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Author | Topic: What is religion good for? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
I'll tell you what religion is not good for, according to scientific research: society.
No webpage found at provided URL: http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html quote: They actually go into considerably more detail than that. Very intersting article that I'm surprised hasn't turned up; it turns the creationist view that "evolution is bad for society" right on its head - its the highly creationist parts of America that are strongly correlated with various societal ills.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Just because religion is a problem now doesn't mean it wasn't a critical part of how we got here. Got where? The human experience doesn't change; not until the fundamental biological constraints of being human change. Technology progresses but so long as we need to eat, sleep, eliminate wastes, and mate for reproduction, being human is the same no matter what. That's why we can appreciate Shakespeare and Beowulf centuries after the societies that produced those stories are gone; that's why stories are never invented, only retold. If we don't need religion now, then we never needed it. If its a dangerous influence now, it always has been.
Also could have been localist governments and the whole feudal system they had going on there. I don't know. The paper doesn't address it at all. Historical considerations are beyond the scope of the paper.
Your statement seems to imply that religion provides no, or negative coherence. Religion serves to divide the world into believers and unbelievers. In that sense, I would describe it as an influence against cohesion, a divisive influence.
Do we really think that religious belief doesn't correlate with other important behavioral factors that might invalidate their findings? Chicken or egg problem, I guess. Does religion impoverish society, or do impoverished societies turn to religion? Or both? Not within the scope of the paper, as far as I can tell. It simply rebuts the notion that religion is a "civilizing" or enmoraling influence.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Remember the big atheistic, communistic movement? You mean in Soviet Russia, or in China? Those movements weren't atheist or humanist; they deified the state and the party.
(well, historical memory). Looks like you have some issues with your memory.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Do you think that 18th century Japanese culture has any fundamental differences compared to now? No, I don't. The words change but the music is always the same. And I think I made a pretty good case for that, which you didn't even address.
Do you think religion was a factor for the pilgrims who first came to America? How about 1000 years before that? How about 20,000 years before that? I don't see the relevance. The pilgrims you refer to were kicked out of England for their religion, and you're trying to portray religion as a cohesive influence? You've just proved my point.
Do you think nationalism brought a country together after 9/11? Do you think anything has changed since then? I would suggest that nationalism was a big bonding factor around 9/11, but now is turning into a divisive force. Really fast change. And I don't think nationalism had that effect. It was a divisive force immediately after 9/11; it's a divisive force now.
Not if everybody's a believer. There isn't a religion in the world that claims universal appeal; one of the built-in protections of every religion is a rationale (and a suggestion for disposal) for people who simply won't convert to it no matter what. "Everybody's a believer"? Under what condition do you think that's possible? If the only situation in which religion is cohesive is a situation that cannot possibly occur, you've just proved my point again.
Not if believers are stronger from their faith and are able to co-exist with non-believers. I think it's clear from history that neither of these things have ever been true. Earlier you gave an example of believers who couldn't co-exist with non-believers and so founded our country.
Maybe religion works really well for tribal-sized cultures. Or maybe religion divides large cultures until they're about tribal-sized, and is thus a divisive influence.
You can't make the conclusions you want to unless you rigorously explore these scenarios. What scenario? "Unknown factor X"? Fill in the blanks, and maybe you have a point. Unknown factors are beyond the scope of the article, and my point. And neither I nor the authors of the paper are required to rebut the influence of "unknown factor X." You can always say there's an "unknown factor." Such claims should not be taken seriously.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
They were officially atheistic. And we're "officially" a federal republic. In practice, we're not. And in practice, those nations were theocracies - governments that mandated worship of the state and the leader of the party. They did, after all, outlaw religion. Why would an atheist state do that?
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
They did not believe in the supernatural--it was not a "religion" unless you use the term in an excessively generalized sense. No generalization necessary. In those countries the state explicity took the place of church. It was to be worshipped, literally; appealed to for intercession; and held to be both inerrant and supernaturally eternal. Now, they certainly attacked what they considered "superstitions", so there were components of the supernatural that they explicitly denied. But other elements of the state apparatus took on a supernatural character - i.e. televisions and radios that could "transmit back", spies who could listen to any conversation or even read minds. The USSR had a program to train "remote viewers", Robin. (That's why we had one, too.) And you claim that they denied the supernatural? Ludicrous. Those governments were theocracies, Robin. Religion doesn't have to simply be the worship of a god. (Otherwise Scientology could not be considered a religion.) Worshipping a state believed to hold supernatural powers of influence, survelliance, and literally power over life and death, certainly constitutes a religion to anybody, presuming that person is not like you - an ideologue slavishly determined to tar all atheists with the brush of socialist atrocity.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe Crashfrog's line of thought is: Religion is bad; communism is bad; therefore, communism must be a religion. That's a funny, if erroneous, assertion. Now, why don't you try addressing my points. Or is it your intention then to simply abandon the discussion? Don't blame you.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
I deny that communism is a religion. I maintain that calling communism a "religion" is a misuse of the term. Fascinating, but completely irrelevant to my point. I've never asserted that communism is a religion. On the other hand, worshipping a deified state held to be eternal, all-knowing, and inerrant is definately religion. But I challenge you to find any post of mine where communism is said to be a religion.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Some kind of word-trickery, I guess--some sleight-of-hand distinction you are smuggling in. No, just your gross misunderstanding, and now your spurious and insulting allegation. Don't worry, nmr, I'm pretty sure we're done with this.
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