God Gene?

This week my cover story attempts to show, using the work of two archeologists, that mankind developed religion due to a gene. That gene is supposedly the one that makes us social, that makes us want to dance all night together, defend the tribe and risk our lives for our social group. These archaeologists make a good case, that this kind of a gene would lead to success in battle, better social relations and a greater likelihood of survival.

So perhaps we have such a gene. But I don't see, from reading the article, why that should lead to bowing before statues and believing in an afterlife. Frankly, dancing all night seems good in itself, philosophy being an entirely different field. But you can decide for yourselves.

Last week I posted a bunch of information on the Council on Foreign Relations. What I should have posted was this link:

http://www.ecfr.eu/content/about

This is the EUROPEAN Council on Foreign Relations, not the American one. The study referred to in last week's cover story was published by the ECFR, founded in 2007 by George Soros and friends. The American and European CFR organizations are related by the business interests of Wall Street.

According to Wikipedia, Soros is the world's 29th richest man, with a fortune of around 11 billion USD. He is also a former director of the AMERICAN Council on Foreign Relations. Born in Hungary, Soros has a strong interest in European affairs, and wants both a strong EU and a strong alliance between US and EU. Hungary was once part of the Soviet (Russian) "Warsaw Pact", whereas now it is part of the Western military union, NATO (since 1999) and the EU (since 2004). American cooperation with Europe is essential to keep this relationship intact.

The point of the article was that Europe must embrace Obama's program for tighter American-European cooperation, under American direction. The immediate objective is more troops in Afghanistan. After the article was published, President Obama did decide to send over 30,000 new American troops to Afghanistan. The article had blamed his indecision for the hesitation Europeans were feeling about committing more NATO soldiers. The implication of the article is that now Europe must follow Obama's lead and send thousands more Europeans into the Afghan war, if it wants to avoid "global irrelevance".

The relationship between American billionaires, CFR, ECFR, the Obama administration and the New York Times has to be appreciated, in order to make sense of the articles we read. As I predicted, the NYT article of last week warned us of what Obama would do. We can wait and see if its expectation for European cooperation also comes true.

If the group which sponsors CFR and the NYT get their way, the new Lisbon Treaty will gather Europe more tightly together under central government in Brussels, weakening local government in the individual countries. NATO will gradually merge with the EU, reinforcing the US military and the US economy in a dominant role there. If a small elite can govern Europe under American direction, it is felt that this cultural bloc can compete successfully with Russia, China and the Islamic world for domination of the world's resources, notably in Africa.

For what it's worth, here is a link to a New York Times book review of Robert Kagan's The Return of History and the End of Dreams (2008), which argues approximately the same thing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/books/review/Sanger-t.html