Are we better off without religion?

[moobu2]

Popular religious belief is caused by dysfunctional social conditions. This is the conclusion of the latest sociological research (pdf) conducted by Gregory Paul. Far from religion benefiting societies, as the "moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis" would have it, popular religion is a psychological mechanism for coping with high levels of stress and anxiety – or so he suggests.

I've long been interested in Paul's work because it addresses a whole bunch of fascinating questions – why are Americans so religious when the rest of the developed world is increasingly secular? Is religious belief beneficial to societies? does religion make people behave better?

Many believers assume, without question, that it does – even that there can be no morality without religion. They cite George Washington who believed that national morality could not prevail without religions principles, or Dostoevsky's famous claim (actually words of his fictional character Ivan Karamazov) that "without God all things are permitted". Then there are Americans defending their country's peculiarly high levels of popular religious belief and claiming that faith-based charity is better than universal government provision.

Atheists, naturalists and humanists fight back claiming that it's perfectly possible to be moral without God. Evolutionary psychology reveals the common morality of our species, and the universal values of fairness, kindness, and reciprocity. But who is right? As a scientist I want evidence. What if – against all my own beliefs – it turns out that religious people really do behave better than atheists, and that religious societies are better in important respects than non-religious ones, then I would have cause to rethink some of my ideas.

This is where Gregory Paul and his research come in. I have often quoted his earlier, 2005, research which showed strong positive correlations between nations' religious belief and levels of murder, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse and other indicators of dysfunction. It seemed to show, at the very least, that being religious does not necessarily make for a better society. The real problem was that he was able to show only correlations, and the publicity for his new research seemed to imply causation. If so this would have important implications indeed.

In this latest research Paul measures "popular religiosity" for developed nations, and then compares it against the "successful societies scale" (SSS) which includes such things such as homicides, the proportion of people incarcerated, infant mortality, sexually transmitted diseases, teenage births and abortions, corruption, income inequality, and many others. In other words it is a way of summing up a society's health. The outlier again and again is the US with a stunning catalogue of failures. On almost every measure the US comes out worse than any other 1st world developed nation, and it is also the most religious.

<<< LINK >>>

[Deja Q]

1. Structure vs chaos.

Those who are against religion should pony up ideas on how to put in a superior replacement.

Oh, with who is championing religion these days, that alone is enough to agree that religion is questionable, but what DO we replace one structure with?

Not anarchy; we cannot let people run around doing everything they want. Like murder and rape and such...

[darkstar3]

3. False dichotomy. n/t

[patrice]

8. So, God made us bad creatures with no free will to choose good and that's why we need

somekind of spiritual coercion without which most of us would be doing murder and rape and such?

[ZombieHorde]

16. "Those who are against religion should pony up ideas on how to put in a superior replacement."

Art, science, meaningful sexual encounters (the definition of this depends on the individual), and wonder.

Perhaps a little weed or other drug for those who enjoy such things.

[rd_kent]

31. Here is your superior replacement: LOGIC and REASON.

Better than ANY religion.

[RKP5637]

44. +100, n/t

[dmallind]

45. How about utilitarianism?

Socially evolved morality based on utility is what actually caused the moral codes credited to religion, so why not just replace religion with that?

[RKP5637]

2. Good post! Not everyone needs religion and they function quite well. I've

never had difficulty with people that want/need religion as long as they don't try to push their ways and agenda on me. Today, we have a lot of people trying to shove their particular brand of religion on others.

[madrchsod]

4. yes ...that is the problem..."my religion is better than yours"

as for myself...i love to tell fundies about my personal jesus.

[roguevalley]

9. I don't need religion but I need God. That is good enough for me.

[Iggo]

5. Well, I'm certainly better off without it. (n/t)

[rwheeler31]

6. Yes, but in the US. too many people are making money

off it.

[mindwalker_i]

7. Religion provides a framework

fr people who can't come up with it themselves. I have no problem being moral without believing in a deity, but there are many people who need that moral structure imposed. A friend of mine lost his religion for a while (about 15 years). Without it he had nothing to guide him.

Thinking ain't for everyone.

[DeSwiss]

19. "Thinking ain't for everyone."

