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Does Religion Influence Epidemics?
sciencehabit writes "Whether or not they believe in God, evolutionary biologists may need to pay closer mind to religion. That's because religious beliefs can shape key behaviors in ways that evolutionary theory would not predict, particularly when it comes to dealing with disease. According to a new study, some of today's major religions emerged at the same time as widespread infectious diseases, and the two may have helped shape one another. The same dynamics may be reflected today in how people in Malawi deal with the AIDS epidemic."
Rodney Stark got a Pulitzer for this 15 years ago: The Rise of Christianity
... from FEAR and IGNORANCE.
...since about the time we started blaming disease on sin.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Its as if saying the last fly that hit my windshield may have contributed to the destruction of my car 3 decades later.
Jesus never claimed that healing the sick was a sure way to heaven. That's ridiculous, and against what the rest of the Bible teaches. This person doesn't know what they are talking about.
The AIDS pandemic in China was caused by unsafe blood donation practices.
Specifically, the blood merchants would extract blood from villagers, pool it together in a big tub, extract the plasma, and then reinject it. Part of it was a cost-cutting measure, part of it was due to local religious beliefs.
There was another article on religion just posted on Slashdot yesterday morning.
Yes? Then I'd say they're having an influence.
of polio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis_eradication#2001.E2.80.932004
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
When disaster hits and you have no idea what causes it, you're helpless. And people don't like feeling helpless. So they start praying. Does it help? Most likely not, but hey, at least they're doing something. Whether it helps or not is not really that critical, what matters is that people believe they're somehow reacting to it instead of just sitting there, helplessly, waiting for disaster to strike again.
Thinking about it, it bears a lot of semblance to how we deal with the terror threat...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Are you sick? Come ask your invisible friend in the sky for help! Come share air with dozens of others asking for other things. Too sick to leave home? We'll send a carrier to your home to take your problems back to the church!
I jest, of course, but not by much. Religion relies on community, just as much as an epidemic does. That said, there's also a few interesting correlations between some religious taboos and common disease carriers. It's like whoever designed the religious laws somehow knew about germ theory hundreds of years before anyone else. Either that, or they just noticed that certain things smelled bad, and people who spent time near bad-smelling things got sick.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
What does child molestation have to do with religion?
...
never mind.
And William H McNeill breached the subject in Plagues and Peoples in 1976 regarding the rise of Christianity with the black death although maybe not a blunt as perhaps latter literature.
Mod up.
Humanity needs less religion and more rational thought.
I absolutely love any story that gives self-righteous atheists an excuse to say, for the umpteenth time, that religion is categorically an evil, that organized religion is clinically insane, that religion has caused more suffering in human history than all biological and political causes combined, etc.
Before you get started this time, how about you give it a rest? We understand your opinions, but most of us are agnostic if we even care one way or another; likewise most of us realize that religion inspires good as well as evil, and see no need to throw the baby out with the bath water. Most of all it just gets really fucking boring listening to your hate fest.
You hate "religionists" and they hate you. The rest of us would rather you all shut the fuck up.
http://www.google.com/search?q=pop+aids+afrika
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS#Religion_and_AIDS
I can't decide what is worse... this or the pedophilia in that "religious" organisation...
itself is a disease (of the mind)
From the article:
The survey also revealed that the prospect of getting help was enticing. In the past 5 years, about 400 of those responding have shifted religions, many of them moving to Pentecostal or the African Independent Churches, places where the promise of receiving care is greater and the stigma of having AIDS is less, Hughes noted.
The evidence presented suggests that however born, growth/conversion of religion in the study area is at least in part motivated by the incentive of some health care.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
It is quite clear from some of the rules laid down in religious texts that one of the purposes that religion served in historical times was to educate the population about sanitary practices, such as the relative danger of eating meat from certain animals and seafood as opposed to others. Interestingly, Christianity as practised in the West seems to ignore most of the rules of this category, while Islam inherits most of them from Judaism, giving its own twist on the rituals surrounding them.
Derp indeed
Still, nice set of arguments you had. ;)
Humanity needs to replace religion with a civil institution for promoting social cohesion with a basis in rational thought.
FIFY
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
Mod up.
Humanity needs less religion and more rational thought.
I wasn't aware the two were mutually exclusive.
A lot of things are born from fear and ignorance.
Maybe instead of trying to kill off religions, we should kill off the fear and ignorance first?
Cure the illness not the symptom.
NOTE: I am a religious person. However, if religion is a result of human failings, I *really* feel we should deal with the underlying problem instead of screaming about what gives people some relief. If people are drinking from a poisonous well that causes unimaginable pain and the only relief that they can get is by bleeding themselves once a week, instead of stopping them from bleeding themselves ritualistically once a week for relief, fix the damned well. If people stop bleeding themselves to get some relief, they might end up doing something *worse* for said relief.
Yes. I'm sure some of you will call religion the well in this example instead of the bleeding. But according to the parent post, fear and ignorance is the disease and religion is a symptom.
And no, living in permanent pain is not an option.
Translation: Religion is born from FEAR and IGNORANCE.
Actually the opposite can sometimes be true. Religion can also be a practical survival manual based upon observations. For example I believe if one adheres to the old testament prohibitions against eating certain types of seafood then one will avoid most of the unsafe species in that part of the world. We say don't do something because the surgeon general says so, thousands of years ago they said don't do something because God said so. Maybe its the telephone game: "great healer says" becomes "great shaman says" becomes "God says", all based on a scientific sort of process - at least the observation part, can't say if they also did the experimentation part.
Are you sure you are not operating on fear of a particular 3 or 4 thousand year old book and rejecting everything in it in an irrational and ignorant way? If we were talking about Hawaiian kapu and its instructions on fishing and such would you be more open minded?
Mod up.
Humanity needs less religion and more rational thought.
I wasn't aware the two were mutually exclusive.
Now you're aware. Time to flush baby Jesus down the toilet. You can only keep shit in your house so long before you get sick.
They really are. Religion is based on irrational answers to rational problems.
EG:
Where do earthquakes come from?
Religion: GOD!
Science: Tectonic movement
Pretty easy to see how mutually exclusive they are.
Anything that affects how we interact, especially in large groups, will affect contagion.
What's the central social order of religion?
Congregation.
I think this is one of the most evil aspects of Christianity.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
It's killed more than most illnesses I've heard of. And still does.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
The Catholic Church preaches abstinence. Well guess what? If you don't have sex, then it's pretty damn tough to get sexually transmitted diseases like HIV. You can consider the church to be short-sighted in thinking they can control libido, but you cannot blame the church for all those Africans being bored and breeding like rabbits.
You ask enough, eventually get to "point where we cannot explain".
Some people fill this void with an arbitrary explanation not limited to the involvement of a postulated deity. Some choose to let it inspire them to find out the real answer.
I wonder which one produces more truth and beauty...
They couldn't understand desiese so they thought it was a curse. Nothing new here, ancient Greeks thought lightening came from Zeus.
This sig has been distributed under the Creative Commons license.
> you cannot blame the church for all those Africans being bored and breeding like rabbits.
So, that is why condoms are bad? So the "rabbits" get AIDS?
Dude...
