Is religion harmful to society?

[modest]

Can't you imagine an atheist religion?

 

Are you saying that atheism can be a religion or are you saying there can exist a religion that is atheistic?

 

It also might help if you gave your definition of religion, theism, and atheism.

 

~modest

[charles brough]

Are you saying that atheism can be a religion or are you saying there can exist a religion that is atheistic?

 

It also might help if you gave your definition of religion, theism, and atheism.

 

~modest

 

Oh no, atheism is not a religion but, clearly, atheism can be part of a religion---such as East Asian Marxism.

 

The dictionary "definition" is not a definition at all but a description. A proper definition of "religion" would state its function. A "chair," for instance, has to be defined in a way that includes that it is to sit on. And since we use religions to bind us into much larger groups than the small hunting-gathering groups we evolved thru millions of years of evolution to live in, they serve an important function.

 

So, it is better to avoid the term entirely (which I do in Destiny and Civilization, the evolutionary explanation of religion and history). I use "world-view" or just WV instead. A WV is always a closed way of thinking that enables a large society to function. The old ones are "spirit"-based, but the horrible examples of new ones we have so far been saddled with are not---Marxism and Nazism, We have to do better than that! (Hitler was evolving his system away from Christianity).

[modest]

Oh no, atheism is not a religion but, clearly, atheism can be part of a religion---such as East Asian Marxism.

 

The dictionary "definition" is not a definition at all but a description....

 

So, it is better to avoid the term entirely... I use "world-view"

 

I think you're right, using the term "world view" would be much better to get your idea across. When you say Marxism is a religion it disagrees with what my idea of religion is. I think there's often a fine line between philosophy, religion, and political ideology. However, distinctions have to be made—especially in this thread where attributes are being given to "religion".

 

A belief in gravity may be part of a world view, but it is not a religion. A disbelief in god or the lack of any belief in god (also known as atheism) can similarly be part of a world view, but it is not a religion.

 

As a world view, Marxism deals with issues of social and political philosophy, but does not cross into religious and theistic philosophy. It doesn't express issues of the supernatural, the sacred, and the divine in a way that religion does. I believe this is a necessary distinction. At least... it is in my personal world-view :shrug:

 

~modest

[charles brough]

I think you're right, using the term "world view" would be much better to get your idea across. When you say Marxism is a religion it disagrees with what my idea of religion is. I think there's often a fine line between philosophy, religion, and political ideology. However, distinctions have to be made—especially in this thread where attributes are being given to "religion".

 

A belief in gravity may be part of a world view, but it is not a religion. A disbelief in god or the lack of any belief in god (also known as atheism) can similarly be part of a world view, but it is not a religion.

 

As a world view, Marxism deals with issues of social and political philosophy, but does not cross into religious and theistic philosophy. It doesn't express issues of the supernatural, the sacred, and the divine in a way that religion does. I believe this is a necessary distinction. At least... it is in my personal world-view :naughty:

 

~modest

 

Yes, but there is a problem there. The mainstream religions such as Christianity, Islam and Hinduism are more than just a belief in "spirits." There is something about them that binds them into or causes the society they are associated with. How can anyone separate Christianity from Western civilization? In fact, the faith caused or is the civilization.

 

In other words, those three old religions and East Asian Marxism are all society bonding mainstream religions or, better yet, world-view and way-of-thinking systems. They all have a similar structure and function that philosophy does not have.

 

Seems to me that the key to that is that they all answer the same four important questions: what is our origin? what is our goal? what is the moral system we use to reach it? and what stands in our way? This is the core of all four---including Maxism. . .their theology. All mainstream religions are based on answers to those questions. Consistent answers provide a closed system of thinking that is able to survive for thousands of years.

[HydrogenBond]

Second time you have tried to sneak this canard into this thread Hbond, and this will be the second time it is shot down.

A few issues here:

-coercive or imposed atheism by vicious dictators is not the same as organic secularization taking place gradually over generations, as in countries such as Sweden or Denmark

 

Atheists like to cherry pick their greatest hits but deny anything that is not flattering to their cause. This was a bleak moment in atheist history that is way up there in the atrocity annals. They ran a huge social experiment and it failed, so blame it on everything else.

