Much thanks for that. I have found it hard to stop playing the believe-in-god game. Maybe I'd rather talk to god than myself. But I curse myself for my weakness. It is an addiction, even if it's just a behavioral addiction. It's a tattered comfortable sweater, but dirty, smelly and looks like shit. Atheism may be sterile, but it's clean and free of the ugly trappings religion carries with it. Or so I keep telling myself. Mainly, I have loyalty to the notion of truth and the virtues. Science also offers it's solace of accepting not being able to know every answer.

PUBLIC NOTICE:
The metaphorical view that Fernapple decries has nothing to do with the “sort” skado speaks of on this site. Fernapple is not a licensed distributor of skado ideas, and as yet has not been able to steelman them satisfactorily. Please get your skado ideas from the authentic, original source, skado.
Thanks.

ps. The UK clergy have never heard any of skado’s ideas and are also not authorized to distribute them.

@skado @ Fernapple Wow @Fernapple, what did you do to deserve the ire of the mighty skado? I know he doesn't like me -- I'm one of those cognitively dissonant atheists who pig headedly refuse to acknowledge the 'good' things about religion -- but you've been much more tolerant. Curious!

@skado I did not claim that the Church of England knew about or received its ideas from skado. Quite the contrary, ideas of that sort have been long and well established in that institution, to the point of banality. Whatever skado may think, there is little or nothing which is new, let alone original in the ideas he wants me to steelman. And it is far too late to pose a a prophet by using them, that boat sailed long ago.

As to the other mater. Perhaps you should consider appointing me as, "a licensed distributor of skado ideas". Since I seem to be able to remember them much better than you do yourself. If you suffer from memory loss, there is no shame in seeking help.

@David1955 I often butt heads with skado. I mainly differ from the two of you, in that I do think that religion has done both some good things, but also a lot of evil. But where I differ from you both, perhaps, is that I think that most of the good was in the past, and that the trend is toward a greater bond between religion and evil over time. Especially into the future, when religion is destined to become the true wife of darkness.

I think that its marriage with evil is natural, and that even skado himself almost got there the other day, when trying to defend religion he said, that, "religion did not create any evil, (I disagree with that as well. ) but that it was simply a sauce," that people poured over both their good and their bad, to make them tastier. But as I see it, if humans are to, or do, make any progress, then over time we should, and do, find better ways from reason, science, education, history, moral philosophy etc. to justify, explain and reach moral goodness, and truth. Which only leaves the anti-social, the immoral of intent, and the opponents of truth or progress in need of strong sauce, to cover the bad taste and poison in the dishes they wish to serve.

The other thing with skado is that as he says, "we are like brothers." And yes, he does remind me of me, especially me fifty years ago, I believed exactly what he preaches now, suffered from the same cognitive dissonance. I was an arrogant little s##t, a bully, who thought that I could get away with deception because I was smart, and vain enough to think of myself as a god given prophet. But then I was a teenager then. Sadly I may not have grown much, but I do know those failings well, well enough to make it a personal.

@Fernapple "I think that most of the good was in the past, and that the trend is toward a greater bond between religion and evil over time. Especially into the future, when religion is destined to become the true wife of darkness."

I couldn't agree more.

@Fernapple
You have no way to know if a person’s ideas are new if you are unable to demonstrate your knowledge of them, and every time you have represented what you thought were my ideas, you have stated them incorrectly.

If you are going to claim I have changed my position, the constructive (helpful) thing to do would be to point out where exactly, and give me the opportunity to either explain the apparent disparity or learn from my mistakes. To fail to do so at this point would be to admit that you still have nothing to offer but bullying.

Standing at the safe distance of plausible deniability and lobbing accusatory generalizations is neither convincing to the astute reader nor helpful to me.

And I have never mistaken myself for any kind of prophet or anything other than someone who has a hobby interest in the latest science regarding religion, and reporting it to the people who claim to love science the most.

@skado My only intent is to help people, including you, to learn from their mistakes, but there is in some people no wish to do so. I have as far as I know represented your ideas as plainly and truthfully as possible, if they are not accurate to your exact position, then that can only be due to inarticulate and poor presentation on your part, or the dishonest shifting of position after the event to support a vain belief in personal infallibility.

Which of the two I think that it is, should not be hard to guess, although I admit that I could be mistaken.

@Fernapple
No human is infallible. Language itself is far from perfect in its difficult job of conveying complex ideas. Most words carry multiple definitions. The context of each conversation is at least slightly different from every other. The individual point being made within each conversation may benefit from an emphasis different from what was used in a previous conversation about the very same topic.

