80% of your brethren are not as fortunate as you.

Yes, and you may mean that the post could also be made there, in addition to here, but I want to make the point that I absolutely love that Skado chose to take this conversation and his personal research effort to the broader group.

In philosophy-oriented groups, often the conversation will end up a bit hidden away, and some respondents may try to frame the conversation only in academically acceptable terms.

And, after all, isn't Skado trying to address a question here of the lack of inquisitiveness of those atheists who may have, to a degree or entirely, fallen into the trap of "there's no god, I'm done with much of my philosophy thinking". I think this is better done in the broader group, or in addition to a philosophy group, particularly as it's not just a philosophy question, but a question of psychology, social science, community discussion, and maybe some salesmanship.

Anyway, I don't know if you were trying to say that the post is more appropriate for a philosophy group (which I would disagree with), or if you were just saying there is a philosophy group where the topic also would be appropriate (which I would agree with).

My point is that figuring out that there’s no god is no great intellectual achievement. Many twelve year olds are capable of that. But understanding why all human societies, in all locations, and in all time periods have all had religions requires deeper study.

If the whole world has always been on fire everywhere humans appear, we might need to find out what’s causing it. To say religion causes it is not sufficient. We would then need to know what causes religion. One way to do that is to study its evolutionary roots.

Who cares is me. I care. If there has been a destructive force operating in the human psyche forever, it would be a service to humanity today to figure out why.

Everybody can’t do every job. Humans’ great superpower is the specialization of individuals and the teamwork of groups of specialists.

If a patient shows up with a gunshot wound, somebody needs to tend that wound immediately. You don’t need to worry about his toes. You also don’t need, at that moment, to be worrying about who shot him or why, or how many more gunshot victims you will see in the next month, or why the number is escalating with no end in sight… but somebody does.

Your priorities are not the same, nor should they be, as the person who is drafting gun control legislation. Those are two different skillsets. Everybody can’t do everything.

The research scientist’s job is yet another skillset. His job is not on the front lines where the blood is flying. He’s figuring out new methods and medicines that you can use to keep more of those patients alive, and send them home with a better chance of full recovery.

When there’s a war, we urgently need the Red Cross on the battlefield, patching up soldiers. We also need somebody else trying to negotiate a ceasefire. Then we need social scientists and historians trying to figure out why humans make war so we can stop doing it in the first place.

Yes. I think knowing how religions started is a critical part of understanding how to reduce any harm they may cause. That’s just Science 101.

And feeding that knowledge back into public education is a huge part of that harm reduction.

I’m not a medical professional, or a scientist, or an educator. I’m retired. I served my time. I get to do what is meaningful to me now.

My priorities stack up something like this:
I would like nothing better than to spend my retirement years applying whatever abilities I might have toward reducing the greatest amount of human suffering that I am capable of.

That’s my number one priority. That doesn’t mean I think I can change the world, or even have much effect. I’m only one person. But however small my contribution might be, I want it to make use of the skills I have - not the skills I only wish I had.

What I have been able to do, for the last six years intently, and sporadically before that, is to gain some familiarity with the research being done on how humans create suffering for themselves and others.

What I have discovered is not at all what I expected. The science is counterintuitive. It is not in line with my lifelong beliefs, or my personal preferences, or my natural inclinations. Science doesn’t care about our prejudices. It just tells us what’s there.

“The whole world is on fire for centuries bcz of religions.” is not a statement that has any - did I say any - ANY - scientific support. None. You are no more shocked than I was. I spent my whole life blaming religion. For the same reasons you do. It sure looks like religion is to blame.

It isn’t.

Neither you nor I nor any scientist on Earth has the evidence to back up that claim.

What do we have?

The overwhelming preponderance of evidence suggests that

1. Religion relieves more suffering in the world than it creates, if only perhaps by a small margin.
2. Religion wasn’t thought up by the conscious minds of men. It is a product of bio-cultural evolution.
3. It can no more be gotten rid of than the human fear of spiders, or our attraction to tribal identity.
4. Our need for religion escalates, rather than diminishes, with technological progress.
5. The biological function of religion does not necessarily depend on belief in things that aren’t true (although that has its place. MCIs, minimally counterintuitive concepts aid memory retention).
6. Humans are a conflicted species due to evolutionary mismatch. Religion’s main function is to serve as a patch across that mismatch. As such it plays a vital role in maintaining stable civilizations. No civilization has survived without it.
7. Rather than being the primary cause of human abuse, religion’s greatest shortcoming has been its failure to modify our pre-existing capacity for abuse to the extent needed.
8. If all religion went away today, not one ounce of the abuse would go away. The only thing that would happen is civilization would collapse. But hey, look at the bright side - we’d be rid of religion! And most of those pesky humans!

