Will religion ever disappear?

[kato]

Communists are definetely behind the worst wars and excesess of the 20th century.

World War Two? Fascists.
World War One? Monarchists.
Second Sino-Japanese War? Monarchists.
The Congo Wars? Protofascists.
Vietnam? Nationalist junta.
Chinese Civil War? National-Conservatives.
etc

Also,the French revolutionaries were quite keen in eliminating religion and the religious.

Hebert's and Chaumette's anti-clerical actions were a rather minor part of the Reign of Terror; the War of the Vendee that saw most deaths as part of this was actually a counter-revolutionary uprising by Royalists. Of the trialled and executed during the Reign of Terror, only 6% were clergy while 72% were proletarians accused of counter-revolutionary actions. Hebert himself was guillotined in spring of '94.

[Mihais]

WW2 fascists&communists.

Vietnam-communists.
China-communists vs the rest.
Russian Civil war is worse than WW1 for Russia.
All the hot wars during the Cold War have a communist component.

What the hell are protofascists and what the hell have these invented culprits with the Congo wars?

It would be terribly strange for clergy to be a majority of victims in any anti-religious persecution.To ignore the religious part in the royalist uprising and the atheist part in the revolutionary genocide is to simply ignore one of the reasons for the vast cultural differences that led to such a brutality in Vendee.

[kato]

WW2 fascists&communists.

Stalin had time to think over whether he actually wanted to commit to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact before his troops crossed the border into Poland - two weeks after the Germans.

Vietnam-communists.

Communist dissidence against Diem was merely a reaction to his anticommunist pogroms that if Vietnam was in Europe would have been called White Terror.

China-communists vs the rest.

It was the Right KMT who started it in 1928.

Russian Civil war is worse than WW1 for Russia.

The Russian Civil War had less than 3 million dead, hence not even making that short list that is merely sorted by casualties.

All the hot wars during the Cold War have a communist component.

And an anticommunist component. Domino Theory took care of that. The number of hot wars of the Cold War of mentionable quantity in the context of this is rather small though.

What the hell are protofascists and what the hell have these invented culprits with the Congo wars?

It's a bit difficult to characterize Kagame and Kabila, but they do fit the Duce role regionally. Of course one has to adapt some concepts of the Fasci, but overall it works quite well as a description.

[Mihais]

A very convoluted thing passes for logic in you,mon ami.So Stalin and Hitler make a deal to divide Eastern Europe.At the time Hitler was not convinced the Western powers will declare war,but Stalin was aware.Because the Western diplomats told the Soviets this time is no bluff.
The Soviet attack came late,but it was the thing that broke Poland militarily.Up until then Polish prospects to continue resistence were reasonable.There are plenty of myths on the Polish campaign,but it was the Soviets that sealed their fate.
Both were assholes of first class,but Adolf turned out to be a bit more naive than Joe.
Russian civil war is worse than WW1 for Russia from any pov. But if doesn't makes it to your list...
You don't get the damn point.An anticommunist faction is a GOOD thing.But absent a Red faction,there is no need for something opposed to that.Btw,White Terror,anywhere, is a mere fraction of the Red Terror and it's a just a response anyway.

Which supports the wider point that reds are behind the worst crimes in the 20th century.Not religion :D

[kato]

You don't get the damn point.An anticommunist faction is a GOOD thing.

Nah, the point is pretty much that Imperialist Scum (tm) of all kinds is to blame for the last century.

[Parihaka]

In absence of a morality that derives its authority from a "divinity", what is the basis for an objective, universal morality in a society that rejects the existence of the divine? If a movement seeks to tear down an existing system, there must be an alternative proposed to structure society around.
.

IMO Religion co-opts morality from society, not the other way around.

[tantalus]

IMO Religion co-opts morality from society, not the other way around.

I suggest that is part of the truth, but fundamentally it stems from an innate biological sense, a moral instinct we are born with, although we vary individually to different degrees. Sociopaths deviate considerably from the median. We are born with morality, society, culture, religion et al. shape it to the specifics.

[Parihaka]

I suggest that is part of the truth, but fundamentally it stems from an innate biological sense, a moral instinct we are born with, although we vary individually to different degrees. Sociopaths deviate considerably from the median. We are born with morality, society, culture, religion et al. shape it to the specifics.

