religion is harmless
My dear blogging buddy Ark is convinced that religions have nothing of value to offer humans. While I share his frustration about harm brought to our world by some people of a religious persuasion, I think it’s unhelpful to get too carried away and dramatically claim religion poisons everything. There are a number of considerations that actually make me think religion itself is relatively harmless.
the actions of some are not the actions of all
Most people who follow a religion live their life broadly in the same way as those of us who don’t. They eat, they sleep, they work and they try to have good relations with those around them. Just as I don’t see sense in equating anything I do to Stalin (a random atheist), most religious people see no sense in equating their actions with that of an Islamic terrorist or a Westboro Baptist Church member (random religious people). Just because we share one quality, does not mean we are liable to act in similar ways.
crimes committed in the name of religion don’t outweigh crimes committed in the absence of religion
Catholic priests don’t abuse children any more than the standard level of society. This does not excuse their behaviour (which I discuss in more detail on this post) but it’s useful to bear in mind that child abuse unfortunately happens in many settings, most commonly within families. The only majority culprit is the male of our species.
Furthermore, we need only look at non-religious regimes such as Mao and Stalin to see that atheists are just capable of committing large-scale atrocities as religious people. Religion doesn’t tell us who the ‘bad guys’ are, it just gives us a different set of motivations. And, once more, the only majority culprit is the male of our species.
religion is natural and evolves with society
Every human society in every isolated part of the world has developed some kind of religion. It is one of the most natural developments of the human species – we crave answers, we crave comfort, we crave order. So, we imagine and create answers that give a measure of comfort and order. Why be angry at what our nature gives us? We can more usefully help religions evolve into kinder interpretations that better suit our current understanding of life- as many are naturally doing. For example, more and more Christian denominations are accepting women leaders and same sex couples.
religion can have a positive impact on lives
As with every other human endeavour, religious insitutions are never without their flaws. But individuals within these institutions often bring comfort for people in times of grief, they provide valuable services to vulnerable sections of our communities and they provide a framework for life that many people are lacking. It would be foolish to pretend that the work done by church groups with families, with refugees, with homeless people, with old people, is all for nothing, or all has sinister ulterior motives. Yes, other people could provide these services, but realistically, what percentage of non-religious people dedicate themselves to these groups of people for free?
conclusion
In the context of human behaviour and the history of our societies, religion is crucial. Without its uniting force, strong communities could never have been established, and humans would likely still be isolated in small, constantly warring tribal groupings. I’d like to think humanity can do better, but realistically with the diversity of circumstance and the challenges many of us face just living life, is it reasonable to assume that social media, football or secular humanism have what it takes to provide a binding force when times get tough? Let’s respect religion as the vital part of our development that it is, and celebrate the good that it brings, while we still have it. All too soon it may be a relic of our history that we sorely miss.
First up, I did not ”blame religion for everything”, the assumption being that everything bad is because of religion .
I said it poisons everything.
For the sake of accuracy you might want to edit that to avoid any ambiguity?
Now let me go back and read the rest of the post.
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Done. You might be the only person to read it, it’s done one of those random silent publications that didn’t hit readers. Does that ever happen to you?
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Dunno? Did you include tags?
Or try re-publishing it?
Or some of your favorite tags that all those naughty people manage to find you by?
My review of the post proper is coming up ….
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I accept the premise that: ”Every human society in every isolated part of the world has developed some kind of religion”, some even ate each other, but I disagree with the bulk of the post, and in particular your claim that religion is ”crucial”, especially when one considers past history and also in this day and age in light of religiously motivated terrorism, and the aims of the more extreme sects/branches of the various religions.
I have the distinct feeling you are playing to the punters with this post and look forward to reading reams of erudite rose fertilizer from SOM, Greg, and Colorstorm. Oh, and your Nemesis, Miss Spanking Insanity bytes.
Let me grab a coffee and a sandwich.
I am busy writing at the mo, but I will keep the window open if not the door.
Good post though. Made me smile.
By the way, the word is communities, rather than cummunities (final paragraph) unless you were intentionally casting aspersions of a sexual nature regarding Christians and the other religious mobs bonking each other silly?
Ark.
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Haha, I’m doing this on my phone, so there are bound to be errors. Thanks for spotting that. Maybe I’ll delete it an republish to see if it will push through to readers. No idea why the silent posts happen.
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Feel free to edit out that part of the comment. If you are concerned with traffic I can do a re-blog if you like? But don’t want to usurp your post in any way so I’ll close comments at my spot -at least until Argus moans again. 🙂
(We all right for a while as he’s just gone to bed, so he says.)
Say the word?
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If you want, but leave comments open at yours so the anti-theist faithful can express their ire openly. 😀
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From your lips to … Quetzalcoatl’s auricular orifices.
Ire? Surely not? Feel the lurv ….
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Hey~! I heard that …
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What makes you think that without religion communities would never have formed?
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Is it not obvious, John? We would all be completely without morality and run riot butchering people.
Unlike well-disciplined, moral, ethical, god-fearing communities.
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Ah, of course. Hunger, thirst, security must have all been secondary drivers for community formation.
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It’s the ”crucial” term that Violet uses that seriously bugs the Gehenna out me .
It is as fallacious and erroneous as when the religious say:
”So if we got rid of religion what would you put in its place? What do we have to fill the void with?”
I mean really … Mary mother of God, what a bloody ridiculous thing to say.
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But it’s a fact that it has been crucial, even if we’re not exactly sure why. We don’t know what societies in general would look like without it. We do know that individuals can behave civilly, even better, with more compassion, without it. But how do you extend that understanding to everyone in such unequal societies?
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I disagree that it is a fact it has been crucial and I still don’t see evidence to support this. Conjecture, yes, evidence….hmm. Did I miss something?
Unless you have details of some ancient godless society to compare with?
Of course we don’t know what they would look like without it … but we are moving that way.
And the figures are out there .
The better, all-round societies are the more secular orientated democratic ones with little or no religion.
Teach religion as a subject , sure, like History, Geog, or Math.
Teach Christianity and Islam etc as one would the Inca or Mayan religions.
How many kids do you think would suddenly have a revelation at 15 and rush off and devote their lives to Quetzalcoatl?
Is society in general worse off because we do not have an Inca religion as our foundation?
Take a look at the figures for Iceland.
I don’t have a link but the god, Googly should oblige.
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“The better, all-round societies are the more secular orientated democratic ones with little or no religion.”
Where do you get this from? The country with the most atheists in the world is China, and it has an appalling record for treatment of human beings. And why look at Iceland? It has at most a one in five atheists – what could that tell us?
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Did you miss the bit that said secular orientated democratic?
I’ll put that down to jet lag, shall I?
Pee Ess, Re: Iceland. Did you see the most recent stats regarding god belief in the age group of those under 24 ( I think this was the figure) …, considered the new/next generation that will bring kids into the world. There are no recognized god-believers in this age group; officially anyway.
Even if the figures are a bit skewed (quite likely) that pretty much amounts to an almost religion/god free society withing the next 25 years.
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In times of relative ignorance with basic struggle for survival, what else encouraged people to obey, to follow, to cooperate beyond immediate family or small community? The golden rule is logical when you can convince everyone to sign up for it but when your neighbours are starving to death and want your chicken…?
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Hunger, thirst, physical security.
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Some scientists see religion as more of an adaptation — a trait that stuck around because the people who possessed it were better able to survive and pass on their genes.
Robin Dunbar is an evolutionary psychologist and anthropologist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom whose work focuses mostly on the behavior of primates, including nonhuman primates like baboons. Dunbar thinks religion may have evolved as what he calls a “group-level adaptation.” Religion is a “kind of glue that holds society together,” Dunbar wrote in “How Many Friends Does One Person Need?: Dunbar’s Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks” (Harvard University Press, 2010).
Humans may have developed religion as a way to promote cooperation in social groups, Dunbar said. He noted that primates tend to live in groups because doing so benefits them in certain ways. For instance, hunting in groups is more effective than hunting alone. But living in groups also has drawbacks. Namely, some individuals take advantage of the system. Dunbar calls these people “freeriders.”
“Freeriding is disruptive because it loads the costs of the social contract onto some individuals, while others get away with paying significantly less,” Dunbar wrote in a New Scientist article, “The Origin of Religion as a Small-Scale Phenomenon.” As a result, those who have been exploited become less willing to support the social contract. In the absence of sufficient benefit to outweigh these costs, individuals will leave in order to be in smaller groups that incur fewer costs.”
But if the group can figure out a way to get everyone to behave in an unselfish way, individual members of the group are less likely to storm off, and the group is more likely to remain cohesive.
Religion may have naturally sprung up from this need to keep everybody on the same page, Dunbar said.
http://amp.livescience.com/52364-origins-supernatural-relgious-beliefs.html
Here’s one opinion I just found. I think the fact we see religion everywhere tells us we needed it. Like Ark, I see a lot of harm and ignorance, but I’m cautious about what human societies would look like without it. There’s a lot of desperate, selfish behaviour. Thinking about the experience of people like Tiribulus, who genuinely think they can’t control their antisocial behaviour without eternal punishment looming.
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I think what you’re actually hitting at here is existential death anxiety. Dunbar is wrong. We developed religion as a palliative measure. This is from my fabulous book:
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While I do not think, that “the conflict between the desire to survive and an individual’s inevitable death gives rise to—and drives—virtually every human activity”, as there are plenty of activities we humans engage merely to amuse ourselves, I do not see that “religion is a “kind of glue that holds society together” either. With all due respect to the wise scholars and their work on this issue, I think Arkenaten is especially right in this case, claiming, religion “poisons everything”. For example the research into religion is often poisoned by preconceptions religion propagates about itself. One of those is the idea, that religion is somehow necessary – any religion? That makes no sense, because the combining qualities between different religions are not positive, or beneficial social behaviour. What beneficial for a society does a televangelist offer? How does that sort of pyramid scheme “glue” societies together? Is it not more likely demagougery that plays on the fears of humans and causes segregation? Is televangelism not religion?
The idea of religion being a necessity to society is merely a nother excuse for a religion to exist, while the only actual evidence for this is the correlation of religions within societies. However, if we look at the position of religions within those societies we come to a number of great variability. If we then compare the variable importances people in different societies have given to religions or the ever changing values that the religions have tapped into, the role of religion, nor any values any religion claims to have ever held becomes rather questionable.
Religion is an obscure and quite broad term anyway. There is a big difference between Roman Catholic church hiding pedophile priests globally, and a East-Siberian shaman foretelling the future for the reward of a bottle of vodka. Both are described as religions and both share the same problem of basing their entire activity on tradition of guesses about a possible unnatural agent in the universe. What they give to the surrounding societies should be evaluated on the grounds of how much of those guesses can, on any even remotely reliable level, be determined to be actually true at all. That is, if we value truth.
Westerners could have merely a couple of hundred years ago said that no civilization has emerged without the horse, therefore a horse is necessary to any civilzation. If someone had pointed out that the American civilizations did not have a horse, the answer could have been, that those were not real civilizations as they lacked the horse and some other halmarks of civilization inherent to the Western culture. This still happens even today. Just a few days ago Magagutu wrote a post about an article in the Guardian that claimed that without colonialism Africa would not have had the rule of law or nation states. Ridiculously ignorant.
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If TMT was true, then we would still need religion now, because we don’t have much better alternatives to offer ourselves as atheists. It’s all about agency and ignorance, that’s why many of us can overcome the urge to be religious now. The people who still fall for it are either steeped in the culturally so it’s a brainwashed part of their identity that is difficult to shed, or have a … need … in their life. The absent parent, the brutal parent, lack of attachment at key developmental stages. Religion can fill a ‘love’ and ‘belonging’ gap.
I’m confused that my point about religion being crucial and natural to our development is being challenged. All our societies are as they are because of collective belief in superstitious frameworks – we can’t deny that. We are the evolutionary product of a superstitious species and therefore religion has been vital to our development – even if we can never extract the exact ‘how’. The glue theory seems most logical to me.
