Religion's value questioned

[Baby Nemesis]

Basically we agree, I think, but I have a couple of objections:

I don’t think that Marx, ”compassionately” or otherwise, said ”that the people shouldn't be deprived of religion until their living conditions had improved enough that they didn't need such a thing”.

Perhaps I was over-stating what Marx said a bit. But I wasn't suggesting he had anything good to say about religion in itself.

For years, I'd often heard the phrase, "Marx said religion was the opium of the masses", and it sounded as if he was just making a demeaning comment, casting a slur on religion in the same way that some people say belittling contemptuous things like, "Religious people are just weak people who need an emotional crutch to cope with life". But then I read the quote in context, and realised Marx wasn't being demeaning, but rather had a more sympathetic take on things. I took him to be saying it was natural for people to be religious, given the oppressive conditions they lived under, and if they were to give up religion, their living conditions would need to be improved so they could do without it, and one shouldn't happen without the other:

... Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

(He also didn’t recommend opium addiction as a way of tackling the suffering caused by capitalism.)

I didn't say he did. He probably recognised that although opium could be good for things like pain relief, hence one reason he may have used it as a metaphor for religion, it could have detrimental effects that religion doesn't have in itself.

And you have to admit that former socialist countries managed to render religion almost non-existent.

Not always in benign ways though.

I hope that you know that a guy like Hitler accused the Jews of being ”corrupt selfish money-grubbers who habitually lied and had harmed the country rather than improving it

Did he?! I didn't realise that. I'm going to have to get out my old copy of Mein Kampf again to remind myself what it says. :-7 Funny how the description fits today's politicians so well. Perhaps it also fitted the Nazis, and Hitler had just looked in the mirror and was thinking about himself, but because of his obsession with Jews, what he said came out as if he was referring to Jews. A kind of reverse Freudian slip. :-7

What is good for the country is usually achieved at the expense of its impecunious citizens.

When I referred to the good of the country, I meant the good of its citizens in general, not what would advance its status best.

 

[dann]

I took him to be saying it was natural for people to be religious, given the oppressive conditions they lived under, and if they were to give up religion, their living conditions would need to be improved so they could do without it, and one shouldn't happen without the other:

Maybe this is hair splitting, but I want to make sure that we are not on different wavelengths:
I don’t think that Marx would ever describe it as natural for people to be religious, but if you mean to say that religious ideas are a wrong but very understandable reaction to having to cope with a ”heartless world” and a ”vale of tears”, then I agree.
The problem is that it is up to the same people to overthrow the ”soulless conditions” that makes them long for the consolation of religion.

He probably recognised that although opium could be good for things like pain relief, hence one reason he may have used it as a metaphor for religion, it could have detrimental effects that religion doesn't have in itself.

Still, you make it sound as if he might want to recommend religion as the lesser of two evils. I think that it was probably a reference to the opium addiction of the upper classes:

Public concern over opiates, which was influenced by the Temperance Movement, was directed at opiate use by the lower classes. It was believed that working women in industrial towns doped their babies when they went to work. The upper classes could have their addictions, but not the working class, who needed to be protected from themselves
(…)
In 1868, Parliament passed the Pharmacy Act, which restricted the sale of drugs to pharmacists’ shops. It was harder for the masses to get drugs, but use by the upper classes did not change. Although consumption fell, it returned to normal levels with a few years of the act.

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cach...es"&cd=3&hl=da&ct=clnk&gl=dk&client=firefox-a

(However, Marx wrote his critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right much earlier than 1868.)

Not always in benign ways though.

No, and the malign ways are other examples of an idealist approach to criticizing religion. Not only brutal but also very inefficient.

Did he?! I didn't realise that. I'm going to have to get out my old copy of Mein Kampf again to remind myself what it says. :-7 Funny how the description fits today's politicians so well. Perhaps it also fitted the Nazis, and Hitler had just looked in the mirror and was thinking about himself, but because of his obsession with Jews, what he said came out as if he was referring to Jews. A kind of reverse Freudian slip. :-7

No, he was referring to Jews. Not the Jews of reality, though, but the Jews of his nationalist delusions. As a nationalist he was pretty consistent. He did not see any difference between the nation and its people, which is why he considered the ultimate sacrifice for the nation to be the ultimate self-fulfilment. This is also the reason why he blamed gipsies, Jews (and communists, of course) for the decline of his beloved nation: foreigners and internationalists, all ‘vaterlandslose Gesellen’. That most Jews did not see themselves in this manner (and some ‘Jews’ did not even think of themselves as anything but Germans) did nothing to stop the delusion, which he shared with an awful lot of other nationalists. (Nationalists are always unable to criticize fascism.)

When I referred to the good of the country, I meant the good of its citizens in general, not what would advance its status best.

However, there are no “citizens in general”. Investment bankers are very different from workers. What’s good for one usually isn’t for the other, which is what necessitates class struggle. Patriotism is a way of ignoring this necessity and it is even more prevalent than religion.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

I don’t think that Marx would ever describe it as natural for people to be religious, but if you mean to say that religious ideas are a wrong but very understandable reaction to having to cope with a ”heartless world” and a ”vale of tears”, then I agree.

That's what I took Marx to be saying he believed.

The problem is that it is up to the same people to overthrow the "soulless conditions" that makes them long for the consolation of religion.

Only partly. Did Marx ever specify Exactly what it was about religion that he thought was hampering the working classes from improving their lot?

I mean, for example, did he think people would have to reach rock bottom in order to be motivated to organise to improve things for themselves, so religion prevented that because it made them too contented to do it? If so, the same criticisms he levelled at religion would have to be levelled at things like loving family relations, or any fun they did manage to have, since that would have a similar effect.

Or did he mean that religion could motivate people to provide some level of social services, which would prevent them from becoming so discontented they'd do something major in order to gain wholesale improvements in their condition?

Or was he arguing, like some have, that the people were taught the Bible verses about working hard for employers, and led to believe that they should never protest and be resigned to their fate, so they wouldn't be motivated enough to improve their conditions in large enough numbers to achieve anything significant?

Or what?

I would personally think there were far greater obstacles in their way than religion. Poverty itself would have been one of them - if they couldn't amass the financial resources necessary to challenge the authorities, they were a lot less likely to be able to do it successfully.

They did manage to organise more and more successfully though, despite religion and evrything else. Here's a brief timeline of the development of unions in the UK. And here's a brief history of UK unions that goes into quite a bit more detail.

There was a growing level of activism, and unions became very popular.

But significant changes were brought about by concerned Middle Class reformers fighting for change from outside. See a fairly brief document: How and why did working conditions for the masses improve 1834-1948?

The decline of religion doesn't seem to have been much of a factor in any of that. In fact, it was partly the religious beliefs of some reformers that led them to campaign so vigorously for improvements in working and living conditions for the people. See, for instance, What 19th-century British reformers teach us about Christian social action today. I expect they also had other reasons for getting involved in social reform apart from the ones specified in that article. Several of the most influential social reformers were committed Christians who believed their Christianity was partly what influenced them.

However, there are no “citizens in general”. Investment bankers are very different from workers. What’s good for one usually isn’t for the other, which is what necessitates class struggle.

True, on the face of it/in the short term. But it's possible to improve the lot of underprivileged citizens without actually harming the rich, and the rich can, after perhaps protesting at first, discover they benefit from the social improvements. For instance, the rich may not have seen the need for the introduction of the national health service in Britain in 1948, having no problems affording medical care, and perhaps feeling penalised at first at having to pay taxes for other people's healthcare. But there can't be many around now who'd object to its existence, since they will themselves have benefited. Rich employers might protest if working hours are shortened by law so they can't drive their employees so hard. But if they then discover that productivity actually rises, because there's a healthier and happier workforce who don't take so many days off for sick leave, which is possible, they may realise it was a good idea.

 

[AWPrime]

I qould like some feedback on this thought:

Some religions/cults deliberately keep the living conditions down in such a way that it benefits their religion. Like the Taliban preventing girls from going to school.

 

[dann]

Or the pope denouncing condoms. (We don't need exotic examples of this, do we?)
It's fairly obvious that religion must be the enemy of enlightened education and/or pleasure for pleasure's sake.

 

[dann]

Only partly. Did Marx ever specify Exactly what it was about religion that he thought was hampering the working classes from improving their lot?

Yes, but .... Marx was a revolutionary so he would have wanted the workers to 'improve their lot' by overthrowing capitalism since capitalism was the reality of their "vale of tears". He also did not approach the problem in the manner of a modern revisionist (i.e. the whole CP movement), who would ascribe to the good working class the noble role of fighting against evil capitalists for the sake of high ideals (the progress of history and stuff like that). So he would be asking why they were doing what they were doing, not why they weren't doing what they were supposed to do according to the high ideals.

