The "What should replace religion?" question

Since I know that Acleron will hate this study, I hasten to bring it. It is also interesting that not only the poor but also the rich will tend to display superstition in circumstances where they lack control:
"When we lack control we are going to see and seek out patterns, sometimes even false patterns, to regain our sense of control," said Whitson, whose research appears in the journal Science.

Baseball players are a prime example.
"Everybody knows the classic superstitious baseball player with their lucky T-shirt and the particular thing they have to do before they step up to the plate," Whitson said in an audio interview on the Science website. http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread397374/pg1
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And another interesting study

I wonder what makes Acleron cling to his conspiracy theory of religion and superstition. Could it be lack of control? And will it get progressively worse if he feels that he is losing control?
She and colleague Adam Galinsky of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, suspected lack of control was at the heart of many rituals, superstitions and conspiracy theories.
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And two more:
How a lack of control leads to superstion (Scientific American)
Lacking control drives false conclusions, conspiracy theories and superstitions

PS I also wonder why Acleron never commented on the Randi quotations:
People are often compelled to believe in the supernatural, a category that includes God and religion for Randi, he told LiveScience in a separate interview. "In many cases, they absolutely need to believe it," he said. "Because they believe it gives them some kind of way of controlling the way the world works." http://www.livescience.com/9066-magi...llibility.html
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The theory is that people who want to believe, or "need to believe," as Randi says, will grasp onto the accuracy and forget the inaccuracy. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/...0-psychics.htm
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SlackerBabbath said:
Further to my earlier post, unfortunately, the Golden Rule also has a dark side too. The 'Eye for an Eye' principle is based upon it, (essentialy it's treating others with the same bad intent that they have treated you with) and as Mahatma Gandhi once said, "An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind."
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More so then that if you think about they are many occasions where trying to right a moral wrong with simple reciprocity would seem terribly insufficient, even pandering.

If someone robs a bank we don't consider everyone involved "even" after we make the robber give the money back. I know no one that would consider it cruel or immoral or barbaric to punish the bank robber further even after the bank has their money back. You give the money back, which the situation "even" and restores everyone to where they were before the robbery occurred, but you still sit your butt in prison for a few years and that's not generally considered breaking the "Eye for an Eye" principle.

Morality, and its more organized civilized cousin law, has never really been about simply restoring some concept of a pre-crime balance or restoring everyone to the state they were in before the crime occurred. The idea that most modern concepts of morality or the legal system of most western secular democracies really is based on some Biblical concept of reciprocity really doesn't stand up to scrutiny unless you take a cherry pick a handful of scenarios out of context.

And I think there is one of those Elephants in the Room that we all just sorta agreed to not talk about, but yes actions and reactions do fall under different moral standards some of the time. I know "He started it" is a classic childish schoolyard response, but it is totally without its logic or moral sense in some cases. Yeah sure in our hypothetical "eye for eye" both parties are blind, but they wouldn't if the first person hadn't started the whole thing in the first place. Both parties have, depending on your personal views of morality, done something wrong or harmful, but honestly I can't really split the blame or causativeness (that needs to be a word) down the middle exactly 50/50.
 
Very interesting study: Community perceptions and factors influencing utilization of health services in Uganda
'There are illnesses that we don't take to health units where we have someone known to us. Like HIV/AIDS, here we just go to witch doctors. In fact, we don't even want to know that it's AIDS. We prefer to be told that it is witchcraft. People fear to give advice when they see signs of AIDS. They are afraid because that would be offending the sick, people shall ask you how you know ... how you come to imagine that it's HIV. When you mention testing to them, they will shun you and never want to talk to you again' (FGD Medium wealth category, Namundudi).
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'For us once you have AIDS, you just go to witch doctors otherwise we don't have places to go for treatment. Once you have HIV, you just wait to die' (FGD Medium wealth category, Kakongoka).
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Availability of services was a perception translated to mean that services were within reasonable physical reach. The poorest wealth category identified the availability of free public care as enabling to the use of both preventive and curative services:
'If there isn't any money in the home we go to the health centre since we can sometimes get free treatment' (FGD Poorest, Kakongoka).
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The presence of community medicine distributors was also reported as facilitating use of conventional health care but these were considered unreliable:
Community medicine distributors make it easy for us to access care but these are unreliable (FGD Poorest, Namundudi).
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The inadequacy of health services was noted for preventive and curative care as well as at the different levels. For instance, the distribution of free commodities enabled use of preventive actions such as condom use but this was inadequate to cater for existing demand:
'There is no way to get free condoms, maybe when there is an immunization outreach but we buy most of the time' (FGD Poorest, Namundudi).
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dann said:
Yes, sometimes you do - as long as you don't change the meaning of the quotation, which, by the way, I would have done if I hadn't added your "not". Feel free to accuse me of the heinous crime of having used round (parentheses) instead of 'square' brackets!
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What is this nonsense? I at least expected a reference to where I had quote mined you. But you haven't got one, have you? So yet another baseless accusation.
There is a perfectly acceptable way of quoting people on this forum, see above for an example, I suggest you use it.

