It’s not just the Christians who have a persecution complex, but also other religions? Say it ain’t so! But read this remarkable whine about poor, picked-upon Hinduism — did you know that only Hindu beliefs get mocked?
…why is it that only Hindu practices and traditions are targeted for censure and ridicule? How is what Smriti Irani did more superstitious or unscientific than a Muslim kneeling to pray to a black stone in Mecca or a Catholic imbibing bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ?
Here, I’ll make Ms. Aditi Banerjee feel a little better: all of those practices are absurd, superstitious, ritualistic baloney.
Is a Christian attending Bible study accused of promoting creationism?
Sometimes, yes. It depends on exactly what they’re studying, but if it isn’t creationism, I’m sure we can find something else silly that they’re pursuing.
Is a Christian who believes in the Immaculate Conception subject to the same scorn of being anti-scientific?
Yes.
Really, there’s nothing special about Hinduism — it isn’t particularly singled out for ridicule. In the US, where Banerjee is from, I’m afraid it isn’t noticed all that often, because we’ve got bigger targets here that distract us. But I can try to laugh harder at the Hindu practices, if that will help.
Banerjee makes that easy, too, since much of her article is a defense of ridiculous Hindu religious beliefs. She’s quite irate that the media in India had made some noise about a minister who visited an astrologer…and she thinks that hoary old superstitious is defensible.
These attacks betray a gross misunderstanding of what real jyotisha/ Vedic astrology is. Vedic astrologers do not just use charts and planetary positions to make predictions; they use their powers of meditation and intuition to perceive certain patterns and trends and forces that act upon an individual based on their karma, as reflected in their birth chart, and intuit how they interact with forces operating in the larger cosmos at the current time. It is about probabilities and trends and currents that pull our lives and psyches in certain ways—it is not about fatalistic proclamations or specific predictions of what will happen when.
All of our Vedangas recognize the supremacy of purushartha (individual effort through the exercise of free will) to counteract what is written in our stars, for better or worse. Even what was written in our stars was not written by some capricious creator. What is written in our stars is the recording of the karmic fruits of our own actions and exercise of free will in the past, which are then divined through astrology and other such practices.
American astrologers have this same bullshit line: the stars incline, they do not compel. But of course they don’t even have the slightest evidence or reason to suspect that the stars even give gentle nudges. And honestly, telling me that they don’t just use star charts, but also the powers of meditation and intuition
doesn’t add any more credibility to the claims, nor does telling me that karma, another bullshit concept, is all intermingled with the influence of celestial bodies.
She also endorses palmistry and lots of other flavors of woo.
It is well-known by those who are proficient in astrology and palmistry that the lines on our palms change as our destiny changes through the exertion of our free will. Genuine astrologers are not fatalistic—they are life counsellors who recommend therapies, meditations, pujas, the use of gem / colour / yoga therapies to counteract negative forces and to chart our course through the various currents we face in life due to past karma. In other words, when used properly, astrology is another tool for therapy rather than a fatalistic foretelling of fixed events in the future.
She rationalizes the recent mass sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of animals at the Gadhimai Festival in Nepal. She has two arguments: everyone else murders animals, too, and the slaughter has good intentions.
Why are non-vegetarians exempt from criticism, but a handful of Hindus who follow their indigenous customs of worship (again, in this case, once every five years) are globally condemned for killing an infinitesimal fraction of the number of animals slaughtered by others on a routine basis? Why is it okay to slaughter animals for payt puja (to satisfy our stomachs) but not for Devi puja?
There is a good point there: we should be more outraged at the excessive slaughter of animals for the purpose of consumption. But who says non-vegetarians are exempt from criticism? They get lots of criticism! Unfortunately, the meat-eaters are a majority and they ignore most of it. Even so, though, has Ms. Banerjee ever heard the phrase, “two wrongs don’t make a right”? That a cow is slaughtered to be rendered down into a McDonald’s patty does not mean it’s then OK to murder a cow in the name of an imaginary goddess.