I mean, for example, did he think people would have to reach rock bottom in order to be motivated to organise to improve things for themselves, so religion prevented that because it made them too contented to do it? If so, the same criticisms he levelled at religion would have to be levelled at things like loving family relations, or any fun they did manage to have, since that would have a similar effect.

No, he didn't. And you are making it much too easy for yourself now. Instead of reading what he wrote, you just pick out the line about "the opium of the people and start imagining what it could possibly mean! You have the idea that Marx said that religion is mainly alleviating the pain, thus actually a pleasure. Therefore you compare it with things like "fun" (!!!) and wonder if Marx was the kind of guy who would prefer life to be living hell for workers so they would get off their ***es and rise in rebellion already!
However, you completely forget what ought to be a matter of course for people in this forum:
Religion does not simply make people contented by being merely a pleasurable experience! Like drugs - and unlike loving (family or otherwise) relations or fun (usually) - it makes them contented by screwing with their minds. Religion is a delusion, and you don't need to have a lot of experience with believers to discover how false and therefore strenuous the alleged happiness of religious people is.
In my Baptist Sunday school we used to sing this song (in my translation):

"I am happy, I am happy, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I am happy, I am happy, 'cause Jesus is my best friend." (In the second stanza in reverse order: "on Sunday, Saturday, Friday ...")

I was usually quite happy but mainly because I liked to sing, which is why I put up with having to sing about this ubiquitous Jesus guy, who was never there anyway.
I mean, if you are actually soooo happy all the time because Jesus is your best friend, you wouldn't have to sing about it the whole time. It is very exhausting having to persuade yourself of a delusion, and therefore "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness."

Or did he mean that religion could motivate people to provide some level of social services, which would prevent them from becoming so discontented they'd do something major in order to gain wholesale improvements in their condition?

No. Does anything at all seem to indicate that this was his point?
Again: So discontented that ... is not the point! I mean, they are already so discontented that they invent an alternative world, an imaginary world, a fantasy world. Discontented is not the point. Understanding the conditions that produce the discontent is.

Or was he arguing, like some have, that the people were taught the Bible verses about working hard for employers, and led to believe that they should never protest and be resigned to their fate, so they wouldn't be motivated enough to improve their conditions in large enough numbers to achieve anything significant?

There are actually Bible verses "about working hard for employers"? I find it hard to believe! But the Bible is all about serving. In Dylan's version: "You gotta serve somebody." Yes, unfortunately you do, which is what bugs revolutionaries about the present mode of production. And this is also one of the things that Che Guevara got all wrong when day-dreaming about the Soviet Union:
“Cold efficiency and impotent resentment go hand in hand in the big mine, linked despite the hatred by the common need to survive, on the one side,”(so far so good!) and to speculate on the other … maybe one day, some miner will joyfully take up his pick and go and poison his lungs with a smile. They say that’s what it’s like over there, where the red blaze dazzling the world comes from. So they say. I don’t know.”
Longing for a society that is worthy of your self-sacrifice is a perversion more akin to a religious sentiment than to a revolutionary one. He deserves credit for not wanting Cubans to live up to his ideal of unselfishness.

Or what?

Read what the guy actually wrote. It is no big deal - in spite of his fondness of metaphors. (He was very young when he wrote this!):

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm

I would personally think there were far greater obstacles in their way than religion. Poverty itself would have been one of them - if they couldn't amass the financial resources necessary to challenge the authorities, they were a lot less likely to be able to do it successfully.

Remember that poverty is what makes them seek the consolation of religion .. instead of overthrowing the conditions that make them poor.

They did manage to organise more and more successfully though, despite religion and everything else. Here's a brief timeline of the development of unions in the UK. And here's a brief history of UK unions that goes into quite a bit more detail.

There was a growing level of activism, and unions became very popular.

But significant changes were brought about by concerned Middle Class reformers fighting for change from outside. See a fairly brief document: How and why did working conditions for the masses improve 1834-1948?

It is true: What middle-class reformers do is to reform. They worry about workers health because they want workers to …. work, not die, an attitude criticized by Oscar Wilde when he turned one of their slogans upside down:
”Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”
But their activities haven’t really stopped exploitation, have they? Nor have trade unions put a stop to exploitation but only managed to regulate the terms of the exploitation.

The decline of religion doesn't seem to have been much of a factor in any of that. In fact, it was partly the religious beliefs of some reformers that led them to campaign so vigorously for improvements in working and living conditions for the people. See, for instance, What 19th-century British reformers teach us about Christian social action today. I expect they also had other reasons for getting involved in social reform apart from the ones specified in that article. Several of the most influential social reformers were committed Christians who believed their Christianity was partly what influenced them.

Yes, I guess so. What is your point? Nobody’s claimed that Christians are evil. They tend to be a very charitable lot, especially for Christmas.

True, on the face of it/in the short term. But it's possible to improve the lot of underprivileged citizens without actually harming the rich, and the rich can, after perhaps protesting at first, discover they benefit from the social improvements. For instance, the rich may not have seen the need for the introduction of the national health service in Britain in 1948, having no problems affording medical care, and perhaps feeling penalised at first at having to pay taxes for other people's healthcare. But there can't be many around now who'd object to its existence, since they will themselves have benefited. Rich employers might protest if working hours are shortened by law so they can't drive their employees so hard. But if they then discover that productivity actually rises, because there's a healthier and happier workforce who don't take so many days off for sick leave, which is possible, they may realise it was a good idea.

Unfortunately the world does not look like that, BN.
‘Why cannot we all just be happy and get along?’ is an attitude that refuses to see the basis for the actual disagreement, the contradictory interests in this society.
Yes, rich employers not only ”might protest if working hours are shortened” – by law or otherwise, they actually do, and in some countries even reformers, good Christians, tend to die at a very early age.
And notice what the attitude of your shrewd employers depend on – even in your very non-confrontational fantasy: ”But (!) if (!) they then discover that productivity actually rises, because there's a healthier and happier workforce who don't take so many days off for sick leave, which is possible, they may realise it was a good idea”

Yes, you are right: Capitalists tend to be very fond of raising productivity and lowering costs and reducing absence, and when they raise productivity, lower costs and reduce absenteeism by making people work harder, lowering wages and threatening employees with dismissals, they don’t do so because they want to make their employees unhealthier and unhappier.
That’s not the purpose, it’s just the consequence.

I can recommend these pages about the reality of capitalism and euphemistic descriptions of it
http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/capitalindex.htm
http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/moralityindex.htm

Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

Hey, not so fast

Or the pope denouncing condoms. (We don't need exotic examples of this, do we?)
It's fairly obvious that religion must be the enemy of enlightened education and/or pleasure for pleasure's sake.

Only in its extreme forms. You're making a generalisation. After all, not even all Catholics agree with the pope; and there are Muslims who don't like the extremism of the Taliban.

No, he didn't. And you are making it much too easy for yourself now. Instead of reading what he wrote, you just pick out the line about "the opium of the people and start imagining what it could possibly mean! You have the idea that Marx said that religion is mainly alleviating the pain, thus actually a
pleasure. Therefore you compare it with things like "fun" (!!!) and wonder if Marx was the kind of guy who would prefer life to be living hell for workers
so they would get off their ***es and rise in rebellion already!

No, you misunderstand my intentions. Actually, my question wasn't related to that bit about the opium of the masses. I simply thought there must be more to his thinking than is apparent from that quote. I'm not aware of what other things he said about religion in his lifetime, or even if he did write anything else about it, because I haven't read his writings extensively. But I thought there must be more to his beliefs that I hadn't heard.

I'm not imagining Marx really did think that people needed to reach rock bottom to motivate them to rebel. My question was merely a suggestion, because in all that quote about religion being a set of illusions, he doesn't explain why being an illusion would make it necessary that religion was got rid of. There just has to be something else to his reasoning. I was simply making tentative queries as to what it could be. I wasn't ignoring all that stuff about religion being an illusion. But there has to be something else to his reasoning that he didn't explain, unless it's in such convoluted language I didn't pick it up. But "Religion needs to be got rid of if the people are to be happy" doesn't follow on logically from "Religion is an illusion". There has to have been a step in between in his thinking that isn't apparent in the quote. "Religion is an illusion, so it needs to be got rid of to make people truly happy, because, being an illusion, it ..." does what? That's the bit missing. There has to be something about it being an illusion that makes it so terrible it needs to go.

Thus, I was wondering if his main motivation for wanting to get rid of it might not be to do with it being an illusion at all, but with something else.

After all, simply being an illusion wouldn't make it any worse than many other things, that no one would want to get rid of; they would simply want them modified.

