Can religion ever really be blamed?

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Re: Can religion ever really be blamed?

Post by klr » Wed Oct 14, 2009 3:53 pm

Ayaan wrote:
floppit wrote:Definitely not! My contention is that the indoctrination follows from human behaviour, that it's people not religions (or despotic political viewpoints) that ought to be blamed, rather that it is down to people's own desire to reason for themself or their desire to take shortcuts, to spread their beliefs, to coerce others to share them, that is to blame for things like war - things often blamed on religion.
Religion is one of many dogmas that can motivate people's behavior. Many religions have the built in promise of an afterlife that motivate people in a way other dogma's can't. Speaking from personal experience, it is a very powerful thing. People may take the actions, but dogma gives them the justification when nothing else can.
That was the point I was making about the limited "shelf-life" of non-religious (mainly political) dogma. Once the novelty value of those wears off, people are back to looking out for number one. Just look at China. :levi:
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Re: Can religion ever really be blamed?

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Wed Oct 14, 2009 3:53 pm

Ayaan wrote:
floppit wrote:Definitely not! My contention is that the indoctrination follows from human behaviour, that it's people not religions (or despotic political viewpoints) that ought to be blamed, rather that it is down to people's own desire to reason for themself or their desire to take shortcuts, to spread their beliefs, to coerce others to share them, that is to blame for things like war - things often blamed on religion.
Religion is one of many dogmas that can motivate people's behavior. Many religions have the built in promise of an afterlife that motivate people in a way other dogma's can't. Speaking from personal experience, it is a very powerful thing. People may take the actions, but dogma gives them the justification when nothing else can.
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Re: Can religion ever really be blamed?

Post by floppit » Wed Oct 14, 2009 5:55 pm

I have not and would not suggest that awful things aren't done 'in the name of' religion, the examples above simply show that is the case but who do they show it is because of religion? I would still blame the Nazis, the people who undertook to carefully plan to kill millions of other people, I see their willingness to do so as the deciding factor, after all, not all Germans took part despite being exposed to the religious rhetoric being blamed here for events.
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Re: Can religion ever really be blamed?

Post by Hermit » Thu Oct 15, 2009 5:58 am

floppit wrote:I tend to think in a religion free environment people would still try to attain oil, money, power, diamonds, land and resources by war and would merely find a different (no more valid) justification.
Yes indeed, but consider something Steven Weinberg said: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion." I do not subscribe to the implication that only religion is capable of making good people do bad things, but without it there would definitely be fewer good people doing bad things.

As for the distinction between religions and religious institutions, that may become relevant when a noticeable number of religious people decide that they can practice their religion without involving the latter.
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Re: Can religion ever really be blamed?

Post by Rum » Thu Oct 15, 2009 6:03 am

Seraph wrote:
floppit wrote:I tend to think in a religion free environment people would still try to attain oil, money, power, diamonds, land and resources by war and would merely find a different (no more valid) justification.
Yes indeed, but consider something Steven Weinberg said: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion." I do not subscribe to the implication that only religion is capable of making good people do bad things, but without it there would definitely be fewer good people doing bad things.

As for the distinction between religions and religious institutions, that may become relevant when a noticeable number of religious people decide that they can practice their religion without involving the latter.
Ideology. Loads of 'good people' have done terrible things in the name of ideology. I suppose some ideologies are akin to religion in many respects.

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Re: Can religion ever really be blamed?

Post by floppit » Thu Oct 15, 2009 7:40 am

Yes indeed, but consider something Steven Weinberg said: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion."
There's a flip side to that, a hangover of religion itself - good and bad people, that life really is ever that simple. There are good and bad acts, there are people that spend more time indulging in one than the other, there are certainly people I don't like but whether it's rational to classify people as good or bad is questionable to say the least. Secondly, look at the quote carefully, religious people get to retain their 'good' status regardless of what they do, in fact ONLY religious people get to stay 'good' despite doing bad things, everyone else has to wear their mistakes as a judgement of their goodness/badness.

As Rumertron rightly points out this doesn't stand up to closer inspection, ideologies have shown themselves just as capable of changing people's behaviour for the worst. Additionally, there's no account taken for mistakes, boring as they may be people with good intent can do the most ruddy awful things just out of error and there's no reasoning to support why an atheist should be any less vulnerable to cock ups unless they replace the ease of ready made beliefs with reasoned ones.