As Socrates said, at least I know that I know nothing. Those who replace "I don't know" with "it was God" forfeit their ability to learn more and those who militantly cling to their answer even as "I don't know" gets replaced with a proper explanation hold us back.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Fear and ignorance go hand in hand, what you don't know can scare you since you don't know if it's dangerous. But you cannot know everything as the world is too complex for a human to understand entirely within one lifetime. If you could augment humans with all that knowledge right from their childhood it might be possible but the risk of manipulation by humans is too damn high, who knows what "truths" China would implant into people?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
FTFA (emphasis added):
between 800 B.C.E. and 200 B.C.E., cities flourished , deadly plagues arose capable of killing off up to two-thirds of a population, and several modern religions emerged.
A simpler explanation for the emergence of massive epidemics during this period is the rapid growth of cities and long distance trade routes between them that occurred from second century BC onwards.
It was advent of agriculture that introduced us to domesticated animals, concentrated our population into large sedentary groups and eventually linked those groups together using trade. From an epidemiological perspective human beings who have lived during the last five or ten thousand years are at far greater risk than their nomadic, hunter-gatherer predecessors who lived in small groups with infrequent contact with outsiders or animals (well, living ones anyway).
In short: yes.
One example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_%28disease%29
The irony of most Christian denominations' disbelief of evolution is that religions evolve through natural selection analogously to life forms. In fact, it is through evolution that the Abrahamic faiths came to dominate Europe and the Middle East.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Ask these enough times and you'll arrive at God.
Not so mutually exclusive as you think.
And where does god come from?
See? Totally mutually exclusive!
You do know that religion only exists today because evolution has prevented it from being wiped out ?
It is the very product of evolution.
... from FEAR and IGNORANCE.
Fear, yes - but not necessarily ignorance.
The mainstay of religion is fear of death. The vast majority of people seem to be incapable of living with the fact that when you die that's it. There's nothing else. It's all over for you. Completely. So those people need the delusion that they (somehow) live on after death - which is totally unreasonable of course. Religion provides a solid base for that delusion - so long as you don't look too deeply into it.
The Catholic church preaches abstinence because
* It gives them leverage. If sex is sinful, and the only way to absolve sin is via confession, it keeps you engaged with the church.
It's no coincidence that it's something that most people are biologically wired up to do. Even *thinking* about it is deemed sinful, so you can't escape the association with confession even if you abstain.
* It gives them a justification to disapprove of contraception
Because contraception is only for the purpose of making extra-marital sex less risky, right? Oh, it's nothing to do with the fact that less contraception => more babies with Catholic parents => more Catholics.
Being able to control your fertility is one of the most basic means of promoting economic welfare. Even without the arguments for disease prevention, that should be enough to wholeheartedly endorse it. Contraception also prevents abortion, something else that the church does not like. But the church is not interested in the welfare of it's congregation - it is interested in the welfare of the church, and that means expanding it's power base with more good little Catholics.
It's also arguably becoming essential simply because the planet can't support many more of us. Opposing contraception is almost anti-green, it would be interesting to see the outcome of "The Catholic church" vs "The Greenies".
Note that I'm not implying that these decisions are conscious. They may be, but equally, Catholicism is a meme-complex that has had a long time to evolve. They may merely be memes that have the best fitness for their particular niche.
As if that's unique to religion. Singularity, anyone?
Religion is born... from FEAR and IGNORANCE.
And also the other way around:
Religion breeds fear and ignorance.
It's so beautifully symmetric.
And where does god come from?
I was just about to ask that. I have never understood how people can say that everything must have a creator so therefore that proves that there is a god. But at the same time they will say that god didn't have a creator.
Religions are made up of equal measures of ignorance and hypocrisy.
Tectonic movement willed by God.
See? they're not mutually exclusive.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
Their position on condoms is inconsistent. They are against them for the prevention of pregnancy yet support the rhythm method.
The trouble is, the rhythm method works by timing, so there will be fertilized embryos that die because they came too late in the cycle.
So, the Catholic teachings have killed far more babies (their definition) than if they hadn't come out against condoms in the first place.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
As far as I know, child molestation is not more common among catholic priests than among other professions. The scandal was based on the fact that the catholic church covered up their priests' "mistakes", and just relocated them to a new parish.
Why isn't shit like this modded troll?
God wills it!
"Some people fill this void with an arbitrary explanation not limited to the involvement of a postulated deity."
People who dont ask questions simply say it was god, others believe it was the Higgs-boson particle (not string theory) that did it.
All people who thinks everything can or should be explained are equally retarded in my book.
Not all people are the same. Whilst it is all well and good to promote greater understanding of the world around you, some people, in fact quite a lot of people are simply incapable of it. Whilst they might by rote remember some facts, they don't ever understand them, not by choice by by genetics and those people will always be drawn to more comfortable answers.
Answers that say you can alter random chance in highly complex interactions, that prevent you and those you care about from suffering by convincing some superior to intercede on your behalf. Whilst that time is better spent on coming up with ways of reducing the probability of harmful outcomes not all people are capable of doing so.
Some people just need religion of one form or another, to maintain a stable psychological attitude in a world of, to them, of chaotic outcomes. So it's not about eliminating religion, it more about minimising the harm of religion and it promoting positive sociological outcomes via religion. The worst of the worst, when it comes to religion, is politicians who use it to gain power. The more a politician reaches for religion the more corrupt they are.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
They seem to be using a very narrow (i.e. unscientific) understanding of what evolutionary theory predicts. It is adaptive to adopt altruism in the face of a crisis that requires higher than usual degrees of co-operation.
Also I'm guessing "[l]inking early epidemics to the emergence of disease" was supposed to refer to something more than the definition of epidemic being the emergence of a widespread disease.
Cause it's not ?
stating an anti-religious point-of-view ? yes.
trolling ? nope
Religion is yet another way for evolution to eliminate those with deficiencies compared to others.
For some reason those that are religious seem to be too stupid to follow common sense and basic medical advice. They believe faith can heal contagious diseases (thus infecting more during prayer sessions). They help spread sexually transmitted diseases due to resistance against contraception (no, married people are if anything more likely to sleep around) and similar. The Muslims have their Ramadan where they starve themselves and drink too little, thus weakening their bodies and make them more susceptible to catching something, or to be unfocused and dehydrated during the day where many also drive cars and thus are more likely to be involved in accidents.
Okay, so the fact that some see it as a duty to produce babies, they tend to make up for the extra loss of life in the long run...
For some reason the great majority of religious people have more or less strict rules to live by, rules directly or indirectly given to them by their God(s). But these rules always seem to be stupid in some way. Praying five times a day? - Waste of what could have been important time. Only eating certain food? - Can cause malnutrition or deficiencies. Fighting scientific research because 'it offends God' or similar? - Well, obvious. They could miss finding an important cure or similar.
Abortion is of course a tricky question. The upcoming child could become someone important that find an important cure or make some important discovery, but after all that is fairly unlikely. It is much more likely that an unwanted child both get substandard care and education and it may threaten the economy of the mother/family, thus endangering additional individuals. In nature an unwanted offspring would simply be left left to die or be eaten by predators, but humans can't do that which is one of the reasons people want an abortion in the first place.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
And where does tectonic movement come from?
And where does THAT come from?
Ask these enough times and you'll arrive at God.
