The Brothers Bundy, Lafferty, and Mormon Myth

[_ludwigm]

DrW !

- see viewtopic.php?p=943183#p943183 -

[_Symmachus]

Dr W,

What I deduce from this survey is not that secularism makes life more satisfying than having a religious myth in one's head or performing rituals that you see as pointless and not fulfilling but that living in a largely homogeneous and wealthy society with a relatively strong sense of rule-of-law among the population (and especially in institutions) does. It would be simplistic to the point of historically false to argue that secularism is the sole or even the main cause of those things, especially for the countries on this list. It's probably the other way around: it's not that secularism leads to wealth and stability (abundant examples show that it doesn't) but that wealth and stability on large scale tend to make people in those societies more secular in their outlook.

[_Chap]

... wealth and stability on large scale tend to make people in those societies more secular in their outlook.

That is perhaps why the religions that do survive in a prosperous and relatively stable society tend to be the ones that have ways of making their adherents feel markedly insecure and in need of outside help about non-material things, such as "What happens when we die?"

[_DrW]

Dr W,

What I deduce from this survey is not that secularism makes life more satisfying than having a religious myth in one's head or performing rituals that you see as pointless and not fulfilling but that living in a largely homogeneous and wealthy society with a relatively strong sense of rule-of-law among the population (and especially in institutions) does. It would be simplistic to the point of historically false to argue that secularism is the sole or even the main cause of those things, especially for the countries on this list. It's probably the other way around: it's not that secularism leads to wealth and stability (abundant examples show that it doesn't) but that wealth and stability on large scale tend to make people in those societies more secular in their outlook.

Symmachus,

While not necessarily disputing your stated view on the issue, there are a number of countries that could be used as cases in point to counter your argument. Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE, for example, are very wealthy countries that are far from secular.

You might claim that their wealth is relatively recent and that secularism will develop as the population becomes more educated. This is very unlikely so long as religion reigns supreme. The education systems of many of the Gulf States produce more (largely unemployable) Imams than good engineers.

Getting back to the post at issue, I posed three questions to Huckelberry to determine if he could imagine a harmonious and prosperous society that existed without the need for religious myths upon which to base its core values. These questions were in response to comments by several that it was not necessarily religion, but authority in general, that was the problem.

I would claim that if one wishes to focus on authority, then the focus should be on illegitimate authority. And by far and away (unless congregates have a direct democratic say in the operation of their religious organizations), religious authority is illegitimate, almost by definition.

Abuse of illegitimate religious authority is the primary reason for the ongoing and seemingly intractable problems in the Middle East. For recent example of religious abuse of authority, one need look no further that the essentially summary, and religiously motivated, executions last week of 47 people in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

I am am not arguing that secularism is a panacea to societies' ills, only that religion can, and usually does, function as the pathogen. And in this generalization, I would specifically include the US political conservative right wing, as represented hijacked by Evangelicals and fundamentalists, including many Mormons.

[_Symmachus]

While not necessarily disputing your stated view on the issue, there are a number of countries that would seem to counter your argument. Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE, for example, are very wealthy countries that are far from secular. You might claim that their wealth is relatively recent and that secularism will develop as the population becomes more educated. This is very unlikely so long as religion reigns supreme. The education systems of many of the Gulf Sates produce more (largely unemployable) Imams than good engineers.

I think if you read my comments again you will see that I said wealth and (not or) stability (defined there very generally as rule-of-law in institutions as accepted by the population at large). The stability of all these states is extremely precarious and is not based on rule of law in any sense that is used in Western Europe or North America. Corruption is rampant because laws aren't enforced equally for everyone, the court systems are tools of brutal security regimes rather than checks on them, and religion is used as a linchpin to hold society together because there isn't an alternative as of present. This is especially true in Saudi, and we saw a paradigmatic example of that on New Year's day with Nimr an-Nimr. But even the wealth in these countries is precarious; it's not just new, it's unstable. All of the Gulf countries, with the possible exception of UAE, really have nothing but oil for their economies. We see now what happens when the price goes down. What we mean by wealth anyway is not just gobs of cash but the effects that gobs of cash bring: economic stability. If you're not sure the cash will always be there, you're not economically stable.

