In my defence, can I say my OP title was derived from the headline (and the substance) of the Times article. Anyway, great debate everyone.
Diogenes -
I see I was not able to forestall your usual response, which is to deny that you said what you said. Color me surprised.
Thanks, I missed this cite the first time. There is substantial methodological discussion to wade through. In the meantime, I see no reason to object to your use or interpretation of this measure.
I am well within my rights to speculate whether or not my conversation partners are engaging in self-conscious sophistry. I do not feel that this in any way inhibits discussion. I do not necessarily believe that words can (or should) reflect the true state of mind of the debater, which can be a private thing and subject to constant change.
Were you not arguing that this illustration is somewhat analogous with Paul’s correlation and thus is a worthless exercise on its face?
If this is not your position, I retract my objection.
If it is, then I disagree. My objection is not to the correlation exercise but to the author’s inadequate methodology and reporting of his findings. I believe that there is an interesting research program here. This correlation could be extremely meaningful provided that researchers actually generate hypotheses from theory and test them. Even a “first look” with a more rigorous methodology would have been a real improvement.
What the fuck are you alleging that I said? This is what you quoted from me:
To which you responded:
I will now repeat what I said the first time- I DIDN’T say it. If you want to call me a liar then SHOW ME THE QUOTE. Show me where I said that the problems of the Soviet Union could be blamed on atheism. Cite? I’m waiting…
No, I was arguing that it was analogous to the correlations that Der Trihs was drawing between what he called “archaic Christianity” and communism. I only said that they were as reckless as Paul’s, not that they were Paul’s. You need merely look at what I responded to in order to see what I was commenting on. I quoted it, even:
“Frankly, Communism has alway reminded me of archaic Christianity. Constant pushing of the dominant ideology on pain of death : check. Rhetoric about how the impoverished/workers are favored by God/inherently noble, while the elite live in luxury : Check. Leader with absolute power and a personality cult : Check. Constant search for unbelievers and heathens to convert : Check.”
One can make up such a checklist of correlations about practically anything at all. Instead of the sun and a tennis ball, I could have used Lincoln and Kennedy.
Ok, Liberal. I got something entirely different out of the following:
My emphasis. I hope you can see how I would have interpreted this in the way I did.
I agree that Der Trihs’ analysis is unhelpful, but I do not think these correlations are similar to Paul’s nor do I believe that Paul’s are reckless. Perhaps dubious and definitely underreported, but not reckless nor specious.
Yes I am describing human nature. It has nothing to do with country, religion, or “being a victim of society”.
I can, yes.
As one sensitive to accusations of nitpicking, I will not saddle you with charges of semantic quibbling. I am more than willing to concede to both the wording and the gist of your argument. I have, indeed, supported it from the beginning and continue to do so now.
I think we are square then. I am less interested in semantic nitpicking than in making sure that my understanding of your position is clear and vice versa. I don’t want to waste my time arguing against anything that you never in good faith actually argued.
Returning to the topic in a more broad sense, take a look at this abstract. This is from a first-rate publisher (Sage) and was carried in an extremely reputable journal.
Rather than gesture at correlations and bemoan the complexity of the issue, the authors appear to build a theory, generate testable hypotheses, and drive results. The authors posit that if individuals can receive social benefits without (costly) religious participation and small changes in cost cause large changes in preference over spiritual goods, they will ride for free on the state. I am tempted to cough up the $15 to pay for reading the entire article.
This is the kind of standard we should be holding Paul’s work to.
Or I could google some more and find the full text of the article here.
When they are fundamentally the same thing. I’m arguing that Communism essentially is a religion in all but name.
If a tennis ball was bigger than a planet, powered by fusion and had planets orbiting it, it would be very similar to the Sun indeed. I’m simply saying that Communism is a belief system with the same style as the older varients of the Christian religion.
You and others keep bringing up the “atheism” of the Soviet Union. I called it “pseudo-atheism” because declaring your country “atheist” does not magically eliminate the public’s religious beliefs. Look :
That is not the same as simply declaring a country atheist and killing/imprisoning those who disagree. Atheism is disbelief in gods, not declaring that other people officially do not believe in gods.