How devastatingly true. And yet, to quote Frank Zappa: "These are the men who make our laws."

- In my view (having been close enough to death to smell it's breath), when you stop asking questions and life is no longer a marvel, it's time to pack it in.

[DeSwiss]

10. Are we better off without religion?

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.
But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." ~ Steven Weinberg, (US physicist (1933 - )

- Yes.

K&R

[RKP5637]

23. +1, n/t

[classysassy]

11. Why are there so many anti Christians

here at DU?.If you don't believe keep it to yourself.One of these days all of you non believers will be singing a differant song,hope it not too late,GOD bless us all.

[charlie]

13. You answer your own question

when you tell us God's gonna learn atheists whut's whut for not "believing in" Him.

[darkstar3]

14. Tell me you forgot you sarcasm smiley...n/t

[DeSwiss]

15. Oh, I don't know....

...maybe its just that those of us who support and love freedom, also believe in free will.

- Free will, now there's a novel idea.....

[NMMNG]

20. What a shining example of Christian Love

And a perfect illustration of what the article in the OP is trying to say.

[RKP5637]

27. +1, n/t

[trotsky]

21. LOL at your username.

Because it's the definition of "class" to be looking forward to others being punished for eternity for the mere crime of being wrong. :sarcasm:

Jesus must be so proud of you!

[TZ]

25. Oooh a literal shut up atheist post!

Why is okay for you to talk about your beliefs constantly, but atheists need to sit down and shut up? Irony thy name is "Christian"

[Amaya]

28. I'm just anti- ignorance

[Jester Messiah]

29. How about no?

Why don't you xtians keep your imaginary-friend BS to yourselves and let the intelligent people get on with having a civilization?

[rd_kent]

32. Because of wing nuts like you.

How about you keep it to YOURSELF, huh?

[mitchum]

43. "Blah, blah, blah...amen"

May you soon be with your precious lord

[cynatnite]

46. So, because I voice my opinion, that means god is going send me to hell for millions of years....

Just make sure your car keys are easy to find when you get raptured. I need a new car.

[struggle4progress]

12. "Evolutionary Psychology" is Todd Shackelford's journal. If one goes to his webpage,

one finds a banner for Richard Dawkins: http://www.toddkshackelford.com /

Since Dawkins has in recent years made himself a new career by proclaiming repeatedly that religion is a major source of the world's ills, the Dawkins banner on Shackelford's webpage might say worlds about Shackelford's POV and his reasons for publishing Gregory Paul's paper

Shackelford's webpage also contains a definition of "evolutionary psychology." But Gregory Paul's paper (published in Shackelford's journal "Evolutionary Psychology") seems to have curiously little to do with either evolution, psychology, or "evolutionary psychology" as defined on Shackelford's webpage: it is an attempt to draw causal conclusions from supposed correlations between "popular religion" and socioeconomic conditions. No evolutionary ideas appear in the paper; the discussion involves gross cross-cultural comparisons, without reference to any detailed psycholoogical ideas. The notion "popular religion," as used in the paper, to judge by the charts, is essentially coincident with "creationist" -- which the charts oppose to "pro-evolutionist." The problem of defining "religion," of course, is well-known (and unsolved), so one might doubt whether the author's creationist-evolutionist proxy provides a useful assessment of what constitutes "religiosity" in America:

http://pewforum.org.nyud.net:8090/newassets/images/graphics/evolution/evolution.gif
Religious Differences on the Question of Evolution
http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=392

The graphic shows, for example, a majority of Catholics accept evolution, and that Catholics are more likely than Americans-at-large to accept evolution

The failure to consider (and possibly eliminate) alternative explanations of the low socioeconomic scores (given by the author to American society) is a major weakness of the paper. There is, for example, no comparison of the educational or health care systems in the various countries; nor is there any examination of the role played by media in promoting various ideas in the different cultures. A natural conclusion might be that this shoddy piece of work is mere axe-grinding and is published simply because it coincides with the editor's social prejudices

