So we are so smart, we see the REAL reasons for religious beliefs

[edhopper]

"it's cultural", "it promotes a patriarchy", "it controls people", "it gives people a sense of community" etc

It is never because they do something or believe something because they really truly believe it is what God wants. The are just too dumb to see the underlying, really, true reasons.

None of those Ayatollahs or Rabbis or Priest say these things and have actions because they actually believe it is God's will, they all just use religion.

Sound right?

[whatthehey]

1. Depends what you are asking

Are there real genuine believers willing to do evil things (and yes nice things too) because they think an omnipotent transcendent being both cares about their actions and needs their instrumentality to achieve his ends? Of course. Only the most pathetic and insecure apologist would deny it. When parents let a child die because they prefer to wait for God to heal, or rather of course not heal, a perfectly treatable condition, that's about as cast-iron proof as can be found in a discussion of human behavior that they really think there is a god and that he's interested in making such decisions.

But that does not mean there are not willful mountebanks manipulating such gullible loons out of more earthly concerns. I have no idea if a slew of polyester leisure-suited Southern middle aged men decided a generation or so ago that God genuinely wanted them to have a fleet of Rolls Royces at the expense of little old ladies but I do have to think Billy Ockham might have an easier suggestion. It's hardly implausible that the very top end of ISIS etc are similarly eyeing dollars more than divinity, but in this case they are fooling genuine believers into killing people and taking over economies rather than sending cash. On balance that's worse than fleecing Aunt Mabel for sure, but an analogous use of real belief for non-religious ends.

A 3rd reading of your question is even more speculative but also even more interesting and that's why religion arose in the first place. As etymology tells us there is a difference between religion and folk myth. It's easy to see where primitive humans anthropomorphized nature and pasted their own small creative efforts onto a putative larger version of themselves. When it takes you hours to make a usable hand axe with skill developed and passed on over generations and then you look up at Mt Kilimanjaro, it would take a bloody minded hominin indeed to not think the equivalent of "Bugger me the guy who made that must be really big and way better at this than I am". It's not like Wegener et al were around to offer an alternative. But that's not religion.

Religion by its very name binds and constricts a worldview. It sets up orthodoxy and orthopraxy and reinforces each with mechanisms ranging from genocide to subtle putdowns at the next church pot-luck. Why did that start? In-group cohesion is likely a part, but were there pre-Bronze Age Swaggarts too who figured it would get them a cushy inside job with no heavy lifting and the best bits of sacrificial lambs? Possibly, but I doubt it was a huge factor to be honest. Early religions seemed to closely connect earthly power and religious power from the very start, almost universally. It was the king who was the intercessor, the avatar, the spokesman for gods before the job was farmed out to priests, and while it's possible kings came up with that schtick to make rebellion blasphemous, it's unlikely that they were all consistently so devious without so much as contact. Far more likely that civil power became religious power that only later developed its brazen manipulation when those specialists started working out how to protect those cushy inside jobs.

[edhopper]

8. good answer

more thoughtful than i should expect.

[rug]

2. The answer, of course, is that a lot of things, including religion, affect what people do.

Do you agree that it is asinine to blame everything on religion?

[Cartoonist]

6. Depends on who you ask

I don't blame religion for the weather, but some prominent religious leaders do. Go figure.

[rug]

11. I'm now asking you. Do you blame religion for every ill except the weather?

[Cartoonist]

14. No

Some things I blame on other things. That's a dumb question, why do you ask it?

[rug]

16. Why do I ask it?

I assume you read posts in here.

I would say that was a dumb question but that would be impolite.

[Cartoonist]

18. You asked a question

That no one would answer yes. That's a dumb question. Try harder next time.

[rug]

19. That must be because you mentioned weather and nothing else.

I'm glad you amended your answer.

I won't ask you what other things besides religion cause bad things. It is apparently too painful to answer.

[Cartoonist]

20. Here's a dumb question

I would never have thought of asking this before, because I can't imagine anyone being so biased and close-minded that they would answer no, but you just might be the only person in the world who would.
Do you blame anything on religion?

[rug]

21. Lots of things. But I'm not a monomaniac,

[whatthehey]

9. Everything? Surely

But things done by avowedly and demonstrably religious people giving explicitly religious reasons and acting in such a way as to advance their understanding of that religion? Surely it's even more asinine to claim they were not motivated by religion.

We don't have to agree with an Islamist terrorist's interpretation of Islam, and we don't have to believe all Muslims share it, to accept that they are killing people, enslaving people, blowing up ancient ruins and taking women back to the burqa for genuinely religious motivations. Same for doctor shooters, clinic bombers, gay bashers and child-beaters on our own shores. Why do apologists have such a tough time admitting these actions are motivated by religious belief just like some alms giving and charity work is too?

[rug]

10. The the intelligent response is to sift through the causes, all of them,

The asinine response is to say religion poisons everything.

[gcomeau]

13. Religion does poison everything, which is completely different from saying it *causes* everything.

[rug]

15. In the process or repeating a ludicrous maxim, you've conceded there are other poisons.

The task then is to intelligently determine which poison is at work in any given situation.

I've seen vey little of that intelligent determination at work in her from those who detest both religion and those who belong to those religions. (Before you deny that, condemning an organization that is inherently poisonous to humans. without also condemning those who belong to and support those organizations, is disingenuous at least, hypocritical at best. Not that anyone here would ever even think of behaving disingenuously or hypocritically.)

