Measuring the good and bad of religions

[HemlockGrey]

Social Policing

Everything that religion can do for this, secularly constructed ethical systems can do equally well, without the tetchy little problem of incorporating random archaic b.s. into the list of social prescriptions. I would hardly call this an advantage of religion.

[HemlockGrey]

That should be "proscriptions", not prescriptions.

[Darth Wong]

It's worth pointing out that slavish obedience to edicts and idolatrous worship of figures is something that can and has been duplicated by secular institutions. Just look at the way Americans feel about their Constitution and notable past Presidents. They quote the Constitution with the same reverence that they quote the Bible, and usually with better knowledge of its actual contents.

[Ethereal41]

It concludes, "Am I too lost to be saved? My soul cries for deliverance. I'm dieing (sic), praying, bleeding and screaming. Will I be denied???"

Apparently this gunman thought tortured souls should have Evanescence music running through their heads.

Reffering to the OP, I don't think applying a measurable 'scale' to religion is a doable idea, particularly if you are doing so with the goal of comparing one to the other. Religion is a facet of human history, and history involves a great deal of other factors.

I'm not trying to be an apologist. Just my two cents.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Dude, we have this thing called "media" now. We have no problem transmitting our cultural values and behaviours.

This is true, but historically this has not been the case. Additionally, religious forms of indoctrination are more effective at getting the information to stick, and at getting the desired behaviors to stick. But as I say later on, it does not work as quickly so you see more short lived dramatic effects as a result of mass media that fade away relatively quickly. For example, mass media may change popular modes of dress, but what they dont change nearly as effectively is the overall culture and the values that are a part of it. For example, people in the US, due to a religion-like socialization structure, practically worship our founding fathers. This is drilled into Americans from the time we are little kids. They are on our money we use every day, information about their....indiscretions...is systematically whitewashed, we are told to marginalize people of other cultures and reject ideas that may contradict our founding father worship... The cult of personality is structured very much like that of religion.

No, but you might want to provide some EVIDENCE of this being a competitive advantage.

The fact that every single culture on this planet has a set of unique rituals(or borrowed in the case of more recently developed cultures... christian socities for example borrow heavily from pre-conversion rituals...) that help identify it as opposed to other groups? The simple fact that there is not a culture on this planet, that does not share these features, is evidence to the fact that rituals and what they do for a group are heavily conserved once they arise within a population.

There is a reason why modern militsaries drill troops in formation. There is a reason they march to cadence, there is a reason why every tribe has its own set of rituals that identify it as a group. Because if they dont, they die.

We can actually make testable predictions about this. If ritual was not adaptive, at best we would see wide variance in the prevalence of rituals in various cultures. Some would have no rituals. In fact, rituals have a cost, in terms of time and energy that can be used for other things. So if rituals did not have a strong selective advantage for a group, we would expect to see no rituals at all.. We do not see this. Instead we are steeped in rituals. From national anthems to birthday songs, to funerals and weddings. We cannot escape rituals in our daily lives, unless you live as a hermit.

Now, these rituals do not have to be religious. There are plenty of secular rituals that do the same thing, and perform the same function. But religion provides a very convenient excuse, and a structure for these rituals. You can almost look at it as an alliance of convenience. Or from an evolutionary perspective, evolution co-opting an existing structure, like it LOVES to do (to anthropomorphize a natural process) because religion does other things, it is more likely to get used to form the basis for rituals as well.

Wow, that's wonderful speculative bullshit. Got any actual EVIDENCE for the real-life effectiveness of this mechanism? Or will you just post some anecdotes?

I posted that as a thought experiment. Testable predictions can be made about this. First off, I challenge you to find a social species with no social policing mechanisms. I guarantee you, you will not find them.

What you do see, at minimum in every social species, is a reactive social policing mechanism. If social-cheating behavior is detected, it is punished. It happens when birds engage in extra-pair copulations (the punishment is usually "divorce"), when ant workers try to reproduce (they get their heads bitten off by other workers) when simians do something the group does not like, like refuse to share food (monkey beat-down) I can go on and on. Every social species. Even your cells engage in social policing. (cancer is just a set of mutations that cause a cell to maximize its reproductive success at the expense of every other cell, and the immune system combats it)

Cheating behavior still occurs and it will occur in the population proportionate to the benefit of cheating outweighing the cost. This is basic game theory, and in every test throughout every social species, it comes up with its predictions ringing true.

This is the basis of Multilevel Selection Theory.

The key to living in groups is to have the benefit of cheating outweighed by the chance of detection and the cost. And for a group to invest the resources and time in policing requires that the benefit to it outweigh the cost of implementation. For this to happen Out-group competition must outweigh In-group competition in terms of the reproductive success for the adaptive units involved.

Are you following me this far? No objections to the theory? If you have objections I can dig up and reference you to a library of peer reviewed literature on these subjects as well as textbooks. I am pulling most of this stuff from memory and coursework in behavioral ecology.

Here is a good list to get you started


Wilson DS, Near DC, Miller RR. Individual differences in Machiavellianism as a mix of cooperative and exploitative strategies. EVOLUTION AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR Volume: 19 Issue: 3


O'Gorman R, Wilson DS, Miller RR. Altruistic punishing and helping differ in sensitivity to relatedness, friendship, and future interactions. EVOLUTION AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR Volume: 26 Issue: 5

Wilson DS, Van Vugt M, O'Gorman R. Multilevel selection theory and major evolutionary transitions - Implications for psychological science. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Volume: 17 Issue: 1


Now to apply this to social policing.

The goal of social policing is to minimize cheating behavior while also minimizing the cost of policing. You can do this in one of a few ways (and societies use all of them)

1. You can decrease the benefit of cheating. This decreases the motivation to engage in cheating behavior. No one but the psychologically fucked up engages in such behavior unless they think that they get some sort of benefit out of it. This is why crime is higher when people are impoverished. They get more out of it for the risk than they would if they were well off. The solution is twofold. 1) decrease poverty directly through group-donated aid)government aid, or charity in smaller groups) and give people the means to have upward mobility. IE education. This is an aspect that secular systems are really really good at, that religious institutions are only moderately good at

2.Increase the actual risk of cheating behavior. This can be done through increased risk of detection or through increased punishment. This is what socially constructed ethical systems and justice systems are really really good at, that religion sucks at.

3) Increased the perceived but not actual risk of punishment. This is where religion excels for the obvious reasons. Belief in an afterlife.

The better your group is at these aspects of social policing on average, the better a group will be able to police itself, which means the better it will be able to compete with other groups and achieve dominance. All it is really is natural selection operating upon cultural characteristics, memes.

Really? Those are the only two downsides of religion that you can think of? Seriously?

From an evolutionary perspective yes. From a social and personal perspective, no. You are talking to the guy who has been beaten, scapegoated and denied legal/social equality because he is part of religion's out-group of choice.

Everything that religion can do for this, secularly constructed ethical systems can do equally well, without the tetchy little problem of incorporating random archaic b.s. into the list of social prescriptions. I would hardly call this an advantage of religion.

And I never said they couldnt. Really it is the way religions are constructed that allows them to do a better job at certain aspects of this than cultural institutions, but also gives them a disadvantage in others.

And frankly, from an evolutionary perspective, the bullshit spouted by religion does not matter. Or at the very least did not matter in the evolutionary history of man when our brains were forming and evolving to respond to mystical experiences. Only the results in terms of inter-group competition and intra-group policing matter to evolution.

Now, I may be willing to accept that the parameters have changed and that the bullshit spouted has become maladaptive, but as far as my look at the peer reviewed literature has shown me, that was not the case during the evolution of humans, or in the development of the various cultures that currently populate this planet.

