religion

Factual Questions
61

David B. wrote:

The theory goes that since this forces married couples to physically separate from one another for approximately half of every month (because they’re not allowed to resume until a week after the woman has stopped bleeding), it forces them to develop means on intimate communication other than physical, thereby instilling a deeper level of love into the marriage. In addition, the periodic breaks (no pun intended) make the monthly resumption of sexual relations fresh and new and eagerly anticipated, a feeling that (supposedly) would not exist if the ability (well, permission, at least) to have sex were constant.

Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@schicktech.com

62

Revtim wrote:

Just to answer the pork example (since that’s the one you’re using): if this is the case, then why a blanket prohibition on any land animal that does not both possess split hooves and chew its cud, a broad category which just happens to include the pig? Did the ancient Hebrews examine the edibility of every single animal and conclude that these were the healthiest (maybe Moses had a nice private zoo which included pandas, kangaroos and armadillos)? Did they notice that pig was bad and therefore created a category for excluding them? Odd category to create.

Or did they institute laws like that due to some sort of religious significance, and by happy chance, they came down with fewer diseases than pork-eaters are afflicted by?

Just to give one other example from what I described above: the law to not plow or sow every seventh year. Let’s take your theory, that they realized that farmers who rest on such a cycle have better long-term crops than those who continually work their fields. So they instituted a law that the fields should lie fallow every seven years. What kind of idiot king would have everyone rest their fields on the same year, and have no one growing food for an entire year (and at Jubilee time, two years)? It would make more sense to either divide the land into regions, and each region would have its cyclical rest year so that other regions would help feed it; or to have farmers have half their land lay fallow one year and half the next, or something like that. The law, as described, makes zero sense…unless they felt there was a religious significance to those seventh years, therefore telling everyone to not plant and to trust that G-d would provide for them until the eighth-year crops would grow. But as a happy side effect, resting fields turned out to be good for the crops, too.

Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@schicktech.com

63

Chaim, excellent examples!

64

[quote]

Just to answer the pork example (since that’s the one you’re using): if this is the case, then why a blanket prohibition on any land animal that does not both possess split hooves and chew its cud, a broad category which just happens to include the pig? Did the ancient Hebrews examine the edibility of every single animal and conclude that these were the healthiest (maybe Moses had a nice private zoo which included pandas, kangaroos and armadillos)? Did they notice that pig was bad and therefore created a category for excluding them? Odd category to create.

Or did they institute laws like that due to some sort of religious significance, and by happy chance, they came down with fewer diseases than pork-eaters are afflicted by?

[quote]

I’m not very familiar with the laws of Kashrus, or which animals are safer than other to eat. Do animals in this broader category of animals (with split hooves and chew their cud) have a greater risk than others to be dangerous to eat?

If so, then getting back to my original question, people could have noticed that eating these animals caused people to get sick, and institued the law for this non-religious reason.

If there is no greater risk, and just the pig is dangerous, then banning who whole group doesn’t help society as much as just banning the pig. This makes law somewhat faulty, and a law that came from a scientific method (banning only the pig) might have served society better.

Perhaps there are other benificial reasons for banning the whole category.
Whatever reason you can think of for it benefitting society, people could have noticed this and made the for that reason.
Regarding your example of the fields lying fallow, is IS an idiot idea for them to all to do it at once. I have to admit, I’m not sure I see your point. Are you saying that because it’s flawed it couldn’t have come from a secular source? Even non-religious leader make mistakes.

A possible scenario for this is that one piece of land was fallow for a season for whatever reason (owner died, was traveling, was lazy, who knows), then the king noticed the next season when it was growing the crops were better. Being perhaps an idiot, he orders that all fields lay fallow for a season.

My original question was, “has there ever been a religious practice or belief that helped a society, that could not have been started simply to help society, without a religious aspect?” I’m not sure how showing that these laws are flawed argues against the idea that these practices could have from secular sources. It more argues to me that a secular source would have made better ideas.

Like I stated before, the question is somewhat flawed. If there is benefit of a law to society, then people in the society can notice this and use the law, with just the secular reason of it’s benefit to drive that law. No matter what the source is.