A campaign of misinformation about vaccinations and "lack of education" are not the same thing.
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That you would fail to understand that it is far harder to spread misinformation to an educated group is not the most surprising thing I've ever read.
Your talk of "murderous priests" really helps make everybody see how fond you are of hyperbole! Thank you. I'm pretty sure that it doesn't take much more 'education' than what you can write on a condom, "Protection against HIV and other STDs," to make people realize that it's not a cooking utensil ...
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Hyperbole? Pray tell me, what do you call people who deliberately lie about condoms and allow them to acquire fatal infections? Priests?

And huge numbers of people who are indoctrinated from birth into believing that they need some irrational belief don't have to acquire nonsense. People differ. Some of them accept the nonsense, some of them reject it, and some of the people who weren't "indoctrinated" go on to invent their own brand of "irrational belief". But they wouldn't fit very well into your conspiracy theory of religion with murderous, indoctrinating priests.
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In more secular countries, where there is far less religious 'teaching', there is less belief in magical beings than in countries with more such 'teaching'. Oh I give up on trying to protect your sensitive feelings, telling people from birth that nonsense is true is called indoctrination not 'teaching'.

Yes, the priests and shamans of your fairy tales appear to be really stupid! Instead of targeting people with money, they choose to target the poor. (This, of course, is the reason why priests and shamans would never target people like Tom Cruise or Steve Jobs, right?) And, of course, in your fantasy world every (murderous?) priest and shaman lacks morals and ethics. However, I'm glad that you finally seem to have discovered that the poor actually are "vulnerable" in these matters! Thank you! You may grasp the truth of this field one day if only you let go of your conspiracy theory of religion.
And, yes, "Education allows people to make up their own minds about what is best for them," (I apologize for having changed your full stop to a comma!) but actual alternatives to their ****** lives, e.g. proper healthcare, enables them to change more than their minds, whereas pointing at alternatives that they don't have access to does absolutely nothing. This, by the way, is the reason why all your examples only work to the extent that these alternatives are already there (as in the case of HIV education), even though you conveniently leave out that fact in order to 'prove' your point ...
Dream on, Acleron, but try not to have too many nightmares about murderous, manipulative priests and shamans ...
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In general, they don't go for well educated and wealthy people. You don't see many missionaries in such areas, but you see plenty in poor areas.

In case you hadn't remembered the OP was what can replace religion. Healthcare won't do that. The idea that healthcare can just be parachuted into an uneducated population doesn't work as we see with both HIV and vaccination.
 
dann said:
Since I know that Acleron will hate this study, I hasten to bring it. It is also interesting that not only the poor but also the rich will tend to display superstition in circumstances where they lack control:


And another interesting study

I wonder what makes Acleron cling to his conspiracy theory of religion and superstition. Could it be lack of control? And will it get progressively worse if he feels that he is losing control?


And two more:
How a lack of control leads to superstion (Scientific American)
Lacking control drives false conclusions, conspiracy theories and superstitions

PS I also wonder why Acleron never commented on the Randi quotations:
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You are building an edifice on very poor foundations. Because this rather undefined concept of 'induced lack of control' is supposedly associated with irrational belief you conclude pretty much nothing. As usual, you don't surprise me. If you have real lack of control as happens with the poor you become more vulnerable to being manipulated by the religious. We, with the notable exception of yourself, have known this already. Religions have known it for centuries.

Randi is no god, I don't have to accept everything he says, I certainly won't be bothered by a statement of his unless I saw the whole context of his point.

In general, your comments are not particularly amusing being boringly common, I see projection from the deluded every day.
 
Acleron said:
What is this nonsense? I at least expected a reference to where I had quote mined you. But you haven't got one, have you? So yet another baseless accusation.
There is a perfectly acceptable way of quoting people on this forum, see above for an example, I suggest you use it.
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When you write, "You quote somebody, you don't change the quote", you obviously don't mean me! But when I write, "Yes, sometimes you do," I must mean you, right?! Don't blame me for your poor English-reading skills.

That you would fail to understand that it is far harder to spread misinformation to an educated group is not the most surprising thing I've ever read.
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Does this mean that you do understand that 1) a campaign of misinformation about vaccinations and 2) "lack of education" are not the same thing???

Hyperbole? Pray tell me, what do you call people who deliberately lie about condoms and allow them to acquire fatal infections? Priests?
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I would call them people who lie about condoms thus leading other people to have unprotected sex. Don't you understand the concept of hyperbole?