It's worth pointing out that slavish obedience to edicts and idolatrous worship of figures is something that can and has been duplicated by secular institutions. Just look at the way Americans feel about their Constitution and notable past Presidents. They quote the Constitution with the same reverence that they quote the Bible, and usually with better knowledge of its actual contents.

I would call it a pseudoreligion. It is constructed like a religion without the supernatural element.

[Wedge]

Transmittance of Cultural Information *SNIP*
We like authority, it is one of those little issues with being a social mammal.

Guess, what. You cited authority in your second post.

Wilson DS, Near DC, Miller RR. Individual differences in Machiavellianism as a mix of cooperative and exploitative strategies. EVOLUTION AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR Volume: 19 Issue: 3

O'Gorman R, Wilson DS, Miller RR. Altruistic punishing and helping differ in sensitivity to relatedness, friendship, and future interactions. EVOLUTION AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR Volume: 26 Issue: 5

Wilson DS, Van Vugt M, O'Gorman R. Multilevel selection theory and major evolutionary transitions - Implications for psychological science. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Volume: 17 Issue: 1

library of peer reviewed literature

Is that not an authority on that subject? I fail to recognize religion playing a part on it. Here you have the advantage, that the information you receive is questioned and reviewed, therefor making it even stronger in it's argument for withstanding scrutiny.
Religious authority is NOT questioned or reviewed. Which one is superior?

*SNIP*And when I say cultural info, I mean things like rules for mate selection and number, rules for how to treat eachother.

Don't we have those rules without religion?
I'm atheist yet monogamous, so is Mr. Wong and many others. Did we guide ourselves by religious rules? Do you really think so? Besides in many western countries we have laws against polygamy, but again our laws are changeable and under review.

Group Identities
One word: Ritual. Rituals be they in the form of chanting, dance, song, death, birth, rites of passage, marriage, all of them help form shared experiences, which promote the building of a group identity. I should not even need to go into why that is adaptive for a group in competition with other groups.

So, how come this is exclusively religious? Do you agree that the Super Bowl is a "ritual"? Does that have anything to do with religion? Rituals can take place without religion.

Social Policing*SNIP*
To use an example: you have three populations on an island. One with reactive social policing mechanisms (in this case, stoning people who get out of line), one that has proactive policing mechanisms in addition to reactive ones (in this case, religiously inculturated social mores that further increase the perceived risks associated with bad behavior, followed up by stoning in the event someone gets out of line) and a group that does not have any social policing mechanisms.

Now, say that in each population a rapist appears.

In the poulation with no policing mechanism, this guy will rape repeatedly causing a lot of social problems. False paternity, suffering etc. All of this leads if he does it enough, to a decrease in capacity of this population to compete with the other groups on the island, and this rapist maximizes his reproductive success, and rapists will increase in frequency in the population... eventually the society will be outcompeted by the other groups and go extinct.

Hahahaha, did you forgot the middle ages? Do I have to point this out to you?
Look, in the middle ages it was all about religion. Therefor not questioning authority AND waiting to die so you could go to paradise. Middle ages lasted about 1000 years or more. Look what they did those for over 1000 years, and look at our secular society and the past 100 years.
Which society went extinct? Which society is more profitable for the individual? Which is more advanced? Which is more efficient?

In the proactive religious population, people with a propensity to rape still crop up, however some of them weigh the risks and decide against acting on their impulses, because the stakes are higher. While in the ractive population the guy is only punished if he gets caught, in the proactive population he is punished even if he never is. As a result, rape occurs at a lower frequency and causes fewer social problems as a result. This group will outcompete the reactive group.

Since you pulled this example pretty much from your arse, I will do the same. The rapist has brain-damage and doesn't fear the afterlife just getting killed or imprisoned, because this would impede him to practice his favourite hobby: raping. Now in this third society of yours, people who believe in the afterlife, don't bother so much going after the rapist, because they are convinced that God will help them, and he will go to hell and therefor justice will be made. There is no need for justice in this world, because there will always be God at the end judging you. Who cares if you suffer 40, 50 years if you get paradise FOR ETERNITY. This is the recompense for being quiet, not revolting against those in power because it is God's will that they are in power. Do not question God.

[Wedge]

*Blabla*While my belief has some similarities to christianity, I'm influenced by other religion as well, from chinese mythology to buddishism.

Because at times, I belief in an afterlife yet without the existence of a god...to believing in many gods from different religon...to somewhere close to atheism.

And somehow, I like my religous belief to be rather undefined in a way. And not going to follow any orgainsed religion doctrine and etc. Sometimes, life seems more fun where you don't have to label your religous belief or be defined by them.

Maybe you are a theist? You believe in God or Gods. What´s wrong with that definition?

Ok, in regards to saying science is not a belief, I find it hard to think people will be able think of new theories if they don't even accept it themselves.

Science by itself isn't a belief...but humans accepting science can be counted as one. Science is a study of our surrondings and nothing else, but isn't accepting or acknowledging science something you believe in.

Are you reading what other people are replying to you? Do you comprehend the english language?

Yes, I understand what is you guys trying to say, but I think you guys don't get what I am really trying to say to you guys. What you guys are thinking what I am saying isn't really what I really mean...

I'm rather poor words I guess...

And in regards to me bringing up atheism in this topic....I thought you have mention it somewhere in your OP. And hell, why do I keep forgetting you are the OP?

Damn...my mind is getting screwed up this past few weeks...

I take back my definition of theist for you. How about retard? I think is suits you better. Why don´t you read what you are writing before hitting submit? Every single post you make has typos and some, like the one quoted above, don´t even make sense. Next time STOP and THINK before typing.

[Darth Wong]

Dude, we have this thing called "media" now. We have no problem transmitting our cultural values and behaviours.

This is true, but historically this has not been the case.

It's been the case since we started writing things down, and it's only gotten better over time.

Additionally, religious forms of indoctrination are more effective at getting the information to stick, and at getting the desired behaviors to stick. But as I say later on, it does not work as quickly so you see more short lived dramatic effects as a result of mass media that fade away relatively quickly. For example, mass media may change popular modes of dress, but what they dont change nearly as effectively is the overall culture and the values that are a part of it. For example, people in the US, due to a religion-like socialization structure, practically worship our founding fathers. This is drilled into Americans from the time we are little kids. They are on our money we use every day, information about their....indiscretions...is systematically whitewashed, we are told to marginalize people of other cultures and reject ideas that may contradict our founding father worship... The cult of personality is structured very much like that of religion.

I like the way you simultaneously concede that you don't actually need religion in order to achieve the same kind of results, by citing the same US Constitution and Founding Father example that I used, while pretending that your point about the benefits of religion is still intact.

The fact that every single culture on this planet has a set of unique rituals(or borrowed in the case of more recently developed cultures... christian socities for example borrow heavily from pre-conversion rituals...) that help identify it as opposed to other groups? The simple fact that there is not a culture on this planet, that does not share these features, is evidence to the fact that rituals and what they do for a group are heavily conserved once they arise within a population.

Since you don't need religion for cultural rituals (any national anthem proves that), this is a total non-point.

There is a reason why modern militsaries drill troops in formation. There is a reason they march to cadence, there is a reason why every tribe has its own set of rituals that identify it as a group. Because if they dont, they die.

Indoctrination and training methods work just as well without religion as they do with it. Your example only proves my point, not yours.

<snip more repetitions of the same point>

Now, these rituals do not have to be religious. There are plenty of secular rituals that do the same thing, and perform the same function. But religion provides a very convenient excuse, and a structure for these rituals.

