# What would be better than religion?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-better-than-religion/477199
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [December 15, 2008, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-better-than-religion/477199 "2008-12-15T03:39:30Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@Sinaijon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinaijon)
#### Post date: [December 16, 2008, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-better-than-religion/477199/61 "2008-12-16T15:57:44Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#):
>
> As for what they had to gain; as I said, the approval of others. .
That’s not a rational reason, that’s a faith reason, by your own definition.
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [December 16, 2008, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-better-than-religion/477199/62 "2008-12-16T16:09:56Z")
> [@Sinaijon](#):
>
> That’s not a rational reason, that’s a faith reason, by your own definition.
In what way ? People are real; their opinions are real; most people are made so as to desire the approval of others. There’s no faith involved. Just objective fact and instinct. Faith is doing something to make God happy; not doing something to make your girlfriend/brother/comrades-in-arms happy.
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### Author:  [@Sinaijon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinaijon)
#### Post date: [December 16, 2008, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-better-than-religion/477199/63 "2008-12-16T16:26:13Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#):
>
> People are real; their opinions are real.
I guess I’m just a little slow grasping this. How does the soldier, who is dead, know what those opinions are? How does he measure those opinions?
Maybe his wife didn’t want him to go to war, and threw a shoe at him as he left. That’s all he knows as he dies. 20 years later, she comes to understand and realize what an incredible sacrifice he made. So how exactly does she communicate that to him? How does he go from thinking he made the stupidest mistake in his brief life, to suddenly understanding that what he did was beneficial?
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### Author:  [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)
#### Post date: [December 16, 2008, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-better-than-religion/477199/64 "2008-12-16T16:32:36Z")
If religion is the opiate of the people then surely opiates(drugs) is the religion of those considered to be non people?
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [December 16, 2008, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-better-than-religion/477199/65 "2008-12-16T16:36:27Z")
> [@Sinaijon](#):
>
> I guess I’m just a little slow grasping this. How does the soldier, who is dead, know what those opinions are? How does he measure those opinions?
Because it was pretty clear what people’s opinions were BEFORE the war. The tendency to kill men who ran away was something of a clue. NOT being willing to fight was near unthinkable at the time.
> [@Sinaijon](#):
>
> Maybe his wife didn’t want him to go to war, and threw a shoe at him as he left. That’s all he knows as he dies.
“Fight or you never get any ever again” was the typical attitude among women of the time. From wives to streetwalkers.
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2008, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-better-than-religion/477199/66 "2008-12-17T02:18:38Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#):
>
> The thing I’ve been wondering about is what would replace the group function of religion. There is something very powerful about coming together as a group with a sense of purpose. Granted the purpose isn’t always a positive one but I think think the group purpose has a lot to do with Christian charities. Most of the churches I’ve ever attended has some charitable branch doing some work as part of their ministry. Even if we were to replace religion with something without superstitious dogma I think the group purpose portion of religion needs to continue.
We have lots of ways of coming together as groups - we almost can’t help but to divide ourselves into them. Clubs, sports teams, Rotarians, race, ethnicity, etc… up through nation states and beyond. The key is to find ways of allowing these “fictive kinships” that maximize the potential to do good works and minimize the risk of demonizing the “others”. The overall track record of religion in this regard is not great, but again, I blame that more on human nature than on religion per se.
To its credit, “secularism”, as defined by Americans anyway, is heavy on providing a context in which all these different divisions can coexist by identifying shared basic values and allowing some disagreements on the rest.
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### Author:  [@Vox\_Imperatoris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vox_Imperatoris)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2008, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-better-than-religion/477199/67 "2008-12-17T03:28:07Z")
I will also add that it depends on the religion and one’s actual belief that it will have consequences. I don’t think, for example, Roman Paganism or Mob Boss Catholicism confer much benefit to society.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
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### Author:  [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2008, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-better-than-religion/477199/68 "2008-12-17T03:30:38Z")
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> We have lots of ways of coming together as groups - we almost can’t help but to divide ourselves into them. Clubs, sports teams, Rotarians, race, ethnicity, etc… up through nation states and beyond. The key is to find ways of allowing these “fictive kinships” that maximize the potential to do good works and minimize the risk of demonizing the “others”. The overall track record of religion in this regard is not great, but again, I blame that more on human nature than on religion per se.
>
> To its credit, “secularism”, as defined by Americans anyway, is heavy on providing a context in which all these different divisions can coexist by identifying shared basic values and allowing some disagreements on the rest.