Is there a genetic component for our need to group? Yes, all species are born with it in order to survive. Beyond that, no, the moralities are nurture, not nature and are necessary for the survival of a tribe.

[Officer of Engineers]

Good God! Do you need any more proof than Stephen Hawking's imaginery time? Instead of accepting the fact that the equations cannot work, the most celebrated physicist of our time had to create imaginery time to make his equations work.

Imaginary time! The name says it all. It's all 100 percent pure bullshit. The equations works but the concept? Pure manure!

[Mihais]

I suggest that is part of the truth, but fundamentally it stems from an innate biological sense, a moral instinct we are born with, although we vary individually to different degrees. Sociopaths deviate considerably from the median. We are born with morality, society, culture, religion et al. shape it to the specifics.

To the Aztecs is perfectly right to sacrifice humans to Huitzilopochtli.Without that,the world ceases.So,are they psychos?Are they immoral?

[snapper]

I remember studying the four 'traditional' proofs' of the existence of God as an undergrad. As I recall them they were the Ontological Argument (a form of logical argument found in Descartes and before), the Argument from Design (if I find a watch in a desert then I must infer a watch maker etc) which Einstein referred to when he said "God doesn't play dice", the Cosmological Argument (a kind of cause and effect regression where 'God' is the first cause) and the Argument from Morality, which I think is what tantalus is denying here. I found none them to be actual proofs but I am a theist and (more or less) practicing Catholic myself, when I can I go to Church every day, nor need it be a Catholic Church; I've prayed in Mosques with Muslims before and love Orthodox Easter.

I generally have to agree with tantalus that Argument from Morality doesn't hold up: A good case can and has been made for morality as a form of species self preservation. Murder is bad because it diminishes the gene pool (re Dawkins Selfish Gene theory) but looking after orphans is good because it adds to the human sum etc. This though denies any true form altruism. Just because we have a sense of morality therefore does not mean there necessarily is a God.

I would also comment that religion is not the same as any one persons belief in the Divinity. My belief in God is very personal whereas a religion - any religion - is an organisation of humans normally with a hierarchy that operates within society. The humans that work in the organised religion being fallible and society being interest laden and political any religion is therefore bound to tempted and fall to political manipulation from time to time. I have several times seriously considered becoming a Nun myself as I regard the truest form of real religious observance the deep introspection and simplicity of life that only the Monastery can offer. If you want to 'be religious' 100% it seems to me you must renounce the world. To blame a religion that operates within society for being fallible is akin to saying society isn't perfect. Sure religion has, still is and will be used again as a pretext for war - the war in Syria is touted as Sunni vs Shia but this is abuse of true religion in my view.

I also think it wrong not to see Communism as a form of religion; in many ways it was the supreme attempt to create 'Man as God' that resulted from 19th Century Humanism with a mix of Left Hegelianism. Hell they made Lenin immortal and erected shrines to him everywhere... New Holy Scriptures emerged - from Karl Marx to Mao's Little Red Book. Even a theory of historical progression was dreamed up which showed that Communism was our destiny; heaven on earth. So when you say "the commies caused the most deaths between x and y" in many ways you are blaming a religion. Not that it's High Priests were believers themselves of course - they merely manipulated the existing belief structure and tried to substitute it's icons and festivals with their own, much the same as Christianity itself incorporated and changed many older pagan customs and dates - why do we paint eggs at Easter and when did a Christmas tree appear in Bethlehem? There again in many ways the Communist religion was merely a renewed form of old the oriental idea that Kings should be worshiped and can 'transcend' humanity - Lenin became immortal and 'pure' in the 'true' sense; pilgrimages were to the mausoleum were encouraged and his replica/shrine set up in 10,000 towns. The Party became his priests.

Regarding the religions of others - be it the Aztecs or those of ancient societies such as Carthage that we know to have practiced human sacrifice and others that used and stil worship polytheistically, I do not think we have the right to say they were or are wrong. Each culture represents their theism in different ways but this does not mean that religion is just a cultural phenomenon but rather that the belief in divinity is trans cultural - it is part of the 'human condition'. I must admit I would find it hard myself to pray the elephant God Ganesh but I can respect another persons faith as being of the same qualititative value as mine. In general I believe religion has been positive sociologically for humanity. Faith is more what matters though and is individual and private, no doubt all theists arrive by different paths, some look into the abyss and others have 'religious experiences', Saul on the road to Damascus or Lewis Carroll on a tram. I personally count myself lucky to have crossed the 'leap of faith' and know with surety that that there is a Divinity from where I came and to which I will return. I am quite sure when meet 'intelligent' aliens (or when we admit having met them perhaps) they will have a divinity too.