So do other institutions, and without the ridiculous baggage of belief in made-up nonsense. The very nature of religion is to invent answers to questions with little or no basis in logic or reality whatsoever, and then cling to those answers even in the face of contradictory evidence, even if people are being hurt in the meantime.

You can almost look at it as an alliance of convenience. Or from an evolutionary perspective, evolution co-opting an existing structure, like it LOVES to do (to anthropomorphize a natural process) because religion does other things, it is more likely to get used to form the basis for rituals as well.

We're intelligent designers, not amoeba. We don't need to co-opt existing structures if we can design new and better ones.

I posted that as a thought experiment. Testable predictions can be made about this. First off, I challenge you to find a social species with no social policing mechanisms. I guarantee you, you will not find them.

What you do see, at minimum in every social species, is a reactive social policing mechanism.

There you go again, taking something universal in all human societies and acting as if it requires religion even though it demonstrably does not.

<snip more repetition of this ridiculous attempt to equate religion to all forms of social policing>

Really? Those are the only two downsides of religion that you can think of? Seriously?

From an evolutionary perspective yes. From a social and personal perspective, no. You are talking to the guy who has been beaten, scapegoated and denied legal/social equality because he is part of religion's out-group of choice.

You keep citing evolution theory as a basis for your argument, but you also repeatedly cite advantages for religion which do not in fact require religion. If they do not require religion, then they are not unique features of religion, hence religion does not confer a competitive advantage, despite your many repetitions of that claim.

The chief disadvantage of religion from a competitive perspective is not just that it does not react quickly to scientific progress, but that it actively competes with science within its sphere of influence. And science has been shown to be the ultimate competitive advantage, as the Native Americans learned the hard way.

It's worth pointing out that slavish obedience to edicts and idolatrous worship of figures is something that can and has been duplicated by secular institutions. Just look at the way Americans feel about their Constitution and notable past Presidents. They quote the Constitution with the same reverence that they quote the Bible, and usually with better knowledge of its actual contents.

I would call it a pseudoreligion. It is constructed like a religion without the supernatural element.

So when I point out that the "benefits" of religion do not require religion, you call their secular replacements "pseudo-religion" in order to salvage your argument?

[Vicious]

This is true, but historically this has not been the case. Additionally, religious forms of indoctrination are more effective at getting the information to stick, and at getting the desired behaviors to stick. But as I say later on, it does not work as quickly so you see more short lived dramatic effects as a result of mass media that fade away relatively quickly. For example, mass media may change popular modes of dress, but what they dont change nearly as effectively is the overall culture and the values that are a part of it. For example, people in the US, due to a religion-like socialization structure, practically worship our founding fathers. This is drilled into Americans from the time we are little kids. They are on our money we use every day, information about their....indiscretions...is systematically whitewashed, we are told to marginalize people of other cultures and reject ideas that may contradict our founding father worship... The cult of personality is structured very much like that of religion.

Except that, in all the cases you mentioned, there is nothing supernatural involved. Religion, by default, requires supernatural elements.

No, but you might want to provide some EVIDENCE of this being a competitive advantage.

The fact that every single culture on this planet has a set of unique rituals(or borrowed in the case of more recently developed cultures... christian socities for example borrow heavily from pre-conversion rituals...) that help identify it as opposed to other groups? The simple fact that there is not a culture on this planet, that does not share these features, is evidence to the fact that rituals and what they do for a group are heavily conserved once they arise within a population.

There is a reason why modern militsaries drill troops in formation. There is a reason they march to cadence, there is a reason why every tribe has its own set of rituals that identify it as a group. Because if they dont, they die.

We can actually make testable predictions about this. If ritual was not adaptive, at best we would see wide variance in the prevalence of rituals in various cultures. Some would have no rituals. In fact, rituals have a cost, in terms of time and energy that can be used for other things. So if rituals did not have a strong selective advantage for a group, we would expect to see no rituals at all.. We do not see this. Instead we are steeped in rituals. From national anthems to birthday songs, to funerals and weddings. We cannot escape rituals in our daily lives, unless you live as a hermit.

Now, these rituals do not have to be religious. There are plenty of secular rituals that do the same thing, and perform the same function. But religion provides a very convenient excuse, and a structure for these rituals. You can almost look at it as an alliance of convenience. Or from an evolutionary perspective, evolution co-opting an existing structure, like it LOVES to do (to anthropomorphize a natural process) because religion does other things, it is more likely to get used to form the basis for rituals as well.

And the evidence Darth Wong requested is ... where, exactly? The fact that religion is heavily ritualized makes sense because humans in general like to ritualize things. Which, when you think about it, only makes the fact that religion is man-made in the first place more obvious.

Wow, that's wonderful speculative bullshit. Got any actual EVIDENCE for the real-life effectiveness of this mechanism? Or will you just post some anecdotes?

I posted that as a thought experiment. Testable predictions can be made about this. First off, I challenge you to find a social species with no social policing mechanisms. I guarantee you, you will not find them.

What you do see, at minimum in every social species, is a reactive social policing mechanism. If social-cheating behavior is detected, it is punished. It happens when birds engage in extra-pair copulations (the punishment is usually "divorce"), when ant workers try to reproduce (they get their heads bitten off by other workers) when simians do something the group does not like, like refuse to share food (monkey beat-down) I can go on and on. Every social species. Even your cells engage in social policing. (cancer is just a set of mutations that cause a cell to maximize its reproductive success at the expense of every other cell, and the immune system combats it)

Cheating behavior still occurs and it will occur in the population proportionate to the benefit of cheating outweighing the cost. This is basic game theory, and in every test throughout every social species, it comes up with its predictions ringing true.

This is the basis of Multilevel Selection Theory.

The key to living in groups is to have the benefit of cheating outweighed by the chance of detection and the cost. And for a group to invest the resources and time in policing requires that the benefit to it outweigh the cost of implementation. For this to happen Out-group competition must outweigh In-group competition in terms of the reproductive success for the adaptive units involved.

Are you following me this far? No objections to the theory? If you have objections I can dig up and reference you to a library of peer reviewed literature on these subjects as well as textbooks. I am pulling most of this stuff from memory and coursework in behavioral ecology.

Here is a good list to get you started


Wilson DS, Near DC, Miller RR. Individual differences in Machiavellianism as a mix of cooperative and exploitative strategies. EVOLUTION AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR Volume: 19 Issue: 3


O'Gorman R, Wilson DS, Miller RR. Altruistic punishing and helping differ in sensitivity to relatedness, friendship, and future interactions. EVOLUTION AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR Volume: 26 Issue: 5

Wilson DS, Van Vugt M, O'Gorman R. Multilevel selection theory and major evolutionary transitions - Implications for psychological science. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Volume: 17 Issue: 1


Now to apply this to social policing.

The goal of social policing is to minimize cheating behavior while also minimizing the cost of policing. You can do this in one of a few ways (and societies use all of them)

1. You can decrease the benefit of cheating. This decreases the motivation to engage in cheating behavior. No one but the psychologically fucked up engages in such behavior unless they think that they get some sort of benefit out of it. This is why crime is higher when people are impoverished. They get more out of it for the risk than they would if they were well off. The solution is twofold. 1) decrease poverty directly through group-donated aid)government aid, or charity in smaller groups) and give people the means to have upward mobility. IE education. This is an aspect that secular systems are really really good at, that religious institutions are only moderately good at

2.Increase the actual risk of cheating behavior. This can be done through increased risk of detection or through increased punishment. This is what socially constructed ethical systems and justice systems are really really good at, that religion sucks at.

3) Increased the perceived but not actual risk of punishment. This is where religion excels for the obvious reasons. Belief in an afterlife.

The better your group is at these aspects of social policing on average, the better a group will be able to police itself, which means the better it will be able to compete with other groups and achieve dominance. All it is really is natural selection operating upon cultural characteristics, memes.

