Yay, regression!

darobin on 2002-09-16T15:17:12

Political summer in France is usually slow. Apart from the new government decreasing taxes for the richest and increasing prices of fundamentals (transport, telephone, tv...) for everyone (do the math: who loses most?) not much happened.

But now that september's around, things have started... Budgets for culture, research, and education have been slashed down. The system that allows artists to live with irregular income is being dismantled. The 35h work week system is being tortured, slowly turned into a 39h week paid 35. That's only the beginning of course, but people are acting surprised. It's not as if it were any different from the Juppé or Balladur governments...

It gets better. Gay/Lesbian and Feminist organisations have been removed from the various governmental agencies in charge of 1) Family, 2) Sexual Education, and 3) Gender Equality to be replaced with two wonderful organisations: a group of Catholic Integrists from the Opus Dei and a bunch of so-called "pro-life" assassins. Oooh, I can tell the months to come are going to be fun in some political areas!

If you frequent religious circles and know people like that and are close enough to them to understand what can produce such mental configuration, I'd be happy to know about it. Last time I checked World Domination and Crush Everything Different were not moral imperatives.

I guess that all hope that the coming five years might not be as bad as they looked they would be can now be left behind. Hmmm, anyone have suggestions for civilized countries out there?

why so many religions tend to force their values

wickline on 2002-09-16T17:27:19

> understand what can produce such mental configuration

This is off the top of my head, and not well-thought-out, but seemed to be useful at first glance, so I thought I'd comment: try comparing religion to biology, particularly in regards to evolution.

You might ask "what could produce such a /foo/ biological configuration in an organism" with just as much bewilderment. In many cases, there are stories one can tell about how /foo/ was beneficial for survival and so organisms with /foo/ were more likely to reproduce, and so we see more of those organisms today than we do organisms without /foo/. Given enough time, all the non-/foo/ ones died out. In other cases, you can't tell that story, but you can say that organisms with /foo/ tended to survive more, whether /foo/ was instrumental or not. Maybe there was a small sub-population with /foo/ which happened to live in an area which was not subject to a natural disaster... and the disaster killed all the non-/foo/ ones.

Now on the religion front, can we tell any story about /foo/ and religious survival? Probably. Few of the Brand Name religions propogate through active divine intervention at the individual level. Instead, parents and community pass the religion on to their young, and occasionally on to an adult. Religions which don't do any teaching or converting and just wait in silence for each child or adult to spontaneously convert probably don't survive. Religions which take active measures tend to survive.

So, the fact that religions tend to force their values on others may just mean that those religions which do this are more likely to survive. In fact, there are probably *more* religions which do *not* force their values, but they have very few members and tend not to survive beyond a generation. For example, if you read the Slashdot interview with Larry Wall recently, Larry discussed some of his personal religious views. If he were to codify his views in sufficient detail, I think we'd find a completely unique religious belief system. That system will probably die with Larry. Most of the folks at Unitarian churches each have their own religious belief systems, each of which is unique, and each of which will probably expire with the individual believer.

Brand Name Religions are what they are because they don't expire. They tend not to expire because they take active (sometimes offensive) measures to ensure their propogation.

Other characteristics of Brand Name Religions may just be coincidental, and not instrumental to their survival... or they may be survival-related (I bet the postulation of an afterlife contributes to a religion's of survival).

-matt

Re:why so many religions tend to force their value

hfb on 2002-09-16T18:47:37

You must have forgotten about the "Kill them all, for surely god shall know his own." in the crusades. There is nothing in biology to explain the crusades and the mass killings. Christianity bludgeoned its way through history rather than evolved.

When fanatics of any ideology get power to push their own agendas it is a bad day for everyone eventually.

Re:why so many religions tend to force their value

rafael on 2002-09-16T19:30:01
This quote doesn't come from the crusades, but from the massacre of St Bartholomew. A few years later, Henri IV embraced the catholic faith to become king...

Re:why so many religions tend to force their value

rafael on 2002-09-16T19:41:36
Well, in fact I'm confused. This quote comes actually from the war against the albigenses, during the assault against Béziers.

Re:why so many religions tend to force their value

hfb on 2002-09-16T20:57:56

yes...and the quote comes from the question one asked 'how shall we tell the christians from the cathars?'. So they simply killed everyone thinking that 'god shall surely know his own.' Problem solved.