"Evolutionary psychology" seems an interesting and potentially fruitful field of study -- and one should like to see it explored with (say) the detailed dedication that Piaget showed when investigating the psychological development of children by studying the ability to understand specific ideas. The problem, with grandiose notions such as "religiosity," is that the notions are too ill-defined and culture-bound to be useful. It is also important to recognize the possibility that particular ideas may not represent what we naively think they represent: beliefs in instrumental "magic," for example, are beliefs that the world can be manipulated if one simply does the right thing, and exactly the same idea that the world can be manipulated if one simply does the right thing underlies all modern science; there may thus be a considerable evolutionary advantage to believing the world can be manipulated if one simply does the right thing, and selective pressure for this belief might occur because cultures transmit, not only strange notions, but substantial amounts of useful information also

<repost from: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=501513&mesg_id=501524 >

[Jim__]

26. I haven't read Paul's whole article yet.

But, he does draw some conclusions with respect to inherited humand traits. Starting at the bottom of page 405:

The substantial divergence in levels of belief in a creator measured by the PRVSS
indicates that popular religiosity is not universally and consistently high as are more primary
human attributes such as materialism and language to the degree that appears to have become
widely accepted. Speech is truly universal because all mentally healthy adults possess highly
sophisticated language skills (either verbal or signing among the deaf) that are already well
developed in childhood, and it is essentially impossible for humans to be close to normally
functional and social without the language abilities which the human brain and upper
respiratory complex are highly adapted for (Deacon, 1998). The brain in combination with the
tool making and using opposable thumb are also highly adapted for materialism. There is more
variation in the degree of materialism between individuals and between societies than there are
in linguistic abilities, but those that actually reject essentially all interest in material objects are
considered aberrant by the great majority of humans who are highly desirous of material
objects. The desire to fulfill material wishes is a primary factor behind the development of
civilization and its ultimate industrial-corporate-consumer expression (Paul, in press). No mass
society rejects materialism, societies that do so are small and rare, the few individuals who go
to extremes to reject materialistic lifestyles are often considered mentally borderline, and even
anti-materialist cults retain substantial materialism; anti-modernity Mennonites take pride in
their traditionalist property and goods. Many religions that promote spirituality also involve a
major materialistic component, including the acquisition of funds from participants. The degree
of individual and religiosity can vary to a far greater extent. A third of the French qualify as
atheists and another third are agnostics according to recent sampling (Times/Harris, 2006), and
some other democracies appear to have similar levels of religious disinterest and skepticism
(Zuckerman, 2006, 2008). Nor are those with little or no religious interests mentally or socially
deficient or dysfunctional in the manner of those lacking substantial language abilities or
material desires, many convinced atheists are successful members of society, to the degree that
a large portion of the scientific community is in this cohort (Larson and Witham, 1999).
Whether it is possible for large numbers of humans to lack any measurable attraction to
supernaturalistic spirituality is not yet established, and it the near universality of religion until
modern times shows that most if not all humans have the potential for a significant degree of
religiosity. But it is clear that while language and materialism are primary aspects of the human
condition that show limited or no fluctuation among populations over time and space,
religiosity is a more flexible, optional, secondary factor that is not nearly as integral or
consistent to human psychology as are more worldly matters -- it is probable that human
interest in art is more universal than is supernaturalistic spirituality.

[struggle4progress]

42. That qualifies as empty chatter: his proxy for religiosity is a gross sociological

creationism-evolution axis, concerning which one might note:

(1) There's not the slightest reason to think that support for creationism or evolution is hereditary
(2) Different religious groups place different emphasis on the importance of the supposed creationist-evolutionist controversy -- and in fact, many religious are perfectly comfortable with evolution
(3) Given the variety of social forces that shape reported attitudes, gross sociological measures of attitude are unlikely to shed any light on evolutionary issues

[Better Today]

17. JMO, but no. I think it isn in our nature to raise a ruckus about some thing or

another. Get rid of religion and we'd find a way to have all the same conflicts over some other topic, or subject, some other personal choice

[DeSwiss]

18. Well, I still think it'd be nice for us to have some NEW conflicts.....

...because I'm bored with these. Besides, the ones we've got now are 6,000 or so years old, and they weren't that good to start with. Okay? But I suppose that's to be expected, seeing how it was acquired off a "used religion" lot.

Only maybe the next time we create a religion, we can skip the invisible deity business. Oh, and no clergy. And none of those tax-exempt black holes like churches, temples, or mosques either. People want to sleep-in on Sundays without feeling guilty.