Religion didn’t create ignorance, meanness and greed. It was a naturally evolving counterbalance to those very human traits. It’s failure to stop them, and their subsequent co-opting of religion for their own purposes is just part of the terrifying drama of life on Earth. It would be comforting if we had someone or some group to blame for life’s horrors, but we don’t. That’s the appeal of conspiracy theories. It makes a complex problem seem simple, and it gives us a scapegoat to blame. But living in that comforting fantasy won’t make things better.

What will make things better, if anything can, will be gathering the courage and curiosity to look at the facts. And we get those from science - not from our natural emotional responses to the horrors of life, no matter how understandable those emotional reactions might be.

You have zero reason to believe me, and I hope you won’t.

I hope you will be able to find the time to look at the relevant science and inform me where I have misinterpreted it. That is the value, I believe, of open dialogue.

Thanks for your thoughtful and heartfelt comment.

@skado

I don't think I've followed or understood everything you're getting at in this thread, and on a few things where I do think I've understood enough to make a comment, some of it I would agree with and some of it not. But I applaud that you have raised issues for open discussion in and around responding to atheists who are dismissive in various ways (including ending nascent ingenuous intellectual explorations that have real merit) with throw-away intellectually sloppy (basically thoughtless in many cases) comments about religion and theism being a problem, or the problem. This has been an ugly thing to watch, in my view, over many decades, and in many contexts. There are any of a number of important topics where this applies, including explorations of defining and determining the purpose of philosophies of morality.

Thoughts for you at this time, for whatever they are worth.

"Religion" is at some point, for some purposes, too broad a word, or insufficiently exact. There are many religions, and while there are similarities, they are not identical. I say this in part because one of my next points is that I find it useful to think of religions as being entirely, or in large part, philosophies. Some would say "primitive" philosophies, but that probably depends heavily on which religion and one's definition of "primitive".

In many cases (particularly in Judaism, Christianity and Islam) I think they are largely or partially botched philosophies, but perhaps there are many other religions where the word "botched" would not apply as strongly, or (to be even a bit more demanding of using words better) perhaps it could be said that all evaluations of all philosophies would find elements that are botched and not-botched, wise and not-wise, pro-human and anti-human, grounded in physical reality or otherwise. And even there, how does one establish objective criteria to evaluate them, and is this possible - all worth asking in my view. But those conversations are hard to get off the ground with others, if they are heavily invested in naysaying the raising of any issues at all in this area. And many atheists are indeed heavily invested in nay-saying the initiation of explorations in many of these areas.

I was raised Jewish, not Christian, and not a very strong variant of Judaism at that. This has to a degree left me immune both to the pull of the Christian mythology and psychology (no Christ, if he existed, was not a supernatural being) but possibly also a bit immune to the anger or dismissiveness that many ex-Christian atheists may manifest. When I hear a Christian sermon on the radio, or watch a Christianity-oriented movie, I don't think "there is no god, therefore I won't listen or watch". I often think "there are real human issues and needs here, which do not go away just because there is objectively no god, and the speaker or writer is trying to address those issues and needs in the vocabulary they know, even if some of this attempt is botched and probably somewhat disingenuous" I think this attempt to address is (in itself) potentially arguably a very good thing (a loaded word, but brevity requires staying focused on something else for the moment), but it is also horrible to watch them often botch (in my opinion) the addressing of the real need or issue. Yet, if their audience largely or entirely is consistently on the same wavelength and uses the same vocabulary of principles as them, then, it may "work", for some in the audience, to some degree.

Yesterday this came up for me as I started to watch a movie that I was getting into, where a man was going through some extraordinary difficulty at the loss of his family, but then I realized they were going in a Christianity-as-answer direction with the tale. It was a tossup as to whether I would watch it through, as I liked seeing someone try to give some real thought to these issues and the players act out this, but so far I decided not to go through with it. Yes, there are many movie alternatives, but many of them do not compare favorably, even if they are not strongly theism-oriented, as they disavow any really meaningful explorations, and although there are many times I'm ok with a shallow film, sometimes I'm not.

At other times, such as when listening to radio on a long drive, and if my only choices in some rural areas are very narrow, and if I'm in the mood for non-music radio, I will sometimes choose to listen to a religious preacher rather than something else. I am not vulnerable to having any belief in their mythology, and frankly that mythology and related morality usually does not inspire me, but at least it is (sometimes) a discussion of real human issues. In a society where so many are having difficulty transitioning from botched philosophy to good philosophy, or any philosophy, it can sometimes be hard to find something resembling a real discussion of issues that do not go away just because a person figures out there is no god.