So, because every species engages in some form of social policing, this is evidence for the advantages of religious policing on top of pre-existing factors ... how, again?

Really? Those are the only two downsides of religion that you can think of? Seriously?

From an evolutionary perspective yes. From a social and personal perspective, no. You are talking to the guy who has been beaten, scapegoated and denied legal/social equality because he is part of religion's out-group of choice.

This thread wasn't just about the evolutionary perspective. The original idea was weighing the positive and negative influences of various religions to see which one is the least invasive/oppressive in the modern world.

Everything that religion can do for this, secularly constructed ethical systems can do equally well, without the tetchy little problem of incorporating random archaic b.s. into the list of social prescriptions. I would hardly call this an advantage of religion.

And I never said they couldnt. Really it is the way religions are constructed that allows them to do a better job at certain aspects of this than cultural institutions, but also gives them a disadvantage in others.

And frankly, from an evolutionary perspective, the bullshit spouted by religion does not matter. Or at the very least did not matter in the evolutionary history of man when our brains were forming and evolving to respond to mystical experiences. Only the results in terms of inter-group competition and intra-group policing matter to evolution.

Now, I may be willing to accept that the parameters have changed and that the bullshit spouted has become maladaptive, but as far as my look at the peer reviewed literature has shown me, that was not the case during the evolution of humans, or in the development of the various cultures that currently populate this planet.

Awesome, religions aren't as harmful to societies that are as technologically and socially primitive as the religions themselves. Except this is evidence in favor of religion in the modern world how?

It's worth pointing out that slavish obedience to edicts and idolatrous worship of figures is something that can and has been duplicated by secular institutions. Just look at the way Americans feel about their Constitution and notable past Presidents. They quote the Constitution with the same reverence that they quote the Bible, and usually with better knowledge of its actual contents.

I would call it a pseudoreligion. It is constructed like a religion without the supernatural element.

So in other words it's just like any other cause which people pursue passionately. Is fan-worship of major sports stars, to the extent that people will excuse egregious illegal activity a pseudoreligon? Is the worship of political candidates, again to the extent that their supporters will excuse illegal and immoral activity pseudoreligion? What about movie stars? If the definition of pseudoreligion is so broad that you can apply it to virtually any cause or idea which people champion and work towards passionately, than what's the point of the definition?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Is that not an authority on that subject? I fail to recognize religion playing a part on it. Here you have the advantage, that the information you receive is questioned and reviewed, therefor making it even stronger in it's argument for withstanding scrutiny.
Religious authority is NOT questioned or reviewed. Which one is superior?

Hear that swishing sound? That was the point going right over your head.

I never said in any way that religious authority was superior. Merely that if tunctioned to serve the purpose. So, you are committing a strawman

Also you are committing a fallacy of equivocation by using a different useage of the word authority from the one I used. When I said authority I meant in the dominance-heirarchy sort of way that resonates in our brains and colors all of our social institutions. Not the intellectual authority, which is a bit different.

Don't we have those rules without religion?
I'm atheist yet monogamous, so is Mr. Wong and many others. Did we guide ourselves by religious rules? Do you really think so? Besides in many western countries we have laws against polygamy, but again our laws are changeable and under review.

Strawman again. Can you argue honestly please?

Also, I am also a very morally bound atheist. A philosophical naturalist to be more precise and use an ethical system of my own construction. But that does not mean that societies did not use religion to solve evolutionary problems. The fact is, it did so very well.

I am going to hand you a clue. Religion is a complex social trait. observance of religion entails a cost. Both in resources and in risk of exploitation. Because of this, it will not arise within a population and fix, across the species, due to drift. Due to random chance. The only way this happens is by selective advantage. It may be able to become prevalent in a population under no external selective pressures. But that has not happened in the history of humanity, so there must be a strong selective pressure in favor of religion. And we are talking about biological and social evolution working in concert here.

So, how come this is exclusively religious? Do you agree that the Super Bowl is a "ritual"? Does that have anything to do with religion? Rituals can take place without religion.

Never said they were you fucking idiot. All I said was that religion did them well and because it did other things provides an easy reduced-cost justification and framework.

I challenge you and Mike, to go search through the literature and find me a society that does not have religious rituals, and only has secular ones. The more advanced a society gets, the more sophisticated their social structures, and the larger they become, I would predict that you will find more secular rituals. But the religious ones still remain at the local level. This is because human social identities exist as nested categories(family, community, town, state, nation etc) and each one of these has a different level of organization and rituals tend to be different in each one, with a state tending to have more secular rituals and getting more religious the more local they become. At least with secular states. Religious states use religious rituals all the way up the chain.

Bear in mind, I have NOT said religious rituals are superior to secular rituals. Just that religion was already there performing other functions in society and was co-opted by social evolution to provide the content of rituals.

Sort of like how the type 3 (IIRC) secretory proteins were co-opted by evolution to provide major parts of the bacterial flagellum.

Hahahaha, did you forgot the middle ages? Do I have to point this out to you?
Look, in the middle ages it was all about religion. Therefor not questioning authority AND waiting to die so you could go to paradise. Middle ages lasted about 1000 years or more. Look what they did those for over 1000 years, and look at our secular society and the past 100 years.
Which society went extinct? Which society is more profitable for the individual? Which is more advanced? Which is more efficient?

First off, another strawman. Additionally your grasps of evolutionary biology and history are pathetically weak.

In Medieval Europe,religion unified Europe and kept them from being at eachother's throats more than they already were. There is a reason that catholic church does one thing really well. Ritual. Because they were the only source of rituals on the western half of an entire continent for about a thousand years.

It was the church that managed to unify the nobility throughout europe to stop fighting eachother and go fight the muslims (a land grab didnt hurt though) and mobilize literally millions of people over the course of all the crusades, to march to almost certain death in the holy land. The middle ages are a case study in the social unification religion is capable of providing. Could you do that with secular institutions? Probably. But it would be harder(look at communism...) Assuaging the fear of death with belief in an afterlife is powerful. Just look at what religiously motivated islamic terrorists will do.

As for the modern period, what we have now happened as the result of technological advancements and the enlightenment. In other words, social evolution. But we have not gotten rid of religion. Religion has adapted to the environment it currently occupies, but has remained the same where it counts. How it is cognitively constructed in our minds and it still fills the same social purpose it has since humanity started.

The fact claims about the universe that religion passes are like spandrels between two arches. They are there by necessity of the arches and are used to place decorations. And they can change. It is the arches you have to look at. The arch that is the cognitive construction of religion that makes it resonate in our minds, the arch that is the ease of ritual construction of group identity etc. These are the characters under positive selection.

Since you pulled this example pretty much from your arse, I will do the same. The rapist has brain-damage and doesn't fear the afterlife just getting killed or imprisoned, because this would impede him to practice his favourite hobby: raping. Now in this third society of yours, people who believe in the afterlife, don't bother so much going after the rapist, because they are convinced that God will help them, and he will go to hell and therefor justice will be made. There is no need for justice in this world, because there will always be God at the end judging you. Who cares if you suffer 40, 50 years if you get paradise FOR ETERNITY. This is the recompense for being quiet, not revolting against those in power because it is God's will that they are in power. Do not question God.

That is really really funny, because you dont actually see that "In nature" very often. In fact, I would hazard that you almost never actually see this. They almost always have a component of in-world punishment attached, even if through secular institutions and not though religious ones. You may see things like the example you describe in special cases, but there are other forces at work.

Two real life examples, with different mechanisms. Bear in mind, before someone jumps down my throat in a way that is unpleasant.

