[...] one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding. (p. 152 of the Black… - Richard Dawkins

one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.

It's almost impossible to say anything against Islam in this country, because you are accused of being racist or Islamophobic.

I think it is not helpful to apply Darwinian language too widely. Conquest of nation by nation is too distant for Darwinian explanations to be helpful. Darwinism is the differential survival of self-replicating genes in a gene pool, usually as manifested by individual behaviour, morphology, and phenotypes. Group selection of any kind is not Darwinism as Darwin understood it nor as I understand it. There is a very vague analogy between group selection and conquest of a nation by another nation, but I don't think it's a very helpful analogy. So I would prefer not to invoke Darwinian language for that kind of historical interpretation.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.