Daughters (and sons) have a special property: normal people simply can’t kill them. They drive us crazy, they can break our hearts, but we just can’t do them harm ourselves.
So I really don’t understand how a father can kill his daughter over her clothing choices. I can yell, and I could ground her, and I could deprive her of privileges…but physically hurt her? Impossible.
Oh. It was over religious apparel. That explains everything. Religion is very good at subverting and destroying normal, healthy family values.
And just how many slutty young girls his daughter’s age will he be rewarded in heaven by Allah for his commitment to purity?
the poor girl in question has now passed away
oops, sorry. i guess that *was* noted in the original post …
PZ,
I agree with you completely. As a (relatively new) father, it baffles my mind, then fills me with incredible sadness, then an almost indescribable anger.
And for this to happen in my own country — Canada – where we’re supposed to be more ‘moderate’ (whatever that REALLY means) in our religion…well, it just fills me with shame — as a Canadian, as a father, and as a human being.
Utterly sick, and perhaps the truly sad part is it sounds like not only did the father kill his daughter, he has poisoned his son to the point of being the same type of sub-human creature.
Misogyny should be a crime.
Don’t forget that Infanticide is still being practised in several countries (Indian girls are the most numerous victims).
Check this link :
http://www.gendercide.org/case_infanticide.html
..doh…
that sparks of thought-crime.
Misogyny should not be allowed the support it receives from islamic culture.
What, no one’s been here yet to say that it’s a cultural thing, and has nothing to do with religion? Because religion has no influence over culture, obviously. Unless it’s the good stuff, then obviously it was religion what dunnit.
Why yes. I am a bit tired of hearing that argument, now that you mention it.
As for the incident itself, I’m as disgusted as everyone else, no matter what the cause.
Sad, sad…
And, Islam is intended to take over culture. If Islam does not condemn things like this which happen among its people, it supports them.
This is certainly not the first time that’s happened. I remember reading about a boy killing his sister for wearing Western clothing. Here’s the story:
“AYHAN SURUCU was so angry when his sister started to wear make-up and date German men that he put a gun to her head at a bus stop and killed her.
The 18-year-old Turk fired three bullets into her brain and calmly walked away.
Boys at a nearby school, attended mainly by the children of immigrant Muslim families, cheered and applauded when news of the murder reached them.
…
Only Ayhan, 19, was jailed after admitting that he wanted to “wipe the stain from our family”.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article705412.ece
Misogyny should not be allowed the support it receives from [fundamentalist] culture.
here let me correct that for you
I have lost faith in humanity now.
Yes, Dawkins and Dennett say things that “arouse hatred” against people. That’s it, those evil atheists cause the wickedness in the world today.
And of course I’m not saying that Xianity is ruled by that text (most “literalists” are fortunately far from following their own “principles”), just that it’s bizarre how lesser statements from “atheists” are supposed to cause so much evil, while wretched Bible verses are, you know, the basis for all peace and civilization.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Fedaykin:
At the risk of being thought insensitive, do we really want to defend the girl’s humanity by dehumanizing her murderous relatives? Clearly, the girl was not killed just for her clothes, or just for her religion, but for some toxic combination of defying cultural mores, religious sanction and parental authority.
Most believers love their daughters the way non-believers do, and most of them don’t lay a hand on them, much less kill them. Let’s be real: a fed-up non-believer could just as well lay a hand on their kid. Would we buy the argument that atheism leads to child abuse? Of course not. We would properly distinguish the behavior from the belief, or absence of same. It is a very slippery slope to do the converse with religion, even if one is skeptical about religion’s merits.
Also, I believe the argument has been made here that religion is not necessarily adaptive, that it simply ‘piggybacks’ on things which are adaptive. That’s an interesting argument and a discussion worth having. But, if we allow the possibility that the former is true, isn’t it also possible that religion ‘piggybacks’ on things which are maladaptive, or at least not adaptive for the individual? Or, perhaps more realistically, that there are things like filicidal reactions which ‘piggyback’ on human institutions generally, among them religion? It seems to me that some people here want it both ways: when religion appears to do something good, the response is ‘no, no, it’s not religion that does anything good, it’s people acting through religion that’s good.’ But, when religion appears to do something bad, some folk here instantly seize upon it as justification for non-belief and the general bludgeoning of religion. I’m just sayin’….
This sent chills down my spine. A reminder that the human race isn’t as evolved as I sometimes think it is. To take away her humanity and treat her like a stain or a mistake to be corrected.
I don’t know what to say.
Scott Hatfield, the point isn’t that religion makes people do bad things. Clearly, bad people do bad things, and find a justification for it somehow.
The point is that all the religious creeps claim that religion makes people better, and faith is somehow a good thing. These examples refute that claim.
I heard a quote once, wish I could track it down, but it was something like
“With or without religion, bad people do bad things. But to get a good person to do bad things, that requires religion”
You are certainly not going to like the more extreme manifestations of the Shiite festival of Ashura.
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/the-muslim-ashura-festival-and-child-abuse
—————–
And there are more cases like this:
Shamed father cuts off daughter’s head
Independent, The (London), Sep 9, 2002
Iran: “A man cut off the head of his seven-year-old daughter, suspecting she had been raped by her uncle, Jomhuri-ye Eslami said. A post-mortem examination showed the girl was a virgin. “The motive behind the killing was to defend my honour, fame and dignity,” the father told the newspaper.”
Clearly it’s fundamental Islam that is the problem, not ‘religion’ per se.
There’s another way of looking at it, of course, which is that religion (modern religion, at least) really is opposed to life, like Nietzsche claimed.
So the opposition to evolution may not be incidental to the exaltation of the word, the logos (or Logos) over life and life instincts. Killing one’s daughter is one way of showing that you prefer “sacred” words over flesh and blood, though, fortunately, most strongly religious folk find other ways of opposing life. The imperative, however, is to take the words and orders of one’s god over one’s own will to have life for oneself, family, and friends, while evolution challenges the anti-life pro-Word imperative to its very core.
And yes, I think that religionists who do accept evolution are the least likely believers to oppose life and living in order to exhibit fealty to a dead musty book. And some of the children of these become Dembski and other horrible people to whom words are paramount and unrelated to such paltry stuff as evidence, flesh, and DNA.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
This is just crap, and definitely one of the most disgusting examples of what religion is capable of.
On a separate note, Christianity is all about killing one’s children.
It does seem to be more of a “control” issue than a religious issue. I’m sure there are non-believer control-freaks who have seriously harmed their kids over trivial matters, just as there must be uncountable fundamentalists who struggle (like every parent) over wardrobe issues with their kids and don’t kill them. Every battering or homicidal parent has some pathology driving them, it just happens to be religion in this and the other cases mentioned. A religion that makes women wear certain clothing is one thing, killing your kid is something else entirely. Of course, I don’t agree with either, but one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other, which is why this is so sensational.
BTW, did you see this article on the same Reuters site;
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1043228620071210
Rapid acceleration in human evolution described
PZ get ready for some Creationist/ID spinning. It won’t take long…
Canada – where we’re supposed to be more ‘moderate’ (whatever that REALLY means) in our religion…
Moderation toward religion often means it’s also largely tolerated; which means (implicitly) gives credibility to nonsense like a great imaginary sky-fairy that doesn’t like seeing the tops of women’s heads.