In more secular countries, where there is far less religious 'teaching', there is less belief in magical beings than in countries with more such 'teaching'. Oh I give up on trying to protect your sensitive feelings, telling people from birth that nonsense is true is called indoctrination not 'teaching'.
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It's nice of you to promise to give up even though I'm not all that sensitive. However, I am pretty bored with your repetitiveness.
As I've already told you, I live in one of the least religious countries of the world, but it wasn't always like this. People stopped needing to believe, and therefore preaching diminished - as you can read about in Phil Zuckerman's book Society without God. But you appear to insist that correlation is causation ...

In general, they don't go for well educated and wealthy people. You don't see many missionaries in such areas, but you see plenty in poor areas.
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And you are (almost) absolutely right this time!!! People looking for the solace of religion, i.e. the fantasy of a better world beyond the 'vale of tears' tend to live in the vale of tears, and therefore the preachers are more numerous in these areas. That, however, was my point, wasn't it? Whereas you claimed that "murderous" priests were only in it for the money, which would make rich people the obvious targets of their "indoctrination" ... and also make it hard to understand why these manipulating predators want poor people to off themselves by having unprotected sex ...

In case you hadn't remembered the OP was what can replace religion. Healthcare won't do that. The idea that healthcare can just be parachuted into an uneducated population doesn't work as we see with both HIV and vaccination.
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Yes, I know about the OP, and I've criticized it already: Since religion is the 'replacement' for a comfortable, safe and secure life on earth, it shouldn't be replaced. The need for religion should be done away with along with the vale of tears that produces it.
 
Acleron said:
You are building an edifice on very poor foundations. Because this rather undefined concept of 'induced lack of control' is supposedly associated with irrational belief you conclude pretty much nothing. As usual, you don't surprise me. If you have real lack of control as happens with the poor you become more vulnerable to being manipulated by the religious. We, with the notable exception of yourself, have known this already. Religions have known it for centuries.

Randi is no god, I don't have to accept everything he says, I certainly won't be bothered by a statement of his unless I saw the whole context of his point.

In general, your comments are not particularly amusing being boringly common, I see projection from the deluded every day.
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You are getting there, but sooooo sloooooowly!
Yes, the poor lack control of their lives and therefore tend to long for the solace that religion has to offer, which, of course, makes them more open to religious preachers - or even to becoming preachers themselves. But in your universe manipulative, murderous priests appear to be a race of its own preying on the unenlightened masses.

I don't think that anybody has implied that Randi war divine, but since I've given you a couple of links to "the whole context of his point", you should feel free to indulge yourself. You can google "James Randi" + "need to believe" for more.

I see conspiracy theories from the deluded every day, so I'm not at all surprised that yours has a very firm grip of you.
 
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When education doesn't seem to protect you from unrealistic expectations of being cured by medical treatment that's only palliative:
Expectations versus Reality in Science-Based Oncology
The proportion of patients with inaccurate expectations about the likelihood that chemotherapy might cure their cancer according to patients’ characteristics is shown in Table 1. Overall, 69% of patients with lung cancer and 81% of those with colorectal cancer gave answers that were not consistent with understanding that chemotherapy was very unlikely to cure their cancer.
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(...)
No other factors, including education, functional status, and the patient’s role in decision making, correlated with a higher likelihood of an inaccurate response about the curative potential of chemotherapy.
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Not exactly religion, not superstition, but definitely examples of wishful thinking when faced with a 'worst case scenario'. I wouldn't necessarily make further attempts to 'educate' them (apparently it has already been done) unless they were about to fall prey to one of the real predatory quacks trying to exploit their need to believe in an unrealistic cure. I wouldn't interfere if they started going to church or praying to be cured since they appear to have made up their minds to believe.
I also wouldn't feel superior to them (or holier than thou) for my more realistic assessment of their situation.
 
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Since religion is the 'replacement' for a comfortable, safe and secure life on earth, it shouldn't be replaced. The need for religion should be done away with along with the vale of tears that produces it.
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You wandered all over the place but this seems the central point you misunderstand.

The major religions do not offer any such replacement. They think that it is essential to suffer. Providing, of course, it is you that is suffering, not them. The poisonous Albanian dwarf is a good example, she denied pain killers to dying patients for that stated reason, and then went to Rome for her own treatment. Before you try to say she is an outlier, the RC are making her into a saint. They also extract money from the poor, it is better, according to them, to give to the adulation of their particular sky fairy than spend it on themselves.

People don't have an inbuilt need to be treated in this way, but they can be fooled into believing that somehow this is good. Such fooling is indoctrination.

