Cycling UK Forum

drossall wrote:

reohn2 wrote:That is essence is what religion is ultimately about for the majority of believers.

What's your evidence for that? People make all sorts of broad, generalising statements about other groups, such as "All cyclists jump red lights". It can be hard to answer these, even when they plainly don't match the day-to-day experience of those with any involvement in whatever is being generalised.

Second answer
Christianity's doctine is one of in(saved) or out(damned)the criteria for being saved is a believf that the saviour,Jesus,was born of a vigin fathered by God in the form of the Holy Spirit,and that he died died as a sacrifice for our sins,that he rose on the third day and ascended into heaven.If you believe that you'll be reborn and saved.
If you don't believe that you're not saved.
Other Christian based sects claim the same or similar doctines

Islam promises a similar saving if you accept that Mohamed is the final prophet and that the Koran was dictated directly to him by the arch angel Gabrial,and that Islam is the final answer and only true religion.If you don't believe and are not a Christian or Jew ie; 'of the book', you're a nobody to god and Muslims,worse still if you reject Islam you're worse than a nobody.

The fear is one of being cast out of heaven into hell if you don't toe the line and believe.

drossall wrote: ..........I'm still struggling to make all this fit the facts.

Mind you, I'm struggling equally with the account of reohn, that people believe out of fear, as the main reason too. It just doesn't seem to fit the people I've met. And it still doesn't, either, seem to respect fully their ability to reach conclusions as adults.

The fear is one of being 'out',damned.

@reohn, the idea that children are "brain-washed" from childhood again suggests that the adults whom they become cannot think for themselves. It also clashes with the experience of churches, that children of believers leave, and "unchurched" adults join. Of course, I think most would allow that children of believers are more likely to become believers themselves, but then that's not necessarily saying anything more than that you're more likely to believe something that you have been told about. We don't expect people to believe anything, even evolution, if we don't tell them first

It doesnt necessarily follow that believers children stop believing because they stop attending church,not many people these days want to or are fulfulled by attending church services especially the Anglican or RC Christian churches.It's not much fun for thinking people to be told how good God is and how much of a sinner you are and literally "we are not worthy to gather the crumbs from under your table oh lord"every Sunday

Neither of us has met either most of the cyclists in this country, or most of the Christians, or even, I suspect, a statistically-significant sample of either. Hence, I'm not sure why you see a logical difference between the two claims. Personally, I believe neither, but that's that belief word again.

I'll accept that,though the evidence for a fear based faith is there for any thinking adult,of course if you've been taught to bark from being very young youll be in dangermof thinking you're a dog

In summary, I'm not finding either ignorance of evolution, or fear, a convincing reason for belief in most people. I imagine, however, that hardly anyone except us is still in this thread, so maybe we leave it there?

We can leave it there if you wish but,what other reason is there to believe something there is no evidence of?
PS,you can PM me if you wish to carry on with the discussion.

There are sects of all the major religions that believe in universal salvation/reconciliation. So, it's not just a matter of in (saved) or out (going to hell).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universalism

Vorpal wrote:There are sects of all the major religions that believe in universal salvation/reconciliation. So, it's not just a matter of in (saved) or out (going to hell).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universalism

Agreed,and there are sects of major religions who believe in blowing themselves up in the midst of innocent people to prove a point and in the belief they'll go straight to heaven for doing it.
There are also people who think it right to kill doctors who perform abortions.
There's always the extremes of anything but the mainstream tenets of the the two major religions are as I mentioned in my previous post.

meic wrote:

Psamathe wrote:

meic wrote:......Religion is ubiquitous among successful human civilisations.

Thing is, look around and human societies are not doing particularly well ... and is religion helping or hindering those societies. My personal opinion is that these days our current prominent religions hinder those societies. It's not necessarily the religious beliefs themselves but certainly is the organisations and businesses that effectively operate those religions.

Ian

Yet they have all survived, more than you can say for any non-religious civilisation. Religion inspires people to do things that save the day, with or without god.

They have not so much survived but rather evolved and adapted, re-interpreted. Without that re-interpretation many would have disappeared.

e.g. My understanding is that Christianity has been trough many "phases" without which one would wonder if it would still be around. Most of my limited knowledge of the bible I don't remember torture in the interests of the Church being acceptable.

e.g. People sleeping on the streets whilst churches keep their doors locked. e.g. planet destroying it's climate and some churches still floodlight their buildings at night, etc.

