Do Societies Need Religion?

[SenorChristPuncher]

If religion is meant to keep people in line, without the moral cop (god/jesus/etc) patrolling the minds of so many can we still keep order? I'll post my thoughts in a little while.

[SenorChristPuncher]

Religion is the enforcer of morals and therefore helps to enforce laws. A look at the demographic of prison dwellers would suggest otherwise, but thats debatable. You can't run a statistic on the amount of people religion has kept out of jail. A lot of people say we need to do away with religion, but i don't want an army of people on the street without their god of punishment keeping them in line. People exploit it, but at a ground level does religion help at all? I guess i'm confused, i hate (most) religion, but at the same time I don't see the world a better place without it. Maybe one of you can shed some light. This site is great by the way, have been lurking around for a while.

[Philboid Studge]

Welcome to the City of the Damned, Senor CP. Abandon all hope, et cetera. It's hard to imagine what the world would be like without religion (or any other enduring cultural artifact). I suspect that humans would have found some other way to communicate their ever-changing concepts of morality.

[SenorChristPuncher]

hey thanks for replying. well humans have been communicating morals for quite a while, but it seems (to me) other than the law, only a religion can enforce it. unless we are willing to give in to a police state.

[Philboid Studge]

I like this idea of a moral cop "patrolling the minds" of believers. It sounds so sinister and a devilishly clever way of keeping people in line. Maybe God is Philip K. Dick.

[Blindwatchmaker]

I like this idea of a moral cop "patrolling the minds" of believers. It sounds so sinister and a devilishly clever way of keeping people in line.

//

Have you ever read 1984? If I didn't know it was a socialist railing against Stalinists I would swaer that it was describing religion. Thought crimes, Crimestop, Room 101 (Hell), The inner party (the saved) the outer party (the lapsed) the proles (the damned). Anti sex leauge.

The circular use of logic, the sophist use of rhetoric....its all there.

The truth is that 1984 is a good analogy for both religion and Stalinism because they both require dogmatic following of absolutist doctrine.

Religion is the worst kind of totalitarianism - it pervades your thoughts.

[Evil_Mage_Ra]

I voted "That's a sweet ass avatar"!

I'm also a bit torn on this issue. I think it's perfectly possible to be moral without religion. Unfortunately, there aren't too many non-religious and non-communist societies I can point to and say "Here's a system that works". Britain comes closest, but still the majority (67%) say they believe in God.

[alaspooryorick]

I don't feel that religion is a prerequisite to morality, but that's also just my opinion. Religion does provide, to borrow Kant's language, a moral anchor for society. Laws provide the "don't, or else" threat, but religion is a good reason for most people to justify their reasons for not doing wrong. Clearly even "secular" societies based their own laws on religious law.

This may seem cynical, but I'd say that the majority of society (including the non-religious) doesn't want to be bothered with questioning their own reasons for morality and are willing to accept divine law as, well, law.

[SenorChristPuncher]

hey thanks for responding guys. yeah I too believe that its possible religion wasn't a prerequisite to morality. But as those first civilizations grew bigger and more chaotic, i think religion manifested itself as a way to police a societies mind, as physically policing a large society would be close to impossible.

[Blindwatchmaker]

Religious belief provided early man with a manner in which to understand himself and the world around him. It has evolved (oh, the irony), early religious belief directly attributed those phenomenon man di not understand at the time, such as the wind (Zeus), seas (posieden) etc.

The concept of the god we see with the current desert monotheism approximates the Platonic idea of essence. Man made in god's image gives it away.

That religion has assumed the place of moral arbitrator in societies evolution cannot be disputed, man's understanding of the world has only just reached an approximation of reality, religion has so infested human society until the last two hundred years that there hasn't been an opportunity for a society to develop a moral code and legal system without the influence of religion.

As our understanding of the origins of life, evolution and the universe increases, Religion will find itself with less and less room to manouvre. Look at my own country, Britain. During the Victorian period we had a strong, overbearing presence of religion. Since the curtain has been raised by Darwin, Neitzsche, Dawkins and others, religion has massively waned. We are probably the most secular population on earth, churchs go empty, one vicar today has a parish of three churhs because funds are so low.