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Vital how? No religion ever discovered how to fire bricks, build a sewage ditch, form a government, or even wage a war. Religion has given nothing at all to human societies other than a shared cartoon. If it numbs people to existential death anxiety, then great, but let`s not pretend it has actually contributed a single thing to human development.
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But it is our development. It’s something humans invented that has been key to our societies. I don’t see how you can remove it. It’s like saying storytelling has no function because it spreads misinformation, or families have no function because we can live in communes, or music has no function. People get pleasure out of it, and it has provided key structures (including moral ones, whether you like it or not, probably why we still eat animals).
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Pleasure, or a medicine?
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The kind of pleasure they can get at a rave, and the kind of medicine they can get in therapy. With an eternal comfort blanket for good measure. I’m actually on both sides of the fence on this one, depends how the wind is blowing. 🙂
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Would you upload your consciousness and exist in a virtual world, capable of assuming any form you like, whenever you like, if you could?
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Maybe after the first million volunteers had reported 100% satisfaction with it. But certainly not in the testing stage. 😎
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Fair enough, but that is the promise of post Singularity. We become imortal (be it physically through augmented bodies, or digitally), which would be making real the religious cartoon. Technology (everything from symbolic language to cloud computing), therefore, is the real “religion.”
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The phrase ”May have”, which you have attributed to Dunbar, features three times in this short comment, which may have been because Dunbar was just taking a flyer?
No matter how qualified he is, Dunbar it looks like he may have sucked his conclusion out of his thumb as there is no reason we shouldn’t believe that without the Church, for example, we may have got along just fine, thank you very much, Mr Dundar.
Maybe he should hold bible study for no human primates?
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It’s a theory, like everything else we’re discussing here. Like evolution. 🙂
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Oooh … now that is a Pandora’s Box comment that is going to have Tildeb baying for blood.
How’s your holiday, by the way?
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Holiday is good so far, nice and hot. I’ve still not recovered from the journey, my brain feels like sludge so keeping up with what I wrote on this post is proving difficult. I’m not sure I even believe most of it. 🙂
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Sunny? Can’t be England then. I heard that since Brexit, mainland Europe is still debating whether to let Mudisland, (as my blogpal Footsy calls her place of birth) carry on importing sunshine or tell them to bugger off.
😉
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There’s only one place we go on holiday – we’ve got desperate grandparents to appease. So I’m down in the southern hemisphere with you and John – just like old times! 🙂
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Aah … of course! Give me minute and I’ll get my flashlight, point it west and say hi by semaphore or whatever. Be ready to look out your window.
😉
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Unite the group doesn’t require any form of reality, just a catchy line. (And of course profits for the creative.) Ark~?
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Reblogged this on A Tale Unfolds and commented:
Violetwisp’s refutation of my Religion poisons everything post.
Worth a read, as is everything she writes. This is an ideal post for those who thoroughly enjoy seeing my atheist perspective put through the wringer. Feel the love! 😉
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Thanks best blogging buddy. 😀
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Pleasure. Forgot to mention the photo, beautiful.Thistle, right?
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Aye, national flower. Still old stuff, need a new collection. Want to lend me your garden?
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🙂
No probs.
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Violet, I so enjoyed UR post !! The only thing I disliked is the truth you posted in these words…” For example, more and more Christian denominations are accepting women leaders and same sex couples.”
Violet, Christianity has become watered down by many Christian churches… We as Christians are called by God to share our faith…not cave in to what the world deems acceptable…
If one believes that every word in the Bible is truth (as I do)…and that God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow…why do Christians believe same sex marriage is OK ???
We are called to love the sinner, but hate the sin…
Anyway…I appreciated this post !!
Blessings !! bruce
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Thanks Bruce. When you have a slave you think you are entitled to beat to just before the point of death, you can use that argument. Until then, go with flow, and accept that all religions need to update their interpretations to stay ‘moral’ within society.
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There are some good points in this post. I think, however, you are giving religion far more credit than it deserves. When you say:
It would be foolish to pretend that the work done by church groups with families, with refugees, with homeless people, with old people, is all for nothing, or all has sinister ulterior motives. Yes, other people could provide these services, but realistically, what percentage of non-religious people dedicate themselves to these groups of people for free?
Are you saying religion is what compels people to volunteer and to act kindly towards one another? This is something that can be easily refuted. There are of course many people who help one another who are secular, agnostic, atheist. But if you want to argue that a higher proportion of such help is provided by religious organizations. The fact that religion is organized is the answer to your question there. I would argue that this is what religion excels at and is the reason for it’s survival. It’s a great way to organize people, to keep a cohesive unit. But it doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways to do it, and given that massive levels of organization are also tools of war and oppression we might be hesitant to say that the ability to mass organize through religion is a great idea.
There most certainly is a practical side to religion, and so that makes it seem helpful at times, there is no denying that. Certainly religion would arise out of a need to explain the world around us, and thus it seems unsurprising that it would develop naturally in humans who apply agency to everything and who desperately want to find order out of chaos and find patterns even when there are none. But at some level is there not some danger in for failing to progress beyond the framework of the supernatural? If we put religion on an equal pedestal as any other world view. One that is full of ideas and values, we find that many values exist across different religions and in the absence of religion. We also find many ideas that we can reject. Like science should we not take what is worthwhile and move forward? It seems to me that at some point maintain religion is just stubborness because it’s only place becomes and extremely smaller opening in which to fit through (aka God of the Gaps). When religion does not adapt to increased knowledge about the world it tends to be more like trying to make a square peg fit in a round opening. This, it seems, is when real harm gets done.
In the end you say:
Without its uniting force, strong communities could never have been established, and humans would likely still be isolated in small, constantly warring tribal groupings.
Do you have evidence that we wouldn’t have had strong communities otherwise? Community is evident in chimpanzees and other primates. We are a social species by evolution. I don’t think we were ever not in communities. And to say that religion is what binded tribes together, wouldn’t be necessarily true, as it was also the reason that many people fought. It was also often something that was forced on to people through threat of death, and through indoctrinating children. So in some cases it did bind communities, but not of out compassion and cooperation but through coercion and fear. Is such a community worth it? What type of beast evolves from such a community formed in that way?
I’d like to think humanity can do better, but realistically with the diversity of circumstance and the challenges many of us face just living life, is it reasonable to assume that social media, football or secular humanism have what it takes to provide a binding force when times get tough? Let’s respect religion as the vital part of our development that it is, and celebrate the good that it brings, while we still have it. All too soon it may be a relic of our history that we sorely miss.
The great thing about science is it requires to binding idea. If you accept the scientific method as a superior way of knowing it is usable by any culture and the same physical and biological principles can be discovered. So why wouldn’t secular humanism be a positive binding force. It might to excite the masses on an emotional level, but it does promote love of all humanity, it does promote reason and science, it promotes critical thinking. Values that have been pivotal in moral progress. Social media was extremely relevant in the Arab Spring movement. it bound people together in a way that wouldn’t have been possible before. I was listening to a podcast recently where they were talking about our internet bubbles on social media and one philosopher was like “we’ve always lived in bubbles.” Moreso in the past. Before the printing press, few were educated, most were illiterate, you lived in your bubble almost exclusively. At least now your ability to stumble across different points of view is greatly increased. Recognizing common struggles and triumphs of humankind across cultures is much more likely to bind us together than religion ever has. In fact if you look at the decrease in violence (as a percentage of world population) since the rise of secularism, it’s astounding. http://pitweb.pitzer.edu/academics/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/2014/12/FAC-Zuckerman-Sociology-Compass.pdf
I respect religion for the honest attempt at trying to understand the world and to try and bring people together. There are good things to take from it, but I think it’s better we move on. It’s better that we take the training wheels off. I have no hatred of religion. It is fascinating historically and is an important part of the story of humanity. But I would argue that any ideology that can’t accept change as the only true constant in the universe, is overall not a beneficial one to mankind. Life is too short to not take some things on faith. Humans are going to have it certainly. But uncertainty, because things do change, is a also a part of life, and so what we have faith in should change as well.
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Based on evidence, most religions seem to want to bring people over to their own particular understanding of how the world works, where science and common sense are moire often than not required to sit at the back of the bus.
Meanwhile, up at the front of the bus,the Driver ‘s Theological GPS is going haywire and showing at least 40,000 routes to get to the afterlife, some indicating a return trip, reincarnated as a Dung Beetle, someone’s awful Mother in Law or Elvis.
And all the Bus Conductor seems intent on doing is either chop your head off, remove your foreskin, cover you from head to foot in some god awful dress thing, label you a sinner from birth, or send you to Hell because you refuse to buy a ticket!!
Thank the gods this bus doesn’t go by my place any more. Besides, a relaxing jog is so much more peaceful and gets me where I want to go with a lot less stress.
Ark.
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I guess I should have clarified here that when I said religion, I wasn’t talking about religion as an organized institution but rather what the texts themselves seem to imply. There are stories and parables. Some inspirational. They talk of values like sacrifice, forgiveness, mercy, and tolerance. And there are of course brutal stories too, ones reflective of moral norms of the day. The book of Leviticus seems largely concerned with matters of health: avoid touching blood, don’t eat food that spoils easily, what to do in case of skin diseases, etc. Many of the questions we ask or ones that have been asked for some time. We can come up with better answers because we know more, because we have a more systematic way of discovering truths. I mean imagine not knowing a god damn thing about volcanoes, and one day this peaceful mountain you live next to blows it’s top and buries almost everybody in your town? What would you make of that? Why would one assume there is a natural explanation to that. Maybe you would assume that people in the town were sinful and that some force far more powerful than you could ever force to muster even with a large army has killed 10’s of 1000’s of people in a few hours. What would you make of it? How would you explain it? What about the many infants and young people who would have died before we developed strong resistances to microbes in the early days of farming. You don’t know anything about microbes or this new sickness that seems to pass around so easily. How would you explain it? Would you look for patterns in how got it and who didn’t and think that maybe that was the reason? Religions tries to explain these things. It’s wrong of course, but without any alternative explanation it might be the most reasonable one.
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Hi, Swarn. Are you referring to Abraham’s kid, or goats or doves or that bloke in the New Testament?
And talking of dubious crucifixions… One would have thought he … sorry He… might have had a few useful gems to pass on, even if all he said was, ”And wash your damn hands after making Number Twos for My sake.”
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I’m not talking of any particular story literally being true, but simply the representation of ideas in regards to values.
And of course there is a lot of crap in there, even after you wash your hands. All I am saying that it’s a historical text that give us some insight into how people thought, how people lived, and how they tried to uncover truth. It’s never anything really original…every culture tried it. We don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater is all I’m saying.
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Hmm, of course one could ask why would you bath your kid in water that might give it some vile disease in the first place?
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Only religious fundamentalists take metaphors to literally. lol
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You are seriously comparing moi with a religious fundamentalist?
God help us … whatever next?
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I’m giving you a hard time Ark that’s all. 🙂
If we want to stick with the water metaphor, well some water might be bad, some might be good. We have the ability now to parse out what has value and what does not. I don’t think you could find a religious text that doesn’t have at least one idea that you can’t agree with it. So there is a part of religion that will not cause disease. The fact that it also has diseased parts, doesn’t make religion all bad, or people who are religious all bad. I tend to think that good people would be good even without their religion, but they do tend to adhere to the more positive things their holy book has to say.
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I agree. I know you are giving me a hard time, Swarn, as only a ‘Girl’ could. No worries.
But my original point … whenever that was, sometime back in 1853 I think, was the baggage religion comes with: sin, hell, cutting bits from genitals, and the oft times compulsory wearing of funny hats and other items of headgear, is the fact it is built entirely upon a supernatural foundation.
So on this basis alone, I still maintain that religion poisons everything.
And still on the water analogies and traditional ”beliefs”.
I read that it was once believed that, if the water in a well had newts living in it then it must be okay to drink as the newts obviously wouldn’t be able to survive if the water was poisoned or tainted in any way.
