But it was concluded that David Berkowitz was batshit crazy-he didn’t actually hear his dog talking. Are you saying that we should lock up everyone who claims that God talks to them because they could potentially become mass murderers?
I’m saying what I’ve said several times here on the Dope. Regardless of what belief prompts an action , be it greed, lust for power, or “god told me to” people must bear the responsibility of their actions If the dog had told him to feed the poor he wouldn’t be in jail. Maybe he actually thought god told him to do it and he’s dyslexic 
So dyslexic he got the action backwards as well. 
If criminals were executed by ritual sacrifice it sounds like there was some malice involved.
I think the logic is supposed to be that without religion or religious belief we’d have one less reason to kill and that’s a good thing. It seems to me is that without religion we’d also have less reasons to do good things as well. That seems significant in light of the study linked above.
Of course we don’t really know what people would or wouldn’t do if they lacked any religious belief so it seems a bit pointless. I think the OP is trying to find some logical formula to show religion as a net negative. I doubt it will happen.
I wonder if we might consider level of belief. When I was a Christian I remember the that peer pressure, the need to support and be a part of this group, squelched certain questions and doubts. Something that really didn’t make sense would be accepted because the good feeling of being a part of the group was more important.
I also remember people doing things like lying and cheating and wondered if they really believed. Perhaps the threat of eternal hellfire isn’t as horrible emotionally as it sounds since even those that say they believe it still retain enough seeds of doubt to behave badly. Perhaps the more serious trauma in that situation is rejection by family and church members. That occurs without religion as well.
When I read Leviticus some months ago it seemed obvious that the Laws" presented as holy were actually designed to control the general population. Rather than try to convince people individually that certain sanitation and food practices were conducive to good health it was easier to imply, “God will be mad” It had the added benefit of putting religious leaders in a position of power.
“And thou shalt bring brownies to the holy temple. The ones with walnuts not pecans , because pecans make Jehovah break out in a rash”
So, with that in mind couldn’t we realistically say that religion , even with it’s mythology, is a net positive in the way , however imperfect, it teaches and helps control the general population. It’s only fairly recently that the general population has become more literate and the ability to actually do more research and access more information is in it’s infancy.
Taking the linked study into consideration it would appear that religion is an effective way to encourage people to be supportive of one another even if it’s all myth.
I agree. I believe moral reasoning is a cognitive developmental process, defined by Kohlberg and Piaget, influenced by socialization, perception, and self control. High levels of moral reasoning and moral behavior are found in people with strong feelings of empathy. When people with high moral reasoning fail, they experience guilt and cognitive dissonance.
Religion is a powerful form of * social control *that either fosters moral reasoning or hinders it. Religion can misconstrue an immoral act as moral or impose sanctions for immoral choices. The same can be said for secular society. A person who does not see oneself as responsible for a behavior and is simply following orders is a common rational for many atrocities. Sometimes a ruthless regime or government will manipulate religious beliefs to justify inhumane acts, so it is up to the individual to use moral reasoning. Many people hid and smuggled Jews out of Nazi controlled countries in direct defiance of social control and possible punishment, but most adhered to Nazi social standards because of consequences.
Can you explain what this means? Do you believe there is more “malice” involved if a criminal is executed by a state led by a religious leader or group than a secular one?
I think the real problem here is the inherent contradiction-of people who profess to be religious, who behave badly. of course, Christianity provides an explanantion (“the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”), but people of a moral conviction have problems with believers who act the opposite of what their religion teaches.
Unless you’re simply saying that peer pressure is one of the many reasons that religion has a grip on its adherents, I don’t understand what you mean by this paragraph. (Hopefully it wasn’t important…)
It’s been my observation that the more secure one is in their religion, the more convinced they are that God “loves” them, will forgive them, or whatever it takes to Get Out Of Jail Free for the religion; the more likely they will be to cease to care about the threats of heavenly punishment. I think those threats are targeted more towards people who are wavering, uncertian, or outsiders; persons who recognize a threat when they hear one and aren’t doing what they’re told will protect them from the threat.
Sure. Didn’t it also, in addition to controlling the population in a good way, also control them in ways like “kill unbelievers” and somesuch? I haven’t read Leviticus, but it’s been my impression that the laws were salted with both good and bad effects. (Like most non-modern legal systems, really.)
