Is religion harmful to society?

[InfiniteNow]

Without a concept of self, it can’t have a concept of an immortal self, otherwise known as a soul. Based on a survey of the major religions, and my personal experience, I begin with the assumption that all significant religions must have a concept of the soul.

 

Not Jehovah's witnesses, and other monist practitioners. Nor do buddhists believe in souls. How narrow is your definition of "significant religion?" The only way your basic premise here holds water is if you limit yourself pretty significantly to only a handful of sects.

 

Either way, it's time for me to move on. I feel the claim that "societies cannot exist without religion" has been thoroughly debunked in numerous ways already, and no more is required of me at this time. Take care, my friend.

 

 

 

EDIT: I meant to comment on this previously... I like how you've laid this out. It makes good sense. The challenge is that it only applies to some people, not all. For example, non-believers like myself, and others who engage in religion due to simpler causes like indoctrination. Either way, though... I like your logic, and it reminds me of my "God as first parent" concept I've shared a few times here and elsewhere.

 

According to my theory, it’s a sufficient cause, because for a self-model to be effective – allow the psyche to plan, act disadvantageously with the expectation of future advantage, etc. – it must necessarily assume persistence of the self – that “I” will be the same “I” in the future, as now. The key assertive leap of my theory is that the self-model assumes persistence of self too strongly and inflexibly, decreasing the psyche’s ability to conceive of its opposite, impermanence, or death, of the self, otherwise known as mortality. This disability results in a strong tendency toward wishful thinking (AKA magical thinking), which is manifest by creating and accepting explanations of reality in which the self never dies. Thus, the presence in a psyche of a self-model requires that the psyche believe, on some cognitive level, in an immortal self/soul, a religious though.

[CraigD]

Without a concept of self, it can’t have a concept of an immortal self, otherwise known as a soul. Based on a survey of the major religions, and my personal experience, I begin with the assumption that all significant religions must have a concept of the soul.

Not Jehovah's witnesses, and other monist practitioners.

Jehovah’s witnesses believe that, upon one’s physical death, one exists in a state of unconsciousness until one is physically resurrected by God. After this resurrection, one is physically immortal, not aging or again dieing from disease or misadventure (see this Watchtower article). This satisfies my theory’s requirement that a religion deny that the self ends, by equating the time between physical death and resurrection with deep, dreamless sleep.

Nor do buddhists believe in souls.

Although it’s correct that Buddhism rejects the idea of the eternal soul common religions including its parent religion, Hinduism, it posits nearly the same concept of karma, in which after one’s physical body dies, one is reborn, possibly as a human, possibly as a non-human animal, or possibly as a being in one of many non-physical realms. Because Buddhism rejects the idea of actual separateness of souls, all beings being manifestations of a single entity.

 

In my experience, these ideas are very esoteric, so much so that many, possibly most self-described Buddhists have beliefs more closely matching one of the many forms of Hinduism than one of the several forms of Buddhism. Regardless, Buddhism and Hinduism provide explanations of reality in which the soul – be it truly or illusorily individual – does not end when ones body dies, so satisfies my theory’s requirement that religion provides such an explanation.

How narrow is your definition of "significant religion?" The only way your basic premise here holds water is if you limit yourself pretty significantly to only a handful of sects.

My definition of “significant religion” is based primarily on its number of adherents.

 

Per the wikipedia article I linked to from post #353, less than 8% of the world’s religionists fall outside of the major religious groups of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism/Buddhism, and “Chinese Folk Religion”, all of which provide explanations of the self persisting after the death of the physical body. Although an analysis of the remaining religions is outside of my experience and the scope of this post, I suspect that nearly all of them also provide this explanation.

 

Therefore, I don’t believe my theory’s requirement to provide such an explanation is limited to only a handful of religious sects.

 

I recognize, however, that equating number of adherents with significance, and simplifying religious ideas such as those in Buddhism to equate them with those in Hinduism, is crude and in need of improvement. For example, there have never been very many Diests, but many Deists were very socially influential, especially in late colonial America and the early US, and although most Deists believe in an immortal soul, some prominent ones did not. According to my theory, these people, and others, prominent or otherwise, who do not profess to believe in souls, immortal or otherwise, must on some unconscious level entertain the idea. Scientifically confirming this, however, requires neuroscientific instruments and techniques that don’t yet exist – though I hope that such instruments will be invented in the near future.

[modest]

For me the idea of a spirit or a soul seems very natural. Thinking back to when I was a kid—I thought of me (my sense of self) as something inside of my body. My arms and legs and everything else that made up my body were mine... but they were not me. My consciousness and my identity was something that controlled my body from the inside. I would certainly understand that as a soul if I knew nothing of anatomy or biology.