Compare this, by the way, to Egypt, a 100% secular government and a society which produces still a lot of engineers who are, I am sure, as smart as you but who are conservative Muslims and conservative Copts (I have yet to meet a genuinely liberal Copt). Egypt was one of the world's most secular societies a century ago, despite the fact that it was a motley of Jews, Muslims, Copts, Greeks, Italians, and Armenians under the unwelcome domination of an aggressively proselytizing British colonial regime. It remained deeply secular—indeed, committed to secularism—until well into the 1970s. How has it become one of the most conservatively religious places in such a short time? To say that religion caused it is tautology.

It is poor, obviously, because it has no abundant natural resources, but that poverty has only been exacerbated by the fact that it has never been a stable country in modern times, and with the decline of the Ottomans became a plaything for greater powers, especially during the Cold War. And why hasn't science saved it? Modern medicine (brought about by the rush of hospitals that were built by educated Egyptian engineers and staffed by Egyptian doctors, who were educated in schools and universities patronized by the modernizing, secular governments going back to the early 19th century) have been part of western medicine and thus have eradicated diseases that had kept the population small. It was 4 million in 1900. It's nearing 90 million today. The socialist and deeply anti-religious governments of Nasser and Sadat (and Mubarak for many years) pushed further and further to turn it into a society of engineers and doctors, and there is a glut today. People are deeply anxious about everything from health, to jobs, to housing, to fuel, to food, and secularism is seen by many as a culprit in this; it certainly did nothing to help. Religion is not causing these problems, Dr W; it is being used as an attempt to alleviate them.

We are seeing this same process play out in many parts of the world that are becoming more religious (Russia, for example, once the most militantly secular society on earth). In all of these places, religion is addressing the need for stability that secular governments have not provided. It has the advantage that it doesn't have to deliver on its promises until the believer is dead.

You mentioned secularism with democracy as if those are the most natural things in the world, but in fact they are quite accidental. Most secular governments aren't democracies (they are and have been authoritarian dictatorships) and most successfully functioning democracies have large religious populations (like the US, India, Turkey, and Indonesia). The key, in my view, is in the quality of institutions and economic health, not the validity of religious myths. That is also the view, by the way, of people like Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, and others at the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, which is the group behind behind the survey you cited.

And let's look at Mormonism. It's conservative, sure, but it's nothing like it once was. The more secure its position has become, the wealthier it has become as an institution, and the more its membership has become and remained middle class and above, the less extreme it has become. Say what you will about its rather insignificant policy change, the rhetoric about gays from the Mormon leadership is nothing like the rhetoric about gays at your local Baptist church in Tennessee. And notice the way the religious right turned Kim Davis into a hero, but Dallin Oaks repudiates these manchildren in Oregon (as well Kim Davis). Interestingly, these people feel viscerally threatened by a secular and democratic government. Religion has not made them that way; it's probably the fact that ranching is an unstable profession, and they think the government should help make it more stable by not charging them to use federal land or asking them not to destroy protected species, etc. It doesn't look at all, however, like the Bundys (or Bundies, if you like) were reading 3 Nephi and then suddenly realized that they needed to storm a federal building in Oregon.

Religion is always going to be present in one sense or another, and religious thinking can be strong even in stable countries among wealthy people, but I think the kind of religion you see is very different there because religion is a reflection of a society, not an independent metaphysical force that acts on a society. It is the canary in a coal mine. When you see it tick up, you know that a society is not meeting the needs of its people. It is a symptom, not the pathogen.

[_DrW]

While not necessarily disputing your stated view on the issue, there are a number of countries that would seem to counter your argument. Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE, for example, are very wealthy countries that are far from secular. You might claim that their wealth is relatively recent and that secularism will develop as the population becomes more educated. This is very unlikely so long as religion reigns supreme. The education systems of many of the Gulf Sates produce more (largely unemployable) Imams than good engineers.

