Religion has Never Bettered the World

Great Debates
101

Right, but the point I was making that you seem to have lost in the discussion is that while these things are not necessarily required to have a religious basis, they just aren’t replaced in our culture. People do without them rather than finding a different outlet for the same needs. That’s one of the main reasons religion cannot be replaced in our culture yet, because some people really do want these things and there are not sufficient competing paradigms that provide these services.

Do your opinions differ significantly from the liberal party line? You believe in gay marriage, you’re pro-choice, etc… etc… right?

Where we disagree is in how much you think this is a result of religion. I think it’s a result of people getting together in groups and sharing a cognitive bias. The religious nature of the organization doesn’t make it any different. You’re complaining about mob mentality (as far as I can tell) but trying to supply some sort of deeper religious significance. Many Christians for instance would be more than happy to remove, “In God We Trust”, from our money.

Well in theory that does happen, just as with any other non-profit. You’re talking about a problem with enforcement more than anything.

Perhaps, but Christianity within it’s teachings actually has warnings against doing these things. That is why I think it’s about group dynamics and the particular grouping isn’t that terribly relevant. You think if we had less Christianity that this would be less of a problem. I think if the people doing these things paid more attention to their own religion they’d do it less.

The need that is being fulfilled ultimately is the need for tribe. If it’s not a church, it’s a gang, if it’s not a gang it’s a fraternity, if it’s not a fraternity it’s a corporation. Every social grouping of people seeks to make reality conform with their own desires in order to increase their relative power in society. By singling out religious folk in this, I think you’re missing the point, a common error that I see on the straight dope.

I no more want Christian Fundamentalist pseudo-Theocracy than I want a completely systemic Secular Liberal dominated society.

102

There’s no way to be certain. Just, looking at history, places of different religions were largely all consistent. Not all religions had a moral code, and quite often the moral code came from philosophy rather than religion. You can’t say that the Romans were kinder or eviler than Chinese or Navajo or any other group.

It’s a much easier argument to make, from looking back on 3000+ years of human civilization that how kindly and charitable people were was independent of religion. Even within a single religion, you’ll have everything from Stone-the-Infidels-to-Death group over in country A and Oh-no-it’s-Evil-to-Naysay-another-Persons-Beliefs nansy pansies over in country B, and both of them preaching and praying to the same deit(y/ies).

The interpretation of a religion is synergistic with the local culture. Sometimes it leads, sometimes it follows. But it’s really a chaosian framework under which this occurs.

It is entirely possible for a secular US tracking through the 18th to 21st centuries would have ended up as a bunch of libertarian Let-'Em-Dies, but it’s just as likely to have been even more charity-centric than it is right now. Look at Europe and you’ll notice that the countries with the highest rates of atheism and agnosticism are the ones which have the greatest safety nets in place.

And as Sampiro noted, it was the Quakers who spearheaded ending slavery. Quakerism is non-doctrinal sect of Christianity which encourages people to take nothing in the Bible as a rule nor suggestion, and rather use logic and common sense to figure out the right answer to morality. It was more doctrinal Christians who supported slavery.

103

It’s my personal hope that this will change in my lifetime. In any case, I’ve no problem with religious people performing benign acts. My concern is that the trend, at least in the western democracies, toward separating religion and political power may be slowed or even reversed.

If you want to list a bunch of issues, I’m sure I could write a paragraph summarizing my stance on each, but since I don’t know how you’re defining “the liberal party line”, I can’t answer this question.

Well, sports clubs and such also consist of groups of people who share a cognitive bias. I think it’s safe to assume that any voluntary organization has at least some consistency on some issues in the attitudes and beliefs of its membership.

This is not an accurate description of what I’m doing. Please restate it for clarity.

I’m sure they would, and I’m also sure that it’s never been more than a loudmouthed minority who resists any attempt to remove the phrase. Unfortunately, that minority gets far more slack on the issue than they deserve.

You should probably stop using “You think…” and similar phrases because all indications are that you’re frequently wrong. I have no particular reason to focus on Christianity except that it is the largest religion in the western democracies and thus the biggest religious threat to those democracies.

Besides, it wouldn’t matter if we had more religion or less religion as long as religion was kept out of spheres where it didn’t belong, i.e. the legislative process, science classes, etc.

Well, it’s inevitable, I guess, but if one group’s desire is rule of law with a focus on individual freedom while the other’s is ensuring conformity with God’s will, I’m more inclined to trust the former, though I’ll have to remain vigilant in either case.

