What do you think? Would the world be better off without religion?
Of course, religion is only a symptom: what would really make the world better off would be if people were smarter and made important decisions rationally. That’s even less like than growing out of religion, unfortunately.
The aussies are obviously an enlightened race – the poll was Yes 63%, No 37%, with 2086 votes cast before Pharyngulites started on it!
Too bad. I was hoping for a “Hell, yes” option…
I definitely agree that religion is just a symptom of brainwashing and rampant zealotry but its such an easy target. Plus I like to think that people, even the religious nutjobs wouldn’t be quite so nutty if they had been better raised and better educated.
The aussies are obviously an enlightened race
I like to think so! But it could also be the effect of World Youth Day in Sydney. (Further down that page there’s a pretty strong reaction to the rules against causing annoyance to pilgrims.)
Except about smacking children, unless smacking means something else down there. And what’s a “middie”? the consensus is that 8 constitutes a binge.
“Imagine there’s no religion…”–John Lennon
Before I could honestly answer “yes” to that question, I need to figure out what would most likely (if anything) take the place of religion if it were to vanish.
Considering human nature as it is, I have this sinking feeling that everything will end up functionally more or less the same as it is now.
The thought alone that there can be a world without religion is utopian. As atheists we have to learn to live with religion as an important part in the lives of most people. People will not become rational, and even if they do they might not become less religious. We cannot design a new world, because from the crooked timber of humanity, nothing straight can be made.
Person: “So where do you get your morals if not from the bible?”
Me: “Let me ask you something; if it was conclusively proven to you tomorrow that your god didn’t exist and that the bible was a load of crap, would you kill and rape whomever you wanted?”
Person: “Yes that’s correct.”
I’ve had this conversation quite a few times, and it’s been the only time I’ve really ever thought, ‘Well at least religion is good for something’. Still, of course the world would be better off without it.
If you’re going to crash polls PZ, crash mine! (I shall eventually get you crash my polls PZ!)
Given that the largely irreligious Europeans seem to be going in for homeopathy, astrology, crystals, Holocaust denial, and other nonsense in large numbers, I don’t think a world without religion would be an improvement. People have a pretty strong need to believe in something stupid.
On the other hand, I wonder if astrologers could acquire the centralized power and ability to get people to do silly and dangerous things that religion has had for centuries. Perhaps it would be an improvement to switch out powerful purveyors of nonsense and replace them with weak, decentralized ones.
The world would be better off without politicians, yet we do not have polls on whether the world would be better off without politics.
Does that count substitutes for religion, like dialectical materialism?
Anyhow, isn’t the question whether or not the world would be better off if social fictions were expunged? With others, I’d say yes, but wouldn’t limit such fictions to religion.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Well put. Thank you.
BCH
The Census Bureau seems to be suggesting that womans continued education beyond high school is a form of birth control. The possibility that the educated, hopefully rational, population will not grow seems real. Sort of a “green” way of population control.
Religions that keep women dumb and reproducing seem to have a better plan for success. It success is measured by number of souls in a shared delusion.
I answered “yes”, but then I thought better about it.
What the world would be better off without is people taking religion so damn seriously.
To #9: People who assert the claim that morality can’t exist without a god are also, by definition, claiming that no rational argument exists for ethical conduct, or they’re simply incapable of making one. Furthermore, if one acts based upon expectation of reward, or avoidance of punishment, from a god then the actor is not making a moral judgement.
The person who claims that he would rape and murder without god is not being truthful. Such a person would quickly find himself exiled or dead and those are sufficiently compelling disincentives in most cases.
Would removing religion from the world really inspire more people to educate themselves? I’m guessing not. Perhaps what we need is more education and religion would settle for being a side dish.
What we could use is less fanatics, but then they do serve as a constant reminder of what a big dose of crazy can do to people if they aren’t careful to try to remain balanced.
Bingo!
And I really wish more atheists would realize that little bit of reality.
It’s not religions I have a problem with, it’s the kooks that follow them!
[W]hat would really make the world better off would be if people were smarter and made important decisions rationally.
That would require the majority here to give up their silly economic (and related political) notions, which ain’t gonna happen anytime soon. Reality-based policy simply can’t compete with liberal dogma ’round here….
It’s not religions I have a problem with, it’s the kooks that follow them!
Votes 77% yes – 23% no, 4110 votes.
The other interesting thing was 82% of those voting are against Purity Balls… er, what are those?
I believe the pharyngulist canonical response is: Knitting
The aussies are obviously an enlightened race
Uh, Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis is one of them!
It is hard to answer this question. “A world without religion” could be so many things.
People ask the question “What would take the place of religion?” Well, anything that “takes the place” of a religion is itself another religion, isn’t it?
Anything else – an epistemology, or a code of ethics, isn’t “taking the place of religion”. Accepting the question “What would take the place of religion?” puts one halfway down the path to the usual nonsensical arguments whereby creationists argue that evolution is itself a “religion”.
what would really make the world better off would be if people were smarter and made important decisions rationally
That is the stupidest thing I have ever read on this blog.
Follow that line of thought, and you will go directly to Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”.
But I’ll let you decide what “smarter” and “more rationally” are. Oh, I’m intelligent enough, I suppose, but I’ve got a real humility problem you seem to have freed yourself from.
“The other interesting thing was 82% of those voting are against Purity Balls… er, what are those?”
Purity balls are evangelical ‘don’t lose your virginity!’ things. A father will take his daughter (very rarely a son) to a two or three day abstinence sex-ed evangelical style program. At the end, they have a whole father-daughter grand ball where the daughter pledges to her father not to have sex until she is married, and gets a ring in return.
Obviously, they only care about this for the women, so there are almost no male-centered programs or pledging slavery to the father. Horrible things all around. Especially when they take no-nothing 5-year-olds (quite often) to these things.
More Info:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/us/19purity.html
Would the world be better off without religion?
Well, my response to that would be the following quote (and I wish I could remember where I got this from):
No situation in the whole of human history has ever been improved by the sticking into it of an ecclesiatical nose.
If anybody knows who the originator of that quote was, please tell me because it’s been bugging me for years. It might be Heinlein, but I can’t find any reference to it on the Net or anywhere else. It’s certainly a good one though.
Damn, I meant ecclesiastical of course. My “s” key misfires often.
There will be religion as long as there are people uncomfortable saying “I don’t know”. I really think the atheistic/skeptical end of the spectrum primarily boils down to an ability to accept one’s own lack of knowledge.
In other words, where a naturalist can see and accept a certain question as unanswerable (whether temporarily or permanently so), a supernaturalist is uneasy with such a conclusion, and substitutes something more satisfying.
So I think that as long as people experience discontent with mystery, there will be supernatural beliefs.
“Would the world be better off without religion?” is equivalent to asking “Would the world be better off without stupidity and insanity?”
I clicked YES, which is now 80% of the vote.
Imagine an entire day without one suicide bombing. Imagine biology teachers able to teach evolution anywhere in America without fear of harassment. Imagine the explosion of human progress in a world without supernatural woo-woo.
Thankyou for the answer Will.
What a rube I am. I thought a purity ball would be something to put in the wash to kill cooties. Leave it to the fundies to come up with another sexist celebration.
Huzzah for the 82% against!
Calm down. They don’t go in for any of these in larger numbers than Americans.
To the contrary: the most religious people are the generally most gullible ones. If you already believe that miracles happen all the time, believing in spoon-bending in addition to that isn’t difficult, and if God arranges your fate, why shouldn’t he arrange the stars so you can see it beforehand. Plus, I have anecdotal evidence in the form of a relative :o)
And here I though a purity ball was the result of a good bath.
Depends what you mean by “religion”.
Would the world be better off eliminating the idea that God/Fairies/Gaia is a causal mechanism? Probably, although it’s hard to say precisely.
Would the world be better off without the sociological mythologies that form the fabric of society, of which religion is an inevitable and irrevocable part? I certainly doubt it.
While religion is almost certainly “wrong” in the sheer factual sense that the world was not created by Odin from the body of his father and that praying to Allah will not make the rains come any quicker, the processes by which religion arises are so intrinsic to the human experience that it’s hard to work out how the world would get rid of “religion” without getting rid of people too, or at least fundamentally changing them into a different species, which probably amounts to the same thing.