- And if whatever "conflict" it is we come up with starts getting into politics and trying to run our lives, at least then they'll have to pay for the privilege.....

[Jim__]

22. The article in the Guardian doesn't support that conclusion.

Are we better off without religion?

We should be careful about drawing rash conclusions from the correlation between religiosity and societal breakdown

...

He draws implications for human evolution too. Contrary to Dan Dennett, Pascal Boyer and others, he argues that religion is not a deep-seated or inherited tendency. It is a crutch to which people turn when they are under extreme stress, "a natural invention of human minds in response to a defective habitat". Americans, he says, suffer appalling stress and anxiety due to the lack of universal health care, the competitive economic environment, and huge income inequalities, and under these conditions belief in a supernatural creator and reliance on religious observance provides relief. By contrast, the middle class majorities of western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan have secure enough lives not to seek help from a supernatural creator.


These are powerful conclusions indeed, and if they are right the US in particular needs to take note. But are they? I still retain some caution. I keep reminding myself of the obvious point that in science it is all too easy to apply a more critical eye to research whose conclusions you disagree with. In this case the wiggly route from correlation to cause includes many questionable steps, and clearly a lot more research is needed. I was also dismayed by what might seem trivial – the appalling number of typos and other mistakes in the only version of the paper I could find – the one that is linked from the press release and several other places. There are missing words, added words, "their"s for "there"s and other errors that sometimes made it hard to follow. If the text was so poorly checked, I wondered, what about the data? Should I apply my critical concerns to those stunningly high correlations too?

[DeSwiss]

33. Her overall article I would say was "favorable" to the research....

...however she thought that the paper itself was not conclusive in showing causation. Largely because of the methodology used. But the correlations that he did find, are themselves troubling enough. Particularly with respect to the US. What Sue Blackmore, the author of the article (http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/">and herself a scientist) ends up saying is that further study is needed. Which is what is often said when research is being done for the first time:

These are powerful conclusions indeed, and if they are right the US in particular needs to take note. But are they? I still retain some caution. I keep reminding myself of the obvious point that in science it is all too easy to apply a more critical eye to research whose conclusions you disagree with. In this case the wiggly route from correlation to cause includes many questionable steps, and clearly a lot more research is needed.

She also pointed out that there were several typos in the research paper copy that she got, but she wasn't sure it that was indicative of the work itself or not. I've downloaded the paper and began reading last night, and it is very interesting.

[moobu2]

40. It isnt a unique idea either. This study builds on earlier work

Religion and Politics Worldwide --- Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris

LINK

Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment

Before he began his recent travels, it seemed to Phil Zuckerman as if humans all over the globe were “getting religion”—praising deities, performing holy rites, and soberly defending the world from sin. But most residents of Denmark and Sweden, he found, don’t worship any god at all, don’t pray, and don’t give much credence to religious dogma of any kind. Instead of being bastions of sin and corruption, however, as the Christian Right has suggested a godless society would be, these countries are filled with residents who score at the very top of the happiness index and enjoy their healthy societies, which boast some of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world (along with some of the lowest levels of corruption), excellent educational systems, strong economies, well-supported arts, free health care, egalitarian social policies, outstanding bike paths, and great beer.

LINK

[struggle4progress]

53. It might take some work to decipher what Danes believe: Denmark has an official state church;

the majority of Danes belong to that church; and yet if one polls Danes on their beliefs, a majority seem rather heterodox and decidedly undogmatic

And some estimates of the prevalence of Danish atheism would suggest that a number of atheists belong to the official state church

[struggle4progress]

54. ... Danes joke that almost everyone in Denmark is Lutheran but almost no one is religious ...

Something spiritual in Denmark
01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, June 16, 2007
By Kevin Sullivan
The Washington Post
http://www.projo.com/religion/content/LBdenmarkreligion_06-16-07_PQ60NRC.202ca3b.html

[struggle4progress]

55. ... Denmark has the highest level of confidence in religious institutions at 74%, yet a meager 3% of

Danes attend church at least once a week ...
September 21, 2004
Religion in Europe: Trust Not Filling the Pews
by Robert Manchin, Senior International Correspondent
http://www.gallup.com/poll/13117/religion-europe-trust-filling-pews.aspx

[RKP5637]

24. Here is some interesting reading.

http://www.evilbible.com/

[edhopper]

30. The most moral people I know are

Atheist.