True enough I suppose, but one has to wonder what the people who believed such a story thought the newts did when they needed the toilet?
Makes you think …
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Haha. That seems silly to think that what’s good for a newt is good for us!
By the same token if we look at ideas like eugenics, or the nuclear bomb as product of science, we could say that science poisons things as well. Clearly we have to consider ethics and the real impacts these ideas have in the world and be willing to change them. Religion while excelling at organizing if woefully slow to adapt. Which is why it ultimately fails.
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Even if I were to concede a few points just for the sake of (not) arguing, are there really any merits to clinging on to religion in this day and age?
Unless you can make a really strong case for eating wafers, cutting bits off men’s willies and dressing women to look like the Lone Ranger in drag?
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I agree with you. I don’t think there are any good reasons. As I said before, I think if we can, from a broader point of view, say that religion is an early model attempting to explain how the universe works it is most certainly outdated. I don’t want to say that it represents sort of child like thinking, but if you sort of consider the history of humanity as one human life, religion represents best guesses we had when we were young. Like children we need to accept that Santa isn’t real, but that doesn’t mean giving is a bad thing.
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A better analogy might be the child sitting on the potty and declaring with glee:
”Look what I made! Now I’m going to show it to everyone and if they don’t beleive it is real or that I did it I will take it out and show them!”
As a parent you must be familiar with this scenario or something along similar lines.
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LOL…quite familiar. Although that implies shit is a bad thing. As a parent I recognize the importance of regular bowel movements, proper consistency as a measure of diet and health. 🙂 I find a good shit quite satisfying. lol
What I was going to add to my last comment. The question is why do people hang on to old things when something new is much better? Sentimentality? lol And some point we have to move on, and I believe we are at a point in human history where we can do that.
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@Swarn. Re: your comment to Tildeb
For instance my mother is a strong Christians,
My mother is merely a strong Christian.
Exactly how many Christians is your mum?
Just asking …. carry on. 😉
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LOL…she’s fortunately not too many of them as she lives in Pakistan.
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No, I don’t think the analogy is correct.
You are confusing the product for the principle and claiming equivalency when you compare nuclear bombs to be ethically the same as some religious poison. Science does not poison everything like religion does in the same sense of mistaking beliefs about reality for reality. Introducing the ethical concerns of implementing these or those scientific or religious products is not enhanced or clarified or revealed but muddied by suggesting concern of some divine agency deserves a place at the discussion table. The inclusion of this third party – transcendental and invisible, donchaknow – is never a way to improve ethical or moral concerns; it’s a way to poison any discussion and move it away from real world concerns about real world humans.
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I agree with what you say, but that wasn’t the point of my analogy. Ark, seemed to be making the claim, that we can say some method of describing the universe is poison because of the negative results it leads to. My point is that we can find negative results in science as well. Although I would say there are far fewer, and that science will self-correct a harmful practice much more quickly than religion does. I am not arguing in anyway that religion does a better job in the long run by any means, but that doesn’t mean there is no useful information encoded into religious practices. For instance let’s look at forbidding the eating of pork. Why would such a rule be there. It seems arbitrary. But not so arbitrary when you consider how much water it takes to keep pigs (not sensible in an arid climate), how much garbage they eat, how easily the meat spoils in a time without refrigeration. Likely it was observed that eating pork led to more sickness. Now they didn’t know why it was causing sickness, and they attributed it to the wrong reasons, but in the absence of any way to determine why pork sometimes caused problems and why it sometimes didn’t it is probably a good thing that people were told in a holy book not to eat pork. That “rule” came from empirical observations, and the practice of not eating pork likely had overall benefits, even if their conclusion as to why it happened was absolutely wrong. To continue to not eat pork now, from a safety consideration, is obviously ridiculous. As I said to Ark, I don’t believe religion is necessary anymore, but at the time when many of these “rules” came about they were likely done for practical reasons and did improve quality of life. We can do much better with science, there is no doubt in my mind about that. But we didn’t have the scientific method 2000 years ago.
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Yes there may have been reasons for some ‘laws’ but the same reasoning should have applied to all meats. (Remember, Jesus is the one who transferred the evil spirits to a herd of pigs and ran them off the cliff… a meaning from translation that could indicate it is a very good thing to have pigs, n’;est pas?)
All you’re doing is assigning to a few carefully selected injunctions a possible reason other than what is given in scripture and suggesting that maybe this might make sense and so we can then attribute to a religious belief some potential ‘good’. All I see here is grasping at straws. If religion did offer real benefit, then the examples should be immediate and obvious and practical to all. That such reasons are not given, not made available, not explained but simply pronounced as if by an authority, indicates that coming up with possibilities is really a standard of rationalization used today to work backwards as if to justify them rather than show benefit from religions readily deduced. You have to squint just so to even find this weak rationalized version.
In fact, and as you know, there are just as many hair-brained dietary injunctions (or hare-brained for those who know these laws) as there are any that might make reasonable sense. But don’t ponder these while trimming the corners of your beard or picking up sticks on the Sabbath, both of which are an abomination to God and worthy of death. If human welfare really was was at the forefront of the pig injunction and divinely inspired, then surely suggesting it would be pleasing to God – as Ark likes to point out – that washing hands would have produced an ark-load of benefit by comparison. Nope. Let’s keep to the cloven/divided hooves dietary insight and bring in nighttime as the timeline that determines cleanliness. I mean, seriously…
Good grief.
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Well I don’t think I’m grasping at straws, simply because it seems reasonable that all such laws, religious or otherwise would be created for completely arbitrary reasons. That literally doesn’t make sense either. I’ve read of numerous other ones, beside the pork one. Beef in India is similar. In fact there are lot of religious rules surrounding food in many cultures and religions that often have to do with nutritional concerns, without any understanding as to why…and pigs are different than other animals in terms of the ease in which it can cause sickness, and the vast amount of water resources it takes to keep them since pigs don’t actually sweat. Again, I am not arguing that religion bears value in this day in age, but to assume that all encoded laws in religious texts didn’t have some intent that might have been to benefit the people is also highly unlikely given human behavior.
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I think it poisons everything it produces… including anything ‘good’ people try to attach by assumption to it… because it starts with a methodology guaranteed to fool you. Doing ‘good’ for religious reasons undermines the ‘good’ and changes it into an action that serves something other than doing ‘good’ for its own sake.
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I agree. I’d rather ‘good’ be attributed to the right reasons. For instance my mother is a strong Christians, she does really good things for people. However she thinks that it’s because she’s a good Christian following what the Bible tells her. She doesn’t recognize that she was raised by good parents, who loved her, and that empathy is just part of who we are as humans, and that doing ‘good’ has value at a human level, not the divine. This is likely what has made her latch on to the more positive parts of the bible. Once beliefs are had they can also impact behavior. And maybe as a result she does even more ‘good’. So I’m glad good is being done, even if I’d prefer that it was being done for the right reasons. Because obviously the pitfall is what happens when someone is raised by shitty parents who introduce them to religion. What parts are such children going to latch on to?
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too*
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@Swarn Girl, you wrote: ” I would argue that this is what religion excels at and is the reason for it’s survival. It’s a great way to organize people, to keep a cohesive unit.” Indeed. Massive bureaucracies to invent imaginary (both superstitious and seemingly secular) reasons why other people should pay for their upkeep.
The relatively liberal (as it has women priests) Finnish national Lutheran church for example excuses it’s right to collect tithes as taxes, mostly by appealing to charitable work at home and at developing countries. In reality only 13% of their yearly income goes to this work, while the majority goes to the upkeep of the bureacratic organization and the massive wages of the bishops at the top. They cling on to the taxation, because most of them would be out of work, if they were left to the Finns to voluntarily pay for their upkeep. A bishop in Finland “earns” some 10 000 euros per month.
Besides, nobody really even knows how much of the “charitable” work is just proselytizing, wich of course is seen as a beneficial thing by the church, but in reality benefits the poor people it is supposed to help absolutely zilch. It may even be harmfull, in setting them in a disadvantageuous situation in believing unnatural nonsense (that is the basic building block of every religion) about the reality around them.
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Thanks for calling me Swarn Girl. Reminds me of the last time I was in a gay club. Lol
Great points though. I agree… The corruption of organized religion knows no bounds.
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LOL — reminded me that not long ago, you were addressed as Swart several times on your blog.
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Overall I prefer Swarn Girl. 🙂
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😂
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Shape up, man! Get a damn haircut and shave and put on a blerry tie!
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Oops, I am sorry Swarn Gill, this is embarrasing. I assure you it was not deliberate, nor was it a Freudian slip – rather a simple typo. Yet, embarrasing, especially since I just recently chastised Silenceofmind for getting garbled in his comment.
People write my name wrong all the time, and I must admit, that I have on occasion gotten a bit annoyed about it, when I thought it was deliberate. Just look at what the aforementioned Silenceofmind keeps calling me.
I wonder if the corruption is just a bureacratic phenomenon and therefore almost unawoidable in large scale organizations, like organized religions? No gods seem to be bothered by it much, though. On the other hand corruption in general is a complex issue. For example my homecountry is said in various studies to have a very low level of corruption, but that seems to refer more on the low level corruption, than what is decided secretly in the cabinets of corporations and the government. Our cops do not charge extra on the side for writing a speeding ticket, like on occasion happens at our neighbouring Russia, but our ministers and generals are quite happy to spend billions and billions on the most expensive and innefective weaponsystems. It is difficult for me, at least, to come up with any other explanations, than that some form of corruption is at play, or that our generals and ministers are moronic. Am I moving towards ridiculous conspiracy theories?
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Don’t worry. I wasn’t offended in the least, just needling you a bit for a funnier than normal typo. It definitely happens frequently enough in my life that getting actually upset over it, would be a time and energy consuming activity best spent elsewhere. lol
Corruption is an interesting thing. As you say, it seems to be unavoidable.
One way of looking at it, which I think is a good place to start, that for any system there will be cheaters in that system. Most will be able to compete fairly, but others will find a way to cheat the game. This is something we find everywhere. Even people who fake emotions well, are the type of toxic people we might have in our lives. They’ve learned to essential cheat social systems. Which comes in handy at all hierarchies. Perhaps though we could find such people not so much corrupted by just natural “cheaters”.
Then we have the reward structure in the brain for winning. If you can win dishonestly, and you get a shot of dopamine for winning, then it’s likely you are going to justify that behavior more and more. Just as reinforcing beliefs release dopamine, so does continually winning. This would be more relative to corruption, but again we might find such things in all hierarchical levels.
Then we have the impact of power. There are lots of studies that show how power changes the brain. One study I heard about in a podcast showed that one can rise to the top more easily with empathy than with being a bully, but that once there, your empathy erodes over time. This to me is the most depressing in a way, but it certainly speaks to the importance of putting term limits on any sort of leadership position. Regardless of your best intentions you are unlikely to be as effective of a leader past about 8-10 years. This might also explain why we have more corruption in bureaucracies, religious or otherwise, than we seem to have in the general population.
I also imagine, relevant to the discussion, is to how much even those who want to play fairly are forced to step outside the “fair norm” in order to accomplish anything, if they enter a system that has been corrupted. i.e. I shouldn’t have to bribe this guy to convince him that this scientific finding is significant and we should enact some legislation, but I do. And once you start doing that, even if you have good ends, such actions must change you…corrupt you in a certain way.
It seems though, that corruption would much more easily thrive in a situation where religiosity is higher. If your worldview structure is predicated on believing things without any evidence behind it, you are more likely to be fooled, or in other words, be unable to recognize the corruption. Many studies demonstrate the importance of education to at least reducing the level of corruption and oppression in a system.
Corruption does seem difficult to remove once entrenched. I get the sense that India is trying to get out of that a little now and is having a hard time of it.
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“But uncertainty, because things do change, is a also a part of life, and so what we have faith in should change as well.”
