Quote Originally Posted by MiamiB View Post
Yes, I am quite sure that the men who flew those planes into the towers were experiencing that wonderful religious ecstasy at the moment.

:crazy:

Well, I wouldn't have picked that as an example of "religious" ecstasy, but now that you mention it, it's not a bad example of one of the evolutionary benefits of religion for human groups.

Human groups compete for territory, and expending their younger members to attack other groups in attempts to drive them away from territory is an evolutionary pattern.

Chimps send their excess males out to war with other bands of chimps and try to seize their territory. The wars we've gotten involved in the last few decades are the same thing written large.

However, that's more a brain stem thing, raw competition for space, and doesn't have anything to do with the "religious" ecstatic states i was talking about.

Altho, I agree, it's a good example of religions evolitionary function. Religion helps humans compete and gives a mechanism to justify killing and assuage guilt.