I am not morally justifying this. Just pointing out that that they make sense from a psychological and evolutionary standpoint.

Islam and rape: In islam it is pretty common practice to punish the victim of rape. This would seem to go against the general example I used. But there is a problem with that line of thinking

1) It was a thought experiment and kept other variables equal, which is not the case in real societies
2) I could have used any other cheating behavior such as murder and it would have worked just as well

Before I get into this, also bear in mind. This is a hypothesis. It makes testable predictions, I just have to find a way to test it that I can get past an institutional review board.

So why in islam are women punished for being raped? Because males have all the power over resources and reproduction in middle eastern societies (for reasons that to illustrate would require me typing for pages and pages on phenotypic plasticity and mating systems in humans) as a result of this power difference males treat females as inferior, and basically property. And because these societies are often polygynous due to resource distribution, there are a lot of unmated males, as a result of this (and mated males trying to maximize their reproductive success while minimizing investment) rape is present in the population. At fairly high rates I would imagine(national stats not withstanding there is no way they are accurate due to low reporting, for obvious reasons). This presents a problem. The problem is false paternity. Individuals cannot have high reproductive fitness if the kids they invest in are not theirs. So they have to police rape. But because the ones making the rules are males and thus doing all the raping, they are not about to punish themselves... so... Religious justification for punishing the rape victim! Joy! Now, they p[robably didnt sit around and decide this in a smoking room with brandy, but the social forces that shaped the religious beliefs and social structure of the population would have pushed in this direction.

In a society where females have more power and control over reproduction or where the incentive to rape is not as large for significant portions of the population, the rapist gets punished. But even then the rapee is still punished. (take a look at all the rape-myths, victim blaming, and social stigma that happens when someone is raped, then look in a criminology journal and find low report rates that are wonderfully correlated with high acceptance of such bullshit rape myths and victim-blaming)

The second example is just a case study in cognitive dissonance. That youth pastor we all read about a couple weeks ago that killed someone decades ago and was hailed as a hero for turning himself in. Put it this way... this guy was around their children. They trusted him, they went to a murderer for guidance. They HAVE to rationalize it away. They HAVE to minimize what he did. It is not just religion that does this. Other social institutions do the same thing, and it happens more the less removed from the population the person of trust is.

I like the way you simultaneously concede that you don't actually need religion in order to achieve the same kind of results, by citing the same US Constitution and Founding Father example that I used, while pretending that your point about the benefits of religion is still intact.

I never claimed that religion was unique now did I? All I said was that religion is especially good at it because of the way it is constructed. That does not not prevent a secular institution from having a similar construction. Please dont burn strawmen, you are better than that.

Also, I apologize for re-using your example, I was writing that post while other posts were being type and we happened to use the same example.

Since you don't need religion for cultural rituals (any national anthem proves that), this is a total non-point.

Never said they did. Just that religious rituals were predominant due to evolutionary co-opting.

Additionally, I read your initial post as asking for evidence of rituals providing a selective advantage. If that was incorrect and I misread you, I apologize. If that is correct and you are getting your exercise by shifting around goalposts I would ask that you desist.

Indoctrination and training methods work just as well without religion as they do with it. Your example only proves my point, not yours.

Not really, because I was operating from the perhaps (see above) mistaken assumption that you were asking for evidence of rituals providing a selective advantage. However, if you accept that prima facia, then I can make another line of argument.

Secular rituals have to be purpose built from the group up. Religious rituals do not... of course here we come to a chicken/egg problem. Which is when we need to create a phylogeny. If we look at basal forms (tribal cultures) secular rituals are not common. They do however have lots (and lots) of religious rituals. In modern societies we have both types, apply parsimony, build your phylogenic tree. Religious rituals came first, and secular rituals are derived characteristics. Perhaps secular rituals do a better job in modern societies (we would have to generate predictions and test them, but I am very willing to provisionally accept the idea given current trends and evidence) but religious rituals came first, provided a selective advantage over groups with no rituals, and spread to the entire human species.

So do other institutions, and without the ridiculous baggage of belief in made-up nonsense. The very nature of religion is to invent answers to questions with little or no basis in logic or reality whatsoever, and then cling to those answers even in the face of contradictory evidence, even if people are being hurt in the meantime.

See above. Also, you are moving goalposts and burning strawmen now. I reiterate, I am not saying religion is better at these things in modern societies. We are probably undergoing positive selection to remove religious influence from mainstream culture (though the frequency of fundamentalism has remained constant for the last 70 years or so, at least in the US) because it is becoming divisive and maladaptive, but in our evolutionary past, religion was the only game in town and compared to the alternatives that existed at the time, was adaptive, and still is in some cultures. If you removed religion from a small east african tribe tomorrow, and changed nothing else, the tribe would collapse in upon itself or get swallowed up by its competitors.

We're intelligent designers, not amoeba. We don't need to co-opt existing structures if we can design new and better ones.

That argument might apply if we sat down and deliberately socially engineered our societies. We have not done that. Until recently it has been a more fluid, organic and evolutionary process. It is only now that we actually know enough to consciously design secular institutions to take advantage of the same mental processes and needs that religion has taken advantage of since the dawn of humanity. One of the first things that humanity started doing, one of the ways we are different than Neanderthal was the ritualistic burying of our dead with decorations and some of their possessions (IIRC on the possessions) are you going to sit there and tell me that was secular?

There you go again, taking something universal in all human societies and acting as if it requires religion even though it demonstrably does not.

never said it. did. In fact I expressly said it didnt, because we can design secular institutions to perform the same function. But in our evolutionary past this has not been the case, and there is a reason religion still persists. It helps. If it were as maladaptive as you think it never would have gotten out of cultural infancy and would have been wiped out by selection.

You keep citing evolution theory as a basis for your argument, but you also repeatedly cite advantages for religion which do not in fact require religion. If they do not require religion, then they are not unique features of religion, hence religion does not confer a competitive advantage, despite your many repetitions of that claim.

The chief disadvantage of religion from a competitive perspective is not just that it does not react quickly to scientific progress, but that it actively competes with science within its sphere of influence. And science has been shown to be the ultimate competitive advantage, as the Native Americans learned the hard way.

And here is where your argument fails miserably. Science did not exist until very recently in human history. Even a person with the grasp of history equivalent to that of third grader should know that. I ahve been speaking from an evolutionary and historical perspective throughout this engagement. So competition with science does not apply. Additionally, I never once said religion was required for these things. Only that it has been used for them, because it is constructed by nevolution in such a way as to be good at it. Did you conveniently miss parts of my posts where I specifically addressed that?

I will agree with you. Religion competes with science and deliberate social engineering in modern cultures. And it is loosing. It will either go extinct, or undergo niche partitioning where it minimizes its competition with science. Which one occurs will depend on the location and predominant culture and a bunch of other factors.

So when I point out that the "benefits" of religion do not require religion, you call their secular replacements "pseudo-religion" in order to salvage your argument? Laughing

You are chuckling at a strawman. Religion does well because it is constructed a certain way. A way that can easily be mimicked. Hmm.... mullerian mimicry not applied to aposematic coloration. Nifty.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Except that, in all the cases you mentioned, there is nothing supernatural involved. Religion, by default, requires supernatural elements.

My argument is that religion is structured in such a way that it performs a function. The supernatural element is a spandrel. It is incidental to whether or not religion performs the function it evolved to have.

And the evidence Darth Wong requested is ... where, exactly? The fact that religion is heavily ritualized makes sense because humans in general like to ritualize things. Which, when you think about it, only makes the fact that religion is man-made in the first place more obvious.

Where did I say that religion was not man-made? Of course, you will need to define man-made. Deliberately socially engineered, or man-made in the sense that it evolved from human populations in order to solve social problems?