Religion causes misery and further poverty, education gives hope, allows better decisions over circumstances and is necessary for improvement of those circumstances. It is an excellent replacement for irrational and harmful belief systems.
 
It's funny that you actually seem to be unable to do without your murderous, poisonous dwarves, i.e. without cherry picking, which, of course, corresponds very well to the cherry picking of the other side: the self-sacrificing holy men who are sanctified in all religions; the friendly neighborhood priest, who actually helps people in his congregation and doesn't rape the quire boys, the guys that people honor and respect. They are the guys that the religious will think of immediately when they hear about your cherry-picked cases.
And religion is not primarily bad because of people you refer to. They are not the ones that help people maintain their faith. The other guys are, and you only make it worse when you pretend that they don't exist.

And to your cherry picking you add your favorite, the strawman: Nobody in this discussion, not even Randi when he talks about the need to believe, as far as I can tell, has claimed that people "have an inbuilt (!!!) need" to be treated in this way - and suddenly you seem to have left your acknowledgement of poverty as a particular problem in this context. Instead you return to the good old conspiracy theory of religion: "fooling" and "indoctrination", and I fear that you'll probably never outgrow it.

It's no surprise that you don't comment on the example of educated people who resort to irrationality when faced with incurable diseases, a situation that has much in common with people suffering from, in principle, curable diseases, but don't have access to (= can't afford) the cure.
But I guess that it's so much easier simply to claim that I’m ”all over the place” …
 
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dann said:
It's funny that you actually seem to be unable to do without your murderous, poisonous dwarves, i.e. without cherry picking, which, of course, corresponds very well to the cherry picking of the other side: the self-sacrificing holy men who are sanctified in all religions; the friendly neighborhood priest, who actually helps people in his congregation and doesn't rape the quire boys, the guys that people honor and respect. They are the guys that the religious will think of immediately when they hear about your cherry-picked cases.
And religion is not primarily bad because of people you refer to. They are not the ones that help people maintain their faith. The other guys are, and you only make it worse when you pretend that they don't exist.

And to your cherry picking you add your favorite, the strawman: Nobody in this discussion, not even Randi when he talks about the need to believe, as far as I can tell, has claimed that people "have an inbuilt (!!!) need" to be treated in this way - and suddenly you seem to have left your acknowledgement of poverty as a particular problem in this context. Instead you return to the good old conspiracy theory of religion: "fooling" and "indoctrination", and I fear that you'll probably never outgrow it.

It's no surprise that you don't comment on the example of educated people who resort to irrationality when faced with incurable diseases, a situation that has much in common with people suffering from, in principle, curable diseases, but don't have access to (= can't afford) the cure.
But I guess that it's so much easier simply to claim that I’m ”all over the place” …
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A whole religion believes that condoms are evil and deny people through indoctrination of a life saving system. And you accuse me of cherry picking? Hilarious.

Try addressing the actual issues of religion, most of your sneering attempts at framing are failures unless you do.

The friendly face of the kindly local priest is a facade for activities which are indeed murderous. These religions indoctrinate beliefs which are harmful, your contention that religion need not be replaced is wrong unless you believe that this harm is somehow beneficial. Incidentally a belief held by these very religions you are holding so dear. And I haven't even mentioned the greatest harm that religions cause which is their intolerance and divisiveness.
 
Religion sucks.

What should replace it is an absolute, 100% dedication to feeding, clothing, and sheltering EVERYBODY on the planet NOW!

Always, without fail.
 
I agree. But I would like to add that, since there's no real subject for taking this kind of action, people themselves should be encouraged to do away with the conditions that make them poor, homeless, diseased and consequently in need of irrational faith in pie in the sky instead of here on Earth.
 
Acleron said:
A whole religion believes that condoms are evil and deny people through indoctrination of a life saving system. And you accuse me of cherry picking? Hilarious.

Try addressing the actual issues of religion, most of your sneering attempts at framing are failures unless you do.

The friendly face of the kindly local priest is a facade for activities which are indeed murderous. These religions indoctrinate beliefs which are harmful, your contention that religion need not be replaced is wrong unless you believe that this harm is somehow beneficial. Incidentally a belief held by these very religions you are holding so dear. And I haven't even mentioned the greatest harm that religions cause which is their intolerance and divisiveness.
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"these very religions" that I'm "holding so dear"??!!! You don't even make the effort of trying to cover up your strawman argument anymore.
dann said:
It's no surprise that you don't comment on the example of educated people who resort to irrationality when faced with incurable diseases, a situation that has much in common with people suffering from, in principle, curable diseases, but don't have access to (= can't afford) the cure.
But I guess that it's so much easier simply to claim that I’m ”all over the place” …
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dann said:
"these very religions" that I'm "holding so dear"??!!! You don't even make the effort of trying to cover up your strawman argument anymore.
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You should look up 'straw man' it doesn't mean what you seem to think it does.