[Orangeone]

34. Like Ayn Rand? nt

[DeSwiss]

35. Personally I like Torquemada for the "Most Moral Religionist" Award

[Deep13]

37. I don't know her.

Atheism doesn't make someone moral, but it does remove a big justification for being immoral. There may be atheists in fox holes, but there are very few of us in prison. Critical thinking leads to problem-solving skills, the lack of which is a big indicator of criminality.

[darkstar3]

47. Oh how very clever!

You've shown that there is one immoral atheist, so therefore that invalidates the entire argument that atheists are moral. Bravo!

Way to show your true colors...

[Orangeone]

50. Why be upset?

Atheists are too large a group to generalize about one way or another. You act like it's some sort of club or something...

[darkstar3]

56. .

:wtf:

Lemme get this straight here. You throw out "Like Ayn Rand?" in an attempt to poke the tiger, and then when I simply point out the abject stupidity of your post, you act like you're the one being attacked? Allow me to clarify: I am not upset, I simply hold no quarter for stupidity, and I have no earthly clue where you got the idea that I think atheism is some sort of "club."

Further, your post here seems to be a 180 degree reversal from your post above. Here you say that "atheists are too large a group to generalize," but you certainly took a stab at generalization earlier. So help me understand...did you forget your sarcasm smiley before? Do you somehow think your earlier post wasn't a generalization? Or did you think somehow that "Like Ayn Rand?" was a joke?

[Orangeone]

57. Wow

You do seem to be taking it personally. The reason i pointed out Ayn Rand was because someone wrote "all the atheists that I know are moral," and i was reacting to that illogical generalization. I just don't believe that morality and ethics has anything to do with whether a person believes in God or is an atheist.

[darkstar3]

58. Wow, indeed

1. That's not what was said. What WAS said was "the most moral people I know are atheist." This in no way translates to "all the atheists I know are moral." There was no illogical generalization. Care to try again?
2. I'm not taking it personally, I'm simply being blunt. If I had taken it personally, I probably would have frequently suggested in no uncertain terms that you have an inappropriate relationship with your mother. ;) But I didn't, because this isn't about personal insults. It's about your weak attempt at an argument that you have so far failed to defend.

[Orangeone]

59. It's not about personal insults, yeah...that's the ticket

And if someone states: "the most moral people I know are Christians?" wouldn't you think that the person is trying to say that "Christians are good" ? It could be true in the person's experience but in the bigger context not mean very much....

[darkstar3]

61. You're kidding, right?

No implication was made by the original post to which you responded. It was a simple statement of personal experience designed to confirm the premise of the OP, which is that we don't need religion to be moral. Your assumption here that I would make the same mistake is completely false. There is a world of difference between a simple statement of experience and a sweeping generalization.

So the question could be asked, since you were so quick to infer a message that was never there, why did YOU take edhopper's post so personally?

[Orangeone]

62. Didn't you do the same thing?

infer a message that really wasn't there? All i did was point out a bad person who happened to be an atheist! I didn't do it to impugn all atheists, you just took it that way.

[darkstar3]

63. False.

Your post in context was loaded with implications, and you know it. Further, and more importantly, do you really think "well you followed me" is a justification?

[Iggo]

48. You know Ayn Rand?

Kidding, man.

[Deep13]

36. Two points.

1. If there's no god, the question is moot. Whether or not we need religion is irrelevant to the question of god being real.

2. As a general matter, we would be much better off without religion or dogma of any kind. While there are specific positive things religion has accomplished, that has to be weighed against the collosal damage it causes.

[Meshuga]

38. Obviously,

I don't think that adherence to religion creates good and moral human beings (at least not by default). There is plenty of evidence that people too often misuse their adherence to religion and employ it for malevolent ends. However there are those who employ it for the good as well.

There are those who look in religion to find a way out of suffering and despair (or guilt) so their focus is on an otherworldly religion that promises forgiveness and something better in the end. Not focus is not necessarily in becoming a good and decent human being.