All of these variables can add up to a lot of latitude for misunderstanding. If a person’s intent is only to make the other person look bad, they always have all the ammunition they need to do that, and no degree of sincerity can ever defend against such attacks.

The only way any conversation can ever hope to be constructive, that is, bring both parties closer to understanding each other’s intended meaning, is for both parties to extend benefit of the doubt to the other (even if they privately suspect otherwise) and give the person every opportunity to clarify any misunderstanding, no matter how long that takes. If it’s worth talking about, it’s worth talking about well.

All humans are susceptible to falling in love with ideas that make them feel good but just don’t happen to correspond with objective reality. Accusing that person of dishonesty helps no one, even if dishonesty were to be the case. Allowing that conversation to unfold in an atmosphere of mutual respect, even feigned respect, gives both parties an opportunity to see the inconsistencies of their thinking, while not giving them heightened cause to retreat into ego defense mode.

I can imagine myself or anyone reflexively “enhancing” a point in the “heat of battle” to save face. I’ve caught myself doing that and I’ve seen others do it. It’s human. And I am as capable as anyone of expressing my ideas poorly. But I really can’t imagine what would motivate anyone to deliberately lie about some obscure philosophical perspective for five years running!?!? What could possibly be the point of that?

What seems a lot more likely is that people really do believe the positions they take up and defend. There can be powerful motivation to believe propositions that fit neatly into our existing worldview, because it really is more important to have a functioning worldview than a flawless one, and there is never going to be a flawless one.

If proving ourselves “right” is our goal, we will never meet it. If we are genuinely interested in constantly adjusting our worldview to more nearly align with objective reality, we can insist on conducting our investigations in an atmosphere of basic mutual respect, forgive each other’s unavoidable human shortcomings, and do the long work of sifting through the mountains of tattered and soiled evidence, and let what we find speak for itself.

@skado So are you now going to admit that you once spent nearly a month arguing with me in favour of the metaphorical view of the bible, and indeed that the bible was written as metaphor ?

@Fernapple
There is no “The Metaphor”. There are literally countless possible metaphorical interpretations of the Bible or probably most sacred texts. It matters which interpretation you’re talking about.

I have consistently, and still do argue for a “particular” metaphorical interpretation, or rather a particular method of interpreting Biblical symbolism.

I would be hugely surprised if the method I have in mind corresponds even vaguely with anything espoused by any established religion, because I have spent the last seven years looking for one that did, and have found nothing.

If you would outline the basics of the church doctrine that you think is similar to mine, we can discuss similarities and differences. I’m assuming they didn’t say “Just form any metaphor you want, by any method you choose.” Was there a pattern, or a method or an outline they recommended?

@skado Good, at least you are not trying to gaslight me.

It is a long time since I was involved with the church over fifty years, so I do not remember exact details, but if I know anything of the COE it was probably a broad church view of metaphorical interpretation. That is the main trouble with the COE, it is so broad church, in everything, that it is basically little more than the church of relativism. I do however remember being told as a young man expressing doubts, that the "real grown up" way to view the bible and Christianity was as metaphor, and that that was how most clergy and educated Christians, who were offered as the ideal, within the church understood it. So for a while I was enthused with that idea.

However, details were not very forthcoming, and it was the very evasiveness and secrecy of the people involved, more than anything, which started to arouse suspicion. And when I tried to enquire deeper , I was only offered the direction to study mythology, especially the Greek myths, to learn the metaphorical methods. (Which I did. ) But that in itself was a contradiction, because one of the prime teachings I had been indoctrinated with, was that the classical world was superseded, by the modern Christian Socialist synthesis, (The Xian/socialist are not such opposites as they are in America.) and that its teaching were no longer valid and best avoided. I then met a teacher, a truly twisted person, who used his religion metaphorically when it suited him, and literally when he preferred that, but always to justify his racism and sexism. I then realized that it was often a pick and mix option, which could be used to justify anything you wanted.

Shortly after that, ( And this was forty plus years ago when I was a teenager, so don't ask for details, sorry.) I learned that a survey had found that most COE clergy were of the metaphorical school, and that literal belief was much less common among the clergy, than among those sat in the pews. It also stated that the stats changed if the clergy being interviewed were told that their answers were secret. I then understood that it was something that the church was ashamed of, and the reason was not hard to understand.