“The changes have been driven by the colossal growth in the human population — from a few million to 6.5 billion in the past 10,000 years — with people moving into new environments to which they needed to adapt, added Henry Harpending, a University of Utah anthropologist.
“The central finding is that human evolution is happening very fast — faster than any of us thought,” Harpending said in a telephone interview.”
I can already here the IDists :
– you see, we knew it all the time that Evolution was wrong, this acceleration can only be the work of an intelligent designer.
Hi,
Let us not forget the class issue here. Most fundies are from the “lower orders”, either because their lack of smarts or my fave…being fundie allows you to endure the situation. No kidding. If you are a poorly educated putz with no status, being fundie lets you believe that you’ll prevail in the afterwards.
But, to gain the upper tentacle, one must adhere to the rules or you’ll be on the outs again. Not a pleasant thought to the dung-boy of our story.
Who am I kidding? The guy is only good for feeding worms.
Most gallingly, I bet he gets a lighter sentence because of his cultural/religious motivation.
Don’t be such self-satisfied Americans-I can guarantee both mothers and fathers here perpetrate huge amounts of abuse on their daughters here-and religion, culture, etc. are only an excuse for frustated, immature adults to abuse their children (who are often the only weaker people they can control). Also, younger sons are also at risk.
Yet if you criticize Islam in Canada, be prepared to be hauled before the federal and provincial human rights commissions:
http://volokh.com/posts/1197249553.shtml
And if you criticize the members of those commissions for their suppression of free speech, you’ll be successfully sued for defamation:
http://volokh.com/posts/1196120116.shtml
We Canadians are in no position to talk about Bush suppressing free speech….
Religion may not be the cause of these killings (and there have been a few here in Sweden as well), in fact it most probably isn’t. But it will take a lot to convince me that religious belief does not facilitate these killings. Can there be any greater justification for a heinous act than that I believe my gods decree it to be not a heinous act, but a good and pious one? Other than mental illness (supposing that religious belief does not count as that), what other way would you justify to yourself the killing of your own child?
I can’t see it as religion simply hanging on for the ride. Traditions of violence influence religion which influences traditions which influence religion which…
“The changes have been driven by the colossal growth in the human population — from a few million to 6.5 billion in the past 10,000 years — with people moving into new environments to which they needed to adapt, added Henry Harpending, a University of Utah anthropologist.”
This can’t be right. The growth in the population did NOT come from adpatation to new environments – we we’re already in all of them before the population exploded. Human population mushroomed because of a complex variety of factors including technology, science, agriculture and other factors. Not adaptations to new environments.
We are evolving “faster” in the sense that since natural selection serves to constrain variance in alleles and to the extent that our technology and science has eased some (many?) selection pressures, the human population has obtained broader variation than in the past. Has sod all to do with moving to new environments. I suspect Dr. Harpending was mis-quoted. Maybe he meant our technology and science were adaptations?
Braxton Thomason:
You may be thinking of this:
“Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things — that takes religion.” — Steven Weinberg (Physicist and Nobel Laureate; researcher and professor at the University of Texas)
Ted,
of course religion is used to validate most cases of infanticide as an acceptable moral behaviour.
In Tamil Nadu, murdering girls is still sometimes believed to be a wiser course than raising them:
– “A daughter is always liabilities. How can I bring up a second?” Lakshmi, 28, answered firmly when asked by a visitor how she could have taken her own child’s life eight years ago. “Instead of her suffering the way I do, I thought it was better to get rid of her.” (All quotes from Dahlburg, “Where killing baby girls ‘is no big sin’.”)
The question is, really, why do people commit infanticide in the first place ?
Your son or daughter isn’t nice?
It’s time to act, and don’t think twice:
The proper move? A sacrifice;
So says your loving God.
The Bible and Koran both say
Your son and daughter must obey,
And if they don’t, then they must pay.
You mustn’t spare the rod.
To show a father’s proper love
A sacrifice to God above–
To me, when this push comes to shove
It’ simply fucking odd.
Ultimately, I think, because they are people. Humans have a tendency to be thoroughly messed up. But still, to quote a certain Doctor: “It may be irrational of me, but human beings are quite my favourite species.”
Dammit… “It’s”, not “it'”.
“Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things — that takes religion.” — Steven Weinberg
Just a small question :
how do human beings arrive to an agreement on what constitutes a good and a bad thing, taking into account the diversity in :
– cognitive abilities
– knowledge
– life expectancy at birth
“The question is, really, why do people commit infanticide in the first place ?”
Contingencies. Economic and behavioral. A culture that has wealth and property inherited through male lines only.
Religion is just an excuse. Religion allows you to say “I’m not greedy–God wants me to do this.”
Why was nothing done to help this kid before it happened? It was reported in the article that she was scared sh*tless of her father and brother, and that she said this to people who knew she was never fearful of *anything* – so it would have sounded warning bells…
Why didn’t she get her wish to go to a refuge, or to stay with some friends, or something else? Is the culture of “parents always know best” so strong that no one listens to the child herself? She was 16 – old enough to make decisions for her own life.
Why wasn’t this prevented?
Two questions here.
1) Do religions embrace and teach positive, constructive attitudes and behaviors that are not also embraced and taught by humanist ideologies?
2) Do religions embrace and teach pathological, destructive attitudes and behaviors that are not also embraced and taught by humanist ideologies?
I think the answer most commenters here would give is No to the former and Yes to the latter.
I’m willing to admit human motivations are a mixed bag. I’d be happy to say that, for the most part, religion in modern culture has very little influence on behavior. People in main-line congregations pretty much act like everyone else.
However, because modern culture is generally accepting, those in strongly religious circles are more likely to deviate from what I, from my modern social viewpoint, consider “moral behavior.” Their morality is more likely to be simplistic, authoritarian, and backwards. That old-school religious morality, the us/them attitude, the obeisance to an angry god, the emphasis on punishment, judgement, obedience, etc. … that will lead people away from the relaxed and accepting modern view, and into a morality where, say, killing your daughter for not wearing her hijab is acceptable.
And, I’d further add, that you don’t need social support to do something that’s “good.” Doing things that are “bad” — like killing abortion doctors, screaming at funerals, attacking gay people, etc. — those are aberrant behaviors that need some sort of social sanction. I think it’s fair bet to say that fundamentalists religions are a large source of support for behaviors that modern society condemns. Therefore, religion in modern societies is a net drag on the good.
Scott —
Just to back up my point, think about what the correlation is between church attendance and the following:
birth control;
death penalty;
torture / erosion of civil liberties;
abortion;
tacation for social services;
environmental measures;
political affiliation;
women’s rights;
gun control.
I don’t know if it’s cultural, or religious, but certainly the mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers who support the morality of the last century are largely the most church-going.