For instance, at the time when Marx wrote his opinion piece in which he made that quote, many doctors believed that disease was caused by fumes in the air. Thus Marx himself probably believed it. He could thus, theoretically, be said to have been under a delusion. The belief was extremely damaging, since although it did save lives, as it prompted people to improve sanitation when they felt under threat themselves, it meant that appalling practices went on unchecked, such as those that so troubled one doctor, who realised women were dying in childbirth because they were being infected by doctors after they went straight from working in the mortuary to delivering babies.

It was over a decade after Marx wrote of religion being an illusion in that famous quote that doctors began to realise in large numbers that germs caused disease. I don't suppose for a moment that Marx would have thought, upon realising the medical profession had been so tragically wrong before, that the whole medical profession ought to be done away with to prevent such a tragedy ever happening again.

Thus: I'm puzzled as to why he believed the illusion of religion was so tremendously damaging that religion didn't simply need to be modified, but it ought to be done away with entirely. I don't understand his thinking. To give an example, there must have been more to it than, "Christianity teaches Jesus rose from the dead and is now offering a place in heaven for the faithful. This is terrible! This pernicious belief must be got rid of if the people are going to be truly happy!" There just must have been more to his thinking. Exactly what was it about his belief that religion is an illusion that made him deem it such a terrible one that it would prevent people from being truly happy unless the entirety of religion was done away with?

Incidentally, I don't recall suggesting Marx equated religion with "fun".

However, you completely forget what ought to be a matter of course for people in this forum:
Religion does not simply make people contented by being merely a pleasurable experience! Like drugs - and unlike loving (family or otherwise) relations
or fun (usually) - it makes them contented by screwing with their minds. Religion is a delusion, and you don't need to have a lot of experience with believers
to discover how false and therefore strenuous the alleged happiness of religious people is.
In my Baptist Sunday school we used to sing this song (in my translation):

"I am happy, I am happy, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I am happy, I am happy, 'cause Jesus is my best friend." (In
the second stanza in reverse order: "on Sunday, Saturday, Friday ...")

I was usually quite happy but mainly because I liked to sing, which is why I put up with having to sing about this ubiquitous Jesus guy, who was never there
anyway. I mean, if you are actually soooo happy all the time because Jesus is your best friend, you wouldn't have to sing about it the whole time. It is very exhausting
having to persuade yourself of a delusion, and therefore "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness."

I can see your point to some extent. I did hear a Christian counsellor once say the people who shouted halleluias loudest in the church services he attended tended to be the ones who confessed to the biggest doubts in confidentiality afterwards, in his experience. And I knew someone myself who would shout "Jesus" and "halleluia" at all kinds of appropriate or inappropriate places in the services, but in reality, he said he was worried because he didn't know if he was even in God's favour.

I've also heard it said that Christians, who are supposed to disapprove of lying, actually tell more lies than anyone else, because of the hymns they sing that they don't believe half the words of.

I've also heard of depressed people who were treated disdainfully by other Christians who assumed they ought to be happy all the time or they weren't real Christians.

But I think the extent to which that kind of thing would happen or be a strain on anyone would depend partly on each individual, and partly on the way their particular brand of Christianity was manifesting itself. It isn't universal to Christianity. And I wouldn't understand why anyone would think that kind of thing in itself would be serious enough to get rid of the entirety of religion.

After all, religion can make people genuinely happy. There have been several studies that have found such things as a correlation between attendance at church services, and living longer, lower blood pressure, better mental health, and lower suicide risk. Take this study, for example:

Regular Church Attendance May Lower Suicide Risk

University of Manitoba researchers analyzed data from almost 37,000 people who took part in the Canadian Community Health Survey to study the relationship between spirituality, religious worship and suicidal behavior.

"The main finding of this study is that religious worship attendance is associated with a decreased risk of suicide attempts," study author Daniel Rasic said in a university news release. The researchers didn't examine why religious worship may reduce the risk of suicide attempts. ...

Or did he mean that religion could motivate people to provide some level of social services, which would prevent them from becoming so discontented they'd
do something major in order to gain wholesale improvements in their condition?

No. Does anything at all seem to indicate that this was his point?

No. It was mere speculation. Again, I thought maybe there were things he'd written about religion in other writings that I hadn't read.

One thing I was wondering was what, exactly, did Marx perceive the relationship between religion being an illusion, and it being an obstacle to the working class being enthusiastic for revolution, to be. If he didn't think religion would make them less enthusiastic for revolution, then why was religion an issue for him at all? If he did think religion was an obstacle, why? Again, there has to be a step of reasoning in between, "Religion is an illusion" and "It needs to be entirely got rid of". He wanted something that would make the people genuinely happy put in its place - i.e. an improvement in their working and living conditions. But why did he think it would be impossible for them to have both? What made him think religion was such an illusion it was genuinely damaging their lives?

Again: So discontented that ... is not the point! I mean, they are already so discontented that they invent an alternative world, an imaginary world, a fantasy world. Discontented is not the point. Understanding the conditions that produce the discontent is.

They were born and raised into it; they didn't invent it. What I would love to read, if such a thing were to exist, is a research study done by someone of Marx's day, who asked a fair number of people about their motives for being involved in their religion. I know there were a few social historians and researchers in the 19th century. But I don't know if any ever did a study like that; and it might be impossible to do a study like that in any case, since most people might not be too aware of their own motives, and in any case might not want to admit to any that didn't sound that honourable.

But it would be interesting to know whether most had a genuine conviction that what they believed was true and good for them, or whether some just went to church because it gave them a sense of community, and whether some treated religion like a kind of fire insurance - they were too scared not to believe in case they went to hell; or whether some believed simply because they wanted a reward in heaven; or whether some believed because it had never occurred to them that Christianity might not be true, since they were taught it from when they were very little and had never been exposed to alternative opinions. They may have had a variety of motives for believing it. Marx may have been simplifying things by simply calling it an illusion and an opiate.

But though he may have been simplifying things, he certainly used convoluted imagery, or else his translator has made what he wrote seem unnecessarily complex.

For instance, Marx wrote:

Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again.

Blimey. I can imagine someone quoting that on here and saying, "Is this woo?" I suppose the quote's something to do with that illusory happiness he talks about. I haven't a clue about the next bit though:

But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world.

Aha, perhaps I have now. Did you italicise the word "man" because Marx was implying the words "unlike God"? But if so, how do you know that was his meaning for sure, albeit it sounds like the only logical one.

This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world.

Inverted? What on earth did he mean by that? I think it needs to be interpreted in the context of some background information on what his thinking was.

In fact, what I would find very interesting would be to find some information on exactly what it was about Marx's personal experiences and observations that shaped his view of religion.

He isn't entirely uncomplimentary about religion, is he.

Religion is ... [the world's] moral sanction, ...

But what on earth did he mean by saying it was the world's "solemn complement"?

The passage is rather too poetic for my liking.

and [the world's] universal basis of consolation and justification.

Justification for what? I have no option but to guess again. Existing?

As for what he means by "universal basis of consolation", does he mean that all the world's population are consoled by it, or that people turn to it for consolation for all ills? It's all rather confusing. As I said, some background information on his views would be needed to genuinely make it easy to understand.

It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality.

Blimey, if only Marx had made the words rhyme a bit more, he could have been right up there with Wordsworth, Shakespeare and the other poets, having his work force-fed to children in literature classes, subverting them on the quiet.

The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality.

Poetic styles always give me brainache. This is no exception. I can feel it coming on now.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.

And that's supposed to be easy to understand? Again, it would be impossible to be sure what he really meant without some background information explaining his views further.

I'm sorry to say this, but I've even got a quibble or two about my favourite bit, the bit that comes next:

... The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

I take him to mean that criticizing religion is in effect criticizing Capitalism, because harsh conditions are what spawns religion. Why did he think the two were so related? Again, it would be interesting to read information about how his own experience of religion shaped his views on it.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.

Oh no, more poetry! I'm going to start losing the will to live in a minute! How can You be so sure of what he was going on about?

The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses,

Well, at least Marx speaks more plainly here. Still, he doesn't give a word of explanation as to why he imagines that if anyone does become disillusioned with religion, they will "regain their senses". I mean, some people who lose their faith in religion are not sensible at all. For instance, it would still be possible for someone who's given up religion to somehow imagine he could leave his pre-teenage children at home on their own and be fairly confident they were going to be safe.

But then, perhaps by "regain his senses", Marx simply meant a man would realise his working and living conditions were intolerable and want to shake them off,

... which brings us back to the very questions I was asking. Why did he think religion stops people making efforts to improve their living and working conditions?

As for the rest of what he said, again, it's too poetic and ambiguous for me to understand what it means.

There are actually Bible verses "about working hard for employers"? I find it hard to believe!