Because in the UK the COE enjoys vast privilege, political power and a major say in most national debates as well as great, if fading, wealth and prestige. And yet, I encountered almost no mention of anything but the most literal view of Christianity in the churches I visited, and still being at the seeking stage of life I went to a few. At which stage I saw that all the wealth and power and privilege, was built on people who were prepared to preach one thing, while believing another, that they based their power in what they saw as a fob for the people they regarded as lower orders, and were not even honest enough to own it, at least not unless directly challenged. And this it was in the churches view, not just mine, a dirty secret.

Things may have changed since then, perhaps they are more open about it now, there is less stigma about such things now. But that I would not know, because I then lost touch with the church and have not returned much.

@Fernapple
The whole religion/church/belief thing is an enormously complex and conflicted phenomenon, and I wouldn't blame anyone for walking away from it, and wanting nothing to do with it. That was my story as well, but I probably didn't even give it as many chances as you did. The minute I was old enough to make my own decisions, around 12 or so, I stopped attending church, mostly because I just didn't see the attraction. I stayed home with my Dad, who also didn't attend often, while my Sis and Mom continued.

At around 14, I met a friend who claimed to be an atheist, a concept I knew little about growing up deep in the American Bible Belt South in the 1950s. He was a transplant, from Pennsylvania I think. The more he told me about atheism, the more it made sense to me, and gave me the ammunition to survive in the Southern latitudes, though ammunition only against my own training, inside my head - I would not, at the time, argue with the religious folks - they were the only friends and family and social support I had. I survived socially mostly by just keeping my mouth shut and nodding in agreement.

Fortunately, in my case, most of the religious folks I grew up around weren't Bible-thumping fanatics. They were mostly decent, working class people who spoke of "the Lord" only occasionally, and then mostly in familiar expressions like "...if the Lord's willing and the creek don't rise". The subject was rarely ever talked about in any depth. Religion was considered a private matter, and even in that context mostly just a vague sense of being decent and tolerant of other people.

I have spent my entire adult life considering myself an atheist and hugely relieved not to have to sit through the boring Sunday services of my youth. The town I have spent most of my later life in is an aero-space engineering town, which draws talent from all over the U.S. and the world, so is not really typical of most of the South in terms of demographics. I have been able to find like-minded friends and a reasonably tolerant social atmosphere, such that my lack of religious affiliation has not been the problem for me that many have suffered in the Bible Belt.

When members on Agnostic suggest that my current apparent support for religion is due to lingering sentiments about my religious past, I just shake my head and laugh. There was never a time in my past when I had any affection for the religion I was raised in or the generally religious atmosphere of my surroundings. I always wanted OUT, and made it happen as early as I was allowed. Not that I experienced it as all that offensive - it was just boring and meaningless to me. There was never a time when it made sense to me, or gave me any comfort. There is nothing to look back on fondly, besides perhaps the gentle, patient, loving folks I grew up amongst, who were, at least nominally religious.

My interest in religion comes from a different place. I have, most of my life, assumed science to be the most reliable source of propositional knowledge, certainly over religion. But in my late 50s and throughout my 60s, I started developing an even greater appreciation for science, ironically partly in the interest of defending myself against the ever-present, and increasingly aggressive religious proselytizers, particularly online, and the numerous "spiritual-but-not-religious" New Agers, astrologers, channelers, and so on. I fortified my non-religious stance by reading Carl Sagan and everything I could find about evolution and the philosophy of science.

I eventually came to realize that evolution wasn’t just something that happened a long time ago and had something to do with speciation, but was in fact responsible for every single feature of every living creature, down to the thoughts we think and the emotions we feel to this very day.

That’s when I began to realize that the religion that I had been disparaging my whole life was likely a product of natural forces too, just like the mating rituals of exotic birds, and likely played some role in our survival.

So it was a pursuit of scientific knowledge alone that has brought me to my current position on religion - not religion itself. I naively thought my fellow atheists would be interested in what I was learning about science, since they are the ones who claim to depend, for their worldview, on science alone. But I soon learned it apparently wasn’t science they were interested in so much as justification for avoiding religious oppression, much as I had done for the first half of my adult life.

No problem. I’ve certainly been there. Avoiding oppression is a good step in the right direction. And I understand that going further into science and philosophy than what is necessary to armor oneself against oppression is not everyone’s cup o’ tea. Nor should it be, necessarily.

I have just developed a fascination with the science, and its implications for humanity’s future, such that I enjoy discussing it with people, and a curiosity, now, for why generally thoughtful and intelligent people are so resistant to one particular field of science, and how much that resembles the science denial often found among the religious.

As for the issue of metaphor… it’s another complicated subject. It has always been clear to me that a literal translation of religious scripture made no sense, and like many atheists, I just assumed it had no real value. I have been aware of many so-called metaphorical interpretations that, to me, seemed like just so much sentimental fluff - harmless enough if you like it, but I didn't.