65

Revtim:

Darn tootin’ your question is flawed. Every time anyone points out an illogical-seeming (and therefore unlikely to have been devised by the scientific method) law which turns out to have helped society, you can just claim that someone noticed the benefit first and then instituted the law, and if the method of instituting the law was illogical, then the person/being who instituted it must have been a little off. So by your definition, the only laws which could be provably of religious origin would be those which have no visible positive effect on society. But in that case, they don’t fall into the category you described!

The fact is, trichinosis in pork was not scientifically described until very recently…within the last four hundred years, I think. (Religious) Jews have been avoiding the stuff for Biblical reasons (regardless of who you say wrote the Bible) for thousands. Similarly, the benefits of crop rotation were a recent discovery, yet religious Jews who lived in Israel had been doing it for millenia prior to that. And since, if the point of the law was specifically to target pork or to encourage scientifically intelligent land use, the law could have been written much more precisely, it’s unlikely that these were the original reasons. But the benefits are there, and they’re clear.

Now, putting on my Yarmulka and speaking subjectively as an Orthodox adherent of Judaism (something I generally avoid doing on this message board; I try to keep all my comments objective, but here goes): I believe that these laws came from a Divine source, and therefore the precise reasons cannot be completely known to us. We may be able to think of reasons, but in addition to whatever Earthly ideas we may have, there’s bound to be mystical-divine wisdom in them as well. This is my answer if asked “Why ban all non-cud chewers & non-split-hooved animals if the whole point was to prevent pork from causing trichinosis?”. If you, as a non-believer in my religion wish to claim that the law was written wrongly or unintelligently, despite the fact that those who observed it benefited from it (physically as well as spiritually), and you would have done it differently knowing what you know now, you’re welcome to do so. But whoever wrote those laws wrote it while the human world at large was ignorant of what we now know scientifically, and there may very well be more benefits that are hidden in there that we are not yet scientifically privy to. To say that the writer was wrong in some details when He was so obviously far ahead of His time (or just darned lucky) in others is, in my opinion, very shortsighted…whether you believe the writer was Divine (as I do) or whether you believe it was some human genius (or lucky idiot).

Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@schicktech.com

66

John W. Kennedy:

Try this scenario (I’m not saying it’s correct–I don’t know one way or the other): God, being omniscient and able to see all events, past, present, and future, makes sure that the words he tells the Nephites in the Book of Mormon match the future text of the KJV. Since he can SEE the KJV in the future, he knows that there will be people who will not believe that the Book of Mormon is true unless it matches the Bible.

JWK:

Yet that’s the way they were preserved and translated. Again, God, being prescient of this fact, makes sure that the B.o.M. matches the text of the Bible. Just a possible scenario.

JWK:

I believe in truth for its own sake. I also believe unshakeably that the Book of Mormon is true, therefore I’m trying to defend it, as it contains truth. I’m not the best person to be doing so, but no one else seems to be replying to your post, so I am. :slight_smile:

67

I’m curious about the Mormon faith, because frankly it seems quite unlikely to me. Here’s the meager amount I read about this faith (from a skeptical article):

Joseph Smith, while attending school, was obsessed about why there were so many faiths and whether they all can be true, etc. He had a vision in which a angel told him:

  1. Only one religion can be true, and

  2. Moses led the Hebrew tribes to the New World and they became the Indians (Native Americans)

He then founded the Mormon Church, ‘married’ 47 (or 49?) women, allegedly murdered a husband (some were already married) and was hounded by the FBI because of it for years.

The article printed a letter in which he:

  1. Demonstrated his considerable illiteracy, and
  2. Plotted with a ‘wife’ to meet clandestinely, away from her husband

Are these facts correct, and if so why the Hell does anyone believe anything he said?

I sincerely apologize if I am not remembering the article correctly and therefore slandering him more than the original article did.

And, it certainly isn’t intolerance to criticize religion in general or any one specifically, any more than criticizing political systems, parties or individual views. We have the freedom of religion, but not the freedom from the free speech of others. Certainly on this thread the topic implies criticism of religion.

68

Axel Wheeler:

Here are a couple web sites to go to if you want to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth:

The first one is the LDS church’s official site, and the second is a comprehensive site about Mormonism. You can submit questions about Mormonism to the latter site and they will answer them for you.

69

cmkeller,

When I asked my question, I was trying to understand if a society had existed or CAN exist that did not have religious or superstition beliefs. I was wondering the benefits of religion (which even as an atheist I must admit exist) can be replaced by humanistic theories. I wasn’t trying to disprove or put down any existing religion. I hope I hadn’t offended you.