I have to argue in favor of God and His inerrant word… The world is changing with gay marriage rites, and abortions that seem to be no big deal…
However the Bible, and what God teaches us, has and will never change for those who God has graced with salvation, and filled us with the Holy Spirit…
bruce
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“However the Bible, and what God teaches us, has and will never change for those who God has graced with salvation, and filled us with the Holy Spirit…”
Well that’s your choice, but that’s a little like saying, “For those of us who believe in the geocentric theory a proposed by Ptolemy in ancient Greece, the Earth will always be in the center of the universe.” It simply defies reality. Of course you can always choose to do that, but having too many people deny reality seems harmful.
Also there is nothing inerrant about His word. It’s full of errors and contradictions, it’s full of unprovable historical events, and it was written by men, who for the most part weren’t even around to witness the events they describe. Once again you can choose to deny reality, but that’s a choice and one that most of us can’t afford to make if we actually care about improving well-being.
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Teaches us? You mean such things as, awful science, bad geology, bad zoology, boat building for idiots, stoning one’s children, misogyny, Chatty Burning Bushes and other stupid botanical nonsense, Inter Species sex for the adventurous, incest, lying, cheating,
Oh… hold on , Bruce. I thought of a good one. Supernatural viticulture!
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“But at some level is there not some danger in for failing to progress beyond the framework of the supernatural?”
Absolutely. But we’re clearly not there yet, given that so many educated people still feel the ‘need’ to follow religions. I think we best tackle the harm that religion does by discussing why adherents believe certain things – not by presenting such a natural feature of our specials as all-that-is-evil.
“Do you have evidence that we wouldn’t have had strong communities otherwise? Community is evident in chimpanzees and other primates.”
That’s a great example. How many ape groups do you know that run into hundreds, or thousands or millions? They live in small (tribal) territorial groups generally. They would need a bigger unifying force to work together in larger numbers, and humans have historically done this by someone representing an outside, invisible force. There is no evidence of any human society that has developed in the absence of this, and given the obvious cohesion advantage, I can’t see how we can dismiss it as a key factor. I’m not suggesting we have to cling onto religion for the sake of it, just that we may overlook in the advantages in our haste to further evolve.
“Social media was extremely relevant in the Arab Spring movement.”
That’s an odd example to use given the current state of most nations involved. Proves my point that religion still has more relevance as motivational force, but I guess proves your point that religion has more relevance as a harmful force. Maybe social media can provide great swells of popular opinion and shared emotional outlets, but it doesn’t provide the glue or the reason to follow through. Invisible gods do.
“It is fascinating historically and is an important part of the story of humanity. But I would argue that any ideology that can’t accept change as the only true constant in the universe, is overall not a beneficial one to mankind. Life is too short to not take some things on faith.”
I think we essentially agree. I’m just trying to put the brakes on the hate parade against religion – I think it threatens religious people and pushes them towards more dangerous ideological corners.
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I agree that shaming and belittling people for their beliefs has usually the opposite impact, if our aim is to promote reason and critical thinking.
The arab spring was just one example. There are many people who, through use of social media and the internet are able to find support they never could have found before, connect with people they never could have connected to before, it changes the very nature of community to extend beyond the geographic confines of your world. Ask Victoria how much the internet has brought cohesion to her world that wasn’t before.
And it’s still unclear how religion would be a useful tool for bringing tribes together. How about the simple recognition that, if within your own tribe, cooperation makes you more successful, that if you met a new tribe you might also cooperate to become even more successful? This doesn’t seem to an unreasonable logical leap. Certainly many tribes traded and had amicable relationships and share knowledge to improve each other’s way of life.
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Ark: I don’t think religion makes any “honest attempt”.
The only honesty is sometimes—by the genuinely (certifiably?) deluded people. That some of them have doctorates in even scientific disciplines goes only to prove the success of the delusions, and the infinite human capacity to compartmentalise thinking.
I know I’m boring but religion boils down simply to delusion and/or Big Business. (How many popes can you squash through the eye of a needle, or their equivalents in other cons?)
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Faith-based beliefs have no means to differentiate delusion from reality. They are identical in method. Religion teaches faith – the willingness to grant beliefs extremely high levels of confidence with little to no support independent of the beliefs themselves – to be a virtue to the extent that contrary evidence can and should be left alone. This is poisonous to learning how and why to respect reality’s testing of these ideas and why empowering faith-based beliefs produces all kinds of unnecessary harm.
You, VW, and many others claim that implementing this virtue demonstrated to show harm has mitigating benefits… but never quite seem able to link the selected benefits to the selected faith-based belief. In contrast, we have a world filled with compelling evidence that justifying actions on faith causes irrefutable harm to real people in real life each and every moment of each and every day. Nevertheless, the belief that faith is a virtue and produces causal benefits still remains. Unsupported, but another persistent belief.
Now, why is this?
Well, this post gives us some insight to indicate why: there are far too many people with good intentions fooled into maintaining the confidence that faith of the religious kind really is an overall virtue. This appears from adduced evidence to not be the case. But, using faith, such people filled with good intentions can create a false equivalency that in effect dismisses all of this evidence as of some secondary or tertiary concern yet allows the person with good intentions to maintain a high confidence that faith really, really, really is a virtue and exercising it in the face of contrary and incompatible and mounting evidence an even a higher virtue! Why, it’s downright moral!
And, tolerant, of course. One must be tolerant. And nice helps. Earnest is always a good feature to project, and finding that middle ground between actual and ongoing harm faith-based actions produce vs the catastrophic conditions to human welfare that might, could, and probably would ensue if faith of the religious kind were not a virtue helps to create and justify standing firm on this fully imaginary middle ground. All very reasonable (in appearance but empty of evidence-adduced substance). And of course the Great Thing of building this apologetic edifice to religion – one that guarantees the legitimacy of faith-based beliefs – is that one does not appear extreme… especially so when now compared to the bookends of religious fanaticism on one end and outright rejection of the faith-is-a-virtue militant atheism on the other that is arbitrarily offered in its defense of religion generally.
In other words, the liberal believer is always presented to be the one who holds the moral high ground in this debate… because religion has co-opted morality to be its surrogate fighter against those who allow reality to arbitrate beliefs about it and people have been fooled into going along with this theft. But the liberal believer is really the most important facilitator of defending the root cause of so much perniciousness: faith.
You are being used, VW.
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YOU are being used tildeb. The perniciousness’ of faith. Ha!
Well might you cite the day as pernicious. Or the scent of a flower. Or a babbling brook. Or the laughter of a child.
It is you sir who is clueless to the facts of life, as you revel in your ‘science falsely called,’ for the common compass that points to north condemns your endless ‘theories’ of suppositions and a world without a Creator.
You see, let God be TRUE, and all men who despise Him are liars. God and His word are that compass.
‘Little or no support?’ Please. Your opinions are an embarrassment to reality, logic, reason, true science, and common sense.
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I’m not sure what you said there Tildeb that actually responded to points in the post. Religion is natural and it’s not all bad – that’s a summary of the post. I’m not arguing that we reward delusion, but that we don’t go overboard in criticising something that is so key to our development. Now, if you want to argue that humans could have evolved without it, go ahead. If you want to argue that it is indeed all bad and that humans behave better without it, go ahead. Humans behave as they behave, and we do so because somehow religion helped us evolve.
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To paraphrase Sean Carroll, humans are pattern seeking critters who will create a bad explanation rather than accept no explanation at all. (Just look at how hard is for theists to ever admit “I don’t know.”) That’s what religious belief is: a Really Bad Explanation. It is also an explanation that creates unnecessary yet pernicious harm and confuses pious ignorance as ‘another kind of knowledge’. What this post attempts to do is say this imposing on reality beliefs that are not allowed to be arbitrated by it is actually not all bad, because, you know, community, evolution, civilization, and any other smatterings that might be termed ‘good’ or of benefit that I can throw at religion.and maybe something will stick. You have not linked any direct causal benefit to this manner of imposing on reality beliefs disallowed to be arbitrated by it, namely, faith.
My comment was intended to explain that this method of imposing beliefs on reality and then not allowing it to determine how accurate the beliefs may be duplicates the method used to maintain a delusion. In medicine, we call this delusional thinking. In society, we call this religious virtue.
I take issue with almost everything you’ve written in this post because your thinking is entirely muddled by trying to claim something that reality has arbitrated to be highly unlikely: that religion causes some measure of good and that’s why most if not all societies practice it.
Is this true?
There other and better explanations than this but your importation of religious-belief-must-have-virtue has clouded (I would normally say, “polluted”, but some people think that change in tone is fatal to the merit of good reasoning) your thinking before you tap the first words into this post. You are emulating faith-based thinking by assuming your assumptions are correct and then disallowing reality to arbitrate your beliefs about it. And this is demonstrated by your inability to bring forth compelling evidence you should already had immediately available and from which you supposedly drew this conclusion. But you don’t have it handy, do you? You’re now scrambling trying to find something to link an example of ‘benefit’ to religion. Why is this?
But don’t feel bad, VW; no one has been able to do this yet. That’s why I say you’ve been fooled because you’ve been used to promote an idea – religion causes at least as much good as harm – that reality does not support. You got it from religious advertising and it won;t be last time you will be fooled by the carefully crafted message of those who stand to benefit from your imported confidence when reality doesn’t do this job for them. Without imported belief that religious faith is a net benefit, religious faith can demonstrate no net benefit.
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“that religion causes some measure of good and that’s why most if not all societies practice it.”
You got your fury specs on? You saw the title and your head imploded and you were ranting before you had a chance to actually read the post?
The main point of the post is that religion is no more harmful that non-religion. The secondary point is that it is natural to our development, so why be furious at something that has evolved so naturally in every society? I don’t know if it is overall ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because I can’t see how human societies developed without it – which in itself is interesting in terms of what it might have brought that we can’t pinpoint.
I’ll concede it is a scrambling post that I’m making up as I go along, and I don’t even wholeheartedly agree with everything I’m saying. It’s a theory I’m working on. 🙂
I’m quite sure though that we don’t need to hate religion, we don’t need to despise everything religious people do, and we don’t need to be quite so dismissive about those with lingering religious beliefs. I’ve lost track of the comments here, I’m on a small tablet with intermittant access, but I’m sure I said on another thread (to you?) about the arrogance of our current state like all other Truths before it. We’re constantly in a state of ignorance and although we should confidently state our best understanding and explore it fully, it should never be completely dismissive of other viewpoints. Especially when it comes to the invisible and deepest animal instincts.
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The main point of the post is that religion is no more harmful that non-religion.
You throwing red meat out for some reason?
Here’s an example of how that statement is dead wrong.
The Evangelical play book for climate change denial.
Are you seriously suggesting this is not harmful?
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Are you seriously suggesting that only religious people take a similar stance on climate? The whole point is that while religious people will find wonky reasons to believe wonky things, non-religious people will find wonky reasons to believe wonky things too. It doesn’t come with an added does of harm that is removed when you take it away. It provides a different set of motivations. Now, you may think ‘delusion’ is the most dangerous motivation, but look at someone like Arb who is fighting tooth and nail for trans people to be erased because his atheist feminist theory tells him they shouldn’t exist, and his confirmation bias tells him they are bad people. Removing religion doesn’t remove prejudice, doesn’t remove harm and doesn’t remove people thinking they know the Truth.
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Nonsense. Religion is organised stupidity. Organised prejudice. Indeed, it rewards stupidity and prejudice. It produces, as I have demonstrated, a rationalisation of sick thoughts. It is a retardation of the human condition. It is Japanese foot binding for the mind.
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I could say exactly the same about Arb and Roughseas’ wayward thoughts on trans people. It’s organised stupidity and prejudice backed up by textbooks that misrepresent society and draw false conclusions. They’ve definitely foot bound their atheists minds on this one. And I’m sure there are countless other examples. You think theism is natural. Ark thinks it’s okay to post naked women pictures and snicker. Argus thinks Muslims should be banned from immigration but that he can usurp the Maoris from New Zealand. Shall I go on? We all have weird thoughts and beliefs that harm other groups of people. Religion has the added bonus of WTF but even then people choose interpretations that suit them.
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So, you didn’d like my “It’s Japanese foot binding for the mind”? I thought that was quite a clever line.