@kmaz
Thanks for your very sane commentary.

The word, “religion” is, without a doubt, a vague and troubled designation without even a scholarly agreement on its meaning. I wish we had better, but, as yet, I don’t know what it would be.

There are definitely overlaps with philosophy. I don't pretend to try to define words for other people but I do feel some responsibility to clarify, for my own understanding, a general working definition of some of the more pivotal concepts. These are for convenience and speed rather than for depth or breadth. They are gross oversimplifications which hope to represent only the "center of gravity" so to speak, of the concept, rather than any comprehensive definition. With that caveat understood, I tend to think of science as what tells us the nature of nature, philosophy as what tells us how to think (not what but how), and religion as what tells us how to live (in relation to ourselves, our environment and other beings). I find that navigating by these coordinates generally gets me in the ballpark, from which point further clarification is always nonetheless due.

To get more specific, I'd say religions usually employ some or a lot of philosophy toward the meeting of their goal. But their goal, I'd insist, is more than just thinking skillfully. It is, at least in part, to preserve and convey to future generations the collected generational wisdom of their forebears. And this wisdom is primarily about how to function in harmony with one's own nature, and with one's neighbors in a way that maintains social cohesion and personal emotional buoyancy.

Also, the radical leap from casual animism to full-blown organized religion that occurred shortly (in evolutionary time) after the, also radical, shift from nomadic foraging to sedentary farming leads me to suspect that a primary biological function of religion is to cushion the potential effects of evolutionary mismatch (otherwise known as the force that causes all extinctions). When the environment that a species has become well adapted to changes (in this case, by our own hand) more rapidly than biology can adapt, our secret weapon has been our capacity for complex cultural modifications. This cultural counterbalance to rapid mismatch has been implemented by none other than our old friend, religion.

We don't see it, or experience it that way, or consciously plan it, but that appears to me to be what has happened.

Quite a wide variety of specific systems could accomplish this goal, so the local color is broad-ranging, but the one thing every major world religion seems to have in common is that it modifies, by hook or crook, some of our evolved instinctual impulses, in order to fit creatures who evolved in simple egalitarian societies of 150 individuals of mostly recognizable kin, into complex hierarchical societies of hundreds or thousands of strangers with whom they must nevertheless cooperate peacefully.

So the "thou shalt nots" curb the animal instincts, and the "transcendence mechanisms" resolve the resultant angst.

Biologically speaking, it worked magnificently! Not only did we not go extinct as every other animal did who faced such a transition, we then gained masterful control of our food production and the rest is overpopulation history.

As you point out, various religions used more and less humane approaches to accomplishing this same end, and that contributes to some of the botchiness. But a perhaps more dire problem now is that these systems each evolved in relative isolation, but are now, ironically due to their outrageous success, spilling into each other's territory and causing, at first only murderous wars at a distance, but now threatening catastrophic societal upheaval. So we are now approaching our next extinction stare-down. The old systems, plenty primitive indeed, are rapidly becoming obsolete and in need of something a lot more challenging than mere abandonment. They need, in my view, either radical reform or full replacement, and something that would work on a global scale.

Science alone is not equipped or trained to do that job, though it must certainly play a central role. I think science needs to dissect religion, find its bones, and synthesize a (voluntary) behavior modification practice that will meet this next-level mismatch challenge that we now have on our front porch.

I offer these thoughts in the spirit of "dialogos" as John Vervaeke puts it, the attitude of collaborative creativity, toward the goal of addressing "the real human issues and needs here". All feedback welcome.

@skado my man . We already know how or y religions started and thrived .
I am not sure how u can say “ we don’t know “.
All Greek gods , all 12 of them plus the second cast ones , all where made to resemble humans and human’s needs . Human professions , human goals , and of course , human fears and the unknown .
Do u really don’t know how or y religions started ???
Thousands years later , the poor , the sick , the desperate , the No light in the tunnel , and of of course the dying , or the grieving death are closely attached to religions . For same reasons as thousands yrs ago .
Not all , but many . U don’t understand y ?
Now , your point # 1 .
I have to laugh . And it’s not a hahahahah laugh. It’s like , damn , really ? U think religions relieve more suffering than it creates “? Damn brother .
I just can’t read past that .
I guess we had to define “ relief “. Sure . I have held the hand of a grieving mother recently . Son 17 yr old , diving accident , after two weeks in the vent , she let him go . Yes she is relieved to know that she will meet her son again in heaven w Jesus . Yes . That’s a great relief and a great lie . Mean x . The 14 yr old brother will continue to dive at questionable depth waters , bcz Jesus has a plan for everyone , and he is armed w prayers instead of been guarded by parents who are willing to spend less x in church and more at places where boys dive w friends .
Of course I told the mother “ thats right , he ll be right there w god waiting for u “. Bcz fuck me., what’s the point . The woman was a mess . Comforting lies are always a relief skado . For sure . Point is , they don’t fix the problem . That’s not the type of relief that provides solution , motivation , strength or how to avoid the next problem . So I can’t read past that point #1 .
I am out , I heard u , and i don’t agree .