[gcomeau]

22. Sigh...

If you are not going to demonstrate a grasp of the difference between a corrupting factor and a root cause we are not going to have this conversation. It will only serve to aggravate.

[rug]

23. Do you understand something can be both? Or neither?

Do you understand something can be one in one circumstance and not in the other?

[gcomeau]

28. Quite clearly.

Do *you* understand that your argument contained an implicit assumption that that was *not* the case, which is what provoked my response in the first place?

And FYI, I didn't "concede" anything. That there existed other poisons WAS NEVER IN CONTENTION you genius. You might as well have triumphantly declared that I "concede" that I breath air, or that gravity exists. NOBODY argues that religion is the only thing that ever poisons anything. Simply that its particular poisonous effect infuses everything it involves itself in.

[cleanhippie]

29. You really are wasting your time here

You'll never get a straight answer or acknowledgement of your point from that one.

Here, borrow this.

You'll get better results.

[gcomeau]

30. Thanks, but I find my desk works fine. ;)

[rug]

32. Banging your head into a wall leads to cognitive deficiencies.

[rug]

31. "you genius"

If I must be insulted that's a benign one.

I have no idea what provoked your response. I do note your agitation though.

[gcomeau]

33. I just told you, point blank, what provoked my agitation. -eom

[rug]

34. That's your problem then.

I remain unperturbed by your calling me alternalely "simplistic" and "genius".

[gcomeau]

35. You know what an inability to recognize blindingly obvious sarcasm...

...is going to get you labelled as right? So how about we stop pretending you didn't know what that was?

[rug]

36. I assume "simplistic" was sarcasm.

[gcomeau]

37. If you really have a desire to portray yourself as stupid...

...I'm happy to indulge you.

[rug]

38. True, I am talking to you.

Shall I stop?

I woukl not want to leave a false impression.

[gcomeau]

39. If all you're going to do is continue playing dumb...

...in a misguided attempt to seem snarky and clever, by all means either continue or don't at your whim. I couldn't care less.

[rug]

40. There's those darn patterns again.

[gcomeau]

41. Yes, frustration saturates my interactions with you. -eom

[rug]

42. Oh, that's only clustering. There are more distinct patterns.

[gcomeau]

43. I refer you to my previous cautionary note. -eom

[trotsky]

3. Oddly enough, the same people who swear up and down that religion...

has nothing to do with negative things are generally the first in line to credit religion for things like charity and hospitals. Strange how that works. All of the credit, none of the blame. What a great gig that god dude has!

The rest of us can see the more complex picture: religion plays a role in the good AND the bad. It sure seems like people can be equally good with or without religion, it's just that the bad is extra hard to get rid of when religion is protecting and reinforcing it.

[msongs]

4. power, control, and wealth - the priest class wants it all nt

[rug]

5. What priest class?

Here's something from someone who knew something about class.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

[edhopper]

7. You don't think the priests and clergy

are acting on their belief of what God wants? They just cynically do whatever it takes for power?
And all the people who go to those churches are too dumb to see it and believe that God is behind it?

[trotsky]

12. Silly Ed.

The evil priest class believes and does what they want because they are nasty patriarchs.

The volunteers at the soup kitchen are acting on what they believe their god wants.

It's very simple, you see. Good comes from god. Bad never does.

[rug]

17. Why that's precisely what Marx wrote.

[Act_of_Reparation]

24. A Saudi cleric just ruled the game chess was un-Islamic.

Apparently, it is a minor vice, like music.

Those "imperialism" arguments make sense when we're talking about sweeping social movements like Islamism and their associated factions, but kind of fall apart when you look at ridiculous quibbles over the moral implications of board games.

Yes, some of these situations are complicated and involve many, many factors. Others, frankly, aren't. Sometimes, people really believe God hates chess.

[MellowDem]

25. At least in the US...

Most people don't act like "true believers" of their religious identity, so the assumption is that what mainly drives it is "its cultural" etc., and likely that most people that identify as religious have a very vague belief of some sort, but nothing as detailed as any sort of dogma.

When the vast majority of Catholics in the US use contraception, it's hard to think they truly believe they have just increased their risk for eternal torture. The god they actually believe in no doubt is a more pleasant fellow with pretty much their same morality.

[Warpy]

26. It's useful to separate belief from religion in this case

Organized, codified (and often ossified) religions are used just as you say, especially now. They're also great cash cows.

Belief on a personal level might not be unless the person has been seduced or bullied into organized religion.

[DetlefK]

27. The tendency to believe is an evolutionairy trait.

Life was harsh in the Stone-Age.

Just some random numbers thrown out there:
50% of people who did as they were told died.
99% of people who didn't do as they were told died.

Out of those 1% of the skeptics who survived nature despite their recklessness, some found something useful to make life easier.

What happens with this new knowledge?
50% of people who accept this new knowledge die.
99% of people who don't accept this new knowledge die.



People with a neurological predisposition to believe and to do as they are told have a higher probability to survive and therefore pass their traits on to more kids.
"Don't go there? There be dragons? Ridiculous. I will totally go there. What's the worst that could... Ah, a bear is mauling me!"