That’s my thing as well. Let’s try to see what we have in common and not let our disagreements divide us unnecessarily. Often to me it seems like we let different terminology create distance when if we looked beneath it we’d realize we’re not that different.
You may be pleased to know that some religions are doing that as well. I’m not a joiner anymore but I like the Bahai community. They embrace science and their focus is unity. When addressing a particular subject that concerns humanity they often read from various sources including writings from various religions. They have no clergy and their services are informal. They feel more like a hopeful reaching out for a better world, than a religious tradition.
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### Author:  [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2008, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-better-than-religion/477199/69 "2008-12-17T10:32:10Z")
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> **Zoe** and **Lobohan** - many other creatures follow various behavioral guidelines that allow for social function. There is even some evidence that some have a sense of “fairness”. But one is hard-pressed to call those “morals” for precisely the reason that morality is not just “what nature has provided us to live in large groups.”
>
> Morality may be best analogized to language. Clearly we are hard-wired to learn a language as we grow and a language that follows some particular sorts of rules and structures. But within that hard-wired framework exist much culture-dependent variability - from tonal languages, to Bantu clicks, to the Semitic languages, to English, and so on.
>
> Similarly moral systems have some basic structure many of which are no doubt part of what is wired into us as a predisposition to learn and believe given the most basic exposures, but the specifics of those structures nevertheless can have a good deal variation. Religious often did encourage human sacrifice before Judaism came up with the novel idea that such was not actually what God wanted after all. Now that concept which was so widely the norm is so anathema that we read the Bible story in which we are taught that God does not want that after all with confusion as to how Abraham would have even considered sacrificing is son.
>
> Having rules that are so culture-dependent is morality, even though the basic structures of moral codes may be evolutionary adaptations.
Yeah, I wasn’t meaning to suggest that we have a natural fully formed morality. That is obviously cultural. I’m was trying to get at the seeds for the fully formed morality of our particular culture (Whatever that means) were ingrained by nature, not necessarily a god.
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### Author:  [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2008, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-better-than-religion/477199/70 "2008-12-18T18:11:07Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#):
>
> Again, seizure of property is not against the concept of private property ownership unless it’s being seized for the public trust (or, at least, in the name of the public). If I steal your hat, it is because I want to own it and I want you not to own it.
The point I’m trying to make here is to contrast the vision for society that existed before–for our purposes let’s say 150 years ago–and the visions of the secular movements that started growing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The difference lies in how the individual and the state relate. Before, the vision was roughly as Aquinas outlined it. Individuals live their lives, and the purpose of the state is to assist them in doing so by preventing violence, theft, and other disruptions. Once the socialist movements started to grow powerful in all the major western nations in the late 19th century, they were introducing an entirely new vision. They envisioned the state taking an active role to reshape human existence. All the old basis for society would be torn down in order to rebuild the world as a socialist paradise. Public control of the means of production was the economic program, but that emerged from a philosophical program that was seeking to remake society from the ground up. And the people in the socialist movement certainly agreed that their vision could not be reconciled with the old vision of private property. Or as George Bernard Shaw said:
> [@](#):
>
> This, then, is the economic analysis which convicts private property of being unjust even from the beginning and utterly impossible as a final solution.
For him, private property was an old idea that simply had to go.
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### Author:  [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2008, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-better-than-religion/477199/71 "2008-12-18T18:55:34Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#):
>
> Out of interest, however; why is this point more relevant to this discussion? No, i’m afraid I disagree, and moreover I feel you’re missing out the factor of purpose. Certainly I would agree that a lot of people, religious and irreligious alike, are against those vices which cause widespread harm and disruption. But there are also laws designed to protect us from ourselves; against drug usage, or prostitution, for example. Your Fifth Amendment, that helps in defining the rights you have to keep your private property, also provides protection against incriminating oneself.
I am personally against most of the intrusions that are lumped together in what we call “the nanny state”, and I agree that they don’t fit perfectly with how Aquinas described the proper role of government. They do, however, match much better than the totalitarian governments that ruled so much of the world in the middle of the 20th century.
In short, I would say this. Nowadays, whenever the anyone proposes a government action, they have to argue that the action is good at the level of individual citizens. If they want to ban crack cocaine, they have to argue that crack cocaine hurts people on the street. If they a 34 billion dollar bailout of the auto industry, they have to argue that the bailout will protect jobs and individual investors. There is agreement that individual freedom and well-being is the end; the disagreements are over how that well-being should be achieved.