@Pralina1
What do you think of the antivaxers?

@skado that’s not news to me . Just another dissapointing point . People will not vaccinate their teens against hpv . And these young women and men , 20 yrs later , here w cancer or hpv progress .
This is “ just Tuesday “ in my world

@Pralina1
I'm sure you and I are in the same camp on this, but I'm asking to make a point. What makes your view on the vaccines more valid than theirs?

@skado the amount of elderly patients I see , 80s plus , who tell me stories of friends of theirs who died from polio . Talks w women on their 50s w chronic hpv issues and when I put a request for admission to oncology for cervical cancer / diagnostics for these women .
Flu “ vaccine “ . I used to think none about it years ago , bcz wasn’t mandatory and I never got the flu in my entire life . . Cold , yes . Flu , nah . Then they made it mandatory about 10 yrs ago . And I had a problem w that . I have seen 6 cases of Gillian Bar in my career . All scary . All flue vaccine related . Every yr I put my arm out to to keep my employment / Feed my dogs , and I am like , fuuuuvkkk! I don’t want that . I am terrified about any neuromuscular disorder . I live alone . I am pretty sure I ll shoot my self on the head b4 I depend from anyone to wipe my ass . Silly ? Yeah . More likely stupid .

Then covid happen . That was and is a different animal . We were cleaning surfaces while this shit was airborne . We did not know . We were given no equipment , no gear , no instructions , and we were told to reuse r n95s to save supplies . We kept ventilated patients in no negative air pressure . We did the same w high flow O2 pts . Covid should had be treated same as TB and there simply nobody has the capacity / rooms for that .
Vaccines became available . Googling every night r phones , while r phones in zip lock bags and fat glove fingers . From March 2020 to February 2021 , I ve seen more dead people than I seen in 22 yrs in trauma unit and ED or micu / sicu . Half of them we killed them . Bcz we had no idea what we were doing
Giving drugs that caused fatal arrhythmias . Treating this like an angry flu or a bad pneumonia , and not realizing that this wasn’t the same animal .
When vaccines became an option , and at that time , dec 2020 , it was an option , not mandatory , it made sense to me to get it . Worst case I ll grow a third ear and a third boob . That was my line to my team .
Point is , doing heart compressions night after night , I lost my n95 many x in the process . It just flies away .
The covid patients on my board , are not in danger of my breathing allover them .
But the supermarket workers , the car wash guy , my 78 yr old neighbors , those were . And my ass of course . Vaccines work .
And here we are . No . I was too tired every week and no , I did not know right way that it won’t protect me or others for many yrs like other vaccines . I did not even realize that I can get covid even if vaccinated . Yeah .
What I did happily realize on 2021- 2022 , is that vaccinated people who get covid are not my clients anymore . Home w px for vit c , zinc , vit d , rest , etc .
The unvaccinated . Worse than ever
When I took a 27 yr old to the morgue and her husband was also a patient next door , I was done . Wedding party . Newly weds . Diabetics . Slightly overweight . Unvaccinated . Fought it for 2 weeks . The boy was coded 4 x in one night . I got a blister on the base of my left hand that night . We coded him for 55 minutes .
The mother was hysterical . No visitors at covid micu .
Next night she came to give us rosaries , small paper pix of Jesus , and to thank us for trying . Her was w the lord now . Yes ma’am . He sure is . I had to go down fucking stairs , take all my gear off to hear that garbage . In addition : “ none of us are vaccinated and I hope u refused too . God knows how to walk us out of this . Follow his will . My 73 yr old mother had covid twice and she is doing good . It’s what god wants . He choses for us “ . And u know, I just sat there like , “ are there any cookies on that bag for my team , or just more Jesus pic “. . Is that answers your question ?

@Pralina1
Yes. I see. Direct experience.
Thank you for that.

First, Scado says. "My point is that figuring out that there’s no god is no great intellectual achievement. Many twelve year olds are capable of that."

And it would not take a very bright twelve year old, to work out following that conclusion, that all of the harm in religon therefore must come from religious culture regardlees of the existence or non existence of a god.