 

Likewise (being a social and empathetic creature) I would imagine others have souls directing their bodies just like me. Animals also have bodies with motion and life and so they must have something like a spirit. To me, these seem like logical conclusions that prehistoric humans would have come to. It’s not even a religious thing as much as it is just kind of an obvious conclusion people would make.

 

Religion is related to this idea of souls and spirits.. I can see that. But, I think it also stems from something more basic. The human brain takes sensory input and makes it into recognizable patterns. Trees and animals both grow. Streams and arrows both move. Those patterns make the world into something predictable (something with cause and effect). It’s only natural then to see a sky that gives us lightning and storm as angry. If you kill a snake and a week later your child is killed by a snake then that’s retribution.

 

It’s not a big leap until you have tribes doing things to make the sky happy and appeasing the spirit of the snake. The way superstitions get started in modern culture, so too can religion get started in prehistoric culture. Certainly the supernatural world we create out of patterns would become intertwined with our notions of souls and spirits, but I don’t think one is necessarily the cause of the other.

 

~modest

[Pyrotex]

One excellent way to analyze a specific attempt at logical deduction,

is to see if it works with other conclusions:

 

* human language is a necessary condition for human society

* a cognitive self-model is a necessary condition for human language

* a cognitive self-model is a necessary and sufficient condition for human stupid thought

 

* human language is a necessary condition for human society

* a cognitive self-model is a necessary condition for human language

* a cognitive self-model is a necessary and sufficient condition for human non-sensical thought

 

* human language is a necessary condition for human society

* a cognitive self-model is a necessary condition for human language

* a cognitive self-model is a necessary and sufficient condition for human retarded thought

 

Yup, it works every time, no matter how ridiculous the conclusion.

 

Therefore, the logic itself is flawed and fallacious.

[charles brough]

For me the idea of a spirit or a soul seems very natural. Thinking back to when I was a kid—I thought of me (my sense of self) as something inside of my body. My arms and legs and everything else that made up my body were mine... but they were not me. My consciousness and my identity was something that controlled my body from the inside. I would certainly understand that as a soul if I knew nothing of anatomy or biology.

 

Likewise (being a social and empathetic creature) I would imagine others have souls directing their bodies just like me. Animals also have bodies with motion and life and so they must have something like a spirit. To me, these seem like logical conclusions that prehistoric humans would have come to. It’s not even a religious thing as much as it is just kind of an obvious conclusion people would make.

 

Religion is related to this idea of souls and spirits.. I can see that. But, I think it also stems from something more basic. The human brain takes sensory input and makes it into recognizable patterns. Trees and animals both grow. Streams and arrows both move. Those patterns make the world into something predictable (something with cause and effect). It’s only natural then to see a sky that gives us lightning and storm as angry. If you kill a snake and a week later your child is killed by a snake then that’s retribution.

 

It’s not a big leap until you have tribes doing things to make the sky happy and appeasing the spirit of the snake. The way superstitions get started in modern culture, so too can religion get started in prehistoric culture. Certainly the supernatural world we create out of patterns would become intertwined with our notions of souls and spirits, but I don’t think one is necessarily the cause of the other.

 

~modest

 

I regard this is an excellent dipiction of the origin of religion. In other words, religions provide the best understanding of ourselves and the world around us that exist at the time they originate. Being the "technology" and "science" of the people at that time, it is the ideology that unites them. It turns them into a sort of "tribe" or, in primate and even all mammal-terms, it forms the cohesive "group" within which the alpha males stake out its territory and, with the assistance of all the others, protect. Howler monkeys will even go to the edge of their territories and harass their neighbor troops.

 

Evidence of religion show up from 70,000 to 40,000 years ago and we have had it ever since. Eventually, we always outgrow religions because human understanding continues to become ever more accurate.

 

But just because our science no longer needs to credit everything, in fact, ANYthing, to "spirits" does not mean that the process of "religion" can ever be outgrown. We still need common understanding of ourselves and our universe and we need it in such a form that it binds us into territory-protecting mammal-primate-like groups which is evolved in us.

That is why East Asian Marxism is able to survive even though it is a defective "science." It provides that social binding we need to survive in such numbers.

 

We need it, but we need something much better than Marxism!