One aspect of modern morality is to seek the best outcome for the most people. Therefore, for instance, we want our children to know about birth control, because we know that children who know about birth control are less likely to get pregant or transmit STD’s. Religious people take a different view — they mostly believe that some actions are SINFUL and should NOT be condoned in ANY manner. This is a fundamental construct of religious thought. There is no compromise with sin, with the devil, when there are SOULS on the line. The focus on the non-material means they can blithely ignore statistics and focus on the “morality” of behaviors, almost always leading to a worse result.
Anyway, is this horse dead yet?
Braxton Thomason:
The point is that all the religious creeps claim that religion makes people better, and faith is somehow a good thing. These examples refute that claim.
No, these examples demonstrate that the possession of faith alone does not make a person better. Or, for that matter, even a dehumanized person, as in the murderous father above. There is that verse about the devils believe, and yet tremble. I suspect that many of the religious ‘creeps’ you refer to do not, in fact, believe, or at least do not believe as their followers do. For the record, I entirely agree with the quote. Belief systems are toxic and can help make essentially decent human beings act inhumanely.
Cuttlefish:
At the risk of giving offense where none is intended, do you moonlight at National Review? Your work is reminescent of the droll epigrams that they favor, and always gives me a chuckle.
Azkyroth:
I agree with your assessment of how folk here would respond, and I note in passing that when evaluating religious practice, taking the time to discern what is positive and what is negative about same is, in my view, preferable to blanket condemnation. Though, of course, I’m hardly a disinterested party…
inkadu:
If you’re arguing that religions tend to be conservative, and thus resist attempts to improve the status quo for the disenfranchised, you’ve got no argument here.
However, I take exception to this brief: “Religious people take a different view — they mostly believe that some actions are SINFUL and should NOT be condoned in ANY manner. This is a fundamental construct of religious thought.”
I beg to differ. At the risk of completely vaporizing the poor horse, the polarizing attitude you cite may be fundamental to the fundamentalists, but I doubt its true for all religious. Again, that brush is too broad in my judgement.
Scott,
I know you enough to say you are rational and reasonable.
Please stop being an apologist for a religion that you are not even practicing. It is just not worthy of you.
I have the misfortune of having been raised as a Muslim and interacted with them for the longest time.
The Koran is forever the unalterable word of God, because it says so. If you beat the crap out of someone according to its instructions, you are doing the work of the creator of the universe for them and will be rewarded for it.
After all, it says that if a man looks at a woman outside the strict rules it imposes, God will fill their eyes with fire in the afterlife.
And you are saying the father’s acts did not have a religious motivation? You know that better than he does?
Even if he did have non-religious motivations, how on earth could he find a better excuse, than God’s law being superior to man’s?
The difference is, if a non-believer commits such a crime, he will have to admit that what he did was pure evil. He cannot explain it away.
…wow…
It’s sad that this happens, and that it has been happening for quite some time…
Scott I’m confused here. You seem to be saying with the above comment that by default since they don’t really believe they do bad things. It has been shown time and time again that religious belief often has no effect on behaviour.
So is this just a subtle out for religion on your part? Or a purposeful slight on atheists?
Scott:
My point is that the more religious someone is, the more likely they’re going to act in the manner prescribed by the belief-system I proposed. As they become less religious, they become more like everyone else in this modern society. Therefore I do a little logic and conclude religion is bad. Not that all religious people are bad, but that religion can be used badly, or it can be used in a way that is neuteral. So from bad to neutral leaves a net of bad.
The facts are really pretty plain here– an authoritarian father of a particular religious sect has killed his daughter for violating some religion-associated rules of dress. Whether this is someone who would be an authoritarian monster even if he didn’t have religious encouragement is an open question, but it may well be so. But it doesn’t help to believe fervently in a religion that explicitly endorses such vicious acts. In fact, it makes the problem much worse. It justifies the impulse, which might otherwise be resisted (whether out of natural sympathy or prudence), and helps the murderer ‘over the hump’, from thought to deed. Very sad, and an object lesson in the evils that religion can lead to. (By contrast, just to anticipate the response, there is nothing in atheism per se that justifies violence and oppression. Not that people in general aren’t perfectly capable of coming up with such justifications independently when it suits them– but having them ready and waiting in a religious dogma is just too easy…)
The facts are really pretty plain here– an authoritarian father of a particular religious sect has killed his daughter for violating some religion-associated rules of dress. Whether this is someone who would be an authoritarian monster even if he didn’t have religious encouragement is an open question, but it may well be so. But it doesn’t help to believe fervently in a religion that explicitly endorses such vicious acts. In fact, it makes the problem much worse. It justifies the impulse, which might otherwise be resisted (whether out of natural sympathy or prudence), and helps the murderer ‘over the hump’, from thought to deed. Very sad, and an object lesson in the evils that religion can lead to. (By contrast, just to anticipate the response, there is nothing in atheism per se that justifies violence and oppression. Not that people in general aren’t perfectly capable of coming up with such justifications independently when it suits them– but having them ready and waiting in a religious dogma is just too easy…)
Sorry for the double post– something is twitchy here.
Of course, being Muslim didn’t cause the man to commit murder. But religion, like superstitious belief in witches or other irrational beliefs, can validate and encourage such decisions. If you believe that all deaths are caused by witchcraft and you’re in a society that belives the same, you’ll go looking for witches. If you believe that a girl without a scarf dishonours her family and you’re in a culture that believes the same, you’ll act to stop her. I don’t say it’s right. I can see how it happens.
Anon Ymous, probably no one believed he’d go that far.
Skwee or anyone who has lost their faith in humanity, check out these random acts of kindness.
Have a look at the Wikipedia entry for ‘Honor Killing’. There you will find information about the countries where it is prevalent and/or condoned by the legal system.
Interestingly some former colonies of Spain and France still allow the ‘in flagrante delecto’ defense for husbands, so it isn’t just the Middle East and Asians.
This all derives from patriarchy, where the women are vehicles for the production of new generations of males.
It is not that it is Islam itself that is the source of such attitudes. That goes back over a thousand years before Muhommed, to those early Abrahamic tribes and who knows how much before them. The religion codifies the old tribal mores and rigidly maintains them wherever it can and seems especially successful in rural areas, where literacy rates are low.
Sikhs, Hindus, Arabs, there are many cultures where patriarchy results in this kind of violence against women. Now think about how recently it was that in various Western countries, husbands could not be convicted for raping their wives. Also think about why there are so many women using shelters from abusive men where you live, today.
Was it really just as recent as Victorian times in England, that unmarried upper class women had to have escorts whenever they left the house in order to vouch for their chastity?
I’d be more inclined to believe jdb’s points if s/he weren’t referencing the Drudge Report of right-wing online hangouts (aka The Volokh Conspiracy). It’s really not uncommon, though. Most of the Canadian right-wingers out there suck up to any and all Americans they can find, to a thoroughly embarrassing degree…
(I don’t know where jdb’s been, either. I saw lots of people “criticising” Islam in the most bigoted possible terms here in Ontario a while back, and nobody got hauled in front of the HRC. I do note that the murderer in this case has been arrested and remanded to custody…)
Another example in a long list of horrors.
Does anyone here now wonder why I wouldn’t vote for Romney or Huckabee with a gun to my head ?
This world needs less religious zealotry and more rationality.
