Secularism - Is it a blessing or a curse?

[Khayyam]

I think we all know religions exist for a reason. The corn and maize deities were a big deal in mesoamerica because those crops were essential to survival, water has such powerful theological overtones in abrahamic religion because of its scarcity in the middle east etc.

I don't doubt that religion, like the first article you posted does provide a sense of peace to many.
It's also no coincidence however that the most religious nations are also the poorest. The article here claims the US is an exemption, but considering that at least 40% of the US population also lives in poverty by UN standards, also has the highest foodbank useage of the developed world and also has the highest child mortality rate of the OPEC countries it should also be no suprise this section of society also happens to be among the most religious.

Religion does help bandage a problem, but it also causes more problems than it solves. The Gospels prohibition on divorce did ensure for a time that women could not be abandoned once they got too old, but it also cemented women for the next nineteen hundred years in the role of a serf.

The person you are quoting is Voltaire, but the problem with this idea is that at the last examination in the early 10's atheists in the US were actually the smallest percentage of the prison population in the US. Obviously in sheer numbers, but proportionsal percentage of the US Athiest population as well.

Not that Hellbound points out that religiosity is automatically a sign of criminality. But that since athiests tend to be wealthier, they also don't tend towards petty crime so Voltaire's observation seems drastically off. Particuarly since coming from France, one of the Catholic countries of confessionals and cover ups...Need I say more?


Short version: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...ation-and-facts-about-secularism-and-religion
Long: https://pitweb.pitzer.edu/academics...8/2014/12/FAC-Zuckerman-Sociology-Compass.pdf

 

[Autopsy]

I don't doubt that religion, like the first article you posted does provide a sense of peace to many.
It's also no coincidence however that the most religious nations are also the poorest. The article here claims the US is an exemption, but considering that at least 40% of the US population also lives in poverty by UN standards, also has the highest foodbank useage of the developed world and also has the highest child mortality rate of the OPEC countries it should also be no suprise this section of society also happens to be among the most religious.

Religion does help bandage a problem, but it also causes more problems than it solves. The Gospels prohibition on divorce did ensure for a time that women could not be abandoned once they got too old, but it also cemented women for the next nineteen hundred years in the role of a serf.

The poorest countries are also the most religious. What's your point? Your tabloid source has much the same issue, apples to oranges does no favors, and by stretching the search wide enough you could assert a lot of things about a lot of countries that would be unreasonable. Give me a grant and a year and I'll get back to you with "evidence" that rate of cheese consumption is a driving factor for the most successful economies and a solid report on how developing countries could increase their rate of cheese consumption to compensate.

According to the official poverty measures, in 2016, 12.7 per cent of Americans were living in poverty;19 according to the supplemental poverty measure, the figure was 14 per cent. [...] Based on the supplemental poverty measure, poverty rates in the United States fell from 26 per cent in 1967 to 16 per cent in 2012 — a decline of nearly 40 per cent

Food banks are functionally altruistic and a religious populace with significant surplus supporting the blatantly poor through tax and charity is to be expected; not sure why you linked the same source again.
I've got no idea how to address the claim that women were made "serfs" because of marriage as an institution. My best attempt would be to point out that in many instances functionally similar institutions arise across time, the most primary element being 'devotion to a single man', and many of the others are far less forgiving. Of particular note is the Chinese system in the higher courts.
Finally, the sources cited the last article that contradict the sources I used do not assert the same things that I asserted in most cases and could not have taken the sources I used to assert what I did assert into account because they are new and chronologically relevant- the same is not true vice-versa. Here's a choice quote:

Although some studies have found that religion does inhibit criminal behavior (Baier and Wright, 2001; Powell, 1997; Bainbridge, 1989; Elifson, et al., 1983; Peek et al., 1985) others have actually found that religiosity does not have a significant effect on inhibiting criminal behavior (Cochran et al., 1994; Evans et al., 1996; Hood et al., 1996). “The claim that atheists are somehow more likely to be immoral,” asserts Benjamin BeitHallahmi (2007:306), “has long been disproven by systematic studies.”