It's not hard to see that if you start with religion, and look for metaphorical interpretations, you can easily find whatever you want to find. But that's kind of like asking a used car salesman about the condition of the car. You would be much better off to seek the advice of a mechanic first.

I have found that if we start with science first, and work our way toward religion as a peculiar behavior of a peculiar animal species, we see things with different eyes. When we understand that evolution created Homo sapiens - and either directly or indirectly, everything Homo sapiens does - we see that our capacity for the use of symbols is certainly adaptive, or such a complex system would never have come into existence. It is no less adaptive than the bat's sonar or the bee's honeycomb.

From that perspective, the science, history, and reason are suggesting the metaphors, instead of superstition or cognitive biases and wishful thinking. The suggestions themselves are not experimentally verifiable in specificity, but they get us a lot closer to the ballpark than dreamy wish fulfillment. It is at least easy to see how something in that ballpark could be useful to Homo sapiens.

How close this view may match the views of the COE, I have no idea. But not even all scientists agree on all science, so I would not expect all clergy to agree on hardly anything as difficult to pin down as metaphor.

But I can imagine a more benign motivation for saying one thing publicly, and another privately. Whether we characterize believers as a “lower order” or not, the plain fact is that most humans don’t have much interest in intricate philosophical intellectualizing. They have babies to raise and mortgages to pay.

What they do have is pretty much the same brain that evolution was installing in H.sapiens models five thousand years ago when the currently extant religions were in their embryonic stage. And the pressures of civilization that those religions were a response to are not only still around - they are at least a magnitude greater.

So it appears to me that whether religion was taken literally or metaphorically, it worked. So you have a population whose psychological and social equilibrium is built on a foundation of allegories that the majority assume to be literal. You have a heartfelt desire to support social equilibrium, and meet it where it is - not some ambition to turn the whole world into intellectuals.

So you meet them where they live - in their allegory. You know it’s an allegory, but you have no real need or even right to upend two thousand years of evolutionary equilibrium by forcing your worldview on them. And you know they would just go somewhere else if you did. You have to decide whether you are going to serve the need that exists or find a different occupation. The compassionate thing to do would be to do one or the other. You would not meet with much success trying to change that much momentum from inside the church. If that were someone’s goal they might have more success as a science popularizer, like Sagan.

Being clergy would be a tough job, that I wouldn’t want. But it could be taken on from a position of compassion and an understanding of the reality on the ground. And if an individual came to you and asked if was all metaphor or literal, it would be pretty risky, as a representative of the church, to take any firm position one way or the other. Best to just give an evasive answer. One that you could give all individuals- intellectual or not, for consistency’s sake.

@skado I agree with nearly all that you say, and although I spoke mainly of my religious progress in the last comment, I too came to my present position mainly though science. Since it was a deep love of science which started a fuelled the journey from religion. ( The same teacher who disparaged classical learning in favour of his Christian/Socialist synthesis, also scorned science. )

But to take your second point first. Yes I have found that most clergy, and true believers, are good people. Often wonderfully good people. Indeed in the current COE there are probably more good people who have a real vocation to help others, than there were in my youth, since many of the old corrupt, “Its an easy job with good prospects, and priviledge.” clergy, have died off since my youth. While the rise of Humanism and Socialism ( with both large and small capitals ) means that doing things with good intent, is more important since there are now more ways to help others, and more questioning of motivation, rather than blind respect for institutions.

But I also suspect that the COE is an exception in many ways, and that, as the rise of fascism within the Christian communities in your country proves, the general trend is in the other direction. For the reason that religion has to provide an alternate voice to mainstream thinking to exist, and as in most countries political and social life becomes more respecting of human rights, and social needs, religion will have to move to the hard right, else it has nothing to say that anyone would be bothered with, since humanity can be taken as a given in all other spheres anyway.

As to evolution. Yes I do agree wholly that all things in the human and animal world stem from evolution, including religion. Only the raw environment being unevolved.

But there are several things to remember about evolution by natural selection. Firstly, that it is slow, and secondly, that it is crude and quite arbitrary, producing many blind alleys, pointless ultimately destructive arms races, and costly spandrels. For a well known example, on many offshore islands, many birds evolved to be flightless, because if you are in an environment where there are no predators to escape, one of its main purposes is lost. While flight is expensive in energy terms, and that energy can be used for breeding, fighting and foraging. And flight is also dangerous in that you can easily be swept out to sea, or dashed against rocks, by strong winds, especially on small islands.