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I feel like a testing ground. I did like it that’s why i used it back. Take it this diversionary dance means you agree with me. 😀
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Absolutely not, but we run the risk of upsetting Neptune if we argue on a Sunday.
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You don;t understand Arb’s position.
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Yes, and ColorStorm tells me I don’t understand Insanitybytes. Keep up your delusional wingman routine.
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“The main point of the post is that religion is no more harmful that non-religion.”
Right. I understand your assumption. It’s wrong. Restating it is simply unreconstructed nonsense.
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Tildeb, I’ve pointed out two specific areas in the post where I demonstrate that false assumptions about the harm of religion are made – child abuse and tyranny. You can’t claim that religion in itself is a cause of more harm that we have without it, given that priest commit these crimes at the general level of society, and given that we have very clear examples of non-religious states committing horrendous crimes. What have you given me in return? Vast paragraphs of waffle, as usual. You have to demonstrate where specifically it does more harm if you don’t agree.
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I can and I have: the poison in religion is the method used. It is toxic to knowledge.
It’s a guaranteed way to fool ourselves, to impose our beliefs on reality and then be told it is a virtue to presume reality must comport to them. The methodology is called basing beliefs on faith.
The harm is caused when evidence from reality that arbitrates the belief to be incorrect is rejected because it is not respected. That’s what faith is: a substitution for reality. It is identical to delusional thinking. It is a way to divorce beliefs held about reality from reality’s role to arbitrate them.
This method produces ignorance masquerading as ‘another kind of knowledge’. So here’s the evidence for this:
We see the effects played out from this kind of reasoning method in everything from climate change denialism to alternative medicine, from anti-vaccination groups to conspiracy theories. We see this played out in everything from politics to patriarchy where the assumptions made about real people in real life in order to justify causing them real harm (usually in the name of morality) is secondary to maintaining this imaginary right to lunacy and delusion, that people’s delusional thinking be protected from legitimate criticism in the name of … well, pick your poison! Religion is the mother ship of faith-based methodology and its children are all around us: from going along with the delusion that individuals really do have their very own ‘truths’ to all kinds of anti-scientific anti-intellectual, anti-expertise beliefs that are so contrary to reality that its a marvel that anyone in their right mind would go along and nod wisely and with dripping compassion and exuding tolerance as if this were all very reasonable and chic and oh-so-liberal.
The harm is so ubiquitous from the prevalence of going along with this method imposing belief on reality – a reality that actually has the temerity to disagree – and then claiming it’s as valid a method as adducing evidence that has to comport to an explanatory model that fits the data that it’s actually hard to see this common method in use. It takes a bit of thinking. Yet acting on this schizophrenic model of pretending science and faith comports and are mutually supportive when reality demonstrates this assumption to be both folly and foolishness means we end we end up having no respect for what is true independent of our beliefs! And THIS means we are kept from coming up with working solutions to real world problems while people debate relying on beliefs and false equivalencies in the name of tolerance. This is intolerable stupidity that now threatens our survival as a species while wingnuts and deluded people insist their anti-reality beliefs be given a place at the table. This guarantees no solutions.
This is post-modernism run amok that empowers the Regressive Left to ally itself with the goals of the very worst of humanity’s death cults as if it’s the ultimate life affirming alliance! That the ideal liberal is to be anti-liberal! That one has such enormous capacity for respect for people with Really Bad Ideas that we demonstrate our moral virtue by opening our minds to the extent that our brains have fallen out. And we actually go along with the absurdity that up is another kind of down, black another kind of white, and respecting beliefs about reality is far, far more virtuous than respecting anything and everything reality has to say in the matter.
Yes, religion poisons everything. And yes, the harm is ubiquitous. And yes, we end up spending time and effort pretending the real problem is pointing out the common thread: granting faith-based beliefs any respect at all.
It’s time to put away childish things and wake up. How do I know? Reality is telling us this is required now. Or face global consequences of unimaginable harm and suffering… unimaginable to people who don’t respect reality enough to even LISTEN/b> to it.
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You haven’t given me anything concrete here Tildeb, just another paragraph of puffy wind. Non-religious people are just as likely to be climate change sceptics, into alternative medicine and be anti-vaccine. You’re making no point at all. Why is religion more harmful? It isn’t. I’ll bet if I hadn’t covered the Catholic priest angle, you’d be holding that up as your example. If I hadn’t pointed out the tyrannical atheist regimes you’d be waxing lyrical about religious wars. There’s nothing extraordinary about religious delusion, and most religious people pay as much attention to science and logic as you do in their everyday decisions. It’s the minority that cause the problems – the same minority that do so from a non-religious point of view. We don’t know the first thing about our existence, about the Universe – case isn’t closed.
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Because religion is the enabler and the source of promoting faith-based beliefs to have legitimacy and virtue, it is the poisoner. The poison itself is faith-based belief. When you identify the use of a faith-based rather than evidence-adduced belief, you will recognize the poison at work. It always impairs the mind and impedes the acquisition of knowledge.
All of us – religious and non religious people – can use this method to rationalize any delusion we want. No one is immune, which is why it falls on each and every one of to use appropriate reasoning and not allow ourselves to be fooled into drinking this Kool-Aid.
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Non-religious people are just as likely to be climate change sceptics
You’re wrong here. In the US, evangelicals comprise the absolute lions share of climate change deniers.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/05/29/this-fascinating-chart-on-faith-and-climate-change-denial-has-been-reinforced-by-new-research/?utm_term=.2cbf4681b8ee
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If it weren’t for Christian values the atheist wouldn’t know abuse from a hole in the fence.
Yes, the Christian religion continues to serve the atheist well.
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Well it taught us auto-da-fé so that’s a good thing right?
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Thanks SOM. The Christian religion has been key in the development of our societies, but I don’t think that means that as individuals in this day and age we couldn’t recognise suffering without it. In fact, in an age where billions of animals needlessly suffer so that humans can gorge on their flesh, the fact that the Bible is so careless about their lives probably has influenced us in a negative way. Imagine how much less suffering and bloodshed there could be if Jesus had thought to be vegan.
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Good for you for making this point, Violet.
Amid all the nonsense this is a most worthy comment.
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All the nonsense …?
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You are not going to tell me this was meant to be a serious post? Seriously?
😉
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If Christianity had come up with any of it’s values on its own you might have a point. But since that’s not true, you don’t. Even Christians used the reasoning part of their brain to determine that certain practices even in their own religion were harmful. It’s almost like humans are quite capable of figure out things on their own without religion.
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Yes, Gil,
Christian values just happened all by themselves.
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Can you name a unique Christian value or teaching, SOM?
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John,
I listed out six or seven of them for you the other day. I guess you don’t bother to read people’s comments.
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Can’t recall seeing any such thing. Perhaps you could list them here?
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John,
Let me start with something obvious.
Christianity is unique.
There is no religion like it.
There is and never have been a civilization like Christian Western Civilization.
You are living the newness of Christianity everyday.
But like a fish in water you don’t know that you are wet.
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Right, so can you name a unique Christian value?
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How is this for starters zande:
The grace of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness.
Grace of God- distinctly Christian
Revelation from heaven- distinctly Christian
Did you catch that? From heaven, not the first or the second, but the abode of the only living God.
And as a bonus just for you: this GRACE of God, FROM heaven, is revealed against ALL ungodlinesss; surely by now you should recognize such goodness as being impossible to fabricate, or borrow from all other pretenders.
This grace is offered to YOU. But first, it may do you good to give the Creator the courtesy of existing.
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So, care to name a unique Christian value or teaching?
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I’m sorry if that answer is above your pay grade.
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John,
Are you stupid? Or are you just a troll?
Either way, you don’t belong around people who are trying to have an intelligent conversation.
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Okay, so can you name a unique Christian value?
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John,
Talk to the hand.
It’s waving you goodbye.
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Read any good revisionist history books lately?
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Swarn,
Everything I say in my comments comes straight from the lessons of renown scholars who teaching in the best colleges in the United States.
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LOL…OK.
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Swarn,
The willful, ingrained ignorance of atheists no joke.
Christian Western Civilization is an extraordinary, exceptional civilization.
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I mean you’re just making things up. I mean prove to me with one of your great scholars that there is one positive moral value that was only practiced once Christianity came into human history.
I mean this has got to be a troll comment. The most positive part of western civilization is the development of the scientific method. Other than that, the amount of suffering and devastation western civilization has caused stands out as particularly heinous. But at best, it is no different than any other civilization. We have done great things for people at the expense of people of different skin colors, different religions. Christian history is as bloody, if not more so than any other religion.
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Swarn,
A civilization doesn’t form from one positive value being practiced once.
And you are right. It is a troll statement.
But that is because it came from you, not me.
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Your claim was that Christian has original values that they apparently created. You have yet to prove that such a claim is true. So your original point is without merit unless you can do so.
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Swarn,
The claims I make are obviously true.
If you can’t figure out that Christian Western Civilization is extraordinary and exceptional then nothing I say can change that.
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See there are a lot of things I didn’t think were true until someone showed evidence for them. So not only are your claims about Christianity unsubstantiated, but so is your excuse for not citing evidence from these amazing scholars you mentioned. After awhile people are going to get the impression that there is zero substance behind what you claim to be true. But I mean that’s not possible is it?
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Swarn,
The evidence is right in front of your eyes every day.
That’s what obvious means.
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And you continue to dodge. Actually it’s not obvious. Except for the development of the scientific method which mentioned earlier. You see people who say something is obvious might be A) telling the truth or B) using Trump like tactics in a lie. Here’s how we can determine whether it’s A or B. You provide evidence.
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Swarn,
Sometimes patterns are right before our eyes and yet we cannot see them.
By shifting our point of view ever so slightly, the pattern once hidden, becomes obvious.
Civilizations are humongous patterns that span time and space.
When the pattern of Christian Western Civilization is placed next to all other civilizations the differences are remarkably obvious.
I suggest just giving yourself a chance to see the patterns.
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And I suggest you provide evidence to your claims.
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Swarn,
It is obvious that Christian Western Civilization is the only civilization in human history that progressed past the camp fire, slave and beast of burden as engines of hearth, home and material comfort and wealth.
Atheists mistakenly see history as a continuum from primitive to modern.
But that is not the case.
Ancient civilizations lasted for thousands of years and never progressed past the camp fire, the slave and the beast of burden.
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And Christianity was around well over a millenia before slavery was abolished…slavery is in the bible…the bible was used to justify it in fact…so I really don’t know what garbage you are trying to sell, but it absolutely is.
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Swarn,
Slavery is the human condition.
That condition cannot be cured overnight.
It has taken 2000 years for humanity to get this far.
And we have a long way to go.
Without Christian Western Civilization it doesn’t happen at all.
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You mean without the rise of secularism and science it doesn’t happen at all.
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Swarn,
The foundation of modern science was laid down during the Christian Middle Ages.
Galileo, Copernicus, Newton were all Renaissance and Enlightenment Christians who stood on that foundation.
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Copernicus and Galileo based a lot of their work on that of Ancient Greece which was before Christianity. But even if the Christianity of Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton played a role in their science…what part of the bible encourages the acceptance of conclusions based on empirical observations, that are repeatable by others as a valid way of discovering truth? What part of the bible encourages inductive reasoning? You’re better off finding parts of the bible that justify arresting Galileo as a heretic. Obviously Christians didn’t think a whole lot of these Christian scientists. Perhaps because they recognize the very things they were discovering was invalidating much of what they had to say.
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Swarn,
The work of Galilleo and Copernicus was the scientific goodbye to the Greco-Roman concept of cosmology.
The Bible if chock full of examples of God reasoning with human beings.
Reasoning is essential to science.
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The act of reasoning is not the same as the promotion empirically derived inductive reasoning. Please provide examples of what you call reasoning from what is not even proven as a being that exists. If you can provide some passages in the Bible that promote empiricism, that would be great.
