I agree that there is a great deal of difference between culture affecting one’s religious beliefs and saying that that culture determines those beliefs. And I am precisely saying that, in fact, many people’s religious beliefs/convictions have largely been determined by their culture.
For example, if you were born and raised in Saudi Arabia, what is the liklihood that your religious beliefs/convictions are influenced by Islam? How likely is it that someone born and raised in Saudi Arabia would become a devout Christian, given the lack of cultural institutions, practices, norms and the like that would enable you to become one? Surely you are not suggesting that it is easy for someone born and raised in a country steeped in Islam as Saudi Arabia is to become a Christian? It’s possible, sure, but absent those cultural institutions, practices, norms and the like of other religions, a person who is religious (has certain religious beliefs/convictions) has been largely determined by the culture into which they have been acculturated.
Here’s another example that might help understand what I’m driving at: If you were born and raised in France, what is the likelihood that your native language is French? And how likely is it that you would some day, suddenly, begin to speak, read, write, and understand English absent any exposure to English in your life?
No, I think that’s still false. Naturally, a person can’t become a Buddhist without first being exposed to Buddhism, but if your thesis is correct, than no new religions could ever have been started. I would agree with the obvious conclusion that the culture in which a person was raised plays a very substantial role in determining that person’s religion, but while it may be the most significant influence, it is by no means the only one.
If you are suggesting that if a person is exposed to only one religion then that person can take up only one religion, you’re closer to correct but are still demonstrably wrong; atheism and agnosticism are always options as well.
On the contrary, religions often come into existence as a *reaction * to the prevailing religion of a particular culture. That is, an individual or group rejects all or some of the tenents of that particular religion.
For example, Buddhism did not arise as a rection to say, the tenants of Islam or Christianity. It arose as a reaction to the prevailing religion (Hinduism) where the Buddha was born and raised. The concepts, terms, ideas, notions that the Buddha used were those religious notions that were a part of Hinduism. For example, the concept of anatman (no soul or eternal enduring essence) arose in Buddhism in opposition to the Hindu concept of atman (soul or eternally enduring esssence).
The same could be said for Christianity. Jesus’s ministry and message could be said to be in contrast to the prevailing religious beliefs/convictions of the time and place where Jesus was born and raised, and the language, terms, concepts, etc. that Jesus used in his ministry were those into which he was acculturated - Judaism.
If the Buddha had been born and raised in the jungles of New Guinea and Jesus had been born and raised in the Arctic region of Canada, do you think that either one of them would have developed their religious beliefs in contrast to those of South Asia (Hinduism) and the Middle East (Judaism), repsectively? I don’t think so. Their religious beliefs (or rather their reaction against the prevelant religious belief system) would have been determined by the fact that they were born and raised in New Guinea and the Arctic, respectively.
Atheism and agnosticism are options in the sense that those people would become atheists or agnostics often do so in reaction/rejection to the prevaling religion into which they were acculturated. For example, if a person in Saudi Arabia becomes an atheist, I would venture to say that his atheism arose as a reaction to Islam, and not some other religion.
No no, that’s not the point. Why is it that two people of the same culture end up so differently, with one sticking with the prevailing religion and one reacting against it? If they’re in the same culture and culture determines religion, then quite obviously they will be of the same religion. You’ve at least extended it somewhat by suggesting that people adhere either to the dominant religion in their culture or to its antithesis, but that, too, is too narrow. As I said before, I cannot join a religion I have not heard of, and which culture I’m a member of has a major impact on which religions I am familiar with, but even within a given culture different people know more about some religions than about others.
I guess what I’m saying is that you’re making things too simple; culture cannot be the only influence. It can be, and presumably is, the dominant influence, but there must be more too it than that. I would be interested in a discussion about what those other influences are (I’ve no idea myself), but am quite firmly convinced that the accumulated centuries of evidence point towards the contention that those other influences are there and cannot be discounted.
