I disagree. Getting shot is an objective fact. I can demonstrate that a bullet has entered my body and caused damage to me.
The consequences of religion are subjective and cannot be perceived by anyone. They are beliefs not facts.
They may be true; some beliefs are. But you cannot argue a unsubstantiatable belief is true in the same way a fact is true.
I don’t know about “next day” but certainly people change and abandon previously held beliefs all the time, I assume it is because they’ve heard a more convincing argument or found their existing belief system lacking.
Not so easy, perhaps, especially if you have been indoctrinated since childhood. I have heard outspoken atheists who were raised in evangelical churches say that they still have nightmares about hell.
But if someone merely threatens you with a bullet, you don’t have any facts other than someone is threatening you you with bullet. You have been programmed to take that threat seriously. But you don’t know for a fact that you’re going to be killed.
For millions of believers, they have been programmed to associate bad behavior with eternal punishment. It doesn’t matter that we have no objective proof of God’s wrath or hell. Programming is still programming at the end of the day.
Despite which, significant numbers of people who’ve been taught all their lives that they’ll go to hell for fornication have sex with people they’re not married to. Happens all the time. Been happening ever since that threat started being made.
Which makes you wonder how they would behave if they didn’t believe in a wrathful, fornicating-hating God.
…Due to hormones and sex drive being incredibly powerful drivers of behavior.
But at the same time, there are many who do abstain from sex due to that threat.
I doubt it. They just believe others should.
That’s not yet. If someone believes “if you die unsaved you will go to Hell,” that is something that can’t be proven (since - who has died and come back to tell us if Hell is real or not?) - but the implications are still terrifying and can still significantly influence human behavior while alive, nonetheless.
Thought exercise.
Let’s say God decides he’s sick of people being bad and he replaces the sun and the moon with giant eyeballs. When the Eyes catch a person being bad, sometimes lightening bolts fly out of them and strike them down. Let’s say this happens about 10% of the time somewhere on the planet. Frequently enough for everyone in the world to know someone who has witnessed a Strike Down, but not frequently enough for everyone to be a first-hand witness.
Would people behave the same way in this scenario as they do now?
My guess is that some significant chunk of humanity would definitely be more constrained in their choices. By this I mean that certain ideas wouldn’t even come into their heads anymore, because those ideas would become strongly associated with death. For instance, when I am thirsty, I don’t have to worry about ingesting Pine-Sol. My brain won’t even present that as an option, since it knows Pine-Sol, no matter how sweet it smells, will hurt me if I drink it. So I think for some segment of the population, the fear of punishing lightening bolts would keep them from even entertaining the thought of telling a lie, shoplifting, or touching their penis. In that way, you could consider them less free than they would be in a world without eyes in the sky.
I do not think hell-believers are as constrained as these folks. Fear of something you only know from a story told on Sunday mornings is different from fear of something that you know happens daily and is a frequent subject of conversation (which the Strike Downs would certainly be). But I do think hell-believers are more constrained than the people who don’t believe in hell at all. Like, profanity comes to me pretty easilyy as a non-believer. But it didn’t flow easily when I was a believer, since just the thought of cursing would make me feel guilty and “bad”.
I think there’s a big segment of the population that would not change their behavior even with Eyes in the Sky hanging over them. Maybe they would tell themselves the Eyes are a hoax and that the lightening bolts are a weird natural phenomena, not punishment for sin. Or maybe they would believe in the Eyes and their punishing ways, but they would tell themselves that their sins weren’t bad enough to warrant a lightening bolt. Only super sinners have to worry about being struck down, they’d tell themselves. I think lot of people would fall into this category. “I have fornicated my whole adult life, and never once been struck by lightening. So that tells me this sin isn’t really all that important, despite what the preacher man says.” Humans are great at rationalizing like this.
There are many who abstain from sex, or from sex outside their marriage, for a number of other reasons.
