At 08:35 AM 11/29/2002 -0800, Andrew McGuigan wrote: >--- Steven Brust <skzb at dreamcafe.com> wrote: > > > Why do we love each > > >other in the abscense of children? > > > > I'm not sure what this means. > >Well, I've heard from some people that "love" is an >evolutionary survivial mechanism to insure parental >bonding, which in turn helps progeny to survive. Oh. I hadn't heard that. In any case, I certainly don't know enough about it have an opinion. And I never express opinions on subjects I don't know anything about between 6 and 7 on Friday evenings. > > >I guess you would not agree with the phrase >"Co-incidence is God's way of remaining anonymous?" :) That would be a "no" > >Ok, well then we are arguing over different things. I >was arguing that "religion" was not shrinking, and >thus it made sense that it would exist in the far >future, as opposed to "God" shrinking. Correct. "Religion" shrinking refers to number of people who are religious. Since the population is increasing, and since people here are coming up with whacky definitions of what "religion" means, I don't see how to answer that (and it isn't a subject that intrusts me). I'm saying that the domain over which the superhuman and supernatural has control tends to get smaller as man's knowledge increases.