The truth will out and mankind will stand on its own two feet. Its inevitable.:lol:

[whoneedscience]

Laws provide the "don't, or else" threat, but religion is a good reason for most people to justify their reasons for not doing wrong.
To use a poignant cliche (:)), the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I see religion as just as much a justification for evil than good. I firmly believe that the tendency for what we label "good" and "evil" are somehow hardwired into our brains. Social cooperation, entailing a desire to help others and be "good" as much as an ability to communicate abstract thought through language, gave our ancestors a major competitive advantage. Building the desire to help others on top of a more fundamental desire to serve oneself can cause understandable distress. Any selfish action that could be made to seem to be accomplishing good would effectively eliminate this stress. Therefore, anything that gives the average person room for rationalizing makes moral decisions much easier, especially in a society where one could die suddenly and without warning (ones not as stable as the US, Britain, etc.). Perhaps this is why religious people tend to be happier. You look at the Bible (especially the new testament) and all you see are scriptures that can be interpreted any way to rationalize any action imaginable. While this is fine for more morally advanced individuals, it can do immense harm on the uneducated and childish, especially where mob mentallity is thrown in.

If we are to consider that the desire to do good could be inborn, then we also must intertain the idea of genetic roots for religion. The God Gene by Dean Hammar looks very interresting in this respect. Although I haven't read it myself, I have heard that his evidence is pretty weak. If such a thing is possible, it could mean that religion, or at least a tendency to believe in such crap, is here to stay. It would do no good, as in communist countries and 1984, to replace religious crap with government/Big Brother crap.

In other words, while I think society would be greatly improved by the elimination of religion, we would have to find a way to get rid of the more fundamental human stupidity that caused it and on which it is still based. While science and philosophy are doing their part, I don't see this process as inevitable, or occurring in our lifetimes. It could just be that this is the greatest of all catch-22s: we can't achieve a near-utopian society without getting rid of religion, but neither can we get rid of religion without first creating a society stable, educated, courageous, and scientifically advanced enough to remove its niche.

And that is a kickass avatar. Or rather a punch-ass one.:D

[Metman07]

I don't think that there's correlation between religiosity and moral behavior. The Bible Belt has the highest divorce rate in the country. Some of these states also have some of the highest crime rates. Also, take a look at many Islamic fundamentalist countries. They don't exactly strike me as being the towers of morality that they claim to be.

The advantage religion has though -at least the fundamentalist interpretations of it- is that it is simple to understand. It's like reading a story book... "God created the world using his infinite powers", "This is wrong because God said so" etc.

Science is not so easy to understand. You have to be educated and you have to work at it to get it. It's unlikely that you'll really understand physics by just reading a physics text book like a novel. You actually have to DO it to get it. It requires work.

Most Western countries have highly educated populations and this is why religion is declining rapidly in the Western world. In Ireland, where the Catholic Church was once very strong, the religiosity of the population is declining rapidly. At the same time however, the Catholic Church is booming in many African countries, where much of the population is illiterate and impoverished.

[Philboid Studge]

Have you ever read 1984? If I didn't know it was a socialist railing against Stalinists I would swaer that it was describing religion. Thought crimes, Crimestop, Room 101 (Hell), The inner party (the saved) the outer party (the lapsed) the proles (the damned). Anti sex leauge.
Yes indeedy. Not to mention an omnipresent Big Brother . . .

p.s. Welcome to the forum of the Raving Damned

[Tenspace]

I don't think that there's correlation between religiosity and moral behavior. The Bible Belt has the highest divorce rate in the country. Some of these states also have some of the highest crime rates. Also, take a look at many Islamic fundamentalist countries. They don't exactly strike me as being the towers of morality that they claim to be.
I would go as far to say that there is an inverse correlation between religiosity and moral behavior. The more religious an area, the greater propensity for deviation from that particular religion's moral norm. Don't ask me why, I am just stating my observations from 25+ years in the Bible Belt.

Tenspace

[Metman07]

I don't think that there's correlation between religiosity and moral behavior. The Bible Belt has the highest divorce rate in the country. Some of these states also have some of the highest crime rates. Also, take a look at many Islamic fundamentalist countries. They don't exactly strike me as being the towers of morality that they claim to be.
I would go as far to say that there is an inverse correlation between religiosity and moral behavior. The more religious an area, the greater propensity for deviation from that particular religion's moral norm. Don't ask me why, I am just stating my observations from 25+ years in the Bible Belt.

Tenspace
I agree. This inverse correlation is not only true of the Bible Belt. There is an inverse correlation between religiosity and morality in many parts of the Islamic world and pretty much any place where there is a lot of intense religious fervor. In the Dark Ages, Western society was extremely religious. Of course, we know how that era is looked upon today.