Actually I arrived at "The burrowing effects of dholes and/or bholes in the planetary crust". I don't think Cthulhu had much to do with tectonic movement (mostly because he's asleep at the moment), but thanks for playing.
>Ask these enough times and you'll arrive at God.
If that was true... wouldn't scientists have gotten there by now ? On the contrary, it seems we keep on digging deeper, asking the more and more complex questions and we always find answers that are mathematical, scientific and rational without having to get to God.
The only time you get to god is if you give up and go for God as a cop-out.
Now it's true that deep enough the theories aren't that verified yet (we've yet to come up with a way to experimentally test string theory), but that's ALWAYS been the case. New ideas arise to answer questions - it takes time for science to develop the means to test them, when it can it either proves them false or begins a process of refinement.
Religion's answers to anything rational is always and without exception cop-out's that don't REALLY explain anything, just provide an excuse to stop asking the question, and usually based on "common sense" ideas which are verifiably false, mixed with a great deal of deliberate self-delusion, cognitive dissonance and psychological manipulation - none of which promote rational thought.
A good example is the Adam and Eve myth - it seems obvious that if you go back far enough you'd find a first set of parents. They way plants grow and such suggest it - except - reality is that we're basing that common-sense conclusion on incomplete data, just like our ancestors did.
In reality, the further back you go - the MORE ancestors you have. You had two parents, FOUR grandparents, eight grandparents, 16 great grandparents (well cousin marriages were much more common then so maybe 15). Either way - the general trend is that any human living today will find his number of ancestors increasing exponentially with ever generation going back. But the number of PEOPLE in total decreases exponentially on the same timeline.
So the number of people who are your ancestors out of any previous age becomes an every growing percentage of the total population !
That does NOT make "common sense" but it makes perfect mathematical sense. Add in that until pretty recently the higher up in society you were the more likely you were to raise your kids to adulthood and you can see why EVERYBODY has a famous ancestor or 5. Personally I can prove that Cardinal Richelieu was one of my ancestors and I live in Africa !
But that's the simple reality - the Adam and Eve mistake is common sense with a religious cop-out, but it isn't rational and it isn't true. These days with what we know about speciation the entire concept falls flat.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I assume you're talking about technological singularity meaning the hypothetical point at which either machine intelligence or augmented human intelligence experiences a runaway effect beyond which its capabilities and knowledge grow beyond anything currently conceivable? While some people might speculate that, at that point, virtual immortality might become available to some (which I assume is what you're getting at), the hole point behind referring to it as a "singularity" is that it's a point beyond which we can make no reliable predictions because the post-humans/machine intelligence/both/neither/whatever will have motivations, impulses and behaviour we can't guess at. I'm going to have to assume that, rather than the concept of singularity, you're talking about the drive to find ways to extend life and perhaps achieve some form of functional immortality.
There's a world of difference between blindly believing that you will live forever in some sort of spiritual paradise and trying to prolong life. They're not the same thing at all, although they may share the same motivation. One (spirit life after death) is crazy and believing it without proof, will continue to be crazy even if it miraculously actually is true. The other (attempting to extend life), has had and continues to have crazy adherents all throughout history (such as the alchemists) but, despite this, the sane adherents (and some of the crazy ones) have still managed to make advances that can actually extend life in some situations (cancer patients, HIV, heart conditions, etc.). We're still a long way off from (virtual) immortality and chances are pretty darn slim we'll get there in our lifetimes, but we may very well get there in some future persons lifetime. Note that I'm talking about agelessness and freedom from disease here, and any actuary can tell you that even with those your chances of living "forever" are still 0%. You can still have a safe fall on you. Even if you have mastered mind-transfer and backup, a safe could still fall on you and all your backups.
In the Dutch Bible Belt children still get polio because their parent refuse to have them vaccinated.
So yes, religion has an influence.
This is not the sig you're looking for.
Christianity => Adultery & many sex partners => STD
Just want to point this out, since the article is about AIDS and religiosity.
At least between European countries, a high level of religiosity is strongly correlated to a high level of adultery and many sex partners. In Catholic countries, the use of condoms is also low and that also makes the levels of STD higher and STD epidemics spread faster.
In secular European societies (strong separation between the church and state), the level of adultery is very low. In countries where a large part of the population is Atheists (30-50%), adultery is almost non-existent (Sweden, Finland, Iceland). And in these countries, the low level of adultery doesn't just apply to couples that have been registered and accepted by the Church or the State (a.k.a. married), but to all people that live in some form of sexual relationship.
In non-secular European societies (weak separation between the church and state), the level of adultery is high. In areas where many people is religious practitioners, it is even worse. Worst is Catholic countries like France, urban Spain and Italy, where almost everybody that is sexually active also commit adultery.
In secular European societies, adultery is not considered socially acceptable, while in non-secular European societies, adultery are considered socially acceptable as long as the adultery is handled a certain way. It even goes so far, that in countries like Italy and France, a male philander is someone who is admired and their social status is increased.
The frequency of switching sex partners (without committing adultery), is also at its highest in religious areas of Europe. Having multiple sex partners (without committing adultery) at the same time is also very common in those areas. Whereas those phenomena is very rare in secular societies, like Sweden and Finland, where people usually engage in sexual intercourse as part of seeking a more permanent relationship. This is in stark contrast with that "sleeping around" is considered an acceptable behaviour (as long as nobody gets hurt) in most parts of the Swedish and Finnish society. I guess it has something to do with that forbidden fruit taste better.
I have an imaginary friend. His name is Fred. His dad made you and me and everything around us. You must worship him so that you can live forever and if you don't, you will burn in hell for all eternity. Please worship Fred. He loves you... he will punish you if you don't love him.
Yeah, seems rational enough.
Religion is not the symptom, but the wrong remedy. That's like saying "I've got cancer and one of the symptoms is chiropractors."
A choice is made and has been made repeatedly. Instead of seeking real answers, it is easy, convenient, simple and even traditional to seek them in religion. This is bolstered even further because we have things in our brains arranged such that we create our own positive reinforcements and confirmations, so it must be right.
People who were not raised in such environments don't often arrive at the conclusion that magic and invisible supreme beings exist and must be responsible for whatever thing comes to mind. You know, things like gravity or my teaming winning the game.
As we continue to understand ourselves, we learn that these feelings we have are little more than evolutionary developments which provided some advantage for survival at some point in time. But many of us believe that some of these things are hindering additional progress and that it is time to get them out of our way.
And where does God come from?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Quote I saw last week:
"Why is it that when someone has an imaginary friend it's called insanity, but when millions have the same imaginary friend it's called religion?"
People like to fuck. Perhaps this comes as a surprise to some geeks but in the world at large people like to have sex, lots of it. What's more, there are strong genetic dispositions to have sex with multiple partners (The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and People is a good book on the subject, if you are interested).
So sure, the #1 best way to stop the spread of AIDS is a strict 1-partner policy, coupled with premarital testing. If you and your partner are AIDS free, well then short of an infected needle you never will be.
However in the real world, people aren't willing to do that. People want to have sex with more than one person. It may not even be at the same time, they may grow close to one person, have sex with them, but then grow apart and grow close to another person.
Condoms go a hell of a long way to reducing the spread of AIDS. Want proof? Look at the U.S.A. There's about a 0.6% AIDS prevalence and it is a very promiscuous culture. Compare that to some of the African nations which are at 25% or more. Clearly condoms and proper education can go a long way.