Second he says. "We would then need to know what causes religion. One way to do that is to study its evolutionary roots."

All things have evolutionary roots, that is irrelevant to whether they are good or not, and even if things were good in the past, that is irrelevant to whether they are useful today.

Third. " I spent my whole life blaming religion. For the same reasons you do. It sure looks like religion is to blame.

It isn’t."

This is the rifle association pro-guns argument. "It is not guns that shoot people." Just reworded. It is not religion that does harm, it is just the people using it.

He then goes on to say that religuions role was to. "curb the animals instincts" Just after saying that it is itself a product of evolution.

I could go on, but to tell the truth addressing someone's arguments, when their every sentence contains logical contraditions and fake evidence, just gets tedius, if you want more just ask.

@skado

Thanks for the thoughts. This is a grand scale sort of topic, or set of topics, that you are teeing up, so proper discussions could span a portion of a lifetime. And it's work to discuss these things so among other things worth quick-noting, is that even if you were to set up a special group on agnostic.com to discuss them, a drawback of these forums is that our comments are kind of here today, obscured tomorrow, and eventually deleted, at one time or another.

I will say your comments are reminding me of a book I read a few years ago, which I liked a lot even if (as in this case) I can't say that I fully agree with the overall approach, which was "A Short History Of Progress" by Wright

[amazon.com]

I think you and I are approaching the topic from somewhat different directions. To into this a bit:

• I can't really bring myself to approach the discussions from a group/social philosophy point of view. My approach is more tabula rasa individual point of view.
• I hear you about being careful around the definitions discussion. Some may use definitions improperly as a bit of a rhetorical cudgel, but at the same time I think there are times when we have to try, even if everyone has to agree somewhat to disagree, or at least agree that it is hard to use a common vocabulary exactly the same as others. When it comes to "philosophy" I can't use the word to describe "how to think" and leave off the table "what to think". For me, it very much describes and includes accumulated wisdom, moral, cosmological and philosophic concepts, but (unlike at least some religions), subject to human reason rather than faith. I guess I go even further than most to say that philosophy for me may include science itself.

@skado I had to read through most of your original post to discover that it was something I did not care about. I'm not a member of the philosophy group because I don't feel like reading a whole bunch of philosophical stuff. Yes, that's what I mean.

@BitFlipper
You don’t “have to” read anything. You chose to read. There are lots of people on this site who post things I’m not interested in. A lot of their posts are about the same topic over and over, so when I see their name I know I can scroll past without missing much. I realize this site is not my private playground. It is used by many people who have different interests, so it would never occur to me to complain that I have to see or read their posts. They have as much right to post here as I do. And I have as little obligation to read their posts as they have to read mine. There’s room for everyone.

A majority of my posts are about the biological/social function of religion and how that relates to the atheist/agnostic perspective, which is central to, in the most general way, what this site was designed for discussing. My posts are not about the field of philosophy. If you are not interested in reading about the subjects you know I write about, you are free to scroll by. No force other than your own mind can compel you to do otherwise.

If you want to complain about things you don’t like, there are groups for that.

@skado I choose to read this group because I want to see items of general interest. I would have ignored your post if I had known what it was.

@BitFlipper
Fair notice: My posts are likely to have similar content in the future.

@kmaz

Good thoughts.

Definitely grand scale stuff and definitely something that’s too big to rest only in a passing chat site. I did set up a specialized group here [agnostic.com]
to archive some of it, separate from general discussions, and when I post there I usually add a notification in the general forum, else participation is anemic.

I have also built two websites for it, one an interactive blog (which no one visits, and I rarely update) and the other a static repository for the ideas modeling a formal practice. And I’m working on a YouTube channel and a book. Part of what I’m doing on this site is trying to learn how best to communicate these ideas, thinking (incorrectly!) that atheists would be the more receptive audience.

Thanks for the book suggestion. It definitely looks like one I need to read.

I really think approaching a topic from different perspectives is the great value of mutually respectful dialogue. It’s what helps the idea develop in three dimensions instead of two, so to speak. Any one person alone can’t see around corners.

I am definitely more of a group approach guy, but I recognize the value of the individual and the importance of his sovereignty. But from an evolutionary perspective, I think tabula rasa has been fairly discredited.

I also would not leave off the broader philosophical table ‘what to think’ - just saying it doesn’t make it into my “center of gravity” expedient, which I find useful mostly to define differences between disciplines rather than, as I say, full definitions of single ones.

I would say that each discipline has its method and its accumulated wisdom. Maybe my personal interest in philosophy, or religion or science for that matter, may be their methods more - at least slightly more - than their accumulations. I’m very much process oriented. Having a cursory familiarity with their respective products though, is certainly of great value.