And this argument is painfully ridiculous…
I am a strict vegetarian and do not even like the touch of leather against my skin, but I accept that there are legitimate traditions within Hinduism that have the practice of animal sacrifice. In such sacrifices, the animal is not being killed for gluttony—the animal is honoured; the prayer is made that the animal receive moksha or a better life in its next rebirth; and the act is dedicated to the Divine.
Please spare me the ‘honor’ of having my throat cut to satisfy the delusions of a religious fanatic! The animal is dead; there is no rebirth; that someone believes its death makes an invisible intangible spirit happy is meaningless. At least the cow slaughtered to make a greasy hamburger is providing some small material benefit to a person somewhere; killing to appease a non-existent deity has no purpose at all.
Banerjee then goes on for paragraph after paragraph of obscure Hindu theology, throwing around archaic terminology to make herself sound deep and educated — but it’s no more persuasive than the turgid, self-referential crap I more familiarly hear from Christian wankers. Once again, Hindus are completely unexceptional, and bore me to tears as badly as any Protestant babbler.
Sorry, Ms. Banerjee.
Hah! Why not show some real courage, PZ, and have a go at Manicheans!
What does a god — whether Yahweh Elohim, or Gadhimai — need with dead animals?
I remember with special amusement the sermons that the pastor in my parents’ parish used to deliver on the dangers of superstition. I was greatly entertained by those homilies.
That article is just the tip of the Hindu superiority complex-berg. But then just as all the religious fanatics do, they counter reason with more stupidity and arrogance.
What are your thoughts on atheist hindu sects like Carvaka that reject the supernatural?
Owlmirror,
We call it animal sacrifice, god calls it barbecue weekend.
@Owlmirror- they forgot to pack any food on their starship.
The comments over there…whee.
The gods like the smell.
I don’t even have to get very far in the article before it pisses me off. Opening quote:
“Dry atheism?” As opposed to what? Wet atheism? Atheism which is on the sweet side? Or is it supposed to run together: atheism is an arid, cold, joyless view of the world which fails to connect emotionally?
Oh, I bet it’s the last one. So we can see why philosophy “needs” religion. It dampens it. Makes the philosophy nice and soppy.
Learning not so much from the poor persecuted Christians then, but from the Muslims. You can’t be “secular” or “scientific” without being a “bigot.” A Hindu version of what PZ once called “fatwah envy?”
Hey, maybe this is a backhanded compliment to the new atheists! We’re consistent.
That’s one of the 3 C’s which kill religious faith: Curiosity, Clarity, and Consistency.
The 3 C’s which foster religious faith: Credulity, Confusion, and Compartmentalization.
The Reasonable Doubts podcast (also on FTB) has an awesome recurring segment called Polyatheism, where they explore the deities & mythologies of different cultures. The last episode was Odin.
ALL religions are ridiculous, although they can be some pretty entertaining fiction.
Personally I think Offler has the best attitude to sacrifice
“… sausages are fried, allowing the “true sausagidity” to ascend to Offler by means of smell, while the clergy eat the “earthly shell” of the sausages, which the clergy claim taste like ash as Offler has eaten their essence”
Yes. Killing animals in order to eat them has at least some justification. A lot of changes would have to be made to enable the poor in many parts of the world to eat vegetarian without an excessive burden on their wallets or their time to acquire the skills and knowledge and to acquire and transform the resources. Killing animals purely for purposes of entertainment (bullfighting, religion and other superstitions, foxhunting or any hunting not for food, etc.) has none at all that I can see.
Carvaka – a wonderful school of thought, probably the earliest organised disbelief in the historical record. Too bad it’s not around any more.
The thing of it is, Hindus in America aren’t picked upon particularly much. Worse, they are pretty much dismissed out of hand. Oftentimes Christians and cultural Christians see Hinduism as so obviously ridiculous that they won’t even bother engaging with it, not even bothering which mocking. They are more likely to mock atheists, the “wrong” kinds of Christians, the filthy evil Muslim menace, or maybe some homegrown American idiocy like New Agers, Mormons, or Scientologists? But Hinduism? Might as well get them to argue about or mock Shintoism. They don’t know shit about it, and the shit they do is so foreign to them that they think it is “obviously” ridiculous anyway and not worth generating much in the way of words or thoughts on the matter.
