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Dave wrote:

If you believe that tribalism is something that comes naturally to humans anyway, can't you see how systems that draw yet more lines in the sand, and that put down as holy, inerrant doctrine the idea that our tribe is the One True Tribe, favored by God, and other tribes must be eliminated, marginalized, or assimilated might make things worse?

Again, you're painting the whole with a brush that doesn't apply to the whole. Yes, some religious people think they're chosen and that everyone else must join them or die. But that doesn't mean all religious people are. If you apply that logic, then you can say not only that all religion is evil but that all humans are evil because some are.

Again, I say:
All of Alma Cogan is dead.
Not all dead people are Alma Cogan.

*E*V*E*N*S*T*A*R* wrote:

One church isn't always the entire religion. And if you don't believe the "choser" even exists, no need to get bent out of shape about not being chosen by them.




*E*

I'd agree but there are some entire religions with those ideals.

Yes, but people with similar beliefs are probably going to come together anyway, especially if they're that exclusive. The religion is in this case merely the vehicle for social interaction between these people, and a means by which they can justify one another's beliefs.

Crucifer wrote:

Dave wrote:

If you believe that tribalism is something that comes naturally to humans anyway, can't you see how systems that draw yet more lines in the sand, and that put down as holy, inerrant doctrine the idea that our tribe is the One True Tribe, favored by God, and other tribes must be eliminated, marginalized, or assimilated might make things worse?

Again, you're painting the whole with a brush that doesn't apply to the whole. Yes, some religious people think they're chosen and that everyone else must join them or die. But that doesn't mean all religious people are. If you apply that logic, then you can say not only that all religion is evil but that all humans are evil because some are.

I don't see Dave trying to paint all religious people as horrible zealots. He's just stating that in general systems that can cause more division can make an already difficult situation worse.

Probably, Ara! But not the majority of them. Some women drown all their kids in a bathtub, but it doesn't mean that's the purpose of motherhood or representative of most mothers, or that people who aren't mothers are lesser people.




*E*

I have read some of this thread and I wanted to look at the actual journal article. The New Scientist article seemed to put a heavy emphasis on hypocrisy. I will say it is from a peer- reviewed economic journal. I think we would have to ask Jny if the Journal was of significant importance in terms of economic journals. I tried to skim the article but Fudge I read 3 - 5 academic articles a week I don't wanna do it anymore. But from hat Lali said it seems as if he correlating subscription rates with State and religious averages which isn't exact but he can't do a survey directly on it, since many religious would not admit they look at porn. ( I have learned that self reporting surveys can have major weaknesses and this would subject would definitely demonstrate the weakness of self reporting).
From the headings of the article it's kind of hard to skim since his headings are a bit weak. But I will say it's a paper on economics and subscription patterns. He did not write this paper to say conservatives are hypocrites. Just because one may not like the results of a paper does not mean the results are not valid (some papers I have had to read are quite depressing , and haven't really had a conclusion, just sort of sit on the fence).

I will say the church I have been to has never ever advised hate. They haven't even said we are Chosen. I think once they recommended that we watch Al Gore's documentary on the environment. That is about it.
Then again they did put up this huge outdoor sign about what this Anglican church is about and it may come off as.. pretty liberal. I think the last of the 5 points was something about if one expects 'perfect ' people this might "not be the church for you" ( which I think points directly to hypocrites, so maybe the study was not that far off. Although religion may attract hypocrites it does not mean the religion itself is hypocritical. Maybe just people who are prone to hypocrisy look for a place where they can express it safely)

I think maybe this study and this conversation is more about the way religion is practiced in the US.

About religion and atheism I am sort of on the fence. Although I have issues with some organized religion, I also know I can never be an atheist because I believe in God. Religion really has some very good things and I don't think it should be all thrown away. Lots of Christianity has some liberal stuff I think, so that is why some conservative thinking that is attributed to Religious type seems sort of off to me (like i was wathing a bit of CNN today and they were talking about universal health care and the conservative guy was saying that the government should not tell people what doctor they can see. I have to say the government here pays for healthcare and I can choose any doc I wanna see. Really. Anyway to me Universal health care and Christian/religious compassion seems to go together in my eyes.

