Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:11:02 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> 
>> In the best of worlds, both government and religion are in the same
>> business.
> 
> Very true.  The fundamental difference is that the Government deals in 
> your life today, religion typically deals in your eternal life. 

No, that's what I'm saying. Religions don't tell you about your eternal 
life. They tell you about what you have to do *today* to get your eternal 
reward. I can't think of any religion that tells you about your eternal life 
without telling you how to behave in this one.

My point was that to break up a prisoner's dilemma situation, you can either 
increase the reward for cooperating or increase the punishment for refusing 
to cooperate. And government and religion are both in a good position to do 
one or the other of those.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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