I think if you read my comments again you will see that I said wealth and (not or) stability (defined there very generally as rule-of-law in institutions as accepted by the population at large). The stability of all these states is extremely precarious and is not based on rule of law in any sense that is used in Western Europe or North America. Corruption is rampant because laws aren't enforced equally for everyone, the court systems are tools of brutal security regimes rather than checks on them, and religion is used as a linchpin to hold society together because there isn't an alternative as of present. This is especially true in Saudi, and we saw a paradigmatic example of that on New Year's day with Nimr an-Nimr. But even the wealth in these countries is precarious; it's not just new, it's unstable. All of the Gulf countries, with the possible exception of UAE, really have nothing but oil for their economies. We see now what happens when the price goes down. What we mean by wealth anyway is not just gobs of cash but the effects that gobs of cash bring: economic stability. If you're not sure the cash will always be there, you're not economically stable.

Compare this, by the way, to Egypt, a 100% secular government and a society which produces still a lot of engineers who are, I am sure, as smart as you but who are conservative Muslims and conservative Copts (I have yet to meet a genuinely liberal Copt). Egypt was one of the world's most secular societies a century ago, despite the fact that it was a motley of Jews, Muslims, Copts, Greeks, Italians, and Armenians under the unwelcome domination of an aggressively proselytizing British colonial regime. It remained deeply secular—indeed, committed to secularism—until well into the 1970s. How has it become one of the most conservatively religious places in such a short time? To say that religion caused it is tautology.

It is poor, obviously, because it has no abundant natural resources, but that poverty has only been exacerbated by the fact that it has never been a stable country in modern times, and with the decline of the Ottomans became a plaything for greater powers, especially during the Cold War. And why hasn't science saved it? Modern medicine (brought about by the rush of hospitals that were built by educated Egyptian engineers and staffed by Egyptian doctors, who were educated in schools and universities patronized by the modernizing, secular governments going back to the early 19th century) have been part of western medicine and thus have eradicated diseases that had kept the population small. It was 4 million in 1900. It's nearing 90 million today. The socialist and deeply anti-religious governments of Nasser and Sadat (and Mubarak for many years) pushed further and further to turn it into a society of engineers and doctors, and there is a glut today. People are deeply anxious about everything from health, to jobs, to housing, to fuel, to food, and secularism is seen by many as a culprit in this; it certainly did nothing to help. Religion is not causing these problems, Dr W; it is being used as an attempt to alleviate them.

We are seeing this same process play out in many parts of the world that are becoming more religious (Russia, for example, once the most militantly secular society on earth). In all of these places, religion is addressing the need for stability that secular governments have not provided. It has the advantage that it doesn't have to deliver on its promises until the believer is dead.

You mentioned secularism with democracy as if those are the most natural things in the world, but in fact they are quite accidental. Most secular governments aren't democracies (they are and have been authoritarian dictatorships) and most successfully functioning democracies have large religious populations (like the US, India, Turkey, and Indonesia). The key, in my view, is in the quality of institutions and economic health, not the validity of religious myths. That is also the view, by the way, of people like Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, and others at the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, which is the group behind behind the survey you cited.

And let's look at Mormonism. It's conservative, sure, but it's nothing like it once was. The more secure its position has become, the more its membership has become middle class, the less extreme it has become. Say what you will about its rather insignificant policy change, the rhetoric about gays from the Mormon leadership is nothing like the rhetoric about gays at your local Baptist church in Tennessee. And notice the way the religious right turned Kim Davis into a hero, but Dallin Oaks repudiates these manchildren in Oregon. Interestingly, these people feel viscerally threatened by a secular and democratic government. Religion has not made them that way; it's probably the fact that ranching is an unstable profession, and they think the government should help make it more stable by not charging them to use federal land or asking them not to destroy protected species, etc. It doesn't look at all like the Bundy's were reading 3 Nephi and suddenly realized that they needed to storm a federal building in Oregon.

Religion is always going to be present in one sense or another, and religious thinking can be strong even in stable countries among wealthy people, but I think the kind of religion you see is very different there because religion is a reflection of a society, not an independent metaphysical force that acts on a society. It is the canary in a coal mine. When you see it tick up, you know that a society is not meeting the needs of its people. It is a symptom, not the pathogen.

Symmachus,

You have obviously thought these issues through very carefully. You have successfully addressed my counter examples, and provided further examples that support your position.

While not entirely convinced that you have things exactly right, I will grant that you have made a better case for your position than I have for mine (which has moderated somewhat as a result of this exchange).