Re:why so many religions tend to force their value

darobin on 2002-09-16T23:15:01

Yes, I know this quote well and thank you for the english version of it for I'd been wondering about that for quite a while, but always when away from a computer and/or google (surely you'll know what I mean). I know there is much about Christianity (and other religions) that is totally despicable. However, I also know there have been great thinkers in their midst, some of which were incredibly open-minded (especially during the Middle Ages, contrary to common opinions). As an atheist, I would rather see religion go away because too many religious people act like fascists. But fundamentally I have nothing against it. If they followed their own beliefs and let other people live peacefully, I wouldn't mind them. What I don't understand is the constant need to impose one's views. It just seems plain downright stupid.

Re:why so many religions tend to force their value

wickline on 2002-09-17T10:40:44

> Christianity bludgeoned its way through history rather than evolved

Evolution is never toward any goal. It just *is*. That something evolves does not mean that it gets better. The crusades and the spanish inquisition may have influenced individuals to raise their children christian so they would not be tortured or killed. That affects the numbers of christians in future populations. That could be reasonably compared with evolution.

I'm not saying the comparison is ideal, or even useful beyond chatting over a pint... but I wanted to point out that the comparison does not imply a value judgment about 'organized religion is better than it was because it got here by a process somewhat akin to evolution'. Instead, I'm just trying to say 'the type of organized religion is as prevelant as it is today due in part to evolutionary considerations' ...and those considerations are *not* value judgements.

Our genes are not 'better' today than they were 10K years ago. Their mutations were at no point guided by a consideration of where we wanted to go as a species or what would be best. They just mutate.

-matt

Re:why so many religions tend to force their value

darobin on 2002-09-16T23:08:21

Thanks for underlining this aspect. I am aware of the problems any ideological -- not just religion -- system faces when it wishes to survive: it needs a way to spread and perpetuate itself. It's only logical, and thus far there's little wrong with that.

On the other hand, if you truly want to look at it from an evolutionary point of view (I think there are limits to the application of evolution to social science, it's much more complex than that -- but lets pretend we're still at a sufficiently simple level here), it's best for a religion's survival if it avoids making too many or too strong enemies. France is not a religious country, and a vast majority of France's population disagrees with the ideas put forth by the groups I mentionned. For instance, polls show that circa 95% of the population in France is favourable to abortion, and almost 100% are in favour of contraception (it can't be that much because you find the odd exception, but those are rare enough to be discarded). Even with a large error factor, that's still a clear majority. Those groups know that, and won't try to change it: they know it's a lost battle. What they do try is to keep abortion and contraception information away from those that need it: teenagers. They strive to make youngsters as uninformed as possible in order to make their ideal of a contraception-less world real, or at least more real. In effect, they do not try to perpetuate themselves, but solely to perpetuate sufficient ignorance for their views to subsist. I spent three years on a high school board, believe me I know.

So their objective is not their survival, it's just making people suffer under their moronic belief system. I say "moronic" not through disrespect for honest people that may follow it -- that's none of my business and if they're happy then it's fine -- but because it's not something for everyone that they nonetheless try to apply by and large. I also say moronic because by encouraging ignorance by all means they are trying to produce morons.

And how is that to help their survival? Do they hope that the morons they attemps to produce will join them? What good is it to have a congregation of stupid people? Surely in the long run it cannot help. And meanwhile, they're producing more and more amounts of people that are angry at them. Most of those are pacific, but if they push too far -- and they're starting to -- there will be a point beyond which explosion will occur. I am a peaceful person, but if they keep pushing, some steps will have to be taken to calm them down. And it's never good to make ennemies.

For more information on the people we are talking about, see a fairly objective description of the Opus Dei

"The Pope has always admired the conservative principles underpinning Opus Dei, and many of the group's members work for the Vatican. However, one of the Pope's favorite theologians, Han Urs Von Balthasar, once described Opus Dei in an article as "a concentration of fundamentalist power in the church". Many Catholics have criticised Opus Dei's support for General Franco and have concerns about the group's recruitment practices. People do not apply for membership, but are recruited. A high proportion of this takes place in universities."

The word "sect" comes to mind.

Re:why so many religions tend to force their value

wickline on 2002-09-17T10:34:49
> any ideological -- not just religion -- system faces when
> it wishes to survive: it needs a way to spread and perpetuate
> itself. It's only logical, and thus far there's little wrong
> with that.

by comparing with evolution, I did not mean to say that thier actions were logical or justified. In fact, biological evolution is neither logical nor justified... it just *is*. There are many biological facts about humans which are illogical in an of themselves, but at no point in our evolution did our genes engage in a debate over what mutations would be logical or justifiable. They just mutated and some mutations survived more than others (whether or not the mutations were survival-relevant).