 

Cultures like Sweden and Denmark have done better with atheism because they do not contain the diversity of a Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was not one culture where most people could trace their ancestry to everyone else. Atheist failed with the harder diversity experiment. It does better with soft and peaceful people who would do good any which way.

 

The second half of the experiment had to do with the reintroduction of religion into this atheist state. Things should have gotten much worse, but they actually got better for most people. Ironically, capitalism increased when religion was introduced. Atheism seems to increase socialism. Are Sweden and Denmark closer to capitalism or socialism?

[charles brough]

Atheists like to cherry pick their greatest hits but deny anything that is not flattering to their cause. This was a bleak moment in atheist history that is way up there in the atrocity annals. They ran a huge social experiment and it failed, so blame it on everything else.

 

Seems to be a mistake to blame Marxism on atheism! The failure of Bolshivism lies not in its atheism---in what it does NOT believe in---but in the numerous errors in the Marxist social, economic and political doctrines that it DOES propose.

 

The next successful world religion will not be some ancient semi-monotheism but one based on atheistic-science. It will have to be based on it to be scientific and it will not be successful if it is not. Religions come and go in world history. The semi-monotheistic age is nearing its end.

[HydrogenBond]

LIke any religion, the members of that religion are not all Saints. You will have good atheists, who are honestly concerned about truth and what is good for all. But you will also get atheist thugs. It has to do with human nature. When we talk about the history of religion, we bring up the religious thugs like they are the rule instead of the exception. I was doing the same, showing atheist thugs.

 

Even if religion ended and atheism was to come into its own, there is still human nature to deal with. There will be atheist thugs that will bully the good atheists. Not everyone one is altruist or rational. Many are opportunistic and irrational. Christianity projects this dark side of human nature into Satan. Although this looks like a fantasy, it keeps this aspect of human nature conscious. When it is not conscious, one is not fully aware.

 

Most people on this forum are intelligent and reasonable. But converting a street gang to atheism won't lower crime. If they have any fear of god, they have some inhibitions, just to be sure. It that is removed, they can now become even better thugs. I am not saying atheists are thugs but this will be some of your future recruits. Don't expect to skim the cream of the top and live in paradise. How will good atheist deal with atheist thugs who only see themselves as their own god?

[Galapagos]

Atheists like to cherry pick their greatest hits but deny anything that is not flattering to their cause.

What is the atheist cause? Atheism only means someone who does not believe in any gods.. nothing else. Atheists cannot be assumed to have any more in common than that.

This was a bleak moment in atheist history that is way up there in the atrocity annals. They ran a huge social experiment and it failed, so blame it on everything else.

The social experiment was one testing the irrational belief in collectivism and other communist dogma. There is plenty about these ideas that would lead to the genocide, destitution, and oppression witnessed in places they were implemented.

There is nothing about simply not believing in gods or angels or demons that logically leads to genocide and oppression.

 

 

Cultures like Sweden and Denmark have done better with atheism because they do not contain the diversity of a Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was not one culture where most people could trace their ancestry to everyone else. Atheist failed with the harder diversity experiment. It does better with soft and peaceful people who would do good any which way.

Homogeneity may or may not have anything to do with the levels of organic atheism in Sweden and Denmark, but neither of us know that(unless you have evidence you have failed to present thus far).

You should re-read Zuckerman's paper, and see that the argument is not based solely on Sweden and Denmark:

Is Faith Good for Us

If this often-touted religious theory were correct-that a turning away from God is at the root of all societal ills-then we would expect to find the least religious nations on earth to be bastions of crime, poverty, and disease and the most religious nations to be models of societal health. A comparison of highly irreligious countries with highly religious countries, however, reveals a very different state of affairs. In reality, the most secular countries-those with the highest proportion of atheists and agnostics-are among the most stable, peaceful, free, wealthy, and healthy societies. And the most religious nations-wherein worship of God is in abundance-are among the most unstable, violent, oppressive, poor, and destitute.