Thank goodness for that! - At least You're making sense.

The Bible doesn't specifically use the word "employer", but there are several verses about working hard in the context of employment.

Remember that poverty is what makes them seek the consolation of religion .. instead of overthrowing the conditions that make them poor.

Perhaps Marx didn't live to see it, but there was growing organisation among the poor to improve their conditions, even while most were still religious. There were organisations with a lot of popular support around when he was alive though, that did campaign for improvements in social conditions, hoping political activism would help bring them about, like the Chartists:

Chartism was a movement for political and social reform in the United Kingdom during the mid-19th century between 1838 and 1848. It takes its name from the People's Charter of 1838, which stipulated the six main aims of the movement as:
•*Suffrage for all men age 21 and over
•*Equal-sized electoral districts
•*Voting by secret ballot
•*An end to the need for a property qualification for Parliament
•*Pay for Members of Parliament
•*Annual election of Parliament

Chartism was possibly the first mass working class labour movement in the world.

The movement did seem to fail at the time. But most of those demands have since been achieved. The only thing we don't get is yearly elections.

It is true: What middle-class reformers do is to reform. They worry about workers health because they want workers to …. work, not die,

Probably, partly. But I think several were genuinely motivated by humanitarianism as well. After all, there were plenty of business owners who didn't think workers dying was an important enough concern to improve working conditions for them. If it was simply a matter of it making good business sense, they would have done.

But their activities haven’t really stopped exploitation, have they?

No, but then no one else's have either. People who want to exploit others will probably always find ways to do so. What those reformers did achieve, however, was to improve living and working conditions a lot.

For instance, they brought in legislation about the safety of machinery in factories, and legislated for factory inspectors to check that working conditions were improving. There were ridiculously few at first, but then more were employed. They also shortened working hours, especially for children. Here are some quotes from people who worked in factories in the 19th century, who speak about things that just don't happen any more, because of the work of the reformers. From a history project:

"Two children I know got employment in a factory when they were five years old………….the spinning men or women employ children if they can get a child to do their business……..the child is paid one shilling or one shilling and six pence, and they will take that (five year old) child before they take an older one who will cost more." George Gould, a Manchester merchant, written in 1816.

"The smallest child in the factories were scavengers……they go under the machine, while it is going……….it is very dangerous when they first come, but they become used to it." Charles Aberdeen worked in a Manchester cotton factory, written in 1832.

"The task first allotted to Robert Blincoe was to pick up the loose cotton, that fell upon the floor. Apparently nothing could be easier……..although he was much terrified by the whirling motion and noise of the machinery and the dust with which he was half suffocated………he soon felt sick and was constantly stooping; his back ached. Blincoe took the liberty to sit down. But this he soon found was strictly forbidden in cotton mills. His overlooker, Mr. Smith, told him he must keep on his legs. This he did for six and a half hours without a break." John Brown, a reporter for "The Lion". Written in 1828.

"We went to the mill at five in the morning. We worked until dinner time and then to nine or ten at night; on Saturday it could be till eleven and often till twelve at night. We were sent to clean the machinery on the Sunday." Man interviewed in 1849 who had worked in a mill as a child.

"In the evening I walked to Cromford and saw the children coming from their work. These children had been at work from 6 o’clock in the morning and it was now 7 o’clock in the evening." Joseph Farington, 22nd August 1801 (diary entry)

"I began work at the mill in Bradford when I was nine years old……we began at six in the morning and worked until nine at night. When business was brisk, we began at five and worked until ten in the evening." Hannah Brown, interviewed in 1832.

"Very often the children are woken at four in the morning. The children are carried on the backs of the older children asleep to the mill, and they see no more of their parents till they go home at night and are sent to bed." Richard Oastler, interviewed in 1832.

"Woodward and other overlookers used to beat me with pieces of thick leather straps made supple by oil, and having an iron buckle at the end, drew blood almost every time it was applied."John Brown quoted in the "Lion" newspaper in 1828.

"Sarah Golding was poorly and so she stopped her machine. James Birch, the overlooker, knocked her to the floor. She got up as well as she could. He knocked her down again. Then she was carried to her house.......she was found dead in her bed. There was another girl called Mary......she knocked her food can to the floor. The master, Mr. Newton, kicked her and caused her to wear away till she died. There was another, Caroline Thompson, who was beaten till she went out of her mind. The overlookers used to cut off the hair of any girl caught talking to a lad. This head shaving was a dreadful punishment. We were more afraid of it than any other punishment for girls are proud of their hair." An interview in 1849 with an unknown woman who worked in a cotton factory as a child.

"When I was seven years old I went to work at Mr Marshall’s factory at Shrewsbury. If a child became sleepy, the overlooker touches the child on the shoulder and says "come here". In the corner of the room there is an iron cistern filled with water. He takes the boy by the legs and dips him in the cistern, and then sends him back to work." Jonathan Downe interviewed in June 1832.

"I have seen my master, Luke Taylor, with a horse whip standing outside the mill when the children have come too late.........he lashed them all the way to the mill." John Fairbrother, an overlooker, interviewed in 1819.

"I work at the silk mill. I am an overlooker and I have to superintend the children at the mill. Their strength goes towards the evening and they get tired. I have been compelled to urge them to work when I knew they could not bear it. I have been disgusted with myself. I felt myself degraded and reduced to the level of a slave-driver. William Rastrick, interviewed in 1832.[/quote]

In 1833, there was a factory act that banned children under 9 from working in factories at all, and limited 9-13 year-olds to working only 9 hours a day and 48 hours a week. Further factory acts throughout the century further improved things.

Such things as I've quoted just don't happen in factories in the West any more.

Yes, I guess so. What is your point? Nobody’s claimed that Christians are evil. They tend to be a very charitable lot, especially for Christmas.

My point is that if Marx thought religion would have to be abolished in order for conditions to improve for workers much, he was wrong. In fact, the opposite was true in some respects - some people were motivated to push for reforms precisely because they were Christians.

And notice what the attitude of your shrewd employers depend on – even in your very non-confrontational fantasy: ”But (!) if (!) they then discover that productivity actually rises, because there's a healthier and happier workforce who don't take so many days off for sick leave, which is possible, they may realise it was a good idea”

That paragraph of mine was in response to your claim that it's impossible to legislate for the good of the citizens of a country in general. I was arguing that it in fact is possible. Whether or not employers eventually realise that shorter working hours are good for them as well as their employees, parliament can legislate for them, knowing that they are in fact legislating for the good of the citizens of the country in general.

Blimey, I don't think I'll write too many posts of this length! I need a cup of tea now.

 

[dann]

Only in its extreme forms. You're making a generalisation. After all, not even all Catholics agree with the pope; and there are Muslims who don't like the extremism of the Taliban.

I don't see any of them pushing proper sex education (or education in general) in order to make sure that people know how to enjoy the pleasures of sex without the easily avoided consequences of VDs and unwanted pregnancy. I do know that Catholicism is often praised for its contributions to science in the dark middle ages, but it wasn't science meant to reach a wider audience. And we all know what happened to Galilei. I also know that some scientists are able to live with the contradiction of being scientists and religious, which does not make religion the least bit rational.

I'm not imagining Marx really did think that people needed to reach rock bottom to motivate them to rebel. My question was merely a suggestion, because in all that quote about religion being a set of illusions, he doesn't explain why being an illusion would make it necessary that religion was got rid of. There just has to be something else to his reasoning. I was simply making tentative queries as to what it could be. I wasn't ignoring all that stuff about religion being an illusion. But there has to be something else to his reasoning that he didn't explain, unless it's in such convoluted language I didn't pick it up. But "Religion needs to be got rid of if the people are to be happy" doesn't follow on logically from "Religion is an illusion". There has to have been a step in between in his thinking that isn't apparent in the quote. "Religion is an illusion, so it needs to be got rid of to make people truly happy, because, being an illusion, it ..." does what? That's the bit missing. There has to be something about it being an illusion that makes it so terrible it needs to go.

No, not really. That it's an illusion is reason enough to get rid of it.

Thus, I was wondering if his main motivation for wanting to get rid of it might not be to do with it being an illusion at all, but with something else.

After all, simply being an illusion wouldn't make it any worse than many other things, that no one would want to get rid of; they would simply want them modified.

Why would you want to modify an illusion in any other way than by exploding it: disillusionment?

For instance, at the time when Marx wrote his opinion piece in which he made that quote, many doctors believed that disease was caused by fumes in the air. Thus Marx himself probably believed it. He could thus, theoretically, be said to have been under a delusion.

Yes, and I guess he would have welcomed proper knowledge and disillusionment if anybody had offered it to him. And he might have lived longer ....