Your argument so far has been that religion doesn't need replacing, it helps a poor population and certainly doesn't indoctrinate anyone because they have some sort of need. It is reasonable to conclude that you hold it dear.
 
You may be innocent to the extent that you just don't know any better. The reason why I tend to think so is that you now repeat and aggravate your strawman to: "it helps (!!!) a poor population."
If you can't point out where I say either that religion helps a poor population or where I say that I am "holding" "these very religions" "so dear", you should at least admit that you've been lying so far - intentionally or because you imagined that this is what I said.
Let me repeat this: Show me where you think that I've said something that allows you to rephrase it into one of the two things I've quoted you for in the paragraph above.

dann said:
It's no surprise that you don't comment on the example of educated people who resort to irrationality when faced with incurable diseases, a situation that has much in common with people suffering from, in principle, curable diseases, but don't have access to (= can't afford) the cure.
But I guess that it's so much easier simply to claim that I’m ”all over the place” …
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My bad. You actually do know better, Acleron! :-)
Acleron said:
To be fair, and yes I know, usually I'm not, not all catholics are either paedophiles or support these reprehensible priests. As an atheist I don't feel shame for being an atheist because a high profile atheist is guilty of fraud. But I do wish more catholics would speak up and denounce both the individuals involved and the general mass cover-up organised by their church.
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However, that only makes it so much harder to understand why you feel the need to invent the strawman + hyperbole that I should have claimed that religion "helps a poor population and certainly doesn't indoctrinate anyone". Is it really so hard for you to grasp the fact that there's a big difference between, on the one hand, objecting to your conspiracy theory of religion, which claims that religion essentially consists of murderous baddies indoctrinating people for personal gain, and, on the other hand, thinking that religion actually helps people?
Are you really incapable of understanding that the term "opium of the people" means the exact opposite of what you seem to think it does?
You are like the guys who believe in the conspiracy theory of drug addiction and therefore won't recognize the fact that addicts do drugs because they crave the effect it has on them, not simply because some dealer lured them into taking it, and after that they just happened to be hooked. When you tell guys like that about this effect of drugs, they also tend to jump to the (strawman) conclusion: 'So now you're advocating the use of drugs, aren't you?!!!'
The point that you always have to be aware of, of course, is that if drugs did not have the effect that people want from them, they wouldn't be dangerous! There is no big demand for pain enhancers! Only torturers might be interested, but it probably wouldn't be very addictive!
And indoctrination wouldn't turn people into addicts - of opium or of religion. (And indoctrination's very inefficient at making addicts stop using.)
Still, I wouldn't recommend depriving patients in pain of their opium ....
 
Very interesting study by Edward Miguel: Poverty and Witch Killing
Abstract: This study uses rainfall variation to estimate the impact of income shocks on murder in rural Tanzania. Extreme rainfall (drought or flood) leads to a large increase in the murder of “witches” – typically elderly women killed by relatives – but not other murders. The findings provide novel evidence on the role of income shocks in causing violent crime, and religious violence in particular.
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Suggested solutions:
One possibility is improving the system of formal insurance against extreme rainfall shocks, to provide households with better means of smoothing their consumption across years of good and bad rainfall.
(...)
Another potentially attractive policy option is to provide elderly women in the study area with regular pensions, which would transform them from a net household economic liability into an asset, and could help households smooth their consumption. The South African case provides suggestive evidence that this could have a substantial impact: witch killings in Northern Province, South Africa have dropped dramatically since the introduction of an old age pension in the early 1990s (Singer 2000) – although it is, of course, difficult to definitively establish causality given the many other political and social changes that have occurred in South Africa during the same period. Unfortunately, Tanzania is too poor to afford a pension scheme as ambitious as the South African program without considerable external donor assistance.
The results of this paper suggest that violence against "witches” is likely to continue in rural Tanzania as long as most households live in grinding poverty and are unable to insure themselves against large income shocks.
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It's been a while, and in the meantime I finished reading Phil Zuckerman's Society without God.

In a paragraph in chapter 9, "Religion: Scandinavia and the USA", he raises the question:
"Why are Americans so religious?"

He comes up with six answers that compare the situation in the USA with Denmark & Sweden:
1) "the role that a strong Christian faith played - or didn't play - in the historical foundations of these countries." I.e. DK & S had religion imposed upon them by kings - unlike the Pilgrims, who brought religion with them to the USA.)
2) immigration. Unlike the USA, DK & S are very homogenous countries), and "immigration is consistently correlated with religiosity."
3) "the high degree of racial, ethnic, class, and cultural diversity one finds in the Unitedd States, particularly when compared to relatively small - and until very recently - homogonous Denmark and Sweden."
4) "the separation of church and state." I.e. religious leaders in Denmark and Sweden may tend to be feel secure in their vocational positions, which is probably also the cause of the difference in
5) "the degree to which religion is aggressively marketed." (in DK & S it isn't!)