I suppose what I'm arguing is that blaming religion is as much a meme as religion itself, it's equally born of group psychology and demonstrates the same one-sidedness in it's approach. I could easily demonstrate the awful versus of the bible, and it would perhaps be easier to fit in if I did, I know them, I can find and quote them (with the help of google!). But, why would I pay them more attention than the caring, fluffy bunny quotes in the same book? Why would I only select those quotes that demonstrate just how awful the bible is and ignore the sentiments that inspired Quakers to challenge social injustice? Why would I centre my attention on RC refusal to allow contraception and forget about 'ChristianAid'? For me personally (and I do mean personally) the only motivation to do that would be to belong more firmly to the group, I don't think a high level of selectivity when it comes to evidence is helpful to clear, rational thinking, I don't think it's accurate. The same instincts not to do that now are the ones which meant despite growing up in a very religious home any notion of faith I had failed to survive O Level biology! I'd need a lot of convincing to give those instincts up.
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Re: Can religion ever really be blamed?

Post by Xamonas Chegwé » Thu Oct 15, 2009 5:40 pm

There have been a number of posts comparing religion and ideologies in this thread. What people seem to be forgetting is that religions are ideologies despite the fact that they claim some kind of divine revelation as their basis rather than the ideas of a man, or group of men. But, if we deny that divine heritage, (and I assume that most of us here do) a religion is simply another man-made ideology.

As to whether religion, or any other ideology, can be 'blamed' for the actions of its adherents, that is tricky. Ultimately, we are all responsible for our actions - 'just following orders' is no defence, whether those orders come from other men or from some dusty old book of lies. The methods used to convert and reinforce the belief structures of ideologies can make people act in ways that they would not have countenanced previously - the question is, does this mean that the ideology itself shares the blame, or merely its officers? Is catholicism responsible for the spread of AIDS in africa, or is the pope and his cardinals? Was fascism responsible for the murder of 6 million jews, or was Hitler and his coterie? I don't claim to know. My best-guess would be 'a bit of both'.
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Re: Can religion ever really be blamed?

Post by Hermit » Sat Oct 17, 2009 2:17 am

floppit wrote:whether it's rational to classify people as good or bad is questionable to say the least.
Yes, the more I consider that Weinberg quote, the less I like it. Perhaps I let my assessment be unduly influenced by a certain catchyness and the fact that it is anti theist. A more appropriate saying would be: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Of course the word "hell" is used metaphorically here.

That saying is more generally applicable. Believe it or not, there were many fascists who sincerely believed that their actions were necessary to save civilisation from being destroyed by the twin nemeses of communism and zionism. Many communists committed atrocities believing their actions to lead to the workers' paradise on earth. Christians may no longer kill humans to save their souls, but even the more moderate believers inculcate notions of guilt in billions of others, resulting in incalculable misery and dread.

I don't particularly like the use of the word "blame" because I don't believe in "free will", but that is a tangential issue probably better discussed elsewhere. I do believe that without religion there would be one less cause for misery. There would be less misery because people would not simply change horses, so to speak, and continue creating "hell" for others under a different banner.
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Re: Can religion ever really be blamed?

Post by floppit » Sat Oct 17, 2009 7:54 am

Believe it or not, there were many fascists who sincerely believed that their actions were necessary to save civilisation from being destroyed by the twin nemeses of communism and zionism. Many communists committed atrocities believing their actions to lead to the workers' paradise on earth.
Thing is, I don't necessarily believe that what people say motivates them is actually what motivates them, ie people persuade themselves to justify actions. Look at the examples you give and you can see both a presence and an absence of religion - ok they are bound by a common thread of fantastical ideology but not religion. I'm not arguing religion has no influence, just that it is far from the most reliable one, again looking at the examples above they have another common denominator - the economic background in which they developed, poverty and for many hopelessness.

I'm suggesting the meme gets born for it's function and it's the perceived need desperate measures that leads to the justification not the justification that leads to the desperate measures.
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Re: Can religion ever really be blamed?