The belief was extremely damaging,

Yes, it was!

since although it did save lives, as it prompted people to improve sanitation when they felt under threat themselves, it meant that appalling practices went on unchecked, such as those that so troubled one doctor, who realised women were dying in childbirth because they were being infected by doctors after they went straight from working in the mortuary to delivering babies.

And in the end doctors were disillusioned and the problem was (more or less) solved!

It was over a decade after Marx wrote of religion being an illusion in that famous quote that doctors began to realise in large numbers that germs caused disease. I don't suppose for a moment that Marx would have thought, upon realising the medical profession had been so tragically wrong before, that the whole medical profession ought to be done away with to prevent such a tragedy ever happening again.

No, probabaly not. But the illusion was replaced by science, which is what should be done with religion. See? Imaginary contradiction in terms eliminated!

Thus: I'm puzzled as to why he believed the illusion of religion was so tremendously damaging that religion didn't simply need to be modified, but it ought to be done away with entirely.

Because if you start from the beginning and replace Genesis with evolution and then work your way through the whole thing, nothing's left!

I don't understand his thinking. To give an example, there must have been more to it than, "Christianity teaches Jesus rose from the dead and is now offering a place in heaven for the faithful. This is terrible! This pernicious belief must be got rid of if the people are going to be truly happy!" There just must have been more to his thinking. Exactly what was it about his belief that religion is an illusion that made him deem it such a terrible one that it would prevent people from being truly happy unless the entirety of religion was done away with?

Incidentally, I don't recall suggesting Marx equated religion with "fun".

Neither do I, which was my point:

If so, the same criticisms he levelled at religion would have to be levelled at things like loving family relations, or any fun (!) they did manage to have, since that would have a similar effect.

In post 83 you reduced Marx’s critique of religion to: religion = opium = pleasure, fun. Now you want to reduce it to: religion = illusion.
And I’m sorry, but this reduction just isn’t true, which is why your abstraction from his actual critique of religion cannot be compared with an illusion in pre-scientific medicine or, for instance, the illusion of a fairy tale or a magic show. (In the case of the latter, by the way, an enquiring, curious mind does not leave it happy at having been entertained but with the nagging question: How the hell did he manage to fool me like that?)

But I think the extent to which that kind of thing would happen or be a strain on anyone would depend partly on each individual, and partly on the way their particular brand of Christianity was manifesting itself. It isn't universal to Christianity. And I wouldn't understand why anyone would think that kind of thing in itself would be serious enough to get rid of the entirety of religion.

After all, religion can make people genuinely happy.

If you say so, but I find it hard to equate happy at being deluded with genuine happiness.

There have been several studies that have found such things as a correlation between attendance at church services, and living longer, lower blood pressure, better mental health, and lower suicide risk. Take this study, for example:

Regular Church Attendance May Lower Suicide Risk

I will still risk staying away from church, happily. And I know that the correlation has been explained with the joy of being with other people instead of alone, i.e. that the religious content of church services does not have anything to do with the alleged beneficial effects. Thus, the citizens can compete against each other all week long and on Sundays they meet in church to celebrate the ideal (= unlike reality) of fellowship and togetherness.

One thing I was wondering was what, exactly, did Marx perceive the relationship between religion being an illusion, and it being an obstacle to the working class being enthusiastic for revolution, to be. If he didn't think religion would make them less enthusiastic for revolution, then why was religion an issue for him at all? If he did think religion was an obstacle, why?

He didn’t like illusions. He wanted people to mature to the stage where they recognize and treat the world as [what it is[/i] and not as what it isn’t. He wanted people to control their world – not be controlled by their world and merely in control of their imaginary justification of world.

Again, there has to be a step of reasoning in between, "Religion is an illusion" and "It needs to be entirely got rid of". He wanted something that would make the people genuinely happy put in its place - i.e. an improvement in their working and living conditions. But why did he think it would be impossible for them to have both? What made him think religion was such an illusion it was genuinely damaging their lives?

Again: by reducing his critique of religion to: religion = (”such an”) illusion, you manage to create a mystery that was not there in the first place.

1) Marx actually criticizes the people who reduce the critique of religion to: religion = illusion.
2) He points out that religion is there for a reason: People’s lives make them crave an illusion for the consolation this illusion brings them, which is not a natural state of things.
3) A more rational approach to the fact of their miserable lives would be to look at the world as it is, the real world, instead of indulging in imaginary wish-fulfilment. (You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.)
4) If they had not been impotent from the very beginning – i.e. this is not a world that they control, on the contrary they are controlled by the world – they would not have resorted to religion in the first place but would simply have changed the things that caused them harm.
5) Therefore these heartless conditions should be abolished as part of the struggle against religion: the conditions that require illusions.

They were born and raised into it; they didn't invent it.

Sometimes they are born and raised into it, sometimes they modify this spiritual inheritance, and sometimes they make up new illusions. It’s no big deal, and the outcome is much the same in all its variations: religion.

whether some treated religion like a kind of fire insurance - they were too scared not to believe in case they went to hell; or whether some believed simply because they wanted a reward in heaven; or whether some believed because it had never occurred to them that Christianity might not be true, since they were taught it from when they were very little and had never been exposed to alternative opinions. They may have had a variety of motives for believing it. Marx may have been simplifying things by simply calling it an illusion and an opiate.

They may have had a combination of all of these reasons, much the same way a present-day congregation do, but it isn’t very interesting to make the distinction. The distinctions don’t make the common denominator, religion, any different.
And Marx did not, ”simply” or otherwise, call it: illusion+opiate!

I already mentioned that I wasn’t too happy with Marx’s many metaphors, but I don’t find them as convoluted as you do. And the translator cannot be blamed for anything: Hegelian German does not translate well.

I’ll return when I have a little more time.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

I don't see any of them pushing proper sex education (or education in general) in order to make sure that people know how to enjoy the pleasures of sex without the easily avoided consequences of VDs and unwanted pregnancy.

I think there are a few things wrong with that statement.

A. Is pushing such sex education actually the job of religious authorities? It's time the pope realised it would be better for him to stop fuelling controversy about condoms. But would promoting an opposite attitude really be appropriate for him or what he should be about?

B. Have you done enough research to be sure it's so rare for them to do it that you can make statements with the implication that they never do?

C. I'm not sure if you're actually suggesting that teenagers should be educated about "how to enjoy the pleasures of sex". While that might seem a good idea on the surface, can you not imagine the increase in problems it could cause among the irresponsible, not to mention making it more difficult for them to concentrate on subsequent lessons? LOL

D. "the easily avoided consequences of VDs and unwanted pregnancy"? It would be more correct to use the term "more easily". No contraception eliminates the risk. And that's especially when human error comes into play, as it often does, among the youngest sexually active people especially, such as forgetfulness, recklessness under the influence of drink, complacency about the likelihood of anything bad happening to them, etc.

Take this factsheet, for example: Failure Rates of Contraceptives. You'll find the failure rates for the typical user are sometimes a fair bit higher than for the ideal one, but even the lowest failure rates that can be expected are generally higher than zero.

In fact, you'll probably find, if you research the matter, that lots, and quite possibly the vast majority, of those who get pregnant inconveniently or pick up sexually transmitted diseases, have been educated adequately about contraception, but for one reason or another have chosen not to use it, or haven't used it to its best advantage. Education about contraception certainly helps matters. But it isn't a fale-safe solution.

You may be suggesting that education should involve more than that, though, such as education about the risks of making reckless decisions under the influence of alcohol. This would clearly be a good thing; but for a maybe large proportion of teenagers, what feels good at the time, or fitting in with their friends, will trump any education they've been given every time.

And we all know what happened to Galilei.

But you can't take an example of something that happened to one person hundreds of years ago, and use it to support the argument that:

It's fairly obvious that religion must be the enemy of enlightened education

I also know that some scientists are able to live with the contradiction of being scientists and religious, which does not make religion the least bit rational.

It doesn't say anything about "religion" as a whole, unless it can be demonstrated that the whole of religion is anti-science. You could equally say that if scientists are living with the "contradiction" of science and religion, then those scientists are clearly not rational beings, and so what hope is there for science! But do they all think they are actually living with contradictions?

No, not really. That it's an illusion is reason enough to get rid of it.

Why?

Why would you want to modify an illusion in any other way than by exploding it: disillusionment?

Well, you've got a point. But what if it turns out that only part of what you're calling an illusion really is one, or that you think it's an illusion but you can't be 100% sure? For instance, religion might come with some beliefs that seem strange, some of which might be downright falsehood. But Christianity, at any rate, also comes with a lot of good things, such as all the commands in the New Testament to behave to a high ethical standard. So why not take the view that you'd like to just get rid of the worst excesses of what you consider the illusions, and keep the rest?