How is it disproven by strictly contrary evidence? The author inserted this completely irrelevant assertion on abstract morality where it frankly doesn't belong and in circumstances where it is, in fact, rebutted.

The real point, however, is this: What specific problem does it 'bandage'? You have asserted that is solves one 'problem' but causes more? How do you know there is only one reason Religion has been a human institution for millennia? How can you possibly evaluate how many problems religious countries have are caused by religion? How could you assert a unilateral approach to dismiss the entire spiritual vector as a poverty-causing wife-beating relic when different religions are so dramatically different or even opposed to one-another? Even if there are more raw rewards to abandon religiosity than to keep it, are they meaningful enough for it to matter?

I think we all know religions exist for a reason. The corn and maize deities were a big deal in mesoamerica because those crops were essential to survival, water has such powerful theological overtones in abrahamic religion because of its scarcity in the middle east etc.

This is the height of hubris and that is the entire point of my original post. You are assigning reasons you do not know to things you do not understand, and trivial reasons that that. There are thousands of examinations of water as a symbol within the Abrahamic context and thousands more examining it without- they come to many common conclusions, but in some cases the importance was uniquely generated by the religion itself. We know far less than we pretend about the 'corn and maize deities' of societies we have lost to time and prophets we will never know and you could not possibly assert a causal pathway between "I need this thing" and godhood in a greater context with any degree of seriousness.
The consequences of losing religiosity as an institution are wide and many and it's time to realize that you can't amputate a massive chunk of the entire social structure without causing a few hundred unexpected holes, no matter how hard you try to patch the problems you're so confident you know about.
Coincidentally, that's the problem with central planning. Heuristic structures always function more completely than those made under human eye; compare the capabilities of robots and that of our own brains.

 

[Slap47]

There are two kinds of secularism

1. Not privileging any religion

2. Privileging all religions



The 2nd one is obviously retarded but it is applied by several countries. It basically amounts to blasphemy laws and multiple state religions.

The first one is ideal. The USA botches it by leaning into the 2nd one. Churches should be treated like businesses when they rake in revenue and should be freely criticized. Governments should not be in the business of defining what is religion in the first place.

 

[Black Waltz]

no, we need to become a christian theocracy

 

[wylfım]

I'm going to go ahead and assume Christianity/Judaism since we're speaking in English on a forum hosted in America (ie, western society), so know that when I say religion I am referring to these two.
People have been arguing back and forth about religion for thousands of years, to think that all of a sudden the west has solved the problem "with science" (the most frequently posited position) betrays a staggering hubris and lack of understanding on the topic. Religion is so much broader and touches on so many more aspects of life than just "where did people come from"; it encompasses morality*, the relationship between the individual and others, how to structure society, along with the emotional/spiritual aspect. Sure, evolution is true. That doesn't mean the Bible/Torah are false. The two aren't exclusive.
*And in regards to morality (because that's always the most contentious one of that list), atheists can't claim that "I don't need religion to be moral, I just won't be an asshole who kills someone else," because like it or not they grew up in a Judaeo-Christian influenced society that generally follows the moral rules of the Bible/Torah, and they picked up their morals from that (see Freud's theory of superego). There's no proof that people are inherently moral; there's also no proof that people are inherently immoral. Regardless, the Bible/Torah still gives people moral rules to live by, and historically society has used the Bible/Torah as a basis for their moral structure. So morality stays on that list.
There have been scholars who have spent literally their entire lives trying to understand the complexity of the Bible/Torah. To think that we, a society where most people have an extremely minimalist understanding of these texts, if at all, have somehow "transcended above religion," is preposterous. Even at the most secular level the Bible/Torah is full of the collective wisdom of thousands of generations on both how to live life at the micro level, and how to structure society at the macro level. To just blatantly disregard it is nothing but foolish. And that's not even to speak of the emotional/spiritual side of things.

 

[Khayyam]

The poorest countries are also the most religious. What's your point? Your tabloid source has much the same issue, apples to oranges does no favors, and by stretching the search wide enough you could assert a lot of things about a lot of countries that would be unreasonable. Give me a grant and a year and I'll get back to you with "evidence" that rate of cheese consumption is a driving factor for the most successful economies and a solid report on how developing countries could increase their rate of cheese consumption to compensate.

