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Has Religion Done More Good Than Bad?


Jotari
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Same with me, nobody, I just didn't make my point clearly enough.

I dislike the word bitter because it implies anger, or that there was a cataclysmic event that caused someone to leave religion, and that begets the stereotype of the angry atheist who could be persuaded to return to religion if they could only work past their anger, which in turn begets more prosthelytizing from religious people, and that's one reason why I said many ex-religious people I know have less-than-warm feelings towards religion. Families that have been non-religious for a longer time tend not to get bothered by friends and family in the same way. 

Another reason is that sometimes the strong feelings come from having been subject to abuse, in which case describing someone as bitter undermines the effects of that abuse.

Edit: Measuring how many people who have left religion are bitter is kind of impossible, but for what it's worth, studies have shown atheists are no more angry than any other group.

Of course Dawkins, Harris et al don't exactly give atheism a good name, which is why I haven't read any of them, but they no more represent all nonreligious people than the best-known evangelists represent Christians, etc.

Edited by Res
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4 minutes ago, Res said:

Same with me, nobody, I just didn't make my point clearly enough.

I dislike the word bitter because it implies anger, or that there was a cataclysmic event that caused someone to leave religion, and that begets the stereotype of the angry atheist who could be persuaded to return to religion if they could only work past their anger, which in turn begets more prosthelytizing from religious people, and that's one reason why I said many ex-religious people I know have less-than-warm feelings towards religion. Families that have been non-religious for a longer time tend not to get bothered by friends and family in the same way. 

Another reason is that sometimes the strong feelings come from having been subject to abuse, in which case describing someone as bitter undermines the effects of that abuse.

 

The view of "we can only bring them back if they work past their anger" reeks of victim-blaming.  That's like saying "you can be a couple if only you work past your issues" - sometimes, two people just don't work together, and forcing the issue makes things worse.

If there was past abuse involved, then it's even more important to move on, rather than stay hung up over how awful religion is.

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2 hours ago, eclipse said:

Reread what I quoted.  I made it a point to highlight that for a reason - even while trying to justify why people leave (while using no sources, which is shoddy case-building), calling people who follow a religion "stark-raving lunatics" is insulting.  Lawyers choose their words for a reason.

Aye. We choose our words for a reason.

...now did I categorically call "people who follow a religion" stark-raving lunatics? Or was I speaking with specificity about the experiences of non-believers coming out as non-believers in religious families, in the context of an ongoing conversation about why persons from theistic upbringings who become non-believers later in life may hold the attitudes that they hold?

I said exactly what I meant to say; please don't twist it.

If you are formally requesting sourcing as to the claim of correlation in my prior post, such sourcing will be provided. However, I should note, this matter was raised in passing as background to the broader point that it is not uncommon for persons raised religious to become non-believers for no particularly earthshaking reason; not to go down the rabbit hole of arguing the data behind the correlation.

Because when you start getting into great detail about the correlation between education and religion and presenting and defending studies showing that the more educated a person is the less likely they are to be religious--invariably, that is when people start reading personal insults into fact-based arguments and accusing you of calling religious people stupid and taking personal offense at everything that gets posted.

The conversation appears to be going in another direction, so lets think really carefully about whether or not we want to open that an of worms. (sourcing will be provided upon request)

I have quite a bit more I want to say on the subject of persons from theistic upbringings coming out as non-believers to their families. But this post is long enough already.

So I'll bugger off for a while, see how the conversation moves, and post further accordingly.

 

Edited by Shoblongoo
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1 hour ago, Shoblongoo said:

If you are formally requesting sourcing as to the claim of correlation in my prior post, such sourcing will be provided. However, I should note, this matter was raised in passing as background to the broader point that it is not uncommon for persons raised religious to become non-believers for no particularly earthshaking reason; not to go down the rabbit hole of arguing the data behind the correlation.

Because when you start getting into great detail about the correlation between education and religion and presenting and defending studies showing that the more educated a person is the less likely they are to be religious--invariably, that is when people start reading personal insults into fact-based arguments and accusing you of calling religious people stupid and taking personal offense at everything that gets posted.

I actually believe you when you say it, and I've read similar things basically third-hand (people mentioning studies), but I want to see a source just so a) I can look into the claim further and b) I can be informed in case this comes up again.