 

"""Tsodilo is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in northwestern Botswana.[1] It was inscribed in 2001 due to its unique religious and spiritual significance to local peoples, as well as its unique record of human settlement over many millennia. It contains over 4,500 rock paintings in an area of approximately 10 km² within the Kalahari Desert. A recent discovery of 70,000-year-old artifacts and a python's head carved of stone appears to represent the first known human rituals.[2]

 

Scientists had thought human intelligence had not evolved the capacity to perform group rituals until perhaps 40,000 years ago in Europe. But inside a cave in remote hills in Kalahari Desert of Botswana, archaeologists found the stone snake that was carved long ago. It is as tall as a man and 20 feet (6 meters) long.""" ---Wikipedia

[charles brough]

I recognize, however, that equating number of adherents with significance, and simplifying religious ideas such as those in Buddhism to equate them with those in Hinduism, is crude and in need of improvement. For example, there have never been very many Diests, but many Deists were very socially influential, especially in late colonial America and the early US, and although most Deists believe in an immortal soul, some prominent ones did not. According to my theory, these people, and others, prominent or otherwise, who do not profess to believe in souls, immortal or otherwise, must on some unconscious level entertain the idea. Scientifically confirming this, however, requires neuroscientific instruments and techniques that don’t yet exist – though I hope that such instruments will be invented in the near future.

 

Religious rituals have been traced back some 70,000 years and it is assumed by many scholars that religion goes back as far as we have been able to speak language. Most religions in modern times are just sects or denominations relating to or immitating the major ones.

 

What is a major religion? They are easy to find. They are the ones that bind us into animal/primate type groups with our own distinct territory. In other words, they bind us into the same sort of groups we find among other higher mammals and especially primates. That is, they ("religions") serve a function. The rest of the so-called religions only compete for that status, as it were. There is a natural selection process always going on between them. The most useful ones to human technological-numerial growth are the ones that enable us to spread and take over territory.

 

In my work, I call these "world-view and way-of-thinking systems". They were all based upon "spirits" because, then, we had no other way to explain things. Now we do, so the modern world-view systems are not based on "spirits." These include East Asian Marxism and our modern Secular Humanism.

[HydrogenBond]

The premise "is religion harmful to society", is too narrow because it only looks at one side of the equation. If we started with the premise, "is science and technology harmful to society, we could also dwell on the shady side of science and draw a distorted picture that does not include all the good it has done.

 

For example, all war, throughout history involved using technology made possible with the science of the day. Without science and technology we would not have nuclear and biological weapons. We would not be worried about North Korea or Iran. We would not be on the verge of manmade global warming. Without science we would not have the same level of pollution nor would millions of people be exposed to as many cancer causing chemicals. We would not have the means to make as many species of animals extinct. The world would not be overpopulated nor mass production would never have made it possible for so many people to die from smoking cigarettes, etc. Even the concentration camps were made possible with science and technology. The Amazon is being altered at an alarming rate using advances in science and technology.

 

This shady side of science and technology does not express all that science and technology is or was. There is also a good side to science that does a lot of good. But if the discussion premise was only the dirt of science and technology we could add to the above list. I love good science, but I try to be objective to the fact that science has a clean hand and a dirty hand, as does religion.

[charles brough]

 

Either way, it's time for me to move on. I feel the claim that "societies cannot exist without religion" has been thoroughly debunked in numerous ways already, and no more is required of me at this time.

 

What has been debunked is only the belief in "spirits." You equate that with "religion," but when we deal only with those large religions that spread and encompass vast territories--like other animals do---then "religion" is a FUNCTION, a system of belief that binds people into a large animal/primate like group with its own territory.

 

Then, "spirits" are no longer of any significance to the belief structure that achieves it. When we consider the binding power of Secular Humanism and East Asian Marxism, we can see they serve that function and do so without "spirits."

 

It is just a matter of everyone being confused and held back by a senseless but commonly held definition of the word. It is a shame they are so stubbornly adhering to is. It is a deadweight to social theory. It prevents us even from well understanding what is going on in world affairs today.

[InfiniteNow]

Whether you choose to refer to beliefs, worldviews, spirit systems, or whatever...

 

Society is a precondition for religion, not the other way around. Much like a collection of cells is a precondition for cancer. Funny, the similarities. :hihi:

[charles brough]

Whether you choose to refer to beliefs, worldviews, spirit systems, or whatever...

 

Society is a precondition for religion, not the other way around. Much like a collection of cells is a precondition for cancer. Funny, the similarities. ;)

Apparently you are of the opinion that that is the total, abstract, final and absolute "Truth."

 

the discussion ends . . .

