Agree or disagree and why? It's not like we can save the children. Parents can legally torment their brood until they are legally 18.
16
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The same can be said about Marxism / Socialism.
PBuck0145
Level 7
Apr 14, 2022
0
Or any other political dogma.
I would agree with the proposal if the children received training and instruction in science from a young age right up through high school and college. Then religion wouldn't stand a chance. 
Flyingsaucesir
Level 8
Apr 14, 2022
1
Disagree. Most humans are uncomfortable living with uncertainty, the unexplainable, the unknown, and the responsibility to do something to ease their anxiety with said reality. So giving up that anxiety to a greater power is soothing. It is community. It is order in a chaotic world. Doctrine can control large masses of people who would otherwise be pillaging, father raping, & attacking their Capitol building. The enemy is us as Pogo said. Unless we evolve from our testosterone laden history & return women to their exalted status if goddess, we are doomed. That the prophets are patriarchs & the holy books are the boot on our necks, war will continue, rape will continue, addiction will continue, religion will continue. Now I will go & praise my goddess, Stella Artois. 24 ours in a day. 24 bottles in a case. Coincidence? I think not. Yuk Yuk
Mooolah
Level 8
Apr 14, 2022
2
THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Evolution of the God Gene
By
Nicholas Wade
Nov. 14, 2009
In the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico, the archaeologists Joyce Marcus and Kent Flannery have gained a remarkable insight into the origin of religion.
During 15 years of excavation they have uncovered not some monumental temple but evidence of a critical transition in religious behavior. The record begins with a simple dancing floor, the arena for the communal religious dances held by hunter-gatherers in about 7,000 B.C. It moves to the ancestor-cult shrines that appeared after the beginning of corn-based agriculture around 1,500 B.C., and ends in A.D. 30 with the sophisticated, astronomically oriented temples of an early archaic state.
This and other research is pointing to a new perspective on religion, one that seeks to explain why religious behavior has occurred in societies at every stage of development and in every region of the world. Religion has the hallmarks of an evolved behavior, meaning that it exists because it was favored by natural selection. It is universal because it was wired into our neural circuitry before the ancestral human population dispersed from its African homeland.
For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless.
For believers, it may seem threatening to think that the mind has been shaped to believe in gods, since the actual existence of the divine may then seem less likely.
But the evolutionary perspective on religion does not necessarily threaten the central position of either side. That religious behavior was favored by natural selection neither proves nor disproves the existence of gods. For believers, if one accepts that evolution has shaped the human body, why not the mind too? What evolution has done is to endow people with a genetic predisposition to learn the religion of their community, just as they are predisposed to learn its language. With both religion and language, it is culture, not genetics, that then supplies the content of what is learned.
Universal Religion has been found in societies at every stage of development.
It is easier to see from hunter-gatherer societies how religion may have conferred compelling advantages in the struggle for survival. Their rituals emphasize not theology but intense communal dancing that may last through the night. The sustained rhythmic movement induces strong feelings of exaltation and emotional commitment to the group. Rituals also resolve quarrels and patch up the social fabric.
The ancestral human population of 50,000 years ago, to judge from living hunter-gatherers, would have lived in small, egalitarian groups without chiefs or headmen. Religion served them as an invisible government. It bound people together, committing them to put their community’s needs ahead of their own self-interest. For fear of divine punishment, people followed rules of self-restraint toward members of the community. Religion also emboldened them to give their lives in battle against outsiders. Groups fortified by religious belief would have prevailed over those that lacked it, and genes that prompted the mind toward ritual would eventually have become universal.
In natural selection, it is genes that enable their owners to leave more surviving progeny that become more common. The idea that natural selection can favor groups, instead of acting directly on individuals, is highly controversial. Though Darwin proposed the idea, the traditional view among biologists is that selection on individuals would stamp out altruistic behavior (the altruists who spent time helping others would leave fewer children of their own) far faster than group-level selection could favor it.
But group selection has recently gained two powerful champions, the biologists David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson, who argued that two special circumstances in recent human evolution would have given group selection much more of an edge than usual. One is the highly egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer societies, which makes everyone behave alike and gives individual altruists a better chance of passing on their genes. The other is intense warfare between groups, which enhances group-level selection in favor of community-benefiting behaviors such as altruism and religion.