 

One must always be careful, of course, to distinguish between totalitarian nations where atheism is forced upon an unwilling population (such as in North Korea , China , Vietnam , and the former Soviet states) and open, democratic nations where atheism is freely chosen by a well-educated population (as in Sweden , the Netherlands , or Japan ). The former nations non-religion, which can be described as "coercive atheism," is plagued by all that comes with totalitarianism: corruption, economic stagnation, censorship, depression, and the like. However, nearly every nation with high levels of "organic atheism" is a veritable model of societal health.

 

The twenty-five nations characterized by organic atheism with the highest proportion of nonbelievers are listed in Table 1. When looking at standard measures of societal health, we find that they fare remarkably well; highly religious nations fare rather poorly. The 2004 United Nations' Human Development Report, which ranks 177 countries on a "Human Development Index," measures such indicators of societal health as life expectancy, adult literacy, per-capita income, educational attainment, and so on. According to this report, the five top nations were Norway , Sweden , Australia , Canada , and the Netherlands . All had notably high degrees of organic atheism. Furthermore, of the top twenty-five nations, all but Ireland and the United States were top-ranking nonbelieving nations with some of the highest percentages of organic atheism on earth. Conversely, the bottom fifty countries of the "Human Development Index" lacked statistically significant levels of organic atheism.

 

 

LIke any religion, the members of that religion are not all Saints. You will have good atheists, who are honestly concerned about truth and what is good for all. But you will also get atheist thugs. It has to do with human nature. When we talk about the history of religion, we bring up the religious thugs like they are the rule instead of the exception. I was doing the same, showing atheist thugs.

Atheism is not a religion, what are you talking about?

 

Most people on this forum are intelligent and reasonable. But converting a street gang to atheism won't lower crime. If they have any fear of god, they have some inhibitions, just to be sure. It that is removed, they can now become even better thugs. I am not saying atheists are thugs but this will be some of your future recruits. Don't expect to skim the cream of the top and live in paradise. How will good atheist deal with atheist thugs who only see themselves as their own god?

 

And no one has suggested a causal relationship but yourself. This could simply be a correlation; places that are healthy are conducive to atheism. Or it could be causation; irreligious folks make up relatively peaceful, healthy societies.

There could be a number of explanations for the data, but one thing is certain, the idea that societies degrade into Sodom and Ghomorra or the Soviet Union without religion is not tenable.

[Galapagos]

Cool interview with Dr. Phil Zuckerman about his latest book:

YouTube - Irreligion & Scandinavian Society- Phil Zuckerman Part1 of 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn1il00qIzI

YouTube - Irreligion & Scandinavian Society- Phil Zuckerman Part 2 of 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eEojwlG4cU

Soceity Without God http://www.amazon.com/Society-without-God-Religious-Contentment/dp/0814797148

[HydrogenBond]

Are organic atheists raised on manure? I could not resist that joke. Sorry. Once I hear the buzz words green or organic, I think fad, marketing, more expensive and a con job. These buzz words try to create an irrational image in the mind, using a natural religion presumption. The atheist need to prove atheism is natural and not synthetic.

 

One way to determine whether religion or atheism is more organic is to take the 10 most primitive cultures on earth, before they have too much time to become artificial. They are the closest to being natural or organic. Then we determine their orientation to see what the earth naturally brings. The other will be called synthetic. I don't know the results of this, but would be willing to live with that result.

[Moontanman]

Are organic atheists raised on manure? I could not resist that joke. Sorry. Once I hear the buzz words green or organic, I think fad, marketing, more expensive and a con job. These buzz words try to create an irrational image in the mind, using a natural religion presumption. The atheist need to prove atheism is natural and not synthetic.

 

One way to determine whether religion or atheism is more organic is to take the 10 most primitive cultures on earth, before they have too much time to become artificial. They are the closest to being natural or organic. Then we determine their orientation to see what the earth naturally brings. The other will be called synthetic. I don't know the results of this, but would be willing to live with that result.