You’re not being forced to choose between these extremes, though I’ll point out that if you wanted to live as a Christian Fundamentalist, you could do so more safely in the latter society than you could in the former. Under a Christian Fundamentalist pseudo-Theocracy, a government elder could call you a heretic at any time. With no firm standards in place, replaced as they were by attempts to interpret God’s will and holy scripture, how would you prove him wrong? That you might agree with 99.9% of the elder’s views is no protection.

104

I want to know how come I never meet these liberal feel-good secular thoughtful introspective love-thy-neighbor Christians in real life. I’m only assured on the Straight Dope that they’re the majority. I’ve experienced nothing in the real world to support this. Evangelicals alone in the United States were over 80 million a couple years ago. That doesn’t include all the other conservative Christians.

105

I think the theory is that the more liberal feel-good secular thoughtful introspective love-thy-neighbor a Christian is, the less they advertise that they’re a Christian. Being a Christian is something that needs to be advertised at some level to be known, so maybe some of those liberals you know (or rather, think you know) are really stealth theists.

That said, If I’ve met any of these people, I don’t know it either. (All the ones I know fail the ‘liberal’ test on the basis of overt social conservatism. But I will hasten to say, I don’t know all Christians.)

106

Move to a big city.

107

Like Salt Lake City? :stuck_out_tongue:

108

I guess every other city is a podunk shithole when you live in almighty NYC, but Phoenix is the 5th largest city in the United States, you know.

109

You been to Salt Lake City? It’s a lot more liberal than you might realize.

My wife is from Phoenix, but I am certain there are plenty of people in Phoenix who do not wear their religion on their sleeve. But as far as it goes Phoenix is the least cosmopolitan big city I’ve ever been to.

110

But we need to be able to say that that philosophy (and philosophisers) were unaffected by religion or religious people when coming up with those codes - with that, too, there’s no way to be certain.

True, you’ll find those extremes. But we need to know whether they have them to the same extent - I mean, if we have one culture where 5 people are perfect saints, and 5 people who are horrible bastards, and one bastard converts to a saint, then we still have a culture which goes to those two extremes - but it’s still a more kindly and charitable place. You have to show precisely what you’ve claimed - that the ratio of kindly to non-kindly people is independent of religion, and just saying that there are extremes in both groups doesn’t do that by itself.

But these are still countries which have been hugely affected by religion throughout their history. You can’t look at nations today and act as though they’ve newly sprung into existence; they have roots, and in a lot of cases those roots are religious. How do we know that those greatest safety nets are not a result of atheism affected by those religions, and not atheism in a vacuum?

Too, safety nets are only one viewpoint as to what entails kindliness and charitableness. Many people who are considerably against such things are themselves charitable and kindly still of their own accord. Looking at such things alone is far too narrow.

Perhaps in America; i’m afraid i’m not as well-versed in American history as you or Sampiro. But not necessarily elsewhere; the big figure i’d pick out of the British anti-slavery movement was Wilberforce, a very orthodox Anglican. And this still has the same problem of roots.

111

Like I said, that’s all certainly possible. Atheists are perfectly moral beasts, though generally still within a subset of whatever the prevailing morality of the culture is, and that will be descended from older doctrines and leaders, some of which will likely be religious.

But there are reasons to think that things wouldn’t be different otherwise.

Firstly, originally humanity started without religion. All of the original moral codes came from either humanity or the first deities (who no longer are worshipped). One can circumise that particular moralities survived based on an evolutionary basis. Things that were particularly counterproductive would get dropped, and things which provided a stable, non-self imploding way of life continued on. Now, that’s assuming that cultural moralities do have a quantitative effect. If it does have a measurable effect, evolutionary factors will apply. If, on the other hand, you say that cultural moralities are ignored and people do as people do, then well then that answers that. So in either case, you’re going to see a consistent result over the long term. A non-religion based morality will prosper based on its ability to keep the group behaving in a successful enough way for the group to continue on and pass those values on, just the same as a religion based morality would.

Secondly, supposing that any one moral belief is descended from a particular source, then the beliefs we are following are an amalgamation of theachings from a large variety of gods from all around the world. Who chose to follow those religions? Humans. If people didn’t believe that there was value there, they wouldn’t have wasted time on it. Humans have carried on the beliefs that they found to match what they thought was a good way to do things.

