Ok, let's replace lies by untruths.
Ahem:
Untruth Un*truth", n.
1. The quality of being untrue; contrariety to truth; want of
veracity; also, treachery; faithlessness; disloyalty.
Lets just call them myths Stephen, because that is what they are.
Now, stories about gods are not exactly myths, in the sense you mean, because people pray to the gods that the stories are about, partly drawing on the stories to know how to pray, or sacrifice, or whatever.
Well, this does not necisseraly invalidate them as myths. You must remember that the concept of gods and worship varies greatly from culture to culture.
The Japanese shinto religion for example has an understanding that nature itself is suppernatural, filled with spirits called 'Kami'. These spirits are not so much beings to be prayd to, as they are natural principals, often indiferent to humans.
Australian Aborigional belifes are highly metaphorical, and rather beutifull. They see this world as a dream of sleeping gods, an ephemeral thought of eternal slumbering beings.
Just because belife in these gods, or in what the gods stand for, produce certain cultural behaviors, does not invalidate their mythic value. The two examples above reaveal a very rich, prfound, and meaningfull perspective on reality resulting from belife, and meditation, on these gods.
Thus, we have a myth, valuable as a myth, providing existential truths, and a cultural identety to a people. Gods do not affect their mythic validity one way or the other.
As to unfit behavior, my training (long ago!) in evolution, in population genetics as the basis for evolution, emphasized something called fitness, W, which was the rate at which a given gene increased or decreased in populations over time. When W was greater than one, phenotypes based on W increased, and were considered more fit. Less, than one, they were headed for extinction.
Are you suggesting that myths affect W, that is, natural selection? I suppose it may have some effect on the population.
When I did population studies on birds, comparing fitness between habitats, I measured life-time production of offspring, acceptably to the evolutionary community I think, as a reflection of fitness and the adaptive-ness of the habitat selection behavior. So, now, I have been considering similar sorts of data for those believing in evolution and those believing in creation. Which population is more fit, in the evolutionary sense. Has more offspring, reproducing offspring. My anectdotal experience, mostly working with home-schoolers and scientists, suggests that those believing in evolution raise fewer children. So with societies, and nations. Maybe some sociologist somewhere will put a grad student on the question.
Well, it is common knowledge that poorer people, with the least education are likely to have more chilldren. Creationisim is a belife that is rampant amongst the worlds poorest people and must uneducated. Could this be a coralation as well?
I find it philosophically interesting, because, as a part of studying applied epistemology, I am interested in the parameters of the being (us) pursuing the truth, or wallowing in self-delusion and denial, as the case may be. How are we functioning, and how did we get that way?
I really have to ask for a clarification here. Pretend I'm three years old and explain what you mean in the above paragraph.
Thank you.
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