Jerry

IMO, the bottom line is that religion forms a sociaty stronger and more stable then it's atheist counterpart. I believe history proves this out, and it is because of this observation that I warn of the dangers of turning away from a once commonly shared religion, as a people.

When you form a sociaty on religios ideals and then turn away from those religious ideals, the sociaty falls apart.

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"Nature has it's bad designs eaten by it's good ones."
Eyes of Nye, episode 114

Lightdemon

Can you name a few atheist societies for me?

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Cara

You took the words right out of my head. It's quite possible his claim is true, but without an atheist society or several there isn't a valid comparison.

new coup for you

If you're trying to disprove his point that was a poor move.

Contemporary Europe could be described as atheist, or at least religiously apathetic. And it's fairly stable.

The rest however were horrifying communist regimes.

Ultimately I reject this question.

I feel that all religion is nothing but a reflection of the culture which practices it, not the other way around.

A strong society will create a strong religion. A crazy bat-**** nuts society will create the crusades. Or suicide bombing. Etc.

American's aren't Christians, Christianity is American.

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======OBAMA
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And why does your tone suggest that you do not care about children?

Lightdemon

No, I simply couldn't name any myself.

As a society or a gov't?

The reason I asked is because of his comparison between religious societies versus atheist societies.

Religious societies, although 100% of the population doesn't belong to that religion, is still considered a -insert religion- country if thier dominant religion is -insert religion-.

However, it seems that atheism has never really been the majority of the population in any society. They are always a minority. Given that, how can we call any society an "atheist society"?

Mach

Evolutionary psychology, always fun and often entirely conjecture


Over time, the soup of beliefs, environment, humans, results in something like this:

- A set of beliefs that a society shares and serves to help unify them, giving them some common ideals.
- The unification is a survival advantage
- The fact that the beliefs are usually not true does not confer a distinct survival disadvantage because those have been weeded out already via cultural evoluition, you're left with ones that are hard or by definition not demonstrable.
*NOTE: Beliefs that are true are called science, and they stick around too!

- Once sufficiently invested in a belief, the human mind will often hold onto a belief even if they are presented with clear evidence it's false, for reasons of ego, self-image, congitive dissonance, old dog not learning new tricks, whatever you call it today.

That's why it takes generations to shift culture, because a child is not as emotionally invested in things and if presented with the correct belief, can more easily adopt it. And if it's true, the truth benefit probably outweighs the earlier minimal investment. This same behavior is in primates, and probably many other species.

This is also why some famous quotes from religious leaders note that if you given them a child to invest their religion into, they own them for life. Not a coincidence.

- Also, unity needs to endure attacks on it from the outside (foriegn culture), so this also serves the purpose to allow a culture to resist new cultures - for a time.

In summary we end up with:

A unified culture, that favors new correct information over time, and still maintains a unified set of beliefs that can be maintained despite new information, that is resistant to outside cultures for a generation or two, and that in times of crisis helps foster dominant leaders declaring new information as "fact", and not having to wait for people to analayze it for them to support it, wins the day.

Note that it wins in those environments. As human culture changes, so has, and so it will continue, to change the ideal mix.

And faith is simply the label we give the psychological tendencies that helps resist new ideas, helps foster obedience/efficiency in a hierarchical organization. The most enduring things we have "faith" in are those things which have not been replaced with facts, over time, usually things that don't hurt much to believe incorrectly, like afterlife, or gods that don't actually interfere, etc.

Power-hungry humans that organize such faiths into an organized religion, are a by-product of the above + the nature to seek power.

-Mach

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Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and I am content.- Conan

Mach

Whew. Good thing we formed the U.S. on a secular constitution, and not religious ideals!

-Mach

new coup for you

Listen I'm not pro-religion but I don't think arguing that atheist communist regimes aren't reprsenative of genuinely atheist societies because the obvious response is that there are none, and that atheism is unnatural and must be forced upon people violently.

Which I feel is untrue.

Society cannot give up religion by force but given sufficient time it will grow beyond it naturally, like in Europe.

Cara

Yes, even in countries that are seemingly ruled by atheists, like the USSR, the vast majority of people still practice their religion even if it is practiced underground. There is no true comparison to make.

Cara

Where are you getting the idea that Europeans have grown beyond religion?