Hinduism in America doesn’t suffer the persecution of an abundance of criticism. It suffers the persecution of being disregarded, dismissed, and ignored, treated as an irrelevance when it is one of the largest religions of the world.
That said, in this case, at least in the quoted sections of the article, this isn’t really about prejudice or persecution as much as it being the case of a bullshitter who is frustrated with the fact that they don’t have Christian privilege to allow them to spew bullshit with impunity like Christians do.
ragdish@5,
Acording to the pfft of all knowledge:
Sastra:
Okay, folks, time for debate:
“Wet atheism”: Sex term or drug term?
Very similar to Albert Einstein’s incredibly stupid quote about “science without religion is lame…” which must be read in its incredibly stupid context in order to get the full effect of its mega incredible stupidity.
I think that’s a reference to Onanism.
An article in Skeptical Inquirer mentioned an upcoming poll in which a depressing fraction of Indian scientists believe astrology is legitimate. (No link on Teh Interwebz yet that I could find). It’s sad, but the one redeeming aspect is that it provides a convenient counter-argument to the “religious scientists are proof that religion and science are compatible” argument.
I googled up dry atheism and apparently it’s the old “the universe isn’t wonderful enough as it is so we have to imagine it’s controlled by a grumpy superman to make it nice” trope.
@PZ:
**YOU** may believe that two wrongs don’t make a right. However, if you had correctly interpreted the paragraph after paragraph of obscure Hindu theology, you would learn the greater truth:
anteprepro @#17
All of the above?
Owlmirror @2:
Didn’t you know? Dead animals are status symbols among all the deities.
Reginald Selkirk wrote, @18:
I did not read Einstein’s whole treatise, there, but what I did read; I summarize as “Science is Reason, Religion is Emotion; each needs the other to be complete.” I strongly suspect I’m wrong about it, but that’s just my oversimplification.
.
“Dry vs. Wet”, Dry implies “no squishy stuff, just cold hard facts. No ‘ifs’, nor ‘buts’, just plain, dry, facts.” Like “dry sand” vs. “wet mud”.
.
Merry Solstice everyone!
it is kind of funny that some believers can get so wound up that they have to complain about any criticism as if no one else is subject to it. This one even lives in the US were her beliefs are mostly ignored and she is allowed to practice them unencumbered except for any regulation on the treatment of animals no one cares what she does generally. There are no restrictions in law.
None of these “victims of persecution” seem to get it that there are in existence many religions and many many different people who will think and act the way they will and just may not agree with them any more than they agree with agree with other people. If their faith and cultural practice is so special because it is the correct one why does it bother them that others do not agree. Is it not much more important that their gods agree with them and to hell with what other people say? Because it really sounds like it is more important that other people should agree with them then it does for their gods to be real at least to the loud complaining out spoken defenders of the faith ones like Ms Banerjee.
uncle frogy
@Tony #24
Now I’m picturing Zeus, Odin, and Shiva sitting around in a British hunting lodge, smoking cigars and sipping gin while telling stories about their sacrifices.
There’s a fascinating theory that religion actually evolved because of meat-eating. As early humans developed tool use, language, planning, and cooperative activities, we also increased the amount of meat in the diet. Humans aren’t well suited to predation and need those higher cognitive tools to do it efficiently. But at the same time we developed a sense of self and the ability to ask abstract questions like “Does the animal feel pain when I kill it?” and “Where do consciousness go after death?” Hence the need for religion to answer questions. An awful lot of early religious material is concerned with hunting and meat-eating and how to do it well.
@Sastra: love the 3×2 Cs. Stealing them. (In case, whom should I cite for them?)
@Reginald Selkirk: In defense of Einstein, his idea of “religion” was more like “feeling awe”. He was kinda contemptuous towards Christianity.