Post by charlou » Sat Oct 17, 2009 9:35 am

floppit wrote:again looking at the examples above they have another common denominator - the economic background in which they developed, poverty and for many hopelessness.
Ideological dogmatism, often religious, is a major contributing factor, actively preventing economic and intellectual development and progress for many backward, oppressed, "hopeless" cultures.

This can be exploited by those with greater economic resources and their own agendas, of course, further entrenching the "hopelessness" and creating the circumstances which breed radical extremism.
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Re: Can religion ever really be blamed?

Post by floppit » Sat Oct 17, 2009 2:26 pm

Charlou wrote:
floppit wrote:again looking at the examples above they have another common denominator - the economic background in which they developed, poverty and for many hopelessness.
Ideological dogmatism, often religious, is a major contributing factor, actively preventing economic and intellectual development and progress for many backward, oppressed, "hopeless" cultures.

This can be exploited by those with greater economic resources and their own agendas, of course, further entrenching the "hopelessness" and creating the circumstances which breed radical extremism.
Your post made me think, more than that it almost persuaded me except that our time now is only a brief snapshot in history. If it was religion itself that stifled development and progress one would expect to see the first civilisations that arose having less religion - or religious memes, but that's not the case. Mayan culture was highly religious - I almost don't need to type the words because alongside the ancient civilisation ruins temples spring to mind as quickly as their geographical context. The Babylonians were highly religious polytheists but that didn't prevent them being (probably) the first to use the concept of zero, if not the number itself.

My contention is not that religion is helpful, or even that it isn't harmful, rather that it is more a product than cause. Religions change over time as does their adherence to a dogmatic versus a flexible approach, recent years have shown that just within the CofE. The existence of religion remains and yet the levels of dogmatism change which would surely indicate other, more potent, factors.

If religion is the cause what explains the changes in religion? Beyond that, if it is religion holding nations back how can we explain highly religious and advanced countries like the US? Causal relationships just look different - what can be observed in our brief snapshot of time seems closer to a correlation.
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Re: Can religion ever really be blamed?

Post by Hermit » Sat Oct 17, 2009 2:59 pm

floppit wrote:If it was religion itself that stifled development and progress one would expect to see the first civilisations that arose having less religion - or religious memes
We're not looking at some athletic event here, where teams of humanoids spring out of starting blocks at the sound of a starting gun, and the team with the least religious ballast wins the civilisation stakes. More importantly, religion was a force for progress, a kind of proto-science, until the likes of Francis Bacon proposed a better alternative. Then it became a sheet anchor in regard to progress, fighting tooth and nail against just about any innovation, be it scientific, social economic or political, that you can name. Such calcified institution as the Vatican, for example, took several centuries (somewhere in the 1960s, I think) to formally concede that Galileo was right after all. Even though Eratosthenes had conducted an experiment involving the angle of the shadow cast by the sun in a trench in Sparta and a tower in Alexandria around 250 years before Christ was supposedly born, which not only established that the earth was actually a globe rather than a disc, but also enabled him to calculate its circumference with astonishing accuracy, people have been killed for proposing theories such as his, that did not accord with what is written in the bible for many years to come.

And please, before you point out to me that there is a difference between religion and church, remember what I said about that earlier.
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Re: Can religion ever really be blamed?

Post by FBM » Sat Oct 17, 2009 3:30 pm

Religion, like warfare, individual identity, oppression, generosity, hate, kindness, love, compassion, humo(aeiou)r, murder and such 'things' are patterns perceived in pheonomena. Abstractions fabricated from moment-to-moment experience. They have no independent existence apart from their constituent elements. They derive their qualities from them. This can be demonstrated efficiently by removing the constituents and observing that the abstraction can no longer exist. For example, remove humans and religion no longer exists. Etc.

The component elements of a religion are the phenomena that we label 'religious'. The label is used, not quite arbitrarily, but variously depending upon one's own indoctrination and subsequent prejudices. One doesn't identify his/her own beliefs as superstitious, but only conflicting beliefs that others have. And practically everyone believes in something that can't be demonstrated in a laboratory.

No, religion isn't to blame, because religion isn't a concrete entity. Neither are people nor an individual person to blame, because all of those are abstractions that draw their qualities from their constituent elements.

