Religion: Order or Chaos??

Great Debates
1

Has religion throughout the 6000+ years of recorded history created more order or chaos in our world??

This is not a debate as to whether anything supernatural exists or not…whether Jehovah/Yahweh/Allah is real, or whether Abraham/Jesus/Mohammed were real historical figures or actually supernatural avatars for an unseen presence.

And I certainly concede to religion causing untold human suffering/deaths…

BUT…

If man had not come up with these belief systems (and the laws/guidelines for adhereing to) what would our civilization be like today?

I think it was in Star Trek: TNG there was the allusion to religion being wiped out centuries before which caused all of the near-paradise scenarios for people of the Federation. Would we have naturally advanced to such a state long before now (minus the technolgy) in the absense of religion?

Or would I be the head of my particular family/clan ecking out a living by warring/stealing from my neighbors the Smith’s/Brown’s/Johnson’s of the world?

Did religion provide enough ‘cohesion’ between people to allow the technological advancement we enjoy in the West?

If this has been done before, my apologies.

And these forums need better selection of smilies :):p:cool:

2

Given the diversity of religious viewpoints, I don’t think a simple answer is possible.

Couple of thoughts:

Critics of religion often suggest it is a means of social control (“the opium of the people”). That would suggest that they see it as bringing order, rather than chaos. (They may not approve of the particular order which it brings, of course, but that’s another matter.) That seems to me right; most religions tend to promote the acceptance of a common ethical code, which is a necessary condition for social order. Of course, a common ethical code is possible without religion, but I don’t see that it’s necessarily inevitable, and certainly not that there is any reason to think that a sustainable code is more likely to be developed and commonly accepted in the absence of religion.

As regards scientific advances, I see no reason at all to think that religion necessarily impedes them. You’d have to consider the impact of specific religious beliefs or standpoints. Judeo/Christian/Islamic religions generally assert that the world is real, the world is intelligible, the world is ordered and the world is worth studying, all of which beliefs are necessary in order to sustain the natural sciences. Other religions, by contrast, may teach that the world is illusory, or unimportant, and you would expect the natural sciences to flourish less, or not at all, in cultures formed by those beliefs. It does seem to me that it is the cultures formed and dominated by Judeo/Christian/Islamic religious views which have also achieved the most in terms of scientific and technological development.

Finally, the big unknown: if, instead of religious belief systems we had non-religious belief systems to shape our values, attitudes, ethics, etc, would those non-religious systems be better or worse at producing order than the religious ones that, by and large, we have actually had? Well, that obviously depends on what those non-religious belief systems were, and what values, attitudes, ethics etc they fostered.

3

Religion has been used as a form of social control but I don’t say this to criticize it. Laws passed by governments are a form of social control but most of us don’t see that as a bad thing. From the 10 Commandments we’ve got things like don’t steal, don’t covet wives or property(leads to stealing or ill feelings for others), and don’t murder. These seem to me to be a good way to ensure one has a cohesive society that functions. If Shem the baker comes over to my house, fucks my wife, and eats that ham sandwich I’ve been saving for the big game on Sabbath it’s entirely possible that the community will soon be without a baker. So it’s good to have rules against this kind of thing for the cohesiveness of society.

Granted, a religious institution isn’t the only way to exert social control. However, I’d have to say that for the most part it represents order rather than chaos. I’d say the same thing about most types of governments whether I liked them or not.

4

There’s no meaningful difference between order and chaos in the sense the OP is using them, it’s just an interpretation. If a religion promotes social cohesion and also leads to wars and factionalism, is it causing order or chaos?

People who aren’t religious are able to use other beliefs for the same purpose, because I think that aside from religion, people usually gravitate toward others with similar beliefs. I’m not really sure how a society would have developed without religion, not because religion is necessary for social cohesion but because I’m not sure how people would begin to interpret the world without religion or something that does the same thing. If we assume people gave up on religious views entirely I still think they’d behave in some of the same ways.

There are societies that lack Western technology and still have plenty of religion. Perhaps more than they can use. :stuck_out_tongue:

While it doesn’t invalidate the social control criticism, I am pretty sure this is not what Marx’s quote means.

5

I would say that religion has provided order in the past, but no longer does so in many or most parts of the world.

Religion, like tyranny, is a mediocre ordering mechanism - it can take an absolutely chaotic system and bring a degree of order by making contrary behavior anathema and encouraging a certain set of communal cooperative activities. On the upside, this can bring cohesion to a community through homogonization and mutual participation; on the downside, this makes enemies of nonconformists and causes strife with them. The latter being a relevent issue the moment more than one religion comes on the block.

So, back in prehistoric times, religion was probably an ordering device - the societies were all going to be basically tyrannies anyway, and were all going to be attacking their neighbors at every opportunity anyway, so the tendency of religion to ostracize nonconformists wasn’t going to make the situation discernibly worse, which would its positive ordering effects as the only relevent effects.

Then, as time passed, religion became the vehicle for the creation of functioning legal systems - it might even be arguable that religion taught us how to have legal systems that were based on codified rules rather than, say, spontaneous edicts from the chieftan. (I couldn’t say for sure; IANAnAnthropologist.) In this regard religion would certainly be an ordering force…as it simultaneously taught us about a better ordering system than it, specifically organized civil government with codified legal systems.

As every modern nation has gradually drifted away from divine right of kings towards indisputably better government systems that have some form of democratic representation at their base, though, religion has been supplanted as the best system for maintaining order, and now rather than being most visible for its ordering aspects, it is now most visible for its divisive aspects. Rather than guiding us to make peace with our brothers (a role covered by cops now), religion now serves only as a font of war. Nobody could reasonably say that religion is a force for peace in the middle east right now. Or in europe. Or the states. In all these places, religion cannot make things better than civil law does, because even in the cases where it is having a cohesive effect it is redundant. The only notable effects it has in these places are the divisiveness and chaos it inspires.

So yeah. Religion is an excellent way to get from “REALLY chaotic” to “somewhat ordered”, but from there on up it resists global peace and order. It’s like a post with a bungee cord attached to it - while we’re beneath it’s natural level it pulls us up, but after that it pulls us back.
And regarding its effects on technology and science, I’d say it’s pretty clear that its effects on science are somewhat similar to its effects on order - religion gave us the knack for noticing things happening in nature and attributing it to consistent causes (any causes), and it brought us sufficient social order to be able to have monks sitting on their butts all day thinking and philosophising and possibly experimenting. But at that point you pass the post and religion starts pulling you back, figthing every discovery that appears not to support it or worse, to dispute it.

6

That’s not what that phrase means.

I think religion has enabled a kind of order throughout history, sure. Where the OP errs is in the implication that a rigid system is probably more beneficial, or that the opposite of religious order is anarchy rather than some other ideological order, like numerology or feng shui. Or that an ordered system is actually responsible for our present level of development rather than a hinderance.

Without religion, I might already have my flying car, damn it!

7

IMHO religion, which is not spirituality and not a personal relationship with God through Jesus, is a attempt at making order out of chaos.

8

While Karl Marx’s prose is not always characterised by perfect clarity, I think that is what he meant by the phrase.

“Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”

As I read this, he is saying that religion functions as a psychological mechanism which enables the suffering masses to put up with their suffering, rather than refusing to put up with it and rising up against it. It therefore sustains an unjust social order.

9

Ironically, some religious people don’t fully understand the concepts of chaos and order, whence anti-evolution arguments that incorrectly apply the laws of thermodynamics.