Was it really just as recent as Victorian times in England, that unmarried upper class women had to have escorts whenever they left the house in order to vouch for their chastity?
Erm, where did you get this bit, because it is quite wrong.
The status of women was by no means approached equitable in any European country until recently, but that was never a rule, written or unwritten, in Victorian England.
DLC – I have a confession to make. I’d vote for a Republican religious zealot who was earnestly against torture. Sure as shit can’t find a Democrat to vote for this cycle.
Wait, the father’s name was Muhammad? Why is it that Muslims go crazy in Sudan when a teacher names a teddy bear Muhammad, or in the entire world when someone publishes some cartoon supposedly depicting a Muhammad, but all are silent when someone named Muhammad acts like a cruel beast? A Dutch muslim once told me that, if you are given the name of the Prophet or one of the Kalifs you are supposed to act righteous. Let’s see, 9/11 hijackers Muhammad Atta and Ali, Muhammad Bouyari who shot, stabbed and cut Theo Van Gogh, and the list goes on. Why are Muslim never outraged by this kind of abuse of the Prophet’s name?
Again, religion poisons everything.
Really, I’ve noticed the opposite. Whenever something good happens, the religious attribute it to God. Whenever something bad happens, it’s because of bad people.
We tend to point out when religious people do bad things because religious people themselves claim that morality stems from religion.
Part of the founding story of Islam is that it received grateful support for outlawing female infanticide, which was common in the pagan culture of the time.
There is a moving passage in Qur’an where a murdered female child addresses her killer. “Why did you murder me?”
On a different point, no one has Godwin’ed this thread yet, so I must point out that Good People did very Bad Things in both Nazi Germany and Stalinist countries, in the latter case having no religious motivation at all (arguably in the former case also, but since Nazi Germany hijacked the entire religious apparatus, along with all other civil institutions, it is not so clear.)
This is in my neighbourhood, alas.
What’s got me angry about the coverage is that the discussion has been about culture clashes between parents and children. That’s it’s all about the common “you’re so not wearing that” arguments, or just the expectations that parents have that they shouldn’t.
It isn’t.
It’s about a man who thought it was his right, duty, whatever, to enforce certain behaviour in his daughter, with force. It’s about him thinking what matters is behaviour, not her acceptance of whatever standards.
It’s about people who somehow think that children, particularly daughters, are more property or servants, who should obey and don’t need to be taught or convinced.
And it breaks my heart.
At least the radio finally suggested that parents this frustrated call children’s aid services.
mndarwinist:
I am not apologizing either for Islam, or for the murderous father’s rage. I’m merely suggesting that where causation is concerned, we can uncouple the two. Belief systems are ubiquitous, filicide is not. Is belief of some form implicated in this case? Doubtless, but it neither stands alone or as a stand-in for belief in general.
Uber:
You’re reading too much into my earlier post. All I was implying was that many religious leaders are, in fact, ‘creeps’, frauds who deliberately manipulate their followers for their own gain. Can I get an amen? But, of course, however much we might agree on the former is independent of the question of whether religion is directly implicated in the church shootings, or somehow intrinsically wicked, etc. So, this argument neither indicts religion or excuses it from criticism, and it certainly doesn’t count as criticism of atheism per se.
While I’m on that topic, I’d like to point out that I’ve blogged about the alleged role of belief/non-belief in the church shootings here.
inkadu:
I missed the part where Christianity requires that believers shoot up churches or that Islam insists that one should beat one’s daughters to death. Granted, believers can screw themselves into doing horrible things, and this is a powerful critique of religion: how basically good people can act inhumanely when prompted by a belief system that is held to be beyond reproach or question.
I would argue that this is the toxic version of belief, and that you can get this toxic version of belief without religion per se: consider political partisanship, for example, or the completely secularized folk who are yet ‘true believers’ on the flimsiest of evidence that vaccination causes autism.
If religion maps onto such things (as I think it does), it can also map on to other, more ennobling qualities. In which case ‘the net’ may not be from bad to neutral, but from bad to good. This leads, in a roundabout way, back to my original observation that there is a lack of consistency demonstrated by some here as to when religion/belief itself is directly implicated, and when it is merely symptomatic of deeper things at work.
Consider your clever analogy of a net. In order to argue that ‘the net’ is from bad to neutral, would you be at pains to demonstrate that there is no good that comes from religion? Hmmm. Yet, of course, there are obvious benefits to religion, so one is placed in the position of saying, in effect, that when religion does good it is not really religion, it is merely piggybacking on humanity’s better impulses. Hmmmm. And, yet, when religion works evil that is really religion in its essence, and not piggybacking? If this is the de facto position being taken, I would think that the able skeptics, or at least the True Scotsman (TM) among us would be able to explain why this distinction isn’t arbitrary.
I invite comments.
Rudy @59
Please not this old mumbo jumbo again.
*sigh*
I used to accept there was an obvious benefit but now I’m not so sure. The social aspect of religion always seemed to me a net plus but that isn’t from the doctrines/ideas itself. If one could have the social without the absurdities I may agree.
I do think people who are inclined to control gravitate to religion because it gives them a handy tool to justify otherwise unacceptable actions. Thats one reason I like the outspoken atheists despite not being one myself as they highlight the fact a bad thought is a bad thought religious or not. That and I find them more sensible as a whole.
All that said I just don’t see religion being a big plus for many except in times of extreme need. The rest of the time it seems to be almost parasitic. Causing doubt, needless guilt, cheapening of minds, destruction of education, and real hurt. I’m no longer convinced there aren’t better ways.
That and telling folks that faith is a way to knowing is a really, really big lie.
Misogyny is a crime; but it is seldom punished.
I contend that women from countries like Afghanistan should be granted refugee status the moment they apply for it, because of stories like these.
Why is all religious belief bad, not just fundamentalism? I suspect that even ‘mild’ religious belief is progressively poisonous to human rational capacity. Confronting daily contradictions to beliefs that you’ve ivensted a great deal in maintaining must be psychologically costly. Those of the fundamentalist stripe simply get to the batshit point earlier. Poison is poison nonetheless.
To carry this ad hoc analogy a bit further, self-deceptive religious belief isn’t a poison like venom, it doesn’t purpotedly give benefits in small doses. I would argue that it’s progressively debilitating. Why else do we have to train college students to think critically? Shouldn’t they have been doing this all along?
Maxi, I don’t mind being accused writing mumbo jumbo, I’ve written rubbish before, but maybe you could clarify which part you mean?
The Godwin paragraph was specifically just to rebut the Steven Weinberg quote earlier in the thread, and shouldn’t be taken as my Answer to all the other criticisms of religion in the thread. I know the dichotomy Fundie Religion vs. Godless Stalinism gets trotted out a lot, but the Weinberg quote is a tiresome cliche too.
Anyway, the oldest (and most virulent) religion in the world is Patriarchy. And this is unfortunately not restricted to the Abrahamic religions; even many versions of Buddhism consider females inferior.
I can’t think of a secular movement that is systematically misogynist this way.
(Maybe if Social Darwinism had become a mass movement instead of an elite aberration, we would have seen this.) But it is worth noting that many of the founding mothers of feminism in North America were members of liberal religious groups, Unitarian, Quaker, etc.