Atheism, to me, implies a fundamentally amoral universe. Not immoral, but amoral. No individual is ultimately accountable for his/her actions, because no act arises without pre-existing conditions and influences. But we must behave as if it were so, otherwise we would have no basis upon which to structure and organize societies.

Good/bad, right/wrong are issues of pragmatics and conventions, not absolutes. If you want to blame religion, which is a blanket term from the beginning, you may as well waste your breath blaming the god(s) that don't exist in the first place.

What's the solution? Minimize behavior that is harmful to quality of life (not always necessarily quantity), regardless of the label applied to it. Always look for underlying causes and conditions. Religion arises out of fear. Fear arises out of the false belief in one's eternal soul. Religion is just one of very many behaviors that reduce quality of life. Just about any thread in this forum contains references to behavior that is counter-productive to quality of life, whether any of our members engage in that behavior or not.

I'm not particularly a fan of Kant nor his Categorical Imperative, but it's in the ballpark, at least.
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Re: Can religion ever really be blamed?

Post by floppit » Sat Oct 17, 2009 7:58 pm

I couldn't agree more FBM - you put it much better than I managed.
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Re: Can religion ever really be blamed?

Post by Sisifo » Sun Oct 18, 2009 3:55 am

FBM wrote:Religion, like warfare, individual identity, oppression, generosity, hate, kindness, love, compassion, humo(aeiou)r, murder and such 'things' are patterns perceived in pheonomena. Abstractions fabricated from moment-to-moment experience. They have no independent existence apart from their constituent elements. They derive their qualities from them. This can be demonstrated efficiently by removing the constituents and observing that the abstraction can no longer exist. For example, remove humans and religion no longer exists. Etc.

The component elements of a religion are the phenomena that we label 'religious'. The label is used, not quite arbitrarily, but variously depending upon one's own indoctrination and subsequent prejudices. One doesn't identify his/her own beliefs as superstitious, but only conflicting beliefs that others have. And practically everyone believes in something that can't be demonstrated in a laboratory.

No, religion isn't to blame, because religion isn't a concrete entity. Neither are people nor an individual person to blame, because all of those are abstractions that draw their qualities from their constituent elements.

Atheism, to me, implies a fundamentally amoral universe. Not immoral, but amoral. No individual is ultimately accountable for his/her actions, because no act arises without pre-existing conditions and influences. But we must behave as if it were so, otherwise we would have no basis upon which to structure and organize societies.

Good/bad, right/wrong are issues of pragmatics and conventions, not absolutes. If you want to blame religion, which is a blanket term from the beginning, you may as well waste your breath blaming the god(s) that don't exist in the first place.

What's the solution? Minimize behavior that is harmful to quality of life (not always necessarily quantity), regardless of the label applied to it. Always look for underlying causes and conditions. Religion arises out of fear. Fear arises out of the false belief in one's eternal soul. Religion is just one of very many behaviors that reduce quality of life. Just about any thread in this forum contains references to behavior that is counter-productive to quality of life, whether any of our members engage in that behavior or not.

I'm not particularly a fan of Kant nor his Categorical Imperative, but it's in the ballpark, at least.
Greatly expressed, FBM, but I disagree. According to you, ideas cannot be blamed, because they have no independent existence from humans. That doesn't make the ideas less subject to blame. It simply makes those who use them as an excuse, responsible. But to exonerate the ideas from the cause of the problem, and simply holding the user or the actor as the only guilty part, is a minimal solution.
One example: an act of racism will have the person who committed it responsible of the wrongness of the act. But if you don't address the idea of racism in a more global frame, there can not be sensible hopes of eliminating those acts. Same thesis with gender injustice and homophobia. And with religion.
The fact that something has no real physical existence, doesn't mean that it has no repercussion in the real world. And if those repercussions cause suffering, they must be targeted and prevent that they influence others.

I also disagree about the amorality of atheism. My sense of justice, my pity and my empathy towards suffering didn't disappear at becoming an atheist. Call those feelings morality or any other way, and may they come from evolution or from social indoctrination, they are there, and that makes me a moral being.

Some memes are real viruses as religion is. And my atheist stance is, if I can't eradicate them, I'll try to prevent their propagation and contagion... But that is a personal decision...

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