6 ms·

Except Sweden is in the top 5 in anti-depressant use. I think the problem here is that we can dismiss religion wholesome, perhaps even all spirituality, but the

Except Sweden is in the top 5 in anti-depressant use. I think the problem here is that we can dismiss religion wholesome, perhaps even all spirituality, but there's nothing to cushion the fall. Perhaps its a little arrogant to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think its clear that reality is far from explained and selling people on the idea of a nihilistic existence that is meaningless may not be good for humanity, nor actually be accurate. Are we certain science has solved all major mysteries and our cosmology is pretty much close to perfect? How do we know we're not Newton, unable to see Einstein coming, for example? Maybe we can't ever know. I'm not exactly sure where religion or spirituality fits in with the modern lifestyle, but I suspect it has a place still. As much as I like visiting nordic regions, the lack of smiles and cold attitudes really reflects something I consider wrong and off-putting especially as the son of European immigrants from a 'family' centered society and a liberal US citizen who certainly sees value in the collective, even if the electorate does not. I don't think evolution made us to be asocial, anti-family, anti-spiritual, anti-collective, etc and expect us to be satisfied with the end result (everyone in therapy and on pills for mood issues and complaining about lonliness and lack of meaning constantly). From a personal perspective, adding a touch of meditation and some lightweight Buddhism and Eastern thought has really upped the quality of my life. Perhaps I'm engaging in an evangelical folly here but the facts do remain that the more atheistic a society the more you see depression and suicide appear, once we correct for depression caused by economic issues or warfare or political instability. Maybe this is an issue that'll solve itself somehow, but I do wonder if we ran too hard towards atheism/materialism, when we should have jogged more towards more liberal and 'lighter' religion, personal spiritual practice, or just plain-jane agnosticism.