 

 

I have to admit that "organic atheist" is really out there, it kind of raises the bar on misinformation. Dog excrement is organic but I don't think it's good for me. organic is a meaningless term, it can be used to mean almost anything.

[charles brough]

Cool interview with Dr. Phil Zuckerman about his latest book:

YouTube - Irreligion & Scandinavian Society- Phil Zuckerman Part1 of 2

YouTube - Irreligion & Scandinavian Society- Phil Zuckerman Part 2 of 2

Soceity Without God

I listened to the video clips, Galapagos, and while what he says is all accurate, I am, surprised that a sociologist would be unfamiliar with the fact that the secularism of Scandanavia and much of the rest of Europe is also an ideology. It unites us as did the old religions. There is no absolute "Truth" and our world-views are always only more or less accurate than the others. Secular Humanism is more accurate than the old religions. But it is not able to bind us into a society that is succeeding. People are deserting Secular Humanism---especially in Islam. For the first half of Bush's reign, people in the US did also. People are going back to Hinduism and converting to Christianity in India. If Secular Humanims were all we needed, we of the world would not be warring all the time, would be spending many times more to move into space colonizing, bring unity to the world and the expense of racism, and cut down the growth of population. Our secular system is not doing this. It has problems also, not just the old and even more obsolete faiths. . .

[Galapagos]

I have to admit that "organic atheist" is really out there, it kind of raises the bar on misinformation. Dog excrement is organic but I don't think it's good for me. organic is a meaningless term, it can be used to mean almost anything.

 

That's the social sciences I guess :doh:. He was just using the word 'organic', as in 'home-grown' to contrast with 'imposed' or 'coerced' atheism like that in communist countries(a lot of religious loonies can't seem to separate the two in their minds):

One must always be careful, of course, to distinguish between totalitarian nations where atheism is forced upon an unwilling population (such as in North Korea , China , Vietnam , and the former Soviet states) and open, democratic nations where atheism is freely chosen by a well-educated population (as in Sweden , the Netherlands , or Japan ). The former nations non-religion, which can be described as "coercive atheism," is plagued by all that comes with totalitarianism: corruption, economic stagnation, censorship, depression, and the like. However, nearly every nation with high levels of "organic atheism" is a veritable model of societal health.

 

 

 

Are organic atheists raised on manure? I could not resist that joke. Sorry. Once I hear the buzz words green or organic, I think fad, marketing, more expensive and a con job. These buzz words try to create an irrational image in the mind, using a natural religion presumption. The atheist need to prove atheism is natural and not synthetic.

 

One way to determine whether religion or atheism is more organic is to take the 10 most primitive cultures on earth, before they have too much time to become artificial. They are the closest to being natural or organic. Then we determine their orientation to see what the earth naturally brings. The other will be called synthetic. I don't know the results of this, but would be willing to live with that result.

 

Are you suggesting that his collected data is some sort of a fad, or "con job"? Also, all babies are born atheists, so there, its natural!! :hihi:

And, yes you know the results of that. All primitive cultures have false beliefs about supernatural agents and public ritual practices etc.

But alas, this was not Zuckerman's point, his point was that these people(those in places like Japan and Norway[shout out to Tormod!!]) became irreligious of their own volition, whereas those who lived in communist nations did not.

Are you suggesting that because primitive or ignorant people believe in strange things, it is unnatural for modern people with information to stop believing weird things?

 

 

I listened to the video clips, Galapagos, and while what he says is all accurate, I am, surprised that a sociologist would be unfamiliar with the fact that the secularism of Scandanavia and much of the rest of Europe is also an ideology. It unites us as did the old religions. There is no absolute "Truth" and our world-views are always only more or less accurate than the others. Secular Humanism is more accurate than the old religions. But it is not able to bind us into a society that is succeeding. People are deserting Secular Humanism---especially in Islam. For the first half of Bush's reign, people in the US did also. People are going back to Hinduism and converting to Christianity in India. If Secular Humanims were all we needed, we of the world would not be warring all the time, would be spending many times more to move into space colonizing, bring unity to the world and the expense of racism, and cut down the growth of population. Our secular system is not doing this. It has problems also, not just the old and even more obsolete faiths. . .