How often does this really occur? How many people living in Saudi Arabia do you think are honestly atheists or agnostics? There may be quite a few who are privately, but I would bet there are very few who profess it openly. And if they are atheists or agnostics, they came became atheists/agnostics in large part as a reaction against/rejection of Islam.
Cultures do not exist in a vacuum. It’s just that some cultures are more open than others - like that of the United States. I would think that, given the relatively openness of our culture, it is much easier for people who have been acculturated into the same culture to end up differently (for example, Genseric from above). I would bet that had Genseric been born and raised in Saudi Arabia, that his becoming an atheist would have been much less likely. And even in the case if he did become an atheist, it would have been due to the rejection of/reaction against the Islamic faith.
Even in the case where you have a culture that is relatively open, you’ll still have cases where it’s very rare for people from certain communities to reject the religious beliefs into which they have been acculturated. A good example is the Amish community. Sure, they are a relatively closed community existing within a larger open culture. They are aware of and interact with those from that larger open culture on a daily basis. That’s why it’s a big deal when an Amish man/women walk away from their community - it doesn’t happen very often. And even when it does, that person is largely rejecting/reacting against the religious beliefs/convictions of the Amish community - the culture into which they have been acculuturated.
If you look at it from a historical perspective, it has been extrememly rare that individuals/groups have reacted strongly against their culture’s prevailing religion. That’s why the lives/teachings of Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammed, Abraham, and others are so remarkable. But again, remember that their religious beliefs/convictions arose in reaction to the prevailing religious beliefs into which they had been acculturated.
True some people know more about some religions than other people, but it depends upon the culture. As I mentioned before cultures don’t exist in a vaccum, but some cultures are more open than others. I surmise that you will find it much more likely for people from the same cultural background arriving at different religious beliefs/convictions in a relatively open culture than one that is relatively closed (United States versus Saudi Arabia, for example).
Your right, I am simplifying my case somewhat, but only to illustrate the power than culture wields on individuals. How we think, how we interact with other human beings, our beliefs and values (or the rejection of cetain beliefs and values), the language we speak, how we view ourselves in relation to other human beings (and the world), even small things such as gestures (shaking hands when meeting someone, for example) are determined in large part by the culture into which have been acculturated. The influence is so great that we commonly think that out “worldview” is correct and natural (ethnocentrism), and forget the fact that our “worldview” would be different had we been acculturated into a different culture.
Idd, sometimes I muse about how we would think if Germany had won the war.
Instead of being in a resistance movement, we would more probably be expressing our relief at being spared the miseries of capitalism, the yoke of religion and the barbarism of the Bolsheviks.
With regards to religion and why someone from a fundie culture can turn atheist;
Don’t forget that our overlaying culture, in the West, is a scientific one. We are tought from early school to think* for ourselves* to investigate and draw conclusions.
Most people have the same beliefs as the culture they were brought up in? Either of the majority, or their parents?
A significant minority decide what they were taught as a child is wrong and do something else?
I’m interested in hearing from a religious person - why does God let some people be born into a culture where they’re more likely to be saved? Do good people get pre-born into the appropriate culture? Are ‘heathen’ babies being punished for the beliefs of their parents? Does it not matter what you believe?
I would add “. . . but this decision too is influenced by the culture in which they were raised”.
I would also say that most people develop somewhat the religous beliefs that are handed to them by their parents. Very few people believe at 60 exactly what they beleived at 6, or at 16, or at 26. In fact their is probably a spectrum from changing your understanding of your own denomination’s position, to switching to a similar denomination, to adopting a radically different, but still theistic, belief, right through to agnosticism and atheism. It may be too simplistic to divide the world into those who retain their parental religion and those who reject it.
I respectfully suggest that you start a different thread on that. The answers will vary wildly according to the religious beliefs of those who respond, and many will question your assumptions about who is likely to be saved. It will be a very different discussion from this one.
I thought this was a particularly obvious response to the OP. If, say, Christianity is the one true faith, I’d have thought God would give everyone an equal chance to believe it, to some extent negating the OP. But I don’t know much about it, so I’ll shut up now.