6)
"Finally (...) comes the drastically different levels of security one finds when contrasting Scandinavian society to American society. I don't think it is a mere coincidence that the nations of Scandinavia (the most irreligious) have the lowest poverty rates of all developed democracies and the United States (the most religious) has the highest. After all, research shows that the poor are much more likely to be religious than the rich. Not only are poorer nations more likely to be religious than wealthier nations, but even within the United States the pattern is clear: poor Americans are far more likely to pray daily and consider religion "very important" than wealthy Americans, and poor Americans are more likely to believe in heaven, hell, and the devil than wealthy Americans. Of course, poverty is not the only cause of religiosity. And obviously many wealthy people hold strong religious beliefs. Yet there is an undeniably salient correlation between rates of poverty and rates of religiosity. And in the United States, it isn't just poverty, but numerous sources of insecurity that can propel someone to seek comfort in religion. Millions of Americans - over 45 million, to be exact - don't have health insurance. Millions of people can't find affordable housing. The United States is admittedly one of the wealthiest nations in the world, but that wealth is not widely nor evenly distributed. Far from it; the wealth in America is heavily concentrated in certain hands, so that there exists a huge gulf between the haves and the have-nots, particularly when it comes to decent health care, affordable housing, healthy food, not to mention well-supported schools or competent legal representation. And the possibility of homelessness looms over the heads of millions. As Inglehart and Norris explains:

The United States is exceptionally high in religiosity in large part ... because it is also one of the most unequal postindustrial societies ... relatively high levels of economic insecurity are experienced by many sectors of U.S. society, despite American affluence. ... Many American families, even in the professional middle class, face risks of unemployment, the dangers of sudden ill health without adequate private medical insurance. Vulnerability to becoming a victim of crime, and the problems of paying for long-term care of the elderly.

The situation regarding social security in Denmark and Sweden couldn't be any more different that what it is in the United States. Not only do the Scandinavian nations spread their wealth around to a degree unparalleled among developed democracies - so that the gap between rich and poor is remarkably small - but the tangible, day-to-day support people experience in their lives is exceptional. If a person loses a job in Scandinavia, they don't lose their medical care, nor will they lose the roof over their heads. No matter how down-and-out someone is in Scandinavia, they can always find food, shelter, and health care. And everyone knows that they (and their loved ones) will receive good care in their old age. And there is plenty of affordable excellent child care to go around. And free job training. And free education. Life in Scandinavia may be a lot of things, but precarious simply isn't one of them.
(...)
The existence of this relatively irreligious society suggests that religious faith - while admittedly widespread - is not natural or innate to the human condition. Nor is religion a necessary ingredient for a healthy, peaceful, prosperous, and (have I already said it?) deeply good society."
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In chapter 6 Zuckerman quotes Norris and Inglehart's Sacred and Secular:
"People who experience ego-tropic risks during their formative years (posing direct threats to themselves and their families) or socio-tropic risks (threatening their community) tend to be far more religious than those who grow up under safer, comfortable, and more predictable conditions. In relatively secure societies ... the importance and vitality of religion, its ever-present influence on how people live their daily lives, has gradually eroded."
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I think that this makes it pretty clear why religion shouldn't be replaced: Religion itself is a pathetic substitute for being safe and secure.
 
PS Being a Scandinavian myself, most of the stuff that Phil Zuckerman discovered during his research did not really surprise me, but one thing did come as a surprise to me.
It always bothered me that Karl Marx seemed to ignore the parts of the "vale of tears" that weren't societal in origin:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm
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Yes, poverty, i.e. lack of food, healthcare, housing etc. may make people look beyond reality for the 'meaning of life', so in order to abolish religion, you have to do away with the vale of tears that instigate it. But how about the things that you cannot do away with because each and every one of us are subject to them, the things that are an inevitable part of the human condition? First and foremost death ...
Well, Zuckerman discovered that it doesn't seem to bother us much.
The following excerpt is from his interview with a woman who works in a hospice:

Do the people who are in your hospice, are they needing religion a lot or do many of them die without it?
Many die without.
Without religion?
Yes, we have some of the old people, they are very Christian.
Okay.
And I see it's very difficult for them to die. They are afraid of dying. They are afraid that God doesn't take them to heaven, and they are thinking of their life and have they done something wrong ...
Feeling guilty?
Feeling guilty, yes.
And do people that aren't very Christian or aren't very religious ...?
No, it's the Christians who have problems.
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The other interviews seem to support the notion that secularized Scandinavians don't fear death much.
My guess is that only people who believe in the longevity (or singularity) stuff are more scared of dying than Christians ....
 