This is a very different situation from what existed 60-80 years ago. Then it was perfectly normal for someone to argue that the good of the state was the end. The definition of totalitarian thinking is that it subjugates individuals to the government. So those two underlying philosophies, individualist and totalitarian, are at opposite poles.
And individualist philosophy won. We now have widespread agreement that people should be allowed to choose their own goals and strategies for pursuing those goals, rather than having the government decide what goals everybody is going to pursue.
> [@](#):
>
> And I disagree with what you ascribe to the motives of “most people from any religious viewpoint” to be with regards to the law; the problem is that most religious people tend to think their religion is a good thing. So there are two scenarios; either their religion, being itself a good thing, is included in that idea, and widespread harm and disruption therefore includes that which is against or not of that religion, in which case any law that does not fully comport with the teachings of that religion would be against that person’s political views. Or their religion is exempt from that decision, not considered when taking into account “widespread harm and disruption”, and no religious person may use their beliefs when judging the law, which (at least to me) doesn’t seem all that likely nor honestly a good thing to ask of someone.
But as the quote from Aquinas demonstrate, Christians do not have trouble distinguishing between questions of morals and questions of laws. Some issues are moral decisions but the law should not be involved: Do we use profanity? How much should we give to charity? Should we attend church weekly? Other questions are fit for the law: Should murder, theft, rape, and fraud be allowed?
We know have very multi-culturalist societies, where all kinds of people from many different nations live in the same nations, sometimes the same cities or neighborhoods. And yet all those different groups live with this same legal framework peacefully. (With a few exceptions.) So the question is, where did the framework come from? Certainly it’s not the case that all the immigrants who ever came to America and England arrived from societies that had already agreed to the framework.
(The Aquinas quotes came from some old notes I have, which I believe came from [this book.](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393952436/ref=s9sdps_c1_14_at1-rfc_p_si2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-6&pf_rd_r=0E53JNMHTKHCSHR1HGJ8&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=463383451&pf_rd_i=507846))
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### Author:  [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2008, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-be-better-than-religion/477199/72 "2008-12-18T21:53:09Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#):
>
> The point I’m trying to make here is to contrast the vision for society that existed before–for our purposes let’s say 150 years ago–and the visions of the secular movements that started growing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The difference lies in how the individual and the state relate. Before, the vision was roughly as Aquinas outlined it. Individuals live their lives, and the purpose of the state is to assist them in doing so by preventing violence, theft, and other disruptions. Once the socialist movements started to grow powerful in all the major western nations in the late 19th century, they were introducing an entirely new vision. They envisioned the state taking an active role to reshape human existence. All the old basis for society would be torn down in order to rebuild the world as a socialist paradise. Public control of the means of production was the economic program, but that emerged from a philosophical program that was seeking to remake society from the ground up. And the people in the socialist movement certainly agreed that their vision could not be reconciled with the old vision of private property. Or as George Bernard Shaw said: For him, private property was an old idea that simply had to go.
No, I think i’d tend to disagree with that one. Even 150 years ago, the concept of the “white man’s burden” showed that the state was very much willing to attempt to control and shape the masses; the difference I would draw is not that states felt individuals should be left to get on with it, but rather that the state the masses were in was acceptable to them. The shape human existence was in was a comfortable one for those at the top of the pile; the difference is not that one was interested in moulding humanity and the other happy to let things go free, but that one was interested in moulding and the other felt humanity was in the correct mould already. Acts of containment and conservatism (in the traditional definition), rather than a laissez-faire approach. People were kept in their place. And to the contrary, I could argue that the concepts of anarchism, or suffragism, of liberalism, as growing during that time showed a quite considerable interest in allowing people to do as they willed. Moulding of society was nothing new; the true change was not one of direction of moulding, moving from trying to keep society as it was to changing society into something else, but rather one from attempts at control at all to allowing people to mould society as they saw fit.
> [@](#):
>
> I am personally against most of the intrusions that are lumped together in what we call “the nanny state”, and I agree that they don’t fit perfectly with how Aquinas described the proper role of government. They do, however, match much better than the totalitarian governments that ruled so much of the world in the middle of the 20th century.
And, indeed, the governments that ruled quite before that, who believed the vote should be kept from women, from blacks, from immigrants.