So, I will say, "Well done" - and go back to work.

____________________________________________

I only hope that Ceeboo, MG, Huckelberry, Honorentheos, and several others happen to be following this thread, because you will have certainly made their day - if not their week.

[_huckelberry]

Do you think that it would be possible for humans to achieve social order and harmony on a large scale (populations in the millions) without the need for some kind of unifying mythology related to an imagined supernatural deity?

Do you think that societies that believe in religious myth, and are thus lead by individuals who claim to themselves some kind of authority from an imagined deity, are more likely to have problems with abuse of authority than societies wherein leaders are democratically elected by the voice of the governed?

Do you think it possible that such a secular democratic society would be shown year upon year to have higher rates of life satisfaction, happiness and fulfillment than an age-matched, mainly God-fearing, cohort?

I claim that the answer to each of these three questions is an unequivocal Yes.

In other words, one can debate the effects, advantages and drawbacks of religious myth in society. But what's the point? In my experience, societies get along much better when the vast majority of members have no more than a passing historical interest in religious myths.

In the latest OECD Life Satisfaction Survey, the US came in at number 12 out of 36 countries participating. (That's a score of only 67% when graded on the curve.)

The eleven countries that ranked higher than the US are, for all practical purposes, secular, and certainly more secular than the US.

Turns out that I have worked or otherwise spent time in all of the top 11 countries* on the list, except for for Iceland. I will tell you that one of the really great things about life in all of these countries (with the possible exception of Israel*) is that almost no one pays any attention to religious nonsense - not from the Republican Party, not from Mormons, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or Evangelicals, or prosperity church televangelists. Religious nonsense is just not on the daily radar screen - at all. Instead of thinking about the religious right, they tend to think in terms of realpolitik.


Would you imagine that the ultra orthodox Jews* in Israel are happier and more fulfilled (or of more benefit to society) with their mindless and time consuming rituals than are the folks who work at Technion or the Weizmann Institute developing new computer languages or low cost medical diagnostic devices for use in the third world?

__________________________________________

Dr w, You present a cluster of considerations which contain ambiguities to my mind. Well I see no ambiguity in a couple of your points. Replacing democratic institutions with some religious authority is to my mind a bad idea. Should I remind that I left the Mormon church 48 years ago due to a combination of deciding it was not true and had dangerous authority claims as explained by Honorentheos above. I have no reason to think ultra orthodox Jews are more happy or represent a desirable path for people.

Considering relative happiness I thought your treatment of countries relative happiness problematic. I do not know why you mention the percentage and curve grade. That number could be manipulated to be almost any by shifting the number of countries under consideration. I am not sure why United kingdom ,Germany ,Austria each countries more secular than the US fail to exceed our happiness level. Perhaps many factors are involved. As Symmachus notes wealthy countries tend to be happier than poor. In that respect there are two US countries, one wealthy and the other living alongside which is not.

I do not know for sure the answer to your question about building societies. None of the societies which you point to as being happiest at present were built in a religionless context. Religion was an important part of their historical development. Could they have developed as well without religion? I see no objective historical demonstration of that speculation either way.

[_DrW]

Do you think that it would be possible for humans to achieve social order and harmony on a large scale (populations in the millions) without the need for some kind of unifying mythology related to an imagined supernatural deity?

Do you think that societies that believe in religious myth, and are thus lead by individuals who claim to themselves some kind of authority from an imagined deity, are more likely to have problems with abuse of authority than societies wherein leaders are democratically elected by the voice of the governed?

Do you think it possible that such a secular democratic society would be shown year upon year to have higher rates of life satisfaction, happiness and fulfillment than an age-matched, mainly God-fearing, cohort?

I claim that the answer to each of these three questions is an unequivocal Yes.

In other words, one can debate the effects, advantages and drawbacks of religious myth in society. But what's the point? In my experience, societies get along much better when the vast majority of members have no more than a passing historical interest in religious myths.

In the latest OECD Life Satisfaction Survey, the US came in at number 12 out of 36 countries participating. (That's a score of only 67% when graded on the curve.)

The eleven countries that ranked higher than the US are, for all practical purposes, secular, and certainly more secular than the US.