No, probabaly not. But the illusion was replaced by science, which is what should be done with religion. See? Imaginary contradiction in terms eliminated!

Well, again you've got a point. But again, eliminating religion altogether would be to eliminate its benefits as well as its drawbacks. Christian ethical teaching can inspire people to live better lives. There are lots of testimonies written by people who say their lives were changed by the Christian gospel. To link to just a few:

How to Handle Angry People.
Gamblers Beware.
Leaving Unbelief and Promiscuity to Finding Jesus.
A Captive Set Free.
Three Times a Loser, Now Forever a Winner.
Testimony of Skip Lewis.
A Prodigal in Blue.
The Void.
Testimony of a Police Sergeant.

(Having said that, it's always advisable not to be too hasty to believe such things. For instance, I know someone who was in a top security prison for years because he used to be very violent and had murdered; but he became a Christian, and it seemed he'd completely changed. He stopped being violent altogether. He did a lot of work for outsiders and built up a network of friends. It seemed it could be proved he really had changed when one day, some prisoners who were angry with him tried to throw boiling water over him. He escaped serious injury. But in the old days, he'd have retaliated violently. Now, he didn't.

A number of years after his conversion to Christianity, since he'd had a clean record of good behaviour since then, he was moved gradually to less and less secure prisons. Eventually, he was allowed out of prison once or twice a week on day release. But not long afterwards, there was a problem.

A 17-year-old girl accused him of abduction and rape, and the case went to court. He pleaded not guilty, saying she'd consented. But that would have been odd in itself, since they'd only just met, and he'd married someone while he was in prison, and so should have been living up to the biblical ethic of fidelity to his marriage partner that he professed to be following.

He had indecently assaulted people years earlier, so such behaviour wasn't unknown to him. It had seemed he'd changed. But it's obviously difficult to know whether such a change in people is genuine or will be permanent.)

Still, Christianity can inspire better lifestyle choices in a lot of people. Hence the reason why modifying it would seem better than getting rid of it altogether.

Because if you start from the beginning and replace Genesis with evolution and then work your way through the whole thing, nothing's left!

Only if you decide it has no uses whatsoever and focus entirely on the scientific aspects. What was Marx focusing on though? Didn't he write about religion being an illusion before Charles Darwin published his writings?

Replacing Genesis with a textbook on evolution? Now there's an interesting thought. "In the beginning was abiogenesis. ...".

If so, the same criticisms he levelled at religion would have to be levelled at things like loving family relations, or any fun (!) they did manage to have,

Ah, so that's where the fun reference came from. I wasn't saying Marx might have equated religion with fun, but was just saying that if he thought religion took the edge off people's desire for improvement so it made them less enthusiastic for revolution, it wasn't the only thing that would do that, so if he was going to be consistent, he ought to criticize other things as well.

you reduced Marx’s critique of religion to: religion = opium = pleasure, fun. Now you want to reduce it to: religion = illusion. And I’m sorry, but this reduction just isn’t true, which is why your abstraction from his actual critique of religion cannot be compared with an illusion in pre-scientific medicine or, for instance, the illusion of a fairy tale or a magic show. (In the case of the latter, by the way, an enquiring, curious
mind does not leave it happy at having been entertained but with the nagging question: How the hell did he manage to fool me like that?)

I'm not "reducing" Marx's critique to either. The reason I asked questions about it was because I was hoping you'd be able to give me some new information that would help me understand it better.

I used the medical comparison with the attitude that religion is an illusion to suggest that surely advocating getting rid of it in its entirety would be unnecessary - why not just get rid of anything about it that can be demonstrated to be doing harm?

If you say so, but I find it hard to equate happy at being deluded with genuine happiness.

But it isn't as simple as that. The happiness would derive from a number of things, like the happiness of knowing that because your family follow Christian teaching, you don't have a husband who goes out and gets drunk and then does who knows what before he gets home, like other women in your neighbourhood do. And so on.

I will still risk staying away from church, happily. And I know that the correlation has been explained with the joy of being with other people instead
of alone, i.e. that the religious content of church services does not have anything to do with the alleged beneficial effects. Thus, the citizens can compete
against each other all week long and on Sundays they meet in church to celebrate the ideal (= unlike reality) of fellowship and togetherness.

Well, I'm sure that's part of it anyway. I'm also sure that not all church services could do the trick, since some are abysmal.

He didn’t like illusions. He wanted people to mature to the stage where they recognize and treat the world as what it is and not as what it isn’t.
He wanted people to control their world – not be controlled by their world and merely in control of their imaginary justification of world. ...

1) Marx actually criticizes the people who reduce the critique of religion to: religion = illusion.
2) He points out that religion is there for a reason: People’s lives make them crave an illusion for the consolation this illusion brings them, which is not a natural state of things.
3) A more rational approach to the fact of their miserable lives would be to look at the world as it is, the real world, instead of indulging in imaginary wish-fulfilment. (You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.)
4) If they had not been impotent from the very beginning – i.e. this is not a world that they control, on the contrary they are controlled by the world – they would not have resorted to religion in the first place but would simply have changed the things that caused them harm.
5) Therefore these heartless conditions should be abolished as part of the struggle against religion: the conditions that require illusions.

Aha. Now that makes sense. That's something like what I thought he was saying in the beginning. But it has more to do with control of circumstances. So he was basically against anything that would inhibit the people from taking control of their circumstances with complete self-determination, unless it was there for a very good reason and benefited them? He thought religion was a product of the inability to control their circumstances, but there were now means available, so they should substitute those for religion so they could genuinely improve their lot?

 

[dann]

I'm overwhelmed with work right now, so just a short comment on the last bit of your post:

Yes, I think that you are right, but please don't reduce his criticism of religion to a question of control. Religion is a question of control, suffering, illusion etc.
In primitive religion you have real people, basically equipped with the same (physiological) ability as we to perceive and consider the whole universe but with almost no means of controlling this universe. It isn't very easy for an intelligent mind to come to terms with an environment that can wipe it out if it so 'chooses': Lightning, hurricanes, floods and droughts.
So in order to achieve peace of mind primitive people resort to the belief that they control their surroundings at least to the extent that they can appease the powerful (albeit imaginary) creatures who control what they have experienced that they themselves don't control. And this kind of peace of mind appears to be so important to them that even very small bands of people tend to leave it to particular person to take care of this job - and allocate the necessary resources: sacrifices.

The scandal of the present day is that people still resort to basically the same kind of behaviour at a time where the societies have at their disposal all the means necessary to control the things that threatened our ancestors: Nobody starves because there is not enough food but because they don't have access to the abundance of it and other riches. TV crews with HD cams and satellite transmission are present at every major hot spot and mass starvation.
Why are many people in developing countries poor? (and not only in developing countries!)
And so are the soldiers, making sure that they stay put.
Globalized hunger, hunger riots and imperialist order problems

Today people are not confronted with nature. (The irony is that the aforementioned camera teams are crazy about children with stomachs distended from hunger on the picturesqe background of deserts!)

"But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world."
A contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
(By the way, I copied the italics from the text!)

Condoms and sex education:
No, nothing's perfect. People die in traffic every day, but I have never seen that fact used as an argument against the obvious futility of traffic education.
That some people aren't able to handle condoms suitably is not a very good argument against teaching them to do so, is it?

 

[dann]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.

This one’s fairly obvious. In spite of Genesis, God did not create people, people created God – and ‘in their image’.

Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again.

Instead of facing reality and dealing with the world as it is, the religious individual invents an ideal of what the world is, an imaginary world, in order to give meaning to the world, i.e. provide it with a purpose that it doesn’t have – maybe because he finds the world meaningless (and misses the meaning that he doesn’t see) or because he does not want to recognize the meaning that it actually has. (The lack of divine meaning is actually what makes us free - unless we have to serve somebody else's purposes.)

But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world.

No, man is an island. We don’t live like Robinson Crusoe, isolated and alone, we live in societies governed by states, and this influences our fantasies. It is no coincidence that medieval religion is full of hierarchies: of angels, humans and nature, the great chain of being. Since people don’t control their world, i.e. society, they invent fantasies to give meaning to, i.e. justify, the world as it is. (The rational answer to conditions like this is obvious.)

Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality.

Philosophers of enlightenment may have dreamed of the truly free individual, but this freedom was not yet reality. (compare with: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it”)

The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Unless you prefer to do battle against windmills …

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.

Well, a very servile protest, if at all …

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.

In other words: Don’t fight the symptoms, fight what causes the symptoms.

The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

If people not only want to believe but actually need to believe, you should do something about the conditions causing this. (If they feel that they have no other options, showing them these options, i.e. a way out of their misery, is already a step on the way. And the way out of their misery depends on the conditions that cause their misery. If they imagine that God in his wisdom has punished them with the clap, you should tell them about penicillin. But if they don’t have access to efficient health care anyway, a mere explanation is rather futile. And access may be a question of poverty. Information alone does not make witchdoctors redundant ...)