> it's best for a religion's survival if it avoids making too
> many or too strong enemies

but evolution rarely considers what is best. Very complex forces cause mutations. Consideration of what is best is not one of the forces. For example, the cells in your retina do not project their nerve endings back to your brain. Instead, the projections go toward the surface of the retina (the inner part of the eye, toward where the light is comming from), then they try to stay out of the way of your photoreceptors as much as they can while traveling toward the optic nerve where they all meet up and dive toward the brain. That spot where they all meet up is your blind spot in that eye. Better for our survival would be to have this stuff happen behind the photoreceptors so we have better vision and no blind spot. ...but evolution doesn't involve those sorts of considerations.

> So their objective is not their survival, it's just making
> people suffer under their moronic belief system. ...and evolution has no objective at all. It's just the fact of certain mutations surviving and multiplying within a population more than others, and while some of those mutations are directly survival-related, others are not. Others still may be survival-related, but are not the 'best choice'... but evolution makes no choices.

-matt

Germs, Guns, and Steel

gizmo_mathboy on 2002-09-17T01:07:21

This book posited, at least in my mind, that religion and government (large government) are needed to create a member of a culture willing to die for the group. The author noted that in small bands and tribes the form of warfare boiled down to two types:

1) ambush
2) overwhelming force

This minimized the chance that a member of the band would get wounded and/or die. This is because he member was extremely valuable and necessary to the survival of the group. A loss of one member emperiled the whole band.

That may be an chicken/egg argument but I thought it was an interesting one. Conventional warfare requires that the group can lose individuals and that endanger the survival of the group. The individuals have to be willing to die for the group as well. So a reason has to be given. While the author didn't specifically state that this is a reason for religion to come about, I do think it is an interesting idea.

Morality could have existed before religion but maybe once you have a religion or structure to promote individual sacrifice and an afterlife as a reward the religion starts promoting itself?

Then again I could just be rambling.

It depends on the context

pudge on 2002-09-17T16:16:02

I guess some day I'll understand why religious people are so often so intent on forcing their own life-styles unto unsuspecting innocents. Chosing to live by the rules of religion Foo is fine by me so long as you don't kill or steal. But attempting to force me to follow those precepts, either directly, by polluting politics with religious considerations, or by infiltrating state organisations is an act of direct aggression. It's so obvious, I don't even understand how those people don't realise that it's downright evil.

Specifically, what are you referring to in this? If you are talking about abortion, I can't possibly agree: if I believe that a child in the womb is a human and has full human rights as any other person does -- regardless of why I believe that, be it religion or some other phiolosophical basis -- then I am required to attempt to make abortions illegal in most cases. It's not evil, it's required by logic: if you believe that all humans have the unalienable right to life, and if you believe the child in the womb is a human, then you must think abortion is a serious violations of human rights. There's no equivocation here.

Like you said, people are entitled to their beliefs, so long as you don't kill or steal. And sometimes religion is one of the primary factors that shapes our definitions of what is killing and stealing. You may disagree that abortion is the killing of a human life; but what do you base that on? Your own philosophical beliefs, which are not substantively superior to their religious beliefs.

I am not condoning any specific tactics of pro-life activists. I am just saying that this is one case where I don't see how it is reasonable to "keep it to yourself" when it comes to a religious belief. It's similar to the abolitionist movement of over a hundred years ago, where religious people crusaded against the evil of slavery. Should they have kept their religious beliefs to themselves? Of course not, because it was not merely about personal religion, it was about the rights of an oppressed people.

You apparently think it is not OK for them to dictate their philosophy (e.g., no gay marriage) to you, but you think it is OK to dictate your philosophy (e.g., their hard-earned money should subsidize public transportation, TV, etc.) to them. Why is it OK for socialists to "infiltrate" state organizations with their philosophies, but not Christians with theirs? Just because you get your philosophy from a different source? I can see no justification for this double standard.

Re:It depends on the context

jdavidb on 2002-09-17T16:42:32

It should be noted that one can oppose abortion without reference to any religious beliefs. In fact, I'd say that for the most part, I do, politically speaking. I have no desire to force my religion upon others. (Propagate through rational persuasion, yes, but not force.) In Kiev, Ukraine I saw a monument to Vladimir, who learned from the Bible that you had to be baptized, and thus forced his entire country to be baptized in the Dniper river or perish. (Very much like Charlemagne.) This kind of thing horrifies me. Not only is it morally repugnant, it doesn't advance Christianity at all, anyway, since the actual teaching is believe and be baptized.