The point I was trying to make can perhaps be simplified as such:

  1. The laws of Kashrus gave Hebrew society the benefit of avoiding trichinosis.
  2. Another society could have gained that particular benefit by avoiding pork because people had noticed that some people get sick after eating it.
  3. Therefore, that particular benefit is not one that could ONLY have been gained via religion. Perhaps the Hebrews did actually get it from the God; that doesn’t change the fact that this benefit could have been gained by secular means.

My question (better phrased) is, are there benefits that ONLY religion can bring to society?

Here’s a possibility: Maybe only religion can satisfy humanity’s curiosity about how the world works, when society is not advanced enough scientifically to explain it via scientific means.

70

==> Axel – Your “information” about the Mormons is very confused. Almost all of it vaguely resembles some genuine fact or other, but is significantly wrong.

==> Snarkberry – God knew that the King James Bible was going to have mistakes in it, so He took special care that the Book of Mormon would match? I’m sorry, but it won’t do.

John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams

71

Revtim said:

This may, indeed, be true for some people. Personally, I find a lot more satisfaction in scientific (real) explanations than in relying on any particular mythology to “explain” that which I cannot understand. I would much rather know that something is unexplained than think it has been explained by something magical. For one thing, if everybody in a society buys the magicla explanation, they may not search for the real answer. Therefore, I have to question whether or not this is a true benefit to society.

“It’s a very dangerous thing to believe in nonsense.” – James Randi

72

Revtim:

Well, that’s certainly phrased better than previously, if this is what you meant to ask.

As for the answer, it probably depends on what you consider a benefit. The spiritual benefits of religion (i.e., the afterlife stuff) are, according to any given religion, only available through religion, but of course, a non-religious person would consider this a delusion, not a benefit. There’s a certain sense of purpose…not merely individual purpose, but communal, shared purpose…which religion seems to give its adherents, although a non-believer, considering the purpose to be a false goal, would question the benefit in that as well.

So to sum up: do religious people feel some benefit from their religions that non-religious people don’t or can’t get due to lack of religion? Definitely. Is this “benefit” subjective or objective? Of necessity, it is subjective.

Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@schicktech.com

73

Yes, indeedy, that is a much clearer question. I suggest the following answer:

The ethical code of a religion, its lists of do’s and don’ts, and its general moral compass, provide and absolute standard of right and wrong for its adherents. Without a divine standard of right and wrong, we default to society’s subjective opinions, as reformulated from time to time by the government and by accepted custom.

To take an extreme example, abortion is acceptable to one generation, unacceptable to another, and acceptable-under-specific-circumstances to a third. Lesser examples include any number of laws which are “on the books” but universally ignored.

In contrast, if right and wrong are defined by A Higher Authority, then they will be more absolute (well, as absolute as that Authority wants it to be), and not subject to the whims of society.

I see two objections to the above argument:

(1) You might like some flexibility, the ability to amend bad laws. This is a valid point, but you have to realize how easily that ability can get out of control. For those who see the vast difference between what society tolerated 30 years ago, and what it accepts today, an unbending iron hand might be better than this virtual anarchy.

(2) Of course, anyone who promotes the idea of Ethics and Religion, must be prepared to be reminded of how many people have fought and died in the name of religion. Here too. I realize that competing religions and competing values systems will make it difficult for a non-believer to accept a religion just because it has morality, and he will not be inclined to accept the morality of Religion A over Religion B, or either’s over his own sense of right and wrong. But I say that in theory, it is generally better to have a corrupt government than none at all, and similarly, the definitive morality which one can get from religion is a benefit which cannot be gotten in any other way.

74

John W. Kennedy wrote:

That’s why I called it a “possible scenario” rather than “gospel truth.” What you’re saying in the above quote makes sense. Truth be told, I don’t know the answer to your question. Maybe some of the other LDS people on this board can answer this question.

My reasoning for believing that Joseph Smith was a prophet revolves around my testimony that the Book of Mormon is true. It goes like this: If the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph Smith must have been a true prophet, and therefore the church that he founded is true. I also have a testimony that the leadership of the LDS church today is inspired of GOd. These testimonies came straight from God to my heart after I read the Book of Mormon. Sure, an intellectual testimony of the B.o.M. is great to have, but it’s the spiritual, inner testimony in your heart that convinces you.