Yet many of those birds then went extinct. Because, especially in modern times, predators were introduced. And while humans may have had a big hand in spreading many predatory animals around the world, quite quickly. It is still something that can and will happen naturally, given enough time, (geological time ) at least one predator will eventually find its way to almost every island. Or that island will erode away, and with no way to escape, its flightless life is still doomed. (This is I know a very simple picture with a lot of holes, but it is the principle that counts. )

While human civilization has only been around for a very short time. Not much more than ten thousand years, as a significant evolutionary factor in most humans lives less than two thousand, at most, and there are still uncontacted people today who know nothing of it, who seem to be pretty much genetically identical with those that do. Almost all of our evolutionary adaptive DNA comes from well before complex technological civilization. We have therefore suffered a sudden change in our environment, almost as rapid and complete as that suffered by any flightless bird when a predator arrives on its island. Since there is no such thing, (except very technically) as pre-adaption we can not rely on our inherited DNA to provide us with answers to our current situation.

If you are a bacterium, all of your behavioural responses to the demands of your environment are programmed into your DNA . You do not have a brain. But most complex animals do have brains, and the reason for that is that they evolved, a brain, because it gave them the ability to respond to the environment both more rapidly and with greater complexity than could be programmed into the chemical responses of DNA. DNA itself evolved an emergent higher level of behavioural responsiveness because that helped it to survive, in a way that it could not do for itself.

Thus it is reckless to abandon the power of intelligent responses to the environment, in favour of hoping that our DNA will come galloping to the rescue.

Here is the religion of scientific proof, and a demonstration of how that religion works and works well.

However that same infection of irrational fear can be quite harmful as well. When an institution such as the Medieval Christian church, tells people to fear objective truth, science and philosophy. Because a snake, which is already a fear anyway, infected a couple with a desire for objective truth, and that carried with it a poison created by a imaginary agent of pure evil. Then that is far removed from the useful religion of the orangutang jungle school. Which is why when we speak of scientific proof of the evolutionary usefulness of religion, and say we believe it, and some atheists say that they reject it. There is no conflict. Because both are correct.

It is simply that we are talking about one sort of religion, the religion of the jungle school, and they are talking about a quite different definition of religion, the established organized religion of theism, and its Dogmas. Most atheists that I know, if they have respect for any religion, and most do, it is mostly for so called primitive, non theist religion. While theist religions themselves are quite new in evolutionary term, even most human religions in to quite resent times having no gods, so gods have certainly not had time to affect evolution.

While the greatest change in resent history, has been the speed of change itself. We do not now really need to fear the snake, so much as the snake, and every other creature needs to fear us. We are now the snake. And in a world where rapid change is the normal, then the worst thing is, conservatism, or at least conservatism so conservative, that it does not even attempt to address or understand change, and I am sorry to say that it is in the nature of religion to be ultra conservative.

Yes. It's a question that needs to be clearly enunciated or not asked at all.

That was the question (2nd line of OP). The implication being that atheists/agnostics take the position of viewing reality as it is so that no cognitive dissonance develops.

Over the idea that religion might be a useful or maybe even necessary survival strategy for H.sapiens, regardless of the relative accuracy of some of its propositional claims.

@skado oh, yes. What would I do without your infinite wisdom to guide me and set me straight.

@David1955
Looks like a sarcastic (emotional) response. The look of discomfort on the face.

@skado thank you Mr Spock, but I do sarcasm without discomfort. It comes easily.

Internal conflict generated by holding two opposing views.
Ex.1: A Christian who holds both a biblical view or reality but also respects and understands the scientific world view.
Ex. 2: An atheist who holds a scientific world view but then has seemingly spiritual experiences via hallucinogens.
Ex. 3: A Christian who holds a biblical view and is absolutist in exhorting others to that view, but then picks and chooses what admonishments to embrace for themself.

I think we all have CD whether we know it or not but religion has done a part in our survival as a species and also has led to mass murder and torture as well.

@DenoPenno
I know that's a popular idea, and it's not that there is no truth to it, but since humans put religion sauce on just about everything they do, it's hard to know if the sauce caused the problem or was just there when it happened. And if one looks deeply enough into history, it's not hard to see lots of other motivations in the mix, many of which, religions have cautioned against for millennia. The fact that religion is not powerful enough to counter all of the human selfishness and ignorance does not mean that it caused it. I seriously doubt that humans would all become little angels if religion were to go away.