[tantalus]

Is there a genetic component for our need to group? Yes, all species are born with it in order to survive. Beyond that, no, the moralities are nurture, not nature and are necessary for the survival of a tribe.

Nature and nurture interact to produce the effect. The basic tendency to believe that killing a person is wrong, to have a sense of fairness, to desire cheaters to be punished are innate in humans, you don't need society to teach people from scratch to feel these emotions. Society can alter the perception of the circumstance of a moral killing, but people will always grow up to believe it is immoral to kill certain people, or that people who steal from them have committed an immoral act, ergo, an innate sense of morality, a very basic moral structure, which is then shaped by the person's environment.

Let's imagine I was correct for a moment, how could I prove that morality has a key genetic component that interacts with nurture, what kind of evidence would we expect to find if a moral instinct existed. It is not an easy question. We should expect some universal responses across cultures with people on moral issues that persist independent of culture. For food for thought, I offer the below article, which is long I apologise, but it is worth the read. I have extracted some passages, but it would be best to read the entire article.

The gap between people’s convictions and their justifications is also on display in the favorite new sandbox for moral psychologists, a thought experiment devised by the philosophers Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson called the Trolley Problem. On your morning walk, you see a trolley car hurtling down the track, the conductor slumped over the controls. In the path of the trolley are five men working on the track,
oblivious to the danger. You are standing at a fork in the track and can pull a lever that will divert the trolley onto a spur, saving the five men. Unfortunately, the trolley would then run over a single worker who is laboring on the spur. Is it permissible to throw the switch, killing one man to save five? Almost everyone says “yes.”

Consider now a different scene. You are on a bridge overlooking the tracks and have spotted the runaway trolley bearing down on the five workers. Now the only way to stop the trolley is to throw a heavy object in its path. And the only heavy object within reach is a fat man standing next to you. Should you throw the man off the bridge? Both dilemmas present you with the option of sacrificing one life to save five, and so,
by the utilitarian standard of what would result in the greatest good for the greatest number, the two dilemmas are morally equivalent. But most people don’t see it that way: though they would pull the switch in the first dilemma, they would not heave the fat man in the second. When pressed for a reason, they can’t come up with anything coherent, though moral philosophers haven’t had an easy time coming up
with a relevant difference, either.

When psychologists say “most people” they usually mean “most of the two dozen sophomores who filled out a questionnaire for beer money.” But in this case it means most of the 200,000 people from a hundred countries who shared their intuitions on a Web-based experiment conducted by the psychologists Fiery Cushman and Liane Young and the biologist Marc Hauser. A difference between the acceptability of switch-pulling and man-heaving, and an inability to justify the choice, was found in respondents from Europe, Asia and North and South America; among men and women, blacks and whites, teenagers and octogenarians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Jews and atheists; people with elementary-school educations and people with Ph.D.’s.

Joshua Greene, a philosopher and cognitive neuroscientist, suggests that evolution equipped people with a revulsion to manhandling an innocent person. This instinct, he suggests, tends to overwhelm any utilitarian calculus that would tot up the lives saved and lost. The impulse against roughing up a fellow human would explain other examples in which people abjure killing one to save many, like euthanizing a hospital patient to harvest his organs and save five dying patients in need of transplants, orthrowing someone out of a crowded lifeboat to keep it afloat.

By itself this would be no more than a plausible story, but Greene teamed up with the cognitive neuroscientist Jonathan Cohen and several Princeton colleagues to peer into people’s brains using functional M.R.I. They sought to find signs of a conflict between brain areas associated with emotion (the ones that recoil from harming someone) and areas dedicated to rational analysis (the ones that calculate lives lost and saved). When people pondered the dilemmas that required killing someone with their bare hands, several networks in their brains lighted up. One, which included the medial (inward-facing) parts of the frontal lobes, has been implicated in emotions about other people. A second, the dorsolateral (upper and outer-facing) surface of the frontal lobes, has been implicated in ongoing mental computation (including nonmoral reasoning, like deciding whether to get somewhere by plane or train). And a third region, the anterior cingulate cortex (an evolutionarily ancient strip lying at the base of the inner surface of each cerebral hemisphere), registers a conflict between an urge coming from one part of the brain and an advisory coming from another. But when the people were pondering a hands-off dilemma, like switching the trolley onto the spur with the single worker, the brain reacted differently: only the area involved in rational calculation stood out. Other studies have shown that neurological patients who have blunted emotions because of damage to the frontal lobes become utilitarians: they think it makes perfect sense to throw the fat man off the bridge. Together, the findings corroborate Greene’s theory that our nonutilitarian intuitions come from the victory of an emotional impulse over a cost-benefit analysis.