I have come to think that common vocabularies are hard to build beyond a given pair of people. And labor intensive even there.

Maybe a useful distinction could be made between the producers and consumers of these disciplines. Maybe all three belong under the heading of philosophy? But seems to me a practitioner of science is mostly making product (data) - not philosophizing. And a religious practitioner is mostly following rules - not making them up. Whereas a philosopher is practicing the art of thinking skillfully - the product almost a by-product.

But those are just my biases. Your perspectives are healthy challenges to my ruts - thanks!

There is zero evidence for the existence of the invisible man.

Right. I'm not looking for any. Nor do I expect any to be found. And I've NEVER suggested otherwise. That's not what this post, or any post I've ever made, is about.

And... um... you still don't have any evidence that religion is just a criminal enterprise... right?

@skado - I do believe there is evidence that certain religions were started by individuals with a criminal mentality. I believe Mormonism is one and Scientology another. Others may not have started with criminality but certain practitioners become seduced by the money and power they acquire through their religious following. The seduction is natural enough, imo, but doesn't change the fact that they are fallen into the trappings contrary to their original intent.

@RussRAB
That’s true of course. Of religion, and every other institution that acquires any power.

But I’m not addressing “certain religions” here. I’m addressing “religion” as a category of human behavior. Some people claim that behavior is NOTHING BUT criminal, or insane, or pointless. And never has been, and never will be. Some acknowledge it had some evolutionary utility in the distant past, but no longer. The science that I’m aware of suggests that is was, and still is, a “mission-critical” component of agriculture-based civilization.

@skado - Perhsps the matter is a lack of common definition. What behaviors are included in your definition? I could agree that certain behaviors are beneficial to humanlind that are found in certain religious practices, but I don't know or wouldn't say that religion has a corner on the market for satisfying providing these benefits. From your research, what religious behaviors provide a benefit exclusive to religion?

@RussRAB
It is of course an enormously complex field, difficult to summarize quickly. From my understanding, it’s not any particular behaviors per se, but you might say the gestalt of the cluster of behaviors.

All together they tend to knit the community into a cohesive and cooperative workforce, especially while the various cultures were more isolated. And they provide low cost psychological remedies for the evolutionary mismatch caused by nomadic hominids trying to live in large, structured, stationary populations.

It’s not at all, in my opinion, that these needs couldn’t eventually be met by other means. Just that those means are not currently in place, and we don’t know much about what they should be, because studying the biology behind religion has been unfashionable (and unfundable) so far. But that has started to change a bit.

Still, the evidence suggests that we don’t consciously “do religion” to solve any practical problems, but rather, we do it because it is our evolved nature to do so, particularly in response to the environmental changes that we have had to adapt to.

@skado Well let's see ..... the Vatican built mostly of gold, child sex abuse scandals, televangelists raking in hundreds of millions a year, secret mass graves under church orphanages, history of crusades and inquisitions .... sure, zero evidence of corruption. <snark>

@skado If it is "an enormously complex field, difficult to summarize quickly. then why make this post ?

@Normanbites
I haven’t claimed zero evidence of corruption. I constantly acknowledge the massive corruption and plead for reform. Atheists seem to think if we ignore religion it will go away. I think if we ignore religion it will get worse. Pew Research says religion is growing worldwide as a percentage of population. The atheist population is diminishing, and projected to continue diminishing for the foreseeable future. Religion is not eradicable. It is an indelible part of human nature. Our choices are to try to reform it or to let it metastasize. Take your pick.

The fact that it is corrupt does not mean that it is nothing but corrupt. Government is corrupt, but it serves a purpose. We have to constantly reform our institutions because it is human nature to corrupt them. There is zero scientific evidence that suggests that religion was started as a criminal enterprise, and tons of evidence that it was and still is as necessary as government or business or education or medicine for the continuance of stable societies. <no snark>

@TheMiddleWay - My comment did pertain to the context of discussions on this forum. While I understand your reply, and I do see where it applies to my own experience and position, I might diverge from the ignostic position by saying that the terms 'God' and 'religion' can have meaning when all parties to a discussion agree on the definitions of the terms. In the broadest and most general terms, I may very well be ignostic. What I find particularly frustrating is when it becomes clear that the sides of a discussion don't have this common understanding and so they argue past one another because although they use the same words and terms, they are actually talking about separate issues and topics. The clearest example I might think of is if a Muslim and a Christian discussed the nature of God in relation to religion but neither acknowledged the others separate source for their understanding of God and religion. They could argue all day long, but get nowhere because what they argue about are actually different things being referred to by the same terms.