Like I told Mike. Build a phylogeny of ritualistic practices. I can almost guarantee you that the basal groups, the ancestral forms will be tribal religious rituals, while secular rituals are derived. Hell, they probably work better than religious rituals for the things they need to accomplish in modern societies. But in the evolutionary past they did not exist and religious rituals were the only game in town.

So, because every species engages in some form of social policing, this is evidence for the advantages of religious policing on top of pre-existing factors ... how, again?

Increasing perceived risk is functionally identical to increasing actual risk. So, if you keep all other factors constant and increase the level of perceived risk, then you increase the effectiveness of social policing. And here is the empirical support.

Suck it down.

Regnerus MD. Moral communities and adolescent delinquency: Religious contexts and community social control. SOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Volume: 44 Issue: 4

Abstract: This study bridges the sociological subdisciplines of religion and criminology and examines whether religious characteristics of groups and social contexts might profitably augment social disorganization theory, providing a morally and socially organizing force in a community. Building on the "moral communities" thesis of Rodney Stark (1996), 1 test whether religion, when understood as a group property, is linked significantly with lower delinquency among individuals in schools and counties where select religious characteristics are high. Moreover, I also examine whether-as Stark suggests-the efficacy of individual religious traits is heightened in social environments where religiousness is more pronounced. Employing multilevel regression models, I test several hypotheses using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. While individual religious effects remain strongest, conservative Protestant homogeneity in both counties and schools corresponds with lower theft and minor delinquency counts. Additionally, such religious homogeneity interacts with individual-level measures of conservative Protestantism, further reducing incidence (especially of theft). I explore the mechanisms by which communities' religious characteristics likely influence individual behavior and conclude that religion is a neglected yet potentially important cultural aspect of social organization in communities.

Raven BH. Kurt Lewin address: Influence, power, religion, and the mechanisms of social control. JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES Volume: 55 Issue: 1

Abstract: A power/interaction model of interpersonal influence is applied to the analysis of religions as mechanisms of social control. The original six bases of power presented by French and Raven (1959)-coercion, reward, legitimate position, expert, referent, and informational-are expanded to include variants of these bases: personal reward and coercion and legitimacy of equity, reciprocity, and responsibility (Raven, 1992). Over centuries, certain sages, seers, and chieftains, feeling that they knew what was best for their people individually and collectively, have attempted to utilize these power resources (e.g., to counter tendencies toward murder, theft, adultery, mayhem, or harmful dietary practices). To implement power strategies, various preparatory devices were developed which include the establishment of a Deity, whose ultimate reward and coercive power is enhanced by omnipotence; whose omnipresence establishes necessary continual surveillance; and whose ultimate expertise follows from omniscience. Much of what has been developed in holy works, and in supportive art and literature can then be seen as further preparing the bases of power for social control. Tensions result when a populace that is educated to expect informational power is faced with a religion that emphasizes extreme coercion, reward, ultimate legitimate and expert power.

This thread wasn't just about the evolutionary perspective. The original idea was weighing the positive and negative influences of various religions to see which one is the least invasive/oppressive in the modern world.

Indeed. And you need a framework upon which to evaluate that now dont you? Indeed. You need to define what exactly the modern world is. You think I am being silly perhaps? Well here is a clue. Different societies are under different selective pressures. So you need to understand the selective benefits of religions and apply them to the cultures in which they exist.

EX. A religion that works marvelously for serving its evolutionary function in east africa would be horrible at doing it here. Hell, hinduism would never work if applied writ large to the US, and christianity has to be modified to fit the population of India.

So, you need to specify time, place, modifications, religion... and you need an evaluative framework. I provided Multilevel selection, cognitive dissonance and social conflict theory as a framework by which to evaluate religions past present and future impact on humanity.

So in other words it's just like any other cause which people pursue passionately. Is fan-worship of major sports stars, to the extent that people will excuse egregious illegal activity a pseudoreligon? Is the worship of political candidates, again to the extent that their supporters will excuse illegal and immoral activity pseudoreligion? What about movie stars? If the definition of pseudoreligion is so broad that you can apply it to virtually any cause or idea which people champion and work towards passionately, than what's the point of the definition?

Actually there is a distinct difference. Mopst of those things are not systematically reinforced by social structures and isolated from criticism the way religion and founding-father worship are. The construction both cultural and cognitive are different.

[Alyrium Denryle]

So. Now that my premises are out, (and not universally accepted sadly) I can get to the business of addressing directly the social good and bad of religions using the evaluative framework. IE. I can directly address the Original Post now that my criteria of choice are posted.

So lets look at some religions with each of these criteria in mind.

Judiasm. I have to specify what type of Judiasm, and I am going to go with Conservative to Orthodox Judiasm. Now, for this, I have to specify time and place. In this case, Post-Diaspora Europe. The fun part is, I can use reform Judiasm as a case study as well

Passing on Cultural Information
The basics of Orthodox Judiasm is that the Jews are in a divine and unbreakable covenant with the god YHWH and that in return for being his chosen people they are bound by the laws set forth in the Tanakh and commented on in the Talmud and other texts. in order to pass down these laws (many of which are adaptive, but I will get into that in a moment)

It is worth noting that while christians think these are moral commandments and apply to everyone, jews view most of them as arbitrary and applying only to them. They view gentiles as being bound by another set of rules which basically amount to "dont be a douche to others" that they are also bound to as part of their own laws. This is modern Judaism, not to be confused with Judaism in their genocidal period. They have not done that for a few thousand years.

As for the laws, some have been adaptive historically some have not been. At least not directly.

Take the dietary laws for example. The kashrut. Some of these have an obvious fitness advantage. Such as not cross-contaminating meat with cheese, and eating certain animals or animals in a certain condition. Not eating carrion for example, or birds of prey, or shellfish, or unconscious animal, or animals with lung diseases or pork. Considering the environment the jews "grew up in" this was a good idea. Not all of them are like this though, and I will get into that in a moment.

A lot of the purity laws, or Taharat Hamishpacha, are hygenic preventing the transmittance of possible infections relating to menstrual blood. However, the time when the woman is allowed to have sexual contact again also coincides with ovulation. This maximizes the chance of conception, thus maximizing reproductive success and minimizing the cost (and sperm depletion) Severe restrictions are also on extra-pair copulation which limits false paternity.

As an aside, the prohibition on homosexuality at least is a mistranslation. At least according to a hebrew speaking friend of mine (who is a conservative jew) there was an issue with homosexual prostitution in the temple at the time leviticus was being written (not by moses) and as a result they prohibited that. There are some subtle nuances of the language apparently that take that context into account that does not make it into english translations.

Ritual and Social Unity

Orthodix Jews have a lot of rituals and holidays that are religiously observed, in addition to laws, the sole purpose of which is to form social unity within the jewish community and reduce mixing with non-jews. You may not like this from a social point of view, but from an evolutionary point of view it is genius. It isolates them from outsiders and prevents dilution of their genes. Maximizing their reproductive success through mass kin selection as well. They dont spread, low fecundity, but they have high fidelity.

This social unity has allowed them to do some interesting things over the years. Remain unified as a people during the Diaspora, the Holocaust, etc. Hell, it helps them (along with technological advancement) to compete with numerically superior arabs in Israel, to act as one people.

Social Policing
And of course the Jews, like other social groups, have rules governing interpersonal behavior in addition to the laws. Ethics if you will. What these ethics specifically are depends on the sect of orthodox judaism you look at. But how they are socially enforced is interesting. They use a combination of loss and gain frames in order to police their system.