When you educate people on these things, you have to be realistic and give them multiple strategies. You say "Look, the only sure fire way to prevent infection is abstinence. No sex, no infection. When you do have sex, make sure your partner is clean and stick to one partner only. However, if you are going to have sex with someone you aren't sure about, wear a condom. It really does help."
The problem with the Catholic approach is they scream about everything being a sin and you pissing off god. Well this leads to a classic situation of human non-logic: "Sleeping around is a sin, and wearing a condom is a sin. I'll not wear a condom, because then I'll only piss god off half as much." No it isn't logical, but people do that kind of thing.
Finally there's the fact that Africa has a real population growth problem. If they want to have real economic growth, they have to bring their population growth in check. Condoms work real well for that, yes even with a single partner, and the church doesn't like it.
> , some of today's major religions emerged at the same time as widespread infectious diseases... Birds of a feather flock together.
Mod up.
Humanity needs less religion and more rational thought.
I wasn't aware the two were mutually exclusive.
Now you're aware. Time to flush baby Jesus down the toilet. You can only keep shit in your house so long before you get sick.
So, wait, your response to his is proof that the two are mutually exclusive?
Here in Germany there is a huge ongoing scandal involving the two largest Christian denominations for having covered up decades of widespread sexual abuse of minors by church personnel. The amount of cases come to light so far outnumbers any estimated dark figure by a really sizable margin. The findings strongly suggest a link between a highly repressive stance on sex as found in mainstream Christianity and an increased risk of child molestation.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
Very true. Also the only difference between a religion and a cult is the number of followers.
If we are going to use specious arguments, and faulty logic, then where did god come from?
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Care to name any?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There is absolute zero evidence of Hitler's atheism, while there do exist evidence of the contrary:
http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm
http://www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm
http://www.nobeliefs.com/mementoes.htm
And by the way, all the "nazi" stuff is not really just a story about Hitler, but a story about 80 million catholic-protestant nation. Hitler himself didn't kill anybody (except maybe during his service in WW I)
Cthulhu snores. He snores deep, and he snores loud.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You can get to the point of "not being able to explain" no matter which way you go. The bottom line is that science answers the question "how," and religion is about answering the question "why." When one side tries to reach across and bridge the gap between the two it means someone started asking a different question.
Maybe you should come in again.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The social value of 'religion' as a concept is well-proven.
At least one study has shown scientifically that people's behavior (in this case, children) was distinctly impacted positively by the concept of 'an invisible being watching me'. In the case I'm thinking of, children played a game that gave them both opportunities and rewards for cheating. Cheating, unsurprisingly, was endemic in the control group (no adult present). When an adult was present, the incidence of cheating was greatly reduced. When the children were told convincingly that there was an invisible person sitting in the same chair the adult had used, cheating was even LESS.
Further, there has been some discussion of the value of shared rites (usually religious) in predicting who will reliably follow a society's rules. If a person can't/won't reliably adhere to shared religious rites that supposedly are beneficial at little/no cost to the individual, this would predict that person will be unlikely to adhere to more important societal norms as well.
(One might further observe that this remains largely true, at least in the US. The left is politically characterized as individualist and chaotic, and the (religious) right as collectivist and 'marching in lockstep'. This has resulted in a balanced political landscape, despite a clear majority of voters self-identifying as Democrats (left of center).)
So the value of religion to early societies is pretty clear.
Nevertheless, I'd disagree with their conclusions here. They point to the rise of the great organized religions around the era of plague - this was also (unsurprisingly) the rise of widespread urbanization, probably something that I'd guess had more to do with both the spread of disease AND the rise of religion.
-Styopa
There have been examples of transmission of disease during the Haj. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016344539090577U Christian missionaries have spread disease among native populations around the world.
You are confusing a sympton with the disease. The desire for power is at the heart of almost all killing and war. The two most efficient transport mechanisms to accomplish gaining power is religion and triabalism / nationalism. This nicely explains both Stalin and the pope who said 'now that we have the Papacy, let's enjoy it'.
That you'll end up worse without religion, is an hypothesis that's just as baseless as religion itself. If it were true, atheists would already be doing this and countries where religion no longer has its foot in the door would be collapsing. This is not the case. In fact the most religious places are the worst shitholes of the world. And when your solution to problems is praying and relying on your imaginary friend (he has a plan!), it should come as no surprise that tomorrow you'll wake up in the same shithole.
Even if religion is a symptom, it is worth adressing it just as it is worth addressing a strong fever. Especially if the religion spreads intolerance (submission of women, hatred against gays, ...), misinformation (literal interpretation of bible stories), interferes in public life (praying in schools), receives tax money, opposes scientific progress (creationism/ID) or swindles people(in practice: any clergyman with a private jet or a castle should be hanged).
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Leon Lederman
"some of today's major religions emerged at the same time as [other] widespread infectious diseases"
Seems to me the summary has the horse before the cart. Epidemics influence religion, not the other way around. During the plaque of the Middle Ages, European towns were decimated. Monasteries, being isolated from the town fared much better. Therefore, religious practices changed to reflect those of the monks. Yes, it is true much of it happened because people thought that God had spared the monasteries, however, without the plague none of it would have occurred. The plague or epidemic was the catalyst for the change in religious thought, not the other way around.
And, for the many posts referring to religion blaming natural disasters on God, are we talking 20th century or centuries ago? I'm pretty sure that blaming unknown forces on some superstitious being or practice was quite common in all cultures. Breaking a mirror causing seven years of bad luck has nothing to do with a deity.
It exhibits all the same symptoms as other diseases, and kills an injures. It is also curable, with education; but can sadly be fatal for some (eg. the suicide bomber).
I always find this argument a bit off. There are tons of stuff I don't know much about, and it never caused me any anxiety. Why is it that only the center octave can be turned by using a tuning fork/machine? What is the chance earth is hit by a largish meteor, or how often do people in my country get hit by lightning? Will I get hit by a bus tomorrow?
For my money, religion is mostly cultural. Sure, the seed is doubt, anxiety self-delusion and all that stuff. And sure, it grows because some people knows how to exploit that to get indoor jobs with no heavy lifting (as a famous author put it). But mostly it is a delusion transferred from parents to their children, and more general from society to the next generation.
Don't get me wrong, specific anxieties can be cured by dispelling ignorance (lightning is not caused by demons, e.g.) But there is no requirement to know everything in order to avoid ignorance, nor do complete possession of available facts dispel all anxieties.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
This part is utter nonsense. It makes me think the author of the piece is not as familiar with Christianity as they may think they are.
I love how biased that article is. Muslims are the ones who came up with a way to combat the plague, through isolation of patients and lancing of boils. What did Christians do? They killed all the cats, because cats are demon servants of witches, thereby letting the rats carrying the plague spread. They burned at the stake all the women who had any medical knowledge of herbal and medical lore as witches. They bled people with leeches and by cutting their veins open. Oh, and they walked down the roads flagellating themselves.
Yeah, that was the way to follow Jesus in loving thy neighbor.
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Reminds me of the Stephenson novel which had an interesting take on a link between retroviral diseases and "mind viruses".
It's true
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I find this interesting.