Society has evolved and survival of something that desperately adapts to survive does not make it well suited to helping society.

Ian

They have not so much survived but rather evolved and adapted, re-interpreted.

That is what survival of the fittest in evolution terms is all about, it isnt that the biggest meanest pre-historic dinosaur will remain supreme as it was forever.
If any society ever tried to evolve and adapt on a non-religious footing its life has been so short we dont even know about it.
Evolution only cares about what works, nothing else.

drossall wrote:Then explain why people still believe it, even after being taught evolution in school? Do they still need the evolutionary benefits of belief? I'm still struggling to make all this fit the facts.

Because it's handed down. Kids take their parents/peers religion, kids take their parents/peers belief system full stop.

It's a rare thing for a child to make a break from what their parents and peers think. Sure they make little changes here and there but the most part kids and indeed all of us fall in fairly well with social norms - that's what makes them 'norms'.
Breaking away from them isn't a trivial thing.

If you really want to test whether religion is innate you need to bring up people with no exposure to it. I'm pretty certain that without the need to explain the world using a magical being - i.e. having a valid explanation ala science they wouldn't revert to religion.

A lot of hunter gatherers has very simplistic "religions". No hard and fast rules, ancestor worship and a general assumption that 'things' lived in the world they couldn't see.
It only really went tits up when it became organised and the organisations decided that everyone had to share the same belief.

It only really went tits up when it became organised and the organisations decided that everyone had to share the same belief.

This allowed stronger discipline for much larger groups, larger groups won the wars and became larger still. It may not help the individuals much but allowed the creation of nations etc which could annihilate the smaller more independently minded tribes.

meic wrote:

They have not so much survived but rather evolved and adapted, re-interpreted.

That is what survival of the fittest in evolution terms is all about, it isnt that the biggest meanest pre-historic dinosaur will remain supreme as it was forever.
If any society ever tried to evolve and adapt on a non-religious footing its life has been so short we dont even know about it.
Evolution only cares about what works, nothing else.

I think it is far far more complex than that. Society has many aspects that can contribute to it's survival for adaption. Are we the same society that was around 2000 years ago or has that society "died" and another taken it's place? I think that in terms of society the words "evolve" and "evolution" are totally different ("evolution" as in "survival of the fittest", etc.).

I wonder if our current society is adapting to exclude aspects that hinder and are no longer relevant - like religion. From memory, Anglican church in UK weekly attendance dropped below 1m for the 1st time back in 2016 (down to 750,000(?) weekly attendance) - significant decline. More and more are speaking out against the Bishops sitting in the House of Lords, etc.

In fact, do societies actually die or do the evolve (or go through revolution) whereby one could argue both that the society has died or that it has evolved.

I would be interested in examples of "If any society ever tried to evolve and adapt on a non-religious footing its life has been so short we dont even know about it." - though is suspect it is unprovable as "we dont even know about it".

Although I suspect our currwnt western society is trying to evolve and adapt on a non-religious footing as I think the primary factors affecting where we are developing are non-religious. So maybe our societies life will be so short we wont even know about it.

Ian

I wonder if our current society is adapting to exclude aspects that hinder and are no longer relevant - like religion.

I dont think that there are any valid grounds for assuming that religion hinders any society. If God didnt exist we would have to invent a deity* to create a more successful society where individuals were more willing to sacrifice for the common good.

*Which is of course what happened.

meic wrote:

I wonder if our current society is adapting to exclude aspects that hinder and are no longer relevant - like religion.

I dont think that there are any valid grounds for assuming that religion hinders any society. If God didnt exist we would have to invent a deity* to create a more successful society where individuals were more willing to sacrifice for the common good.

*Which is of course what happened.

Why? On what basis do you assume society requires religion? I don't even see our current society in the UK as needing religion (probably do better without it, but certainly not a core requirement of our society).

In many ways one can think of religion as providing an explanation for observed phenomena we have no other explanation for. As our science has now provided those explanations (answers accepted by the religions), we no longer need religion to provide those explanations. For example we now understand the processes that result in the rains so no longer need to use "god" as the explanation and no longer have o worship that god to ensure the rains come and that he does not withhold them because he's angry with us, no longer need to make those sacrifices, etc.

Ian

Why? On what basis do you assume society required religion?

One major reason is evolution, all successful societies have a religious base.
None of the attempts to remove religion have led to successful societies, one obvious example being attempts by "Communism" in Russia, China and Cuba.