But certainly there are people who look into religion differently and genuinely search for ways of becoming better people using specific religious teachings as a guide.

However, in the end, people in general can find a way to being good in a religion or in non-religious sources. I think that being "better off with or without religion" is not an "either or" and depends on the individual/situation.

I know good and moral people from many different religions as I know good and moral people who are not believers. I find that my religion has a pretty good guide for me that I use as a prescription. I realize that some people may not need a prescription and others choose other prescriptions of their own since, obviously, my prescription does not work for everyone.

[rrneck]

39. Close but no cigar.

I haven't read the entire piece yet but...

The socioeconomic phenomena that gave us the sub prime crisis and the problems of overweening religiosity in the United States are one and the same. It's simply more profitable to sell people nothing at all than to actually produce a product. The desire to maximize profit at the expense of actual manufacturing, much less craftsmanship, has worked well for religion since the advent of the division of labor thousands of years ago.

All humans have some sort of faith. They will always express that faith. When there is agreement regarding their shared understanding of faith they practice religion. When people are unwilling to develop their own understanding of faith they can hire it done by somebody else because self awareness is hard work. Thus, the degree of obtuse crass wish fulfillment in any religious doctrine is a good indicator of the lack of self awareness practiced by the faithful in any particular sect.

Religion has been selling people something they've already got for thousands of years because there's a sucker born every minute.

[dmallind]

41. Yes and no

I think we as a society would be better off without religion's massive influence on laws and regulations.

It's borderline inarguable that we would be better off as a society without religious fundamentalism even on a personal level driving purely personal actions and decisions.

I suspect that we would have a population more open to applying critical thinking to evaluate claims made in all areas, from politics to sales pitches, if we did not pretend that there was any other epistemologically valid way to gain knowledge and review evidence for the sake of religion.

But without the simple moral stories religion provides, we would have more trouble inculcating socially acceptable behavior in people mentally ill-equipped to understand teleological moral systems. Is it easier to train people to follow the order to "love thy neighbor" (whether they do that very well or not) or to deconstruct act-rule utilitarianism? (not that many people follow that completely either).

Without the social support organized religion provides, some people would have to find other communities for that support, inevitably fragmenting into less cohesive groups based on shared interests etc. One of the failings of organized atheism is its inability to provide an even vaguely consistent map of celebrating and guiding life changes for those who need that support (baptism, confirmation, marriage, funerals, etc).

And most important to me personally, since I am in no great need of either of the above, without the rich history of religious patronage and religious thought (flawed though much of it is) we would be deprived of great works of architecture, art, literature and philosophy. Kings can build palaces, sure, but Versailles cannot compete with St Peter's, and who wants to live without Bach's Passions, Paradise Lost, and Raphael's frescoes?

To speak directly to the studies I suspect it is for most societies either a reverse causation or shared causation. Where people are poor, ill-governed, desperate and socially fragmented, religion can thrive. The same factors that cause socially damaging behavior make it more likely that religiosity will become stronger. The US is an exception in large part due to historical accident, a need for a shared source of exceptionalism without a long and great history, the effects of slavery (talk about a social construct almost perfect for spreading religiosity - still seen to do this day in the greater religiosity of the slaves' ancestors), and counter-intuitively the lack of a national church that ironically saw the most aggressively evangelical faiths evolve and crowd out weaker competitors.

[marginlized]

49. Its not better or worse with or without religion

I would never confuse religion and morality. Empathy is the basis of morality. The mirror neurons in my brain make me wince whenever I see someone else hurting. I can’t help it. Now, what I do about it is another question that depends on my political and social circumstance. Does your culture encourage support and cooperation or is it all about competition?

I live in a large-scale urban place. As someone who has volunteered at various nonprofits, I know the donations can dry up in economic bad times. So I would rather live in a culture where the safety net didn't depend on the guilt or largess of the wealthy.

[Deep13]

60. Agree that religion and morality are seperate things.

Unfortunately most people think holy=moral. And when people believe irrational things as the basis of morality, it causes them to behave irrationally.

[RagAss]

51. Man needs religion like a polar bear needs golf clubs.

[rd_kent]

52. Yes, we WOULD be better without religion. Religion is the chains of slavery and ignorance....