@skado
"the evidence suggests that we don’t consciously “do religion” to solve any practical problems, but rather, we do it because it is our evolved nature to do so, particularly in response to the environmental changes that we have had to adapt to."

I have essentially agreed with you that religion has served as a survival advantage in human development. It serves as a unifying element for a societal element and has serve to cement devotion to the group even to irrational levels, but the preservation of the society is maintained even if the direct benefit to the individual is sacrificed. This dynamic might also be evident in nationalism or ethnocentrism which may both also encompass elements of religion, but may also serve to unite a society across religious divisions.

So what survival advantages does religion provide that other social elements do not? Is it a sense of well being? A sense of connectedness and belonging with things beyond ourselves? That certain ritual practices provide us with health benefits? We also need to acknowledge the negative aspects which also provided humans with a survival advantage in our development. Prejudice and suspicion of strangers provides a survival advantage in a hostile world and intraspecies competition. These aspects are certainly present within religion, nationalism, and ethnocentricism. The point is that not everything that provides a survival advantage is necessarily something to be preserved in over time.

@Fernapple

Isn't there a large point inherent to this discussion that many atheists dumb down (for want of a better expression) topics that should not be treated that way? And if he did not respond, on a potentially rich topic, just because it is complex, then would not the failure to respond quite probably be misinterpreted by many quite incorrectly as taking place for some other reason? And if we sometimes encounter a point where the topic itself is demanding and complex, and potentially quite a rich topic, does this mean we just avoid the topic altogether?

I think it's good that he responded, while prefacing his remarks by stating his point of view that it is a complex matter.

@skado It will get worse whether you ignore it or not, that is it destiny. Theist religion may have done wonderful things in the past and still does today, but its future is completely dark, and that is driven by forces of history far beyond any human control.

@skado I doubt very much it is possible to take a charlatan fraud meme like religion and turn it into something "honorable". The fact that it shuns evidence in favor of "feelings" makes it vulnerable to lies and manipulation.

What you are proposing is much like the idea of a "beneficent dictator or monarch" .... sure that can happen for a while, but eventually it will be in the hands of a tyrant. It has no stability like something based on verifiable evidence would.

@Normanbites
I haven't proposed anything remotely like that.

@skado So you didn't say anything remotely like, ".... Our choices are to try to reform it or to let it metastasize. Take your pick...."

Ether you have a very selective memory or you are trying so gaslight for some reason. Shoo theist, we see who you are.

@Normanbites
How do you get "beneficent dictator or monarch" out of that?

@RussRAB
One of the most difficult problems I run up against in these discussions is that most folks take religion, quite understandably, to be just what they see in front of their own eyes, without looking at its DNA. When we look at religion from an evolutionary perspective, it's like X-Ray vision. We see its bones and its functional lineage, etc. (forgive the mixed metaphor, but you get the point).

Religion, as it sits on the ground today, is a complex mix of its evolutionary history, its physical history, and its own counter-forces. Like trying to hold a beachball underwater, any program designed to resist our evolved nature, as I claim religion largely is, is going to exert a mighty resistance. So what happens in human institutions - and I've witnessed this in the corporate environment first hand - is that when a system is developed that goes against the established forces (in this case our evolved nature), the established forces often don't want to look like they are resisting a reasonable development... or they are unsure what the best response might be... or they are wise enough to avoid an expensive, direct confrontation, etc., etc.

So what they do is feign interest. They say "Oh we want to help!" And the new system needs all the help it can get, so it welcomes them in. They soon work their way into positions of power, even if it takes multiple generations, and from those positions, start slowly changing the culture. If they are really wise, they change as little as necessary, so as not to appear obvious, but eventually they have altered the critical functions, so insidiously that the general public barely notices, aside from the occasional minor grumble.

I think this is essentially what happened in Christianity, and I suspect, other major religions as well. It's clearly evident in churches today that virtually never talk about Jesus' teachings. They can't afford to! Because he was (whether real or fictitious) teaching the diametric opposite.

So now, let's say, since the 19th century or so, reasonable people look at the church and see the corruption and hypocrisy, and (understandably) say "Religion is somewhere between useless and criminal".

So, before we can even start this discussion, we have to be able to distinguish between the original religious innovation that was Christianity, and the backlash that soon became the established power structure. And that isn't easy because, as I mentioned, the corruptors wanted to keep as much of the facade as possible, so there is no clear division. And this is not to suggest that there was any conscious, deliberate hostile takeover. A lot of it was done by people who believed themselves to be sincere, but were just being all too human in the process.