My point is religion is destructive and leads to the degredation of society. See Weber's many books on the subject. Why work for the betterment of this world when the next is going to be so perfect and everyone who doesn't agree with you will be roasting forever?

Food banks are functionally altruistic and a religious populace with significant surplus supporting the blatantly poor through tax and charity is to be expected; not sure why you linked the same source again.

We shouldn't need foodbanks, but this is going in the direction of economics and deserves a seperate thread.

I've got no idea how to address the claim that women were made "serfs" because of marriage as an institution. My best attempt would be to point out that in many instances functionally similar institutions arise across time, the most primary element being 'devotion to a single man', and many of the others are far less forgiving. Of particular note is the Chinese system in the higher courts.

I'm using marriage as an example because while Greco-Roman society was heavily patriarcal, women in both Christian and Islamic societies held fewer rights than in those that immediatley preceeded them and eventually suceeded them in some cases. Women could not own land, inherit property and in many parts of the "religious" (Islamic) world today cannot testify as witnesses or object to being beaten by their spouses.

That makes them serfs at best, though slave is more accurate. Even that is being kind when describing the barbarism that parades as "religious morality".

The real point, however, is this: What specific problem does it 'bandage'? You have asserted that is solves one 'problem' but causes more? How do you know there is only one reason Religion has been a human institution for millennia? How can you possibly evaluate how many problems religious countries have are caused by religion? How could you assert a unilateral approach to dismiss the entire spiritual vector as a poverty-causing wife-beating relic when different religions are so dramatically different or even opposed to one-another? Even if there are more raw rewards to abandon religiosity than to keep it, are they meaningful enough for it to matter?

It's not one specific problem, but many of them do show up in combination.

Take the afterlife for instance. In a world where most people died before thirty and at least nine of your twelve children would probably die before the age of four; wouldn't it be nice to think you'll see them all again some day? Likewise for the poor, isn't it a nice thought that one day all the rich people who've lorded it over you are going to be burning in hell forever for the sin of avarice (Rich man and eyes of needles, see the good book).

They're symptoms of a problem that have not been attempted to fix, and have bubbled up into toxic dangerous new concepts. Would people blow themselves up as often if they didn't think an eternity of sex with hot virgins awaited them? Probably not so quickly I'd wager.

This is the height of hubris and that is the entire point of my original post. You are assigning reasons you do not know to things you do not understand, and trivial reasons that that. There are thousands of examinations of water as a symbol within the Abrahamic context and thousands more examining it without- they come to many common conclusions, but in some cases the importance was uniquely generated by the religion itself. We know far less than we pretend about the 'corn and maize deities' of societies we have lost to time and prophets we will never know and you could not possibly assert a causal pathway between "I need this thing" and godhood in a greater context with any degree of seriousness.

I'm not going to powerlevel here, take this to PM's if you'd like.

The consequences of losing religiosity as an institution are wide and many and it's time to realize that you can't amputate a massive chunk of the entire social structure without causing a few hundred unexpected holes, no matter how hard you try to patch the problems you're so confident you know about.
Coincidentally, that's the problem with central planning. Heuristic structures always function more completely than those made under human eye; compare the capabilities of robots and that of our own brains.

I'm going to answer this one alongside the claim above that we live in a society where even the atheists have developed a Judaeo-Christian morality. Let's just take a look at some authentic Abrahamic morality here for a moment. Now I'm going to be kind and not turn to getting stoned in leviticus or somesuch, something that Christians and Jews like to see put up outside Courthourses like the Ten commandments...Let's just review for the sake of clarity....the ordering will vary depending on the denomination you follow, but the contents are mostly identical...

1. You shall have no other gods before Me. (Well, we've lived in a society where other religions have walked among us for more than a century at least now, this isn't being followed).
   
2. You shall not make idols. (We've plenty of those set up as public monuments and again, have for centuries of various divinities and hero figures)
   
3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain. (OMG!!!!!! SRSLY?)
   
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. (Who hasn't worked on a Saturday or Sunday, if you want to split hairs over when it is)
   
5. Honor your father and your mother. (This is the first Western society tends to encourage, so we've got one!)
   
6. You shall not murder. (This isn't something unique to religion, all societies do this, even ones that practice human sacrifice)
   
7. You shall not commit adultery. (Pretty common, not universal like the first seeing as there are amazonian tribes without a a concept of marriage, but not unique to Judaeo-Christian religion)
   
8. You shall not steal. (Universal)
   
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (Near-universal, Islam makes allowances for this to take place)
   
10. You shall not covet. (What the fuck is advertising again?)

So out of ten commandments, four of which have rarely been followed and pertain to faith we follow the six that aren't actually unique to faith? Please, modern Western morality is based on developments in Philosophy from the 15th century onward (Humanism, Empiricism, Enlightenment etc). We've managed just fine without stoning adulterous women to death for a few centuries now, we can manage just fine shedding the rest of the cults as well.

1. 
   
   

 

[Khayyam]

Go, Cubs, go

Spoiler: TL;DR Response

Pardon my bluntness, but how much experience do you have with people of differing views or social norms? You do realize people make such compromises every day, right? Unless of course you came from a particularly hostile background that discriminated you based on your lifestyle, then I'm sorry for that, but personal experiences don't have to define your perception of the population on a global scale. Its like 8/pol/'s backwards logic that dictates that blacks will always be "stupid nogs" because they only want to expect the worst in them due to their own personal grievances. And you do realize the fact that people, regardless of what politics, sports, views, etc, can be unbending about their opinions and views as it all comes down to the personality of the individual and whether they have a dogmatic stance on the things they love/support, right? Or that people everyday of all views have to compromise or keep quiet about their views for the sake of social activities and/or occupations?

There are people of different faiths or lack of faiths who are friends, family, marry and can get along far better than those with differing political views. There are even a religious few in the gay community who compromise their beliefs for the sake of their lifestyles. Just meet people outside of echo chambers and you'll realize the world is not so black and white. Because honestly, the only time I can see someone being as "uncompromising" as you think is if you're actively trying to get them to reject their beliefs. Secularism as a whole should be about keeping religion within its own subject. Much like how one shouldn't start bringing up anime out of nowhere in subjects about agriculture.

I'll preface this with my own experience, a place where ultra-conservative religion is the norm. Gays deserve death, divorce is worse than rape etc.

I tend to view peoples view on the supernatural, regardless of creed in three flavours

Nontheist: Agnostics, Deists, Atheists, nones. People without a care really one way or another and just go with what society deems good or bad.
Lukewarm: We're talking stuff like Christians who aren't campaigning against gay marriage, abortion etc or Muslims who think everyone but them are evil and want to keep way (they don't need to support "alternative lifestyles" or even integrate into society, I'd go as far as accepting "Not harassing women outside Planned Parenthood like establishments" as being in this camp).

These people do make compromises, but they're also not very good representatives of religion. When it comes to religion; claims and causes based not on reason, evidence, fairness or understanding but simply tradition these people are terrible representatives of it, and really do religion a disservice by claiming to have one. Religions like Islam, Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, Sikhism etc put big expectations on their followers to conduct themselves a certain way, and more importantly to change society to fit their way.

Leading to the third group of supernatural belief, the devout who are quite simply assholes. Oh yes, you get your Mother Teresas or Ghandi's, but take a closer look and you see a bit more than meets the eye. Mother Teresa claimed contraception was worse than rape and that dying in agony was a beautiful way to die because "only the suffering can know God", not to mention her rather long list of shady financial records involving third world dictators. Ditto for good old Ghandi, pedophile extrodanaire who was repeatedly caught dragging underage girls relatives to bed to "test his chastity".

Religions place the good of the faith above the rest of society. Catholics for instance have excused, and continue to excuse, allowing sex abuse because "It would scandalize the faithful" (again, not unique to them; they're just the most famous example of it). Forget the greater good, it's all about Skydaddy.

Yes, not all "religious people" (who I've pointed out are not really worthy of the title) are like this, but these are also the people the devout also accuse of being heretics and reguarly try to tempt back to their side with a mixture of promises and barely veiled threats.

I can only speak for myself, but as a homosexual any LGBTQ-whatever who claims to follow an abrahamic religion is essentially claiming to be a Steak Eating Vegan. You can certainly claim it, the same way I could claim to be a furry who isn't a pevert, but it doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. They could certainly make up a new deity and tradition too, but what is the point of that now?

Society should be working for a common greater good, and religions works soley for the good of the elect.

 

[Autopsy]

My point is religion is destructive and leads to the degredation of society. See Weber's many books on the subject.

Assuming you mean Max Weber, this is not a point that Weber has made or would ever actually make; he in fact rightly acknowledges the emergent system of Capitalism as a successor to significant parts of Religion's role in human culture and especially attributes its strong emergence in the U.S.' North to Puritans.

The fact that you could read that entire paragraph about my primary argument and then say,

I'm going to answer this one alongside the claim above that we live in a society where even the atheists have developed a Judaeo-Christian morality.

as if it was something I had ever stated or even vaguely implied tells me more about who you are arguing against rather than what you are arguing about.
I am not that person.
I am not this person, either:

I'll preface this with my own experience, a place where ultra-conservative religion is the norm.

First, you brought up the geopolitical situation of religion and addressed in part the sociological argument I was making; it wasn't especially relevant but I felt it was in good faith so I argued them anyway. Now, you bring up the laws and calls to action of a given religion as if they were relevant, which I'm ready and willing to believe is also in good faith, but it wouldn't serve any greater purpose to argue them. I am not that person and that is not the reason I made any of my posts. Instead, I'll try this again- without the righteous indignation stemming from people oversimplifying human culture this time around, since that might be misleading or mistakable as religious fervor. I'll do it In bold and with fancy quotes, too, because if you read nothing else this is the only important bit of this entire post:

"As a fundamental part of human existence for millennia, it is not only likely but almost inevitable that religions fill purposes other than that to which they have been explicitly assigned."​

We're already done and dusted with extracting express purpose from religions; from them we have transmogrified their values into a form of governance that isn't "Judeao-Christian" but rather non-hypocritical and universally applicable. It genuinely isn't that hard to do, and that's why every internet smart guy shows up and has a lot of very vocal things to say about religions that come up.
The problem is that by necessity, any component of culture does many things to people at once, in most cases too many things to count for by hand. Those components are to axons rather than to switches or rule-books, which have hundreds of thousands of inputs, a single body, and then thousands of outputs; that change over time, continuously altered by its environment and all the other axons that feed into it.
We've quietly and painfully ripped a fat fucking chunk out of that culture and we're left playing whack-a-mole with band-aids with a lot of little issues that used to be handled autonomously while we wait in fear for conditions to align and the next massive rupture in the psyche we never knew was there to spontaneously reveal itself; all the while experts scratch their heads and claim they've got no idea know why, but if you give them enough time and duct tape, they'll be sure to engineer the next big solution.

Religions exist for reasons,
they're probably not the reasons you'd guess in 5 minutes with smug self-confidence and a half baked polisci degree,
figure out what the reasons are and then you don't need religions.

A less arrogant individual could see secularism as a "good thing, over time" as we go through a living hell in the present to then emerge on the other side as institutions slowly develop to fill the unseen gaps that it leaves and we are left with a culture free of religion that is just as impossible to control or understand as when we first made the attempt.
I don't.
I think it would be best to embrace religion fondly for as long as the benefits outweigh the costs, to embrace it, learn about it thoroughly and honestly, to invite it to parties and family outings, to treat it like a friend, such that it can be easily enticed into our house and strapped to a table to be dissected for all it's worth when the time finally comes, to then be unceremoniously dumped in a ditch with all the rest of the spooks that sought to control us. To salvage free will from our masters is what God would want of us, anyway.

 

[wylfım]

@Khayyam double post?
Anyways, just a few quick points on your content, since I don't have time to type up an essay.
Your theology is terrible. Mine isn't much better, but at least I try: the ten commandments are there to make a point that a list of rules isn't enough to be moral. Because when the Israelites had the 10 commandments, they repeatedly failed over and over again. Not sure what Judaism posits as the solution, but Christianity is very clear that constant communion with God is the answer, which is from the most secular viewpoint introspection and contemplation. Thinking tends to be a good way to get people to act better. And the fact that a significant amount of them are universal serves as evidence to my argument that even on the most basic level religion is the combined wisdom of thousands of generations on the best way to act and how to structure a society.

So, for your groupings: Your first group includes atheists. Remember, fedora-tippers who act like assholes and try to push atheism on people exist too. Non-religious people aren't the tolerant hippies who just chant kumbaya all day that you portray them to be. People are assholes, religion or not.
Then your second group. I don't really have much to say except I think historically most people have fallen in this group, and that its probably the healthiest level for the masses to be at, so somewhat agree with you? I can expound on this if you want, just ask. You seem to be implying that religion is illogical though, when you say that "when it comes to religion; claims and causes based not on reason, evidence, fairness or understanding but simply tradition these people are terrible representatives of it." See my above post; science/logic/rationality and religion are complimentary, not contradictory. They don't automatically exclude the other.

Then the third one. Oh boy, where to begin.
Yeah, things like the catholic church ignoring abuse is shitty, but keep a distinction between religion and spirituality. Not the same thing; the Bible in fact mentions that religions (as in established structures/traditions) are bad. Thats why protestants exist.
Then Mother Teresa and Ghandi. Distinguish between people promoting the ideas of the Bible, versus people promoting their own ideas, because people push their own opinions as "biblical fact" way more often than you think. And yes I agree that this is shitty, but its reality. "You will know them by their fruit" and all that.
And now heres a point thats most likely going to spark off a flame war (pls no banerino): you mention women and gays. Both of whom have only recently gained rights; I'm not making a value judgement on that. What I AM going to say is that we don't have sufficient historical evidence to say what effects that will have on society, and whether or not they are beneficial to society in the long run. You can't assume "more rights = always good," and in fact a lot of people disagree.
And for your vegan analogy; steak-eating and vegan are wholly contradictory in their definitions. Having a different viewpoint with a religion on a small subset of its philosophy doesn't make them fully incompatible. Don't overexaggerate the difference.

As for whatever this is: "Society should be working for a common greater good, and religions works soley for the good of the elect."
A) How does religion work for the good of the elect? There's a difference between the catholic church in the middle ages acting like a general asshole (none of the stuff they're infamous for is in the Bible, by the way, and some of it contradicts the Bible: the pope, organizational system, serving as the government, persecuting anyone who ever so vaguely questions you, etc), and people having a general trend towards being religious. If by working solely for the good of the elect you mean that religious people have lower levels of stress, then yeah I guess your point stands. Otherwise, its perfectly possible for religion to try to seek out the common good.

But overall your complaints mostly seem to be against religious institutions and people. Not the religion itself. People will be assholes, and abuse religion to justify themselves. Doesn't mean religion is the problem. Human nature is.

 

[Douglas Reynholm]

Fear the day evangelist preachers abandon religion and move on to shilling as salesman.

 

[Teri-Teri]

Secularism is a good thing, because it keeps the government separated from religious influence or dignitary.

 

[wylfım]

Secularism is a good thing, because it keeps the government separated from religious influence or dignitary.

Ironically enough separation of church and state is in the Bible; give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. Religious institutions and the government uniting is, once again, not really something in religion so much as "assholes abusing religion for their own gain" (notable exception with :islamic: and Sharia law). The Bible even grants authority to rulers and says to listen to what they say. In ancient times though (referring to Europe), most people just followed whatever religion the ruler did, so the fact that church became a part of the government in the middle ages was more because Christianity was introduced by the Roman emperors converting than the church being some evil entity from its inception and sinisterly pulling a massive power-grab scheme. That said, I'm still glad the two are separate today.

Also, a side note: historical secularism (in the Renaissance) referred to focusing on improving your life in this world, rather than just saying "whatever" and focusing on the afterlife, which is an interesting definition and one I fully agree with. I say this because the idea has been floated around earlier in the thread.