A propensity to learn the religion of one’s community became so firmly implanted in the human neural circuitry, according to this new view, that religion was retained when hunter-gatherers, starting from 15,000 years ago, began to settle in fixed communities. In the larger, hierarchical societies made possible by settled living, rulers co-opted religion as their source of authority. Roman emperors made themselves chief priest or even a living god, though most had the taste to wait till after death for deification. “Drat, I think I’m becoming a god!” Vespasian joked on his deathbed.
Religion was also harnessed to vital practical tasks such as agriculture, which in the first societies to practice it required quite unaccustomed forms of labor and organization. Many religions bear traces of the spring and autumn festivals that helped get crops planted and harvested at the right time. Passover once marked the beginning of the barley festival; Easter, linked to the date of Passover, is a spring festival.
Could the evolutionary perspective on religion become the basis for some kind of detente between religion and science? Biologists and many atheists have a lot of respect for evolution and its workings, and if they regarded religious behavior as an evolved instinct they might see religion more favorably, or at least recognize its constructive roles. Religion is often blamed for its spectacular excesses, whether in promoting persecution or warfare, but gets less credit for its staple function of patching up the moral fabric of society. But perhaps it doesn’t deserve either blame or credit. If religion is seen as a means of generating social cohesion, it is a society and its leaders that put that cohesion to good or bad ends.
Nicholas Wade, a science reporter for The New York Times, is the author of “The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures.”
skado
Level 9
Apr 14, 2022
3
@Garban
Religion and fundamentalism are not the same thing. Some things that were evolutionarily advantageous in the ancestral environment can become problematic in an agricultural society and some things don’t. In order to know which is which and how to deal with the problematic ones we have to understand why they evolved, in order to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Fundamentalism needs to be curbed. Religion needs to be reformed and unified. The “devil”, so to speak, is in the details.
Primarily, to follow the science.
But not just the parts you like - a broad and deep familiarity with all sciences, as well as an understanding of the arts and literature.
In other words, a solid liberal arts education.
The main difference between a “religious” education and a secular one is that the religious one must find a way to erode social division. To unify the “spirit” (attitudes) of the population, and to promote individual personal “wholeness” (psychological health).
And religions understand that these goals are not achieved by a one-time information dump, but require lifelong, daily practice.
The religion I was raised in (and abandoned at the age of 14) taught that we should seek the truth, and that doing so would set you free. How is following the science not seeking the truth, and how is seeking truth then not eligible to be considered religious doctrine?
Religions evolved to erode social divisions in isolated societies, which have now outgrown their isolation. Hence the need for reform, but the continued need for evolved solutions to social division.
Religions are more than just a set of beliefs. They are practices that correct evolved traits that are otherwise problematic in agricultural societies. “Thou shalt not steal” would have been meaningless and unnecessary in hunter/gatherer societies which were egalitarian. A single religion grew from a single society in order to provide it a single consensus reality narrative which made it a single successful functioning biological unit. The problem of population growth and migration is what made religions/worldviews clash - not the fact that they had worldviews to start with. The society could never have functioned without a unifying narrative. What works for a global society is what works for an isolated society - a single consensus reality. A little disagreement is healthy - a completely unintelligible worldview in every person you meet is a recipe for chaos. If all world religions evolve into a single worldview, there are no “other” religions to be perceived as incorrect. It doesn’t mean everybody would be a clone - just that everybody in a given society (even if there is now only one) by and large, would have a single sense of societal purpose, just as all human societies did until they all started merging into one.
Superstition is not the defining characteristic of religion, any more than horses are the defining characteristic of transportation. It was the vehicle used to unify a society under a common purpose. Any unifying vehicle would do the job… like science, for example, along with a scientifically derived cultural narrative and personal practice.
The fact that a minority of individuals can feel happy and whole without a unifying principle is possible only in a stable society. And a stable society is made up of individuals of varying intellectual capacities and educational opportunities. You and I may not, as outlying individuals, feel the need for a consensus reality, but all of history and everything science knows about social stability says that societies need such a narrative to remain stable.
I find that most disagreements, if discussed long enough, usually come down to a semantics problem. A different understanding of the meaning of words. Not a real difference of actual preference.
And of course there's always a difference in people's knowledge base. Everyone knows something that the other person doesn't yet know. But when discussions go on long enough for definitions to be ironed out, and information to be shared... differences can slowly evaporate.