@Garban
Science isn't all about doing experiments and "proving" things. And it's never really about knowing anything for certain, or knowing things completely. It is forever changing and growing. And speaking of which, a great deal has occurred, science-wise, in the last two decades that haven't yet filtered down into common knowledge. But if you go looking for it it's there. It's not all neatly packaged and readily available for casual consumption, but it's my hobby, so I search it out and read about it every day.

There is no one source I can point to where you can go and see irrefutable evidence, but if you read about the various disciplines that do use the scientific method, and read what the top academics and scientists are saying today about the intersection of science and religion, you can see for yourself that this is where things are going.

But just as there is a difference between formal science and anecdotal evidence, there is also a HUGE difference between the opinions of scientists who work in this field and scientists who work in other fields but have opinions. Also between scientists whose heyday was the 1960s and scientists who are doing fresh work as we speak.

Now I'm no scientist of any description, but I make use of the work they do. And I have spent every day of the last seven years researching this particular subject, and the five years before that studying the difference between anecdotal evidence and the scientific method. I have, in fact, oriented my studies around the goal of disproving this hypothesis. But everywhere I look for evidence to the contrary, I am surprised to find corroborating evidence instead. No one is more surprised than this lifelong religion-hater. It has opened my eyes to things I would never have guessed or even wanted to be true. But science is like that.

A great place to start, if one hasn't already, is to read anything and everything about evolution, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology - to the point of having better than just a cursory understanding. It's really more about broad-based understanding than any specific knowledge. Read anything you can find about the new, purely scientific field called Cognitive Science of Religion, or really anything about cognitive science. Read about anything that has the Evolutionary- prefix in front of it. And then read about mythology, art, religion, and culture in light of what you have learned about how evolution works.

What I think you will discover is... that it's not so much that we couldn't possibly exist without religion, but that, up to this point, religion has played a critical role in our success as a species - a role that is not self-evident to the casual observer. And... that we have not only NOT outgrown the need for it, but that need is just now in human history about to skyrocket. And... that there is no secular or even religious institution poised to meet that expanding need. What we don't need to be doing is undermining the one institution that helped us get this far, at least until we understand it better than we currently do.

And keep in mind that religion has nothing inherently to do with belief in gods or supernatural anything, or souls or spirits, as popularly understood, but, from the evolutionary perspective, has more to do with herding cats. It is a narrative that puts all ( or most ) of the members of a given society on the same team. And teamwork is our superpower. But now, the society we live in is increasingly global, while a majority of its members still possess less-than-stellar critical thinking skills. So they are not going to all go out and become science literate overnight. If they are to stay even on their local team, they ( that majority ) still need their familiar cosmologies, or whatever mechanism they use, to identify as a team. And as cultures collide in the globalization of the planet, they will increasingly need a way to find some overarching commonality with other teams.

Fortunately, that commonality exists in spades. There is a common evolutionary thread that runs through all cultures that can be illuminated. And it needs to lean in the direction of the scientifically verifiable, without forsaking the human need for fantasy, imagination, creativity, symbolism, and identity. What I think we need is a meta-religion that reminds us of that common thread, without dishonoring local color and tradition.

I hope this has been more helpful than annoying, but there is no simple answer. Read David Sloan Wilson, and Loyal Rue, or watch their videos. They are two of the best that I know of.

Religion has shaped society in many ways but I take issue with the statement that it has had a role in the survival of our species. Archaelogy indicates that religion is a relatively recent phenomenon and mamnkind survived Ok without it prior to this
Science however may eventually bring about the demise of humanity. eg nuclear weapons or the release of a pathegon such as covid but deadlier.

@skado No this is simply defining words to fit the agenda, what has played a significant role in human life and survival, is culture. Religion is merely a small sub-set of culture, far too recent in origin, to have played a role in human life long enough to have significant survival benefit, and many of its phenomena are historically seen to have had negative effects so far.

But mainly, it should also be remembered when addressing atheists, that you are not even talking about the sub-set of culture known as religion, in the widest terms, but only the sub-set of the sub-set known as theist religion. Like the word itself says A-theist meaning anti theist.

As far as I know there is no scientific evidence to support the idea, that the sub-set known as theist religion has had any major positive effect on human survival, or indeed any obvious way that science could even begin to address such a subject. There is certainly bound to be some bad pseudoscience, because any industry with the human and financial resources of theist religions, can easily buy masses of that, but given that the issue is a historical one quite outside the scientific sphere that just shows a bad cognitive dissonance which quite misunderstands science.