Also, no comicsansification for her?
I’m confident the gods don’t need meat at all, or anything else offered, but the priests…now there’s a story rich with possibilities.
Indeed, as far as I can tell Hinduism is exactly the same as the other big name religions. It is also interesting to note that what we think of as Hinduism, sometimes called “modern Hinduism,” seems to have emerged at the same time as the arrival of the British. It’s plausible, at least, that the Brits promoted a mythical nativist religion over the religious myth prevalent among the dominant princes (Islam) as part of their quest for power in the region…a contest which the Brits won, more or less, and could therefore rewrite history to support their purposes.
#17 anteprepro
Obviously a drug term. It’s clearly a reference to de Sade (1797), Novalis (1798), Heine (1840), Marx (1843), Kingsley (1847), and Lenin (1905).
Microraptor @ 27
I’d rather not be there for that. Odin is a notorious liar and Zeus is way to likely to segue into reminiscing about the time he assumed the form of some of those animals for his extra-marital affairs.
I think that the greatest scientific triumph of astrology was Francesco Sizzi’s argument that Jupiter’s four big moons could not exist. Galileo had recently discovered them with his telescope, and Sizzi wrote a book called Dianoia Astronomica in which he argued that they cannot exist. His argument:
In the macrocosm, there are two beneficient stars, two maleficient ones, two luminaries, and unique Mercury, erratic and indifferent.
In the microcosm, we have two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and one mouth.
They correspond perfectly, with no room for Jupiter’s alleged moons. This correspondence also includes the seven metals, the seven days of the week, and other notable sevens.
Galileo vs. Francesco Sizzi, though I used medieval astrologer Al Biruni’s correspondences, since I could not find a complete set for Sizzi.
My knowledge of sacrificial religions is sadly lacking, but isn’t it the case that the priests traditionally get to eat the sacrifices (or pass them out among the poor, depending on their inclinations)? Presumably after their gods have partaken of the animals’ souls, leaving the dead matter behind.
@31 robro
There is barely any difference between the how Hinduism is practiced wrt any other major religion. “Modern Hinduism” is a misnomer though. The term “Hinduism” itself became prevalent more or less during the period the British arrived. It came from the term “Hindu” used by the early Islamic invaders/conquerors for people living across the Indus river. Its technically a collection of religious/cultural practices that were historically followed by the people in India. Some are common across all people, others are confined to regions. They were consistently revised by dominant ethnic, cultural or regional groups. What is called “modern Hinduism” is what is left after some three and a half millennia of revisions & social reform.
Coming back to my first statement, I mentioned that Hinduism is no different in how it is practiced today (and obviously how it is defended by these fervent apologists). But there is a big difference in its genesis, cultural significance and some of its associated philosophies. As an example, despite being openly atheist, I always tick the Hindu box in my religious affiliation. If I want to describe it further, I would call myself a Hindu atheist, which as it turns out is perfectly non-contradictory. The term Hindu has a cultural and/or ethnic significance for me. I dunno how other atheists born into the Hindu religion feel, but I am pretty certain ex-Christians/ex-Muslims would find this concept irreconcilable with their former religions. I suppose an atheist from the Jewish faith may feel the same.
NelC @ 35
I can’t speak for all traditions, but classical Greek sacrifices definitely involved the worshipers and priests eating the meat of the animal after it was killed. They’ve even got a myth explaining why they were allowed to eat the meat of an animal theoretically given to the gods.
It wouldn’t surprise me if it was relatively common behaviour, though – for preindustrial cultures, livestock are expensive, and wasting perfectly good protein is not a useful survival strategy.
I like my atheism like I like my wine: dry. I’m not a huge fan of cordial atheism.
Sastra
I think it has something to do with Traditional Chinese Medicine, so it would be Dry Atheism versus Damp Atheism and would be treated with ground up endangered species.