One semantics problem that I run into often, particularly on this site where I do most of my discussing of this subject, is the thorny problem of the definition of "religion".
To set the stage for this discussion we have to first recognize and acknowledge that some subjects are just more complex and difficult to pin down than others. It is surely easier to find consensus on the definition of the term "hockey puck," for example, than the term "free will".
Indeed, when I google "most misunderstood concept" one of the first responses is:
"The most misunderstood concept in the study of religion is religion. The field of religious studies -- if it is a field -- is in a perpetual state of crisis because it can neither define its object of study nor agree on distinctive methods or strategies of interpretation."
– – –
The experts whose life's work is to understand religion have not reached anything approaching a consensus on the definition of "religion".
Most of the scholarly definitions I've read are accurately descriptive, from various angles, but not very explanatory. "Yes, they do "X" but WHY on earth are they doing that? for as long as we have existed? in every location where humans have lived?"
One hypothesis that is gaining traction in Anthropological and Cognitive Science circles is that religion is either a product or a byproduct of evolutionary forces.
If this is the case, then science could eventually describe, in reasonable detail, the specific evolutionary benefits of religion, and a purely functional, generic religion could be made apparent.
Just as science has separated medicine from voodoo, it could separate religion from superstition. Medicine is still medicine and religion is still religion, but there is no factionalism left in them. It is universal truth laid bare for all to see and make use of.
No relabeling necessary. Nothing thrown in for good measure - just the pertinent facts that made religion a universal presence in human history.
Just as with all other science, all members would be heartily encouraged to modify the status quo by revealing new verifiable evidence. Just as with science, there would be no need for “leadership” as in a science monarch. Evidence is the leader. Members with conflicting views would be free to present supporting evidence, just as with any other science. There would not even need to be membership. Individuals are free to make use of the benefits of science as they please, or not at all.
Critical thinking would be taught in “Sunday School”.
The difference between science and religion is that science tells us the nature of nature, and religion tells us how to live in our evolutionarily mismatched environment… like it always has.
All human endeavors are susceptible to corruption, and so the avoidance of caustic influences is a never-ending maintenance task, just as it is in science, government, business, medicine, education, etc., etc.
Understanding what makes religion tick in no way reduces its sacredness (maximum value to society) any more than understanding germ theory reduces the value of medical treatment - just the reverse - it becomes more valuable.
Math and physics are still secular, and practicing self-restraint and compassion are still sacred. We now just understand more about why these practices serve humankind, and why they need to be preserved and taught methodically.
I disagree because scientific studies have specifically shown otherwise, AND the entire body of science suggests otherwise. It is generally accepted in relevant scientific disciplines that a tendency toward religious belief is genetically based in the human species. The “indoctrination” hypothesis has been thoroughly debunked by the evidence.
skado
Level 9
Apr 14, 2022
1
If religion is genetically based and both of my parents were religious, does that mean I am a mutation?
"generally accepted" ? Maybe in the USA but not in the UK and Western Europe . I live in country where every town has several empty churches and the only Christian sect making any headway are the Anmerican style "happy clappy" churches.
@Lorajay
“Religion” is not genetically based. A tendency toward religious belief is. Most genetically based behaviors are loosely distributed in the population rather than being hard-wired into every individual.
In some cases, one behavior and its diametric opposite are distributed within a population because they balance each other in a way that is reproductively advantageous (liberal and conservative tendencies, etc.).
In any case, just because both parents have a genetic tendency doesn’t mean that either of them will necessarily become religious, let alone their offspring. Or for that matter, that you don’t have the genetic tendency.
@Moravian
Science isn’t done in churches. Better check with your scientists. And not just that one loud-mouthed one. Science knows no national borders. If you study the relevant fields, and their most recent developments, you will see what I’m talking about. 1960s Dawkins-style science has been superseded by Wilson-style evolutionary psychology.
"We all know that any emotional bias -- irrespective of truth or falsity -- can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value.... If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction." -- H P Lovecraft
nogod4me
Level 8
Apr 14, 2022
4
CuddyCruiser
Level 8
Apr 14, 2022
8
And that's why they do it, religion is the problem, they don't want a solution.
@nogod4me it sure has caused a lot of problems.
The religious indoctrination of children ought to be classified as felony child abuse.
KKGator
Level 9
Apr 14, 2022
7
I wouldn't go quite that far because I think some people need religion. Why that is, is way above my pay grade.
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