Ah, well, that’s a different story. I agree completely that the culture in which a person was raised plays a dominant role in shaping the way that person thinks, while of course noting that there’s a fundamental difference between “plays a dominant role” and “determines completely.” I suspect that you could build a strong case for things like language and gestures being culturally determined, but for philosophy, religion, and the like you’d need to recognize the existence of other influences.
If we assume that individuals have the ability to (how did I put it previously? ::scrolls up: engage in independent pattern-recognition and the acceptance or rejection of belief systems based on how well they describe the patterns of one’s experienced reality, religions are subjected to a bit of “reality-checking” (significantly dampened by cultural imperatives against questioning religious doctrine, but present even then).
The hypothetical individual who makes such an assessment and comes to feel that the prevailing religion has it wrong may or may not seek to express this, to put it into words (perhaps even kindling a new religion or alternative-to-religion in the process). If so, the concepts that this individual can draw on are of course embedded in the culture to which the individual has been exposed, so the revolutionary thinker among fundamentalist Druids is not going to come up with the pantheon of Norse gods or Navajo sacred rituals. He or she is also unlikely to express ideas in the same terms and with the same examples and metaphors, or even the same emphases, as a similarly revolutionary thinker living amongst the Sikhs or the Baptists.
Be that as it may, if there is in fact a reality to be described at all within the subject matter at hand (or any reality at all, period, insofar as religion attempts to handle the biggest of Big Pictures), then that reality is like a mountain that many climbers attempt to climb. The trails are different because the points of origin are different, but they tend to converge as you climb, and you don’t need a well-marked trail or knowledge of how and where someone else climbed in order to do your own climbing.
If, on the other hand, you (the OP) are right and religious beliefs are culturally determined, then (by implication) their content is arbitrary and the reality they describe either does not exist or its nature bears only accidental and unknowable correlation with the descriptions found in religion.
i did a search on brain to see if brainwashing would show up and it did not.
the jesuits have a saying “give me a child until he is 7 years old and he is mine for life.” having spent 13 years in catholic schools i see their point. it worked on my sisters but not me. we are dealing with what psychologists call the socialization process. if parents reinforce the school the kids don’t have much chance of thinking the WRONG thoughts.
so how can God have given man FREE WILL if every religion can take it away? education and indoctrination are not the same thing.
but why do some kids have personalities too strong to go with the flow? can reincarnation explain FREE WILL and does that mean that an individual lifetime isn’t as important as the heaven/hell crowd would have us believe?
How often do individuals actually use this pattern-recognition ability to examine whether a particular religion accords with their experiences (reality-checking)?
How much more likely is it that this pattern-recognizing ability is used the other way around? That is, individuals equate their experiences with a particular religion (use their religious beliefs to understand/relate to their experiences).
Even if we assume that everyone has the same pattern-recognition ability, which patterns are the important ones (the pattern’s that accord with one’s experiences) and which patterns are given lesser priority? Everyone may have the same pattern-recognizing ability, but not everyone has the same experiences. If we also assume that, everyone who uses this ability will identify the patterns the same (which ones are important and which ones are not), then why the different religious beliefs systems found throughout the world? You are surely not suggesting that Buddhists, who do not believe in an eternal soul or supreme being, have given the same priority to their “patterns” as those of Muslims, who do believe in an eternal soul and a supreme being?
Interesting choice of words. Is reality like a mountain that many climbers attempt to climb?
Maybe reality is like a mountain were some people think/feel is important to climb, other people think/feel it’s important to understand/realize that you and the mountain are one or to ignore the mountain altogether. In fact, we really don’t “know” what reality “is” (other than it, well, IS). How we relate to, understand, grasp, etc. this reality is largely determined by the culture into which one has been acculturated. People generally don’t go about examining reality and then go looking for a religion that equates with their experiences (#1 above). It’s generally the case that people hold certain religious beliefs and they use those beliefs to understand their experiences/reality (#2 above). And those religious beliefs have been largely determined by the culture in which that person was born and raised.