I don’t see that religious threats have more impact than, say, an atheist’s desire not to upset their marriage partner, and/or to not get evicted from their marriage. Possibly less so, since many religious people who don’t so abstain have those reasons in addition. Anybody have a cite that religious people whose religion forbids adultery are significantly less likely to commit it than non-religious people whose partners expect monogamy?
If one fears to anger their invisible friend(s), I call it self-coercion - which is a choice. Maybe we can just run with it, as it were. Example: devout June Carter was married to Edwin Nix but fell hopelessly in love with singing partner Johnny Cash. She wrote Ring Of Fire about that love, expecting literally to spend eternity in Hell - but he was worth it! She chose to override her fear of damnation. Self-coercion did not stop her.
One can certainly choose to devoutly follow one’s religious precepts. But if hate and hate crimes are sanctioned by one’s invisible friend(s), consider choosing another faith. Suppose the voices in one’s head demand strangling known Scientologists. Resist temptation, I say. Overcharging them is quite OK, though.
I thought I was clear on the distinction between consequences for which there was objective evidence and consequences which could not be demonstrated to exist.
Sure, a person can believe that they go to Heaven or Hell after they die - but that belief does not prove that Heaven or Hell exist.
So their actions are not being constrained by Heaven or Hell; their actions are being constrained by their beliefs.
I think that is pretty dismissive of sincerely held non-religious belief. The proposition that beliefs that an individual claims are ‘religious’ are somehow privileged over those of others is arrogant and not supported by any objective truth.
Should a claim of belief be given any more weight or be treated any differently from anyone else’s beliefs because a person claims that it is religious?
I do not think religious beliefs are choices that someone has come to through their own free will. If this were the case, you would not expect to see so many religious adherents belonging to the same religion of their parents and communities. Most believers were programmed with those beliefs from an early age and simply never encountered another set of beliefs that were compelling enough to make them switch to something else. If they had been raised in a different milieu or they had a different set of life experiences, they would no doubt possess different beliefs.
Of course, it is comforting for believers to cling to the notion that their beliefs are the result of contemplation and thoughtful deliberation rather than programming. No one wants to think that they adopted a set of beliefs simply because of Mommy and Daddy, because only sheeple would do that. Also, it’s easier to wrap one’s head around the concept of eternal punishment for non-believers if you are convinced that non-believers have rejected God because of poor choices they have made deliberatively. The idea that God would punish someone who is not constitutionally wired for religious belief is a troubling idea. But God punishing a person who has made a deliberate choice to be an atheist? Let’s burn 'em up, the stubborn bastard!
If a person’s religion does not come from their personal choice then what was it that made the choice for them?
I realize most people follow the same religion their parents followed but some people don’t. So your religion is not simply a choice your parents made for you.
Is it God? If so, why doesn’t everyone follow the same religion. Does the fact that some people are Seventh Day Adventists and some people are Muslims mean that God chose for some people to be in a religion and chose for other people to not be in it? Or does it mean that there are different gods and each of them are choosing who will be their followers?
I am curious what UltraVires comes back with. I know what most biological determinists would say to your question, but I don’t think that’s the side she’s representing.
This article discusses studies that have shown that religious experiences can activate the same brain circuits that sex and drugs do.
So I’m guessing that people with brains that are especially sensitive to this kind of activation are more likely to be religious than people with brains that lack this sensitivity.
I’m also guessing that brains are sensitive to some religious stimuli over others, which explains why people can switch religious beliefs. If you grow up in a church without music, for instance, and you have a brain that responds really well to music, then maybe you’ll ditch that church’s teachings the moment you discover another sect that is all about singing and dancing.
Aggreeableness and conscientiousness are personality traits. I don’t think people choose their personality traits. These traits are linked to religiosity. I’m guessing someone who scores high in these traits AND is raised in a religious home is more likely to adopt that religion that someone who scores low in these measures and is raised in the same household.