The new-atheist conceit that I find most grating is the idea that human beings are essentially rational creatures who would be so much better off if they would just start thinking straight. While I see the merit of the idea, I wonder whether people have ever met a human being. We are – all of us – delusional by nature, existing in a construction of hallucinations which, yes, are influenced by the outside world but which are representational enough to work, not to be accurate. Our prejudices and expectations influence how we see even simple things, and we struggle to convey our internal conceptions meaningfully even to people who share our own frames of reference, let alone people from entirely different cultural contexts. We build our societies on myths and stories, on convenient fictions and representations of reality.
We’re a species predisposed by the goo we’re made of towards being delusional storytellers, and somehow we’re expected to believe that taking away people’s delusions and stories is going to work?
We should mock, challenge and denounce religion, and always be on the lookout for those who would abuse the nature of their religious stories to abuse their place in society. We should not allow religious motherfuckers to insist that they and they alone are the gatekeepers of morality and good conduct. But eliminate religion? Such a world wouldn’t be full of human beings and, so, it wouldn’t be much fun.
To the contrary: the most religious people are the generally most gullible ones.
As opposed to atheists, 21% of whom believe in God?
Sinbad must have lost an argument to one of the liberals here, and badly. There, there, little man, no need to have such a hissy fit.
McDuff: I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen religion equated with “fun”.
Sure we can have plenty of fun in a religion-free world. In fact I think it would be a lot more fun. It’s only the religious mindset that tends to bring everything down; always seeing only the negative in everything not sanctioned by their religion, screaming “blasphemy” and crying victimisation at every turn if their feelings are hurt, damning us all to hell if we don’t tow their particular church’s dogma, restricting our sex lives because of their own suffocating puritanical mindsets, viewing us as “ungodly”, “infidels” or even sub-human, unworthy of their attention or even worthy only of death (current UK news story) etc. etc.
Oh yes, life could be a great deal more fun without any of that, thank you very much. I might actually be allowed to live my life the way I want to.
@36 by McDuff
I largely agree with this argument. If by “religion” we mean belief in or experiences attributed to the supernatural, then I think the sad fact is that this comes quite naturally to human minds as a function of the inference systems that comprise the same (see Boyer, _Religion Explained_). Even if one could somehow eliminate religion by the flip of a switch, it would arise again spontaneously unless the switch fundamentally changed the way human minds rely on inference, are attracted to counterintuitive concepts, etc.
No we don’t. It might never go away, but minimized to the point that it’s irrelevant and obviously the domain of the nutso? That is already happening.
When given a chance, atheism rapidly begins to eradicate religious thought. How’s religion doing in Sweden, Japan, Germany, France? Dying. Relegated to that place where people can pity, or even point and snicker. It didn’t take long for any of them to get there. We could get there, too, if we didn’t have such pessimistic, defeatist baggage like you hanging around.
Bumper sticker I’ve seen, paraphrased because I can’t remember it fully, and it is often attributed to Ghandi:
“I do not have a problem with your Jesus, but with His followers instead”.
Sums it up.
toni
“Minimize theism to the point that it is irrelevant”.
I guess that would mean that you would minimize the human imagination, the human will, the hard-wired universal necessity for theism to the point of irrelevance. Let me try to see what we would be left with. Perhaps, scientific robots that could not think outside of the natural order. Yes, no epistomology, no metaphysics just meditation on how marvelous it is that those pre-tetrapods who managed to climb out of the swampy waters could have developed into the magnificant creatures we are today.
Evolution is fine. I believe in it but I don’t think we have the last word on the evolution of humankind or the cosmos. There’s no such thing as a missing link; there are thousands of missing links. And when we do have the last word, neither you nor I know what things will look like.
So, in the meantime I will continue to read Dawkins and suggest that you read some of the notable theistic apologists – Plantigna, Phillips, Ward, etc.
. . who would soon be replaced by powerful centralized purveyors as soon as the more determined and power-seeking versions replaced their more naive targets.
ElectricBarbarella, could it have been Ghandi’s quote…
“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.” Ghandi
#44: Let me try to see what we would be left with. Perhaps, scientific robots that could not think outside of the natural order.
Outside the natural order is what? An unnatural order? A magical order?
It sounds to me like you’re trying to defend supernatural woo-woo, and you’re calling anyone who doesn’t believe in your woo-woo a robot.
That’s it! That is the quote. :)
Toni
…the hard-wired universal necessity for theism…
there’s your mistake right there.
Religion is much more than a symptom, a consequence of not thinking rationally. It’s an attack on rationality; religion is a major cause of the lack of free thought.
One of the central aspects of religion is the promotion of faith and divine knowledge. Those are attacks on rationality.
#44: Nothing you say in your first paragraph logically follows from the removal of theism (or any form of woo) from society. Dawkins argues in Unweaving the Rainbow that one can still hold an awestruck wonder of the universe without need of a religious lens to view things through.
Further, you would need to demonstrate that the loss of religion would necessarily decrease the human imagination; I am not an neural-scientist, but I do not think those parts of cognition are linked in the way you think they are. Certainly this is not the case, given that people can be quite imaginative without subscribing to woo.
If anyone’s lacking imagination (not to mention logical coherence) it’s Mr. Verret @ #44. Perhaps he’d like to demonstrate the dismaying lack of imagination demonstrated by Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Carl Sagan.
Mr. Verret, perhaps your mind needs the crutch of a theistic belief system in order to function adequately, but that need is neither hard-wired nor universal.
#44
Yep. Pretty much in the same way Western art died when people stopped believing in the Muses.
#44: I guess that would mean that you would minimize the human imagination
#44: outside of the natural order
#44: there are thousands of missing links
If anyone has no imagination it’s people like Max Verret who would use supernatural magic to solve scientific problems. How easy it is to invoke God. That requires no imagination and no thinking at all.
What requires imagination, thinking, and hard work is solving those problems without Verret’s woo-woo, or what he calls “outside the natural order”.
For the benefit of everyone who thinks it’s “Ghandi”… It’s not. The correct spelling is “Gandhi”.
Now the poll goes 82 – 18. After all, I think religion is much needed by people as bikes by fishes.
Scaurus wrote:
How about a poll on if we need “religious politicians”?
Nazism and Stalinist communism were treated as state religions. A difference without much distinction. Religion is not the only enemy, but also the attitude of orthodoxy.
Another pointless poll.
http://js.polls.yahoo.com/quiz/quiziframe.php?poll_id=38382
“Requires imagination, thinking and hard work to solve {scientific} problems”. Going from A to B requires problem-solving skills; to suspect that there might be a C requires perceptual insights and abstract reasoning, not necessarily imagination per se’. If I can marvel at the “awestruct wonder of the universe” without the prism of religion, how much more of an imaginative wonder it is if I can envisage an overarching divine integrating force in the midst of that wonder. Given the universal presence of a religious institution along with family, economical, political and educational institutions in just about every culture known to mankind, a reasonable and rational person could well conclude that these institutions are indigenous to human society and is probably “hard-wired”. That is what leads beyond the natural order. However, if one is wedded to the exclusivity of the natural order woo in explaining the human experience, all of that is, sadly,lost.
#60: overarching divine integrating force
Your use of fancy words like “overarching divine integrating force” doesn’t make your sky fairy magic any less childish and idiotic.
You’re right, it is an imaginative wonder, since it’s purely a figment of your imagination. Glad to see you’re starting to recognize that.
Oh, and: “overarching…in the midst of…” Work on that.
Re: 62
That’s the beauty of the divine, SC, its over, under and within. God is omnipresent
I can imagine many atheist in Paradise and that’s not even a “figment of my imagination”. In order to forfeit salvation you would have to know God and reject Him, Her or It. If you don’t know God then you’re home free.
Posted by: Dale Husband No. 25
“”The aussies are obviously an enlightened race”
Uh, Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis is one of them!”
Yes, but he had to go to USA to find like-minded people.
I don’t think we could totally do away with religions. People would just re-invent them. What we need to do is find a way to restrict the fundamentally extreme believers to a very small proportion of the population to restrict their political power over everyone else.
Maybe by putting a stop to treating religion as a favoured entity and removing tax benefit status. Then only true believers would donate their money to religion instead of anyone wanting a tax write-off. That should restrict their political power a bit.
Over what, Max? On the top of the world, lookin’ down on creation?
Ah! More sophomoric silly string from Mr. Verret! How can he claim these impulses are “hard-wired”, and reject materialism in the same breath? Fascinating. And he keeps using the word “universal”. It does not mean what he seems to think it means.
What we have here is a man in love with his own “imaginative wonder.” Congratulations, Max, you are very imaginative to have imagined an overarching (and integrating, no less) divine whatchamacallit. Good on you, dude.