Has anyone read the book The Year of living Biblically? It's about an atheist who lives by about 100 rules of the Bible for a year. It is very interesting. I have read bout half of it and hit gives his opinions and interviews on many things. Both a religious person and an atheist can get something out of it.

I have more to say on the subject but I don't really have much more time to post.

EDIT: ZOMG I can't spell

Thanks Eru. I don't know what the problem is this week, but everywhere I go I have to keep repeating everything I say until I'm blue in the face, and people still only hear what they want to hear. I was starting to wonder if some sort of Tower of Babel effect had set in; it's quite a relief to see that people can still read me correctly.

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He's just stating that in general systems that can cause more division can make an already difficult situation worse.

But we cannot know that, in relation to religion, as it has been a part of humanity since time immemorial. There has never been a civilization without organized religion, so we for all we know, without religion, bigotry etc. could increase. The small minority who are already bigots and cite religion as their cause would probably be bigots anyway, and those of us who take the 'nicer' aspects of religion wouldn't have that, so bigotry would be easier.

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But we cannot know that, in relation to religion, as it has been a part of humanity since time immemorial. There has never been a civilization without organized religion, so we for all we know, without religion, bigotry etc. could increase.

Haven't some communist countries like China tried outlawing religion?

The keyword being 'tried'. Religious practitioners are persecuted (notably practitioners of falun-gong) but some have a dispensation from the government allowing them to practice their religion, AFAIK.

Crucifer wrote:

Quote:

He's just stating that in general systems that can cause more division can make an already difficult situation worse.

But we cannot know that, in relation to religion, as it has been a part of humanity since time immemorial. There has never been a civilization without organized religion, so we for all we know, without religion, bigotry etc. could increase.

I posted a study right at the top of this thread demonstrating that a society's degree of religiousness correlates positively with social dysfunction. You don't need societies that are 0% or 100% religious to draw conclusions; all you need are differences.

Well yes, but it's been pointed out in this thread that it is merely a correlation in numbers. How do you know that the reason more people download porn there isn't that the a-religious people who live among such a religious society aren't more immoral than most because they're lashing out at religion?

Not the porn study; I'm talking about the one I posted, which showed correlation between religiousness and all sorts of social problems.

OK, Dave, I read the original article that your article cited. The original article is here:

Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies

Essentially the study says: USA has a higher rate of religiosity, and has a higher rate of sexually transmitted diseases, teen abortion, and under-five mortality rate, etc., than other first world nations, so these social ills must be due to the religiosity (not, say, an abysmal public health policy).

The study did not consider the higher birthrate in the USA (there being a high correlation between young men and crime), the huge mixing of immigrant populations (that makes parts of the USA "third world"), extremely liberal gun-control, the wealth and disparity of wealth, the apartheid-like conditions of the social structure of just a generation ago, the cult of individualism, and so many other factors unique to the USA.

All of the data is presented as correlations of gross populations. On closer look, all of the countries in each of the charts, except the USA, were in a fairly random cloud. So if you compare the center of the cloud with the single point for USA, you could make the statement "the USA generally had higher markers for religiosity and also had higher rates of socially undesirable acts than the rest of the select nations studied", which is not the same as asserting "if you are more religious you are more likely to act immorally". But that is, in a nutshell, what they were asserting. Most anomalies to this assertion were explained away.

The study lumped the entire USA together, and compared it with relatively small European countries, as well as Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. It would be interesting to see the USA divided up by regions, but again, there would be only correlation, not cause-and-effect. The Eastern European countries are omitted, which conveniently omits "anomalies" of high atheism in combination with high abortion rates, low life span, and other social ills. South Africa is also conspicuously absent.

So to summarize, I'm not convinced.

You're correct that the study only shows correlations, but that's not a failure, it's all that this sort of study is capable of showing. They did not include countries like South Africa and those in Eastern Europe because they intentionally limited themselves to developed democracies in order to reduce the number of variables. You accurately note that including third world populations would skew the results. I'm not sure I'm convinced that the US is third-world enough that it's not fair to compare it to Europe, though (but get back to me in a year or two). There have been myriad other studies that have linked higher rates of STDs, abortion, and teen pregnancy to religiously-motived abstinence-only programs; this one provides yet another datapoint (murder and other crimes rates are another matter).