maxerickson 10y ago
I think its clear that reality is far from explained and selling people on the idea of a nihilistic existence that is meaningless may not be good for humanity, nor actually be accurate. That's certainly not an accurate description of secular viewpoints.
fsloth 10y ago
"Except Sweden is in the top 5 in anti-depressant use. I think the problem here is that we can dismiss religion wholesome, perhaps even all spirituality, but there's nothing to cushion the fall." Correlation does not mean causality. Saying atheism leads to anti-depressant use is like saying eating ice cream makes people drown. (Yes, I borrowed that from the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...). "I think its clear that reality is far from explained and selling people on the idea of a nihilistic existence that is meaningless may not be good for humanity, nor actually be accurate." Secularism has nothing to do with nihilism or meaninglessness. Nor lack of spirituality. Atheism does not mean anti-spirituality. It just means non-belief in any of the established deities. I think you mean - people need spirituality. I have no objections to that. " the lack of smiles and cold attitudes really reflects something I consider wrong and off-putting especially " Now you are making judgements based on perceptions on different culture. I fail to see how that connects with anything else you said, except that you don't like unsmiling people. Yes, nordic people actually seem cold and distant to some due to the fact of manners being different. Two pairs of sisters meet - one is nordic, the other of a culture with more vivid body language. The nordic people say hi and stand apart, the other hug, kiss and coo. That does not mean the love between the nordic people is any less strong. To exaggerate only a little bit, a typical french way of welcoming another person with hugs and kisses can be interpreted in the nordic countries as a sexual assault. One of the facets of nordic culture is that I'm not really alone anywhere - not in the brutal survivalist sense anyway. If I actually need help, I'm 100% sure I will get it, no matter where in nordic countries I am and to whom I'm talking. This is perhaps one of the reasons the ties with the social safety net do not appear as exaggerated as else where - we don't need to assure each others that when we need help, someone will be there. It's expected as a basic custom and facet of nordic societies. "I don't think evolution made us to be asocial, anti-family, anti-spiritual, anti-collective, et" Um, where did that come from. We were discussing how nordic people are unfriendly secularists and now you are confusing it with lots of other things by way of associating it with the earlier comments. Yes, religion is conflated with communal activities is several places. Being atheist does not mean being anti-community or anti anything else, except that 1. you don't want to believe thousand year old fairy tales no more 2. you don't want to hand off political authority to third party wankers just because they've progressed in the power structure enabled by the said fairy tales. I totally fail to see how current religions can provide us with any tenable long term solutions - we are in a dire need of better spiritual frameworks. I agree, Buddhism has many attractive aspects - but, also lots of dogma. The deeper western people actually dip into it the more obvious it becomes. Meditation is cool. Also, it needs no metaphysical framework to function, just posture and breathing. " the more atheistic a society the more you see depression and suicide appear, once we correct for depression caused by economic issues or warfare or political instability" I would really like the references to that claim. If we take the hypothetical claim as a fact that the more secular societies are more unhappy, that also correlates with the generic economic and educational status of the said society, as well as the relative increase of urban population versus rural. If we take blunt correlates then we might as well claim that increased wealthy urbanization causes unhappiness and atheism. But the problem is - without any sound theory to explain our findings we are no less the silly. Hunting for correlates in any statistics is one of the cargo cult methods of science and not very effective method of discovery. Religions have intertwined themselves with all sorts of positive things like knitting societies and whatnot (as a crude example). Now, to denounce the deity of the religion and the old texts does not mean denouncing the knitting society. It just strips the old texts of their false eminence and cuts down the political authority of the priesthood if it's based purely on doctrinal concepts. I can agree on one thing with you - if people meditated more the world would probably be a happier place.
mikeash 10y ago
We should never be afraid of the truth. If scientific investigation doesn't support spirituality (it hasn't so far, and there's no sign of that changing) then we should be able to find better ways to satisfy people's needs rather than clinging to myths.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Should we ever be afraid of admitting that science has a limited scope and things like spirituality could be outside its scope? That seems to be an acceptable fear right now.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Spirituality does indeed seem to be outside the scope of science, because it's not real. If it were real, it ought to be amenable to scientific investigation. The notion that it's real but can't be scientifically investigated makes no sense to me.
    - fsloth 10y ago
      Spirituality is not outside of science. We can study humans in the psychological states raised by practices in the spiritual traditions http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/dalai-lama-neuroscience-compassion/397706/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/dalai-lama.... The challenge from scientific point of view with human traditions is that they are a mishmash of established techniques affecting measurable outcomes and superstition, and sometimes it's quite hard to tell from the point of view of an outsider which is which.
      - mikeash 10y ago
        To the extent that spirituality encompasses aspects of psychology then clearly it can be studied, but it hardly seems useful to call it "spirituality" then.
- fsloth 10y ago
nitrogen 10y ago
Except Sweden is in the top 5 in anti-depressant use Anti-depressant use is also very high in Utah, a very religious US state. So religion or a lack thereof is not an obvious solution.

maxerickson 10y ago

I think its clear that reality is far from explained and selling people on the idea of a nihilistic existence that is meaningless may not be good for humanity, nor actually be accurate. That's certainly not an accurate description of secular viewpoints.

