THERE ARE NO ATHEIST BABIES

(from an atheist website)

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@David_Cooper
Beautifully stated!

I think you have the evolution part right. I’m with you through the first half of your last sentence. But evolution isn’t motivated by money. It builds what works biologically and, eventually at least, throws away what doesn’t work.

The fact that humans can choose to use various, otherwise adaptive, traits for selfish gain (a type of exaptation) is no different in religion than in government or in business or just about anywhere humans are found.

Evolution doesn’t construct money scams. It builds adaptive systems, and humans use those, and anything else they can get their hands on, for selfish gain, just as any animal might, only more capably. To suggest that a cultural system as ubiquitous as religion is nothing more than a scam would be to ignore the entire evolutionary component of its history.

@skado Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that money had anything to do with the evolution of religion. I think the money and power angle came later.

Sounds good, but most parents will not like, nor tolerate a child dissenting or questioning their imposed belief system on them. I tried that as a kid and got the "burn in hell" response as my questions threatened others. Creating room for a child to grow and learn means allowing them the ability to dissent from their parents or family. I have rarely seen that in my lifetime in any belief system.

@ClareCK Of course, it will never happen for who is going to let go of their beliefs in which they have invested many years of their life and which forms a large part of their sense of identity. Human beings seek validation of their beliefs and any challenge to them usually results in a reinforcement of them.

I believe that at age 14 to 16 as a bare minimum threshold, children should be able to choose to not be forced to attend church or any religious institution or ceremony against their will. It is horrid, from personal experience, to be forced to even hear the drivel of organized religion in which you have no investment or belief in.

@ClareCK No child, of any age, should have to suffer exposure to the mental illness that is religious faith.
I was raised being forced to attend catholic mass every Sunday.
My earliest memories are of sitting on a damned uncomfortable wooden pew, listening to some priest go on and on about stuff that made no sense to me.
I knew god wasn't real.
By the time i was 12, I knew I couldn't continue to sit through the bullshit. My sister and I would go to the church, get that day's program before mass started, leave and go across the street to Dunkin' Donuts.
We'd have really yummy donuts for breakfast, and pay for them with the money we were supposed to put in the collection plate.

How nice to know that you are. "not aware of any scientific school of thought that considers the teaching of local culture, be it language or religion or folkways, to be child abuse. There is no medical or scientific support for this claim." Perhaps you should tell the W.H.O. they are clearly on the wrong track, and would surely welcome the benefits of your wisdom in these maters. See link.

[who.int]

A scientific acknowledgement of the evolutionary function of human culture is not an endorsement of any of it’s specific, local practices.

Those have evolved over time according to local habit, as they will, thankfully, continue to do. There is no particular ritual that is essential to the biological functioning of “religion.” They will all evolve to suit the sensibilities of the time and place.

But even those rituals that, correctly in my opinion, seem barbaric by 21st century Western standards, were never dispensed as an expression of abuse, such as in anger, frustration, resentment or callous disregard for the welfare of the recipient. They were performed with the best of intentions for the individuals and for the society, by the very same people who were the recipients themselves only a generation before.

This distinction in no way shields the practice from continuing civilizing evolution, but the fact that some cultures are slower than ours to modernize these practices is not evidence of anything endemic in, or essential to, the philosophical abstraction we call religion. They can and, in my opinion should be, dissuaded with maximum urgency.

World Health Organization has not, to my knowledge, claimed that the generational perpetuation of religion, in the general sense, is inherently abusive to children or adults.

For the record, I have never claimed religion is the source of morality. I have consistently said our moral capacity is given to us by biology, as is our capacity for complex culture, including religion. Individual local culture, in turn, determines the specific expression of that moral instinct, just as it determines the specific local language, etc.

Rather than religion creating morality, it is more like it is our biological predilection for morality which, in part, causes us to generate religious culture, just as it is our biological predilection for unlimited gain that then corrupts not only those very same religions but everything else we possibly can.

We have some native capacity for morality and we generate the local and temporal guidelines for it, but we are not particularly good at following either, because they are in competition with multitudes of other instincts and influences.

@skado Sorry but, "I’m not aware of ". Is an absolute, it therefore is, an endorsement of all "specific, local practices".

@skado For the record. if as you say.

"I have never claimed religion is the source of morality. I have consistently said our moral capacity is given to us by biology, as is our capacity for complex culture, including religion. Individual local culture, in turn, determines the specific expression of that moral instinct, just as it determines the specific local language, etc.

Rather than religion creating morality, it is more like it is our biological predilection for morality which, in part, causes us to generate religious culture, just as it is our biological predilection for unlimited gain that then corrupts not only those very same religions but everything else we possibly can.

We have some native capacity for morality and we generate the local and temporal guidelines for it, but we are not particularly good at following either, because they are in competition with multitudes of other instincts and influences."

Then I am in full agreement with you, but also for the record, I never even mentioned morality in my comment.

And the only place where I differ from you is in that, I think that today reason, and education have taken us to the point where there are better ways for our, "biological predilection for morality" to be interpreted and used to generate moral codes, than traditional, and especially theist religions. And that in a world where that is already taking place, and is seen to be doing it better, then it is natural that those traditional religions will be the increasingly the places where, those who are as you say "not particularly good at following either, because they are in competition with multitudes of other instincts and influences" will find their homes.

@Fernapple: “…but also for the record, I never even mentioned morality in my comment.”

@skado Was not talking about your comment, but about the last above. "I have never claimed religion is the source of morality." Skado.

@Fernapple
Which I posted, for the record, after you quoted me elsewhere and then made the comment about morality, as if it reflected my beliefs. It does not.

@skado Those comments were an enlargement on my comment about apologists in general, and have nothing to do with this line.

@Fernapple
Thanks for the clarification.

I consider my childhood religious upbringing abusive. Does that count? I was forced to pray, attend church, memorize the Bible, get baptized, listen to people ranting in supposed tongues and insanity I cannot even describe, and on and on until I felt I left home. It damaged me for decades as a woman as Christian teachings are all about submission of women to men. "Suffer not a woman to teach" and on and on. I hated the doom and gloom of the Bible and how mentally oppressive that was to my development. Everything was a sin and the flames of hell were always locking at my ankles. Yes, it is abuse for a sentient teenager to be forced to engage in these rituals against their will.

@ClareCK
Any situation in which a child is non-accidentally damaged physically and/or psychologically counts as child abuse, whether the justification in the mind of the abuser is thought to be a religious imperative or any other. And the religious domain probably offers more fertile ground for this type of institutional malignancy than any other. This is why I advocate for religious reform.

That said, if a child is beaten with a baseball bat, we don’t blame it on the institution of baseball. We place the blame where it belongs, on the abuser, regardless of how well the bat lends itself to the task.

There is nothing inherent in the philosophical or anthropological abstraction we call “religion” that requires or benefits from the abuse of fellow humans of any age or gender.

Individuals who perpetrate or excuse maltreatment in the name of religion, or any other cover, bear 100% of the responsibility for their crimes, and deserve 100% of the blame.

Any retributive energy aimed at impersonal institutions or abstractions is energy that will have no effect on the source of the abuse. Please hold the abusers accountable for the actions they freely chose to perpetrate. And please help reform any institution that promotes, excuses, tolerates, or passively allows itself to serve as cover for the maltreatment of human beings. Understandable vengeful fantasies notwithstanding, baseball is not likely to go away any time soon.

Animism is total bullshit.

@barjoe Sounds like the expert has spoken!