Hmm. Oddly enough, that’s pretty close to what the author of the cover article in today’s NYT Sunday Magazine says.
Drug offenders are the largest category.
Can you elaborate on your thinking here? Why would a criminal be any more or less likely than anyone else to be religious? They aren’t a different species.
Not innocent, but justified: perhaps they stole because they needed money, or killed someone they felt deserved it, or took drugs because they were addicted. Think of immoral things you’ve done in your life: at the time, you had a reason, did you not?
What are the social standards of a true believer?
People can delude themselves, of course, to varying degrees. As a society, I’d rather we focus on material improvements to people’s lives than expecting people to invent a comforting lie.
If you’re addressing me these questions, you’re making use of a straw man. My words were that “I practice universal conciliation” and Bryan Elkers mentioned the pitfalls of the “middle position”, a notion that I wanted clarified through a rational argumentation so that I could understand both the notion and his standpoint. I for one assumed Bryan Elkers meant by his phrase the standing of an unbiased person, who takes neither side in an argument between two parties and whose neutrality allows him to view things rationally. The way you seem to describe my method is caricature of my conciliatory position, which I find highly disagreeable.
Humans do belong to the same species but they can be more or less religious. Inmates make a particular category of people in that they are incarcerated, but their group is not homogenuous when considering the crime they have been convicted for. This is the reason why their incarceration time varies, they are suspended certain rights during and/or after imprisonment, etc. My opinion is that when an man’s crimes show an increased disregard for the values of the religion he claims to hold, it’s safe to think that man is not really as religious as he claims to be. For example, according to this book people’s religiousness can be assessed by considering their faith, commitment and behavior.
But the issue of inmates came in this thread while discussing the terrible quality of religious fundamentalists’ character, which in my opinion resembles the abjection of inveterate violent irreligious inmates. My observation was that violence does not stem from either religiousness or irreligiousness but it is an embedded trait or our species. Thus, religion is just as acceptable as any other source to prompt positive thinking.
N.B. I’m willing to further discuss the issue of inmates’ religiousness only inasmuch as it is related to the topic of religion working as the best source of positive thinking.
Your remark raises the two following questions, in my opinion: the question of lies and that of good governance.
- Lies is an intricate issue.
With no acceptable absolute truth, everything can be a lie. A person’s view on reality can be regarded as a lie by his peers because it is a subjective construct and more or less contravenes to other people’s views. Moreover, many beliefs do not originate in reality or rational argumentation – instead they’re purely emotional and lack any factual foundation. Any propositions that are built on such beliefs can be considered lies too. Thus, a large proportion of any person’s discourse and mass media content is a sort of lie due to bias, omissions, absence of factual information, etc.
Plus, white lies are not incriminated in the Western world – quite on the contrary. And any lie that can save a life or help somebody boost his confidence and chance of success is encouraged.
- Good governance is about both material and immaterial things.
A good government will not only make sure that people are doing well in terms of wealth but also focus on immaterial issues such as education, lawfulness, equality of opportunity, solidarity, etc. A good government’s goal is that citizens are law-abiding people whose training and confidence allows them to lead successful lives both as separate individuals and society.
Where did you learn American history? People came over here for many reasons-profit, religions, slavery, escaping their sordid past and an untold number of others, and I don’t think religion can claim to be the ultimate source of positive thinking in this country-there are more religious countries out there that aren’t doing a tenth as well.
Nowhere special. I have frequented the same places where everybody else goes.
No, my remark was about the beginning of the American colonies, a moment associated with the Pilgrims. The Puritan colonization of New England was an attempt to establish the New Jerusalem, a notion that had been inspired by the passages in Revelation on this issue and would become the foundation of American nationalism. Among the ideas that Manifest Destiny originated in was the conviction that Americans were divinely elected to control North America.
It is possible that religion can be the ultimate source of positive thinking across the world, not just in the USA. The Pilgrim Fathers’ disproportionate confidence in their attempt to build a New Jerusalem is just an example of how successful religion can be in prompting the type of positive thinking that makes visions become reality. Don’t you find it interesting, though, that the USA is the only affluent nation in which religion plays an important role?
The “pilgrim” colony at Plymouth Rock was only one of many at that time-there was plenty of other colonizations from other countries such as France, Spain, the Netherlands etc., so I don’t think the straight-line from “Puritan Founding of America” to “Manifest Destiny” to “American Greatness” is really there. I think you give those “pilgrims” just a bit too much credit.