[Moontanman]

I think that religion usually starts out with good intentions but as they say the road to Hell is paved with them. Religion is seldom started with the intention of doing evil but as with most things power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and nothing is more powerful than religion at least to hear most religions talk they are. The problem comes when religion decides it has the right to compel people to do what they think people should do, most all religions do this to some extent. Even if it starts as only a guilt trip it eventually gets out of hand and people suffer. Monotheistic religions seem to be particularly bad for this. For organized religion to form I think the society is a given before the religion, not after. You might get some scared people in a cave with a limited belief system but to call it organized religion would be quite a stretch. All in all I think religion become more harmful the bigger and more controlling it becomes and religion by definition always advances it's size and control over time much like a cancer that forms from a benign group of cells.

[pamela]

religion

a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects

3. the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.

religion definition | Dictionary.com

personifying religion as being some sort of evil entity, is abstract to say the least.It is the individual and the collective some, that adhere to a specific religious concept, that bring about certain problems in society

[Boerseun]

When we discuss tribal cultures in Africa praying to their ancestors and going through all kinds of incomprehensible rituals in praying to their multitude of gods, we call it primitive superstition. When Christians do exactly the same thing, we call it organized religion.

 

We respect the one, not the other. What would be the difference? Where does the one fail logically, but the other not? Where does the one justify itself, and the other not?

 

I think that religion is a necessary evil (if you'll pardon the pun) in the evolution of society in the absence of strong State. But once the State and all its organs have evolved to fill the void, then we should be honest with the population and tell them that the Easter Bunny doesn't actually exist.

 

Justice and morality is meted out in a court of law, not after you've died.

 

Honesty is a virtue. And even more so when we're talking about invisible über-ghosts.

 

Religion, at its core, is a primitive superstition, and should be viewed as such. And just by the very intellectual dishonesty attached to the whole concept, it cannot be good for society at any level - provided that a strong State have emerged in the society under discussion to mete out justice and morality in the absence of religion.

[modest]

I think it's a fine line we walk.

 

Religion has accomplished some truly evil things and some of the benefit to society that religion is assumed to have may be better served by the state as Boerseun says. But, personal faith in a metaphysical God cannot be considered so evil and cannot be replaced by the state. Where the function of religion is to serve that personal faith then it is not a necessary evil, but a necessary liberty. Where the function of religion is to control (as with a theocratic state) then religion is unnecessary and evil.

 

The question for me becomes: which religion (or which function of religion) are we talking about and is there a difference?

 

~modest

[buddyzen]

of course religion is harmful to society you put false beliefs in someones head and bamb what do you expect. For example look at Ireland there is a civil war that has been going on for a long time and it is all a religion war............ also in the Christian religion They would burn scientists back in the day and they had galileo on house arrest.

[InfiniteNow]

YouTube - Children of a stupid god http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEtfdzNAE74

[Pyrotex]

I haven't posted here in a long while, because I've been trying to come to terms with "benign religion", if I may be allowed to coin a phrase.

 

I am a member of a religion, the Unitarians. It is significantly different from most all others, in that it does not require belief in a core "creed" or set of theological "faithisms". You may believe in a god, a goddess, several deities, no deities, as your personal consciousness sees fit. "Salvation" may mean whatever makes it meaningful to you. "Sin" can be re-defined or discarded. The core of the religion is not "faith" but commitments or "covenants".

 

We publicly and orally confirm our covenants with each other every Sunday. These covenants are our commitments to ethical behavior, the innate worth of each human being, the protection and education of children, the web of all Life, the search for truth and knowledge, and others. All good things.

 

It's what I would call a "benign" religion. It's also NOT a very popular religion, because, truth be told, most people want to be told what to believe. Or rather, they want to be told that what they already believe is the TRUTH on a sculptured plinth supported by a Corinthian column of purest marble. And they want an invisible Peeping Tom in the sky who loves them. Yeah. Right.

 

Does it damage society if most folks believe things that are not true? It's entirely possible. Some of those beliefs are rather toxic. Like: if God says that He hates you, then it's okay for me to hurt you, because that's just doing God's will. Snerk, snerk. [picks nose. eats booger]

 

I don't think this damage to society comes automatically from deistic religion. But I think it happens more often than not. Sometimes the damage doesn't outweight the good that particular religion does [like, say, they promote excellent child-rearing habits and produce well-behaved children that grow up to be admirable adults]. Does that make a difference? What if the religion tends to foster racism or sexism. Does the fact that their kids all turn out to be good, honest citizens make up for that?

 

And what if the religion instills in each child an unshakeable belief that Santa Claus is just a "practice version" of God -- SC is made up, but God is realer than real, facter than fact, and for the rest of your life, this God will be reading every thought and emotion in your brain. How much damage does that do to a growing human being? And does that balance out with the liklihood that the child will "turn out" just fine otherwise?

 

Is religious indoctrination of children kind of like a mental circumcision?

Or is it more like a mental castration?

 

That's the part I'm thinking over.