What is hard-wired is our tendency – ok, need – to make sense of the world and explain our experience, and our tendency to seize upon the easiest or most appealing explanation, regardless of its plausibility or veracity.
One word: Thor.
McDuff @ 36
I don’t think there’s anything intrinsic about religion at all. I think it exists out of momentum, and ignorance.
Most of the people in the world are Chinese, and most of them do not practice or believe anything that could be described as a religion. They do have some ritualistic behaviors that have been mistranslated as ‘Ancestor Worship’ but that’s because the Chistian kooks didn’t understand the tradition.
The Mongols conquered the entire world without praying to anything.
There’s nothing intrinsic about religion, the evidence doesn’t support such a claim, and all that God Gene stuff is silly.
I liked a lot of what you say in your post, but the last line is baffling, I don’t get it.
Well that’s a load off my mind! I’ll be saved due to a technicality. As in life, so in the afterlife…
Oh, and there’d better be a billiards table!
El Herring @ no.40
And, indeed, if this was the only notable definition of the word “religion” then you would have a point. But since “religion” encompasses so many varying aspects of human existence, and since it shares its bed with so many other forms of human patterns of thought, this is not the case.
Religious groups do, indeed, practice a tribalistic in-group/out-group dualism. And so do many ethnic and nationalist groups, sometimes mixed in with a religious soup but mostly just because they’re the wrong colour or talk funny or are just different in one of the ways that make people fundamentally uneasy around different people. There are so many examples of people behaving in a despicable manner that have nothing to do with religion that you have to question the sanity of saying that “eliminating religion” would make the world a better place. And, to be fair, I am here equating “religion” with “fascism” and “racism”, just in case you thought I was religion’s number one cheerleader in disguise.
The point I am making is not that intolerant and authoritarian bullshit is all sweetness and light for everyone, but that “religion” is part and parcel of the way we, as a species operate. Those of us who don’t assign our tribal identities on religious bases do it via some other arbitrary criteria, and I’m not convinced that any of them are any good. Is it somehow better for someone to irrationally throw their lot in with the group “Americans” because of an accident of birth than to throw it in with the group “Hindus” because of an accident of thought? If not, then you’d better have some pretty firm evidence that tribalistic behaviour is a result of religious thought, otherwise “eliminating religion” won’t make a single dent in behaviour that I’d say is caused, fundamentally, by people being dicks to each other and picking the reasons afterwards.
Perhaps you should stop thinking of “religion” as being simply authoritarian fundamentalism and maybe you’ll begin to understand why it can be fun. If you’ve never been to Valhalla, my friend, you’ve never lived.
Religion is a vehicle that carries tradition and social cohesion from one generation to the next. Wouldn’t it be cool if we had some other vehicle, not based on the supernatural, that did the same thing? I’d hate to get rid of religion (I’m an atheist, but clearly people, including people I love and respect, get comfort from it) and leave nothing. It would be interesting how we would evolve, replacing religion with something else that doesn’t try to control or manipulate using fear. I know this doesn’t describe all religions, but enough of them do.
Scary thing, football (HS, college and NFL) comes pretty close in the Southern US.
Verret @ 60
You should try Mark Twain, it’s just as good, and requires less adjectives.
Oh yeah, a sunset at sea, on LSD is pretty cool, too.
Scooter #67
The Mongols did pretty well in the conquering business, but they didn’t come close to doing the entire world. No Mongol hordes came near Africa, for instance.
#69: There are so many examples of people behaving in a despicable manner that have nothing to do with religion that you have to question the sanity of saying that “eliminating religion” would make the world a better place.
A world without religions would not be a perfect world, but most certainly it would be better. For example, I can’t imagine there being daily suicide bombings without Islam. I can’t imagine any harassment and threats against biology teachers without Christianity.
What’s the worst thing that has happened to America in the 21st century? The 9/11 attacks of course. Without the religious belief in heaven there would never have been terrorists flying planes into buildings on 9/11, and without 9/11 we would never have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan where we are still wasting lives and money 7 years later.
Every effort must be made to completely get rid of all religions, no matter how hopelessly impossible that may seem.
JoJo #72
wow, I did kind of exaggerate that one, huh?
not sure what I was thinking,
duhhhhh
The only guy to conquer the world was Cagney
Re: SC #65
“Looking down on creation”?
What does that mean in a ten, possibly eleven, dimensional universe. It has deceptive meaning only in a three dimensional world. Of course the human brain has not “evolved” to the point where it can imagine a ten demensional world but that is the one in which we live. So, we’re talking about a God that exist in a cosmological environment which can’t even be conceived except mathematically. That God can’t be proved or disproved by science; that has to be accepted within an experience of faith. I do believe that if man survives long enough, the brain will catch up with the science. This is a position that is both reasonable and rational. You may need to bring yourself up to speed. I refer you to some of the more credible apologists; Plantigna, P.Z Phillips, etc.
To the poster who asked about middies:
Standard beer glasses vary between Australian states.
Wiki has a chart of the usual sizes. In NSW, the middy is the smallest commonly used glass at 285ml, or about half a pint.
Clarification:
NSW=New South Wales=the state in which Sydney is located.
McDuff #69:
What’s that supposed to mean? Have you been to Valhalla?
Religion is not “fun”, it is not meant to be fun, its followers do their utmost to have as little fun as they can, and also want to ensure that the rest of us don’t get any either. Your arguments are ridiculous.
I’d have put that the other way round, if they need to be related at all, which I doubt. You seem to be saying that religion is an unavoidable consequence of human behaviour. I disagree. If that were so then we’d all be religious. Human behaviour is what it is, and of course at its worst it can be evil and disgusting, but nothing perverts like religious belief. “For good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”
And please don’t use that condescending “my friend” on me please, I detest that obnoxious cliche. I decide who my friends are.
So God does compactification. You realize that means that God is limited, since the ultimate compactification is to one point.
No one can prove if God does or doesn’t exist, ya gots ta believe. Otherwise known in the psychology biz as “magic thinking.” Belief in God, as with any other superstition, is very near the border of psychosis. I’m giving theists the benefit of the doubt here, psychology
is not my field.
And if you wish really, really hard, Tinkerbelle will live.
Let me see if I have this straight: No one can presently establish the existence of your deity scientifically, but one day our brains will catch up with “the science.” What science?
Don’t refer me anywhere. Explain, in English if possible, what in science is pointing to the existence of a deity, and of your god specifically. What is the science with which our brains will one day catch up? Right now you sound more like Carlos Castaneda than a theoretical physicist or mathematician. Have you taken your shtick to one of the more mathematically-oriented science blogs? What was the response?
I found an interesting article on MSNBC (also carried by other news outlets) called “Supernatural science: Why we want to believe”. Basically it says that people want to believe in some kind of magical being and there’s only room for one “set”. People who go to church often usually don’t go for astrology and people who believe in astrology are less likely to be a regular attender of organized religion. Unfortunately the article falters by giving religion special consideration.
For example: “Why are people so eager to accept flimsy and fabricated evidence in support of unlikely and even outlandish creatures and ideas? Why is the paranormal realm, from psychic predictions to UFO sightings, so alluring to so many?”
Last time I checked, religion is also supported by flimsy and fabricated evidence. So why single out people who’ve seen UFOs? Here’s another quote.
“Believers were the least likely to buy into the paranormal.”
Doesn’t believing in religion AUTOMATICALLY mean you’re buying into the paranormal?
Actually I think the article is heavy handed and not well written. They imply that belief in a god and belief in a ghost are completely separate but never say it. They are also quick to dismiss those who don’t buy into an organized belief in the paranormal as kooks. People who don’t believe in any paranormal, like Atheists, aren’t even mentioned. The gist of the article seems to be, “people want to believe in the paranormal and if they don’t join a system of paranormal belief, they’ll pick one up as they go along”.
If I can marvel at the “awestruct wonder of the universe” without the prism of religion, how much more of an imaginative wonder it is if I can envisage an overarching divine integrating force in the midst of that wonder.
That’s like saying that a meal cooked by the world’s greatest chefs would be even more tasty if you dropped a steaming turd on top.
Basically it says that people want to believe in some kind of magical being and there’s only room for one “set”. People who go to church often usually don’t go for astrology and people who believe in astrology are less likely to be a regular attender of organized religion.