Gain frames being blessings from god and the community, the eventual arrival of the Messiah, return to Israel the temple being rebuilt, all of these things also feed into other practices like their rituals etc. It is a self reinforcing system of gain frames, because if you are a good jew you get to participate in the group rituals.

The loss frames are things like social ostracism and non-participation in rituals, lack of Messiah, God smiting you and everyone you know and love etc.

This combination is the most effective way to motivate someone into obeying your societal rules

There are problems though. They do not respond to change easily, which is why Reform Judaism and even Conservative Judaism exist, to be able to remain within that larger social group of Jews, but not throw out modernism while they are at it. To integrate into society without throwing away traditions that have allowed them to survive 4000 years of getting the shit kicked out of them by everyone from Egypt to France (france of all places)

[Darth Wong]

I like the way you simultaneously concede that you don't actually need religion in order to achieve the same kind of results, by citing the same US Constitution and Founding Father example that I used, while pretending that your point about the benefits of religion is still intact.

I never claimed that religion was unique now did I?

You're posting in a thread about the benefits of religion; it's right there in the fucking subject line. Since religion and secularism are mutually exclusive, only a liar or an imbecile could possibly think that something which can be done by both religion and secularism is a benefit of religion. Get it now, or would you like it written in crayon?

All I said was that religion is especially good at it because of the way it is constructed. That does not not prevent a secular institution from having a similar construction. Please dont burn strawmen, you are better than that.

Take that cloying smarmy bullshit and shove it up your ass, cocktard. You have not produced a SHRED of evidence for any of your claims of religion actually being better at producing the kind of social policing that you think is its particular benefit. Until you produce such evidence, you are nothing more than a long-winded idealogue. So where's your evidence? The fact that all major societies have historically had religion? What the fuck kind of logic is that? There are plenty of non-religious subgroups within larger societies which reject those beliefs, and always have been. So if your argument is correct, we should see some competitive advantage for the religious over the non-religious, and the only time we ever see such an advantage is when the religion are trying to massacre the non-religious: obviously not something you would call a "benefit" of religion.

So WHERE THE FUCK IS YOUR EVIDENCE, asshole?

All of your long-winded tripe is nothing more than repetition of your belief. At no point do you produce any evidence for your claim that a group with religion will necessarily outcompete a group without it. And no, posting abstracts of sociology papers doesn't cut it unless there are some real numbers to back up this assertion. Why aren't crime rates lower in areas with high church attendance, for example? Why are they actually higher?

The last time we had a debate about the value of religion in society, you trolled and lied and acted like a fucking whiny bitch when people kept calling you on your myriad assumptions, and then you stomped out of here like a bratty three year old having a temper tantrum, leaving the rest of us to watch your trail of tears as you left. Are you planning to repeat that performance, or will you actually argue the point with evidence this time?

[Vicious]

Except that, in all the cases you mentioned, there is nothing supernatural involved. Religion, by default, requires supernatural elements.

My argument is that religion is structured in such a way that it performs a function. The supernatural element is a spandrel. It is incidental to whether or not religion performs the function it evolved to have.

Your claim:

[...]The cult of personality is structured very much like that of religion.

My point was that the cult of personality was not, in fact, religious because there is no supernatural aspect to it. Founding-father worship is nationalistic, not religious.

And the evidence Darth Wong requested is ... where, exactly? The fact that religion is heavily ritualized makes sense because humans in general like to ritualize things. Which, when you think about it, only makes the fact that religion is man-made in the first place more obvious.

Where did I say that religion was not man-made? Of course, you will need to define man-made. Deliberately socially engineered, or man-made in the sense that it evolved from human populations in order to solve social problems?

Way to miss the point. You claimed that:

Group Identities

One word: Ritual. Rituals be they in the form of chanting, dance, song, death, birth, rites of passage, marriage, all of them help form shared experiences, which promote the building of a group identity. I should not even need to go into why that is adaptive for a group in competition with other groups.

Mike demanded evidence for this being a competitive advantage for religion. My point, which you missed, was that rituals are a neutral factor, because human society in general is highly ritualized.

Like I told Mike. Build a phylogeny of ritualistic practices. I can almost guarantee you that the basal groups, the ancestral forms will be tribal religious rituals, while secular rituals are derived. Hell, they probably work better than religious rituals for the things they need to accomplish in modern societies. But in the evolutionary past they did not exist and religious rituals were the only game in town.

Actually, any phylogeny going back far enough will find that they blend together and become indistinguishable. As an example, mourning and honoring the dead occurs in every example of human behavior discovered. These are highly ritualized affairs that involve tremendous complexity before religions developed as distinct entities.

So, because every species engages in some form of social policing, this is evidence for the advantages of religious policing on top of pre-existing factors ... how, again?

Increasing perceived risk is functionally identical to increasing actual risk. So, if you keep all other factors constant and increase the level of perceived risk, then you increase the effectiveness of social policing. And here is the empirical support.
Suck it down.

Regnerus MD. Moral communities and adolescent delinquency: Religious contexts and community social control. SOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Volume: 44 Issue: 4

Abstract: This study bridges the sociological subdisciplines of religion and criminology and examines whether religious characteristics of groups and social contexts might profitably augment social disorganization theory, providing a morally and socially organizing force in a community. Building on the "moral communities" thesis of Rodney Stark (1996), 1 test whether religion, when understood as a group property, is linked significantly with lower delinquency among individuals in schools and counties where select religious characteristics are high. Moreover, I also examine whether-as Stark suggests-the efficacy of individual religious traits is heightened in social environments where religiousness is more pronounced. Employing multilevel regression models, I test several hypotheses using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. While individual religious effects remain strongest, conservative Protestant homogeneity in both counties and schools corresponds with lower theft and minor delinquency counts. Additionally, such religious homogeneity interacts with individual-level measures of conservative Protestantism, further reducing incidence (especially of theft). I explore the mechanisms by which communities' religious characteristics likely influence individual behavior and conclude that religion is a neglected yet potentially important cultural aspect of social organization in communities.

What was the economic level of each community? What was the religious breakdown of the comparison community? What was the state of the educational system in each community? What level of familial interaction and learning occurred in each community? The piece you quoted simply says "I looked at this religious community and found lower instances of crime. Ergo, religion is good!", and I'm calling bullshit. If this is a tight-nit community, then social pressures can have as big an impact as religious. If the kid knows that he's going to hear about his actions not only from his family, but the majority of people in the town, he's less likely to commit the crime due to social stigmatization. Another aspect that needs to be examined is that religious communities - esp. insular ones - have a tendency to not report things that occur to the authorities. This would lead to an artificially low number of reported cases, because families/religious groups deal with it before the authorities get notified. It's not a given that this is going on, but it does have to be taken into account, and your quote doesn't go into any kind of detail on what was done to screen the data being gathered.

Raven BH. Kurt Lewin address: Influence, power, religion, and the mechanisms of social control. JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES Volume: 55 Issue: 1

Abstract: A power/interaction model of interpersonal influence is applied to the analysis of religions as mechanisms of social control. The original six bases of power presented by French and Raven (1959)-coercion, reward, legitimate position, expert, referent, and informational-are expanded to include variants of these bases: personal reward and coercion and legitimacy of equity, reciprocity, and responsibility (Raven, 1992). Over centuries, certain sages, seers, and chieftains, feeling that they knew what was best for their people individually and collectively, have attempted to utilize these power resources (e.g., to counter tendencies toward murder, theft, adultery, mayhem, or harmful dietary practices). To implement power strategies, various preparatory devices were developed which include the establishment of a Deity, whose ultimate reward and coercive power is enhanced by omnipotence; whose omnipresence establishes necessary continual surveillance; and whose ultimate expertise follows from omniscience. Much of what has been developed in holy works, and in supportive art and literature can then be seen as further preparing the bases of power for social control. Tensions result when a populace that is educated to expect informational power is faced with a religion that emphasizes extreme coercion, reward, ultimate legitimate and expert power.