Could you clarify the above for me? I’m not clear what you are referring to when you say “their content is arbitrary” and “the reality they describe”.
Certainly, culture plays a part. You can’t believe in a religion you don’t know about, obviously. It’s also extremely difficult to abandon the religion that you were raised with, particularly because many modern religions have frightening descriptions of what happens to non-believers (Christianity and Islam being the most obvious).
That being said, it’s not predetermined. It’s certainly influenced, but if religion was solely determined by culture, why would new religions come about? Why would some small groups of individuals adhere to very obscure religions (like Norse paganism) that don’t have many modern adherents? Why would I, being raised conservative Lutheran, end up an agnostic, who attends Unitarian church, and is exploring a Celtic pagan / Buddhism hybrid?
A “reaction”, you might say. But, you didn’t say influenced – you said predetermined. Why was I predetermined to end up here, but others, who were raised in the same church, end up devout Lutherans, or born-agains, or atheists? Predetermination implies predictability, after all, and this isn’t a predictable phenomenon.
In order to accept your premise, you would have to accept that humans do not have free will and that it is simply a huge number of chaotic variables at work. Perhaps true, but unproveable, and certainly a Great Debate indeed. Good luck!
Often new religions come about as a reaction to/rejection of some or many of the religious beliefs that are preveleant in a particular culture. Many of them don’t just spring out from nowhere. Jesus, when he began his ministry, didn’t start preaching the belief in reincarnation, or that there is no such thing as an eternal, enduring soul. He based his teachings on the prevelant religion of his time and place - Judaism. The same can be said for Buddhism, and many other religions.
Because people who are adherents have either 1) been born and raised in that community or two 2) have decided to become followers of that religion in a culture where information about that particular religion is available and accessible by those people.
How many Norse pagans are living and practicing their religion in Saudi Arabia? I can predict with almost 100% accuracy that it is 0 or almost 0.
Because you were born and raised in a culture (the U.S.) that’s relatively open, and living in a time when your options have been expanded. If you were born and raised in the U. S. 100 years ago, the likihood you reamaining a Lutheran would be higher, the likelihood of you being agnostic less still (although still quite probable), and you exploring Celtic pagaism and Buddhism the least likely. I can predict with a higher degree of probability that you becoming an agnostic was a reaction to/rejection of 1) aspects of Lutheran Christianity and 2) a reaction to/rejection of Christianity in general. Not Islam, not Buddhism, or some other religion. That’s because Christianity is the prevelant religion into which many people have been acculturated in the United States.
Now, I will agree that it would be much harder to predict, say, someone who was born and raised in the United States as a devout Muslim, became an atheist, and then eventually became a devout Hindu (especially if that person’s family/community were ethnically Swedish!!).
See above comment.
No, not 100% predictability and not for everyone. But for many, many people their religious beliefs are predictiable. I’ll use the same example I’ve used before. What is the likelihood that someone born in Saudi Arabia will be, if they are religious (have religious beliefs/convictions), Muslim? And what is the liklihood that if that person is an atheist/agnostic, then they became atheists/agnostics as a reaction to/rejection of Islam?
In many respects, human beings do not have free will. I am not arguing that human beings have no free will whatsoever. But what I am saying is that the culture into which someone has been acculturated constrains the options that that person has available to them.
I leave off with an item to further illustrate what I’m trying to get across:
An individual is born and raised in the United States into a family where English was the native language spoken. She lived and went to school where English was the language used to communicate. She watched televsion and listened to radio programs where English was the spoken medium. She read books and newspapers where English was used as the written medium. Now, can you predict, with a high degree of probability that the language that individual speaks, reads, writes, and understands is English? How much “free will” do we have to speak, read, write, and understand any language we want to, rather than the one into which we have been acculturated?
Even if we decide to learn a new language, there’s still the process of translation. That is, understanding the new language in relationship to the old language.
I am inclined to think that although the capacity exists universally, the vast majority of people are intellectual sheep and “think” like sponges think, and therefore embody the sociological “blank slate”.
Agreed.