I didn’t see an update in the comments, but FYI, the girl died.
“Misogyny should not be allowed the support it receives from [fundamentalist] culture.”
Let me fix that for you:
Misogyny should not be allowed the support it receives from any and all cultures.
Scott —
In answer to your question… I see religion in contrast to modernity. If religion has progressed, it is because modernity has dragged it along. Where religion has not progressed, it holds up the process of modernity. So if a religion does good, it’s in respect to a modern morality that is post-hoc’d into their religious framework.
It’s kind of like a gun control argument, Scott. Yes, if somebody’d had a gun, maybe they could have stopped a massacre. But by arming many people in the anticipation of stopping a massacre, you’ll incidentally cause another massacre.
That’s how I think about religion — it’s like a gun that occasionally can be used for good, but is mostly bad. In modern times, religion can support modern morality, but it mostly doesn’t. And when religion does support modern morality, it’s most likely in reflection of modern society, not an independent manifestation. So what good is it?
“am not apologizing either for Islam, or for the murderous father’s rage. I’m merely suggesting that where causation is concerned, we can uncouple the two. Belief systems are ubiquitous, filicide is not. Is belief of some form implicated in this case? Doubtless, but it neither stands alone or as a stand-in for belief in general.”
Scott you are full of it! Honor killings are based on religious memes. Go find an equivalent number of murders of daughters and sisters for control purposes by athiests in a similar time period and I might change my mind. But as I see it religion CAUSES this one.
Scott Hatfield @ #61:
I invite comments.
Well, since you ask: nicely done.
(Getting people to think about or clarify possible over-reactions on an emotional topic, without starting a flame war.)
I’m certain Allah is happy now.
Inkadu,
Exactly how can you separate “modern” from “religious” morality, concretely?
By “modern” I am suppose you mean “secular”. You can make a distinction in terms of how moral judgments are validated; say, interpretation of revelatory texts vs. philosophical debate. But an argument that “secular” morality is pulling “religious” morality along depends on showing this in concrete cases.
I can’t think of any situation where this is obvious. The abolition of slavery comes to mind, were it not for the fact that both sides in that debate were religious, generally speaking.
It’s even pretty easy to find cases where religious philosophers were in “advance” of the secular, say in regards to racism: Hume was racist in his views, while Thomas Reid, his Scottish opponent, held egalitarian views based on his religious beliefs.
Can you suggest a clearer case? I can’t think of one. (I can think of some other possibilities, but they aren’t much clearer than the ones above. Maybe gay rights? or the environment?)
Indeed. Religion is a retarding factor. It causes retardation and profits from retardation. Mental, educational, moral and emotional retardation. That’s the real MEME of religion. It allows the lazy, dishonest and evil to feel smug about being lazy, dishonest and evil – by pretending they are actually better than everyone else simply by being lazy, dishonest and evil.
Don’t think about things. Thinking’s heretical (eg Adam’s navel). Reason’s the tool of the devil. Just praise god and pass the ammunition and the collection plate.
Don’t learn about things. The holy text already knows it all – and you should only know and do exactly what your religious leader tells you to know and do.
Don’t work out what’s really good or evil and internalise it and own your morality so you can then consider each new situation carefully. Keep the rules external as an immutable, contradictory and conveniently selectable pick’n’mix – dictated by distant ancestors and current manipulative leaders, ready to justify anything they want.
Don’t grow up into a full adult, passing through all the more advanced stages of thought. Remain as a biddable child to please your god and your religious leaders – ie fearful, greedy and easily conned.
Religion provides a well-honed means of control for the use of evil-doers. It provides a handy pre-packaged set of excuses for any evil anyone wants to commit (plus a convenient ready-made gang to help them do that) and also the matching set for denying responsibility. If a non-religious person wants to do evil, they first have to work a bit harder to convince themselves (generating excuses other than the god agreed with them one) and a lot harder to convince others.
Religions have carefully evolved to be as addictive and evil as possible. Nothing else comes close. The next nearest bad things are recognisable as almost being religions! Ideologies where things are similarly taken on faith (rather than tested) and people get to be lazy, greedy and avoid responsibility. Anything making unsubstantiated threats (eg hell) and promises (eg heaven). So much easier than genuinely having to deliver.
Pretty much not – by definition! By being that way they were being secular. They were going against their religion’s traditions. All previous authorities would have regarded them as heretical and not properly religious – too secular. I expect you’ll find any example you had in mind was actually denounced by those of their own religious background. If gods were real, they could move religious people forwards together. But they aren’t so they can’t.
Because religion relies on tradition (and authority) it can never genuinely be a force for progess. Only individual renegade members who want to pretend they are still part of the same religion (for their own reasons and perhaps even genuinely believing it) can make progress – good or bad (though we mostly only count the good as being progress at all). Even when they pretend (or believe) they are receiving new revelations rather than reasoning out the improvement, they are still heretics to the true believers holding to the previous position. Eg Joan of Arc didn’t go down too well with the priests of her era.
SEF,
The details of my “Hume vs. Reid” case, though,
is just the opposite. Hume was, and is, practically the exemplary secular philosopher. Reid, while a philosopher (the founder of the Scottish “Common Sense” school), was making a religious argument against the new, secular ideal of racial types.
(Not all secular thinkers have discarded racialism, either, as shown by the Bell Curve and related controversies.)
Your argument is very general – which doesn’t make it wrong of course. General principles can be very powerful. But your argument seems a little circular – religion often relies on more than tradition; religions are invented all the time. (Just like holidays!) Saying that if it’s new it is secular is begging the question.
Buddhism and Christianity were both once new.
Neither of them was a secular alternative to the previous religions. Some religions call for new revelations as part of their theology; Mormonism used to be this way, and it’s an explicit part of all variants of Quakerism.
Granted, Christ and Buddha might be considered individual renegade members of their original
tradition. So I’ll go along with you there. But I don’t see the jump from there to saying that religion isn’t a force for progress; don’t these examples show that religion *is* a force for progress? Couldn’t it be the case that the new, more progressive ideas actually are religious, as much as the old, busted ideas?
In other words, you might need a new religion to make progress, but it’s still a religion. Just like Newton’s method of finding square roots, you keep getting better approximations.
SEF, you wrote
>Don’t learn about things. The holy text already >knows it all – and you should only know and do >exactly what your religious leader tells you to >know and do.
This is only true of some religions. The holy texts in Buddhism, Catholicism, Sikhism, Orthodoxy, Judaism, etc. are all open to interpretation and explanation, as much as any secular philosophical text. Even Islam, which many people think of as rigid, traditionally had many schools of interpretation, and at one point was very open to speculation.
Of course some of these religions have had problems with authoritarianism. But hey, nobody’s perfect :)
Rudy,
Racial “types” were not a product of secular philosophy. In fact, there was a significant religious theory for racial types called polygenism that posited separate creations by god for the different races.
Typological classification of the races in biology began with Linnaeus and Blumenbach. Although I’m not sure of Blumenbach, Linnaeus was clearly religious and a contemporary of Hume.