Because the Communists weren’t motivated by atheism but by Communism; they were simply trying to eliminate all rivals to it. In other words, they were acting precisely like all the monothesists who have destroyed rival beliefs throughout history.This is what I mean when I equate religion and Communism; they act the same. In my opinion, Communism is simply a religion that happens to be atheistic; and no, that’s not a contradiction. All theism is religion, but not all religion is theistic.
This is typical of religious people; despite the fact that religious people have committed so many atrocities, despite the fact that many have given religion as their motivation, it’s all merely coincidence.
Stalin and so forth were motivated by Communism, not atheism; if Communism had mandated belief in the Tooth Fairy, I’m sure he would have imprisoned and kill those who denied it’s existence. Outside of Communism, athesists do not have a history of mass slaughter to enforce atheism; that’s because the motivation was communism not atheism.
Wow, what a great article! And so easy to read. Thank you, Maeglin. For me, the findings are personally satisfactory since I’ve always maintained that there is a very tight relation between religion and politics that on some level renders them indistinguishable. You might have heard me talk often of “religion politicians”, and the fact that religion is infested in politics. Many RPs do indeed seem to view themselves as purveyors of marketable goods, and it makes sense that when government takes over this role, the churches cannot compete. It was also heartening to read the tightly formulated conclusions of the article, and the authors’ understanding that not all matters of faith are political — that indeed, the urge for spiritual fulfillment from something metaphysical will likely continue unabated.
Gotta admit, I didn’t see that one coming. So, communism is a political philosophy, an economic philosophy, and a religion. Is it everything that’s conceivable plus everything that isn’t? Can we call capitalism a religion too? How about atheism? Is it a religion?
Well, if communism taught that there is life after death, that its adherents could perform miracles, and that Marx was morally perfect, it would be very similar to Christianity.
But that is exactly what the Soviet Union did. It expressly outlawed a variety of religions, and even “resettled” thousands of citizens who professed to being religious. Some say that a primary goal of Stalin’s own purges was to snuff out religion.
Conveniently, you ignore the counter-examples. Not all religions prosyletize. Not all religions even allow conversion. Many religions are completely pacifist in nature.
Ignoring your ad hominem, I will simply say that there is no “all”. You’re making it up.
But outside of communism, there was precious little atheism to be found anywhere for quite a long time. It is hard to mobilize a crusade when your army consists of ten assorted hedonist philosophers scattered across the Fertile Crescent.
Very interesting report and discussion. Lots of good points made by several folks.
I think it’s a good observation that if you’re going blame every horrible thing done in by people who claimed to be religious then you’ll have to accept the reasoning that the evils of Communism can be blamed on atheism.
Of course neither is true. The motives for those things go deeper than the surface rhetoric.
I agree with Diogenes the Cynic that one of the main points is that religion does not make a nation or society more moral nor does it eliviate social ills like violent crime, poverty, drug use etc. any better than a more secular society. I agree with this assessment. Of course realistically we can see that religion will not fade from view in the foreseeable future.
The idea that faith in nessecary to make society progress I believe is correct. I don’t think it has to be faith in a spiritual diety.
Belief matters. Our choices, our actions and all the consequences of those come from our beliefs. Those choices and actions are the expressions of what we believe regardless of what we give lip service to. If a person is honest, compassionate, honorable , that is reflected in there choices and actions, and that’s what goes out into the world around them. At that point, it doesn’t matter if that person is religious or not. What they believe in matters a great deal.
Another factor is manipulation of religion by those in power. People in power will manipulate religious views in order to placate the masses and retain power. The Saudi’s did it by funding schools to teach an extreme fundamental form if Islam. Thsi admin is obviously useing the fears of certain religious groups to divert attention from their reprehensible actions. I was surprised and saddened during the last election when conservative Christian friends of mine seemed to think that the possible dangers of gay marrage and the controversial issue of abortion were more dangerous to society than people dieing in a war built on lies.
An excellent post, Cosmosdan. In time, maybe your conservative Christian friends will come around. Sooner or later, the gentile Spirit will speak to their hearts and point out the moral bankruptcy of politicians who have used their Lord’s name for selfish and nefarious purposes. I’m sorry that it sometimes takes so long.
