This just appears to be an appeal to tradition writ large.
The trope invoked by Boyo Jim is nothing new. Religions adapt according to their circumstance, which is why they’ve survived so many societies. Would the Christianity practiced by a Southern Baptist be recognisable by Christ?
You’ve gotten your chronology a little confused too… The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union had its inception when Bertrand Russell was one. Prohibition, admittedly, came into force after he’d begun writing, but I doubt it was a reaction to any of his writings. His most loathed pronouncements were on masturbation, promiscuity and naturism from what I can recall.
In a way, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was founded far too late, considering that they were incapable of stopping Jefferson from writing the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom or Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”.
I didn’t get my chronology confused. These things don’t grow up overnight. They start…pretty much all the time…and get traction or not depending on overall social conditions. And it always takes awhile for it to build up. The present atheist/progressive movement started in the '60s and only now is religion beginning to react very strongly.
Russell certainly wasn’t the cause of prohibition. He was one voice among many in a movement, which led to a backlash, which led to prohibition.
And that’s a nit anyway. My basic point was and remains that religion appears to satisfy a very fundamental human need. That being the case, no one will ever successfully oppose it, and it is enormously foolish and reckless to try. Far better to work to keep it shackled and in its place. Far better to acknowledge that it does have a place, and that place is an important place. And to do this…the very last thing you want to do is poke with a stick.
Religion bashers are doing enormous damage, and by the time that they realize that it will be far, far too late.
There is a book, Pandora’s Planet by Christopher Anvil, that is a very good read. It is a science fiction novel with a lot of humor in it and an interesting story.
It also contains a metaphor as a major component of the story, and that metaphor is about religion. It is well worth reading. And considering.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that religion has ebbed almost completely in some countries.
Religion is not necessary and satisfies a fundamental human need in the same way chocolate does - you need to eat something, but it doesn’t have to be chocolate; it could instead be something with actual nutritional value. The human mind has a marked predelication towards religion, but that’s not because religion has an evolutionary advantage; it merely benefits from traits that are (or were)advantagous, like pattern matching, anthromorphisation, group formation, a desire to understand the world, and the tendency to search for ways to impact and control the world. Religion meshes with these human traits - sometimes by providing easy but poor solutions where better ones are available. This doesn’t make religion a good or necessary thing.
And you speak of (american) religion as one might speak of a tyranny that is already in place - as long as everybody cowers and stays in line no villages will be razed. Regardless, by your own description it’s already too late; the evil monster is on the move. Lying down and taking it won’t stop it now.
There are places where religion has been suppressed for some period of time, but no place where it has been eliminated, and it always comes back.
I am aware of no place where religion has “ebbed” where that means that, in general, all or almost all of the people have turned away from religion. Perhaps you could enlighten me.
If this statement were true, religion would certainly not be the nearly universal phenomenon that it quite obviously is and apparently always has been. At different times, it has played a greater or a lesser role in society, but it has always been present.
Religion DOES mesh with those traits. Certainly. But if that were all it did and all it was, it wouldn’t be nearly as durable as it has proven to be; there are other ways to accomplish the same thing, if facilitating those traits is the goal.
It is a question I have pondered quite a bit. “What, fundamentally, is our apparent need for religion, or faith (label it as you choose), telling us about ourselves? Is it - could it be - that it is telling us something about our universe?”
And, I don’t have an answer, though I do have some ideas which I can’t support except in the most tenuous fashion.
I merely observe the fact that religion is a universal phenomenon encompassing all societies and all times of which I am aware. This must mean it is fundamental to the human condition, and it also must mean that it provides survival value. Why it is fundamental…we can debate that and we need to ultimately understand that. But that it is fundamental is really hard do dispute.
Your characterization is fundamentally an inaccurate representation of what I said, and reflects your biases, not mine.
I have stated and reiterate that religion, shackled as we have shackled it in this society, provides benefit to the society. Religion unshackled invariably turns evil. Look at the Middle East today, or Europe a thousand years ago.
I’ve also said that baiting the religious or attempting to suppress them - which is clearly underway in this society today - is obscenely dangerous and ultimately will fail.
I don’t understand the logic anyway, unless it is the logic of intolerance, the logic that “I am superior to you because my beliefs are better than yours” - which is the logic that Religion Unchained ALWAYS makes, and the logic that I hear over and over and over from the atheist community.
I never suggest that anyone “cower”. I do suggest that everyone “accept”. Accept the beliefs of those with whom you don’t agree; you can’t change their minds, it is incredibly arrogant to try, and your insistence is going to get you crushed. And why do you care anyway?
I make the same argument with the religious: “accept” because you can’t “change”. But, as a practical matter, they CAN change. They can FORCE change, in their huge numbers and their vast determination. if you oppose them, they can burn you at the stake. Or break you on the rack. Or put your head in a nutcracker and squeeze it until your teeth crush then your skull bursts. Or crucify you. Or simply behead you. They’ve done it before.
“Accepting” is what this nation was founded on. It has worked well for us. To the extent that this nation loses its willingness to accept, this nation loses its ability to function.
And no one can question that Religion in America IS rising. Is it too late? I think it is. Not because the situation couldn’t be settled down, even now, but because the situation won’t be settled down, because the people who are stirring the pot are going to continue to stir it until the rest of the population shoves them into the pot, slams the lid, and turns the heat on high.