Turns out that I have worked or otherwise spent time in all of the top 11 countries* on the list, except for for Iceland. I will tell you that one of the really great things about life in all of these countries (with the possible exception of Israel*) is that almost no one pays any attention to religious nonsense - not from the Republican Party, not from Mormons, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or Evangelicals, or prosperity church televangelists. Religious nonsense is just not on the daily radar screen - at all. Instead of thinking about the religious right, they tend to think in terms of realpolitik.


Would you imagine that the ultra orthodox Jews* in Israel are happier and more fulfilled (or of more benefit to society) with their mindless and time consuming rituals than are the folks who work at Technion or the Weizmann Institute developing new computer languages or low cost medical diagnostic devices for use in the third world?

__________________________________________

Dr w, You present a cluster of considerations which contain ambiguities to my mind. Well I see no ambiguity in a couple of your points. Replacing democratic institutions with some religious authority is to my mind a bad idea. Should I remind that I left the Mormon church 48 years ago due to a combination of deciding it was not true and had dangerous authority claims as explained by Honorentheos above. I have no reason to think ultra orthodox Jews are more happy or represent a desirable path for people.

Considering relative happiness I thought your treatment of countries relative happiness problematic. I do not know why you mention the percentage and curve grade. That number could be manipulated to be almost any by shifting the number of countries under consideration. I am not sure why United kingdom ,Germany ,Austria each countries more secular than the US fail to exceed our happiness level. Perhaps many factors are involved. As Symmachus notes wealthy countries tend to be happier than poor. In that respect there are two US countries, one wealthy and the other living alongside which is not.

I do not know for sure the answer to your question about building societies. None of the societies which you point to as being happiest at present were built in a religionless context. Religion was an important part of their historical development. Could they have developed as well without religion? I see no objective historical demonstration of that speculation either way.

Huckelberry,

No argument to your point that most secular societies have developed from religious beginnings. However, it seems to me that religion, as practiced in many places, now belongs in our social evolutionary past.

As to your comment regarding my treatment of life satisfaction survey outcomes by country, I certainly recognize that this kind of ranking is a very blunt instrument. Nonetheless, there is a trend in the data, as presented, and (while not having formally tested it) I'll bet that it would turn out to be statistically significant by pretty much any non-parametric test you would care to apply.

The discussion with Symmachus above notwithstanding, I view religious societies in which I have lived and worked (UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Oman) as restrictive (if not oppressive), stifling, inefficient and inequitable. (Some are more so than others.) That is not to say that I do not enjoy working in these places, but it takes some getting used to. What I dislike most is the lack of opportunity and institutionally wasted potential of young people (especially females) who are born there.

[_Sethbag]

The ultra orthodox settlements have wire strung on tall poles around the perimeter of the relatively small housing projects. Anyone who travels beyond the wire on the Sabbath is considered a Sabbath breaker.

A friend of mine from work, who is Jewish, told me once that down on Long Island a bunch of Jews had banded together to string up such wires around a whole collection of towns, so that they'd be free to travel within those towns but no further on the Sabbath.

He told me that it related to an injunction not to travel on the Sabbath. The religious scholars at one point had decided that since movement within one's home area was necessary and not to be considered "travel", then it was necessary to define what is one's home area (my word for it, I'm sure they have something more official). They decided that whatever was enclosed was one's home area, and that stretching a wire around an area counted as such enclosure. Thus the wires on poles around towns, rendering those towns part of the travel-legal home areas which could be navigated on the Sabbath.

Some part of me suspects that the Creator of the Entire Universe isn't impressed.

ps: here's in interesting article on this subject

[_DrW]

DrW !

- see http://www.mormondiscussions.com/phpBB3 ... 83#p943183 -

Ludwig,

Thanks for the links. Until reading the posts from you and Sethbag, I didn't realize that Jews living outside of Israel practiced these customs. Guess I never thought about it. I have spent a lot of time in Montgomery County MD, but had no clue.

Anyway, here are the images from your Old Testament post.
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Montgomery County, Maryland, eruvim. October 2010. Note that the boundaries were mapped in 2010 and may not reflect current eruv boundaries.

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