"Imagine no religion..."

Well, what would you think that they might have to do with it? If having an extraordinary percentage of the local population in prison and western world leading murder rates amongst those still outside the walls are symptoms of hedonism, and we're asking whether atheistic societies might be more hedonistic than superstitious societies, what would the graphs tell you?

Hi, Nem. It was your position that was making an assumption about evolution. As written here: You said, "if religion wasn't truth, then it has an evolutionary advantage." That isn't the only possibility if religion is not truth: religion could be a completely meaningless manifestation of some other trait. I didn't assume, either way, that religion had or didn't have an evolutionary advantage: I was only presenting an alternative that you didn't include (i.e., neutrality). I did. Human-like intelligence. The big cats can reason well enough to coordinate an attack on a herd of zebras, but they couldn't plan the attack around the campfire the night before. Humans would be able to say, "pretend this is a zebra..." I have always seen abstract intelligence as the underlying cause of philosophy. Um, yes. That was a summation paragraph. The other alternative was described in the several paragraphs before it: "religion is not true, and not evolutionarily beneficial." That wasn't the dichotomy as presented. We're dealing only with the subject of religion, and it's potential causes and effects, not with the truthfulness of science vs theology. For religion, there are at least three possible causes: (1) it's true, (2) it's advantageous, (3) it is meaningless.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Bluegenes. Oh. Now I get it. Well, you should have included control group.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Are you sure you do? There are two graphs, and considerable variations between and within them.Do you think the light areas are noticeably more hedonistic than the darker areas?Here's some information for a very blue area of one of the graphs: Wow! Keep on Bible bashing.

Hi Bluejay,Just a brief comment; I can think of another possibility, or at least, a refinement on point 2. Religion could be advantageous for some, disadvantageous for others.A powerful minority, probably those who control the religion in question, be they cardinals or witch-doctors, will benefit hugely from religion.To the majority, religion is harmful, but not disastrously so, so it doesn't pose enough of a disadvantage to outweigh the opposing benefit to the minority.I actually think that this is pretty close to the truth.

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Mutate and Survive

Depends on what he said. In Matthew 9:34-36 Jesus said:

quote:

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Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but as sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

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I'm no so sure what the Prince of Peace is prescribing here, but it is not what I usually think of as Christian family values. This would be equivalent to Newton coming by to revoke the laws of gravity. Science, per se, is neither good nor bad in a moralist sense. Manipulation comes from those who would subvert the scientific method. But science has a filter for that; it's called the peer review. Religion has no such thing...until someone like Luther comes along. We have Luthers everyday in science, but in religion they come along once every millennium or so.”HM

Hi, Bluegenes.Wow, I'm not sure what I meant when I was talking about control groups: I must have been on one this morning. As you can see, there was bad grammar involved, too, so I must have been either sleepdebating, preoccupied or just brain-dead. I'd better read over my other posts from this morning to see if they made any sense. Yeah, I'm sure. See, this is the information you didn't include in your first post. All you showed were two graphs comparing the level of theism in Europe and America. I assumed you were going to argue how religion didn't correlate with good behavior, but you didn't give any data that compared the two in respect to hedonism, so the argument, as presented, was incomplete.-----Let's go back to your original statement: I argue that we can't tell that.I posted under the assumption of a world where religion simply never existed, not a world where religion is gradually being abandoned.Consider a Paleolithic tribe, as I did, whose mindset does not include religion or superstition. Rather, they have a simple, practical culture focused on daily life and not on supernatural beliefs. I could easily see such a culture putting survival as the ultimate goal and never getting past that. I could also see such a culture developing better ways to provide the necessities of life, and through that, becoming an advanced society.In short, I believe that a religionless society would not be necessarily "better" or "worse" in regards to societal values, because there are ways for both theistic and atheistic societies to become "good" and "bad."

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Or as Dennett postulates, religion might exist for the same reason we do: Religion is composed of a suite of ideas each of which replicates with differential success resulting in an evolution of religions and religious ideas that are best at replicating in the environment. So in essence: religion exists to propagate. Those that don't catch on, or can't adapt quickly enough become extinct while others thrive.As such, religion might be detrimental to our health and yet still survive. Some religions may be beneficial to our survival or reproduction whereas others are not. I'm sure that some religions are successful by using the strategy of increasing the number of offspring a parent has along with the encouragement of recruiting their offspring as new vectors.

What would the world be like without religion?The answer rests upon whether atheism can be legitimatly called a religion. If so, then you might have a world of agnostics. If the latter is also a religion, then such a world seems impossible, like a two horned unicorn or a meat-eating vegetarian. Are atheism and agnosticism religious views, or are they just "Philosophies" (and when does philosophy end and religion begin? Are philosophy and religion the same or different? Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Confucianism (spelled right?) all have some philosophy, and they are not the only religions that do. Before you can manage to create your imaginable world, these must be settled. Edited by LudoRephaim, : No reason given.

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"The Nephilim where in the Earth in those days..." Genesis 6:4

Why would you want to call atheism a religion? Wouldn't that be like calling a vacuum a material object?”HM

I'd argue that you can look at societies that are already half-way to the no religion point, and there are some in Europe, and assess if they're half-way towards your number one suggestion, or heading that way. You're correct in pointing out that I don't give statistics on hedonism, but some of those low religiosity countries are actually well known for moving in the direction of your second suggestion (like Sweden, for example).I merely thought that imagining possible future societies without religion, which is what I took the topic to be about, might be aided by looking at the least religious societies in existence. I took the topic (and the Lennon song, and your two speculative possibilities) to be more about the latter, so we may have been at cross purposes. It's later that you speculate about a paleolithic tribe without religion. I agree that being with or without religion would certainly not automatically make a society "good" or "bad", even if we could easily define those. However, I will point out that the least theistic societies are amongst the most practical. If you sign a cheque to aid some people who are in serious need, I think it would be headed to one of the countries which is more religious than your own, not one of those half-non-religious ones.

Hi, Bluegenes. I agree that this could be true, but I also think it could be a sort of backlash effect. The area had a history of corrupt religion, and that contributed to the peoples' disillusionment with the concept of religion. If you're right that Europe's morality is increasing with the decrease in religion, then, for those people, "no religion" could very well lead to higher morality.But, in places where religion has really done little harm beyond maintaining a weird, superstitious mythology, the same effect wouldn't be seen. I suppose you're right. I always take things from a purely hypothetical, speculative sense, especially here at EvC (which, for me, is play time, not really science time). Yeah, but I'm an American: what would I know about the rest of the world? Most of my countrymen (including pretty much all of my history teachers throughout primary school and one or two in college) are convinced there really isn't a "rest of the world."

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Where are these places?

Doesn't this bring into question the value of delusion in society? Is mass delusion good, bad, or neutral for social order? And is the abolishment of institutionalized delusion necessary for human progress?”HM

Hi, Bluegenes. I'm not sure, but I'd say that East Asia is pretty close.I spent a couple years in Taiwan as a missionary. Taiwanese religion is really just an uneven amalgam of different tidbits from ancient Chinese mythology, Taoism and Buddhism, none of which (at least in their usage) dictates a moral code that must be followed, except for the notion of "doing good."All the Chinese style of religion does is demand they "sacrifice" fake money and real food to their ancestors in the spirit world. They sacrifice the fake money by burning it, and the food by burning incense around it, after which they eat the food anyway.Beyond that and the charge to "do good," religion doesn't really do much to or for the Taiwanese. I can't see how dumping this religion would have the same effect as dumping Christianity in Europe.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.