The astrology argument (our bullshit is different from and superior to your (“western”) bullshit is also seen in alternative medicine where Eastern per-scientific practices are ancient wisdom where European ones like bloodletting are just plain backwards. Homeopathy for some reason gets an exemption and is very popular in India.
lpetrich@34,
Sounds like Sizzi was the Louis Morelli of his day!
@militantagniostic #39: win.
Also, I’m disappointed, I thought that Christianity’s persecution complex was what made it unique.
What kind of “defense” is it to point out how incredibly wrong he was? Cue quotes from Feynmann (“the pleasure of finding things out”), Sagan (“A sense of wonder”), et al.
Do read the context of that Einstein quote, here are some additional stupidities from the same paragraph:
Bwa ha ha! Sure, that’s why Creationism doesn’t exist, and religions never make empirically testable claims. Just think what a mess the science/religion issue would be without those clearly marked boundaries.
Unjustified and unjustifiable claim about where the aspiration toward truth and understanding originates.
Promiscuous use of the word “faith.” It is not necessary to accept this without evidence, because we have over half a millennium of scientific results demonstrating that nature is comprehensible to reason.
Argument from incredulity.
@41 F.O.
Oh you will be in for a HUGE surprise if you go read the comments made by Hindu right-wingers in India recently.
Do most people no longer eat religiously-sacrificed animals? I’m pretty sure they used to – it was little different than a ritual like having turkey every Thanksgiving, but with more prayers. IIRC most traditions would completely burn some small symbolic piece of the dead animal (especially particular internal organs like the heart or liver) and the rest would be eaten. Wiki is failing me here – in a rather glaring omission, few of the articles on animal sacrifice in different traditions describe what happens to the dead animal.
Sastra @10
Hence offerings unto Offler are cooked sossidges since the smell of aforesaid is always better then the taste. Also priests need to eat.
Whoops, pioused again !
than
@Reginald Selkirk, #42: Einstein had definitions of both god and religion that no mainstream monotheist today would accept.
(Then he goes to rail against atheists).
To be sure, I think he just liked the spotlight and used the ambiguous terms for an effect.
@Sagar Keer, #43: Kudos to the Indian secularists then. =D
Eating the meat of sacrificed animals was the norm in almost all religions, IIRC. Sacrifices where the entire animal was burned were called holocausts (a greek word meaning “everything is burned”) and they were particularly practiced by the Hebrews, if memory serves me. Since western culture takes its views on ancient religions to a large extent from the Old Testament, I can see how people would get the wrong impression about how the rest of the world conducted (and still conducts) its sacrifices. Irrational though such religions may be, I couldn’t help but groan whenever I read people’s complaints about Hindus sacrificing so many animals when so many people go hungry in India – completely oblivious to the fact that those animals were either directly eaten or their meat sold by the temple to cover other expenses.
I’m opposed to the sacrifice IF the meat was just left to rot. (Wasting food is a pet peeve of mine.)
On the other hand, IF the meat went to feed people, I can’t find much fault beyond “this is a silly ritual”.
And, of course, Ms. Banerjee’s complaint is completely ridiculous.
@militantagnostic
Which type of homeopathy? The one made up by the 18th century German quack? or traditional, herbal and other medicines?
If it’s the second, that isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be. Thyme oil for coughs etc can work. Water that may once have touched an active ingredient that may have had some effect if present, not so much. I’m not sure why the two seem to be used interchangeably.
Grewgills
Have you ever looked on the Internets for “homeopathy”?
Hindu fundies are as good at getting their panties in a twist about stuff as fundies anywhere.
The Modi government in India is making sure to establish a Hndu theocracy
from trying to rebrand Christmas as “Good Governance Day” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Governance_Day)
to forcing reconversions (http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/RSS-to-Facilitate-Ghar-Wapsi-of-Goan-Catholics/2014/12/28/article2592250.ece; http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/newdelhi/ghar-wapsi-only-way-to-end-terror-says-bjp-leader/article1-1300421.aspx; http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/VHP-to-hold-ghar-wapsi-for-4000-Muslims-in-Ayodhya-in-January/articleshow/45624372.cms)
making statemets about “Vedic Science” (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/28/indian-prime-minister-genetic-science-existed-ancient-times; )
etc etc…..