A Universal Morality?

The findings of trolleyology — complex, instinctive and worldwide moral intuitions — led Hauser and John Mikhail (a legal scholar) to revive an analogy from the philosopher John Rawls between the moral sense and language. According to Noam Chomsky, we are born with a “universal grammar” that forces us to analyze speech in terms of its grammatical structure, with no conscious awareness of the rules in play.

By analogy, we are born with a universal moral grammar that forces us to analyze human action in terms of its moral structure, with just as little awareness. The idea that the moral sense is an innate part of human nature is not far-fetched. A list of human universals collected by the anthropologist Donald E. Brown includes many moral concepts and emotions, including a distinction between right and wrong; empathy; fairness; admiration of generosity; rights and obligations; proscription of murder, rape and other forms of violence; redress of wrongs; sanctions for wrongs against the community; shame; and taboos. The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they see in distress. And according to the psychologists Elliot Turiel and Judith Smetana, preschoolers have an inkling of the difference between societal conventions and moral principles. Four-year-olds say that it is not O.K. to wear pajamas to school (a convention) and also not O.K. to hit a little girl for no reason (a moral principle). But when asked whether these actions would be O.K. if the teacher allowed them, most of the children said that wearing pajamas would now be fine but that hitting a little girl would still not be.

...Though no one has identified genes for morality, there is circumstantial evidence they exist. The character traits called “conscientiousness” and “agreeableness” are far more correlated in identical twins separated at birth (who share their genes but not their environment) than in adoptive siblings raised together (who share their environment but not their genes)...

http://www.faculty.umb.edu/adam_bere...l_instinct.pdf

The basic moral structure is born to all humans, consider the underlined above. There is not a shortage of evidence to indicate the universality of the above, underlined traits. These are adaptive in evolutionary terms. Furthermore, conformity appears to be an additional layer, whereby people conform to the moral standards of their time. Our moral codes are clearly flexible, an adaptable feature that has proven evolutionary successful, allowing individuals to utilise their moral natures to thrive in various social circumstances they find themselves.

I am not sure if we are on the same page or merely talking past each other. When you say “moralities are nurture”, would you consider the above underlined traits to be included? Take the proscription of murder, I would suggest that the very idea that it is not acceptable to murder is innate, nurture has the ability to determine the people and circumstances that do and do not apply, a vital role nonetheless.

Would you concede the list to nature, while allowing the specifics to nurture? While acknowledging the caveat that they occur in unison in the real world.

The distinction is very important because the lack of it could allow for some people to conclude that religion may be necessary to teach morals, and that a way of life involving atheism could not, and because if we desire to teach our children a certain way to live, it is best to know they have the raw ingredients, we merely need to logically justify why it is unacceptable to murder anyone, we just need to define who is on the list. If our task is to define the list, not the game, we will develop, teach and enforce a moral code with greater success.

[tantalus]

To the Aztecs is perfectly right to sacrifice humans to Huitzilopochtli.Without that,the world ceases.So,are they psychos?Are they immoral?

I would consider such an act as immoral. That said you do have to judge people by their time as alluded to by Snapper in her post. Immoral is a label that exists only with the person who makes a judgement on an action. You cannot ask if they are immoral, only ask a person if they think a particular action or person as immoral. There is a subtle, yet vital distinction to be made here.

To extend on this, ask yourself if the aztecs had any sense of morality? Did they believe it an immoral act to kill someone, anyone? Was their list (see my above post) of people greater than 1. Under the appropriate circumstance there was surely murder and and the subsequent immorality of it in their society.

[tantalus]

I generally have to agree with tantalus that Argument from Morality doesn't hold up: A good case can and has been made for morality as a form of species self preservation. Murder is bad because it diminishes the gene pool (re Dawkins Selfish Gene theory) but looking after orphans is good because it adds to the human sum etc.