Also you would be wrong about Copernicus. He very much idolized Greek thinking, so much so that he pseodo scientifically assumed the orbits if the planets as circles, because the Greeks idolized geometry. It also doesn’t change the fact that Greek philosophy was foundational to European thought.
Also how do you explain the fact that Ottomans outpaced European scientific achievement for much Eurasian history after the rise of Islam but before the Renaissance. They certainly weren’t using the Bible.
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Swarn,
Greek philosophy was incorporated into Christianity by Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas among others.
Saint Augustin lived in late Antiquity and Saint Thomas lived during the high Middle Ages.
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So not in the Bible then. Christianity Incorporated pre Christian thought. Thanks for confirming.
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Swarn,
Greek philosophy is natural law theory which is consistent with biblical teachings. It can be understood through reasoning.
Divine law is the heavy religious stuff that can only be understood through faith.
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But Greek philosophy predates Christianity. So even if your baseless claim regarding Divine law was valid it wouldn’t validate Christianity as a truth. Only that the divine exists. But as it stands your statement makes no sense. Natural Law theory is a nonsensical term. Greek philosophy is consistent with logic and reasoning in ancient China and India. The existence of Divine law depends on faith as it cannot be proven empirically. Faith itself is the belief of something without evidence. So if belief in the absence of evidence is required to understand Divine Law which also has no evidence we can get rid of both and nothing is lost. The first law of thermodynamics still works quite well. Thanks.
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Greek philosophy is part of the Western Heritage.
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It doesn’t change the fact that it predates Christianity so Christianity has nothing to do with the development of the scientific method. Knowledge is largely a continuum, concepts built upon older ones. The greeks themselves used Babylonian numbering for map making which is why we have hours minutes and seconds just as an example. Numerous civilizations pre-date the Greeks with advanced scientific knowledge. Babylon was a big one. Babylonian culture even influenced the Bible itself. Greek mathematics were influenced by Egyptians. Your myopic view of history is flawed. Nothing unique about western thinking, and religion, if anything only slowed down the rate in which we could have developed. Keeping people illiterate, not allowing women an equal role in the intellectual and political affairs of society, imprisoning and killing scientists as heretics. You are fooling yourself SoM. You are free to continue this conversation on your own. You have failed to provide evidence for any of your assertions. They have more holes than a raincoat made out of mosquito netting. http://www.ancient.eu/article/606/
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Swarn,
Christianity is inclusive not exclusive.
It ordered Greco-Roman paganism to human nature as revealed by Jesus.
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No gill, you are not looking for evidence. You are looking for one more comment to extend your rebellion. Then another. Then another. See the pattern?
If life itself is not your evidence, then NO evidence will satisfy a stubborn heart. Unless of course you are looking for ‘evidence’ that is out of this world. in which case that would explain why common sense is not obvious to you, and even when truth stares you in the face, you take it as alien………….
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Look up the psychological definition of projection. You are the master of moving the goal posts. You, as always, are the walking encyclopedia of logical argumentation fallacies! I appreciate the entertaining drop by!
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Always glad gill to point out the insane inability of the atheist mind to see the obvious.
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And I’m always glad to point out the delusions and inability to form logical arguments of the Christian fundamentalist!
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Swarn,
You must remember that I am Catholic.
Our tradition goes back to the Greeks.
Saint Paul and Saint John spoke to the Greeks in their way of thought.
Saint John wrote his Gospel in Greek.
“In the beginning was the Word…”
That is Revelation written in the philosophy of Plato.
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Greeks were around well before the New Testament. So what if the greeks are in the bible. Why shouldn’t they be? lol
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Swarn,
Christianity is a human experience.
Reason is what makes us human.
Greco-Roman thought and tradition is part of Western Civilization.
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Saying religion is harmless is equal to saying, that ignorance is harmles. Religion is the product of ignorance and it perpetuates ignorance. Ignorance may be not very harmfull all the time, but we will never know how harmfull a particular form of ignorance is, untill we become aware of the more likelier reality, than the one we beheld as truth when we were ignorant. Obviously religions feed from the ignorance of humans, much the same way as any of the most harmfull ideologies in human history, that were often enough the products of a religious cultural heritage.
Religion has not been in any way crucial for humans to form societies. There is a correlation of religions forming up while societies evolve, but there is no causation between the two. For example the Roman empire was not formed around any particular religion, but when it adopted one wich became a curcial part of the governing, it fell. Since, that was the one changing factor in the history of the Empire at the time, that must also be the cause of the fall. There were no sudden increase of barbarians outside the empire, rather what changed, was the amount of resources directed to the contest of power within the empire, a part of wich the religious leadership struggle for position was, that led to the fall.
Societies evolve from human needs and often the greater need of the greater group, wich is pretty much why we today value democracy over other forms of government. Theocracies are not among the most remarcable forms of human organization in terms of general human wellbeing. Today religions are preserving tribalistic moral values, because religions rely on inherent conservatism in human culture. They are evolving power mechanisms that benefit sometimes from status quo and sometimes from chaos. They may sometimes even tap into progress, but the further human cultural progress clarifies itself from all sorts of ignorance, it also moves further away from superstition, wich is what all religions inherently are. Superstitious explanations to what we do not yet understand.
It may be, that religions gives motivation to be charitable, but that should make us ask why would we not be otherwise sharing? Is it because religious cultural heritage first makes us self centered, exept when it motivates us to be charitable? I know plenty of atheists involved in voluntary work for free to help people. I bet the persentage of atheists getting involved in such a manner is greater than the same persentage among religious folk. Yet, I do not think it is their atheism that motivates them. People should be motivated to help each other in order to live in a better society, not because of magical superstitions, or ridiculous promises of reward in the imaginary afterlife, or by some form of unnatural Karma.
Further more, charity should not be the goal of the society, rather it should be human wellbeing, if we are to accept, that a better society can only be measured by how much better it is to all humans and not just to the invidual who manages to cheat more to him/herself. We all know, that does not work, even though much of our societies have been built to facilitate precisely that.
Charity, much like redemption and mercy, first require, that someone needs redemption (has done something truly selfish and evil), or mercy (that they are on the mercy of someone), or requires charity (in that they are on the mercy of others). We as human societies are fully able to organize ourselves so, that people do not need charity, any more than they need redemption or mercy. The capacity is obviously there, though we have not yet achieved such a society. However, in the long run we are moving that way, even though there are the occasional set backs. If we are not, then not even gods can save us.
It seems very much, that in general religions get their justification from perpetuating these solutions to some very basic human problems, but if those problems are faced on more practical level, religions loose a big part of their attractivity, as is observable here in the Nordic countries at least. Why? Because religions have never been necessary for anything, even though they are typical to us humans. Just like ignorance.
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Rautakky,
You obviously haven’t studied the history of Western Civilization.
You can read and write because where Christians went so did literacy.
Also, the Christians kicked the Islamic Jihad out of Europe otherwise you’d by a Muslim with the legal right to beat your wife and abuse your kids.
You’d be sucking sand 5 times a day for your prayers and you’d still be wiping your butt with your left hand.
That’s right!
No Christian, no Western Civilization.
No Western Civilization no modern science, technology or medicine…
…an no toilet paper.
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Here’s some reading for you, SoM, which debunks your assertions.
http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2006/11/science-and-medieval-christianity.html (Science and Medieval Christianity)
https://www.nobeliefs.com/comments10.htm — The Myth of Christianity Founding Modern Science and Medicine (And the Hole Left by the Christian Dark Ages*)
And if conservative Christianity ends up dominating, Western Civilization will look much like the Arab world due to conservative religion taking hold — and like the Arab world, may never recover.
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Notes,
My “assertions” are what is being taught by world renown scholars at some of the best universities in the United States.
I see from your links that your “experts” are just Internet flunkies that you call experts because you agree with them.
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Oh Silenceofmind, I have studied the history of western civilization quite a lot. Wether my conclusions are the same as yours does not make me think you have studied it more or less than I have. I simply think you are mistaken. Let us go through your other claims.
1. “You can read and write because where Christians went so did literacy.”
I am sorry, but there were literate people in the Nordic countries before Christianity came here. There was even a specific alphabet. You might have heard of the runes?
Christians, nor any Christian church were not at all interrested in teaching people to read and write for centuries after the religion had spread to areas where people did not posses those skills, so obviously that was not their intent, nor purpose at all. Instead a lot of Christians were all too happy to exploit the conquered people. Were they not?
Here in Europe we have had plenty of bitter and bloody inter-Christian wars, when some Christians thought that the Bible should be translated and readable by all and some that thought it should only be read by the professional priests in latin. Wich of those Christian camps does your particular Christian heritage set you? Who do you think was right?
2. “Also, the Christians kicked the Islamic Jihad out of Europe otherwise you’d by a Muslim with the legal right to beat your wife and abuse your kids.”
You really can not know much about what would be the course of history, if something specific did not happen hundreds of years ago. What Islamic countries are today, is very much a product of western colonialism and capitalism. But what you are really saying, is that a more religious society is worse than a more secular religion as we have in Europe in comparrison to the Near-East. This goes a long way to defeat all the good points about religion, in reference to the the topic post.
There was strong military standing in Europe long before the advent of Christianity, so the coincidence, that it happened to be Christians who were in power to stop the initial Islamic Jihad and Christians in the Near-East and Africa were unable to stop it, make your claim a moot point. Do they not?
3. “You’d be sucking sand 5 times a day for your prayers and you’d still be wiping your butt with your left hand.”
What are you actually saying here? That the greatest achievement of Christianity is toilet paper? Toilet paper is rather common in a lot of non-Christian countries too. Did you not know that? Or is your point, that because there are more prayers demanded in traditional Islam, than in traditional Christianity, the latter is less harmfull to human behaviour? Or, that since Christianity has been weaker in it’s attempts to stop widespread secularism, Christianity represents a better religion? Or what?
4. “No Christian, no Western Civilization.
No Western Civilization no modern science, technology or medicine… an no toilet paper.”
No, of course we would not have the very same sort of Western Civilization we have now, if we did not have it. What we would have, is impossible to discern. Neither you or I could possibly know what we would have. The study of history does not tell us what would have happened in such a grand scale of things.
Much of modern science, techology and medicine actually are derived to us from ancient Eastern, Middle-Eastern and African cultures. Their re-introduction in Europe, since Christian fundamentalism and chaos left to us after the fall of newly Christianized Roman Empire had fallen was a result of cultural loans during the crusades from Islamic countries. Islamic countries were the contributors, because they had inherited those from Zarathustran Persian empire, at the time when most of the wisdom of pre-Christian antiquity was persecuted and destroyed, but also saved by the church in the fallen Roman Empire. The main reason the Islamic countries became anti-science originally was their demise at the hands of invading Mongols and Christians during the crusades. They reverted to fundamentalist interpretations of their religion, because they thought that all the science they had appriciated that far, did not help them defeat the Mongols and the crusaders. This tradition was continued by the Christian colonialists, and today by the western capitalist corporations and the armies of western countries sacrificing their soldiers in the name of the values Western Civilization holds dear, wich are democracy and liberty, but no longer Christianity. Jesus and the values he prompted as the model for Western Civilization are a long since past notion if it really ever was that important, other than in rhetorics.
Most of the achievements of Western Civilization to human wellbeing have absolutely nothing at all to do with Christianity. Like democracy, medicine, science, even though you are ready to point at those. Democracy is an ideal that came long before Christianity and was only assumed in Christendom when secularism started to overthrow the position of Christian chrucrhes in setting values in the Western Civilization. Medicine and science have both had major setbacks when Christianty has tried to tackle them down. You can not give something that tries to stop progress as the reason and cause for progress. Or can you?
Toilet paper? You must be joking? Was your entire comment and all of your points mere jokes? Well, just incase someone who read it, did not get it, I have now demonstrated the ridiculous nature of them (not just the part about toilet paper) and I hope all shall get the irony they represent.
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Rautakky,
You haven’t studied squat.
You are just a parrot of centuries old propaganda.
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Silenceofmind,
You haven’t studied squat.
You are just a parrot of centuries old propaganda.