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On the relationship between education and religion:

Does this really mean anything? I mean, seriously, do you expect people to go to a secular and oftentimes downright anti-religious institution and come out more spiritual? Do high schools, colleges, and universities teach people to  accept religion, or to ignore it?

There's a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom is what we use to make decisions about metaphysical matters such as religion, and it comes from life experience, NOT higher education. 

Case in point, I have an older brother who is in his mid-20s with a high-paying job and a professional-level knowledge of web design. He owns his own house and has no debt whatsoever, because he decided that instead of going to college, he would spend those four years working hard, making money, and studying his own interests on the internet. He's starting a family at an age where most people would be looking for a job and paying off student loans. 

I'm not saying college is a bad thing, and it's definitely necessary for certain vocations. I just don't think increased knowledge automatically means you know more about life, love, and religion. In other words, knowledge doesn't equal wisdom. And even if it was true that better educated people were less religious, that wouldn't necessarily determine that religion is a bad thing or that religious people are weak-minded.

Sorry if this sounds too confrontational. I might be taking this too seriously.

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27 minutes ago, SullyMcGully said:

On the relationship between education and religion:

Does this really mean anything? I mean, seriously, do you expect people to go to a secular and oftentimes downright anti-religious institution and come out more spiritual? Do high schools, colleges, and universities teach people to  accept religion, or to ignore it?

Ignoring isn't really the same as rejecting it.

When I was in primary school we were to participate in teacher led prayer from an early age. I remember that always feeling rather strange to me, but it was common and everyone seemed to not see this as out of the ordinary. All the way up through high school teachers would often ask the class to gather in prayer and we quite often had trips to church too. And this is from an admittedly non-secular country, in which teacher led prayer is not a thing I believe in US schools (as a secular country). As a country, we have more athiests and non-religious people than the US.

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Surely strong faith should stand up to rigorous questioning, though (this is what I was always taught). If people are being persuaded by higher education institutions to drop their religion, maybe they would never have been religious if not brought up in their religion to start with.

My dad was a regular attendee at church and a lay preacher up until he obtained a theology degree (as a related side interest) and formed an interfaith group in his town. He's now atheist; was that the fault of his university, or did his faith just not stand up to scrutiny?

That's not to say that people don't have strong faith and aren't educated and religious, just that there's a substantial number of people in-between, imo, who are casual-religious people who believe more for cultural reasons. I had no idea my bff of 22 years was religious until she chose to get married in a church and if questioned, she might leave her religion. On the other hand, my mom has very strong faith; she regularly engages in theological debates with my brothers and nothing has ever caused her faith to waver. 

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15 hours ago, Lord Raven said:

I actually believe you when you say it, and I've read similar things basically third-hand (people mentioning studies), but I want to see a source just so a) I can look into the claim further and b) I can be informed in case this comes up again.

...right then...

http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/glaeser/files/w8080.pdf

So first we have the somewhat confusing Sacerdote and Glaeser study from 2001. Confusing because it reaches 2 seemingly self-contradictory findings:

1) Attendance at religious institutions increases with education (In America at any rate--this does not hold true in all countries) 
2) Religious belief decreases with education

The study posits that educated persons are more likely to view religious institutions purely as a means of social networking and community engagement, and attend church or synagogue or the like purely for social membership reasons without actually holding any high-religiosity beliefs.

The  study further finds that within religions; more educated persons are more likely to be members of moderate or reformed sects that align with this idea of religion as a social network, without demanding any real adherence to strict belief or practice. 

Whereas less educated persons are more likely to belong to fundamentalist sects that require belief in the literal truth of scripture and dogma.

"Less educated people are more likely to believe in miracles, heaven, devils, and that adversity is a punishment for sin (even holding denomination constant).Religious beliefs and education appear to be substitutes. As people select denominations that match their beliefs, more educated people, who have weaker beliefs, switch into denominations where beliefs are weak...Holding education constant, parents who come from high belief denominations have less educated children." (Sacerdote and Glaeser; Page 6)

AND

"Within the U.S. education raises religious attendance at individual level. This does not seem unusual to us because religious attendance is a major form of social interaction and education raises every other measurable form of social connection."

