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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."
... from FEAR and IGNORANCE.
Yes? Then I'd say they're having an influence.
Still, nice set of arguments you had. ;)
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
I'm actually not that militant in my atheism; I believe the world would, on the whole, be a better place with less religion and more rationality, but I don't go on about it.
However, religious people do go on about it. It's much more subtle that evangelism; how many times have you seen a character in a film, etc, thank god for something or pray? How many films are there based on the premise of there being a god, heaven, etc (vs how many based on the premise that there is no such thing)? How many religious symbols do you see in day to day life (from a cross around someone's neck to a church you travel past)? How often are religious figures or issues reported on in the news?
It all adds up to an unintentional, background pushing of religion. It's little wonder that some people feel the need to push their atheism (and that's ignoring the theists that do go round actively pushing their views; I've never told anyone they're an idiot for believing, but I have been told *to my face* I'm going to Hell for not believing).
It's official. Most of you are morons.
>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.
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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