Th right wing, putting the “FUN” into Fundamental everywhere.
@Chicagao,
Do you read comments and try to understand them before you snark?
Go to a grocery store or drug store and look in the section that has ”homeopathic” remedies. You will find a number of actual herbal remedies like thyme oil that actually do something. Alongside those you will find a bunch of very expensive water that once sat next to a substance that might do something. The latter generally have a 6x or 7x on the label indicating whether they were diluted a million times or 10 million times.
Grewgills@54,
Do you read others’ nyms when responding to them?
“Homeopathy” refers quite specifically to the quackery of Samuel Hahnemann. That some stores wrongly label herbal remedies “homeopathic” is really neither here nor there.
@Nick
It is more than just a few stores. It is true of pretty much every grocery, drug or health food store I’ve been to in California and Hawaii. It was also true of drug stores in the Netherlands. Most people I’ve known in all of those places use the term to refer to all ‘alternative medicines’. Almost none of those people know what the x preceded by a number (usually 6 or 7) means when on a bottle of homeopathic ‘medicine’.
In short common usage matters, so it is both here and there.
It was a good faith question that I have now answered for myself. Apparently in India there is a central board (CCH) that certifies people in which placebos to give patients. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Perhaps more troubling is the even higher popularity of Ayurvedic medicines some of which contain toxic levels of heavy metals. At least drinking overpriced water won’t actively harm you.
I’m not aware of a reason to call Cārvāka “Hindu” except its geographic location.
There is no early religious material. Writing was invented easily a hundred thousand years after religion was.
Grewgills@56,
Common usage matters, but when it is both clearly wrong and seriously misleading, which it is in this case, it should be corrected, not indulged.
On what evidence do you base that claim? It may well be true, but interpreting an artifact from 100,000 years ago as “religious” is very much a matter of faith! And if you’re going to cite ritual burial, do atheists today leave their dead family members out with the garbage?
Grewgills #56 wrote:
Assuming you’re correct then the ‘common usage’ of labeling herbal remedies and/or all alternative remedies as “homeopathy” is either very confused, or deliberately deceptive.
“Pharmacognosy” is the “branch of pharmacology that deals with drugs in their crude or natural state and with medicinal herbs or other plants” and well within mainstream science, given that it involves legitimate tests. As you point out, some of this works so I can see the benefit of trying to co-opt this into alt med in general or homeopathy in particular.
But extending the meaning of “homeopathy” into everything alternative? Very strange. Perhaps they’re either confusing or capitalizing on the superficial similarity between “homeopathy” and “home remedy.” Or perhaps “homeopathy” is now one of those words like “spiritual,” which means whatever you want it to mean as long as it means something good and designates one as open-minded and above the ordinary.
Nick Gotts #58 wrote:
Not more than once. Stupid “municipal ordinances.”
Nick Gotts:
There’s not much direct evidence, but either way I figure that would make it a matter of interpretation, not faith. I don’t have “faith” that G.W. Bush is religious, and I don’t have an overwhelming amount of evidence to support it either. I’m pretty sure he is, but even knowing all sorts of things about him and what he’s said, the evidence is shaky since I cannot be him (fortunately!) to know what he actually thinks with the same degree of certainty that he has (whatever that may be, since he may not “know” either). For that matter, I’m not even totally certain about some of my own family members’ religious beliefs. The point is, somebody could very well raise doubts about that too if they feel like it, but I don’t think it generally accomplishes much, nor is it fair to brand it all as a kind of “faith.” It’s just confusing a lot of different issues.
Religion almost certainly developed long before there was “religious material” an archaeologist could uncover. People were certainly capable of believing in supernatural entities, and their individual beliefs could have had social elements like we’d recognize in religions today (myth-making, dogmatism, authoritarianism, etc.). The evidence for that is fairly strong, I think, but I have no idea how the 100,000 year number is supposed to appear according David M.’s reckoning. So I don’t know what he had in mind.