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Rautakyy,
You prove yourself a parrot.
Your ignorant and all you can do is repeat what you’ve been programmed to say.
On the other hand, everything I say in my comments comes straight from the teachings of world renown scholars.
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Silenceofmind, I must admit, that I am a bit curious, on what propaganda exactly do you consider I have been programmed to say and who do you assume programmed me and why?
If you are trying to appeal to authority, then please do at least name the “renown scholars” on whose teachings you so heavily rely on and why do you think these particular scholars have such an authority on history, that you feel you do not even have to explain your assertions when asked to?
I have not proven myself a parrot, but I merely tried to appeal to your capacity, as a mammal (at the very least), to have a bit of empathy and set yourself in the position you put me into, by making this ad hominem attack on me, as you claimed something about me, that I am pretty sure I know better than you do.
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Rautakky,
1. Runes in the Nordic countries is not literacy. The Christians brought literacy to all of Europe.
That is why most European languages Latin. They are from the Roman Empire.
The Christians even when into Germany and Russia.
Sorry but Nordic runes were forgotten until Christianized, literate scholars founded them.
2. Yes we can know what happened.
That is because it already happened. It’s there in the history books you never took the time to study.
3. If you need to have toilet paper and wiping your butt with your left hand explained to you, don’t look at me.
4. Again, we can know what happened because it already happened.
It’s called history.
Study it. You will learn great things about Christian Western Civilization.
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Silenceofmind,
1. Runes are direct evidence, that the Nordic people had literacy of their own before the conquest by Christians and introduction of Latin alphabet. They did not die out when Christianity was introduced, but they were slowly replaced by the monopoly of monotheistic church on bureacracy. It took several hundred years just about anywhere where Christianity was brought by conquest before any wide spread literacy programs were introduced. These two issues are not very much connected. The only connection between them is that the protestants wanted to have the Bible translated to other languages, than just Latin, because most people did not even understand it. The literacy programs appeared only at the advent of secularism and the ideals of enlightenment. Did you not know about this, though you claim to base your information on the authority of “renown scholars”?
Most European languages are not derived from Latin, if that was what you were trying to say. Or was it something else you had in mind? You got a bit garbled there. Not even English we here use to communicate is derived from Latin. The languages in Europe that are derived from Latin had had that influence from the Roman Empire before Christianity was even invented or had become a very significant social movement.
Roman Empire had a long standing impact on the history of Europe, Middle-East and Africa, that still affects us. Even in countries like yours and mine, that are located far away from the borders of the Empire. One could argue even that the Roman Empire influenced Christianity more than Christianity influenced the Roman Empire, if one did not count the part Christianity played in the fall of Rome.
2. So, do you concede to my point, that I brought up, that you really can not claim to know what would have happened, if it was not Christians (and poor weather conditions), that stopped the early Jihad? Or what?
You make this claim, I have not studied history – repeatedly. What led you to be so sure of it? If you understood anything about the study of history you should be aware of the fact, that people do come to different conclusions about the same facts. Especially in the study of history, since the historical events can not be tested, they can only be observed. Or is this just some childish attempt to insult? You leave me baffled, as I do know to have read a lot of history books. I am the expert on how many history books I have studied, not you and making the claim that you know this better than I do, makes you look like a nincompoop, or having a childish tantrum. I hope you have some other explanation, and I am curious, what that is?
3. You did not answer any of my questions on this matter. I take it that you do not know how to, since you anyway took the time to try to answer. Am I correct, or do you have actual answers?
4. Again you fail to answer any of my points, so I have to assume it is only because you can not refute them on any level. The sort of answer you give, reveals an attempt to evade the points I made. Or can you actually answer my points?
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Rautakky,
The Vikings were very important. And they were eventually Christianized. That’s why we know a little of their history.
The Vikings were raiders who terrorized the European peoples of the Middle Ages.
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Silenceofmind, yes indeed the Vikings were raiders (like so many European people during the middle ages wether if they were Christians or not), whose homecountries eventually got Christianized in a series of bloody civil wars between Viking chieftains and kings, after wich they continued their raiding as crusades. That is how Christianity was forced on my country. What is your point?
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Oooh, Raut. we’re having one of our rare disagreements. I feel like I’m hanging by a thread! You say religions have never been necessary for anything – and yet there is not one isolated group of humans who have developed without it. They are indeed based on ignorance, but it’s a form of ignorance we needed – and it clearly has a cohesive function. Its success must have endowed us with key characteristics as a species. Even in the Roman Empire, people needed a shared sense of invisible gods to give them purpose and to bind their actions to others. It’s religious frameworks that have organised societies, and as they’ve spread, brought them together.
Atheists obviously can be and are involved in charity work. But as a relatively new world view, and as one with no other shared characteristics, it lacks the organisation and history of religious groups. They still provide important services in many communities that no-one else is. That can and will change, but that doesn’t mean we have to dismiss the good they are doing now.
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I do not know if we disagree about much. I am merely addressing some of the finer points in your topic post – and the title. I do not judge all religion as evil, and I am ready to fight for the rights of the religious people to believe what they do, as long as these beliefs are not directly harming anyone, even if the religious are not ready to return the favour for me.
I do not see the causation, though I have already admitted the correlation, between religions and societies. There have been societies without religious beliefs working as any sort of “glue”. That is, unless you are willing to claim nationalism, or communism should be seen as religions in their own right. They could be in a certain sense, but I think that would defeat the purpose of the word as those are ideologies, that have nothing to do with any supernatural guesswork involved.
The fact, that most people who adhere to some religion or a nother does not really change the fact, that most people are not at all interrested in religious issues or the workings of the supernatural much if at all. Religions are part of our cultural heritage, even mine, though I am third generation removed from actually thinking any of them hold any shard of some greater truth. People are part of religions, because religions that survive the social test of generations are coercive, provide easy black and white world views, and excuse themselves with providing a little charity. No wonder they have become important to so many societies as we social animal species are able to recognize the value of help.
People, give all sorts of excuses for their irrational behaviour wether it is, that they want to get drunk, or that they want to believe in an afterlife – happy for themselves and their loved ones and unhappy for their enemies. However, these are rationalizations of the – indeed very human – way of feeling and thinking. Claiming that the correlation of religions with early human social constructs somehow shows causation between the two is no more than an attempt to excuse and rationalize the value of religion.
If religions were inherent to human social behaviour, then there could never have been nations that specifically build on secularism, rather than on any particular religion. Some have been seen as failures and some as successes. The USA was perhaps the first one to be founded only on secularism. The Soviet Union, Communist China, Vietnam, Cuba and so many others are known as countries, that have had atheist leadership, or founders, but they are by far not the only ones that are not at all built on religion. In fact discounting North Korea, Iran and Saudi Arabia, there are no countries today that could be said to be based on a religion. I do suspect, that most people in the world would count those three as the last countries they chose to live in, if they could make the choise. Funny that.
It may be about religion, that “not one isolated group of humans who have developed without it”, but that is equal to saying there is not one isolated group of humans who have developed without violence, crime, war, or indeed ignorance. Yet, we do not need violence, war, crime, or ignorance for anything. Neither violence, crime, war, ignorance, or religion makes us in any way better as humans or as societies. One might claim that religion provides cohesion, but so does war. Does that work as a redeeming quality for war? If not, why should it work as such for religion?
People have never needed gods to give themselves purpose. That is the claim made originally by the demagogue, who wants the people to unite behind his own goals. People are quite capable of finding their own purpose in life, in Roman Empire as today. People who think they need gods to give them purpose have been deluded to think so by this cultural movement we call religion, but in real life they find their own purpose. We are bound to each other by ties of family, frienship, common purpose, common understanding and universal human experience and needs. Not by imaginary gods. Those exist for the demagogues to divide us against each other regardless of the real reasons abowe, that we have to unite us. Religious frameworks organize within societies to tap on to our fears of the unknown in order to benefit the individuals, who want more than their fellow human being.
I do not despise any religious group for what it does to help people who need help. But I see the idea of religious charity also as a hindrance and distraction to achieving a society where religious motivations, be those truly altruistic, or in effect serving to avoid punishment and to recieve a reward, were not needed and we could view helping others as a virtue for the rational reason to help others in a rather simple choise to make the society such that we could all appricieate it equally.
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“It may be about religion, that “not one isolated group of humans who have developed without it”, but that is equal to saying there is not one isolated group of humans who have developed without violence, crime, war, or indeed ignorance.”
I don’t see that as a valid comparison. Violence, crime and war are all incidents of varying length – religion and superstitious beliefs run continually at the forefront of all our organised societies, informing behaviour and direction. And ignorance is a permanent state of being for humans, always, including now, that we don’t choose – it’s simply a lack of infinite knowledge.
Religion has always been within the very fabric of our societies. Most of the history of humans has been well before the last few hundred years when the occasional secular or non-religious states began to appear. Attraction to and/or acceptance of religion has therefore been part of our ‘successful’ genes that are handed down – maybe not causation but certainly a universal experience. I obviously have no evidence of the Stone Age or earlier atheist communities that couldn’t grow because they couldn’t unite – is that what I need to make my point?
Even now, in an age where it’s glaringly obvious to many of us that gods are not real, the vast majority of humans continue to support religious beliefs in some form or another. There are various logical sounding theories why this is the case, but the truth is we don’t really know why, as we also don’t know what the impact of losing religion on a large scale might be.
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I can see why you would not accept violence, ignorance or crime as comparative to religion, though I disagree and think they have plenty of relevance to the question. However, war is not an incident. Almost all developing indipendent human groups that have had a religion have also always made war, or made ready for the next war. Not all developing indipendent human groups have had religion, though many that did not have a religion have made war. That does not mean either of them has been in any way a positive driving force in the human culture, ever. Not even when they have caused cohesion, and I do besiege, that war has had more cause for cohesion in human culture, than any religion ever. Both religion and war are the results of ignorance, tribal cohesion, and greed. War and religion are both crimes as they ultimately are the products of greed. They are often originally motivated by the will of the individual to have more than their fair share, even when religion and war are marketed to us by providing protection and charity.
I agree with you about the “genes” in cultural terms, but even though some such “genes” may be beneficial to their own procreation as undoubtedly both religion and war have been, they may still be really harmfull to us as societies and actually not providing us with anything beneficial. Other than in comparrison to problems they have themselves caused. For example I have been for a long time a trained reservist soldier committed to make war, if my country was attacked. This is not because I thought war was a good thing, but because in practice war becomes a necessity when someone else starts the violence. I have committed not only for the occasion of war, but just in case, even though it is peace time in my country, quite a lot of my time and a small piece of my identity and humanity. Similarly, even though I am an atheist, not really interrested in the supernatural, as I think it is obvious humbug that does not really concern me personally, but I see how much harm it causes. Yes, it causes harm even to my own culture, though I live in a relatively secular country with relatively liberal religious culture. The harm is obvious, while the benefits seem like make-belief solutions to selfimposed problems.
As an archaeologist I have to say, that we know very little about pre-historic religions. There are a lot of assumptions and educated guesses, sadly often “poisoned” (as Ark would put it) by the religious heritage of the scholar. We have an archaeologist proverb, that when an archaeologist can not make heads or tales of an artifact they found, they name it a ritual object. This is because infact when people make something that has absolutely no practical value, it is most likely to do with religious motivation. That is to say a motivation to act, on ignorant guesses about stuff that they did not know. It is the same deeper motivator, both for the archaeologist and the pre-historic person to name stuff they do not recognize and know, just to feel in controll of the unknown. Wich is what always causes us the most fear. That does not mean either of them is right. As it might be, that the religious icon does not bring about the ward of the supernatural entities it is supposed to do, or that the artefact found by the archaeologist is not a religious icon, but infact a piece of art, or a tool of some kind, that the archaeologist simply could not recognize.
