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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.
Yes? Then I'd say they're having an influence.
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.
I don't understand why people fail to realize this. As an extension, abstinence prevents a world of problems from even happening.
Still, nice set of arguments you had. ;)
Why would anyone eat powdered tiger cock? Chinese medicine is largely hokum.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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?
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.
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...
It's killed more than most illnesses I've heard of. And still does.
Mao, Hitler and Stalin were atheists. The 30 years war, the Crusades, the Spanish inquisition, Al Queda were religious. Your point is? Most mass murder is because of greed, not religion. Religion is used to justify the greed in some cases. In other cases, politics or biology are used as justification. But greed is at the heart of almost all killing and war. An atheistic world would be neither more peaceful nor less peaceful because even atheists are just as greedy as everyone else.
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.
The point is that people kill for the basest reasons, and come up with an excuse to rationalize it. Sometimes, the excuse is religion. Sometimes it's spreading democracy. Should we destroy democracy as well, for the harm done in its name? Or should we perhaps realize that people aren't always honest about their motives?
But hey forget it. We now return you to your regularly scheduled five minutes hate.
Hitler was not an atheist. He himself may not have known what he really believed, but he wasn't an atheist. This is one of those things people should stop casually repeating :)
You also skirt round a key point: yes, religion is used to justify appalling acts, but as far as I know atheism never has been. Not once. No-one has ever said "We must kill these people because they believe in a god". Religion is harmful because it can be used in this way. It can be used as a propaganda tool in a way non-belief cannot. When a dictator says "These people are against God and must die"', there are people listening and nodding their heads in agreement. Enough people genuinely believe that such rationalisations are valid that it enables mass campaigns of murder and terror.
Rgasuya aata! : I have been coding Perl and cannot tell where my fingers are now!
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)
Abortion is not necessarily the easy way out. Abortion is not a pleasant experience, physically or emotionally, and it may be tempting for the mother to keep the child, even if she knows it will be raised under less than adequate conditions. If you don't believe abortion is equivalent to murder, abortion may be the most responsible thing to do.
Also, I live in a secularised country (Sweden) where all school children have sex ed, contraceptives are freely sold to all ages, and abstaining from pre-marital sex is seen as a little weird. We have virtually no problems with teenage pregnancies. Most kids have their first sexual experiences some time during high school, but they don't become particularly promiscuous, and most settle into monoagamous relationships (with or without marrying). When people eventually marry, the reason is commonly to have legal protection in case something unexpected happens, especially for the children's sake.
In case you've heard the rumour about Sweden having the world's highest suicide rates, it's a myth.
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
>I don't understand why people fail to realize this. As an extension, abstinence prevents a world of problems from even happening.
That's a false assumption, it prevents some problems (assuming human perfection in execution on a level that is near impossible to achieve), but it causes a whole bunch of OTHER health problems. Religious people don't like to admit it but any sexologist will tell you that severe sexual frustration causes massive health problems including many psychological ones but also physical ones (and of course psychological problems can have physical symptoms which just throws more fuel on the fire).
That's not even considering the massive and proven health benefits of a regular and healthy sex life.
Sorry, science says it's a BAD SOLLUTION and the negative side effects are far worse than the risks of non-abstinence. The fact that abstinence in reality is a near impossible thing to achieve on a large scale just means that attempts to enforce it actually AGGRAVATES the problems it was meant to resolve - because it means that the sex which DOES happen is now unsafe on a much larger scale.
Ultimately safe sex is a far better compromise than abstinence if your goal is disease control.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
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.
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?"
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
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's killed more than most illnesses I've heard of. And still does.
Mao, Hitler and Stalin were atheists. The 30 years war, the Crusades, the Spanish inquisition, Al Queda were religious. Your point is? Most mass murder is because of greed, not religion. Religion is used to justify the greed in some cases. In other cases, politics or biology are used as justification. But greed is at the heart of almost all killing and war. An atheistic world would be neither more peaceful nor less peaceful because even atheists are just as greedy as everyone else.
Hitler was a Catholic. It is a widely believed misconception that Hitler was an atheist, just as it is a misconception that he was a vegetarian.
Hitler himself wrote in Mein Kampf... "I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's work."
Years later he was also quoted as telling General Gerhart Engel... "I am now, as before, a Catholic and will always remain so."
Nazi Germany worked with the Catholic Church who blessed troops and equipment. Each infantry soldier even wore a belt with a buckle inscribed "Gott mit uns" - God is with us.