Seeing as we have very little written evidence from back when the major religons we created (thought up, made up, etc), i find it hard to believe that we also have evidence that suddenly wide spread diseases.
What is more likely, that more people were starting to live together, ie, tribes got bigger, joined up with others, and more people created not only the religons, but the diseases that goes with living amoungst a bunch of people.
Be seeing you...
The difference between a cult and a religion is that a cult tries to isolate its members from the outside world, while a religion won't.
A religion is beer while a cult is crack cocaine.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Agreed that they are not mutually exclusive, but many specific religious groups have a tendency to get in the way or panic when asking for more details. Religion isn't in and of itself a disease that prevents progress, but it often converts to it. I'm sure countless plagues people were trying to come up with a cure for, when a church or group got in the way saying "we need to apologize to god, stop waisting your time trying to cure it with mortal tricks you heathen". That dosn't make every religous person an idiot or harmful, but many groups did and still do hide behind religion as an excuse to instantly give everyone an unrefutable answer and tell them to stop looking. There is nothing directly unscientific about believing in another power, but it has potential to lead to an answer that people stop looking deeper when they hit.
Those doves & pigeons exhibited no signs of lepracy.
Now, what about those poor people with leprosy?
No brain, no pain.
But mostly it is a delusion transferred from parents to their children, and more general from society to the next generation.
Exactly, it's child abuse.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
It's a painting. So what?
I thought the major religions WERE infectious diseases.
How can the belief in an invisible sky-daddy ever be called rational?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
If plagues are ravaging, who lives and dies seemingly random then I'd call it a form of mental self-defense, it won't attack me because I'm pious and those who died had somehow sinned and deserved it. Imagine if people suddenly started dying in large numbers, but you could find no virus, no bacteria, no radiation, no nothing and healthy people would just drop dead seemingly at random. Would you start to get religious? That finally God had come for some long overdue clean-up, a bit of the old Sodom and Gomorrah days?
There might still be many that call themselves religious, but I consider the intensity to be on a strongly downwards trend. Because we see that pretty much everyone, no matter what religion or how much they live in "unholy" ways are about the same. There's no particularly favored groups that have less disease, injury or tragedy in their lives than the rest. The cause of death is for the most part known, there's the odd exception but the vast majority we know that they die from e.g. cancer. It doesn't mean we can cure it, but we know what causes it.
Of course you can say that God hides in the corners and gave the bad people cancer or the odd case of self-healing we can't explain. But that's a completely different and subtle God lurking in the corners and pulling hidden strings, not this powerful omnipotent commander of life and death. Like, if you have that power why use it in the most roundabout way possible? For many people it's now some nice ceremonies of naming (baptism), adulthood (confirmation), relationship (marrige) and death (funeral), without any real expectation that God will do anything for you.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What countries are these where religion doesn't have a foot in the door? In the United States religion has a giant foot in the door. That is half the worlds wealth. Look at the following study: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/09/religions-correlation-with-poverty/ There is correlation with poverty and religion as a whole. But can you see correlation if you remove india(buddism) and islam?
That's not necessarily true - "arriving at God" is akin to the following from the movie "Joe Dirt":
"Why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green? How does posi-trak on a Plymouth work? Some things we'll never know."
Everything is answerable with a scientifically plausible answer.
By the way, since we have a "joe dirt" moment with the question "where does tectonic movement come from?", I figure I'd answer it since your school didn't and you haven't opened up enough middle school books to explain the whole mix. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics
In a nutshell, the earth was a molten ball of lava before it cooled down. The outter shell became solids and broke apart at several locations over the years. The pieces are called plates, and they float on the remaining molten rock that did not cool down. That rock is called magma, and it's temperatures cause it to have "currents" that push the plates subtly. They run into each other and often just slide under/over each other inch by inch over years without notice.
I know you were just trying to be a douche, but I figured we'd bring logic into the picture before things got stupid.
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Care to name any?
I believe there is a scismatic branch of Pastafarianism that holds that the midget is actually a metaphorical representation of the Higgs-boson. Fortunately, the rigidly anti-dogmatic stance of mainstream FSM prevents anyone from really caring.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I've always laughed at the answer to that, it's as if some 6 year old kid smiled gleefully and was telling you about their invisible friend.
"Well ummm... God's always been around and mm he lives forever and nothing can kill him because he's BIG and ALMIGHTY and will crush any other God because he's the only one and uhhh he's always existed! yeah!"
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I'm not saying that couldn't work, but it's had a bad track record so far...
Humanity needs more of both spirituality and reason. We lack greatly in each.
yes they are, saying it's wizard did it means you don't need to bother checking and finding out that it's actually caused by convection currents in the molten core or whatever.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
Tectonic movement willed by God. See? they're not mutually exclusive.
There! Now you've done it!
One group of sincere religious people will say that God is interested in the world and will "will" things to occur on the planet.
Another group of sincere religious people will say that God is disinterested in the world and provides us with free will (?).
The two groups will disagree. They will fragment and fragment some more. They will form new religious groups. Their disputes will become both organized and violent.
One man's heresy is another man's faith--and with astounding regularity that difference spawns violence.
They are not mutually exclusive. You are being just as simple minded as the people that only look to spirituality to answer their questions.
Whether you like it or not, religion has played a huge role in getting us where we are today, both in good ways and bad. Leibniz, Descartes, Galileo, Newton, Dante, Einstein, Augustine: all men who believed in some form of higher power, even the Christian God. And then there is the contribution of monasteries -- beer, the preservation of literature and mathematics, and on and on.
Crack cocaine users destroy themselves. Beer drinkers are happier, friendlier people who get behind the wheel and kill others. Likewise cults pose a lesser danger to the world at large.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Christian Scientist
There, answered that question outright.
Exactly. Is the use of the word religion rather than culture done to gain interest in the article or is it the best use of the word?
Or to put it better, do people of different religions have different cultures, even though they might live in a geographically contiguous area? Does the east coast Jew and the east coast Anglican belong to different cultures?
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Likewise, people who replace "I don't know" with "science has answered this completely" do a disservice to their own intelligence and science at large.
Socrates was right, we know nothing. The results of science are just as unprovable as the existence of a god or gods or what have you. They may seem provable, in that they are reproducible and practical, but there is no way to prove that e.g. our senses and perceptions reflect reality. It doesn't make scientific understanding any less practical, but neither does the unprovability of a higher power make spiritual understanding less practical.
"...and in particular to extend help to nonrelatives, even at a significant cost to themselves. An extreme example of this is when someone tends to the sick, risking infection and, at least in earlier times, death as a result—a behavior that doesn't make much sense from an evolutionary perspective, particularly if the sick person is not kin."
That's a HUMAN trait, not a religious trait, and it DOES make sense from a evolutionary sense. Helping others survive means there is a higher chance the species will survive, even if the one person dies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Where does Reality come from?
Everything is answerable with a scientifically plausible answer.
Prove that your senses and perceptions reflect reality. If you believe they reflect reality, you are engaging in just as much of a leap of faith as someone who believes in a higher power. There is no reliable evidence to prove that a higher power exists and their is no reliable evidence to prove that your senses reflect reality.