  Schwadel (2011) retested the assumptions from this earlier study and likewise found that education has a "liberalizing effect" on religious belief, particularly belief in the literal truth of religious texts and accounts of God therein, but actually INCREASES religious "participation." (i.e. the social aspect of going to Church events and mingling with congregants)  

Hungerman (2013) on the other hand--a Canadian study--finds that an additional year of education leads to a 4-percentage-point decline in the likelihood that an individual identifies with any religious tradition.


https://www3.nd.edu/~dhungerm/ed_relig.pdf


Mcfarland (2013) hints at a reverse mechanism of causation for the observed trend: higher education does not cause persons to become less religious by giving them a broader base of knowledge with which to conclude that religious belief is irrational, but rather, high-religiosity causes persons to become less educated by imparting belief that there is no value in exposing oneself to teachings outside the faith and that higher education is not worth pursuing.
 

http://people.wku.edu/steve.groce/Education and Religiosity.pdf


This is the “Network Closure” model.  (And it’s curiously similar to the point Sully McGully raised in his last post)

This model explains another seemingly-contradictory set of findings:

1) Less educated persons tend to flock to more high-religiosity sects.
2) Within a given high-religiosity sect, the most educated persons in the sect tend to be the most religious  

The theory goes that within a closed-network religious community with limited exposure to outside ideas and teachings, “most educated” has a different meaning then it would in the general population; referring to religious ‘education’ and accompanying mastery of in-network treatises and historical records and classic arguments-for-theism, rather than broader exposure to pluralistic world history and culture and the natural sciences.

There’s so much research in the field I can’t summarize it all in one post. This I think at least satisfies your request for production.
And it leaves open an interesting question for further discussion:

Accepting as true the finding that more education leads to less religious belief, which model of causation best explains the reason why?

-Is it the case that persons are more likely to find belief irrational as they become more educated?
-Is it the case that persons are less likely to find value in pursuing higher education if they are more religious? (i.e. Sully’s “wisdom vs. intelligence” argument”)

…Or is it perhaps some combination of the two?   


 

Edited by Shoblongoo
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1 hour ago, Res said:

Here's some research on why people leave religion. 60% cite 'no longer believing' as a reason while fewer than 1/5th of the respondents point to scandal or a traumatic point in their lives as a reason. 

I believe it. That's only half the story though. 

Because for a solid chunk of those 60% leaving religion because you 'no longer believe' isn't the end of it; you are then dealing with everyone who tried to instill a religious upbringing in you taking it however they will.

Some healthy.
Some not-so-healthy.
Some taking it as a personal slight or failing and feeling the need to never let you forget it.

And even if the break-away from the religion itself was not motivated by some scandal or traumatic event; after-the-fact from the way its handled, events that lead to a deeper distrust of religion then the underlying disbelief which caused the split can start to take form.

I can only speak to my own experience here. But I'll attest that my family took my decision to leave Judaism very, very poorly. (this is a family of Holocaust survivors and children of Holocaust survivors who kept their faith while their people were being loaded into ovens)

I got the whole: "The Nazis didn't kill us; you will! Jews have always been hated and murdered for being Jews and they still kept being Jews; it was their dream for thousands of years to have a free country where they could be Jews without being persecuted for it. You LIVE IN ONE, and you can't even carry on what they died for!? This is how you disrespect your people!?" speech. 

...among other, less pleasant avenues of discussion...

Honestly; they probably would have taken it better if I just told them I was gay. 
 

Edited by Shoblongoo
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On 7/11/2017 at 6:46 AM, SullyMcGully said:

On the relationship between education and religion:

Does this really mean anything? I mean, seriously, do you expect people to go to a secular and oftentimes downright anti-religious institution and come out more spiritual? Do high schools, colleges, and universities teach people to  accept religion, or to ignore it?

There's a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom is what we use to make decisions about metaphysical matters such as religion, and it comes from life experience, NOT higher education. 

Kind of unrelated, but our religion is part of our school curriculum actually (like we have actual O level tests of our religion), but I guess that's because my country isn't secular. 

...and tbh I actually like studying it. But I hate how we have to write freaking 2 page long answers for most of the questions, like in History tests.

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In UK high schools religious education is also compulsory for at least two years; I hear it is not in the US? My husband says he received no religious education in school.

However, it is not confined to the Church of England. We spent a semester each on Judaism, Hindu, Islam and another major religion, as well as Christianity in general (including other denominations) (I forget which). We also visited a mosque and a church in our town (we didn't visit any other places of worship, but I don't believe the town had any others at that time - it's overwhelmingly white and Christian). 