Even if these claims about what is usual or less likely weren’t so blatantly false, the fact that there is an overlap would put the lie to the absurd claim that there’s only room for one set. The article itself states the truth: “studies point to an interesting conclusion: People who practice religion are typically encouraged not to believe in the paranormal, but rather to put their faith in one deity, whereas those who aren’t particularly active in religion are more free to believe in Bigfoot or consult a psychic.” — that is, the church discourages people from believing in other dogmas; they wouldn’t have to if there were only room for one.
Last time I checked, religion is also supported by flimsy and fabricated evidence. So why single out people who’ve seen UFOs?
Ahem. “Christians and New Agers, paranormalists, etc. all have one thing in common: a spiritual orientation to the world,” and “Since people have been people, experts figure, they have believed in the supernatural, from gods to ghosts and now every sort of monster in between.”
Read the article, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26268698/, rather than going by Alverant’s gross misrepresentation of it.
People who don’t believe in any paranormal, like Atheists, aren’t even mentioned.
Your brain appears to be broken: “A third group, which he calls naturalists, do not hold supernatural views, Christian or paranormal.”
This is actually quite a good article that bears little resemblance to Alverant’s characterization.
SC@80
OK, I see what your problem is and part of it may have been my fault. You say,”Presently, no one can establish the existence of a diety scientifically”. Take out the word “presently” and the sentence is absolutely correct. No one can or will prove or disprove the existence of a diety scientifically BECAUSE science deals only with the natural world. Does that mean there is an “unnatural” world? No, but there is an antecedent compliment to the natural world and, in fact, without that compliment there would be no natural world. Within that compliment principles and propositions can be formulated logically into theses that would lead a reasonable and rational person to conclude that a diety can and does exist.
Now the part about the “brain catching up with the science”. This has nothing to do with the existence of a diety.It simple says that science (mathematics) has given us a definition of the universe we live in when the brain has not evolved enough to conceptualize that formulation. Several decades ago, the best we had from physics was that the universe looked to be eternal. Now the prevailing thinking is that it is 15 to 16 billion years old but there are rumblings that the eternal proposition may have been the right one. So, it seems to me that we should not be too quick to affirm the science. Obviously, science got it wrong at some point – there is too big of a difference between 15 billion and eternity. The point was that at some time eons in the future when we more fully understand the “science” we may find that the science of the natural order and the antecedent compliment may very well fit together. I see this as reasonable and rational and it works for me not because I need an easy explanation for the world I live in but because the world I live in gives me this explanation. If it doesn’t work for you – that’s fine.
Max Verret:
“No, but there is an antecedent compliment to the natural world and, in fact, without that compliment there would be no natural world. Within that compliment principles and propositions can be formulated logically into theses that would lead a reasonable and rational person to conclude that a diety can and does exist.”
So if I understand correctly, you’re saying that the natural world is contingent on something that is not the natural world, and if we assume that this not-natural world exists, then we can form logical propositions that will sylogistically lead to the conclusion that a deity exists. I call bullshit. Prove me wrong.
“Several decades ago, the best we had from physics was that the universe looked to be eternal. Now the prevailing thinking is that it is 15 to 16 billion years old but there are rumblings that the eternal proposition may have been the right one.”
If by “several” you mean “nine,” then fine. The prevailing thinking is that it’s more like 14.3 billion. If there are any “rumblings” that the universe might be eternal, then it’s probably not coming from a university physics department.
Also, the “fact” that the universe has ten or eleven dimensions is not even testable yet. You might not want to go around throwing it out as a fact.
Dan @86
“We can form logical propositions that will sylogistically lead to the conclusion that a diety exist. I call bullshit. Prove me wrong”
The proof that you are wrong lies in the FACT that while you quote a philosophical statement, you expect to be convinced by evidence from natural science. you apparently have not kept up with your philosophy. If you were up on your ontology, epistomology and metaphysics, it would not sound like bullshit.
“that the universe might be eternal, its propbly not coming from a university physics department”
You’re right, its coming from the University of Notre Dame but not from the physics department. When Faith and Reason Clash – Alvin Plantinga -University of Notre Dame; Christian Scholar’s Review XXI:1 (September 1991) 8-33
“A few years back the dominant view from astronomy and cosmology was that the universe was infinitely old; at present the prevailing opinion is that it is 16 billion years old; but now there are straws in the wind suggesting a step back towards the idea that there was no beginning”.
science got it wrong at some point
Yeah, how shocking that, before we had it right, we had it wrong. What a brilliant mind, that Min Ferret.
Now the prevailing thinking is that it is 15 to 16 billion years old but there are rumblings that the eternal proposition may have been the right one….You’re right, its coming from the University of Notre Dame but not from the physics department. When Faith and Reason Clash – Alvin Plantinga -University of Notre Dame; Christian Scholar’s Review XXI:1 (September 1991) 8-33
Pfft. Plantinga is a clever Christian ass — aka apologist — but his intellectually dishonest “rumblings” are irrelevant.
“A few years back the dominant view from astronomy and cosmology was that the universe was infinitely old; at present the prevailing opinion is that it is 16 billion years old; but now there are straws in the wind suggesting a step back towards the idea that there was no beginning”.
There are no straws in the wind by anyone knowledgeable that the time to the Big Bang is inaccurate. That isn’t inconsistent with the possibility that the Big Bang was not the “beginning”. But none of this puts your idiot’s notion of a God into the picture.
the best we had from physics was that the universe looked to be eternal
The best we had — because the contrary evidence had not been developed — was the notion that the universe was uniform and that dying stars were perpetually replaced by new ones being born — this was the steady state model. We now know that model to be wrong, and there’s no going back to it — science is a forward moving process due to the accumulation of evidence over time. The claim of a “step back” is grossly ignorant and dishonest — the usual Christian creationist traits.
No, but there is an antecedent compliment to the natural world and, in fact, without that compliment there would be no natural world. Within that compliment principles and propositions can be formulated logically into theses that would lead a reasonable and rational person to conclude that a diety can and does exist.
This wouldn’t be quite as absurd if “complement” were spelled correctly, but it would still be absurd.
The proof that you are wrong lies in the FACT that while you quote a philosophical statement, you expect to be convinced by evidence from natural science. you apparently have not kept up with your philosophy. If you were up on your ontology, epistomology and metaphysics, it would not sound like bullshit.
Proof: ur doin it wrong.
Now, again: PROVE that “We can form logical propositions that will sylogistically lead to the conclusion that a diety exist” isn’t bullshit … asshole.
JoJo @#72:
Well, they came near Africa (Syria is near Africa). But that was pretty much the southwestern limit of their expansion .
It is not correct that the Mongols did not pray. There were Christians and Muslims among them, and even their shamanic beliefs, at least as I recall them being described, did include petitionary prayers.
“We can form logical propositions that will sylogistically lead to the conclusion that a diety exist”?
Easy-peasy!
P1. If chocolate contains no calories, then a diety exist.
P2. Chocolate contains no calories.
C. Therefore, a diety exist.
Just because a syllogism is well-formed, that doesn’t mean that its conclusion is true. Most logical arguments for EOG contain similar flaws – the logic may be sound, but the premises highly questionable.
(PS: diety, chocolate, geddit??)
El Herring @78
Again, if “religion” is simply another word for “authoritarian fundamentalism” then you’re absolutely correct. But it’s not, so you’re wrong. There isn’t a nicer, or simpler, way of saying that.
“Religion” is such a scattershot phenomenon to define. It covers the internal processes people describe as “spiritual” which could be anything from euphoric bliss to bad LSD trips to beserker red-hazed rages. It covers some worldviews and belief systems but not others – Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Wicca, California Pot Pourri Spirituality, Classical Greek Mythology, Aboriginal songlines, the euphoric pagan dances of tribal witchdoctors. But, bizarrely even though things seem to hit all the same buttons, we separate “Religion” and “Nationalism” and don’t seem to draw a psychological line of reason between a “cult of celebrity” and a plain old common or garden cult. Put a suit on a witchdoctor and call his totem “Democracy” or “Socialism” of “Freedom” or “Free Market Economics” and you’ve got the makings of modern witchcraft, where a totemised/fetishised concept becomes a driving force far beyond rationality would allow and which can have deadly consequences for those caught up in the idealist zealot’s quest for righteousness, but is it “religion”? The lines are too damn fuzzy.