Anyway, whether we really “know” about it or not, based on some tangible bit of evidence which was left behind and managed to remain intact until today, it’s hard to see what would’ve prevented that. They evidently had fully modern brains which were more than capable of complex imaginative thinking, and they had fairly sophisticated social groups in which this could all play out as it routinely does in religious groups today … so why not? I don’t think you need writing or agriculture or something like that, just to get the ball rolling on religion. What are the necessary ingredients? You apparently need need some very basic psychological and social features in humans, which seem to have been around for a very, very long time. So why not think there was probably a whole lot of religion (or something like “religion”) in prehistoric times? We may not have archaeological evidence of most or any of it, but the biological and sociological evidence still points in that direction, doesn’t it? Is there another reasonable way to interpret it?
I think the last one is what is being done. But one thing I’ve noticed with “alternative” medicine is that they’ll list things that actually do have antibacterial or pain relieving properties as inactive ingredients, presumably to get around FDA labeling or quality control requirements: there’s something in the pill/capsule that does provide the benefit they’re claiming the medication has, but it’s not listed as an active ingredient and therefore they don’t have to be as careful with how much is actually in each does. Or something.
The FDA has no authority over homeopathic medicinals (thanks to Congress), although they would like to have it.
I’m not sure why they call traditional remedies homeopathy in the Netherlands, but I believe that is common elsewhere in Europe as well. As to health food stores and other places in the US that sell them I think it is a combination of ignorance and the ease of bundling all of the alt medicines in one section.
As to alt medicines, I think Tim Minchin put it pretty pithily when he said ”You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? Medicine.” Any substance that is being sold as a remedy should be under the purview of the FDA.
consciousness razor@60,
Er, my use of “faith” was a rather feeble attempt at humour. Come on, you surely know me well enough not to think I would use the word seriously in such a context?
Simple answer: we don’t know. Yes it’s quite likely there was something identifiable as religion 100,000 years ago, but there’s no certainty this is so. Maybe, for example, societies have to reach a certain size before anything with enough of the typical features of religion to deserve the name can form and persist.
Nick Gotts:
Well, I don’t know everyone else so well, who might take it seriously, given the subtlety of the humor and given their lack of coherence (for many people, that is) when calling everything “faith” or “irrational” if it isn’t some kind of crude positivism. We do get that sort of thing at this blog (and in other atheist/skeptical/scientific settings) fairly often. But I do know you’re not like that. :)
It’s like my mother used to say, when warning me to be careful as I was learning to drive. She trusted me enough to drive responsibly, pay attention, be sober, etc. (that’s what she said at least), but she didn’t trust most of the other assholes out there with whom I’d have to share the road.
How likely is it? Is 99% good enough to be “certain”? If you want this to be a factual claim (that there is in fact no such certainty), it’s not clear how I’d be able to tell whether or not this claim is true or false. I personally don’t require 100% certainty to say I “know” all sorts of other very well-established facts, so this case shouldn’t be any different from them.
I’m sure you would at least need a certain degree of stability and hierarchical organization and so forth in a population to have stable religious myths, dogmas, systems of interrelated beliefs, rituals, etc. I don’t think it would just depend on population size, since it seems like there could be a reasonably large population without other important qualities needed for a religious tradition, but that probably wouldn’t hurt.
It’s quite likely. Inappropriate quantification of likelihood is a widespread error. “Quite likely” means (and I think would be generally understood to mean) that I’m more inclined to believe the claim than disbelieve it, but don’t accept that claims of knowledge are justified.
@57 David Marjanović
Unlike the Abrahamic religions though, Hinduism is all about location, location, location.
Hinduism is more about the cultural practices, often differing by specific regions, than it is about pleading allegiance to any particular god.
The Carvaka rejected the religious rites in the Vedas, but often used Upanishads (commentaries on the Vedas) as partial sources for their philosophy. It would be fair to call the Carvaka a Hindu sect based on its strong cultural ties.