75

Certainly religion gives people the benefit of communal shared purpose. But I strongly disagree that this benefit can only be obtained through religion. Communities can have other shared purposes.

How about a simple neighborhood community? They have common goals, such as keeping crime out of the area, and keeping property values from dropping. They socialize within the community, and have a very real sense of communal purpose.

Another example: My workplace. We are a community with shared goals, developing products. It gives us a sense of purpose. We socialize together, some of us even find mates within this community. It is clearly a community that is based on non-religious functions.

And it takes little imagination to imagine a global community with shared humanistic goals. Imagine a community that has no religion, with the following goals:

  1. Protecting the rights of individuals
  2. Improving 3rd world conditions
  3. Stopping and repairing environmental damage
  4. Enhancing the quality of life of individuals
    etc…

The list of non-religious goals that can provide a sense of communal purpose is virtually endless. Clearly, this benefit can be reached without religion.

76

This argument is unconvincing to one who does not think divinity exists. If there is no God, there is no divine standard of right and wrong. Of course, it is pointless to debate this point. I won’t convince anybody that there is no God, and no one will convince me that God exists.

I don’t agree that a society’s standard of right and wrong is any more subjective that religions. What a religion says it right and wrong also seems to change from year to year. Meat on Friday’s? It’s bad! No wait, changed my mind, go ahead and eat that cow.

Sure, that’s pretty minor thing, you might say. Big things, like murder, don’t change. But I think for the big things, religion should be unnecessary. If someone is only held back from killing because of the threat of Hell, is that person really moral? Only in actions, and not in mind. People who act in a moral way because they are basically threatened into it are weaker morally than those who internalize the fact that murder is wrong, and why it is wrong.
Religion is a more a moral crutch than a moral compass to many.

There is no reason why a society cannot teach morals to its children in a humanistic fashion. It would seem to me that the teachings would be far more effective if the people learning the moral code were also taught the societal reasons behind the code. Not, “act this way or you’ll be punished” (like religion), but “act this way because that is the way you would want everybody else to act.”

I can see a day when society abandons religion, and as a result becomes morally stronger.

77

Revtim:

In my opinion, it seems that you are changing your question again, and now it might read “are there benefits that ONLY religion can bring to society, and which can be brought even to nonbelievers ?”

You are looking for the benefits which religion can provide, but you don’t want to hear about the ones which can be provides by a non-religious society. Then, now that you have restricted yourself to those benefits which are unique to the power of religion, you exclude the ones which depend on the belief and faith of the individual.

This is like asking for a bottle of lemon-flavored dehydrated water, with no juice or any other additives. It’s like searching for a square that has only three sides. Give up.

78

Revtim wrote:

I have found “act this way because that is the way you would want everybody else to act” to be utterly unconvincing. Of course I want everyone to be nice to me, but why should I care how they act to you? The bullies who beat me up in high school were not swayed by it, and neither am I. Do you own thing, as long as you can get away with it. Just because 3 billion people think stealing is wrong doesn’t make it so. What makes them any better than me?

Please tell me the “societal reasons behind the code” that you speak of. But don’t you dare say anything about how much better society runs when people don’t steal, because that’s the same guilt trip that you are accusing religion of.

My belief is that only God can tell us what is “right” and “wrong”. Everything else is either guesswork or mob rule. But He can give us morals, and not because He is the Boss who threatens us with heaven and hell, but because He is the Creator who does know more than us, and because He created everything, he truly knows what is right, and what is wrong. Fortunate are those who are willing and able to listen to Him.

79

OK Keeves, then just ignore my first paragraph. In the rest of my message, I described why I think a non religious society could in fact have stronger morals than a religious one, and therefore gain the moral benefit you previously described. Do you think that’s possible?

Even if you don’t believe it can be stronger, do you disgaree with the suppostion that a non-religious society can at least have morals on a par with a religious society?

80

Revtim - define “morals”. Any society can have strong morals, religious or not. A society could have very strong morals supporting things that a religious society would find appauling, and vice versa. (Not to start an argument, but) If you mean Christian morals, you have to look to the society… I’m a Christian (not the pro-life, anti-non-Christian bad kind), but find some of its morals a little questionable.