There is a multi-faceted way of splicing this: If one were to entertain the Sam Harris method: There is no free will, her question would have to be reworded.
The other is "why pray" when an all knowing god will choose what god wants regardless of what you want. Xtians like to use the term 'logic' when if someone outside of the faith uses 'their' logic, fallacies would be more than self evident, for example, "why pray at all, because as much free will as you believe you have, its god's mysterious ways."
christian logic isn't logic outside of itself because it uses circular arguments.

@MacStriker
Christian logic, or any other religion’s logic isn’t the logic of the 18th century Enlightenment. It’s the logic of evolution. Evolution cares not one whit about the reason of philosophy but only about which traits enhance an organism’s chances of getting their genes into the next generation. If you try to follow its path by human reason you will be lost and confused. If you always ask WWED (What Would Evolution Do) you might find it surprisingly logical.

@skado I don't follow xtian logic, i was using it as an example that if one were to follow it, it defeats itself thus 'non-logical'
Yes, i find evolution logical. If there was confusion as to where my stance is; I am a non-believer, and don't follow xtian belief or any theist belief system.

@MacStriker
There was no confusion on that point. I’m saying what passes for religious logic makes perfect sense when viewed as a product of evolution.

@skado That's not necessarily true. Humans have been fighting against evolution for a long time. If traits have developed in that time it is not necessarily true that they are concordant with evolutionary principles.

@ChestRockfield
It wouldn’t necessarily be true - it just happens to be. When you examine it closely.

@skado How could you possibly know that given what I've pointed out?

@ChestRockfield
I don’t claim to know anything for certain, but that is how it appears to me given the evidence I have seen. I don’t see how what you pointed out precludes the possibility that religious behavior is adaptive.

Evolution, like gravity, can be resisted, but it will win in the long run. It’s effects are not readily visible on the surface, but when you look closely it’s fingerprints are all over religion.

@skado "It wouldn’t necessarily be true - it just happens to be." This is a claim of certainty. Otherwise, you'd have only said, "You're right, not all traits, at least for humans, are necessarily concordant with evolutionary principles."
I'm not saying zero or even few traits of religion are a result of evolution. I'm saying it's possible or even likely that at least a few aren't.

@ChestRockfield
People invent behaviors all the time that are not adaptive, just like random genetic mutations occur with every birth. And just as with random mutations, the adaptive behaviors get repeated and the maladaptive get forgotten in a generation or two.

But there is a general thrust of religious behavior that has been with H.sapiens for at least forty or fifty thousand years, because it has survived the test of bio-cultural evolution.

@skado If you think all maladaptive human behaviors get forgotten in a generation or two you are completely blind to human behavior.

@ChestRockfield
It's not about "all" of anything. It's a general trend. What is an example of a net maladaptive trait that has persisted for forty thousand years.

@skado You think "a generation or two" takes 40,000 years?!

@ChestRockfield
No, I don’t think that. Maybe we need to get more specific. What behaviors in particular are you speaking about? What religious behaviors do you feel were not forged by evolution?

@skado I didn't say anything specifically about religious behaviors. And I didn't say behaviors weren't forged by evolution. What I said was, "That's not necessarily true. Humans have been fighting against evolution for a long time. If traits have developed in that time it is not necessarily true that they are concordant with evolutionary principles." I mean, if you want to extrapolate it literally everything is a product of evolution even a desire to fight against evolution and the product of that is indirectly a product of evolution, but to say that is to say nothing. Everyone knows that already, so there would be no reason to talk about any of it ever. That's as dumb of a conversation ender as saying 'our whole universe could just be a single cell on the tip of a giant's finger' or 'this could all just be a dream'..
That said, our quest to keep certain types of individuals in our society alive as long as possible by almost any means necessary is fighting against evolution, or more aptly, evolutionary "progress" and the long term sustainability of our species.

@ChestRockfield
What certain types?

@skado The type that is no longer or never was able to contribute to the advancement of the human race while consuming exorbitant resources to stay alive. People who are so severely injured or developmentally delayed that they can't do anything except lay in a bed.

@skado Is silence your way of conceding a point because you can't ever admit you were wrong?

@ChestRockfield
Apologies. I haven’t abandoned the discussion. I’ve been distracted by other responsibilities. Will return shortly.

@ChestRockfield

I'm actually pretty delighted to admit I'm wrong (when I am) because that's an occasion when I have learned something. At this point I haven't yet figured out what you think I'm wrong about. What would you like for me to learn here?

@skado
You said, "what passes for religious logic makes perfect sense when viewed as a product of evolution"
I said if traits developed in a time period when humans actively fought against normal vehicles of evolutionary progress, things they did wouldn't necessarily make perfect sense.
You argued a bunch and backtracked about stuff you said like the couple generations that turned into 40k years, that when I called you on it, you went back again and said no.
So, do you still think it always make "perfect sense" that humans do things that actively fight against human evolutionary progress and the sustainability of the flourishment of the species?

@ChestRockfield

I didn't say "a generation or two" takes 40,000 years". I said that maladaptive traits fall away in a few generations, but adaptive ones stick around for forty thousand years or more. And I have explained that I'm not speaking in absolutes or certainties but in general trends and in plausible hypotheses.

I didn't say anything always makes perfect sense. I said, in effect, that if you examine this particular trait (religious "logic" ) deeply enough, it is plausibly consistent with evolutionary principles.

It seems you want to talk about the relative value of keeping disabled people alive or some such, and I don't see what that has to do with the Original Post or any of my comments. If you want to discuss that issue, maybe it would be best to start a new post for that. It seems like a worthy topic to discuss in its own right. But it is tangential, at best, to this post.

@skado "I’m saying what passes for religious logic makes perfect sense when viewed as a product of evolution."
I don't see a "sometimes" or "quite often" or "almost always" in there. Your statement is pretty much an 'if X then Y'. You could have avoided all this by simply correcting that statement to, "Well, most of the time what I said was true" and it would have been over.

@ChestRockfield
If I had wanted to avoid all this I would have blocked you. I’m here to create conversation - not to avoid it. There is no way I or anybody else can anticipate the way every possible reader might interpret a general statement. That’s what followup conversations are for.

To me, and I believe anyone who is familiar with the pertinent facts of biology, religious thought makes perfect sense when viewed as a product of evolution. If you’d like to combatively argue semantics it might not hold my interest for long. But if you’d like to engage in a mutually respectful discussion about the biology behind religion, I can do that.