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.

More metaphors. But the chain is a rather obvious symbol, isn’t it?, and throwing off the chain even more so. And so are the flowers, the joys that life (in principle) has to offer.

The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

Again I find the parallel obvious: the geo-centrism (of the dark Middle Ages) versus the helio-centrism of the Renaissance, compared with ‘deus-centrism’ versus ‘humano-centrism’.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

The “task of history” is Hegelian rubbish and so is ”in the service of history’”/i]. Unlike what also the CP movement claimed, ‘history’ does not have any ‘task’ nor can it be ‘served’. The aim of revolutionaries (which the 25-year-old Marx was only evolving into at this stage) is to persuade people to “throw off the chain” and stop being serfs.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

Condoms and sex education:
No, nothing's perfect. People die in traffic every day, but I have never seen that fact used as an argument against the obvious futility of traffic education.
That some people aren't able to handle condoms suitably is not a very good argument against teaching them to do so, is it?

I didn't say it was. Personally, I think that even if some teenagers are bound to disregard it, sex education ought to involve a range of things, including the emotional pitfalls and other possible drawbacks for the lifestyle of anyone who gets involved too quickly or without enough thought. For instance, information like this:

Cutting Down the Risk of Getting Into a Bad Relationship.
Neglected Heart: The Emotional Dangers of Premature Sexual Involvement.
Post Abortion: Regrets of Women Who Had an Abortion.

Actually, I also think it would be good if education included advice on maintaining good relationships with partners, for instance such things as Tips for Talking - Marriage Communication.

 

[dann]

I agree. Emotional pitfalls and drawbacks for the lifestyle of anyone who gets involved in due course and after carefully considering the pros and cons slowly and with plenty of thought should definitely be included!
Private life - on happiness and its failure in pleasure and love

 

[dann]

It doesn't say anything about "religion" as a whole, unless it can be demonstrated that the whole of religion is anti-science. You could equally say that if scientists are living with the "contradiction" of science and religion, then those scientists are clearly not rational beings, and so what hope is there for science!

Yes, you could easily say that, but you would be wrong. Nobody (that I know) is rational 24-7. Making an error does not make you an 'irrational being'.

But do they all think they are actually living with contradictions?

Yes. They have ways of rationalizing the contradiction, but that does not make the whole thing more rational.

Well, you've got a point. But what if it turns out that only part of what you're calling an illusion really is one, or that you think it's an illusion but you can't be 100% sure?

Then I'll try to make sure.

For instance, religion might come with some beliefs that seem strange, some of which might be downright falsehood. But Christianity, at any rate, also comes with a lot of good things, such as all the commands in the New Testament to behave to a high ethical standard. So why not take the view that you'd like to just get rid of the worst excesses of what you consider the illusions, and keep the rest?

I'm not too fond of ethics, but I hate the ethics of the Bible, including #2, even though it wasn't nearly as bad as #1. I think that The Bible 3.0 should scrap the prequels completely and start anew. I honestly cannot think of any parts of the Bible that I'd want to keep.
However, I do know some Christians who are nice people - in spite of the Bible.

But again, eliminating religion altogether would be to eliminate its benefits as well as its drawbacks.

Yes, of course. You could say the same thing about addiction to crack.

Christian ethical teaching can inspire people to live better lives.

Yes, and it can inspire people to live worse lives too.

Still, Christianity can inspire better lifestyle choices in a lot of people. Hence the reason why modifying it would seem better than getting rid of it altogether.

I know that many Christians like to believe that if it weren't for 'the good book', they'd be out there murdering, raping and pillaging. It's appears to be part of the delusion.

What was Marx focusing on though? Didn't he write about religion being an illusion before Charles Darwin published his writings?

Yes, but Genesis was wrong a long time before the Origin of Species.

Replacing Genesis with a textbook on evolution? Now there's an interesting thought. "In the beginning was abiogenesis. ...".

'In the beginning we assume that there was this kinda Big Bang. What caused it, though, is still very much in dispute. Well, approximately 9 or 10 billion years later life appears to have come into existence, at least in this corner of the universe ...'

 

[dann]

But Christianity, at any rate, also comes with a lot of good things, such as all the commands in the New Testament to behave to a high ethical standard.

Old versus New Testament, Psycho God versus Forgiveness God:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3944358#post3944358
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3944379#post3944379
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3945708#post3945708
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3946076#post3946076
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3947106#post3947106
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3947744#post3947744
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3948057#post3948057
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3948147#post3948147
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3948245#post3948245
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3953663#post3953663

But it isn't as simple as that. The happiness would derive from a number of things, like the happiness of knowing that because your family follow Christian teaching, you don't have a husband who goes out and gets drunk and then does who knows what before he gets home, like other women in your neighbourhood do. And so on.

There are probably more Christian alcoholics than agnostic/atheist alcoholics, at least in Christian societies …

 

[Baby Nemesis]

Old versus New Testament, Psycho God versus Forgiveness God:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3944358#post3944358
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3944379#post3944379
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3945708#post3945708
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3946076#post3946076
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3947106#post3947106
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3947744#post3947744
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3948057#post3948057
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3948147#post3948147
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3948245#post3948245
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3953663#post3953663




There are probably more Christian alcoholics than agnostic/atheist alcoholics, at least in Christian societies …

Regarding alcoholism, I'd guess that there are many many more alcoholics who identify as Christian than identify as Atheists or agnostics in Christian societies. I wasn't disputing that. But many people who self-identify as Christian don't "follow Christian teaching", and that was the criterion I was specifying for being happy because you have a sober husband. In some working communities of the 19th century, there were methodist groupings who were strict teetotallers. This may possibly have made for less merriment, but it may have meant that such households were more financially secure, less violent etc.

Regarding the way God is portrayed: It's a commonly-held misconception that God's character is portrayed as totally different in the old and new testaments. It isn't actually the case. What changes is the kinds of people each section of the Bible was addressed to, and their purposes. The Old Testament was written for people who lived in a theocracy and were supposed to obey its laws whether they wanted to or not. So some of them were psychopaths and criminals who would have to be scared into it if there was any hope of them doing it. The New Testament, on the other hand, was written for people who actually wanted to obey moral teaching, so it focused more on encouragement, and the finer points of such teaching.

This was illustrated in 1 Timothy:

*8We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 9We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine 11 that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.

Wouldn't dealing with that lot turn any God a bit psycho?

Since Christians are supposed to want to live moral lives as part of the deal they sign up to, the Old Testament really isn't relevant for Christians. In fact, I think it's a shame that the Christians who put the Bible together all those years ago didn't have the foresight to drop most of the Old Testament from it, keeping just those bits of it that would be necessary for Christians to understand what the New Testament writers meant when they referred to it, and a very small selection of other bits, so people could get the gist of what happened in it. (They could keep the whole Book of Proverbs, since that's got some good moral teaching in it and is fun to read). It would have been a tremendous boon to copyists throughout the centuries, who could have copied many more New Testaments if they hadn't felt obliged to spend so much time on the Old outdated Testament. (Again, it's the New Testament that says the old one is outdated.)

There are lots of sickening and gruesome parts of the Old Testament, and some do sound insanely savage on the face of it. But it's not as simple as God being psycho in the Old Testament and forgiving in the New. The emphases are different, but you get both harsh and merciful aspects in both testaments. For instance, there are several verses in the Old Testament where forgiveness is offered. For example in Isaiah chapter 1:

16 ****** Stop doing wrong,
*17 learn to do right!
****** Seek justice,
****** encourage the oppressed. [a]
****** Defend the cause of the fatherless,
****** plead the case of the widow.

*18 "Come now, let us reason together,"
****** says the LORD.
****** "Though your sins are like scarlet,
****** they shall be as white as snow;
****** though they are red as crimson,
****** they shall be like wool.

The punishments for wrongdoing the prophets foretold were barbaric, - having their land invaded. They seem especially barbaric since the consequences would have been indiscriminate for the most part. But all that the prophets were asking was that people started living decent lives instead of harming each other, saying that if they did, the punishments would not befall the people!

Other Old Testament passages that seem gruesome don't seem so bad in their cultural context. For instance, there's a horrible passage in the Book of Numbers about how if a man suspected his wife of unfaithfulness, but doesn't have absolute proof, he had to go to a priest with her and the priest would give her some bitter water to drink, and if she had been unfaithful, she would eventually develop some physical problems. This sounds horrible, but it may well have in fact prevented women being killed. There's a tradition of honour killings in the Middle East, where men who feel that a woman in their lives has brought shame on the family, often because of a suspicion of infidelity, will just kill her, no questions asked. If that was going on in Old Testament times, then the law about taking wives to the priest instead would actually have been a protective measure for women.