“Time makes more converts than reason.” Thomas Paine
I am glad you found it satisfying. My only quibble is that the authors did not try to model the decision that individuals face when they trade off religion for government and vice versa. The article does a nice job showing why we would expect to see higher levels of welfare spending in secular societies, but it does not explain how we arrived there.
One specific criticism is worth mentioning, I think.
I disagree with the exogeneity of Axiom 4a (p 408).
Yes, the government does rely on coercive force to ensure revenue collection. However, the level of revenue collection should not be taken as “exogenous”, or externally given. The rate of taxation and the tenacity of tax collection are both products of the aggregation of individual preferences. These preferences, I believe, relate dynamically to preferences over religious participation.
It is not difficult to imagine a scenario where an individual (or a population) would be totally indifferent between having his social welfare tab picked up by the church or by the state. The state may have the following properties:
[ul]
[li]Religious homogeneity[/li][li]Strong religious institutions[/li][li]Low population[/li][li]Low marginal returns to effort in “this life”[/li][/ul]
A myriad of other permutations are possible.
In this case, the state wouldn’t have the scale advantage, and individuals would choose whether to accept high taxes or voluntary church participation. To argue that they would choose religion over the state because they have “inelastic preferences” or vice versa is tautological.
To bring this digression back to the original argument, I wonder to what extent the way preferences are aggregated in secular society (election mechanisms, parliamentary vs. presidential, etc) affect the public tradeoff between religion and welfare. It might shed some light on how the way American society is structured informs our religious choices.
I still find this blanket inclusion of all bad things as being religion unsatisfying. I’ll grant you that in the USSR the State (Stalin) was kindasorta God - everything came to or came from the State. North Korea, which we also call communist, is more a cult of Kim, more an autocracy. Kim is in effect, kindasorta God in North Korea. Is that religion too?
It is not religion, and these two individuals were motivated by something, but it was not any so called religon, and it was not communism. They were motivated by greed, ambition and raw power. They manipulated “the system” in order to get that power.
We can’t argue or debate if everything bad is arbitrarily lumped in as “religion” and that is a false position. If I go on a bank robbing spree is it a religious activity? Would you say I did it because I worship money (religion)? Exactly where are the goalposts?
Outlawing religion doesn’t instantly turn everyone into atheists, just as outlawing alcohol doesn’t make everyone a teetotaler - it just means they have to keep their drinking a secret. That’s why it was pseudo-atheism.
Haven’t you ever heard the term “God-king” before ? Communist tyrants like Mao and Stalin and Kim have made themselves into the focus of a religion; that’s why it’s called a personality cult. Even if they, themselves don’t believe, that’s hardly unusual; using religion to manipulate the masses is an old game. Could Stalin and so forth killed so many without Communism ? Would so many people helped so enthusiatically ?
As far as a formal definition of religion, I can’t find a good one. All the ones I find are Judeo-Christian centered; they talk about belief in a “creator and governer” of the universe, which leaves out all the ones that don’t believe in such a being. Therefore, I go by my personal, unscientific definition : A belief system that defines the nature/structure of the world and “proper” human behavior, held to without or against evidence. Usually tends towards an obsession with ritual, symbols and authority figures.
And no, I don’t think all bad things are due to religion, just a great many. However, even when it’s not directly to blame, it does tend to excuse and worsen bad behavior, and prevent solutions.
On the other hand, Communism, as practiced in the Soviet Union, killed heretics, demanded faith in its principles despite a lack of correlation to reality, and caused icons of the founders to be mounted on the walls of the faithful. The argument that Communism cannot be a religion because it purged and persecuted religions can only be valid if no commonly recognized religion ever persecuted competing religions. The comparison only goes so far, but there are strong similarities to Communism and religion. It seems to me that beliefs make both Lilllian Hellman, say, and the devout member of a fundamentalist church park their brains at the door.
However, the issues in the Soviet Union might stem more from it being a theocracy (in this sense) rather than it being communistically religion. I think it would be unfair to condemn religion by comparing a secular state to a theocracy, like Iran or Saudi Arabia, as opposed to an officially secular state where there was significant belief.