@skado, @Moravian Quite, Skado is simply defining words to fit the agenda, what has played a significant role in human life and survival, is culture. Religion is merely a small sub-set of culture, far too recent in origin, to have played a role in human life long enough to have significant survival benefit, and many of its phenomena are historically seen to have had negative effects so far.

But mainly, it should also be remembered when addressing atheists, that you are not even talking about the sub-set of culture known as religion, in the widest terms, but only the sub-set of the sub-set known as theist religion. Like the word itself says A-theist meaning anti theist.

As far as I know there is no scientific evidence to support the idea, that the sub-set known as theist religion has had any major positive effect on human survival, or indeed any obvious way that science could even begin to address such a subject. There is certainly bound to be some bad pseudoscience, because any industry with the human and financial resources of theist religions, can easily buy masses of that, but given that the issue is a historical one quite outside the scientific sphere that just shows a bad cognitive dissonance which quite misunderstands science.

@Moravian, @skado That is the problem with religion. That it is a sauce that you can put on anything, and thereby use it to justify anything, even the worst acts of inhumanity and manipulation.

And why, if or as, human culture progresses and with that progress, finds better ways such as reason, philosophy, science, advanced politics, belief in human rights and improved education, to justify and explain most of the good things that human society and culture attempt, then the well intended need it less. But then the main role that religion will find in the future, and even did to a large degree in the historic past, is to provide just that "sauce" to conceal and render acceptable attempts at antisocial, criminal and anti-environmental thought and action. You have yourself expressed exactly the reason for the deep and unbreakable link between religion and evil.

@DenoPenno That is the problem with religion. That it is a sauce that you can put on anything, and thereby use it to justify anything, even the worst acts of inhumanity and manipulation.

And why, if or as, human culture progresses and with that progress, finds better ways such as reason, philosophy, science, advanced politics, belief in human rights and improved education, to justify and explain most of the good things that human society and culture attempt, then the well intended need it less. But then the main role that religion will find in the future, and even did to a large degree in the historic past, is to provide just that "sauce" to conceal and render acceptable attempts at antisocial, criminal and anti-environmental thought and action. Skado has himself expressed exactly the reason for the deep and unbreakable link between religion and evil.

@Fernapple On the contrary, religion has along with other distorted doctrines has killed millions throught history. examples are the crusades, the Ottoman conquests, the partition of the Indian sub continent, Stalins purges, Hitlesr antisemitism.

@Moravian I would not say that is the contrary, rather as well as. There may be many links between religion and evil, I was just highlighting one of them.

I think that it was Thomas Szasz who said: "Scientists try to find theories to fit facts. Pseudo-scientists try to make facts fit theories."

If I do I am not aware of it, apart from maybe expecting the team I support to win the league when I know they don't have a chance. As for having CD about religious beliefs, certainly not. I have absolutely no doubt about religions. They are all made up fables.

@Moravian
How do you feel about the idea that believing in fables might confer survival advantages to H.sapiens at this point in history?

@skado An interesting question. Unlike you I live in a secular country where religion is no big deal Some people go to church on sunday and although Church of England bishops are still entitled to sit in the house of lords the church has lost most of it's influence.
We have a hindu prime minister in the Uk and a moslem first minister i9n Scotland. Could that happen in the USA??. I doubt it.
However when I look accross the pond I see the Christian right attempting to turn the USA into a theocracy and that worrries me.
To answer your question I think that beleiving in fables would have the opposite effect of confering survival advantages to H. sapiens

@Moravian
OK, you’ve told me about what you believe and what you think, but tell me about your feelings. How do you feel about the possibility that science may already support the notion that our capacity to believe in fables is adaptive?

@skado not sure what you mean by adaptive but what I beleive and what I feel are the same. Science has gradually disproved most of the fables in the bible.

@Moravian
Adaptive means enhancing survival and reproduction.
Fables don’t make testable claims. They are allegories that illustrate moral or abstract principles by comparison to more familiar and more memorable concrete objects and events.

What science has disproved is the claims of people who read the fables and mistook them for literal history. That’s progress.

Science has only relatively recently begun to explore the potentially adaptive qualities of religious behavior, and the hypothesis of pro-social adaptation is steadily gaining ground in the related sciences.
How do you feel about that?

@skado I'm not really that interested but do you have any examples ?

@Moravian
Yes, the main one that’s generally understood is religion’s influence toward social cohesion. Groups working as a team are more successful than any individual could be alone or lots of individuals doing whatever struck their fancy.