One thing is for certain, though, you can’t say “religion doesn’t want you to have fun” when vast swathes of religious practice the world over tend to get their practitioners to imbibe hallucinogenic drugs and dance around to repetitive music, which unless I’m very much mistaken is something the kids these days are all into. Also, the fact that you, personally, don’t think it’s fun to get into a room with a bunch of other weirdos and whip yourself up into a hysterical state to try and achieve oneness with the infinite doesn’t mean you’re describing the universal human condition. Looking around, it seems that a lot of people *do* think it’s fun, just like some people think skiing or American Idol is fun. Don’t get it myself but that doesn’t mean I can say “oh no, you can’t possibly be enjoying yourself, you must be doing it just to make other people feel bad.” That would just make me a jerk.
No, I’m saying that tribalism and delusion are unavoidable consequences of human thought processes. Those kinds which are called “religion” are no better nor worse, nor even so fundamentally different, than those kinds which are called nationalisms or fascisms or bigotries or idealisms. Most people’s religious beliefs are fairly neutral, just as most people’s beliefs in freedom and democracy don’t lead them, personally, to send armies marching into Baghdad. The idea that there are “good people” who can be told to do bad things only by religion is nonsensical, and shows a blatant disregard for the realities of both people, who are rarely good, and history. Mostly what makes people do “bad things” is the normalisation of the macabre and the capacity to draw lines between “us” and “them”, not to mention the sheer inertia of social determinism. Good people do bad things because sometimes bad things are going to happen and the only people around to do them are those allegedly good people. Sometimes religion is involved, most of the time it’s something much more mundane, perhaps stemming from the same prejudices and processes as religion but fitting into another box.
Put simply, the question “would the world be better off without religion?” is a bit like asking “would the world be better if everyone had four legs?” The answer might be yes, might be no, but overall for the condition to be met such a fundamental change to the state of being human would have to occur that it’s simply fantasy to imagine it could ever actually happen.
Aaaarrrrhhh Max
And the only explanation I can find
Is the love that I’ve found ever since you’ve been around ….
And the Carpenter wasn’t the imaginary Joseph
Good morning! So nice to awaken and find Verret carved up by others. But I’ll add to what they have said, anyway.
Let me rephrase what you’ve said, Max, making the necessary corrections:
Prove this imaginary world (“antecedent compliment to the natural world”) exists, Verret. Then we can talk about how to apply logical thought to it.
Funny, I was under the impression that was the subject under discussion.
First, this is absurd. Any such ideas come from the brains of mathematicians, so their brains are quite evidently equipped to conceptualize them. Second, your use of “has given us a definition” is dishonest. As has been pointed out to you, none of these (competing) ideas has been tested empirically, as theoretical physicists themselves are of course well aware and make note of in their public presentations.
Science is an ongoing process of discovery, and will continue to find out new things about life and the cosmos. Some may surprise us, but irrespective of the specific results of experiments in physics, the (provisional) knowledge gained will be about the natural world. It’s an illegitimate ploy to try to claim this work before it’s even been done for your supernatural fantasies (and dishonest in the extreme to imply that work has already been done that supports your delusions). And do you really believe that as people acquire more knowledge about, say, dark matter or the history of the cosmos, they are finding more evidence for your deity? What about evolution? As biological knowledge progresses, are scientists finding your god in the process? Quite the opposite, in fact. Clinging to arguments of the type “1) Superstrings? 2) Therefore, God” is a losing proposition for you.
Because the world you live in is the world of your fevered imagination. The real world gives you no such thing. Learning about the natural world could give you so much, if you weren’t too blinded by superstition to see it.
#73: “What’s the worst thing that has happened to America in the 21st century? The 9/11 attacks of course.”
No, not the 9/11 attacks. George Bush.
No; you have this completely backwards. It is from studying history and psychology that we do indeed see that people can be induced, by their religious beliefs, to perform horrendous acts of violence (sometimes passive violence, as in the case of children whose parents neglected curable health problems until the children died) that they would otherwise have no other reason to perform.
What?
This makes no sense whatsoever.
I disagree both with the analogy, and your characterization of it as “fantasy”.
Given that religion is a form of mental indoctrination, or brainwashing, it is in no way analogous to a physical change such as you describe. And given that it is a form of mental programming, there exists the possibility that there could be an effective psychological counterprogramming in skeptical and rational critical thinking. This might not eliminate religion entirely, but raises the distinct possibility that religion and superstition would not be given more weight than reality-based thinking, which would hopefully be sufficient to eliminate the potential dangers of religious fanaticism.
Anyway, my point is that it is certainly within the realm of the logically feasible, if not necessarily the practical.
SC@97
You missed my last sentence at #85, “If it doesn’t work for you – that’s fine”. Apparently, it doesn’t work for you.
Well if you can’t decide, just take a moment to ponder a line from “Dear God”. It says “did you make mankind after we made you”? That should fuck up your mind for a long time; time enough to not concern yourself with it anymore.
Verret @87:
I’m fine with philosophy. That’s why I told you that I was willing to assume the existence of your “antecedent compliment to the natural world” if you could show me how such an assumption logically leads to the conclusion of the existence of a deity. Of course, now that I think about it, I would rather hear why this “antecedent compliment to the natural world” is a necessary condition for the existence of the natural world and what properties are necessary and sufficient for this “antecedent compliment to the natural world” in the first place. In fact, if you could just back up every naked assertion you’ve made in this thread, I think it might really help your position.
Your attempts to dodge my request for this has put me even more squarely in the “bullshit” camp than I was before.
BobC, #73: A world without religions would not be a perfect world, but most certainly it would be better.
I love the hubris of one so sure that if everyone would simply think like he does, the world would be a much better place. The evidence in support of the dramatic overestimation of our ability to be rational and to recognize rationality is legion {e.g., Cherniak’s Minimal Rationality (MIT 1986)}. Folks like our Bobbly Boy, however, tend to grant the general (after all, that’s why religion is so common — duh) but deny that it applies to them (enlightened, reason-loving atheists that they are). But that myth of rationality is also shattered by the evidence, both more specific and general. For the more specific, begin with the examples from economic research that the atheist-left is so quick to deny and/or ignore {you might, for example, take a look at Shermer’s recent The Mind of The Market (Times, 2007) if you doubt the economic consensus I noted above}. For the more general, consider the track records of officially atheist governments worldwide with other types of governments and ask yourself why the atheist ones are at least as bad as anything religion has produced and why they are so often a lot worse.
Owlmirror @99
And this makes complete sense if people only commit irrational acts of violence or make stupid decisions when induced by a religious authority. Since atheists join armies and anarchists are often irreligious, this is obviously bollocks.
It also makes sense if one believes that humans are, at root, completely rational actors with a complete understanding of the world, and require external stimuli to corrupt this state of perfect rational grace. Since this is also self-evidently bollocks, you’re still wrong.
…is what happens when people get used to living around things that you or I would find horrifying. Normalisation is a survival mechanism (just like tribalism and whatnot), and it’s amazing what people can get used to. I have friends who live in much more dangerous parts of the world than me, but who prefer living under a petty dictator who might shoot you to living under a petty bureaucracy that makes you fill out forms for everything. There are people who will keep living in terrifying places because of “pride” or “dignity” or some other bullshit like that. Human beings are funny old things.
Then you probably need to get out more, somewhere with a civil war. Ask a Russian. Hell, ask a Zimbabwean. Of course, if you believe there’s such a thing as “good people” and “bad people” then you really need to get out more.
Indeed, but that “given that” is incorrect, so everything that follows is still wrong. While our brains have the capacity to be rigourous tools of logic and reason if we really try hard and really train them up, in their natural state the grey goop doesn’t tend towards that, but rather towards the basic processes which keep social upright apes kinda working together and mostly not killing each other. We don’t use logic and rationality as a norm, we use gut instincts, “common sense”, prejudices and irrational assumptions. Nobody brainwashes us to have religious tendencies – if anything, we’re brainwashed into being rational beings because that’s increasingly more necessary in the modern world. I’m in favour of that kind of brainwashing, but I’m not so wilfully dense as to believe it’s the state of nature because it very clearly isn’t. Perhaps in a few centuries the tendencies of people to believe the first thing that popped into their head and mistake their elaborate post hoc justification for it for a priori reasoning will be evolved out, but I doubt it.
There is a difference between: “the way I desire things should be” and “the way things are”. You can no more get people to be inherently and instinctually rational by asserting it than you can get God to exist by the same mechanism.
Might want to take a look in the mirror, there…
Are you agreeing, then, that your religion is indeed irrational? After all, does it not result from your own overestimation of your ability to be rational?
Just curious.
Because the atheist governments were based on an intellectual model of harsh, incurious, and unyielding dogmatism — similar to the that of religion, when examined carefully — rather than on humanistic skepticism and analysis?