Rudy,
I agree that some parts of the Bible are subject to interpretation, but not all of it. Certain parts don’t have any ambiguous meanings.
For example:
Please offer an interpretation of this passage that does not mean men who engage in homosexual behaviour should be executed.
Though I haven’t read the holy books of many religions (the Bible is the only one I’ve read), I wonder that some of their passages that condone such violence are similarly straight forward…
You don’t have to be right just because you’re secular! That’s no simplistic guarantee of anything. You do have the option of not following a tradition which you can recognise as wrong though. Which is something a full traditionalist doesn’t have. You also potentially have a means of judging right from wrong – using reality rather than personal or inherited fantasy, unlike the fundamental religionist.
No – because they weren’t following the religion. They were making up their own one. It’s then only as good or bad as their personal fantasies and only as progressive in ideas as the (secular) society from which they stole them or worked them out (and working out is rational and secular and not religious). And then it stagnates into tradition again as coming from the new religious authorities.
Only the least religious in any religion can progress. NB They don’t have to be fully atheistic nor admit (even to themselves) that they are. They just have to break with the original tradition – and the degree to which they make sense is entirely dependent on whether they rely on reality rather than fantasy for their changes. Buddha was one of those who leaned a bit towards reality (he still believed that the gods of his childhood existed but that they appeared to be no concern of his) and hence improved things a little by being less religious in his non-traditionalism.
The nutter types just make things worse with their unevidenced delusions. Hence all the splitter sects which go crazy even in comparison with their parent religions. Delusion is no basis for reliable improvement. Only reality (and rational consideration of that) is a reliable guide.
Untrue. When you point out it’s a pack of lies, nonsense and amorality etc, they tell you you’re not a true religionist of whatever the relevant kind is. And of course they’re right on that – while still being completely wrong in everything else.
No, all of them do. It’s the main real-world function of religion. It’s not necessarily down to the original “authority”, eg if they’re mad rather than bad or not very much of either. It’s the followers.
Even Buddha, despite his best exhortations, couldn’t stop that from his would-be followers. Just look at them all with their silly Buddha statues, quite missing the main alleged point. Though there are some Buddhists who aren’t of the religious kind at all and only go along with the good bits of the philosophy, being essentially secular and atheistic. That’s why people have trouble deciding whether Buddhism is a religion or not. It’s both. It depends on which Buddhists you count as the true ones.
And was rejected by the contemporary religious authorities for the very thing over which you would like to praise him – his examination of reality. They didn’t want him teaching the next generation because he was too sensible and not religious enough. They knew that his ideas didn’t come from their religion. So it’s no good you pretending now that they did.
Only the least religious in the population ever make genuine progress, even if they have to manage to convince themselves that they are being religious in doing so (the other sort of self-defence from merely pretending it). Their genuinely religious contemporaries tend not to be fooled though. There is no god to tell them all the same thing.
# 69 inkadu:
You know what? I liked your analogy to gun control. That’s actually a pretty good argument, except for the fact that there really are legitimate uses for guns, even in the 21st century. But I understand what you’re saying: it comes down to the potential for harm. If all the guns were kept as artifacts in museums under unbreakable glass, we could even admire the craftsmanship that went into it. But of course guns are meant to be used, not admired as works of art. Dennett says something similar about religion toward the end of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, where he suggests that aspects of religion should be preserved as cultural artifacts, but that the real thing should be kept safely behind bars. Which is kind of chilling to those of us still in the pews, frankly.
# 74 SEF:
All good points, but conceding that there are things like religion, that function the way religion does without involving supernatural, kind of gives away the farm.
# 71 JimV:
Thanks for the kind words. Arguments are just competing ideas, and what are ideas among friends?
# 70 sailor:
(I can’t resist) Hey, sailor!
OK, sorry, not all that funny but I always wanted to say that. Now, you argue that ‘honor killings’ are based on religious memes. For the sake of discussion, let’s take that further and claim that ‘honor killings’ are inherently and exclusively religious in origin.
So what? My opposition to ‘honor killings’ (and, I might add, the general opposition within Islam as well) stems from religious memes, too. You know, like, ‘love one another’ and ‘blessed are the peacemakers’ and other Hallmark moments? So the fact that ‘honor killings’ might be supported by some religious memes says little about the general culpability of religion.
Besides, people who study these horrors see them not so much as religious, but cultural in origin. There was a UN-sponsored conference on honor killings in Stockholm a few years back, and an Islamic journalist in Australia summarized part of their findings as follows:
The Stockholm conference concluded that honour killings are rooted not in religion, but in feudal social structures and violently patriarchal, tribal culture. This may be true even of those crimes committed in Western countries because they tend to occur among diverse but poor, ghettoised, migrant communities.
In particular, the role of feudalism rings true. Especially in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan where in some regions feudalism has created poverty of an entrenched kind. It may involve whole villages and societies that have been desperately poor and consequently illiterate for generations. Notably, Afghanistan and Pakistan are among the few countries where illiteracy has been increasing. These socio-economic circumstances, tragically but inevitably, create a social dynamic where might is right. The strong therefore dominate the weak whether the dividing line is drawn through race, majority or gender. Accordingly, the rights most infringed upon belong consistently to minorities, women and children. This result is barbarism, and the violent repression of women is a natural corollary.
So, it is dangerous to regard honour killings as the inevitable result of some defect of Islam. This prevents us from addressing the real causes, and can only mean the oppression will continue. It would undermine what is otherwise a righteous and vitally important struggle.
The journalist, to his credit, goes on to point out where religion has been part of the problem, and how believers should join the effort to eliminate ‘honor killing.’ The full text of that article can be found here.
Those aren’t religious memes at all though. They’re social animal memes which religion has plagiarised and then variously tried to claim ownership of and a monopoly over. The only thing which is exclusively religious is the making up of supernatural garbage of the god variety. You’d have those anyway – before, during, after and despite religion (unless you happened to be a sociopath / psychopath).
The next worst things in the vicinity, such as the UFO nuts and the fake telepaths and the extreme believers in witches and fairyland, aren’t considered as religious by everyone because their supernatural (and “natural” to some extent) fantasies are of slightly the wrong kind. They’re not claiming their fantasies include authority figures which should be worshipped.
Not at all. Religion doesn’t have a monopoly on evil – just a very impressive market share. There are other fantasy-based evil things which are supernatural claims but not “religious” (no bogus authority) or natural claims which do have the bogus authority half of the equation. Religion is extra bad for having the double-whammy.
But even then, not everyone in a religion is as fantasy-based as the others. Some can be quite reality-based – and those are the only ones from which reliable good things can possibly come. That appears to be the category into which you fall which is why you can be a responsible science teacher and why you’re not pathologically dishonest in the way the typical creationist posters find themselves having to be. You’ve only got the teeny tiniest bit of reality-denial to do – making it relatively easy to stay honest on the rest. That’s the same with many of the Unitarians I know. The less religious the better (as a general rule).
Oops – I should have spotted I’d later separated the pronoun from the correct noun, making it confusing. Read “You’d have those anyway …” as “You’d have those memes anyway …”.