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Acleron said:
A whole religion believes that condoms are evil and deny people through indoctrination of a life saving system. And you accuse me of cherry picking? Hilarious.

Try addressing the actual issues of religion, most of your sneering attempts at framing are failures unless you do.

The friendly face of the kindly local priest is a facade for activities which are indeed murderous. These religions indoctrinate beliefs which are harmful, your contention that religion need not be replaced is wrong unless you believe that this harm is somehow beneficial. Incidentally a belief held by these very religions you are holding so dear. And I haven't even mentioned the greatest harm that religions cause which is their intolerance and divisiveness.
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coming from an Irish Catholic family background and now an aethiast I am in full agreement with this.
 
Religion currently provides a comfort blanket for a lot of people, most of them are harmless, there are extremuist in al; in teh major religions and as events in Mayanar/Burma have recently shown even amoong bhuddists.

What will replace will be an organic over time realisation and steady voluntary secularisation, as is evidenced in todays UK, nominally a theocracy Head of state is the Head of a state religion the Church of England, and bishops in th unelected second chamber of the legislature from that church, over time the bulk of the UK population has become more and more secular.
 
Dcdrac said:
Religion currently provides a comfort blanket for a lot of people, most of them are harmless, there are extremuist in al; in teh major religions and as events in Mayanar/Burma have recently shown even amoong bhuddists.

What will replace will be an organic over time realisation and steady voluntary secularisation, as is evidenced in todays UK, nominally a theocracy Head of state is the Head of a state religion the Church of England, and bishops in th unelected second chamber of the legislature from that church, over time the bulk of the UK population has become more and more secular.
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Is there a number of reasons why religions tend to violence? There are the direct conflicts between religions exampled by the Crusade Wars and the many Islamic wars of today. Then there is the isolationism caused by religion so that conflict between groups becomes identified with the religious groups. I'd put the Northern Ireland Troubles into this latter category. The Buddhist/Moslem conflict in Myanmar seems to be a mixture of both.

The gradual secularisation of society has limits. Pew published some results from America. In a period of time 10.1% of Catholics left the faith but 2.6% of non-Catholics became Catholics. This leads to a steady state where 20% of the population are Catholic. A simplistic analysis indeed, but it shows that complete secularisation is unlikely by gradual means and may be impossible.
 
I am drawing on the experience in Western Europe and the uK in particular, Western europe has noticeably been getting more and more secular over time, there is a lingering attachment to christianity but how long that will last is anyones guess.
 
Dcdrac said:
I am drawing on the experience in Western Europe and the uK in particular, Western europe has noticeably been getting more and more secular over time, there is a lingering attachment to christianity but how long that will last is anyones guess.
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It certainly is an agreeable situation. I always feel that part of the reason was the realisation that the religious deserve no special respect and that people who had no belief could openly discuss it. The US is also moving in the same direction but I've noticed that American atheists are less likely to openly criticise religion.
 
Humes fork said:
A common critique levelled against the "new atheists" is that they don't put forth a replacement for religion. For some reason this critique appears to be more common among atheist critics than religious critics.

Dawkins briefly deals with it in The God Delusion. How would you answer that question? If it is a bad question, then how would you explain it?
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A combination of institutions already have replaced God in the functional sense. Hollywood would be one example; government another. There are still some social aspects of the niche which some find hard to replace, but your results may vary.
 
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Acleron said:
That is an accusation that is unfounded, I decided not to answer you because you are too full of accusations and none with any substance.
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So you cannot back up your accusations, you cannot point out where I say the things you accuse me of saying. In other words: you are lying. Your lies are unfounded, my accusation that you are a liar isn't.
 
Perhaps we could have a sing-along followed by a stern scolding. After that, we'll break for donuts and coffee. Then, we could listen to the President of the United States' latest State of the Union address for that one-two punch combination of boredom mixed with lies. Afterwards we can congratulate each other on what upstanding citizens we are and perhaps donate a very small amount of money to charity, as long as most of the money doesn't actually get where we intended it to go.

That ought to replace Christianity, at least.
 
dann said:
So you cannot back up your accusations, you cannot point out where I say the things you accuse me of saying. In other words: you are lying. Your lies are unfounded, my accusation that you are a liar isn't.
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Lol, getting desperate aren't you?
 
There's no reason for me to be desperate. Your lies became more and more apparent, and by now it should be pretty obvious to everybody that your claims were unfounded and that you were unable to back them up.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9357331&postcount=216

I guess this is what makes your universe seem so "beautifully understandable" to you: You just make it up as you go along. That it is at odds with the real world doesn't seem to bother you, which is something you have in common with other believers.
 