Rick Santorum just dropped out of the race for president. But look at him. Look how far he got, how much support he had and has. Do you want him for President???
People criticized Bush the Younger for his religious beliefs, but he was never overt about it when functioning as President, and his administration treated religion correctly. Santorum would bring the Bible into the Constitution.
The world has changed a lot. Jimmy Carter was an overtly religious man who never tried to conceal it. He was criticized for it, but not heavily. His faith informed his personal decisions and without doubt affected his governing because it impacted his sense of right and wrong. But he never tried to bring religion into the government and always respected the constitution. He was a horrible president, but not because he was religious.
Jimmy Carter was religious but it was never an issue of any significance to the electorate who voted him in, and he kept his religion in its place when he was President of the country. Everyone expected him to do that, and he did.
Compare that to Santorum. Or Romney, for that matter, who - whether he wants to or not - is being forced to profess his religion.
Carter came into office in a time when religion was accepted. Santorum is a response to the fact that religion is under attack.
Santorum didn’t make it. This time. In Carter’s time, Santorum would never have gotten any traction at all.
Next time? It might be Santorum all the way. Then watch out.
Then you were attacking a strawman. The fact that religion remains says nothing of the fact that religions do eventually wither and die (which was Boyo Jim’s point), or at least no longer exert any noticable influence over humanity as we know it. You may as well lambast Christianity for deposing the various pagan religions - surely they should have known that it’s not wise to poke the cult of Athena with a stick?
I really don’t know how to go about disproving your thesis that any time religion exerts an undue influence on society it’s because secularism has become too strong. Breivik was merely the result of multiculturalism. The Ku Klux Klan and the Know Nothing party a result of Northern aggression.
In fact, abolition was a massive challenge to the religious freedom of Southern slaveowners.
This is a borderline appeal to tradition, appeal to popularity and naturalistic fallacy. If it has a criterion for disproof, it should be met for Sweden: lowest rates of Church attendance and among the highest quality of life indicators (thus survival value is inversely correlated with religion, but the causal factor is probably either levels of education or provision for the needy by the state rather than parish).
Argumentum in terrorem. Also, why do you think Carter was a terrible president?
I hear that in many first world countries christianity, at least, has evaporated as a political force and few people feel religion to be an influential presence.
Admittedly, I haven’t been there; also admittedly there are apparently concerns that the muslims are immigrating too much in some of these places. But still.
If this statement were true, chocolate would certainly not be the nearly universal phenomenon that it quite obviously is and apparently always has been. At different times, it has played a greater or a lesser role in society, but it has always been present.
Sorry, dude. Persistence doesn’t equal necessity.
You have an incorrect understanding of how natural selection works - it does not select for the optimal state, and it does not prevent sub-optimal conditions from developing or persisting. It merely weeds out conditions that tend to reduce reproduction. It also should be noted that just because something survives it doesn’t mean it’s good for humans - aids is going like gangbusters but is hardly a boon to humanity.
Religion does not discourage reproduction (usually), so it wouldn’t be selected against. And, as I noted, its survival is encouraged by what amounts to bugs in the system - it’s genuinely beneficial to see and recognize life and intention in the animals that may be stalking you; it is not beneficial to see intention in lightning and recognize faces in your toast. (But such mistakes don’t usually kill you, so they’re not selected against.) It’s genuinely beneficial to be able to recognize and react to the behaviors of humans around you, but it’s not so helpful to anthromorphise luck and weather into a diety. It’s beneficial to seek out and remember explanations for things - but if anything untrue (but not immediately fatal) gets into our heads it can stick regardless of merit. It’s genuinely beneficial to be wired to notice and remember unusual events more than commonplace ones, but confirmation bias and the ‘van on the corner’ syndrome are unavoidable deleterious side effects of that - though again, not enough to counteract the main positive benefits.
In addition to these psychological reasons that we as humans are prone to getting mired in religion, there is also the issue that many religions have a systemic tendency to persist and propogate themselves quite aggressively. The religion teaches parents to teach their children the religion. Some actively prosteletize. Some aggressively suppress or kill dissenters or other threats. Many of them arrange for the leaders of the religion to receive community support, encouraging others to seek the easy alternative to harder jobs, and that’s ignoring the ones that recieve social or financial priviledges too. Most promise great rewards for following. Any of these properties would encourage a religion to expand and persist, regardless of whether the religion is beneficial to society as a whole.
And, as long as I’m hammering nails into your argument’s coffin, note that assuming longevity=positive would also prove that the following things are positive and necessary to humanity:
-theft
-murder
-prostitution
-lying
-pyromania
-dictatorship
Because, after all, all these things have been going on since time immemorial too. Are they all purposeful or valuable?
Are you serious? This is as clear a declaration that religion is a tyrannical evil that we should cower and hide from as I can imagine. If you wanted to prove my summary of your statements correct you couldn’t have done a better job.
The only thing you seem to disagree with me upon is wether we should bow our heads before the rising tide of horrific evil. I say no, you say yes. It’s a matter of opinion I suppose, but my personal standards discourage cowering - I’m more of a ‘blaze of glory’ kind of guy.
I’m from a European country (namely England, where religion still has a noticeable impact on policy) where there are concerns about Muslims (but the concerns tend to be focused on emigration, rather than that they’re leaving in droves). Such concerns seem unwarranted to me given that democratic institutions remain in place. I don’t support a policy of appeasement as outlined by Bemused, either.