Pygmy Loris (great name, or is it just your species? You never know on the internet):
No, it’s pretty hard to find a different interpretation for that passage in Leviticus, although if I wanted to be really difficult I could wonder what “lying with a woman” meant in that culture… But seemingly similar passages elsewhere (in Paul for example) have often been said to refer to homosexual temple prostitution rather than homosexuality as we understand it.
Now that I think of it, the “meaning” of the passage from Leviticus could be very different if it were just a law to mark a difference from the practices of surrounding tribes, or a primitive sanitation taboo. Both of these interpretations of the *intent* of the law, open up the possibility for religious followers to guiltlessly ignore the law. If the surrounding context had said (for example) “The Lord Your G-d Arbitrarily Decrees That..” the meaning would be different. See, it can be done!
Thanks for the info about polygenism. I’ll have to look into that. How old is that idea? I had the impression that the theory of “races” was relatively modern.
SEF:
I didn’t mean to say that Hume couldn’t be wrong. I just meant to say that when you try to look at particular examples of moral progress, the secular/religious contrast breaks down. That is, I don’t think that your general principle works out; it can’t explain specific cases of moral progress, so it can’t be used as a general principle to predict the origin of future moral progress.
I see the same problem with your claim that moral progress is made by the least religious: do you mean for this just to be true on average? because it is pretty easy to think of counterexamples (e.g. Jesus, or John Woolman).
SEF:
Just for the record, I really do agree with a lot of your points: even, to a certain extent, with your spin on yours truly. In the spirit of trying to avoid dishonesty even of the non-pathological variety, let me freely confess that I compartmentalize. I don’t claim that my faith experience can be justified by rational argument, or that ‘faith’ is another way of ‘knowing’ in any sense that scientists would recognize.
I also agree that ‘love one another’ is not so much a religious meme as it is a social meme coopted by religion. My point is that a lot of the other things ascribed as both evil and inherently religious are also memes on which religion piggybacks or hold hands with, and that it doesn’t make sense to make religion per se fully culpable for one, but not for the other. That just strikes me as inconsistent, and thus a poor argument. Non-believers have many arrows in their quiver that fly hard and fast to the heart of faith. This does not appear to be one of them.
Couple of comments here. Would you consider the Jesus of the NT a ‘religious’ man?
What moral progress was made at this point that didn’t exist elsewhere in the world or previously?
On the above Scott Hatfield discussion. It seems to me religion can be either a force for good or evil. The problem is once a member of said religion it is seemingly difficult to see outside the ‘tribe’ so to speak and very easy to move with the herd. It’s not that religion makes a gunman shoot someone it’s that it makes 1000’s of tribemembers look for excuses for said gunman.
Or vote against their own interests or against things no sane person would care about or create bigotry and hurt with a bunch of irrational and often stupid rules. This is not to mention the lies that must be told, millions of dollars to maintain vast edifices, and the dumbing down of entire societies.
It’s the sheperd and the sheep idea that causes it so much trouble. It simply prevents people from speaking against obvious notions due to sheer numbers and fear of being removed from the group. Which is ultimately what the fear of hell is as well.
This is why when properly used religion can be of great good. It’s also why historically smaller churches lead the way with secular cohorts for societal change. The bigger the church the more slave like the minds of it’s members and the more difficult time the hierachy has admitting it’s wrong.
Also Scott you and I have alot in common on this subject.
“Religion doesn’t have a monopoly on evil – just a very impressive market share”
That’s the quote of the month. Well said.
-jcr
That’s not a counter-example at all! Firstly, Jesus is a fictional character anyway (though there definitely were people of the basic type around). Secondly, even in the stories, Jesus was less religious than other people by the standards of most people then. He whinged about the way religion was carried out and disobeyed lots of rules.
I already know those things about you (I’m not new here). However, those are precisely the things which make you: (a) less religious than other religious people; and (b) more likely to be a much better person than they are (and of course there’s no shortage of evidence of that when comparing posts).
Not my main one – which I think I’ve explained before but that’s not much excuse for not trying again.
Yes, there are other instances of authority and any given real-world authority can be good or bad. Though loyalty is always bad (because if someone was right you’d agree with them anyway, whereas only loyalty can make you agree with someone you know is wrong while still getting to feel smug about your behaviour).
Yes, there are other types of supernatural belief – which are ultimately always bad things but not necessarily devastatingly so (and people can certainly make short-term excuses for the beliefs appearing to be “good”).
But, and it’s a whopping great killer of a but, only religion states that the imaginary authority in your head can be trusted. This is what leads people to fail to be critical enough of the correctness of their impulses, to turn off that all important self-doubt (because they’d be doubting god and god is perfect, unlike a human leader whom one might still doubt), to feel smug about doing whatever they secretly wanted to do anyway (or even something which they thought was bad but still misinterpreted as being god). That unthinking, uncritical, smug faith also leads them to follow other allegedly godly people making the claim of having heard the word.
The other part of the failure to doubt comes courtesy of the promises and threats which never have to be delivered and can’t be verified/tested, ie heaven and hell (and even prayers have a carefully built-in disclaimer). Whereas, sometimes a witch or telepath or telekinetic can be seen to have failed in their claim. People never do return with that pot of pixie-gold. Etc.
Things other than religion also don’t tend to make (either because they haven’t been around long enough to get that cunning or because their structure doesn’t permit inclusion of it) the deliberate built-in claim of untestability (ie the god will eventually punish you for daring to test him clause). Religion is not only evil, it secretly knows (in the persons of its inventors) itself to be evil because it has knowingly added these things along the way. That’s one of the ways in which modern religions are actually worse than ancient ones – the extra guile involved.
PS (ie an important component I forgot to include above!) I know some religious people will claim to have self-doubt. The key thing is what they do about it. Do they then check themselves against reality (scientific evidence, historical example, rational thought); or do they merely go for another round of fantasy (praying, looking for more crazy internal impulses, selectively picking passages out of a holy text? The former are not being religious (and that includes you, Scott) and are much more likely to end up being right. The latter are the ones being religious and much less likely to end up right (or even sane).
The feedback one gives one’s brain (ie for tailoring future decisions and refining the next batch of impulses) has to be external (and as accurate as possible) to be of any genuine use. Only a reality-based person can do that (although they still have to make good choices to be good). A fantasy-based one can’t (even if they really want to be better).
Of course some people delude or lie to themselves and others about being fantasy-based when in fact they do pay considerable attention to reality too. They over-claim their degree of religiousness because they falsely regard it as being a good thing. It’s not. It’s a bad thing – and the more people who realise that the better.
SEF, yes, I would consider Jesus religious. Religion is not a matter of following rules; that is part of the progress Jesus instituted. Some of the things he said were not new of course, the Golden Rule for example.
For many people, the rational course of action from a material point of view, is to go along with the crowd. It can take a religious reform to go “Meta”, to sail above society and see a new way of living.
{ laughs }
You’ve just contradicted yourself. Jesus only (allegedly) made that progress by not being properly religious. You do know it really. You just don’t want to admit it.
PPS I belatedly see that one of my brackets escaped. In case it isn’t obvious, one bracketed insertion should have ended at the question-mark, ie:
“another round of fantasy (praying, looking for more crazy internal impulses, selectively picking passages out of a holy text ) ?”