That is an old case in evolutionary biology and now are largely refuted one. Individuals refrain from murder for a lot of reasons, but in evolutionary terms out of self-interest, and to avoid the cost of reprisal. Thankfully individuals found a successful strategy that involved co-operation and refrained from murder, thriving over the eons, and reducing the sociopaths with a tendency for murder to a minority strategy that could only work in a larger population of those who do not murder.

In present time, we seem to be a species, under the right circumstances, dominated by a majority of individuals who have no interest in murder, the descendants of those with less of an appetite for the act. I grant the massive influence, and I mean massive, effect that society and nurture has allowed us to channel our better tendencies to further reduce murder rates, and create an environment that rewards those who do not murder, and punishes those who do. Nature and nurture, the evolution in biological terms and the evolution in culture, have interacted over tens of thousands of years leaving us with a complex historical narrative to study.

This though denies any true form altruism. Just because we have a sense of morality therefore does not mean there necessarily is a God.

The first sentence is very tricky. The second one is logically sound and I believe empirically true and must follow. In regard to the first, I believe that it does not, but my argument is under-developed. If all morality and emotions can be left to evolution, as adaptions, functional for the purpose of survival and/or propagation, explained by science, what are we left with? The subtle point has been made that humans have free will beyond their genes, in some cases we may have evolved to exercise it as the ultimate adaptation. As Dawkins states the use of condoms outwits a genome that "desires" reproduction. Furthermore, true altruism may exist, because you can only really trust and co-operate with a real altruist, not someone who just acts the role. Therefore, genes that produces real, altruistic behaviour thrived over the liars and actors. These are major themes, contentious ones, in evolutionary science.

I also think it wrong not to see Communism as a form of religion; in many ways it was the supreme attempt to create 'Man as God' that resulted from 19th Century Humanism with a mix of Left Hegelianism. Hell they made Lenin immortal and erected shrines to him everywhere... New Holy Scriptures emerged - from Karl Marx to Mao's Little Red Book. Even a theory of historical progression was dreamed up which showed that Communism was our destiny; heaven on earth. So when you say "the commies caused the most deaths between x and y" in many ways you are blaming a religion. Not that it's High Priests were believers themselves of course - they merely manipulated the existing belief structure and tried to substitute it's icons and festivals with their own, much the same as Christianity itself incorporated and changed many older pagan customs and dates - why do we paint eggs at Easter and when did a Christmas tree appear in Bethlehem? There again in many ways the Communist religion was merely a renewed form of old the oriental idea that Kings should be worshiped and can 'transcend' humanity - Lenin became immortal and 'pure' in the 'true' sense; pilgrimages were to the mausoleum were encouraged and his replica/shrine set up in 10,000 towns. The Party became his priests.

Semantics I think. There is a wide and loose definition that is used for religion, and I don't think bolshevism meets all the basic standards. The reality is, if you are flexible enough, various monarchies, dictatorships and pop bands can make the grade. Many of the features of religion exist elsewhere, religion does not have monopoly on them, and if you are flexible enough with a definition, you can make a case for a fit. I would agree that many of the same features appear in communist regimes that thrive such as the idolized leader. I don't think it is an ideological necessity for communism to be structured such a way, only that a communist state could never establish nor persist very long without such a behemoth dominating at the top, because the economic system is so alien to humans, in its extreme form of collectivisation, that the "Man as God" was required to maintain it. Any other communist state failed to establish, and cannot now be counted in history.

...I do not think we have the right to say they were or are wrong. Each culture represents their theism in different ways..

I understand this statement is from the perspective of someone with faith, but with respect (and I mean that, I enjoyed your post), I do. I treat religion and god like any other issue, evidence, facts, reasoned arguments, laws of the universe etc

No exceptions.

I am quite sure when meet 'intelligent' aliens (or when we admit having met them perhaps) they will have a divinity too.

Maybe so, that may be tied to the same potential pattern alluded to in the thread title and op. If they do, I believe it will be for similar reasons, [steeped in evolution, they too will be products of an evolutionary history (excluding AI)], the same, wrong reasons.

[snapper]

You mistake my meaning tantulus; I am not a priest and have no burning desire to convert you. I do not believe your evolutionary selfishness theory is a proof of the non existence of God - it clearly isn't - so please pay me the same courtesy of not preaching trying to 'convert' me as I do to you.