So one of the dynamic tensions in the Church (all congregations vary) is between our evolved instincts, like appetites, competitiveness, belligerence, etc. on the one side, and the religious advice to curb them on the other. I would say that the more corrupt a given congregation is, the more they would resemble any of the secular alternatives. A sports team, a political party, a nation, etc. They are all about winning against a competing team. You'll never hear any of them advise turning the other cheek, or extending charity in the heat of battle. Some sports cultures try to teach the rudiments of honorable battle, and sportsmanship, etc., but it is always a battle they intend to win.

On the other side of that spectrum is beating swords into plowshares. Loving your enemy. Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, etc. I don't know of any secular enterprise that teaches those values, PLUS, meets every week, PLUS, performs rituals to mark holy events - marriage, funerals, holidays, PLUS requires you to profess counterintuitive beliefs (Minimally CounterIntuitive Concept theory), PLUS gives you a respected identity in the community, PLUS takes ten percent of your income (Costly Signaling Theory), PLUS hosts Wednesday night singings, etc., etc., etc. And last but not least, is that religions most often provide some means of "atoning for sins" whatever that might entail in a given religion. Which is a primitive, but effective and affordable mental health treatment for easing guilt, etc.

I don't have a complete catalog of the components fresh in my head, but the evo psych folks have all that worked out. I don't know of any secular equivalent. When a majority of citizens in a community all belong to the same group, as used to be the case, it makes a powerful bond for group cohesion.

I would say that the "prejudice and suspicion of strangers" aspect is not a part of any official religious doctrine that I am aware of, but more in the camp of evolved instincts which are forever trying and often succeeding at corrupting religious practice, and possibly making its way into some doctrine somewhere, but more often unofficially and illegitimately alloyed with religious identity.

There are definitely aspects of religion, both original and corrupted, that would not be desirable to preserve forever. In fact, probably the biggest problem with religion is its reluctance to change, even when change is clearly warranted.

@skado What part of "What you are proposing is much like the idea of a...." is confusing to you?

For a guy who likes to spout litanies, it's pretty amusing you can be confounded by a simple sentence.

@Normanbites
I didn’t ask about that. What I questioned was “beneficent dictator or monarch.”

@skado Wow you really do need to be spoon fed ....

"What you are proposing is much like the idea of a "beneficent dictator or monarch" .... sure that can happen for a while, but eventually it will be in the hands of a tyrant. It has no stability like something based on verifiable evidence would."

You are proposing to "manage religion" like a dictator or monarch would "manage a government".

Get it now? Bet not!

@Normanbites
No. I am not proposing to "manage religion" like a dictator or monarch would "manage a government". Such a thought never crossed my mind. I’m certainly not in any position to do such a thing. I’m not a pope. I’m not clergy. I’m not even a member of a church. And I have no ambitions to rise to any position of power in either a religious or governmental context, and I’m not proposing that anyone should.

My understanding of “reform” is usually a ‘bottom up’ action as opposed to ‘top down’ action, or at most, a ‘middle up’ action. Religions are notorious for their resistance to change. The changes that come from the top are not usually for the benefit of the people.

Genuine religious reform happens when popular thought changes, because popular thought is the ultimate source of their power.

I prefer reform over revolution because I don’t favor violence. But generally when reform cannot be enacted, revolution is the eventual result.

Got it?

@skado What government or religion has ever been governed from the bottom up? You are fantasizing.

If you want to play with yourself, could you please do it elsewhere?

@Normanbites
Ultimately every government and every religion. They all receive their power from the population… unless you believe in a “higher power.”

If the population is being abused by their leaders, people put up with it as long as they can because that’s easier and more economical to do than fighting a war. But when oppression becomes intolerable, they rise up and behead the king or simply abandon the church and its coffers. So they have the ultimate power.

When people get tired of the oppression/revolution roller coaster, they invent democracy, to smooth out the bumps (otherwise known as self-government - government of, by, and for the people - bottom up government).

When people, in history, got tired of church abuses, they stopped attending and giving their money. Then the churches reformed.

Top power is always fictional and temporary. Bottom power is ultimate and real.

I get to play with whatever I want on my posts. If you have some little something you’d like to play with, you are free to make it with your own post.

@skado I see, so your plan is to be the next L. Ron Hubbard. <YAWN> Good luck with that.

@Normanbites
I have no such plan. Get some rest.

Astute.

Which claims in particular? This post doesn't mention Christians.
Or you.

Beautifully stated. And ditto every word of that for me, except for what I call myself.

@skado Thank you. I think I am going to put what I wrote into my profile. lol.

@MyTVC15
Definitely worthy of that. A well-written summary of a very sane outlook.

Word salad trolling.