The way I and the article author are interpreting the results is: there are a priori reasons to suspect that A causes B. Observation shows that A and B usually go together. Therefore it becomes more likely that A indeed causes B. That's really the best you can do with this sort of question, since dividing babies into test groups and raising one religiously and one not is generally frowned upon.

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That's really the best you can do with this sort of question, since dividing babies into test groups and raising one religiously and one not is generally frowned upon.

It's been done (inadvertently) with twins (identical or fraternal) who were adopted out separately. They've gotten all sorts of nice data looking at obesity, disease, divorce rates etc. as to how much there is of a genetic component and how much an environmental component. With identical twins, the data is especially powerful since the respective individuals are genetically identical. I wonder if they've done a study looking at religion and the outcome of the kid? I'm sure they have--but there are so many variables that, again, it would be a correlation with causation in doubt. The genetic/environment (or nature/nurture) questions are answered more easily.

And I'm saying that religiosity is only one of many factors that sets the USA apart from some of the European countries. A far better measure might be to determine the religiosity of convicted murderers, so that you are actually seeing if murderers are more religious, rather than comparing the murder rate vs agnosticism of 305,000,000 people in the USA vs 5,000,000 in Finland.

Additional compounding factors: In the USA, it is expected that you are religious. Atheism is still considered suspect. So when asked, most people say "sure, I believe in God" when in fact, the thought of the existence or non-existence of God does not factor into that person's daily life when deciding whether to act "morally".

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The way I and the article author are interpreting the results is: there are a priori reasons to suspect that A causes B. Observation shows that A and B usually go together. Therefore it becomes more likely that A indeed causes B.

It may be that when people feel they are out of control and in fear, they tend to be more religious. If our violence-permeated culture was somehow made safer and less violent, then perhaps the need for religion would diminish. That can't be projected to "religiosity causes violence" but to "fear of violence causes dependence on religion".

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That can't be projected to "religiosity causes violence" but to "fear [snip] causes dependence on religion".

Fixed.

laureanna wrote:

And I'm saying that religiosity is only one of many factors that sets the USA apart from some of the European countries. A far better measure might be to determine the religiosity of convicted murderers, so that you are actually seeing if murderers are more religious, rather than comparing the murder rate vs agnosticism of 305,000,000 people in the USA vs 5,000,000 in Finland.

The US prison population is more religious than the population at large. I don't have the numbers at my fingertips, but it's a stat I've come across before. But in that case I'd suspect the correlation isn't due to causation.

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It may be that when people feel they are out of control and in fear, they tend to be more religious. If our violence-permeated culture was somehow made safer and less violent, then perhaps the need for religion would diminish. That can't be projected to "religiosity causes violence" but to "fear of violence causes dependence on religion".

It could be, and if you were studying the data in a vacuum you'd have no reason to consider that explanation less likely than the alternatives. However, I don't know anyone who's religious because they're scared of getting murdered. I do, on the other hand, know tons of people who are religious because they were raised that way. This isn't scientific, but it leaves me with little doubt which is cart and which is horse.

ellienor wrote:

Quote:

That's really the best you can do with this sort of question, since dividing babies into test groups and raising one religiously and one not is generally frowned upon.

It's been done (inadvertently) with twins (identical or fraternal) who were adopted out separately. They've gotten all sorts of nice data looking at obesity, disease, divorce rates etc. as to how much there is of a genetic component and how much an environmental component. With identical twins, the data is especially powerful since the respective individuals are genetically identical. I wonder if they've done a study looking at religion and the outcome of the kid? I'm sure they have--but there are so many variables that, again, it would be a correlation with causation in doubt. The genetic/environment (or nature/nurture) questions are answered more easily.

I'd be very curious to know if there's a certain genotype that tends to become religious regardless of how it's raised (and the opposite). I've never seen any twin studies that look at that, though.