We may get to a point in the future where we can predict whether a child will turn into a religious adult through a combination of brain scans and personality tests. If we come up with a model that can accurately predict religiosity, then that would be evidence that one’s religious beliefs are dependent on that person’s inherent characteristics more than something they have “willed” to happen.
Well, first because religious beliefs are constitutionally protected. Throughout history wars have been fought between people claiming they are right and those other people are wrong. We have decided to stop those wars by protecting a person’s religious beliefs more so than other beliefs.
Further, the very nature of the belief, whether it is ultimately true or not and the truth of it is ultimately unknowable, requires a person to follow it. If the Creator of the Universe has told me not to work on the Sabbath day, then at least in my mind that is a directive and not a choice.
I think political beliefs, while not perfect, are a good analogy. You could choose to vote for Trump. You could walk right into the voting booth on election day and press “Trump.” However your life experiences, your world view, and your beliefs after studying all of the issues effectively preclude you from making that choice. Now imagine that you have a sincere belief that the Creator of the Universe will torture you for the remainder of eternity if you vote Trump. Still a real choice?
As in politics, your worldview nearly compels you to make a certain religious choice. You cannot just toss aside your politics or religion, unless as another said, further study again compels you to change your mind.
Others have touched on it, but I guess it is contingent on your definition of “choice.” Some choices are purely free as they have no consequences. I could spend the rest of the day on the SDMB, watch TV, or go out for dinner. All fine and no real consequences. I consider that a choice.
If you say I have the choice to sleep all day during the week and lose money, lose clients, and have my law license taken, then technically I do have that choice, but the consequences are so severe that it is really stretching the definition of choice to say I have a real one.
You could also say that I have a completely free choice to murder my neighbor so long as I accept spending the rest of my life in prison. But that is choice in name only. Choice, at least in my mind, means a meaningfully free choice. A Hobson’s choice is not a choice.
Politics is a great venue to discuss what damages can happen with religion.
It is and will be harder to get a woman in the WH.
It is hard to get someone of similar but different faith than evangelical in the WH (Jewish, Catholic, etc.)
It is UNHEARD of for anyone who claims to be atheist to run for the WH. And this is what scares me the most with R&P. An atheist would most likely make the best president. But just don’t say it to your friends. You’ll be an outcast.
So someone with a baptist-related faith is probably going to be your or your party’s choice to begin with.
But how would any other set of beliefs be categorically different? Most people who grow up in anti-religious homes also turn out anti-religious, I think. And everyone has to live their life by some set of rules, I mean practical rules not abstractions. I think anti-Christians (again ‘religion’ means Christianity in high 90’s% of references in these debates) have a tendency to overemphasize how much their own beliefs (again practical ones, how to live your life) are the product of their independent rational thought v just what they’ve also been inculcated into by others. This is the kind of the way humans are IME.
I think you made this point yourself earlier, how is ‘religious belief’ (whether harping on Christianity or more generally) necessarily a more real constraint than risking getting hit by a car if you do X, having no money if you do Y, etc etc? Or again among rules people come up with that are (they at least claim) completely separate from ‘religion’. Like for example what’s right and wrong in dealing with or thinking about other people (purging various racial, gender etc isms/phobias from your innermost thoughts as ‘all good people must do’), how is that different?
I don’t see it. Loads of constraints on decisions, self imposed and externally imposed. I don’t see what’s special about religious beliefs in that context. ‘They are more strongly held?’ Not necessarily. Lots of people still follow religions casually even now, and I think most people did at one time. Whereas now more than a few people are fanatical IMO about those bad isms/phobias about race, ethnicity, gender etc. and how they ‘damn’ you (secularly speaking) even to be subject to them in your private thoughts.
As to whether ‘free will’ a useless concept generally, depends in part how you define it. Again in Christian terms all ‘free will’ means is that God while omnipotent in general doesn’t intervene to make moral decisions for you. So you can choose to violate his laws, as well as choose to doubt them, or Him. Once you rule out God I agree it’s harder to nail down what free will really means.