SEF, Uber:
I appreciate the detailed comments, especially the ones that provide me an insight as to how others perceive me. Thanks…SH
Well I certainly can’t speak for how everyone else sees you! So you’re only getting a rather small and probably unrepresentative sample there, even if you aren’t being sarcastic.
Persisting with the view that you’re not, and picking a number not quite at random, I see you as being 99% secular (and reality-based and rational and scientific etc) with just that 1% of clingage to the sacred. I’m about as certain as I can be that you could, if you wanted, explain in rational terms anything you currently regard as a “faith experience”. However, you don’t because you currently regard that thread of your life as being more glittery when viewed in a divine light (even if that doesn’t happen to be true).
So I just have to hope that that 1% of determinedly crazy unreality isn’t what you pass on to anyone who might lack your 99% of sanity checkage and who then goes on to think and do something evil with it. You’re still way ahead of the majority of people who have higher percentages of crazy throughout all their views of things.
SEF,
I can’t see where I contradicted myself. I said that religion isn’t just about following rules, then said that Jesus made a point of this.
My religion (I’m Quaker) has few or no rules. Lots of fundamentalist Christians would agree with you that I’m not very religious. I don’t agree with them, or you, about that.
I’m not sure why you are convinced Jesus wasn’t “properly religious”. If you think that religion is just about following rules, well, yes, you are right, but I don’t see how defining away religion gets you anywhere. Jesus talks about God all the time, which would be odd for someone to do if they were not religious.
SEF said
You completely missed my point. The point was that both religious and secular thinkers created racist, racial classifications of humans. Try for some context before you jump down my throat!
Rudy,
I am a loris :)
The modern racial concept (including its very racist forms) originated in the 16th and 17th centuries. Some have argued that the racial classification of humanity by the Europeans was largely dependent on the development of long range travel by ships. The clinal nature of human variation was obscured when you didn’t see the people living between say, Spain and the Ivory Coast.
Linneas’s classification of humans into five groups dates to 1758. There are other racial classifications by various groups dating back to antiquity. Human variation has been widely considered among intellectuals for millennia.
Polygenism was both secular and religious, but was particularly popular in the US from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s (for obvious reasons).
You contradicted yourself because religion was a matter of following the rules. By changing that to some extent (into being a thing with less assiduous following of rules), the Jesus character was being non-religious (for the religion of the era). The organised, systematic aspect, the rules and the rituals are what make something a religion (a belief system) rather than merely being a bunch of isolated beliefs.
However, in case this is also partly down to some sort of UK vs US usage of English mixup, consider why the word religious (and its derivatives) has the meaning it does in phrases such as “he was religious about it” and “doing something religiously”.
Quaker is one of the least religious of religions. That’s why Quakers get on rather well with Unitarians (in the UK at any rate), sharing places of worship. It’s no accident that it has few (stupid, arbitrary, faith-based) rules. That’s what makes it not very religious. Remember also how the Pope denounced all the other (ie non-pope-following) Christian variants recently as not true Christians.
Some non-religious people talk about god (or gods) rather a lot too. ;-) I think you’re still overlooking the highly selective storybook nature of the text too.
Perhaps, another way of viewing the matter would help. For anyone who isn’t a committed member of the loonie fringe, what about the Jesus character would impress them: the few miracles (sacred acts) or the humane elements (secular acts)? I reckon the non-religious bits of the Jesus story are more likely to inspire people to want to be more like Jesus. Though of course they still have to overlook all the bad stuff he did (both sacredly and secularly) and the good stuff he failed to do. It took a non-Jew to convince him that he shouldn’t be racist (Matt.15:22-8). His supposedly sacred mission apparently hadn’t informed him of that rather basic thing.
I didn’t get that that was the entirety of your point, no. NB don’t forget that the terms “race” and “species” were equivalent and interchangable for a while. That needs to be taken into account as the context under which to read writings of the era. Meanwhile, it was always entirely reasonable to consider the possibility that humans might have significant sub-divisions – even though it turned out not to be the case, once enough evidence was in to judge in comparison with other levels of variation.
SEF:
Hey, as long as we agree each of us is 100 percent human, I can live with being called 1 percent crazy. I enjoyed this exchange…SH
SEF,
For a tiny denomination, Quakers in the US are pretty spread around theologically, with some liberal Quakers very similar to Unitarians and evangelical Quakers more similar to Mennonites, and a lot of middle ground. Here in North Carolina there are at least three major groups.
For that matter, Unitarians in the US are not really homogeneous either, with the humanist grouping being the largest but lots of other spiritual viewpoints represented, including pagans, Buddhists, and (Unitarian or Universalist) Christians. In the US (I’m not sure about the UK) Unitarians joined the Universalists (Christians who don’t believe in hell) sometime in the 1950’s, so they are technically Unitarian-Universalists (UUs).
They are all under one denominational umbrella.
My wife is UU.
No, I don’t think we are having a purely verbal disagreement here, but maybe spiritual would be a better term than religious. I don’t think it’s easy to find the right words for these ideas.
Is it possible to believe in the supernatural and yet not be religious in your sense of the word?
I know I already pre-answered that one (#83 & #91)! Yes, someone could believe in supernatural stuff which has nothing to do with god concepts (and typically no systematic organisation to the beliefs) and hence not be religious. Eg telepathy etc, ghosts, witches, fairies and so on.
Well that might be true enough of you but … :-D
Also depending on one’s definition of human, ie whether it’s simply a compatible species matter or the mental humanity has to be taken into account, some people could and have been classed as sub-human etc by others. As well as unfortunates such as anencephalics, an obvious choice of exclusion clause would be the sociopaths / psychopaths (eg perhaps the sort of people who might kill their own daughters). This seems to be part of what the Dune series is getting at. One other science fiction story I read made it a more explicit theme – with magically powered midwives being responsible for determining whether the child was going to grow up “human”.
SEF,
OK, I read back and see that you that. But that kind of thing is not what I’m getting at.
I’m talking about believing in God, yet not having rituals and rigid rules. I don’t believe in fairies, ghosts etc. but I do believe in God.
Or think pf Spinoza, who said that everything that we see is just a small portion of God. But he was “modern” and rational in political and moral beliefs.
The ritual part is there for a lot of people, and I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing either. All those Buddha statues and cathedrals are at least an aesthetic good. But there I’m wandering pretty far off the original thread.
That’s sometimes referred to as having faith but not religion. Except that you already admitted that you belong to an organised religion – the Quakers. Now perhaps the Quakers indeed don’t require that you all believe in the same god or the same ideas about god (ie in any organised and systematic way) but, on the face of it you are a member of a religion. Just not as extremely religious as the ones who have magic rituals and artifacts (not real magic of course and they’d also deny the term magic while treating them exactly like magic!).
You’d also count as a theist rather than a deist. Eg doing the prayer thing and believing your version of a god can and does speak back and/or intercede.
SEF,
Our use of religious/religion keeps shifting around in this conversation, which is probably an indication that we don’t have a definite hold on the issue.
Prayer vs. magic seems like something that it would be easier to get a grip on, but probably it is too far off this thread.