No, I don’t think we could realistically say that, for the same reason we can’t realistically say (with any real confidence) that religion is a net negative now: you can’t objectively assign a ‘positivity score’ to not-directly-comparable acts. Not all the things religion taught and controlled into its populations were positive; religion has tended to retard science, demonize persons of differing philosophy, etc with its laws; so you can’t just say ‘It’s all good’.
However, I will cheerfully and without hesitation concede that religion is less harmful and more useful the less civilized and modernized that a given society is. As you regress progress into the past, there are fewer positive alternatives, fewer explanations, more acceptance of purely secular brutality - after a certain point it really is a wash, and beyond that point, religion can easily be both the most reasonable explanation of the world and the least destructive social system. It doesn’t matter if it’s a priest or a warlord who’s telling you to attack the neighboring villiage, after all. (None of this applies anywhere this message board can be read, of course.)
That research assumed for no particualar reason that religious persons’ gifts to secular organizations were unaffected by peer pressure or other ‘secular-within-religion’ reasons for giving. As if people couldn’t go to church and brag about how much the gave to the Save the Rainforests foundation or something. So I don’t accept its conclusion in that regard.
Wouldn’t it be more realistic to say “like most legal systems”? It’s not like our current one is doing all that well. Like any human institution, a justic system is going to have good and bad effects.
I don’t remember any specific Levitical injunctions to kill unbelievers–perhaps you ought to look into that before assuming such. Judaism, on the whole, was gentler than most were back then and forbade the usual revenge tactics that were common. Christianity then took it a step further by saying things like “not only should you not kill people, you shouldn’t be angry at them” and “pray for your enemies, do good to them and help everyone.” People being human beings, they mostly proceeded to ignore those rather clear rules.
I’m not sure you can really say that. In many ways, religion has encouraged science; it’s just that we remember the more glaring episodes of Galileo and Creationism, rather than the long-term effects of the scholastic tradition, the roots of the Renaissance, and so on. The Pope was Galileo’s friend until G. made fun of him in print, and some of G.'s problems were more the result of his personality than of his science. And again, it’s human nature to “demonize persons of differing philosophy”–many religious works have tried to control that tendency rather than inflame it.
Given that our legal system makes a massive and overt effort to eliminate dispropotionate punishment, I’d say it’s wonderful in comparison to most non-modern systems (and some modern ones). Flaws in the execution of the legal system caused by corruption, predjudice, etcetera, shouldn’t be held against the legal system itself, I wouldn’t think.
As far as I know the only way that religion has encouraged science was to not always actively retard all of it immidiately, just the parts it doesn’t like. And if that’s encouragement, then I’m encouraging everybody to do everything.
And many religions have tried to control and inflame prejudice - controlling meaning “directing” in this usage. Certainly, there have probably been some religions that have never set their followers in opposion to others. I don’t think that’s the norm though.
OK, so blasphemy was punishable by death, but that’s an action, not a state of being (and I’d be curious to see how often the penalty was actually carried out, given how often ancient Israelites indulged in a little idol-worship). It doesn’t say “kill all unbelievers.” Blasphemy is a specific action, one which is easily avoidable even by unbelievers.
No, I would disagree with that, as well as your opinion of the modern American justice system (though of course I agree that it’s an improvement on many other systems). But I haven’t got any specific books on the history of scholasticism and the development of Western thought to recommend at the moment. It’s not like I’ve got a hugely admiring opinion of historical Christianity, but I do think that it set up an environment in Europe that was more conducive to learning and scientific progress than most cultures have managed.
My apologies. This was a teasing reference to a point the OP made in another thread that human sacrifice for religious belief contained no malice so it did not qualify as murder. I thought the point was a load of bunk and couldn’t resist the reference here.
Sorry for the confusion.
Good post. One of the things I appreciate about the vision of our founding fathers is that they wrote in the idea that in order for me to claim the rights I want as a citizen and human being, I must promote and defend those same rights for others.
There are lots of people who really try to defer responsibility to others. It seems to me the more personal responsibility we claim, the more moral we are likely to become.
when I first got involved with religion it seemed to me that if your beliefs don’t transform your life and the way you interact with others then it’s meaningless.
People are still people and will have their moments of weakness but a matter of course acceptance of dishonesty, and other mean spirited acts just infuriate me. I’ve encountered those who seem to act as if asking god to forgive them is a license to commit the same act tomorrow.