fsloth 10y ago

"Except Sweden is in the top 5 in anti-depressant use. I think the problem here is that we can dismiss religion wholesome, perhaps even all spirituality, but there's nothing to cushion the fall." Correlation does not mean causality. Saying atheism leads to anti-depressant use is like saying eating ice cream makes people drown. (Yes, I borrowed that from the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...). "I think its clear that reality is far from explained and selling people on the idea of a nihilistic existence that is meaningless may not be good for humanity, nor actually be accurate." Secularism has nothing to do with nihilism or meaninglessness. Nor lack of spirituality. Atheism does not mean anti-spirituality. It just means non-belief in any of the established deities. I think you mean - people need spirituality. I have no objections to that. " the lack of smiles and cold attitudes really reflects something I consider wrong and off-putting especially " Now you are making judgements based on perceptions on different culture. I fail to see how that connects with anything else you said, except that you don't like unsmiling people. Yes, nordic people actually seem cold and distant to some due to the fact of manners being different. Two pairs of sisters meet - one is nordic, the other of a culture with more vivid body language. The nordic people say hi and stand apart, the other hug, kiss and coo. That does not mean the love between the nordic people is any less strong. To exaggerate only a little bit, a typical french way of welcoming another person with hugs and kisses can be interpreted in the nordic countries as a sexual assault. One of the facets of nordic culture is that I'm not really alone anywhere - not in the brutal survivalist sense anyway. If I actually need help, I'm 100% sure I will get it, no matter where in nordic countries I am and to whom I'm talking. This is perhaps one of the reasons the ties with the social safety net do not appear as exaggerated as else where - we don't need to assure each others that when we need help, someone will be there. It's expected as a basic custom and facet of nordic societies. "I don't think evolution made us to be asocial, anti-family, anti-spiritual, anti-collective, et" Um, where did that come from. We were discussing how nordic people are unfriendly secularists and now you are confusing it with lots of other things by way of associating it with the earlier comments. Yes, religion is conflated with communal activities is several places. Being atheist does not mean being anti-community or anti anything else, except that 1. you don't want to believe thousand year old fairy tales no more 2. you don't want to hand off political authority to third party wankers just because they've progressed in the power structure enabled by the said fairy tales. I totally fail to see how current religions can provide us with any tenable long term solutions - we are in a dire need of better spiritual frameworks. I agree, Buddhism has many attractive aspects - but, also lots of dogma. The deeper western people actually dip into it the more obvious it becomes. Meditation is cool. Also, it needs no metaphysical framework to function, just posture and breathing. " the more atheistic a society the more you see depression and suicide appear, once we correct for depression caused by economic issues or warfare or political instability" I would really like the references to that claim. If we take the hypothetical claim as a fact that the more secular societies are more unhappy, that also correlates with the generic economic and educational status of the said society, as well as the relative increase of urban population versus rural. If we take blunt correlates then we might as well claim that increased wealthy urbanization causes unhappiness and atheism. But the problem is - without any sound theory to explain our findings we are no less the silly. Hunting for correlates in any statistics is one of the cargo cult methods of science and not very effective method of discovery. Religions have intertwined themselves with all sorts of positive things like knitting societies and whatnot (as a crude example). Now, to denounce the deity of the religion and the old texts does not mean denouncing the knitting society. It just strips the old texts of their false eminence and cuts down the political authority of the priesthood if it's based purely on doctrinal concepts. I can agree on one thing with you - if people meditated more the world would probably be a happier place.

mikeash 10y ago

We should never be afraid of the truth. If scientific investigation doesn't support spirituality (it hasn't so far, and there's no sign of that changing) then we should be able to find better ways to satisfy people's needs rather than clinging to myths.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Should we ever be afraid of admitting that science has a limited scope and things like spirituality could be outside its scope? That seems to be an acceptable fear right now.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Spirituality does indeed seem to be outside the scope of science, because it's not real. If it were real, it ought to be amenable to scientific investigation. The notion that it's real but can't be scientifically investigated makes no sense to me.
  - fsloth 10y ago
    Spirituality is not outside of science. We can study humans in the psychological states raised by practices in the spiritual traditions http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/dalai-lama-neuroscience-compassion/397706/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/dalai-lama.... The challenge from scientific point of view with human traditions is that they are a mishmash of established techniques affecting measurable outcomes and superstition, and sometimes it's quite hard to tell from the point of view of an outsider which is which.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      To the extent that spirituality encompasses aspects of psychology then clearly it can be studied, but it hardly seems useful to call it "spirituality" then.
fsloth 10y ago

nitrogen 10y ago

Except Sweden is in the top 5 in anti-depressant use Anti-depressant use is also very high in Utah, a very religious US state. So religion or a lack thereof is not an obvious solution.