I’ll take a look at your references at some point; they look interesting.
It’s also interesting how someone like yourself, who is reading up on flawed human reasoning and epistemology, nevertheless does not pause and ask “Say, I wonder if I’m making these sorts of biased mistakes?” Or do you think yourself exempt somehow?
But that myth of rationality is also shattered by the evidence, both more specific and general. For the more specific, begin with the examples from economic research that the atheist-left is so quick to deny and/or ignore – Sinbad
What on Earth do you think you’re talking about? It is neoclassical economics that insists, against the evidence, that people are wholly rational. As an atheist and socialist, I think no such thing. It is the particular kind of irrationality that religion (and nationalism, and authoritarian political ideologies) induce that cause the worst damage: that of unconditional obedience to some external authority.
Might want to take a look in the mirror, there…
I regularly do and change my mind far more frequently than you likely suspect.
Are you agreeing, then, that your religion is indeed irrational? After all, does it not result from your own overestimation of your ability to be rational?
No. But I readily concede that I am likely irrational about any number of things (despite my best efforts) and that I may well be wrong about God.
Because the atheist governments were based on an intellectual model of harsh, incurious, and unyielding dogmatism — similar to the that of religion, when examined carefully — rather than on humanistic skepticism and analysis?
That’s one possible explanation, though I tend to doubt it. But even if true, it demonstrates that the conceit of some atheist utopia is silly at best and horrifyingly dangerous at worst.
It’s also interesting how someone like yourself, who is reading up on flawed human reasoning and epistemology, nevertheless does not pause and ask “Say, I wonder if I’m making these sorts of biased mistakes?” Or do you think yourself exempt somehow?
Of course I’m not exempt and I ask that question all the time. I am sure that I’m often wrong (if rarely in doubt). What I try to avoid is the holding of my perception of truth too tightly while trying to analyze my own views aggressively and consistently. Evaluating inconclusive evidence is difficult under the best of circumstances. Our inherent weaknesses make it even harder.
Sinbad #103:
Where did you get the idea that atheism has anything to do with politics? I don’t think the millions of atheist Republicans in America would appreciate you calling them the atheist-left.
About your complaint that I said the world would be better off without religious woo-woo, please explain to me why anyone who didn’t believe in heaven would fly an airplane into a building. Then explain to me why somebody who didn’t believe in magical creation would harass and threaten a biology teacher for teaching evolution.
Also, please explain to me why you believe in a supernatural magic man. Is it because you’re stupid? Is it because you’re insane? Is it because you’re an asshole? All of the above?
In the USA we have a secular government. Nobody calls it atheistic or theistic because religion has nothing to do with it. That’s the way it should be.
In a world without religions there would be no theocracies. There has never ever been any theocracy that wasn’t a piece-of-shit country. That’s another reason the world would be better off without religious insanity.
What on Earth do you think you’re talking about? It is neoclassical economics that insists, against the evidence, that people are wholly rational.
The economists just had the wrong species…
It is neoclassical economics that insists, against the evidence, that people are wholly rational. As an atheist and socialist, I think no such thing.
Socialists fail to see the obvious — that people act in what they perceive to be in their own self-interest. That perception is often flawed, however. Thirty years ago university economics departments were full of Keynsians and socialists. That their ranks have been so dramatically reduced by advocates of market capitalism is quite simply a triumph of reality-based thinking.
Where did you get the idea that atheism has anything to do with politics?
Where did you get the idea that I was claiming any such thing?
I don’t think the millions of atheist Republicans in America would appreciate you calling them the atheist-left.
I wasn’t addressing them (and I think your numbers are overstated).
About your complaint that I said the world would be better off without religious woo-woo, please explain to me why anyone who didn’t believe in heaven would fly an airplane into a building.
So you haven’t heard of the Tamil Tigers then?
Then explain to me why somebody who didn’t believe in magical creation would harass and threaten a biology teacher for teaching evolution.
The targets may be different, but I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that atheists are any less likely to engage in repression than religionists. Indeed, if anything, the evidence points in the opposite direction.
Also, please explain to me why you believe in a supernatural magic man. Is it because you’re stupid? Is it because you’re insane? Is it because you’re an asshole? All of the above?
How long have you been beating your wife?
Max Verret @ #100:
I didn’t miss it, Max. I ignored it, because it was ridiculous. Did you expect to come to an atheist blog making the claims you have since yesterday, then close on a series of unsubstantiated assertions, and not get an argument? What I was saying was that it doesn’t “work” for you, either. You’ve misrepresented science since you started posting on this thread @ #44: “Yes, no epistomology, no metaphysics just meditation on how marvelous it is that those pre-tetrapods who managed to climb out of the swampy waters could have developed into the magnificant creatures we are today.” Science isn’t meditation or abstract logic, but engagement with the world. Philosophy and logic unconnected to empirical reality – beautiful, beautiful empirical reality* – may be interesting mental exercises, but will never prove anything or lead to real knowledge of anything.
*And you need to knock off the stupid references to “scientific robots” and atheism minimizing “the human imagination.” Many of us here write poetry, have studied art, music, theater, dance… I’m about as far from a heartless robot as you can get. And as for science itself, I’ll leave you with a brief passage from Carl Sagan’s wife Ann Druyan’s introduction to his The Varieties of Scientific Experience (page x): “The more Carl learned about nature, about the vastness of the universe and the awesome timescales of cosmic evolution, the more he was uplifted.” Let go of your little tin god and open your eyes to the universe, Max.
Let me first state that I have no problems with imaginary entities, I have extended my own implementation of the gamma-function to the complex plane just a couple of days ago, but I’m quite sure they have no place in a modern society—the time of religions is over. Religion might have had an advantage over other species of apes once and it is unknown if the human race would have come into existance at all without some kind of rudimentary religion at the start of our branch but the very same feature stands in the way now to further survival.
It was William of Ockham who set the upper limit Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem and without any reason for a god to explain anything we can state: Ens metaphysicum non est necesse. There is no reason to divide the world into τα ανω και τα κατω and it starts to get harmful if we continue with it.
Corollary (for all the panspermians out there):Ens extramundanum non est necesse.
BTW: who invented the term panspermian? With the help of my admittedly very poor knowledge of ancient greek (I tend to mix up the ionic and the hellenic dialects sometimes—it’s all greek to me) and the most probably wrong connection with παν θεος I always come to the conclusion:
Yuck, where are my rubber gloves?
CZ
Strawman. And bollocks yourself.
Also a strawman, again. And also bollocks yourself, again.
Read for comprehension, will you?
OK… Yet even granting that that is what ‘mostly what makes people do “bad things”‘, I think you have still not shown how it leads to religious violence. Those who were responsible for 9/11 and 7/7 lived comfortable lives in the USA and the UK, for the most part. What was the “macabre” that they “normalised” to? What was “macabre” about the lives of those who let their children die for religious reasons?
You made a general statement, not qualifying it as something only applicable during civil wars. Are you even capable of writing clearly?
Vetinari expressed universal cynicism and misanthropy much more eloquently than that.
Once again, you fail at reading comprehension. And everything you wrote after that is yet another strawman argument.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4341
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/ethics/toc.html
Oh, and bite me.
Feel free to expand on your doubts.
No, it demonstrates that the conceit that totalitarian hierarchies can ever lead to stable societies is both silly and horrifyingly dangerous.
A reality-based optimized/optimizing social order will, however, necessarily be secular. Not atheistic through any sort of coercion, but atheistic because theism is utterly irrelevant to good government.
True, and some of the things that cause flaws in perception are propaganda, indoctrination, and personal delusions — including, of course, those that arise from religions.
You might pause a moment in your triumphant self-congratulation to consider whether market capitalism is necessarily more reality-based than that which you reject. Given that it is, after all, implemented by people with flawed perceptions of their own self-interests…
I have heard of the Tamil Tigers, and of the Japanese kamikaze, and I am aware of the social theory that suicide bombing can simply be a military tactic, one more especially used in highly asymmetrical conflicts.
Nevertheless, I think it can be shown that belief in a reward of an actual, personal post-life existence in some pleasant but physically indeterminate location can and does lead to more and greater violence from those that hold that belief than in those who do not.
You’ve recommended several works. In return, I suggest reading Fighting Words, by Hector Avalos.
Hm:
Would the world be better off without religion?
Most definitely yes. Here’s one of the most important reasons why all religious insanity must be eradicated from our planet:
In many high schools across the country the subject of evolution is barely mentioned because teachers are endlessly intimidated by local fundamentalist parents and not supported by their politically nervous administrations who lack the will to face the constant political battles raised by the well financed religious extremists.