These requirements also apply to religious schools, as far as I am aware (I attended catholic school and a CofE school, but not at the high school level). 

Edited by Res
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9 hours ago, Res said:

In UK high schools religious education is also compulsory for at least two years; I hear it is not in the US? My husband says he received no religious education in school.

However, it is not confined to the Church of England. We spent a semester each on Judaism, Hindu, Islam and another major religion, as well as Christianity in general (including other denominations) (I forget which). We also visited a mosque and a church in our town (we didn't visit any other places of worship, but I don't believe the town had any others at that time - it's overwhelmingly white and Christian). 

These requirements also apply to religious schools, as far as I am aware (I attended catholic school and a CofE school, but not at the high school level). 

I can tell you that I learned about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the sixth grade(or maybe seventh) in the US and then again in the ninth grade at an International School in Prague.

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The way they do it in American public schools is that they teach you the origins, beliefs, and influence of major world religions as part of the social studies curriculum, in the broader context of studying history and world civilizations. You get a unit on Bhuddism when you study ancient China. You get a unit in Hinduism when you study ancient India. You get a unit on the Abrahamic faiths when you study early Middle Eastern civilizations. And you get a unit on the reformation and the schism between the protestants and the Catholics when you study European history. I think we even got a bit of Shintoism when we studied Japan.

Edited by Shoblongoo
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On 7/12/2017 at 5:27 AM, Shoblongoo said:

The way they do it in American public schools is that they teach you the origins, beliefs, and influence of major world religions as part of the social studies curriculum, in the broader context of studying history and world civilizations. You get a unit on Bhuddism when you study ancient China. You get a unit in Hinduism when you study ancient India. You get a unit on the Abrahamic faiths when you study early Middle Eastern civilizations. And you get a unit on the reformation and the schism between the protestants and the Catholics when you study European history. I think we even got a bit of Shintoism when we studied Japan.

That's not what happened when I went to school.  The religions were mentioned, but we didn't go in-depth in them.  Of my classes, the Japanese class covered a bit of Shinto, and English referred to the Bible, so we'd understand various Shakespeare references.  The most religion I had during my education was a section on the Koran in a college history course.

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It's hard to tell as there are so many factors with religion that has shaped the world today. We know morality didn't come from religion, no instead obedience came with religion as did fear. I think without religion the world would be near the same level of corruption, but through a different manner. I feel like we would be more advanced focusing on technology and innovation with nothing telling us even once that curiosity is sinful, but I feel like there would be near equal levels of destruction because people would find other means of discrimination to campaign wars and conquests, and perhaps there would be even more Machiavellian-type leaders, who are not afraid to think of malicious schemes and practices because they know that after they die it'll all be over. I think in the end chaos and order people have a tendency to cause will balance itself out, and the world will fall somewhere near the middle, but in a different fashion than the timeline we are trapped in. We could have better technology,...etc., but there could easily be an equal number of impoverished countries, animal extinctions, climate problems...etc. Not because we lack the tools to help fix the issues we face, but because most people are still just ignorant, careless, foolish, uninformed and/or gullible. As a world without religion surpasses the problems we have with our world, it faces newer and different problems that replace them. in the end I think it all comes down to perspective; we see a new world more advanced than us, and we envy them, and they see a world without their problems and an opportunity to fix those problems, and then they envy us. I believe with no doubt that religion has had many negative effects that can balance any positive effects it has caused, but whether it would help  the humans of a fresh new world on the verge of maxing out it's population, or ruin it, is beyond my comprehension.

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Personally I think any idea, even good ones, can be corrupted and used in a bad manner. For example, I think we all agree that Science is good, but at the same time the Nazis (mis)used science to justify their genocide. Same rule applies with religion.

The people who use religion in a bad manner are few. Most of us don't believe we're religiously commanded to kill or otherwise harm other people. For most of Religion can be one or more of several things. Of the top of my head:

-For many, religion is just a name. They will say they are "Muslim" "Christian" or "Jewish" but it doesn't play any role in their lives.

-For some people religion is merely a tribal identity. There are some places in the world(such as parts of the Middle East) where religion assumes a similar role to ethnicity in that it people are divided into different communities and political factions based on their religion. A person might not believe in a religion but he will still align himself with one of these factions as a kind of tribal identity

-For some people it's a cultural identity. An example of this is "cultural" Muslims and christians. 

