I think the difference comes down to what you believe the real foundation of values is. Is Christianity built on a wider universal set of values, such that the removal of Christian values does not have the negative effect you’re suggesting.
Well, we can all engage in pointless hypotheticals. I have no reason to think yours are any more valid than mine.
I don’t have the answer to the question. I think it’s an interesting topic to discuss given the fact that values are changing faster than ever and we do have to anticipate what the effects of those changes might be.
I’m not someone who thinks whisking away Christianity will be some magic panacea. How much of our current political divide is coming down to these massive shifts in values in such a short amount of time?
It is happening that many clergy are leaving the church not necessarily over teachings but burnout from conflicts in the job over members who have different views on vaccines and politics. They also have a student debt. Wages average 55,000 a year. I wonder if LDS Bishops have similar issues but then they have a day job.
As you can see, bill4long was suggesting that the absence of "Judeo/Christian ethics" (whatever those may be thought to be) would lead to very unpleasant consequences. My point (a limited and simple one) was that there are many decent people in the world (e.g. in Japan, though I could have named several other countries) who manage very well without anything that could be so described. Thus his expectation of disaster had no clear basis.
Yeah, and I don’t understand why you think that is at all relevant. The question is not what happens hypothetically in a vacuum, but what happens when civilizations that have developed in a particular way jettison some of those foundations. [...]
How about seeing the Abrahamic religions as being not (as their adherents may claim) the foundation of all decent moral order in the societies in which they are found, but as essentially parasitic phenomena? My experience of a rather large range of cultures suggests to me that the basic decency of people who are allowed to live their lives in peace does not have any essential dependency on their adherence to some religious system or other.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
How about seeing the Abrahamic religions as being not (as their adherents may claim) the foundation of all decent moral order in the societies in which they are found, but as essentially parasitic phenomena?
False dilemmas are not really my bag. Nor are straw men.
My experience of a rather large range of cultures suggests to me that the basic decency of people who are allowed to live their lives in peace does not have any essential dependency on their adherence to some religious system or other.
I am totally convinced that this is your perception.
"He disturbs the laws of his country, he forces himself upon women, and he puts men to death without trial.” ~Otanes on the monarch, Herodotus Histories 3.80.
I don’t have the answer to the question. I think it’s an interesting topic to discuss given the fact that values are changing faster than ever and we do have to anticipate what the effects of those changes might be.
I’m not someone who thinks whisking away Christianity will be some magic panacea. How much of our current political divide is coming down to these massive shifts in values in such a short amount of time?
Big change can be frightening and it can bring out the worst in some people. Some will sell their souls to cling to what seems certain and familiar.
"He disturbs the laws of his country, he forces himself upon women, and he puts men to death without trial.” ~Otanes on the monarch, Herodotus Histories 3.80.
How about seeing the Abrahamic religions as being not (as their adherents may claim) the foundation of all decent moral order in the societies in which they are found, but as essentially parasitic phenomena?
False dilemmas are not really my bag. Nor are straw men.
My experience of a rather large range of cultures suggests to me that the basic decency of people who are allowed to live their lives in peace does not have any essential dependency on their adherence to some religious system or other.
I am totally convinced that this is your perception.
(tiptoes away ... )
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
Christian apologists sometimes (maybe often) do argue that their faith is the only basis for morality and that stopping prayer in schools, or whatever, is the start of society's inevitable slide into barbarism. Inasmuch as a fair number of people really do try to argue that, I don't think this purported position is a straw man, in general.
I do think it may be a straw man for Kishkumen in particular, though, because I don't think he has been saying that. What I read him as saying, instead, is that a society's average morale and morality don't just come directly from human DNA, but depend on cultural infrastructure, which has a fair amount of inertia. You can't just delete it all and install a new version within a few years. In some particular countries, I understand Kishkumen to be observing, a lot of that cultural infrastructure happens, historically, to have been Christian. It's not unreasonable to worry about what might happen if that infrastructure gets trashed too quickly for a smooth handover to any new model.
I don't think Kishkumen's point about Japan is that it suffers from its lack of Christian heritage, in particular, but maybe that Japan is suffering spiritual malaise because its own spiritual traditions seem to have run out of steam for recent generations, or something, with no adequate replacement up and running yet. I've only ever been in Japan for one week, twenty-five years ago, so I have no view on this point, but one does see stories in western media about various kinds of unhappiness in Japan. So Kishkumen's perception of contemporary Japanese society might well be inaccurate, for all I know, but it's not just something he made up for himself.