The evolution enigma
Stephen Weinberg put it like this:
If no-one believed in a god then they couldn’t put it ahead of humanity, could they? Of course, all of the examples of so-called atheists (Stalin, for example) involve dictator-types who considered themselves, for all intents and purposes, to be gods. Not quite the same thing as not believing in a god.
With that in mind I believe the world would be a far better place if there were no gods – as long as there were no gods amongst humans, either.
True, and some of the things that cause flaws in perception are propaganda, indoctrination, and personal delusions — including, of course, those that arise from religions.
Agreed. We are all too often astonishingly irrational and no area of thought is exempt. But that is not to establish that religious beliefs are necessarily delusional.
You might pause a moment in your triumphant self-congratulation to consider whether market capitalism is necessarily more reality-based than that which you reject. Given that it is, after all, implemented by people with flawed perceptions of their own self-interests…
I’m not a post-modernist. Truth can be known. We simply need always to bear in mind that we’re wrong much more often than we think and thus hold to what we perceive as truth lightly. That said, the research data is pretty conclusive. I’m open to being shown differently, but those who reject market capitalism need to provide a lot more than the dogma they tend to rely on. Reality-based economics favors market capitalism by a lot. Unfortunately, Obama’s plan to raise the top effective tax rate by 12-14 percentage points will likely be as successful as Jimmy Carter’s economic policies.
I have heard of the Tamil Tigers, and of the Japanese kamikaze, and I am aware of the social theory that suicide bombing can simply be a military tactic, one more especially used in highly asymmetrical conflicts.
Robert Pape (Dying to Win) made an exhaustive study of terror attacks and discovered (surprisingly) that religion played a much smaller role than expected. Indeed, the Tamil Tigers essentially invented suicide bombing and they are a secular (largely Communist) group.
Nevertheless, I think it can be shown that belief in a reward of an actual, personal post-life existence in some pleasant but physically indeterminate location can and does lead to more and greater violence from those that hold that belief than in those who do not.
That makes intuitive sense and I don’t doubt it applies in certain instances (in the same way that it makes intuitive sense that officially atheist regimes are more repressive because they don’t think they will have to answer for their actions). But, per Pape, I think it happens much less than we think. The military long ago realized that “fighting for a cause” works much less well as a long-term motivator than “fighting for one’s buddies” and has been structured accordingly. Moreover, I have a friend that does anti-terrorist consulting work for the military (he’s a CalTech Physics PhD, a Christian, and a very high level “Mr. Fix-It”). He says that most suicide bombs are triggered by others because, otherwise, way too many would-be bombers would back out. That’s only anecdotal, obviously, but he’s in a position to know and I have no reason to doubt him.
Socialists fail to see the obvious — that people act in what they perceive to be in their own self-interest. – Sinbad
Sinbad, since you don’t know what you’re talking about when you pontificate about what socialists believe, I suggest you stop making a fool of yourself. Of course, much of the time, people act in what they perceive to be in their own self-interest. Sometimes, they act to benefit others exclusively, more often they act in ways they think will benefit themselves and others. However, the point of democratic socialism is to devise institutions that make it more likely that peoples’ interests will more often be compatible with each other.
I’m open to being shown differently, but those who reject market capitalism need to provide a lot more than the dogma they tend to rely on. Reality-based economics favors market capitalism by a lot.
Capitalism is certainly good at producing lots of goods and services, much less so at distributing them with a reasonable degree of equity, or protecting the environment (if capitalism is left unchecked, catastrophic climate change is a near certainty, to mention only the most obvious example). Even in regard to its strongest point, it’s not actually looking too clever at the moment – or hadn’t you noticed the financial crisis, home repossessions, and gyrating commodity prices? As for “reality-based economics” – pfui! The neoclassical orthodoxy of recent times is largely based on provably wrong assumptions about how people make decisions – take a look at recent work by experimental economists, who – shock horror – actually do empirical research to find out how people behave. It also makes absurd cornucopian assumptions about natural resources, and has practically nothing to say about non-equilibrium conditions. Its primary function is to justify the ways of Mammon to man.
As for “reality-based economics” – pfui! The neoclassical orthodoxy of recent times is largely based on provably wrong assumptions about how people make decisions – take a look at recent work by experimental economists, who – shock horror – actually do empirical research to find out how people behave.
This subject (behavioral — evolutionary — economics) is precisely the subject of Michael Shermer’s recent book, one which is clear in its support of market capitalism, based upon the evidence. Socialists are simply bitter because they are now essentially irrelevant, their great dreams and promises having been found empty and wanting, overtaken by reality.
Sinbad,
Of course Shermer’s book supports capitalism – he’s a “free-market” ideologue. That doesn’t mean the actual research does. Look at work by Bowles, Gintis, Fehr, Thayer, Simon, Henrich, Camerer… by no means all socialists, though some are, but all showing what nonsense much of the orthodox economics you were lauding as “reality-based” is. And do stop making stupid comments about what socialists are, or think. It just makes you look stupid.
Thayer->Thaler@123
Nick — So your explanation as to why university economics departments, once so similar in ideology to the faculties at large, are now overrun with market proponents is what, right-wing conspiracy to hide the real evidence, hidden in Roswell perhaps?
Sinbad@125,
No. From the 1940s up to the 1970s, the economics departments at macroeconomic level were primarily Keynesian. Keynesian economics did not foresee the macroeconomic phenomenon of stagflation in the 1970s, and was largely succeeded by monetarism (which is no better, and probably worse founded, and which the current crisis may well discredit in turn).
Microeconomics, so far as I am aware, was even during that period dominated by the neoclassical orthodoxy, which goes back to Marshall, Walras etc. in the late 19th century. It is this which depends on the picture of the individual as a rational, self-interested “atom”, in terms of which all economic phenomena are ultimately to be explained. The evidence against this is not hidden, but simply ignored (neoclassical microeconomics concentrates almost entirely on mathematical analysis of analytically tractable systems, remote from the real world). There is no overarching conspiracy to uphold it, although the majority of economics journals (not all) are highly reluctant to publish anything disputing its axioms. It is, however, extremely useful to big business that the myths of neoclassical microeconomics should continue to hold sway – since if everyone is rational and selfish, and the net result of this is an “efficient market”, there can be no grounds for criticising the gross inequalities of capitalism; and university economic departments generally have close connections with big business, get funding from them, place their graduates and postgraduates with them, etc. There are nonetheless several opposing schools of economic thought – Austrian, Marxist, ecological, Keynesian and institutionalist to name but five. Your own position seems somewhat confused: the dominant neoclassical school simply ignores the evidence from experimental economics which you were citing a couple of comments ago. If you want to understand this, it’s better to read work by those actually carrying out the research, rather than an ideologue like Shermer. Try the Handbook of Experimental Economics edited by Hagel and Roth, Choices, Values and Frames by Kahneman and Tversky, Economic and Evolution by Geoffrey M. Hodgson, anything by Elinor Ostrom, or Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies, edited by
by Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr and Herbert Gintis.
Once you (a) grasp the distinction between micro- and macro-economics, and (b) have read some of the above, you’ll be able to argue from a position of slightly less ignorance.
Sinbad,
It might be worth your noting that all the bold, risk-taking entrepreneurs of the banking and property sectors, who inveighed against regulation and “socialism” during the boom years, have been the first to run bawling to nanny state for handouts in the current crisis. This makes quite clear that the people with the real money don’t believe in this “free-market” guff any more than I do – it’s just prolefeed.
Once you (a) grasp the distinction between micro- and macro-economics….
Liking pricing, an area that the Soviets and their socialist economy handled so well? The people expected cheap bread so it was mandated. Of course, it was cheaper than feed so farmers, with earlier supply chain access than retailers, bought bread and used it as feed. Many other examples are in Soviet Socialism from Stalin to Gorbachev (Berliner).
It might be worth your noting that all the bold, risk-taking entrepreneurs of the banking and property sectors, who inveighed against regulation and “socialism” during the boom years, have been the first to run bawling to nanny state for handouts in the current crisis.
Of course they have, because getting bailed out is in their interest. Sadly, bail-outs happen, encouraging even greater and more foolish risks downstream.
