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I have always found this 'religion justifies war' argument to be somewhat weak. I guess you can say Islamic expansion and the crusades were examples of this but

I have always found this 'religion justifies war' argument to be somewhat weak. I guess you can say Islamic expansion and the crusades were examples of this but I don't feel these sorts of conflicts would have been prevented by both sides sharing a common religion - there were plenty of wars within Christian Europe or the Islamic world, after all. Cults are central to culture, it's true but we can still show a lot of conflicts around ethnic, cultural lines that seem to lack a religiously motivated dimension. I think this line of argumentation should be retired - it's just not robust. It is an attempt to gain the moral high ground by secularists and maybe before the 19th and 20th centuries we could imagine it would be true but there have been too many secualr conflicts of a massive scale to sincerely hold this polemic in 2021.

paulryanrogers 5y ago
> Cults are central to culture, it's true but we can still show a lot of conflicts around ethnic, cultural lines that seem to lack a religiously motivated dimension. Existence of problematic non-religious frameworks doesn't negate the wrongness/harmful of religion. Both religious and non-religious memes can be bad at the same time. > I think this line of argumentation should be retired - it's just not robust. It is an attempt to gain the moral high ground by secularists... Even if you dismiss thousands of years of wasted effort and active harm there is the ongoing harm and waste still happening. This isn't harmless LARPing. People are being shamed, ostracized, and even killed in 2021 over these--at best unprovable--beliefs. Religion also encourages lazy thinking with appeals to authority, confirmation bias, and often faith over evidence.
- throwawaygal7 5y ago
  Religion does have some upsides , at a communal and individual level. If we weigh those along with the negatives who is to say what's best? Clearly, it's a human meme that has some positives and no dramatic downside that would have caused it to die out.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    > If we weigh those along with the negatives who is to say what's best? Perhaps those weakest and most marginalized by these memes. > Clearly, it's a human meme that has some positives and no dramatic downside that would have caused it to die out. Is it so clearly positive? Not in my experience. Natural selection doesn't instantaneously stop every injustice. It could be humanity had just been caught in a valley between the least bad options until it could ascend out of a malaise, like the dark ages. The Middle East has some of the most religious populations yet I wouldn't say they evolved into a beacon of human progress.
- rayiner 5y ago
  > Both religious and non-religious memes can be bad at the same time. As a framework for society at scale, Christianity gave us the western world as we know it. It gave us abolition of slavery at a time when belief in the equality of people was a religious belief that couldn't easily reconciled with the self-evident disparities in the level of development of different civilizations. Atheism gave us eugenics, communist horrors, etc. Your point is correct on its face, but the fact is that people will believe in some framework or another.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    > As a framework for society at scale, Christianity gave us the western world as we know it. Is Christianity the dominant or even a significant factor which made the western world better? > Atheism gave us eugenics, communist horrors, etc. Are you sure you're not throwing out the baby with the bath water? Racial 'purity' goes back at least to the Torah. Eugenics and other horrors aren't any more the result of atheism than Judaism or Capitalism.
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    You're confusing Christians and Christianity. The Bible seems quite OK with slavery.

paulryanrogers 5y ago

> Cults are central to culture, it's true but we can still show a lot of conflicts around ethnic, cultural lines that seem to lack a religiously motivated dimension. Existence of problematic non-religious frameworks doesn't negate the wrongness/harmful of religion. Both religious and non-religious memes can be bad at the same time. > I think this line of argumentation should be retired - it's just not robust. It is an attempt to gain the moral high ground by secularists... Even if you dismiss thousands of years of wasted effort and active harm there is the ongoing harm and waste still happening. This isn't harmless LARPing. People are being shamed, ostracized, and even killed in 2021 over these--at best unprovable--beliefs. Religion also encourages lazy thinking with appeals to authority, confirmation bias, and often faith over evidence.

throwawaygal7 5y ago
Religion does have some upsides , at a communal and individual level. If we weigh those along with the negatives who is to say what's best? Clearly, it's a human meme that has some positives and no dramatic downside that would have caused it to die out.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  > If we weigh those along with the negatives who is to say what's best? Perhaps those weakest and most marginalized by these memes. > Clearly, it's a human meme that has some positives and no dramatic downside that would have caused it to die out. Is it so clearly positive? Not in my experience. Natural selection doesn't instantaneously stop every injustice. It could be humanity had just been caught in a valley between the least bad options until it could ascend out of a malaise, like the dark ages. The Middle East has some of the most religious populations yet I wouldn't say they evolved into a beacon of human progress.
rayiner 5y ago
> Both religious and non-religious memes can be bad at the same time. As a framework for society at scale, Christianity gave us the western world as we know it. It gave us abolition of slavery at a time when belief in the equality of people was a religious belief that couldn't easily reconciled with the self-evident disparities in the level of development of different civilizations. Atheism gave us eugenics, communist horrors, etc. Your point is correct on its face, but the fact is that people will believe in some framework or another.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  > As a framework for society at scale, Christianity gave us the western world as we know it. Is Christianity the dominant or even a significant factor which made the western world better? > Atheism gave us eugenics, communist horrors, etc. Are you sure you're not throwing out the baby with the bath water? Racial 'purity' goes back at least to the Torah. Eugenics and other horrors aren't any more the result of atheism than Judaism or Capitalism.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  You're confusing Christians and Christianity. The Bible seems quite OK with slavery.