For myself, I'm sure that most people can be decent without religion, even noble at times—if conditions are good enough that they can afford to be decent. And I'm sure that some people can be decent without religion even in terrible times, at high cost to themselves. It also seems obvious to me, though, that a sincere belief in something like afterlife consequences is bound to have some general effect on people's behaviour. People adjust their behaviour due to their expectations of consequences at tax time; why wouldn't their behaviour be affected by their expectations of divine judgement? There are other incentives to decent behaviour besides fear of hellfire, and in many cases and under many circumstances those other incentives can certainly be enough to keep people kind and honest. I can't think of any motivations for decent behaviour which an atheist could have, though, which a religious believer could not also have; the religious believer, on the other hand, has extra incentives beyond those that apply to any non-believer.
One can argue that this advantage in religious belief isn't actually worth so much in today's world, or that it's outweighed by disadvantages. For example the opportunity cost of relying on prayers instead of actions to make things better can be high. I still don't see how one can legitimately avoid conceding the specific point that religious belief can offer additional incentives to moral behaviour, though. Just saying, "I'm an atheist and I would never murder anyone" is no doubt true but it's an anecdote, like the smoker without emphysema or the factory town with clean water. Unambiguous statistics are also going to be hard to obtain. Just as the scattering of infrared light by CO2 provides a clear basic mechanism for climate change, though, there's a clear basic mechanism by which religion can be an additional support for morality besides anything else. "You'll go to Hell if you do that." If someone believes that, it's got to be additional weight on the scale, when they decide what to do.
Besides morality there is the question of morale. A high-demand religion like Mormonism may bring drudgery but my impression is that it can also make life more exciting. It's like a virtual reality visor that superimposes a vivid(-ish) layer of spiritual meaning on top of mundane things. You didn't just talk to somebody at work for a while: you planted a seed that might save their soul, or something.
I'm not much tempted to murder people, but I want meaning and purpose to set against life's setbacks and tragedies, and overlay on its drudgery. Leaving a religion like Mormonism probably doesn't make many people suddenly struggle to resist urges to murder, but I bet it does often come with a feeling of loss.
My experience of a rather large range of cultures suggests to me that the basic decency of people who are allowed to live their lives in peace does not have any essential dependency on their adherence to some religious system or other.
Mine too. Religious belief tends to bring conflict.
A 2023 Gallup International survey found that Sweden was the country with the highest percentage of citizens that stated they do not believe in God.
Swedish people seem to me to be pretty happy and pretty decent. Isn’t it also rated as one of the best places to live and bring up children?
Last edited by I Have Questions on Tue Sep 05, 2023 1:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Premise 1. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
Premise 2. The best evidence for the Book of Mormon is eyewitness testimony.
Conclusion. Therefore, the best evidence for the Book of Mormon is notoriously unreliable.
Besides morality there is the question of morale. A high-demand religion like Mormonism may bring drudgery but my impression is that it can also make life more exciting. It's like a virtual reality visor that superimposes a vivid(-ish) layer of spiritual meaning on top of mundane things. You didn't just talk to somebody at work for a while: you planted a seed that might save their soul, or something.
I refer to this phenomenon as a L.A.R.P. - Live Action Role Playing for Dr. Shades. There has to be something to what you said, because people are willing to throw a lot of money chasing that high.
- Doc
Hiring a part-time news entertainment anchor as SecDef, what could go wrong?
Right, it's like a LARP that you really believe. I had the same impression about life in Scientology's Sea Organization, which can apparently be about as demanding as a chain gang, but offers the thrill of (supposedly) doing all kinds of important things with your life. Scientology has a lot of officially recognized achievements to collect, and the Sea Org even has naval ranks. I think it outdoes Mormonism on that front.
It's easy to mock this kind of dedication to imaginary goals, but an awful lot of what humans do, at least once we're not hungry, is subtle interactions among emergent phenomena that all go completely over the head of your typical dog. I don't believe that the Mormon LARP is worth playing, but I'm not convinced that this is because nothing abstract and invisible is real. Maybe there is some other kind of visor, some other way of thinking about the world that really does let you see important things that you otherwise wouldn't, and live differently, in ways that are worth it.
At any rate a lot of people do want something like that, and are willing to invest a lot in pursuing it.
To compare the pursuit of that kind of life-enhancing faith with another common human instinct, I wonder whether leaving Mormonism might be something like a divorce. Sometimes it's easy and amicable but for a lot of people it's painful, even if it's also a great release and relief. Even if the relationship that you're leaving had come to be intolerable, there may be grief for the loss of what it once seemed to be, or what you once thought it was going to be. Even if the desire for a better version of that kind of relationship still persists, one may be more discouraged about finding it—again and this time for real!—than one was before the failed marriage.