[Lurker]

I would go as far to say that there is an inverse correlation between religiosity and moral behavior. The more religious an area, the greater propensity for deviation from that particular religion's moral norm. Don't ask me why, I am just stating my observations from 25+ years in the Bible Belt.
The question to ask is "Are these people behaving morally?". Regardless of the answer the next question to ask is "According to who?"

[Tenspace]

If morality was defined by the majority's actions, then havin' babies at 14 would be moral.

Tenspace

[Lurker]

If morality was defined by the majority's actions, then havin' babies at 14 would be moral.
If I remember correctly you said morality is a mere reflection of humanity. In other words "morality is", which means there are no right or wrong answers to questions of morality.

[Tenspace]

If morality was defined by the majority's actions, then havin' babies at 14 would be moral.
If I remember correctly you said morality is a mere reflection of humanity. In other words "morality is", which means there are no right or wrong answers to questions of morality.
Quite right. I did say that. Morality is relative to the population being considered.

But, do you think that those who continually succumb to human nature are thinking of themselves as moral? Most do. Guys like Neil Horsely (remember, he had a mule for a girlfriend), and obviously these folks (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3223269), "she deserved it" clearly states their morals. Then there's the potential abuse of genetic, statistical, or environmental information which is used to further ruin these kids' (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1652127,00.html) chance of normality.

Until we start considering morals as a compass, and not the underlying permanence of a magnetic field... well, history repeats itself daily.

Ten

[Rhinoqulous]

Until we start considering morals as a compass, and not the underlying permanence of a magnetic field... well, history repeats itself daily.

Ten
Nice. Very eloquently put. Hats off to you, Ten.

Rhinoq

[Philboid Studge]

Until we start considering morals as a compass, and not the underlying permanence of a magnetic field... well, history repeats itself daily.

Ten
Nice. Very eloquently put. Hats off to you, Ten.

Rhinoq
You know, I thought so too, then I thought about it and it made less sense. What good is a compass without the underlying permanence of et cetera? It sounded purdy, though.

[schemanista]

You know, I thought so too, then I thought about it and it made less sense. What good is a compass without the underlying permanence of et cetera? It sounded purdy, though.
The underlying fields are hardly permanent. They've shifted often (well, from a geological perspective) and at unpredictable intervals. Sort of like, you know, morality!

[Philboid Studge]

You know, I thought so too, then I thought about it and it made less sense. What good is a compass without the underlying permanence of et cetera? It sounded purdy, though.
The underlying fields are hardly permanent. They've shifted often (well, from a geological perspective) and at unpredictable intervals. Sort of like, you know, morality!
Good point! Okay, it's purdy again.

[thomas]

No, societies don't need religion. I observe that societies of bees, ants, dolphins, gorillas etc get on perfectly well without them. I wonder what is unique about the human species that leads us to have religion ?

[Philboid Studge]

I observe that societies of bees, ants, dolphins, gorillas etc get on perfectly well without them.
Oh, and leave the ants out of it.

[Metman07]

No, societies don't need religion. I observe that societies of bees, ants, dolphins, gorillas etc get on perfectly well without them. I wonder what is unique about the human species that leads us to have religion ?
Intelligence.

[thomas]

What makes you think a dolphin or a gorilla isn't intelligent ?

[Mog]

What makes you think dolphins, apes and bees don't have religion?

[Philboid Studge]

What makes you think gorillas get on perfectly well?

[Evil_Mage_Ra]

Haha, sometimes I wonder if dogs think their masters are gods. I mean, we can do such wondrous things that they can't, like turn on light switches and open doors and cans of dog food. They probably think Milkbones are mana from heaven.

[GodlessHeathen]

They probably think Milkbones are mana from heaven.
My dogs sure act like it.

[Tenspace]

Until we start considering morals as a compass, and not the underlying permanence of a magnetic field... well, history repeats itself daily.

Ten
Nice. Very eloquently put. Hats off to you, Ten.

Rhinoq
You know, I thought so too, then I thought about it and it made less sense. What good is a compass without the underlying permanence of et cetera? It sounded purdy, though.
The magnetic field represents existence. The compass is a reflection of the field. Our existence can't be manipulated to reflect a dogmatic interpretation of existence. The field:existence just is. But the compass, it is relative to the field. You should look at morals as being relative to the permanence inscribed in our simply being here.