Time for a brief story. We hired a couple to clean the floors at work and although things looked good right after they finished an hour or so later the shine faded and all the scuff marks were still there. We called them and said we wouldn’t be needing them again. A few days later in they come wanting to see the owner acting angry about not being invited back. The owner was busy and the manager said, I’ll be with you in a few minutes, but they decided not to wait. As a parting shot the wife said in a pretty insincere tone.
“We hope you business is blessed” then she added, “you’d be more blessed with us. You shouldn’t mess with God’s people.”
To which our outspoken Yankee salesman responded “Stop doing crappy work in the name of God”
Oh…how I laughed.
But all I did was say this Halibut was fit for Jehovah!!!
Peer pressure, even the low key kindness coated variety, is part of what squelches questions about certain aspects of belief. There might be certain doctrine or dogma that doesn’t really make sense to the member but in general they like being a member so they don’t rock the boat by asking too many questions.
I’m certain it varies greatly from congregation to congregation and what you describe goes on. I was thinking of long time members in good standing who still behave badly in certain areas of their lives. Deacon Smith is a respected church member who is there every Sunday and contributes to the building fund, but during the week a little lying and cheating is just business. Smith doesn’t seem to take the hell fire threat too seriously. Maybe he just feels , as you say, secure in his religion, and figures God understands and forgives his business practices.
right. HArd to have real control without some threat of punishment. I hear just before elections the politicians would drum up a good stoning or two to boost their poll numbers.
Fair enough. I recognize that regardless of opinion we can’t really say for sure.
well, they have computers in the middle east.
Looking into peoples mind to try and guess their motives is usually a pointless exercise. I was just thinking that in general church goers are taught to give charitably and with that being mentioned and taught from youth it makes sense that it would become part of their personality make up.
Excellent question. My answer is that unlike electricity, religion isn’t required for any good uses that couldn’t be just as well and effectively achieved without it so it’s a net negative, IMO.
Oh also electricity is a tool not a motive, which is what I’m referring to and should have made clear.
If one has a reason to kill, then one can use religion as a tool just as one can use a gun or electricity; what I’m asserting goes beyond the use of religion as a **tool **to be used by those that have non-religious motives for wanting to do evil (something I think we’d all concede – religion isn’t necessary for the commission of **any **evil in the world).
I’m speaking of religion as a **motive **and asserting that it provides an additional motive beyond secular motives but has no redeeming value in that all good motives it provides don’t require religion to be conceivable as, I think, religious people would tell you if you asked them ‘why are you feeding that person? would you do that if there was no god?’ I think they’d say yes.
The idea that a person has a secular motive for doing something (like ‘manipulating’ their children) and uses religion to do it is all well and good and can certainly be true and I’m sure often is. I’m not speaking of that. I’m speaking of religion as providing the motive, not when it’s used as a tool for a secular motive. Anyone that thinks religion can’t provide a motive in and of itself doesn’t or won’t understand fundamentalism and is really secularizing that person’s religion and imputing other motives to them in order, I think, to make the religion seem like a neutral thing. I don’t believe it is.
I’d have to disagree that if you took away the religion of those that do those things, they’d do it anyway out of ‘secular conscience.’ I think they did it for religious reasons and wouldn’t have substituted another reason because their motive for doing so wasn’t a secular one that just used religion as an excuse, IMO. I believe it’s conceivable that their motive itself was religious, not secular. We obviously can’t know since they’re dead. But in my view, without their interpretation of their own religious belief those men would not have taken those actions.
To that extent, fundamentalist jihadists seem to me much truer to their own interpretation of their own faith to the point of giving up their own lives to achieve their truly held beliefs; and that’s much more consistent with conviction of belief than when another religious person kills someone but protects their own life in which case I think one can impute secular motive more readily since their unwillingness to give up their own life for their beliefs (as new testament disciples were willing to do) can reasonably be made to cast doubt on their true motives.
And by the way, before someone jumps in to say that disciples weren’t killing people yes I know the comparison is simply that of people that are willing to give up their lives for their truly held beliefs which indicates, to me, a greater likelihood of sincere belief rather than a merely cynical use of religion to achieve a secular end. Are people able to conceive of giving up their lives for secular reasons while using themselves as bombs? Not so much.
Actually, there is a belief that religion is a form of insanity. Another thread, perhaps