> [@](#):
>
> In short, I would say this. Nowadays, whenever the anyone proposes a government action, they have to argue that the action is good at the level of individual citizens. If they want to ban crack cocaine, they have to argue that crack cocaine hurts people on the street. If they a 34 billion dollar bailout of the auto industry, they have to argue that the bailout will protect jobs and individual investors. There is agreement that individual freedom and well-being is the end; the disagreements are over how that well-being should be achieved.
>
> This is a very different situation from what existed 60-80 years ago. Then it was perfectly normal for someone to argue that the good of the state was the end. The definition of totalitarian thinking is that it subjugates individuals to the government. So those two underlying philosophies, individualist and totalitarian, are at opposite poles.
Eh, i’d pretty much say the opposite poles are totalitarianism and true anarchism. But, as I said, i’d very much tend to disagree this conception of control by the government was anything new to the socialist movements at the time. If anything, i’d say it was a response to the control already in place; the idea of communism came about because it was believed the power was in the hands of a few, not the many, that benefitted only those powerful few.
> [@](#):
>
> And individualist philosophy won. We now have widespread agreement that people should be allowed to choose their own goals and strategies for pursuing those goals, rather than having the government decide what goals everybody is going to pursue.
Ah, but there’s widespread agreement that the government be allowed to shape the form we may reach those goals. Widespread agreement that the ability to have a say in government is a right not due to all and one that may be taken away. That said, I agree with you on this point; individualist philosophy won, in comparison to some of the nastier government of the time. But it was not a victory of individualism over secularism, or even socialism; it was a victory of individualism over the entirety of previous forms of government before that. The idea that it was secularist movements that started a move away from the individualistic meritocracies where your average person could choose to try anything they wanted in life is, frankly, laughable.
> [@](#):
>
> But as the quote from Aquinas demonstrate, Christians do not have trouble distinguishing between questions of morals and questions of laws.
Buh? It demonstrates that Aquinas had settled the matter to his satisfaction. It says nothing about Christians at his time, nor at our time. I’d very much doubt that a Christian today finds their moral and legal questions and duties entirely easy to seperate and navigate. You’re honestly telling me that not only have you never found a tricky question posed to you as a Christian and as an American voter? And not only that, but no Christians ever have found conflict between their religious views and their temporal ones?
> [@](#):
>
> Some issues are moral decisions but the law should not be involved: Do we use profanity? How much should we give to charity? Should we attend church weekly? Other questions are fit for the law: Should murder, theft, rape, and fraud be allowed?
And how is it to be decided which are which? Do all Christians agree with you? Do all religious people agree with you? And even then, what is the correctly moral punishment for these infractions? Were I to have a magical tool at my disposal, and I looked to see the voting patterns of all American Christians, would they all have voted the same way? What if I compare British and American Christians? I very much doubt the issue is in any way as settled, as unanimous, as widely agreed upon even in those particular cases you mention.
> [@](#):
>
> We know have very multi-culturalist societies, where all kinds of people from many different nations live in the same nations, sometimes the same cities or neighborhoods. And yet all those different groups live with this same legal framework peacefully. (With a few exceptions.) So the question is, where did the framework come from? Certainly it’s not the case that all the immigrants who ever came to America and England arrived from societies that had already agreed to the framework.
We really don’t. The debates over changes to the law, the arguments, in the media and between people, even this very forum in this particular message board shows that we’re greatly at odds over what we think is right. There’s the other thread going on right now about when the death penalty is relevant; some say it is in some cases, others say it isn’t, others say it should be to be fair but don’t like the idea, others want yet greater punishment to be found. And even within those camps, the reasoning and judgement underlying those cases are quite different; you and I are both against the death penalty, but for very different reasons. The problem is that you’re assuming there is but one source; one framework, from which all ideas extend. That you and I, in agreement, must be so because the source of that agreement is one and the same. My question to you would be; why must it be? Why cannot it simply be two different viewpoints coming to the same conclusion? Surely the very many things you and I disagree on show that we are coming from two different places usually; I very much believe that a better explanation that a one source theory is one that simply says we have differing ideas but on some points we agree. It’s pretty likely, after all.
Thanks for the cite, by the way. I do have a request actually; i’ve been meaning to do some reading on Aquinas - for better or worse he’s influenced a lot of thinking! Is there any particular book you’d recommend to someone looking to get to grips with his ideas in general?
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