And thanks for the positive comments. I'll try to avoid a big, throbbing head. :)

Ten

[Tenspace]

You know, I thought so too, then I thought about it and it made less sense. What good is a compass without the underlying permanence of et cetera? It sounded purdy, though.
The underlying fields are hardly permanent. They've shifted often (well, from a geological perspective) and at unpredictable intervals. Sort of like, you know, morality!
:D:D:D Think they'll shift again in our lifetime?

Ten

[whoneedscience]

No, societies don't need religion. I observe that societies of bees, ants, dolphins, gorillas etc get on perfectly well without them. I wonder what is unique about the human species that leads us to have religion ?
Intelligence.
Really just very specific aspects of intelligence, like the ability to communicate abstract thoughts and the ability to pick out patters, even when none exist. All the other stuff, like conformity to a group, greed, fear, and even morality we share with most social animals. I wouldn't be surprised if gorillas, dolphins or chimps had something very similar to religion.

[Tenspace]

No, societies don't need religion. I observe that societies of bees, ants, dolphins, gorillas etc get on perfectly well without them. I wonder what is unique about the human species that leads us to have religion ?
thomas, you doubt! I knew you had it in ya. :D

It's a question that's been asked and answered a thousand times, so why don't we thow out for discussion:

1. Explanation of the unknown
2. Control of local tribe or population
3. Perceived advantage when in conflict

I think those three pretty well sum up the current state of affairs as well. The exploitation of each is evident today, and has spread with populations since religion's invention.

Tenspace

[nvxplorer]

hey thanks for responding guys. yeah I too believe that its possible religion wasn't a prerequisite to morality. But as those first civilizations grew bigger and more chaotic, i think religion manifested itself as a way to police a societies mind, as physically policing a large society would be close to impossible.
Okay, I can accept your reasoning for the rise and purpose of religion in society, but I don't believe it is necessary for societal order. Societies can be broken down into successively smaller parts, and these parts can be and are effective at policing themselves. The smallest part is the individual, and "frontier" justice was common in this country, and I'm sure many others.

As primates, humans share the same tribal instincts as other great apes. It is in our nature to live collectively. As evidenced by certain chimpanzee societies, violence appears to be part of our nature as well. Chimps prosper as they commit murder, and we do the same. I'm assuming chimps have no concept of god.

Morality is a different issue. It would seem that preventing violence is beneficial to the human species, but again, this is a different question, and it can be debated as to whether it is indeed true.

Religion, in the sense you speak, is simply a tool. People can be manipulated with religion as they can with a plethora of techniques. Punishment and reward, whether eternal or material is irrelevant, IMO.

[SenorChristPuncher]

hmm you guys have made me completely rethink this issue. heh, we must do as the monkeys do.

[peepnklown]

Religion is just a way for humanity to give up all responsibility for their actions.

[LogicMan]

The magnetic field represents existence. The compass is a reflection of the field. Our existence can't be manipulated to reflect a dogmatic interpretation of existence. The field:existence just is. But the compass, it is relative to the field. You should look at morals as being relative to the permanence inscribed in our simply being here.

Ten
This is a good metaphoric setup. Now I just need a cartoon icon that has a thumbs up!

[lodger16]

Religion is needed by the few at the top to keep the rest in line, so that they can maintain their privileged positions. People who anticipate eternal life in "heaven" don't think too much about the injustices of their earthly days. They accept that all is merely "God's will", and the Lord works in mysterious ways, etc.
Notice how the political and clerical elite interpret "Holy Scripture' according to whatever suits their ends at the time.
For instance, in contemporary America, most evangelicals accept that the Bible supports free markets, unhindered rights to private property, the right to spread American-style 'democracy" around the world at gunpoint, banning of gay marriage, banning of all abortions, virtually limitless rights to own weapons, the right to use the PA system to pray at football games, the right to force everyone to listen to morning prayers at public schools, the justice of tax breaks geared for the most wealthy, etc., ad nauseam.
Of course, the Bible has little or nothing to say about any of these topics. Any topics related to capitalist theory, of course, didn't even exist in Biblical times. But that doesn't stop the bleating sheep faithful from eating up every word.

[MrsMoe]

I personally feel society should evolve past religion, that is it no longer helpful as Religion is highly controlling and can be dangerous medically speaking, mentally speaking and politically speaking. I do however see some good in "spirituality."