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Are they religious behaviors, or just human behaviors that religions were taking advantage of? Human behavior is possible, but difficult to shape on the indivi

Are they religious behaviors, or just human behaviors that religions were taking advantage of? Human behavior is possible, but difficult to shape on the individual level. There's much more inertia at larger scales and if these are things that should change, it will be very difficult.

mokus 5y ago
I feel it’s even more accurate to say they are human behaviors that take advantage of religion (or any other available power structure). In a world dominated by religion they take religious form. If we remove religion from power or power from religion, they will take whatever form allows them to thrive in the new system.
- smabie 5y ago
  Exactly, these behaviors are memetic and allow a group to continue to exist: groups without some or all of these features certainly exist but don't have the robustness or cohesion to keep themselves together for 100s or 1000s of years. Religion groups have done a very good job at fulfilling their primary purpose: to continue to exist (this purpose is not unique to religions, as continued existence is the purpose of all groups whether they accept it or not)
colechristensen 5y ago
Religion is a human behavior, all of those things (and others) tend to organize themselves into religions. Lots of people are just in a primitive religion phase having left a rather organized one and formed various disorganized group behaviors which should eventually evolve into a set of new religions (which might well look a lot different than things we currently understand as religion just as monotheism looks a lot different than polytheism)
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
Both? Take the topic of abortion. Catholics have always been against it. Southern Baptists and evangelicals were largely either indifferent or in favor of it being rare but legal until the mid 1970s when the Heritage Foundation lumped it in with a group of other things they sold as "moral issues" in an attempt to sway religious groups on economic issues. Now, given that we're talking about the South here, what issue do you think would be considered a moral issue by a majority white Southern population of that era? If you guessed segregation, give yourself a pat on the back. While the fight for segregation has largely been lost by conservatives, they took that emotional energy and kept it going with abortion and laissez-faire capitalism, basically creating an entire ideological framework from the ground up and "discovering" Biblical support for their positions. Today, evangelicals and southern baptists are steadfast in their opposition to abortion. But Roe was a Southern Baptist, and so was her lawyer, and as the article below shows (with two articles from the era of Roe embedded), https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/baptist-press-initial-reporting-on-roe-v-wade/ https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/baptist-... that was anything but "biblically settled" doctrine at the time. Funny how we went 1900+ years and abortion only became an issue in an attempt to exclude a group.
- simonh 5y ago
  Roe v Wade is a fascinating study in the evolution of US political discourse. Aside from the religious angle, the courts decision was driven by republican appointed judges who thought the government should stay out of peoples choices on this. How things change.
- kixiQu 5y ago
  This is a much longer story than the 70s gets you to, and "always been against it" is certainly a reading of the past that some prefer these days, but... > The Leges Henrici Primi, written c. 1115, treated pre-quickening abortion as a misdemeanor, and post-quickening abortion as carrying a lesser penalty than homicide. "Quickening", a term often used interchangeably with "ensoulment" or "animation", was associated with the first movement of the fetus in utero. This movement is generally felt by women sometime in the third to fifth month of pregnancy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion#Christianity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion#Christiani... (The fun sectarian conflicts back then look much, much wilder from today's viewpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism )

mokus 5y ago

I feel it’s even more accurate to say they are human behaviors that take advantage of religion (or any other available power structure). In a world dominated by religion they take religious form. If we remove religion from power or power from religion, they will take whatever form allows them to thrive in the new system.

smabie 5y ago
Exactly, these behaviors are memetic and allow a group to continue to exist: groups without some or all of these features certainly exist but don't have the robustness or cohesion to keep themselves together for 100s or 1000s of years. Religion groups have done a very good job at fulfilling their primary purpose: to continue to exist (this purpose is not unique to religions, as continued existence is the purpose of all groups whether they accept it or not)

colechristensen 5y ago

Religion is a human behavior, all of those things (and others) tend to organize themselves into religions. Lots of people are just in a primitive religion phase having left a rather organized one and formed various disorganized group behaviors which should eventually evolve into a set of new religions (which might well look a lot different than things we currently understand as religion just as monotheism looks a lot different than polytheism)

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

Both? Take the topic of abortion. Catholics have always been against it. Southern Baptists and evangelicals were largely either indifferent or in favor of it being rare but legal until the mid 1970s when the Heritage Foundation lumped it in with a group of other things they sold as "moral issues" in an attempt to sway religious groups on economic issues. Now, given that we're talking about the South here, what issue do you think would be considered a moral issue by a majority white Southern population of that era? If you guessed segregation, give yourself a pat on the back. While the fight for segregation has largely been lost by conservatives, they took that emotional energy and kept it going with abortion and laissez-faire capitalism, basically creating an entire ideological framework from the ground up and "discovering" Biblical support for their positions. Today, evangelicals and southern baptists are steadfast in their opposition to abortion. But Roe was a Southern Baptist, and so was her lawyer, and as the article below shows (with two articles from the era of Roe embedded), https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/baptist-press-initial-reporting-on-roe-v-wade/ https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/baptist-... that was anything but "biblically settled" doctrine at the time. Funny how we went 1900+ years and abortion only became an issue in an attempt to exclude a group.

simonh 5y ago
Roe v Wade is a fascinating study in the evolution of US political discourse. Aside from the religious angle, the courts decision was driven by republican appointed judges who thought the government should stay out of peoples choices on this. How things change.
kixiQu 5y ago
This is a much longer story than the 70s gets you to, and "always been against it" is certainly a reading of the past that some prefer these days, but... > The Leges Henrici Primi, written c. 1115, treated pre-quickening abortion as a misdemeanor, and post-quickening abortion as carrying a lesser penalty than homicide. "Quickening", a term often used interchangeably with "ensoulment" or "animation", was associated with the first movement of the fetus in utero. This movement is generally felt by women sometime in the third to fifth month of pregnancy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion#Christianity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion#Christiani... (The fun sectarian conflicts back then look much, much wilder from today's viewpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism )