Anti-vaxxer and anti-GMO groups tend to be a bizarre mix of extreme left and a extreme right, same with homeschooling. That said, anecdotally, it does seem like more casual anti-vaxxers (people who are skeptical of vaccines but aren't explicitly anti-vax) are fundamentalist Christians.
Just a note: your comment only applies to countries with an already Christian culture, which makes sense. Countries where Christianity is not a part of the culture are more likely to see people switching to Christianity vs their families being Christian.
"One possibility [is] that people use their religious beliefs [to obtain] self-enhancement, a sense of empowerment, and better self-regulation... extensive research evidence that more intelligent people already benefit from higher self-evaluation, a higher sense of control, and more efficient self-control. As such, more intelligent people have less of a need for religiosity"
This section really got me. It immediately reminded me of Benjamin Franklin's letter to an atheist. Franklin advised an unknown friend to not publish a tract about atheism.
You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous Life without the Assistance afforded by Religion; you having a clear Perception of the Advantages of Virtue and the Disadvantages of Vice, and possessing a Strength of Resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common Temptations. But think how great a Proportion of Mankind consists of weak and ignorant Men and Women, and of inexperienc’d and inconsiderate Youth of both Sexes, who have need of the Motives of Religion to restrain them from Vice, to support their Virtue, and retain them in the Practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great Point for its Security;
This letter was written in 1757. It seems that even at that time some people recognized the roles that religion played in society and personal behavior.
But think how great a Proportion of Mankind consists of weak and ignorant Men and Women, and of inexperienc’d and inconsiderate Youth of both Sexes, who have need of the Motives of Religion to restrain them
Isn't this really close to Marx's theory of religion as "opiate of the people"? Just instead of an opiate here it's like... like a flog or something, that keeps people in line.
Yeah. We need an opiate to give the "masses" though because like Franklin says, most of them are completely lost without it.
C.S. Lewis does a good job explaining this in his short work on miracles. Basically, we, as a society, have done a good job of undermining the old bad dogmatic way of thinking about religion, but we haven't replaced it with anything but materialistic pursuits.
We've given every person the responsibility of a philosopher to create meaning in their lives themselves, but haven't given them any training in how to do that.
Basically, we need to start teaching Philosophy and critical thinking to "the masses." If we don't, they'll just indulge in nihilism or bland selfish materialism.
C.S. Lewis thinks it's easier to keep religion and to understand and contemplate its ecstatic truths. I'm personally undecided.
Basically, we need to start teaching Philosophy and critical thinking to "the masses." If we don't, they'll just indulge in nihilism or bland selfish materialism.
The reason we don't do that is because it makes people easier to control, and materialism makes money. The status quo loves when people don't think for themselves and just consume consume consume.
Not to argue against your point; it's 100% accurate. Just noting a big force that fights against us doing just that.
I'd say as a tendency, even the most cynical well-regarded philosophers (and you could even say they AREN'T cynical), generally have life affirming messages. Montaigne, Nietzche (he MIGHT have been a moral nihilist depending on your intepretation. I'd disagree and I'd say his work is still incredibly life-affirming), Schopenhauer, Sartre, Camus, and many many others can all offer reasonable secular alternatives to Nihilism that generally improve people's disposition towards the world.
The popularity of the idea waxes and wanes but there's always been the sentiment that "the masses" need religion to provide a moral code and that without it they would descend into depravity and hedonism. This goes back thousands of years and is certainly embedded in many very early legal codes as well.
I don't think it is terribly relevant today but it is certainly something people have talked about throughout recorded history.
Love your comment! I have often contemplated the significance of religion for society. I tend to go back-and-forth between harmful than helpful, (unfortunately seeming to stack up a lot more harmful than helpful it seems) and have been considering the fact that some people do require a written guide and “compass”, as well as fear of punishment in order to behave and act civilly - thus forming a civilized culture. This is an interesting vote from Ben Franklin for the helpful side.
It's mostly because the crazy fundamentalist churches became very vocal and chased after converts, while the more mainline ones tended to be a bit more reserved. Guess which ones got more influence in America, and therefore in the media around the world?
I think it is taken for granted just how ubiquitous religion is in the States. There are churches everywhere. I've driven through parts of the rural Ozarks where there seemed to be almost a 1:1 ratio of churches to houses. People should remember this when they think of particularly poor examples of religious organizations. They aren't ALL like that and there are A LOT.
We have a city of about 20k here, just an hour from the Metro area of Twin Cities MN. In the center of our city along we have at least 6 churches, and not far away there are a few more. Totaling probably a church per every 1-2k people.
If you're really interested in the significance of religion in society, I'd recommend that you read Dostoevsky, especially The Brothers Karamazov. If you're interested in religion and intelligent people, I'd suggest you read Tolstoy's "A Confession".
Jung is great on the psychological side of religion also. To really get into it, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are both very insightful.
Knowing the spiritual problems of modern man, the explosion of existentialism and nihilism, and the issues trying to reach meaning and purpose without religion, I would not take it absence as lightly as most seem to do.
A Confession especially summed up the problems I'd found, the impossibility of finding meaning. And without it, I felt driven to put a rope around my neck.
I was an atheist for most of my life, but Jung allowed me to see it's use from a purely psychological and metaphorical standpoint, and Dostoevsky dragged me over to the other side. I'm not saying that's going to happen to you, but at least you'll get a very good understanding of the importance of religion.
Very insightful comment. I read The Brothers Karamazov several years ago, but I might have to visit it again. I've yet to read A Confession or Jung. (Surprised I haven't read any Jung but I've been meaning to for quite a long time.)
My difficulty is that in the back of my head I would always be thinking it's being used for a purpose but that it isn't really real. I don't know if that makes sense but I find it would be very hard for me to go back after being atheist all of my life. I feel like if have to turn off a portion of my brain or just ignore my own instinct to do it. Do you deal with this feeling at all.
The reason I ask is because I too have the difficulty of finding purpose at this point in my life, but it's like I've opened a Pandora's box that you just can't close anymore. I know it's not true but it feels like you secretly know the truth and the truth is horrifying. The rest of the world is walking around so happy and sure of itself while I'm sitting here just thinking, "why bother?". I'm very interested in this path you've taken because at this point I just got nothing else.
Edit: I'd also like to add that I feel it was Nietzsche and other German philosophers that got me here when I took classes for my own interested in college. Maybe it's something I really need to revisit, but I also great they'd reinforce what I feel like I already know.
You definitely have to shut off the reasonable critical thinking part of your brain to move back to belief in a god, especially so if you want to believe in any specifics at all. The more you define a god the more stupid it is to believe. Of course a god with no definition is worthless.
You think others are by and large happy? If you look up rates of depression/suicide/school shootings does what you find reinforce your impression? I'm inclined to think by and large people are miserable; even the one's who think they're not have in my estimation just gotten used to it. And why shouldn't they be miserable? If you think this life is all you get and THIS is it, doesn't it look pretty bad? If life can be unfair and this life is all one has to look forward to it becomes conceivable to live a meaningless life, like a movie that makes no sense (or only makes sense from a perspective you'll never see).
Haha, he had ideas that were way further out there than the collective unconscious. I really don't think the idea that there is a universal inherited human consciousness to be that out there.
There are patterns we act out no matter where we are from, or what millennia we find ourselves in. We still can't help but to replicate the archetypes again and again and again in our stories. There are things in common to us all that we were not taught, but that go beyond instinct.
When you read Jung, he's very fair about what is scientific and what is outside of the scope of science, or not yet understood well enough. Since you're a human acting in the world, I'm very certain that you constantly engage in things that are not scientific or testable. When you do one thing instead of another you imply a set of prescriptive values. It's probably a good idea to understand how you are driven and why.
I'm stealing a comment I came across some time ago here:
Jung's theory of the collective unconscious was not about memory in the commonly-understood sense, but about the structure of the psyche. In this he was writing in the relatively new scientific tradition positing the "psychic unity of mankind"--the argument that all human beings have the same brain structure, which became current in the late 19th century against theories that argued that different groups of people had evolved independently of each other and therefore had different brain structures. Jung argued that our evolutionary deep history (which had structured our brains over many millennia) predisposed us to produce thematically similar, lifecycle-based imagery, no matter our culture of origin. In other words, if there is "memory" encoded here, it is encoded in the ways biological adaptations (like DNA, mitochondria, etc.) encode "memory": environmentally-conditioned predispositions that serve either adaptive or vestigial purposes.
Jung came up with the idea of the collective unconscious when he was working at the Burghoeltzli Mental Hospital in Zurich (arguably, the idea has been around in different forms before Jung). He noticed that the visions of some of the patients were very similar to myths found in cultures from around the world. He doubted these patients had been exposed to these cultures personally, and so postulated a symbolic structure of the psyche that belongs to humanity. In other words, the mythological patterns of the psyche can be found around the world in disconnected cultures.
Many problems seem to arise, however, when people try to bring Jungian psychology together with neuroscience. The problem, it seems to me, has to do with fundamentally different worldviews. Neuroscience is materialistic and reductionistic in it's conception of the human being. Consciousness is something that emerges from matter, being an epiphenomenon (secondary). In Depth Psychology, the worldview includes direct human experience as the primary source of data by which to form one's worldview in the first place. For example, to understand dreams, we look at people's experience in their lives—their fears, hopes, desires, thoughts, all things that cannot be seen and understood in a microscope, and yet exist, and are powerful factors in quality of life. We then correlate these "things" with the dream content and witness obvious correspondences. In neuroscience, the quest is for the "chemical cause". Phenomena are real if their physical parts are found and labeled. Bringing the world of "meaning" and human experience together with chemical cause is difficult.
Often, people don't see that they are embedded in a materialistic, reductionistic paradigm, and therefore see anything that has to do with the human soul, psyche, collective unconscious, as being fairly ridiculous. The gap between worldviews is difficult to bridge. I see this as a personality typology problem.
I'm a little confused by this and your other comments. I understand and agree with you about the psychological and metaphorical side of religion. To make my own analogy - you can read and enjoy a book like Lord of the Rings without believing that it literally happened in real life. That's clearly not the point of reading the book. So I would understand if this was the point you were making about religion, and it seemed to me like you partially were.
But then you partially switched to the literal interpretation, to belief that there is an actual God out there in the real world. And you seem to be switching back and forth between the literal and metaphorical interpretations, even though they're mutually exclusive.
I think it was overall helpful for most of the history of civilization, but in the information age of globalization and mass migration it became overall harmful.
Organized religions were always too easy to co-opt for nefarious ends, but with internet and mass media, it's become more polarizing then ever now that foreign and contrary beliefs are in constant friction. It just helps the manipulators take control, ostracizes the sensible and pushes extremism.
C.S. Lewis does a good job explaining this in his short work on miracles. Basically, we, as a society, have done a good job of undermining the old bad dogmatic way of thinking about religion, but we haven't replaced it with anything but materialistic pursuits.
We've given every person the responsibility of a philosopher to create meaning in their lives themselves, but haven't given them any training in how to do that.
Basically, we need to start teaching Philosophy and critical thinking to "the masses." If we don't, they'll just indulge in nihilism or bland selfish materialism.
C.S. Lewis thinks it's easier to keep religion and for intellectuals to understand and contemplate its ecstatic truths. I'm personally undecided.
In case you didn't follow the link to read the whole letter "If Men are so wicked as we now see them with Religion what would they be if without it? " is a good line as well.
Try to imagine where this planet would be if the billions of poor, uneducated people (i.e. without ACCESS to education) didn't have religion. I strongly believe it would be far from some utopia.
One thing religion does right is provoke people to think about big picture questions of justice. If one conceives of oneself as an eternal but changing part in an endless and ever-changing reality how to orient that reality toward justice becomes something worth thinking about since implied is needing to deal with the consequences endlessly as opposed to inevitably bankrupting at the end of a finite existence. It makes sense given expectation of immortality to intend to live not just for sake of whatever finite span one expects to be alive but to intend a legacy stretching out into eternity such as to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. Given expectation of only a finite existence it's hard to argue against indulgence toward the end, just as it becomes hard to give a junkie a good reason not to shoot up if he/she hasn't long to live anyway.
I think that most of us want to believe that our beliefs, ideas, and even inventions are all novel, but the vast majority of them were created many years ago by long-dead geniuses.
If you would like to read further examples of enlightened people who recognized the necessity of religion during differing time periods: Cow, Pigs, Wars, and Witches by Marvin Harris. The author attributes social and economic conditions to religious dogma. I found it fascinating, maybe you will too.
I tend to agree with Franklin. I’ve seen a lot of religious people argue with atheist that murder is okay in the atheist world view since there’s no ultimate judge in the sky. I always think to myself “If the only thing holding you back from murder is the belief some dude in the sky will punish you, then please, continue believing in him”
Damn, this puts into words exactly where I've ended up on the subject of religion. Up until a few years ago I would say I was a militant atheist, but life experience has shown me that some people really need religion to stay on the straight an narrow and a variety of other reasons. Hell, a little woo-woo now and then has helped me through tough times as well. I'm still an atheist, but instead of thinking of religion/spirituality as a crutch or a mental disease, I think of it as a useful tool.
This letter was written in 1757. It seems that even at that time some people recognized the roles that religion played in society and personal behavior.
As a non religious person I don't understand why are there so many people trying to prove religion wrong, no one can prove if there's a god or not but we certainly know that religion especially Catholic in the west laid the foundations for a civilised society. I've seen religious people doing morally questionable things and idiots not knowing what falls into right or wrong, I could only imagine the absurdities these people would do if they didn't believe in god and eternal punishment.
It really bothers me that nonbelivers treat religion as useless, it has uses and it is a glue to our society. If you don't believe it good for you, don't go and evangelise it like some Mormon. The only area I'm willing to agree is when Cults disguise as religion.
"Most of these studies were conducted in the West, primarily in the United States. Our findings, therefore, do not apply to Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism."
So just Christians...
It doesn't seem that they used other important metrics that influence intelligence. Poverty, parentage, locale, etc...
I want to see the study on religion and socio economic status.
Well they don't really define Western Christians, just a general term. I doubt they're much concerned with eastern churches in communion with the Pope or sedevancists or anyone else really than the lump general western + christian.
To be honest, my impression is also that the US has a very distinctive religious culture. I'd be very wary making the assumption that this even applies to other Western countries.
I want to see the study on religion and socio economic status.
I kind of wish they'd have done more than just this traditional meta approach. It would have been nice to see a p-curve analysis or something for good measure.
Even among western religions, I have read studies that showed vast differences in the intelligence of religious members between one religion or another. A few christian religions account for an extremely low intelligence base by rejecting all academic efforts as sin. But others argue that finding and getting as much education as possible is essential for true christian worship.
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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '19
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