Jenny McCarthy. Need I say more? Even Randi has taken issue with her espousing her uneducated opinion about child vaccinations in a huge public forum because of her celebrity. It may not yet be an epidemic, but the resurgence of whooping cough in the United States is in part due to her and her bubble-headed bleach-blond talking head. She has done a real disservice to mankind and has done nothing to try and reach those influenced by her words now that science has unequivocally refuted her witch doctor claims.
Sorry but in the modern world Celebrity trumps everything, even religion. That is part of the problem.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
>Tectonic movement willed by God.
The difference is in the type of response. If you think it is willed by god, then you spend your resources on church's and prayer, and trust that you will be spared by gods will if your a good observer. Basically just wait for the disaster, and when a few people are spared you praise how it is proof that gods will saved them.
If it is science, you instead figure out what size of quake and frequency could realistically happen and spend the money building safe structures and responses to minimize the disaster, rather than on something completely unrelated to the reality of the situation.
Although you may not agree with the remedy, much like chiropractic care for back pain, it can be an effective treatment for some types of problems. Many religious laws solved some fundamental problem (which may or may not still be a problem today).
For example, many of the dietary laws in Jewish and Muslim religion are believed to have been written to prevent certain types of food-borne illness. Mixing meat with dairy, if not done correctly, often results in undercooked meat. Eating pork results in greater contamination of the water supply because pigs require so much water that they tend to be farmed close to river. And so on.
For another example, many of the religious laws on sex stem from a fundamentally sound, albeit primitive, understanding of genetics. Having sex with close family members tends to result in all sorts of recessive traits becoming much more common, including a number of harmful mutations.
Heck, even prohibitions against wearing two kinds of clothing are useful for preventing static electricity buildup, which in a primitive society, could be misinterpreted as punishment from God, and could cause all sorts of really stupid mistakes.
I think the more interesting question is this: many of these religious laws suggest an understanding of medicine that is way beyond the understanding of the people who wrote them. Was this dumb luck, or is it the hand of God working among us? (Or, alternatively, did we get visited by aliens, if you'd prefer?)
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But we DO know things. We know so much that you were able to post your message on Slashdot using technology developed with SCIENCE.
Why do religious people want 100% certainty when dealing with science, but are happy with faith when it comes to religion? Science cannot prove anything 100%, but it can have so much evidence, so many correct predictions, so many passed tests that it can say that it knows something with a VERY high degree of certainty. At the same time science has found no evidence of god. None, not one shred of evidence. Yet, science does not says this proves there is no god, just that it very, very, very, unlikely there is a god. There could be an invisible pink unicorn in my kitchen, and this statement has as much evidence to support it as the existence of god.
Anarchists never rule
When AIDS first began to be noticed in the US our religions played a role in holding back research. AIDS was considered a "Gay" problem and funding and research were both deeply effected.
It is almost funny in a way to try to imagine scientists at the Center for Disease Control actually thinking that a virus penalized or gave credit to people based upon sexual orientation. How could a virus "know" anything about sexual practices? And how about guys out seeking hookers under the belief that AIDS was just God's way of punishing queers and that they were perfectly safe?
Secular community support groups should replace religion. All the benefits of belonging to a group without giving up reason.
Anarchists never rule
How does any of the above change the fact that *some* things in the bible [were] rational and well informed?
The problem is that once these "rational and well informed" rules become part of the religion they become dogma. They become holy words which must not be changed. It doesn't matter if it turns out they were wrong if the first place or if the situation changes. The reason dies and the prohibition lives.
Not necessarily. There are sometimes "reformed" churches who lighten up on rules given scientific progress. For example Reform Judaism believes that some "laws" are really guidelines subject to interpretation rather than literal adherence. On the Christian side you have one church that believes in literal interpretation and that the universe is six thousand or so years old while a different church does world class science in the field of astronomy and who has a priest that developed the big bang theory for the origin of the universe. I think the later (church not priest) once accepted something not far from the former with respect to the age of the universe.
Regarding the proposition that some non-religious people believe epidemics are punishment, yes that is true. A lunatic fringe of that population will say it is mother earth / nature punishing mankind for despoiling the earth.
I'm pretty sure anyone who believes that Mother Nature can punish mankind is religious. They may not be part of your religion, but if they really believe in Mother Nature then they are definitely religious.
To an extent I agree. I see many of the anti-religious posters around here displaying quite religious thought pattens and behaviors. However I think its really about zealotry not religion. A bible thumping fire and brimstone preacher ranting about the wickedness of man and an atheist radical environmental activist ranting about the evils of humanity are quite similar, merely having different polarities on the religiousness meter. While zealotry is often associated with religion I think it exists separately and is the true source of many problems, not religion itself. Many great thinkers and scientists were religious.
What track record? Where or when has any such attempt been made at all? I was not raised with religion, but a couple of years back I attended a Sunday service as a school assignment and finally understood the social component of a church community. It was rather nice and I was sorry to go at the end except for the fact that I was put off by all the hocus-pocus biblical stuff. Even then, for want of benefits such as health care, I think a rational human being would be very compelled to embrace such ideals, accepting the spiritual stuff as an annoyance and the social bonds as a bonus. I haven't since encountered any group of people that shared quit the same appealing traits without the superstitious worldview.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
You're just jealous, because you don't have one
So, how does religion influence the behavior? According to the article:
An extreme example of this is when someone tends to the sick, risking infection and, at least in earlier times, death as a result—a behavior that doesn't make much sense from an evolutionary perspective, particularly if the sick person is not kin.
Behavior "that doesn't make much sense from an evolutionary perspective" What a bunch of hog-wash! It's as bad as the "Evolution did that so that.."- or "Nature wants us to.."-sentences. Nature doesn't want anything. Evolution is a theory of environmental adjustments by selection of favorable random mutations, not a replacement-religion or, worse, a replacement for social theory.
Unbeknown to some scientists, being expert in one field doesn't make you an expert in all related fields. This is like these arguments for the genetic programming of gender roles based on early cave society, where it later turned out that there is no archaeological evidence, but just backwards projected patriarchal bias.
With or without religion, I would much rather live in a community where I can rely on others and others can rely on me. Long term that might even be the favorable form of society.
I'm thinking of the Cult of Reason insomuch as it is connected to the Reign of Terror and other extremes of the French Revolution. There are aspects of "civil religion" in Hitler's political ideas (not trying to Godwin you). There are aspects of civil religion in the politics of Mussolini, Stalin, and Mao as well.
I'm not comparing you to them at all. Maybe it's just been the people behind it and their purposes in using civil religion to cement their power that have given the idea a foul taste, but civil religion has not had a good track record.
The 'supernatural' in practice means 'incomprehensible' - unknowable by humans - something forever beyond human ken, something we will never be capable of understanding. Different terms are used - the 'ineffable', the 'mystery', and so forth - but the basic idea is the same.
Think about the difference between the notion of the 'powerful alien' (a staple of science fiction) and the notion of a 'god' in a religion. What's the essential difference between them? In the stories, they both do amazing, astonishing things. But a powerful alien is (ultimately, eventually) comprehensible - often in the story humans are able to figure out some way of duplicating its powers, or interfering with them, etc. Gods, though, are beyond what humans can do, and there's no point in trying to figure out why or how they do what they do.
And if you decide that something is fundamentally incomprehensible, you will stop trying to understand it. E.g. here or here.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
It's true that there's no way to disprove solipsism. No evidence of any kind could possibly be mustered to contradict the idea... since any such evidence could just be more illusion. You can't prove that the outside world exists, that the sense-data coming in has some relation to an actual external reality. You have to take it 'on faith'.
Except... hold up. Let's assume the converse for a moment. Okay, fine, have it your way. We'll grant that nothing but your own mind is real and everything else is just a dream you're having.
Then what?
You've just rendered everything pointless. Solipsism and related brain-in-a-vat models are internally consistent, but practically useless. If our senses don't correlate at all with an external world... then what? Assuming that sort of thing inevitably leads to futility. The alternative idea - that the senses do relay data that in some way informs us about an outside world - doesn't have that inevitable implication, and has the bonus of being at least potentially falsifiable.
More here.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Your first invalid assumption is that you or anyone else actually knows anything. Your second is that I am a religious person.
Science is based on observations made by the senses. There is absolutely no proof that our senses reflect reality in anyway. For some reason many "fans of reason" have no problem basing their everyday lives on an act of faith. There is just as much proof that a god or gods exist as there is proof that our senses in any way reflect reality (none).
Furthermore, if you can't disprove there is a pink unicorn in your kitchen, why disbelieve it? That's basically what I'm getting at. Denying or agreeing with some premise without evidence either way is by definition making a decision that is not based in reason.
Believing in our senses and therefore in science obviously has practical benefits, but never forget that it is an act of faith.
Or how about the head of the order/religion noticed a problem and proactively "fixed" the text to try to solve it, possibly by early statistacal corelative relationships or to protect an industry?
Thank you for clarifying. But I'm afraid I disagree that any of the social movements you cited were based on "rational thought". With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see where the momentum of those historic developments went off the rails. But I wonder, how much situational awareness did contemporary observers have of the unfolding events? Did *they* believe what was happening was a progressive thing that would properly replace religion? In the case of the French Revolution, at least, I believe the answer was no. I'm reminded of a contemporary American political cartoon comparing and contrasting the American Revolution symbolized by the statue of liberty with the French Revolution rendered as the monster Medusa holding a sword in one hand and the head of the French people in the other. Americans of the time were horrified at the fanatical bloody excesses of the French. Likewise, at the eve of WWII, both Communism and Fascism were viewed with great nervousness and suspicion by the West. I don't think anyone labored under the illusion what was happening was driven by rationality. Unfortunately, no one had the courage or political will power at the time to challenge what they thought they couldn't afford to defend against. In all these cases, support was garnered by propaganda rather than civil discourse. Be that as it may, I remain optimistic that one day, when the institutions of religion is no longer self-sufficient, it will implode on itself and out of the ashes will arise a more effective social institution that will serve the same purpose without the superstitious nonsense.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
i always thought religion is rational thought for the uneducated masses (those who dont have it inherently)
Erm... yes...
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
It's hard for me to say. You may know more about the subject than me. I do think it's more important what the people in France, Italy, China, etc. thought was going on than outside observers. I'm not against the idea if it were to take hold organically, as you say, and without persecution, but I think it is worth being skeptical when people want to "rewrite" society. That sentiment, maybe in name only, has been the reason behind a lot of evil shit.
I think if such tampering had occurred, there would be loads of evidence of it, particularly given that ancient copies of those texts still exist and are regularly studied.
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Sounds like a brave new world to me.
Judging by the quality of your post, you must be deeply religious, then!
PS: Religion != Christianity. You might want to check out the atheist and non-theist religions, for example.
Speaking in my capacity as an ordained minister, I'd like to know what the heck you are talking about?
My religion welcomes atheists and agnostics and actively fights the type of dogmatism you are embracing. So why are you speaking this way about me and my co-religionists? You are telling harmful lies.
See, the truth is that people are not interchangeable parts, and both science and religion are composed of the works and beliefs of many individual people. If you ascribe the attributes of some subset of religion and/or science to a vast mass of people you've never met and have not tried to understand, and refuse to acknowledge the truth of easily verified facts, you have abandoned rationality. Abandoning reason is not a characteristic of religion, although it has been (and is) a characteristic of SOME religions.
Here's how your hypothetical conversation happens where I live:
Questioner: Where do earthquakes come from?
Religion: That's a good question! But it's really more the domain of geology; we religious types are more interested in the effects of earthquakes on humans and other living beings, and how to help make the world a better place for every creature.
Science: buzzword buzzword buzzword buzzword buzzword!
Questioner: No, really, I want a real answer. Quit dodging!
Religious #1: GOD!
Religious #2: Who can say? God willing, we may learn someday.
Religious #3: You must TAKE THE LORD into your HEART so that you may KNOW THE TRUTH!
Religious #4: You should go to the library and look up "plate tectonics" since this is really not a religious question. Also, it's hard to say if objective reality actually exists, so you should take my own subjective interpretations with a grain of salt, and embark on your own journey of discovery. All that being said, earthquakes seem to be caused by the shifting of huge chunks of the earth in reaction to stresses related to the distribution of heat and interactions of cosmic events such as the movements of the planets through space, as well as lingering effects from the formation of the solar system itself. We will probably learn more about this in the future, and many of the explanations used in the past seem silly to modern people, so keep an open mind.
Scientist #1: The latest poorly supported theory is absolutely correct and all other interpretations are obsolete.
Scientist #2: The latest theory is balderdash and poppycock and everyone knows that the standard model is correct! You are a heretic and should be burned!
Scientist #3: What do I know, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a geologist. That last religion guy sounded like the right answer to me, but that's unpossible, since religion is the opposite of science.
Scientist #4: BUZZWORD BUZZWORD BUZZWORD mumble mumble mumble.
Scientist #5: I have degrees in geology and physics and I study plate tectonics. Why don't you come to my lecture series? I'm having it at the local Unitarian Universalist Church, because they love science talks, and they have better coffee than the Buddhists.
That's an interesting list of things we can "thank religion for" but these types of wisdoms can be shared in many other ways. Also, many such rules for sex and food handling existed in other cultures unfamiliar with the Abrahamic religions which only goes to prove that they are not the source of such wisdom nor sole provider of it.
Religion may be a convenient mechanism for transmitting useful other things, but it is not the source of the knowledge, but rather, a carrier of it. And we can see that it's not like it has been followed "religiously" by followers anyway.
So just as in the case of moral laws and ethical practices, religion tends to practice "embrace and extend" in lots of areas. Serving as a useful mechanism to share wisdom throughout cultures is not, in itself, a great thing when you consider that you are also telling people lies about invisible people who demand to be worshipped or die/kill while trying.
In Iraq there's a Muslim hygienic code dictating that people should cover their faces from the desert dust. During the first Gulf War our troops dismissed this as a local religious superstition. Bad move. Turns out the dust was full of cyanobacteria, producing a toxin BMAA. This resulted in a cluster of disease for our infantry and air mechanics:
http://blog.dhec.co.za/2011/03/blue-green-algae-and-alzheimers-disease/
Sometimes religion gets it right.
You're pushing a dishonest argument here. The question what my senses represent is utterly irrelevant as "reality" is no more than a matter of definition. I can define reality as that which my senses convey to my consciousness, thereby declaring it real. By keeping sensory perception outside the 'real' you push any argument whatsoever straight into futility. Such futility isn't necessarily bad, it's just that I consider talking to myself a rather pointless activity most of the time. It's a fast race to the bottom which I'm perfectly willing to accept. My consciousness may not have a purpose and that's ok with me, but that's beside the point. The problem with belief in higher powers is that it's a leap of faith of a totally different order. Where the nature of my sensory perceptions has at the very least some modicum of perceptible evidence (the perceptions in question as my consciousness is aware of them), the same can not be said of godlike higher powers. I can live with the notion that I'll never be able to tell the true nature of what my senses are telling me (with "me" being the consciousness doing the perceiving). Such conscious perception is utterly missing when it comes to gods. At least my sensory perceptions are real in the sense that a consciousness perceives them, it just doesn't have the means to understand their nature forcing it to take them at face value. When it comes to gods we're quite a large step behind that. The utter lack of perception of gods makes it impossible to question their nature, let alone have any hope of understanding such a nature even if it were there to begin with. In short: my senses provide my consciousness with tangible evidence of their presence, I just can't hope to ever truly understand them. God doesn't even begin to show evidence.
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
That mechanism has little to do with religion as such. It's simply the established power structure doing what it always does to maintain the status-quo: prevent change at all cost.
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
Quod erat demonstrandum.. just have a quick glance into Christian schisms and that's just the beginning.
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
You're being quite dogmatic by saying "See, the truth is".. and presumptious as well there yourself dear minister. Scientist #6 would disqualify your "scientists" #1, #2, #3, #4 on the grounds of not understanding of deceitfully subverting the scientific method and #5 on the grounds of answering by proxy, thereby not answering the question at all. Religious #4 is a misnomer in that it reflects what scientist #6 would say without needing religion of any kind. But hey, I'm not an ordained scientist so what the heck do I know? That little bit about your religion welcoming atheists sounds interesting if a little paradoxical, though. How does that work for you?
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
So why even bother with gods at all if they're utterly beyond comprehension? For all intents and purposes they are not there, it's exactly the same but a heck of a lot simpler.
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
Some people are happy to take nearly everything on faith (they believe whatever nonsense they are told by newspapers, holy books, or scientific journals) and other people prefer to practice the scientific method, which enshrines experimentation and skepticism (of all things, including both religion and science itself). I personally have noticed little or no correlation between "faith based" beliefs and religion, honestly. In my own church, I cannot think of a single person who your sentence describes accurately; in fact many of us are practicing scientists. Yet: I can find a dozen people in five minutes on any anti-religious forum who firmly believe all sorts of things they have never bothered to actually verify for themselves, because, they claim, "science has proven" some absurd thing. Some of these people will tell you glass is a liquid, for example!
For many people a white-coated scientist is interchangeable with a black-robed priest... they simply believe whatever their chosen oracle tells them is true, completely on faith.
Reality is not a matter of definition. If something is real it exists, and if it is not real it does not exist. Let's not use the word loosely.
Obviously the senses exist (thanks Descartes), but there is no amount of wiggling around that can prove anything about what they convey to your brain. We can only gather evidence through our senses, and that evidence cannot be used to prove that our senses convey anything about what actually exists.
Furthermore your argument itself seems to say that there is nothing wrong with religion. Many people "perceive evidence" of a god or gods. By your argument that "the perceptions in question as my consciousness is aware of them" are evidence enough that your senses convey information about reality to your brain, so too would it be enough for the belief of a higher power if someone "perceives evidence" of a higher power. I don't buy that, but it's your argument.
Basically I'm just tired of anti-religious people saying that belief in a higher power is "bad" or "stupid" because there is a lack of evidence in a higher power. There is a lack of evidence that our senses perceive reality. It's an assumption (or act of faith) that every sane person makes. All I see is people OK with basing their belief in their perceptions on no evidence and denigrating other people who believe something else based on no evidence.
Criticism accepted! This is the truth as I see it, and I certainly could be wrong.
Religious #4 is me, personally. That's my answer. So it's definitely a religious answer, and the fact that it doesn't contradict science is a feature, not a bug.
Most westerners don't realize that there are a number of explicitly atheist religions. Jainism, for example, is much older than Christianity and still exists today. The dominant western theisms have worked very hard to convince people that religion and theism are synonymous, but any serious study of the history of religion will show this simply isn't true. People from Asia and the Indian subcontinent generally know this, people from Europe and the Americas generally don't.
As for my church, well, I am a pantheist, personally, but my church is Unitarian Universalist. We have been happily accepting theist, atheist and agnostic members since the late 1960s. Every UU congregation has its own unique flavor, but there are many thousands of them all over the world, so it's usually not hard to find one that works for you. Some strongly emphasize the exploration of religion, philosophy and spirituality, some don't; nearly all are active in social justice issues such as fighting ignorance, slavery, racism and injustice.
doesn't the bible also mention getting drinking water _upstream_ from the latrine? religion is a way, in pre-literate times, of preserving & passing on knowledge by wrapping them in mnemonic stories, as well as explaining the unexplained (thunder&lightning? da' gods;-)
but imho, the atheists miss the primary function of religion: socializing each new batch of barbarians, before a conscience can be instilled in a child. religion is indigenous psychology... and what better way to make people listen than to threaten eternal damnation?
isn't it the very definition of evolutionary advantageous behavior? religions exist because they are good at motivating & organizing the efforts of large #s ( >small kinship bands) of people to accomplish works that provide survival value. doesn't the bible have helpful advice such as: get ur drinking water_upstream_from ur latrine?
religion is folk-psychology, using behavioral modification techniques that work on the individual, transmitting valuable information, in a pre-literate world, by way of mnemonic stories, ensuring that subsequent generations don't have to reinvent the wheel.
> people's behavior (in this case, children) was distinctly impacted positively by the concept of 'an invisible being watching me'.
what the rabid atheists overlook is that the target audience of religious teachings, which aren't intended to withstand rational, critical examination, is the _pre_rational mind, ie: children. a conscience must be created while still possible...isn't the age of reason a long-established concept in law & religion?
so habituating the pre-rational mind to moral behavior while it is still influenced by magical thinking is necessary to produce moral adults.
and that is imho the primary function of religion: socializing each new batch of barbarians;-)
no, celebrity _is_ the new religion;-}
as a form of nasal innoculation with whatever pathogens are floating around;-}
what i said above;-)
and have u noticed the new commercial holy water, dispensed in convenient pop-up tissues @ every grocery store entrance, or in wall-mounted pumps, for a ritual handwashing on entry;-)
That's a weird question. If it comes from something else (e.g. God), then it follows that it is not part of reality, and thus it does not exists. So your question does not make sense logically.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
It is a weird question... I guess it doesn't really make sense come to think of it :) But the same could be said of the question "Where does God come from?" Not everything has to have a creator, even if we assume everything (besides God) was created by "God." Reality is eternal (by definition) and God is eternal (by most definitions).
Not that I'm trying to convince you of anything; it's just that the edges of human thinking fascinate me...
I think in truth, the idea of god(s) is the same as the idea of reality. Atheists state reality has no will; many religions state reality has some will that has been revealed to them. I think it's a little arrogant to decide either way, but then again that's probably why everyone hates agnostics ;)
Maybe a more interesting question is "Why is there reality?" or "Why is there anything at all?" If you have any insight into that question, I would be most interested.