 

... do you have any citations for those claims about demographics? As far as I know, Islam and Christianity aren't convincing anyone of anything, they just tend to encourage adherents to have sex without contraceptive and to have lots of babies.

Also, the non-religious are the fastest growing group in America, but I can't find any data about the growth of irreligion worldwide.

Also, those in Sweden are more bound by Christian culture than anything. You can read this in the one-on-one interviews in Zuckerman's book. Despite atheism/agnosticism, many baptize their kids and a lot of them do confirmation as teens(mostly as a way to conform and receive gifts), but that seems to unite them more than their lack of belief in anything else.

 

One more thing, I suspect that globally there may be a negative correlation between education/information and religious belief. I have many statistics that demonstrate this relationship in America, also a negative relationship between acceptance of evolution and religiosity, and measure of IQ and religiosity . I am going to round up all my data and I will post a thread on this topic later..

[Moontanman]

I'm going out on a limb here and say that originally religion was good for society, if it wasn't evolution of society wouldn't have selected for religion. Religion was used to answer the whys of existence, why does the sun rise and set, why does winter come why does my wife have to die. Religion was pretty good at giving answers to questions. In modern times we need answers that are accurate instead of comforting. In that context Science is replacing religion. Religion only answers questions that are nonsensical now, questions with actual answers are answered by science. I say that by default science has become the religion of the modern age or at least fulfills the original need religion filled. the old religion has lost it's power over the centuries of enlightenment and now only clings stubbornly to those things that either have no real answer or are really not true and only religion can assure people they these things are true. Religion as it was is loosing power, eventually only those people who refuse to see reality will be able to believe.

[charles brough]

... do you have any citations for those claims about demographics? As far as I know, Islam and Christianity aren't convincing anyone of anything, they just tend to encourage adherents to have sex without contraceptive and to have lots of babies.

Also, the non-religious are the fastest growing group in America, but I can't find any data about the growth of irreligion worldwide.

I cannot imagine any poll being taken on such a vast scale, but I know from many sources that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in the number of believers each year. Also, the Islam is growing at a faster rate but that amounts to fewer new believers than Christians because Christianity has a much larger base. In the case of Islam, much of the new membership can be credited to so many Muslim babies being born!

Christianity in Africa takes form as 30,000 separate little churches each with a pastor that has spoken directly with God (!) In Singapore, it is a way for Christ to protect you from ghosts. In India, it is a way to get out of the caste and get a better reincarnation. Etc. Etc.

[charles brough]

One more thing, I suspect that globally there may be a negative correlation between education/information and religious belief. I have many statistics that demonstrate this relationship in America, also a negative relationship between acceptance of evolution and religiosity, and measure of IQ and religiosity. I am going to round up all my data and I will post a thread on this topic later..

 

I agree, but that only means we who are Free Thinkers need to take over, to be more responsible. We have been sitting back for the last several centuries---every since the Age of Enlightenment. We need to be in control of government and the direction of society and the civilization. We have been feeding ourselves with "be tolerant" and "favor diversity" epistles when it is the diversity that is tearing up the world and it the religions which will NOT be tolerant when they gain control again. Look into world history. All civilizations experienced religious reaction until they ended completely. So, everyone, are we to just let things drift?

 

charles

http://atheistic-science.com

[Pyrotex]

I cannot imagine any poll being taken on such a vast scale, but I know from many sources that Christianity is the fastest growing religion...

It would seem to me that the rate at which any religion is "growing" should be expressed in terms of the overall population growth of the planet.

 

So, if the planet is adding people at, say, 100 million a year, then the Planetary Growth Rate (PGR) would be 100/6000 or 1.67% per year, then we could say that Christianity is growing at 1.1 times the PGR (which would be 1.83% per year); or at only 90% of the PGR (which would still be an increase, but smaller than the population as a whole).