The next generally accepted feature is more related to the individual than the group, but groups are made of individuals, so it scales up. But that feature is what Loyal Rue calls “personal wholeness”. I think of it as psychological buoyancy. Homo sapiens is an ape whose think-box grew so complex it can get finicky and cause its owner all kinds of misery. Especially when our species started experimenting with stationary living in close contact with thousands of strangers - an arrangement we were not biologically evolved to fit. Religions can generate hope where otherwise the only option might be despair. They can provide counsel for the troubled, and guidelines for living that have the benefit of generational wisdom.

Also stationary living, as opposed to nomadic hunting/gathering, required some behavior modification - some “thou shalt nots” in order to fit a Pleistocene ape into a farming society. Civilization cannot function without a moral scheme as well as a legal scheme, and organized religion has played both of those roles at various times, but always the former.

It’s not that such functions might not, someday, be replaced by secular substitutes, as has already been done with its cosmological function. We get that from science now. The legal aspect has been largely secularized, the diet and cooking recommendations, the medical advice - all have been secularized.

What no secular institution has yet been able to replace as effectively or efficiently are the social cohesion (group identity) and the individual psychological buoyancy at mass scale. It’s more complex than that, but that’s a sample.

These aren’t my ideas, but what you will find if you start digging into the related scientific papers and books.

@skado Well, man is a tribal animal ,so mankind would always congregate in groups. Social cohesion was obviously important and it was adoption of agriculture that increased the size of the tribes which eventually grew into states and countries.
Religion grew in importance , influence ,and control ,and as you say was no doubt instramental in drawing up the original laws. Some good ,some bad. If anyone says to me how good Christianity is I say "ask the descendants of Archie Aitkenhead". He was the last person to be executed for blasphemy in Scotland just over 300 years ago.
An indication of the power of the church is shown in the fact that the Declaration of Arbroath was addressed to the pope in the 14th century.
Fortunately this influence has waned greatly but still lingers on.
An example recently was in the election of a new fist minister here. one front runner was a free church member who was against same sex marriage and the olther a Moslem who absented himself from parliament when the vote was cast.
The reason for their behaviour had nothing to do with whether the passing of the law was good or bad but because of their religious beliefs.
Anyway the law was passed and we have quite a few same sex marriages here. Is this legal in the USA ?

@Moravian
Yes, same sex marriage is legal in the U.S. starting at the state level in 2004 and at the federal level in 2015.
My claim is not that religion is “good”. My claim is that it is a product of evolution which exists because it has aided survival and reproduction. Whether that is “good” or not is a value judgement. I’ve heard people say they think humans are a blight on the Earth and they hope we go extinct. My personal preference is… I like the idea of my species continuing to exist, but I don’t mistake my personal preferences for anything like objective “good”.

I’m also not trying to convince anyone to participate in religion if they have no interest. I am motivated only by curiosity at the fact that so many atheists - the people who claim to love science over superstition - are not in love with science when it tells them something they don’t like.

They claim disinterest, or they deny it’s true, or they attack me personally - all of which are classical responses to cognitive dissonance, but not the response of a person who loves science no matter what the evidence says.

I would think that after this much time some of the more adamant folks would like to prove me wrong and post some relevant studies that support their view, but on the few occasions when they have tried, either the link was entirely irrelevant to the issue, or more often than not actually supported my claim.

I am left to believe that the atheists’ interest in science is as selective as that of the theists.

Humans are indeed a tribal animal, adapted to a nomadic life in small tribes of maybe 30 to 150 individuals, all of whom knew each other personally, and most of whom were related. Anything resembling religion was little more than animism at that time.

The discovery of agriculture thrust these nomadic people into large, stationary farming communities of hundreds or thousands of strangers who needed to cooperate in order to survive. This required making some rules to live by that had never been needed before. We were tribal by nature but not civilized by nature. That is to say, citified. Living in large groups and coordinating the behavior of large groups was not what we were adapted to after two and a half million years as nomads.

It was only after the development of agriculture that what we know as organized religion arose. Its job, among other things, was to give an artificial sense of tribal belonging to large groups of strangers, so they could cooperate as effectively as “real” tribes whose members all had “real” relationships.

Now, that is going to be a difficult one because god, the supreme being or whatever term is used for denotation, is by his/her/it’s nature, supposedly formless. If such being existed and turned up incarnated as a man or woman we would most likely call him or her either a crazy or mad. Likely, we would want a small demonstration of omnipotence to convince us.

Let’s imagine that such a demonstration took place then there would probably follow endless questions about the atrocities of history and the suffering of mankind or maybe a small demonstration of omnipotent power would render us speechless. Time for coffee after my excursion in the realm of the imagination.

@ASTRALMAX exactly