Have you ever noticed that, as a percentage of total volume, the portion of the physical universe occupied by life is infinitesmally small? And yet it is profoundly wrong to state that there is no life in the universe.
There is a huge difference between saying nearly all religious belief is an artifact of one’s culture and saying all religious belief is an artifact of one’s culture. The exceptions that exist in rule#1 (but which do not exist under rule#2) explain (or could explain) the origins and content of the religious belief that all the sheep are blindly and obliviously following. Under rule#2, the only “author” is culture, the content random, and blind sheep are the only thing being followed by the blind sheep, endlessly.
I see here we have some people saying that culture made christians, and the same culture made atheists as a reaction to christians. Now I am no longer sure: the same culture did radically different things?
I have a keen sense of not-pinning-anything-down here.
In one sense, a knob that can be turned without any affect is not a part of the mechanism. On the other hand, effects that happen without any knob-turning will indicate something similar. I don’t think culture is what we want to examine here.
Well, we live in a culture which can accomodate (say) both Christianity and Atheism but not (say) a religion involving the sacrifice of living human children.
But, more to the point, we live in a culture in which both Christianity and, more recently, secular humanism have flourished and grown, whereas (say) animism, although not actually considered offensive, has not done all that well. It seems reasonable to infer that there is a two-way process here; our culture has of course been shaped by both Christianity and humanism, but it has also encouraged people to adopt both Christianity and humanism. Christianity and humanism have been consistent with our culture (in different ways, of course) and this has made it relatively easy for people to adopt them.
Hence, yes, our culture encourages Christianity and humanism, but not animism.
Point conceded - I understand what you’re driving at. But, here’s something to consider:
I agree that its profoundly wrong to state that there is no life in the universe (as a percentage of the total volume life occupies in the physical universe). But what if the “purpose” (I’m using the term loosely) of the Universe was to come into being to evolve to the point where life would emerge and evolve beings that could contemplate, understand, wonder about, etc. itself? After all, the probability that life exists at all (let alone beings that can understand/contemplate the universe) could be said to be infinitesmally small. And yet, one can make an argument that at the time when the universe began, the initial conditions were such (determined) that life (sentient beings) would evolve to be able to observe, contemplate, etc. it. If not, then we wouldn’t be here.
Point conceded. I understand now (re: the logical implications) - if I accept religion A, it’s because of culture; if I reject religion A, it’s because of culture; If I reject only part of religion A, it’s because of culture. Totally random…
I think I can construct a much stronger argument for religious belief being determined by culture by defining what precisely is meant by culture (and, of course, what is meant by religous belief/convictions). I also need to include something that pertains to 1) human being’s innate capacity for language; 2) that while this language capacity exists for all human beings, it is determined by our biology and is finite (that is, we are human beings and not, say, dolphins or some other sentient being, and our capacity to learn language is limited by the structure/function of our brains); 3) the impact that language has in our ability, as human beings, to conceptualize about “reality”; 4) human beings innate ability to socialize (form cultures/socieities) as a condition of our biology and response to our environment; 5) Human beings innate “pattern-recognizing ability” (intellect); and probably a few more things (human being’s capacity to be religious, personality, etc.)
But, alas, my time is short (I’m on vacation) and my debating skills (at present) are still not up to par (although posting here helps). Thanks everyone!
“If”?? You’ve described a central tenet of my religion very accurately.
One can also make the argument that at the time the universe began, time began, and thus it came into being but was not determined by any prior event. One can argue furthermore that this event is and has been the only event. You can divide it up artificially and thus produce the illusion of causality (and a useful and pragmatic illustion it is, I should interject, at least on a local scale), but once you understand that the universe in its entirety exists pretty much because
a) it can; and/or
b) it wanted to
…linear deterministic causality models become relegated to their proper place.
engage in independent pattern-recognition and the acceptance or rejection of belief systems based on how well they describe the patterns of one’s experienced reality, religions are subjected to a bit of “reality-checking” (significantly dampened by cultural imperatives against questioning religious doctrine, but present even then).