Thirdly, game theory and basic critical thinking lead to the advantages of basic morality. If everyone is a bastard to everyone, then your life sucks. If everyone is kind to everyone, you life is good. However, in a world of scarcity, not everyone can get a slice of pie, so a system of rules that are a compromise need to be enacted. There’s never been a human society that was anarchic. If you set three people on an island, they’ll form into a hierarchy and set up rules and laws. This is true of all pack animals, from which we know ourselves to be descended, and it’s doubtful that we were religious before we could talk.

112

“Move to a big city”
“I live in a big city”
“That doesn’t count”

113

It has to be the right kind of city.
Some kinda liberal city or something.

114

The polio vaccine was created on the basis of ignoring Christian values. The modern economy relies on the creation of wealth via loaning. Before usury (charging interest to ones own people) was adopted in Europe, people didn’t loan money because there was no reason to. If Jesus had taught that loans were good and if the Catholic church hadn’t banned paper production in 1100, the polio vaccine could well have been invented 400 years earlier. Instead Jesus told us that usurers burn in Hell for eternity.

It certainly was Christians, in majority, who created the modern world (which includes the polio vaccine). But they did it in spite of their religion, not because of it. The modern world has bettered the life for everyone by all measures, but that process didn’t start until ~1500 years after Jesus died. It’s rather hard to prove causality with that sort of delay.

115

It’s my opinion that a fair amount of the content and “morality” of religion was the result of ‘package deals’, and which weren’t necessarily sold on the basis of any morality. For example, I don’t think that the populace adopted tithing because it was an evolutionary advantageous meme for the populace. I think they adopted it because they like the idea of getting in good with heaven, and it made a certain amount of sense to be able to buy that kind of favor.

As it happens, I think that a huge slice of religious tradition, from official worship days to prayer to communal support of the clergy are evolutionarily detrimental to the populace. (Great for the religion though.) And I think that without a religion packaging up these bitter pills alongside promises of salvation, godly favor, divine protection, or improved fate, they would never have sold. And thus, I don’t think you can reasonably argue that the moral landscape would be the same without religion.

It’s my understanding that a lot of religion persists based on indoctrination of children and/or threats of divine wrath. These motivations would seem inherently likely to bypass the proposed process of people casually dismissing beliefs they didn’t find profitable.

I can’t really comment on this because I don’t see what it has to do with religion. Yes, people tend away from anarchy; anarchy is antithetical to survival in an environment of scarcity. But this means only that rules will be formed, not that the rules that arise from religions forming are the same as the rules a secular society will form.

The actual correlations are, I believe:

  1. In a given region, the cities have a more liberal populace than the countryside.
  2. Some regions are more liberal than others - the liberaler ones are more liberal.
  3. The biggest big cities that everyone thinks of when they think of when they hear “big city” in the US are all in liberal regions.

3 is almost certainly a bigger factor in this than 1 - I live in the biggest city in Idaho (which isn’t saying much), and we’re damned conservative. So while 1 is certainly true, and if you want to find liberal environs in a hurry your best bet is to head for the nearest concrete jungle, but if you really want to find liberals, particularly liberal christians, it may behoove you to be a little more selective regarding which big city you visit.

116

The Greeks invented many interesting things, but they had no motive to use it without a market economy. And since each inventor was largely going off into his corner and doing his own thing, rather than trading papers around telling other people why they were wrong, the scientific method wasn’t invented. Hence you got things like the sustained belief that heavier objects fell faster, holding for no greater reason than that no one could be bothered to actually run tests.

I’m focussing on improvements to the health, kindness, and happiness of mankind. That these happen in parallel to material gain is almost certainly not accidental, but that’s beside the point. If there were deities running the world, and deities are supposed to improve the health, kindness, and happiness of mankind, they had thousands of years in which to do it. During that time period, lots of different gods and moralities had their chance, but the output was the same regardless of which you chose.

There is more art and literature being produced now than at any other time in history, per capita.

117

Hence why it is one point of three.

118

He literally just said “move to a big city.” Full stop. It’s only a few posts up . . .

119

Most big cities have stadiums that host concerts and other events as well as the local sports teams.

Hence, it must have goalposts that move.

120

I don’t thank a god of any kind upon awaking. And my standard response is “Terrific; if I were any better, I’d be illegal.”

One does not need religion to be happy. Quite the opposite, actually.