-For some people like me, religion is something we seriously believe in and use as a lens to look at the world. As a Muslim I seriously believe that God exists, that the Quran is the word of God, and that Muhammad is God's final messenger. I also believe in and try to follow to the best of my ability the injunctions found in Islamic Law and Jurisprudence. Of course, that doesn't mean that I kill people who don't believe in these things. Personally, I use religion to become a better human being and to improve the condition of the people around me.

The vast majority of people who use religion in the ways listed above probably do not believe religion commands them to kill or otherwise harm people. 

 

As for religion and rationality. I might make another post about that later.

Edited by Lord Chrom of Ylisse
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While I am still inclined to believe that the majority of religious people are not like this, I cannot say that I don't find the hypocrisy of the Christian right, especially the American Republicans wannabe-theocrats that obtain power that do not follow the teachings of Jesus themselves infuriating. Other religions may vary.

It reminds me of an old comic from an Al Franken book from 2003 - http://imgur.com/gallery/bCqRp

Edited by Tryhard
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39 minutes ago, Tryhard said:

While I am still inclined to believe that the majority of religious people are not like this, I cannot say that I don't find the hypocrisy of the Christian right, especially the American Republicans wannabe-theocrats that obtain power that do not follow the teachings of Jesus themselves infuriating. Other religions may vary.

It reminds me of an old comic from an Al Franken book from 2003 - http://imgur.com/gallery/bCqRp

That last panel is glorious.

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On 7/20/2017 at 2:12 PM, Lord Chrom of Ylisse said:

Personally I think any idea, even good ones, can be corrupted and used in a bad manner. For example, I think we all agree that Science is good, but at the same time the Nazis (mis)used science to justify their genocide. Same rule applies with religion.

The people who use religion in a bad manner are few. Most of us don't believe we're religiously commanded to kill or otherwise harm other people. For most of Religion can be one or more of several things. Of the top of my head:

-For many, religion is just a name. They will say they are "Muslim" "Christian" or "Jewish" but it doesn't play any role in their lives.

-For some people religion is merely a tribal identity. There are some places in the world(such as parts of the Middle East) where religion assumes a similar role to ethnicity in that it people are divided into different communities and political factions based on their religion. A person might not believe in a religion but he will still align himself with one of these factions as a kind of tribal identity

-For some people it's a cultural identity. An example of this is "cultural" Muslims and christians. 

-For some people like me, religion is something we seriously believe in and use as a lens to look at the world. As a Muslim I seriously believe that God exists, that the Quran is the word of God, and that Muhammad is God's final messenger. I also believe in and try to follow to the best of my ability the injunctions found in Islamic Law and Jurisprudence. Of course, that doesn't mean that I kill people who don't believe in these things. Personally, I use religion to become a better human being and to improve the condition of the people around me.

The vast majority of people who use religion in the ways listed above probably do not believe religion commands them to kill or otherwise harm people. 

 

As for religion and rationality. I might make another post about that later.

science isn't a belief system, so the analogy fails. if you commit atrocities, it can't be in the name of science.

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16 minutes ago, Phoenix Wright said:

science isn't a belief system, so the analogy fails. if you commit atrocities, it can't be in the name of science.

Religion is an excuse, science is a tool. Just as any tool can be misused for evil or unethical things, whereas religion is an abstract concept, which are often used as justifications, excuses, or, at worst, scapegoats. Also, if your other statement is true, why is the Mad Scientist trope a thing? Those kinds of people are motivated by discovery, but as the world found out, a lot of modern aerodynamic science was found out in inhumane and unethical experiments, primarily in both Nazi Germany and the USSR. Science advances when morality and ethics fail, that's why people think that religious people hate science. However, the only science the Nazis used to justify it was eugenics, which is not a popular field of study because of that.

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3 hours ago, Hylian Air Force said:

Science advances when morality and ethics fail, that's why people think that religious people hate science.

Um, this is false

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Just now, Lord Raven said:

Um, this is false

Allow me to clarify: A lot of innovation stems from the disregarding of consequences. There are a great deal of religious people (of all faiths) that would rather not compromise their code of ethics just to gain an advantage over a potential enemy, meaning they might not progress technologically until encouraged to. I don't know what you intended from such a short post, except to tell me that I'm wrong. If you don't mind, I would like to know why you disagree, or, if you are so inclined, would invite you to educate this poor, unwashed plebeian.

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