Most likely stone age cultures were religious rather than atheistic. As I said we do not know. However, what we do know about the interaction between religions, is that a religion that does not suffer a rival has a tendency to destroy a religion, that does not care wether there is competition or not. What we do know about the interaction between the skeptic and the fanatic believer is that the fanatic believer is much more likelier to wipe the skeptic out if it becomes an option than the other way around. I suppose one could see that as a form of survival of the fittest, but in the end I think that the rationalism is more fit model for a species to survive, than mindless attempts of extermination of the competition by an irrational religion or group. I could be wrong and the irrational people might destroy all competition, or even all life before they could even understand what they were doing.
No, we do not know what the future holds for us, but we can learn from the mistakes of the past. Religions are obvious mistakes in perception of the unknown. The practical side of the issue being, that there are today so many religious people in the world, that it does make it a better way to get rid of the worse sides of religion, by appealing to the better sides of the humanity of the religious people, rather than to try to force them abandon their religion. I think we can both agree, that as religions grow more mellow by the standards the secular society sets on them, as science educates the secularism, the more likelier religions are to perish. Can we?
It is important, that we atheist should not take ourselves as some extraordinary super-humans who are more capable of forming communities and living moral lives in comparrison to the poor religious people who need the religion to give them meaning to their lives. If religion gives meaning to the life of individuals, it is a meaning that individuals give to their lives by themselves. There are no gods to give them any. There are religions, that they can derive that meaning from, but it is their choise to do so. Atheism is merely the rejection of gods. To think that religion ever was, or is somehow crucial for humans to form culture, cohesion or anything positive, is a terribly condescending view. You and I, we are not that different from the rest of humanity. They are just as able to find meaning to their lives outside of religion as we are.
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The points are well made, I tend to think, though, that abominations committed in the name of religion do probably outweigh by far those of people of no religion. One good reason is that numerous people not truly religious use the pretext of religion for their own ends. Others choose to place a narrow interpretation on the religion which emphasizes the barbaric bits. One hasn’t seen a great deal of, ‘Become atheists or be persecuted!’
On the other hand it is true to say that many good things have come out of religion because it provided the motivation as well as the cohesion to carry them out on a wide scale. Even many in the past whose mission was to convert ended up doing more helping, with medicine and knowledge, than they did converting.
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There seems to be plenty of persecution in China, even today:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35900242
The reason more abominations are committed by religion is because it’s been around longer, nothing more. One of the reasons we have to pull back from the full-frontal assault on religion is because this is where that kind of attitude can lead. It’s just another “my (non)religion is True!”. No religion is Correct and no lack of religion is Correct.
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Surely getting rid of contradictory superstitious nonsense rather than trying to magically accommodate it is a pretty basic place to start.
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Why do we need to ‘accommodate’ something that is in the foundations of our societies, is completely natural, and is essentially harmless? We should allow it to naturally fade away as smoothly as possible – not attack it head on to make its remaining adherents run to extremist corners. There is a very slim chance that invisible gods exist and they communicate in wonky ways – we may not understand why some people want to cling to that slim chance, but the fact is that most of the human race has and still does. I don’t want to be as arrogant as the Christian who knows the Truth with my mid-evolution scientific theory that won’t stand the test of time. Where we are now will be seen as a state of ignorance in the not too distant future – we don’t need to make the same arrogant mistakes as every generation before us. Open your little mind Tildeb. 😀
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China certainly gives a different perspective to this discussion. ‘If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em by taking over control of the club’.
What the authorities there and in other non-religious areas would like is that the State or the head thereof would replace God. They are already managing to get God to come second, in the official view at least. Cultures are actually prepared to become fanatically supportive of an individual. Look at Hitler.
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I find most of this post perplexing and factually challenged.
Regarding “Most people who follow a religion live their life broadly in the same way as those of us who don’t.” Uh, you mean the religious mostly live their lives ignoring the teachings of their religion? I do not see how that advances any argument to the contrary of Ark’s.
Re “crimes committed in the name of religion don’t outweigh crimes committed in the absence of religion” Uh, you are comparing crimes that have religious motivations to all other motivations. How does that help?
Re “religion is natural and evolves with society” Actually, so does racism, miscegenation, greed, patriarchy…. Hardly a supportive comment.
Re “religion can have a positive impact on lives” I would like to see this parsed. Is having a social solidarity of a church community what is of value or the religion itself? What exactly about one’s religious beliefs makes the positive impact? How is a church group collecting clothes for the poor in some other country different from a Lion’s Club doing the same?
Re “In the context of human behaviour and the history of our societies, religion is crucial. Without its uniting force, strong communities could never have been established, and humans would likely still be isolated in small, constantly warring tribal groupings.” Wow! How’d you come up with this one? I would argue that religion was a way for weaker factions of humans to accumulate power as human communities grew larger of their own nature.
Most people see agriculture as the main driving force of people living in ever larger communities. It supplies the motivation as well as the benefits (albeit is a trap, once you buy in you are trapped). How did religion drive this formation of “strong communities”?
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“you mean the religious mostly live their lives ignoring the teachings of their religion?” Uh, there isn’t much to distinguish how the majority of people live their lives depending on whether they are religious or not. The title of the post (the point I’m defending) is “Religion is Harmless” – it obviously significant if there is little observable difference in the way people lead their lives.
“you are comparing crimes that have religious motivations to all other motivations. How does that help?” Uh, by showing that it doesn’t increase the likelihood of crime – and therefore is relatively harmless.
“How is a church group collecting clothes for the poor in some other country different from a Lion’s Club doing the same?” Uh, it’s not different. If it helps someone, it’s just as useful. As is discussed elsewhere in the comments section, religions have the benefit of time in terms of organisation and population of their willing adherents. They do good work and help people – it sometimes comes with nasty strings attached, but not all the time.
“Wow! How’d you come up with this one?” I’ve found one academic reference, in the comment to John above. I’m going to dig out some more, because it’s surprisingly a point of contention. If no society has grown without the influence of religion, and religion is a uniting force, I can’t see an argument against it. I think a lot of Ark’s friends have anti-religion bias goggles on and refuse to see anything other than poison in religion. It’s curious.
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I’m greatly enjoying reading the comments on this post. Quite informative and thought-provoking.
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… and of course, the post itself is amazing! 😉
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Absolutely. 😀
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Actually, It’s more fun if you just look at the nice photo, and read the comments.
Except if the writer impugns you in the first paragraph. Aside from that …
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Coming back to your Iceland model (can’t find the comment). That’s interesting to hear it’s projecting majority atheist population within a generation. The fact that struck me as interesting from there recently, which if I remember rightly will strike a different chord with you, is that there are no people with Downs Syndrome being born there because everyone, everyone, is choosing abortion. There was a documentary about it recently in the BBC which drove me mad because the actress presenting it was clearly coming at it from a religious point of view, but they never mentioned it. I googled afterwards and found out I was right. Anyway, it does raise interesting points about moral choices, given that we are selecting children we want and essentially telling existing groups of people they aren’t good enough. What’s progress and what feels wrong? We lose religion, we lose the need to accept the creation of an unsentient being that doesn’t fit our expectations. I’m not arguing for or against, simply noting another thing we will most likely lose with religion, and that’s just the start.
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I am a bit confused here. Are you that everyone had an abortion or that every fetus diagnosed with Downs was aborted?
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There are no babies born with Downs
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And this is a bad thing? Why?
Personally, I would never knowingly want my wife to bring a DS fetus to term.
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VW wrote: “In the context of human behaviour and the history of our societies, religion is crucial. Without its uniting force, strong communities could never have been established, and humans would likely still be isolated in small, constantly warring tribal groupings.”
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A new study contradicts the belief that religion unites communities and says religion has actually been the source of conflict for over 2,000 years
“Religion has been dividing human society for 2,000 years, say scientists
Scientists have found religious ties did not bind early societies together as had previously been thought, but actually caused conflict.
Whether religion is a good or bad force in the world has been a strong topic of debate for a very long time.
Scientists have claimed that religion has actually been dividing our society and causing conflict for more than 2,000 years.
The study was released on Monday in Current Anthropology.
It appears to contradict a long-held belief that religion united early state societies, the study said.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/12064796/Religion-has-been-dividing-human-society-for-2000-years-say-scientists.html
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Haha, trust you to come up with the goods Victoria! I’ll have a look at the study and come back to you. 🙂
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Why, I’m shocked, I tell you.. shocked! I thought for sure that this< time religion would lead the way forward and produce great insight.
But, alas, no.
It took some studying of the real world to even begin to broach the assumption that religion was of a net benefit. I mean seriously, who knew that faith-based belief alone might not be so agape producing?
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Lol
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Such civil and intelligent discussions. I spent a worthwhile hour reading through arguments and counter-arguments.
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I’m not sure it’s very convincing to take one small-scale study of the effects of religion in one part of the world and apply to religion everywhere. One of the key things about religions is that they do obviuously cause conflict, but conflict in itself is a uniting force. Religions subsume each other until we have the immense superbug religions like Christianity and Islam that sweep the smaller ones up in their path. Maybe they’re more like tumbleweed picking up smaller belief systems in their path, but they do unite people and have allowed disparate groups of people to work together for a seemingly bigger cause.
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VW, thanks for your comment. As the study points out, elites came to dominate religious life and controlled the connection between communities and their gods – leading to conflict with traditional community leaders. This is a pattern seen with most religions throughout recorded history. This pattern of behavior is also recorded in the bible.
“One of the key things about religions is that they do obviuously cause conflict, but conflict in itself is a uniting force.”
You mean, united by force, right? So we go from small tribal communities fighting among themselves, to large tribal communities fighting among themselves.
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And from large tribal communities to huge bits of tumbleweed taking over the world on holy wars.
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”Nuke the bastards!”
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Wow! I read your article and wanted just to make a small comment, but find this avalanche of comments, a veritable arena of discussion, and polemic!
I just wanted to say Religion it’s no different than a book, or a guitar, a book you can read it, and get knowledge from it, a guitar you can play it and produce beautiful music, or you can use both to smash someone’s head!
Ultimately the responsibility it’s on the individual, not on the book, or the guitar. 🙂
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Thanks for stopping by to comment. There’s something in that, although music and (non-holy) books don’t usually have instructions in them purporting to be from supernatural entities that instruct people to despise gay people or relegate women to submissive roles. But you’re right that it’s up to the individual what they make of those instructions – whether they view them with historical curiosity or they think they are genuine instructions from gods that have validity today.
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@TBH You say, “I just wanted to say Religion it’s no different than a book, or a guitar, a book you can read it, and get knowledge from it”
Knowledge… such as?
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Mel says, “I guess if I’m trying to convince you of anything it’s to be careful about saying there’s no possibility of these invisible realms, or even a “god”, when you cannot prove that either. It’s an argument from silence, which is a fallacious argument. I cannot prove it either. I can only say that I believe in God.”
And there’s the false equivalency: equating “no possibility” to be synonymous with “there’s no compelling evidence to support the god claim.” Not believing, using Mel’s long debunked substitution – a substitution no non believer I’ve ever encountered maintains – is suddenly and magically and erroneously equivalent to believing with absolute certainty in the negative, you see, and, my oh my, look how unreasonable that is.
Now, notice how non belief evolves so radically under Mel’s apologetic tutelage and becomes a dedicated and unreasonable belief… in the negative. This is the necessary step to describing non belief to be – falsely, and knowingly false by Mel – as requiring “as much faith as” whatever belief you want to put in here.
I mean, seriously… it’s so transparently false a claim that it requires dedication to something other than what is true and honest about non belief in gods or a god to then claim this false equivalency presented over and over and over and rebutted time and time again about what non belief IS is a stellar example of just how much honesty Mel bring to what I think is a ludicrous claim when he states “I’m only trying to be understood, and trying to understand you.”
Is that the case? Honestly?
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I got here eventually, from your next post.
Religion is where humanity stores a great deal of its knowledge about how people live together. It binds communities.
Religion gives people a connection to something greater than themselves which gives meaning to lives.
Religion is about what people do more than what we believe. “By their fruits you shall know them”.
Religion for me is fifteen people meeting yesterday, and wrestling together with questions of how to live well, which did me good.
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