Here is a snippet from The God Delusion:

Richard Dawkins said:
Does religion fill a much needed gap? It is often said that there is a God-shaped gap in the brain which needs to be filled: we have a psychological need for God - imaginary friend, father, big brother, confessor, confidant - and the need has to be satisfied whether God really exists or not. But could it be that God clutters up a gap that we'd be better off filling with something else? Science, perhaps? Art? Human friendship? Humanism? Love of this life in the real world, giving no credence to other lives beyond the grave? A love of nature, or what the great entomologist E. O. Wilson has called Biophilia
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I presume that Dawkins doesn't intend to pit science, art, humanism etc as either-or options. Given this reasonable presumption, this seems to me to be as good as anything on this subject.
 
This is just conjecture.
The beginning is as weak as it could possibly be: "It is often said that ..."
Yes, it is often said, but is there any reason to think that it's actually true?
And instead of criticising the idea, Dawkins makes it even worse by accepting it as a fact and supplying his own solution to the non-existent problem: Yes, there actually is a "God-shaped gap in the brain", but we should find something else, something more sensible to fill it with: all the things that people tend to consider the innocent virtues of (the skeptical branch of) humanity: science, art, friendship, humanism, love, rejection of life eternal ... Hallelujah, Brothers and Sisters!
You would never accept this line of reasoning from new-age woos!
Why accept it from Dawkins?
This is a hole in the head, not a gap in the brain ....
 
dann said:
Yes, it is often said, but is there any reason to think that it's actually true?
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I suppose you could take the global distribution of theist/deist beliefs, across many cultures, throughout history, as a reason...

i.e., judging by the above, many people seem to have a need to believe in (or, as Quinn says, an addiction to) that kind of thing. Dawkins is speculating whether they could fill that need/addiction by believing in something rational instead; a safe alternative. What's wrong with that?
 
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So the majority of people in this world, "across many cultures", are believers, and therefore their beliefs must have been caused by "a God-shaped gap in the brain"?!
Yes, that is a reason, but a very silly one.
And how do we account for the apparent secularisation in Denmark and Sweden in recent years, then? Did the gap in the brain just disappear? Is the gap in the brain still there, in principle, but now filled with something else? Where did the gap come from? Is it something we're born with?
That's what's wrong with with Dawkins's speculations.
 
dann said:
So the majority of people in this world, "across many cultures", are believers, and therefore their beliefs must have been caused by "a God-shaped gap in the brain"?!
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I wouldn't read too much into that particular soundbite. He explained that he meant a psychological need for an imaginary friend, father, big brother, confessor, confidant figure.

And how do we account for the apparent secularisation in Denmark and Sweden in recent years, then? Did the gap in the brain just disappear? Is the gap in the brain still there, in principle, but now filled with something else?
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All interesting questions; a careful comparison might be able to confirm or falsify the hypothesis - do the secular societies have behaviours and activities, not found to the same extent in religious societies, that could reasonably be said to satisfy, fill, or substitute for a psychological need for an imaginary friend, father, big brother, confessor, confidant figure?

I suspect not.

Where did the gap come from? Is it something we're born with?
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That's the idea. It's pretty widely accepted that we appear to have an innate tendency towards magical thinking (superstition, attribution of agency, etc.), and questions are being asked about how religion and god beliefs are related to this - e.g. is the god belief the result of combining a tendency for magical thinking with the appeal of a patriarchal authority figure, or is it something more specific?

I suspect it's the former, that the god belief (and religion) appeals because it can satisfy a variety of needs & drives, not because there's a specific innate need ('god-shaped gap') for it.
 
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dann said:
This is just conjecture.
The beginning is as weak as it could possibly be: "It is often said that ..."
Yes, it is often said, but is there any reason to think that it's actually true?
And instead of criticising the idea, Dawkins makes it even worse by accepting it as a fact and supplying his own solution to the non-existent problem: Yes, there actually is a "God-shaped gap in the brain", but we should find something else, something more sensible to fill it with: all the things that people tend to consider the innocent virtues of (the skeptical branch of) humanity: science, art, friendship, humanism, love, rejection of life eternal ... Hallelujah, Brothers and Sisters!
You would never accept this line of reasoning from new-age woos!
Why accept it from Dawkins?
This is a hole in the head, not a gap in the brain ....
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I think you read too much into what he wrote.

Looking at your posts in this thread, you seem to view religion mostly from a sociological viewpoint, while I and many others here view it from a scientific viewpoint. Which could explain your clashes with Acleron. Religion seems to fill several psychological niches. I'd like to ask you the following:

Religions have various stories purporting to tell how the world began, the origins of humans and other living beings, etc. Do you think a religious understanding of how the universe works should be replaced with a scientific understanding of how the universe works?
 
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