It is generally a useful tool in getting individuals to put the society above self, it appears to have a greater success in this regard than anything else I can see in history.
The Roman Catholic Church has outlived every other human organisation hasnt it?

meic wrote:

Why? On what basis do you assume society required religion?

One major reason is evolution, all successful societies have a religious base.
None of the attempts to remove religion have led to successful societies, one obvious example being attempts by "Communism" in Russia, China and Cuba.

It is generally a useful tool in getting individuals to put the society above self, it appears to have a greater success in this regard than anything else I can see in history.
The Roman Catholic Church has outlived every other human organisation hasnt it?

I think there is confusion about "evolution" as I said before, a society "evolving" and the term "evolution" (as applied to survival of the fittest, etc.) are very different when discussing society.

As far as I'm aware Russian society survives, Chinese society survives, Cuban society survives. Religion is in some respects a means to control the population, for leaders to maintain power. Putin uses religion very cleverly.

I don't consider society in the UK today has "a religious base" and I certainly don't see Christianity in the UK as motivating people to put society before themselves (in fact I see local churchgoers round me putting themselves before the good of society). e.g. do people really think the Catholic Church puts the interests of society before its own interests?

And it's far more complex that saying that societies we see all have religious basis so it must be what enables them to survive. As I said before, until relatively recently in human history many natural phenomena were unexplained and scary and not understood and hurt people and religion stepped-in and provided that explanation (e.g. storms and flood come and kill people because those people have made god angry so you need to give the church more money ...). In many societies in history political power and religion were basically the same thing so assuming it is the religion that held things together would need a more detailed proof. And when a society ended there can be many reasons and it may have nothing to do with religion. Were the Central & South American societies that (supposedly) dies out really religious or did they just accept the power of their leaders and that those leaders claimed to be related to God was maybe something of an irrelevance.

Certainly some of the "societies" we consider to have disappeared in reality have not. When I was travelling Belize some time ago I was surprised to discover that the Maya are still around today. Everything I had read spoke about them as having disappeared, but still around, maybe not building quite the same cities and monuments as those before them but still around.

Is the Roman Catholic Church you describe as "as outlived every other human organisation" the same organisation as it was e.g. 540 years ago? (I hope it is not). Certainly there are cultured and beliefs that have lasted far far longer than the Catholic Church (e.g. Mayan)

Ian

e.g. do people really think the Catholic Church puts the interests of society before its own interests?

That is where the interests of society have different meanings.
With respect to the (Darwinian) survival of a society the "interests of society" are rather different to a modern liberal meaning of "the interests of society".
The Victorian times were the pinnacle of the UK's success as a society and possibly the worst time ever for the majority of its people. The strong discipline and oppression of the masses was excellent for the expansion and survival of the Empire.
It was later as decadence started to set in and we started treating the masses with some care that things started going downhill for the Empire.

Now in the modern nonreligious UK we are heading down while the more religious other nations are on the way up.

meic wrote:

e.g. do people really think the Catholic Church puts the interests of society before its own interests?

That is where the interests of society have different meanings.
With respect to the (Darwinian) survival of a society the "interests of society" are rather different to a modern liberal meaning of "the interests of society".
The Victorian times were the pinnacle of the UK's success as a society and possibly the worst time ever for the majority of its people. The strong discipline and oppression of the masses was excellent for the expansion and survival of the Empire.
It was later as decadence started to set in and we started treating the masses with some care that things started going downhill for the Empire.

Now in the modern nonreligious UK we are heading down while the more religious other nations are on the way up.

meic wrote:

Why? On what basis do you assume society required religion?

One major reason is evolution, all successful societies have a religious base.

You still have not said why successful societies have a religious base (or given any evidence that that is the case).

Also I would question Darwinian Evolution necessarily applying so "societies".

Also I would question "The Victorian times were the pinnacle of the UK's success as a society".

I would also question "Religion inspires people to do things that save the day, with or without god"

You seem to be attributing a lot to religion without any evidence.

As I said ages ago, it is all far more complex than simply assuming that Darwinian Evolutionary principles apply to society and if they also happen to have "religious" beliefs then their survival is down to those "religious beliefs" rather than despite those religious beliefs.

As we learn more about things so the names and explanations we have for things changes. Many explanations as to how things worked and causes used to be "God", then we started learning more about the physical world and the explanations changed to things like gravity, radiation, magnetism, weather systems, Coriolis forces, etc., etc.. Before our understanding developed "God" was as much an explanation of the physical world as a religion.

Ian