Emphasis mine.
So, rulers throughout the ages have attempted to utilize religion to control their subjects. Thank you, Captain Fucking Obvious. I reiterate: what is your evidence that it's a more beneficial system than secular policing? If anything, the bolded section clearly indicates that it has negative effects when combined with education. Unless you're arguing that education is less positive than religious indoctrination.

This thread wasn't just about the evolutionary perspective. The original idea was weighing the positive and negative influences of various religions to see which one is the least invasive/oppressive in the modern world.

Indeed. And you need a framework upon which to evaluate that now dont you? Indeed. You need to define what exactly the modern world is. You think I am being silly perhaps? Well here is a clue. Different societies are under different selective pressures. So you need to understand the selective benefits of religions and apply them to the cultures in which they exist.

Actually, no you don't. You need to objectively evaluate what the religions are doing today. If Religion A is actively campaigning to eradicate homosexuality, than we can say that it is distinctly oppressive and invasive, regardless of what fucking country or culture it's doing it in. Or are human rights variable based on culture? Respecting cultural differences only goes so far.

EX. A religion that works marvelously for serving its evolutionary function in east africa would be horrible at doing it here. Hell, hinduism would never work if applied writ large to the US, and christianity has to be modified to fit the population of India.

So, you need to specify time, place, modifications, religion... and you need an evaluative framework. I provided Multilevel selection, cognitive dissonance and social conflict theory as a framework by which to evaluate religions past present and future impact on humanity.

You keep talking about a religion's "evolutionary function". You obviously missed the entire fucking point of this thread, which is to objectively evaluate religions based on their teachings and actions in the modern world. This isn't about the purpose or application of religion as a sociological construct.

So in other words it's just like any other cause which people pursue passionately. Is fan-worship of major sports stars, to the extent that people will excuse egregious illegal activity a pseudoreligon? Is the worship of political candidates, again to the extent that their supporters will excuse illegal and immoral activity pseudoreligion? What about movie stars? If the definition of pseudoreligion is so broad that you can apply it to virtually any cause or idea which people champion and work towards passionately, than what's the point of the definition?

Actually there is a distinct difference. Mopst of those things are not systematically reinforced by social structures and isolated from criticism the way religion and founding-father worship are. The construction both cultural and cognitive are different.

Founding-father worship is socially reinforced due to nationalistic tendencies, you fuckwit. Or is nationalism a religious construct as well?

[Wedge]

So. Now that my premises are out, (and not universally accepted sadly) I can get to the business of addressing directly the social good and bad of religions using the evaluative framework. IE. I can directly address the Original Post now that my criteria of choice are posted.*HUMONGOUS BRAINFART*

How is that addressing the OP moron? I said more than once, comparing the effects of religion to an outsider. Nothing you posted has to do with that. Who cares, what it says in their Torah? What they can or cannot eat? Their history isn´t important either. I wasn´t looking for the motives they do their stupid shit, just the effect it has on outsiders, which you totally failed to address.
If you wanted to spread your bullshit about how religion is "very or especially good" in fulfilling your 3 purposes, go ahead open a thread.
Besides that, secular systems or societies fulfil those purposes BETTER.
(It´s not a strawman, because I´m not saying you thought religion was better, I AM SAYING that secularism is.)
Unifying: Compare your stupid example of how religion “unified medieval Europe” with the secular European Union.
Hierarchic authority: In ancient Greece who had more power the kings or priests? In the old roman republic who had more power, the consuls or religious figures? Through history in societies where the person with the executive power wasn´t the same person as the "head of religion", who had more power? Isn´t the one with most power at the top of the hierarchy, the alpha male, the leader and therefore the authority?
Don´t worry I´ll post more when I wake up in the morning.

[Wedge]

So, because every species engages in some form of social policing, this is evidence for the advantages of religious policing on top of pre-existing factors ... how, again?

Increasing perceived risk is functionally identical to increasing actual risk. So, if you keep all other factors constant and increase the level of perceived risk, then you increase the effectiveness of social policing. And here is the empirical support.

Suck it down.

Emphasis mine.
Aha, so that's why Priests are able to rape children right? Because the perceived risk is functionally identical to actual risks. Nice. Besides, ever heard of little ritual cold "confession"? So how is religion "very good" at social policing again?

[Patrick Degan]

Mafiosi are among the most devoted Catholics you'll find anywhere. They attend mass religiously and confess sin to their priests regularly, and take penance.

Funny how that doesn't seem to stop them from committing a whole host of illegal activities including murder.

So much for the functional value of "increasing perceived risk".

[Darth Wong]

At the end of the day, if a man obeys his own personal moral code, he will usually be able to convince himself that God shares that particular moral code. Any part of the Bible which contradicts that can be safely ignored, since the document conveniently contradicts the living shit out of itself anyway. But that's just a rebuttal to the so-called "thought experiment". No rebuttal to the pro-religion evidence is required, because none was given in the first place.

I suppose one might argue that one should construct a totally logical, self-consistent religion with an impeccable and very strict moral code which is not subject to such a wide range of interpretation, and that this hypothetical religion would demonstrate the superior virtue of religion. Unfortunately, no such beast exists, because it would never be popular. Even Islam, despite the super-strict mentality of its most fanatical adherents, is widely open to interpretation.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Mafiosi are among the most devoted Catholics you'll find anywhere. They attend mass religiously and confess sin to their priests regularly, and take penance.

Funny how that doesn't seem to stop them from committing a whole host of illegal activities including murder.

So much for the functional value of "increasing perceived risk".

Replace "mafiosi" with "gangstas" and "devoted Catholics" with "enthusiastic Christian body-art and bling purchasers" if you want to reach a youth audience with that point, for that matter.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Just so you guys know, I intend on responding to everyone, in some form or another. I will probably end up modifying a few things...(because there were some...nuances I missed that I did not notice until reflecting upon them recently. One is that it it is impossible to sort given current data how religion interacts with rituals. I was only looking at one possibility and did not notice others. The other options being that religion exploits pre-existing ritual behavior supplanting secular ones and then becoming adaptive by providing the substance of new rituals [analogous to the sensory exploitation hypothesis for sexual selection] and secular rituals recently reappear, or that religion and ritual co-evolved mutualistically [analagous to the run-away hypothesis in sexual selection] with religion providing the meat for simple rituals which were selected for and grew in frequency and complexity thus increasing the frequency and complexity of religion.) There are some profound implications for this (and a few other things) that I need to consider and do research on. Which considering my current time commitments will have to be postponed to thursday evening or so (after my organic chem exam, and after the 2 day workshop/conference on multilevel selection theory that I am attending)

But I will say this.

1) I am not ignoring you all or trying to escape
2) I am trying to have an honest discussion and am not trying to rile anyone up anymore than a spirited discussion warrants
3) Mike, this is for you. I think we are talking past each other, and operating from different fundamental premises on the nature of social interactions and the formation of a personal ethic. From more careful reading of your posts it seems as if you take a more individualistic approach to ethics, one which takes an ethical system as determining what is right and wrong. I take a community approach, one in which social evolution determines what is right and wrong, with ethical systems being adopted to explain it to ourselves and aid in decision making based upon pre-internalized values (values which are taught to us by our parents and the rest of our moral community) If I am right in this, our mutual anger is basically due to the frustration that comes from talking past the other. In fact I would hazard the guess that a lot of anger shared between us over the years is due to that frustration (not all of it to be sure, but a good part)

At any rate, i am writing a response... but it will not be finished for a bit.