Owlmirror @114
I think I see what you’re saying here. It’s one of either two things. Either;
a) it is somehow fundamentally worse to be shot by someone because they are Christian and you are Muslim than to be shot by someone because they are American and you are Iraqi, and that religious violence is therefore by definition worse than other kinds of violence; or
b) religious belief is a greater driver for violence than other irrationalities, such as nations, idealisms, monarchies, power plays among the ruling elite, political viewpoints, races, ethnicities, languages or someone looking at you funny, such that “religious violence” somehow exists on top of and in addition to all those various non-religious violent acts, such as someone beating you up for your lunch money.
Here we’re at an impasse. I cannot demonstrate that the vacuum created by the removal of one irrationality will be filled by another one, even though that seems to be the most rational assumption to make. I could point out that, your assertions to the contrary aside, there is very little difference between the mechanics of non-religious and religious violence, and as with so much else specific patterns of violence are more strongly connected to the individual social and geographical circumstances of where the violence takes place. I could point out that even without religion, the world’s most violent demographic – disaffected young men – would still exist and still be wandering around looking for something to hit. I could point out that the world’s powerful elite would still seek mechanisms for controlling populations and telling people that they had to fight wars, and that religion has not had the exclusive share, nor even the majority share, of this control in the past that you seem to be inclined to grant it. I could point out that irrationality is a low-energy mindset wheras rational thought takes an awful lot of brain-power and will-power, so expecting people to commit to a high-energy substitute for a low-energy phenomena is rather optimistic.
I would love to know, though, why you think those who are currently committing acts of violence because of religion would not simply switch rationales and continue to commit acts of violence because of nations or political allegiances, or why charlatans and hucksters would not bilk people out of their money if they had to rely on entreaties without the word “god” in them. It seems such a counterintuitive position to take, for me, and furthermore one that seeks to place religion somehow outside the default human position, external to it and imposed from above somewhere, which is rather an odd when you think about it. It seems so much more likely to me that the reason we have so many religions is because “religion” is something we do, and whether we do it over gods or trees or ancestors or nations or self-help books or charismatic individuals is stunningly irrelevant.
It comes down to certain base assumptions on your part which I don’t share, but which I don’t feel are either justified or justifiable. If humans are not at root rational beings, then removing one type of irrationality as you suggest will not change tendency to behave irrationally. If religion is not external to humans but rather an intrinsic “type” of belief, you are just as likely to see the same kind of behaviour emerge around different totems. Nonetheless, you need to have those two assumptions in place or else there is no way to properly get to “getting rid of religion will make human society a markedly better place to live”. Since I dispute those assumptions – indeed, think they are bollocks – it’s very easy to dispute the statement “we would be better off without religion”.
But perhaps there needs to be a better declaration of what “getting rid of religion” would look like. Would it be an eradication of priesthoods and churches? Would the UU church fall under that? Would it be a subtle changing of the human mindset so as to make them immune from compelling fictions, and if so how far would it go? Would vision quests and songlines be removed along with communion and confession? Would animism and Buddhism go away, and how would we make that happen? If you took away our capacity to be fooled, would this affect our enjoyment of cinema and literature? This is a serious question, since for me the religious impulse is closely bound with the storytelling impulse, and even if one does not indulge in religious symbolism when you suspend disbelief to enjoy The Shawshank Redemption or Fight Club you’re using the same mechanisms that you use for the story of the passion; the same mechanisms employed throughout history to spread social mores via stories, myths and legends. I am not saying specifically that it is impossible for humans to retain the creative impulse and avoid the worst excesses of the irrational tendency, but I am curious as to just how separate those calling for an end to religion think it is from the rest of our psyches. If we pare it off and cast it into the flames, what goes with it?
That was a great post. Lead on MacDuff….
Sinbad@128,
I’m afraid your comment just confirms that indeed you don’t understand the difference between micro- and macro-economics. Look it up. And I don’t support a command economy – you have the usual moronic belief that socialist=Leninist.
To be fair though, nobody in America actually understands what “Socialist” means, do they? It’s a term that gets thrown around to basically mean “anybody to the left of Ronald Reagan”, which essentially includes around 75% of the American population, the whole of Europe and, of course, Mao, Lenin et al. It’s the same kind of nonsense which says that anybody who doesn’t worship at the altar of American Supremacy is a dirty stinking traitor, and means that the word actually loses all meaning.
The funny thing is, America, being a mixed economy, has several broadly socialist ideas underpinning sections of its government. It’s just so schizophrenically and reflexively paranoid about it that nobody’s allowed to admit it. “No no, using government funds to look after our poor people isn’t a socialist idea!” Silliness, but such is the price you pay for group indoctrination into an irrational belief system… ;)
Pricing is always a component of microeconomics. Of course, planned economies always and necessarily lack sufficient information to plan appropriately and the planners are no more rational than consumers (indeed, often less so because of more and competing influences and pressures). Moreover, I don’t assume that socialist = Leninist, but the USSR remains a pertinent example, among many others.
Wrong from the very beginning.
But a more careful and thorough refutation will have to wait. I have things to finish up before I can spend the effort to correct all of your miscomprehensions, malapropisms, strawman attacks, and other sundry fallacious arguments.
I don’t know whether you mean “strawman” or “misapprehension” when you actually use the words, but never mind. Nonetheless, when you have the time, feel free to use all your skill and judgement to actually construct an argument, rather than simply assert things to be true, and I’ll be open to discussion. But, really, if you’re going to simply say that we’d be better off without religion because religion makes people do bad things, you’ll want to stop and consider the extant circularity.
Frankly, if your assumptions are not that humans are inherently rational and that religion is not something external, I would dearly love to see your theory as to where religion comes from and what exactly you mean by “getting rid of religion.” If the world would be better off without it, I’d love to know what it is in the first place, at least from your point of view.
Sinbad@133,
The USSR is certainly a pertinent example of how not to attempt socialism – and was so from the very beginning, when the Bolsheviks dispersed the Constituent Assembly. All governments, of course, undertake economic planning. How they can best achieve their aims is the subject-matter of macroeconomics. How individuals and firms make decisions is the subject-matter of microeconomics. Your fundamental delusion is that capitalism is about “free markets”, as if there could ever be such a thing. Capitalism is about big businesses, and those in effective control of them, manipulating both economic and political processes to their own advantage. This is why the USA, the predominant capitalist power, has: just two significant political parties, both dominated by big business; “pork barrel” politics in congress; an electoral process which ensures you cannot become President without either being very rich yourself, or having the support of the very rich; and an enormous military establishment, to ensure that its elite maintain their predominant position globally.
And now you’re doing projection. Feh.
You mean its tautological obviousness?
Really, your entire argument spiraled away to the realm of strawman argument and non sequitur right about when you started talking about “normalisation of the macabre”, and similar. It certainly looks, now, like you were trying to talk about the escalation of violence in countries and societies under deep internal stress, and while I agree that that is one source of violence, my point was that you completely ignored those cases where people living peaceful, middle-class lives in peaceful countries nevertheless go and fight, kill, and die, in far-off foreign lands for what they themselves will gladly assert is nothing more than fervent religious belief.
And then you pulled the utterly dishonest stunt of both ignoring my questions and putting words in my mouth.
I have at no point said that religion is “worse” than any of the various other ideologies that lead to violent conflict.
So? Teach them humanistic skepticism. How are they going to justify violating the golden rule? OK, they’re kids, they’ll probably find a way. So, if they still have aggressive testosterone-fueled energy to burn off, divide them into teams and give them a ball to kick around.
That may be a bit simplistic, but I note that despite the known problems with young persons being able to assess and care about risk, there is a dearth of young men who are not religious (nor nationalist, to consider the Tamil Tigers, Basque Separatists, etc) forming terrorist groups.
How do you know that?
Can you give something more than the bare assertion?
Awwwww…. Thinking is just too hard. Let’s just all give up.
Well, you certainly seem to have done so. You can be all defeatist and despairing; I would recommend against giving up all hope prematurely.
If you look up at my comment #99, you might just possibly note that I wrote “psychological counterprogramming in skeptical and rational critical thinking”.
I would love to know why you think that getting a good healthy dose of scepticism would have no effect on how vulnerable people’s minds were to charlatans, hucksters, or nationalist and political ideologies.
No, no, no, NO! Are you incapable of reading ordinary English words? Are you brain-damaged? Are you congenitally stupid?
I wrote nothing of eradication. I wrote of teaching.
Sheesh!
No, it’s a stupid question, resulting from your inability to bloody well think. What sort of nonsensical false equivalence is it that using imagination and creativity and suspending disbelief is somehow exactly the same as believing that something imagined is absolutely and unquestionable true?