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Of course not. It’s more like 95%.
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No. You can think positively and do good things without believing in God. You can think (and act) very negatively while being quite religious. See answer #1.
That’s a definition of religion I’ve never before encountered, then, than excludes people who commit sins as having ever been religious. Certainly Christianity, the most common religion in America’s prisons, doesn’t hold that view. Is there a particular religion you are thinking of that does?
It’s unclear from the abstract what behaviors they are talking about.
Er, are you not arguing that religiousness precludes violence, since you’re arguing that criminals, some of whom are violent, aren’t really religious?
The definition of “lie” I’m familiar with is “to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive”. A genuine but mistaken opinion on the aspects of reality does not qualify.
See above.
This varies, based on the nature of the lie and the individuals concerned. Some, myself included, believe that the truth has an innate value and that lying is never moral.
And if I may refer back to an earlier statement of yours:
You just described the just-world fallacy, which is, in my opinion, one of the two or three most harmful ideas extant in the world today. Telling people that there’s a divine plan and everything is working out as per God’s will has very negative real-world consequences.
Education, rule of law, and equal opportunity are material things. Solidarity isn’t, but government attempts at solidarity often means demonizing a minority.
Ultimate as in “final”? Plainly not, as irreligious people are demonstrably capable of positive thinking.
No, not final. I mean the best or the most effective.
The OP mentions a psychology researcher whose work shows that people who make use of positive thinking have better chances to envision opportunities and open their minds up to options and the way to do this is to focus on the pleasant aspects of life while blocking the dark reality.
I tend to agree with Barbara Fredrickson’s findings. Even if I didn’t, I would lack the knowledge to prove her wrong. Yet I’ve long noticed that positive thinking is usually based on a false perception of reality, which emphasizes the good to the detriment of the bad. Although this mechanism of building positive thinking can be enacted on every occasion one needs a boost of self-assurance, I have the hunch that evolutionarily groups of humanoids and, more recently, homo sapiens were able to build a social system of beliefs and practices that gave every individual member a general sense of safety, confidence and élan while dealing the hardships of survival, settlement, re-settlement, inter and intra-species competition, etc.
Although people benefit from the advances of science and technology, they are generally unfamiliar with the knowledge behind it and its logical consequences. My opinion is that the situation will not ameliorate in the future and people will always prefer the narrative knowledge to the scientific one, which leaves us with the conclusion that for the average person the best or most effective way to build positive thinking will always be religion.
This is what I think at the moment, but it’s just an opinion and I want to test it here against other people’s well thought out views.
Lying is a common practice and lies are quite ubiquitous. Just like you (and ironically enough the biblical text itself), I’m not a supporter of lying, but we live in an ocean of lies. It happens everywhere, all the time. For a thousand reasons and in a thousand different ways. A crusade against lies would be a quixotic endeavor.
A crusade against lies may harm the crusader himself. If a lie is an untrue statement made with the intent to delude, the crusader will have great difficulty in proving intent, which will lead to social stigma on this type of crusade.
A crusade against lies may harm everyone. Telling white lies is encouraged in a wide range of situations, and giving up this practice may lead to stress and dysfunctions at individual and social levels. Moreover, psychology experts believe that turning a blind eye to certain aspects of life can endow people with positive thinking whereas accepting to be flooded with negative information leads to apathy and pessimism.
I haven’t changed my stance on lies. I’m just saying that fighting lies seems to me futile and impractical. Especially inconsequential lies or lies meant to prompt something good, such as positive thinking.
It’s possible. More likely, it varies by person. We know there are biological factors that contribute to religiosity, factors which vary by person. Certainly for me, religion isn’t and never has been a comfort, were any religion I’m aware of to be proven true, I’d be horrified.
I see that the original paper describes foundational methods for building positive thinking, and I see that religious belief isn’t among them. Indeed, none of them reduce down to merely “believe in x”. They are, instead, pro-active techniques (meditation, writing, play).
Further, as I mentioned before, any benefit from religion vs. other methods must be measured against the detrimental effects of religion, such as the just-world fallacy.
I don’t have the time or energy for a crusade, but I can make moral choices in my own life.
:rolleyes::dubious:
I’ve seen studies showing that optimistic people who are relatively poor are happier than pessimistic people who are rich.
As for religion, I agree with those who say it is genetic to a certain extent, but I also think it is orthogonal to optimism and pessimism.