There are plenty of things I believe are wrong but should not be enforced by government: practicing any religion but Christianity, sexual immorality, foul language. I have no desire for the government to limit our fundamental freedoms to choose to do right or wrong, as long as our choices do not take away someone else's freedoms. Murder, infanticide or otherwise, interferes with someone else's freedoms, and so I see stopping abortion as an unavoidable obligation of our government and public servants.

Re:It depends on the context

rafael on 2002-09-18T16:17:29
Abortion : as you pointed out, it depends on the definition of what an homicide is. For example, Aristotle (followed by some Fathers of the Church) says somewhere that the foetus has only a vegetative soul until the third month or so. Hence abortion before the third month is not an homicide, as it doesn't kill a soul. Of course, for that matter, theological discussions about the moment the soul enters the foetus have ended centuries ago. It has been replaced by more medical considerations, such as "will a foetus at the age of three months be able to survive with medical assitance?" Currently the Pope is against abortion, but if the next Pope is, say, from the Company of Jesus (which is unlikely to happen), he may allow abortion and contraception, based on such considerations. I don't know the position of the protestant churches on this point. Some religions, such as zorostrianism (one of the oldest religions still alive), allow (IIRC) some forms of early abortion.
You'll have remarked that I'm not taking any side in this post.

Re:It depends on the context

jdavidb on 2002-09-18T17:14:25

You'll have remarked that I'm not taking any side in this post.

Always a wise policy, when possible. ;)

Abortion : as you pointed out, it depends on the definition of what an homicide is.

I think the primary thing that bothers me, from a political point of view, is that pro-abortion folks deny the rationality of considering abortion to be murder. There's not even a sense of, "Yes, I can see how you might see it that way." Is it that odd and unreasonable to say, "Hey, I don't think it's right to kill a baby in the mother's womb?"

(And please, gentle readers, don't counter with smoke about how I have no right to force my definition of murder on everyone else. I've heard it all before. Please check out the arguments if you haven't already. At this point, I'm not striving so much to get my definition accepted as to have someone on the other side acknowledge that it is one of many reasonable definitions.)

Re:It depends on the context

rafael on 2002-09-18T19:42:49
I've checked out those arguments, and they're scientific and philosophical, or, in other words, to make it shorter, moral. Well. One might say that abortion is immoral, as are bigamy, death penalty, and crashing airplanes on buildings. But for some people, some of these things are moral.
In a democracy, laws should not be edicted on the sole criterion of their (subjective) morality. Laws are supposed to help and protect citizens. (That's why I consider the DMCA being a bad law, for example.) Obviously, crashing airplanes on buildings has to be forbidden by law. The other points should be discussed, democratically. It has not been ever and everywhere acknowledged that abortion, bigamy or death penalty are wrong (or right). Even infanticide has been allowed under certain circumstances in some civilizations. I personally think that the governments that allow abortion (because they think it's better for their citizens that way) should also do their best to discourage it : e.g. by promoting adoption of abandoned babies, by mandatory courses on contraceptives in schools, etc. Whether abortion helps women depends on the social circumstances of your time and of your country. There is no universal answer.
What Robin points out it that some ultra-catholic organizations are taking over the democratic process of voting laws. That's very bad. Compare with the corporate lobbies in the USA, that pushed the DMCA.

Resistance futile, send money.

TorgoX on 2002-09-20T06:44:38

Chosing to live by the rules of religion Foo is fine by me so long as you don't kill or steal. But attempting to force me to follow those precepts, either directly, by polluting politics with religious considerations, or by infiltrating state organisations is an act of direct aggression.

Religion wanders into the domain of telling people stories about how their lives are fascinatingly central to everything. They rarely actually express it quite that blatantly, but nobody feels quite satisfied when a religion tells them "there's really nothing you need to think or do, so relax, and have a Mars bar".
But tell people "The Big Blue Meanies are out there, and they are the FOOOOOORCES OF EEEVIL, they want to stomp on us who are the Sacred True Believers, you just KNOW it! So we need to be ever vigilant, and go stomp them first and purify the town/country/world, because God tells us, us!!!", and suddenly everyone gets all worked up into a nice bellicose energetic fit. Pass the collection plate, and resistance is futile!

As Rev'n Alan Watts used to say, religion is always falling apart. And apparently the easiest way to fall apart is a combination of obsessively literal scripturalism, pandering to mob psychology, and turning into sexual regulation societies.