There's a web page called The Bible God: Cruel, Savage, Deranged, Evil, Barbaric, Intolerant, Insanely Jealous, Vengeful and Bloodthirsty? which gives a bit of explanation of the cultural context of some of the old laws, and something about other gruesome Old Testament things. Topics it covers include:

• Killing the Amalekite Babies, and Taking Midianite Virgins Captive
• Isn't God Cruel Because he Didn't Speak Out Against Slavery but Condoned It?
• God Causing Bears to Kill Children for Name-Calling?
• God Admits to the Base Human Vice of Jealousy?
• Did God Command that Babylonian Babies be Killed by being smashed Against Rocks?
• Isn't God Unbelievably Merciless and Heartless for Ordering the Killing of a Man Just for Gathering Sticks on the Sabbath?
• Isn't the Bible Barbaric for Ordering that Rebellious Sons be Stoned to Death?
• Why Should the Bible's Anti-Homosexual Bigotry be Tolerated?
• Women being Forced to Marry their Rapists, and Women being Stoned to Death for Not being Virgins on their Wedding Night
• Isn't the Bible Disgusting for Decreeing that Women had to Undergo a Horrible Ritual Simply Because Their Husbands Jealously Suspected Them of Infidelity?
• Isn't God Unforgiveable and Perverted for Decreeing that Soldiers can Rape War Captives?
• How can God be Loving If We're All Burdened with Original Sin?
• Are we Sent to Hell for All Eternity Simply for Not Believing in Jesus?

That's part one of a series that covers other gruesome things about the Old Testament as well.

To illustrate that God's character is still portrayed as essentially compassionate in the Old Testament, despite its truly barbaric-sounding features, Here's a re-post of lots of Old Testament quotations I put on here in another conversation when I first arrived here. It illustrates that the old and new testaments do in fact have the same main focus - that people are being called on to stop harming one another. Old Testament prophets portrayed God as having a strong core of compassion, so much so that he was made fiercely angry by the harm people were doing to one another, hence his severe punishments. I'll end this post with the quotes about the condemnation of people the prophets made for behaviour that was hurting others:

Amos chapter 3 (NLT)

"My people have forgotten what it means to do right," says the LORD.

Isaiah Chapter 59 (NIV)

3 Your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt. Your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters wicked things. 4 No one calls for justice; no one pleads his case with integrity. They rely on empty arguments and speak lies; they conceive trouble and give birth to evil. 7 Their feet rush into sin; they are swift to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are evil thoughts; ruin and destruction mark their ways. 8 The way of peace they do not know; there is no justice in their paths. They have turned them into crooked roads; no one who walks in them will know peace. 14 So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. 15 Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.

The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice. 16 He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene;

Isaiah chapter 5 (NIV)

7 He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.

Isaiah Chapter 9 (NIV)

16 Those who guide this people mislead them, and those who are guided are led astray. 17 Therefore the Lord will take no pleasure in the young men, nor will he pity the fatherless and widows, for everyone is ungodly and wicked, every mouth speaks vileness.

Amos chapter 2 (TEV)

6 The Lord says, "The people of Israel have sinned again and again, and for this I will certainly punish them. They sell into slavery honest people who cannot pay their debts, the poor who cannot repay even the price of a pair of sandals.

Amos chapter 2 (NLT)

7 They trample helpless people in the dust and deny justice to those who are oppressed. Both father and son sleep with the same woman, corrupting my holy name. 8 At their religious festivals, they lounge around in clothing stolen from their debtors. In the house of their god, they present offerings of wine purchased with stolen money.

Jeremiah chapter 7 (GWT)

29 "Cut off your hair and throw it away. Sing a song of mourning on the bare hills, because in his anger the LORD has rejected and abandoned the people of this generation. 30 The people of Judah have done what I consider evil," declares the LORD. "They set up their detestable idols in the house that is called by my name. They have made it unclean. 31 They have built worship sites at Topheth in the valley of Ben Hinnom in order to burn their sons and daughters as sacrifices. I did not ask for this. It never entered my mind. 32 "That is why the days are coming," declares the LORD, "when that place will no longer be known as Topheth or the valley of Ben Hinnom. Instead, it will be known as Slaughter Valley. They will bury [people] at Topheth because no other place will be left.

Ezekiel chapter 22 (GWT)

1 The LORD spoke his word to me. He said, 2 "Will you judge, son of man? Will you judge the city of murderers? Then tell it about all the disgusting things that it has done. 3 Tell it, 'This is what the Almighty LORD says: [Jerusalem,] you are the city that murders people who live in you. Your time has come. You dishonor yourself with disgusting idols. 4 You are guilty because of the people you have killed. You are dishonored because of the disgusting idols you have made. You have brought an end to your days, and you have come to the end of your years. That is why I will make you a disgrace to the nations and a joke in every land. 5 Those near and those far away will mock you. Your name will be dishonored, and you will be filled with confusion.

6 "'See how all the princes of Israel who live in you have used their power to murder people. 7 People in you hate their fathers and mothers. They oppress foreigners in you. They oppress orphans and widows in you. 8 You have despised my holy things and dishonored the day to worship me. 9 Some of your people slander. They want to kill people. People who live in you eat food sacrificed to idols at the worship sites on the hills, and they sin sexually. 10 Men have sex with their father's wives. 11 Men do disgusting things with their neighbors' wives. Some men sexually dishonor their daughters-in-law. Other men who live in you have sex with their sisters, their father's daughters. 12 Other people take bribes to murder people. You collect interest and make excessive profits. You make profits by mistreating your neighbors. You have forgotten me, declares the Almighty LORD.

13 "'I will use my power against you because of the excessive profits you have made and the murders you have committed. 14 Will you still be brave? Will you remain strong when I deal with you? I, the LORD, have spoken, and I will do it.

23 The LORD spoke his word to me. He said, 24 "Son of man, tell the city, 'You are an unclean land that has not had rain during the day of my anger. You have not been made clean. 25 Your princes are like roaring lions who tear their prey into pieces. They eat people and take their treasures and precious belongings. They turn many women into widows. 26 Your priests violate my teachings and dishonor my holy things. They don't distinguish between what is holy and what is unholy. They don't teach the difference between what is clean and what is unclean. They ignore the days to worship me. So I am dishonored among the people. 27 Your leaders are like wolves that tear their prey into pieces. They murder and destroy people to make excessive profits. 28 Your prophets cover up these things by seeing false visions and by prophesying lies. They say, "This is what the Almighty LORD says." Yet, the LORD hasn't spoken. 29 The common people oppress and rob others. They do wrong to humble people and to poor people. They oppress foreigners for no reason. 31 So I will pour out my anger on you, and with my fiery anger I will consume you. This is because of all the things you have done,'" declares the Almighty LORD.

Jeremiah Chapter 6 (NIV)

13 "From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit."

Jeremiah chapter 9 (NIV)

3 "They make ready their tongue like a bow, to shoot lies; it is not by truth that they triumph in the land. They go from one sin to another; they do not acknowledge me," declares the LORD. 4 "Beware of your friends; do not trust your brothers. For every brother is a deceiver, and every friend a slanderer. 5 Friend deceives friend, and no one speaks the truth. They have taught their tongues to lie; they weary themselves with sinning. 6 You live in the midst of deception; in their deceit they refuse to acknowledge me," declares the LORD. 8 Their tongue is a deadly arrow; it speaks with deceit. With his mouth each speaks cordially to his neighbor, but in his heart he sets a trap for him.

Jeremiah chapter 5 (NIV)

11 The house of Israel and the house of Judah have been utterly unfaithful to me," declares the LORD. 26 "Among my people are wicked men who lie in wait like men who snare birds and like those who set traps to catch men. 27 Like cages full of birds, their houses are full of deceit; they have become rich and powerful 28 and have grown fat and sleek. Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it, they do not defend the rights of the poor."

Isaiah Chapter 10 (NIV)

22 Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks, 23 who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent.

Isaiah Chapter 10 (NIV)

1 Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, 2 to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.

Jeremiah chapter 6 (TEV)

7 As a well keeps its water fresh, so Jerusalem keeps its evil fresh. I hear violence and destruction in the city; sickness and wounds are all I see.

Isaiah chapter 58 (NLT)

1 "Shout with the voice of a trumpet blast. Tell my people Israel of their sins! 2 Yet they act so pious! They come to the Temple every day and seem delighted to hear my laws. You would almost think this was a righteous nation that would never abandon its God. They love to make a show of coming to me and asking me to take action on their behalf.

3 'We have fasted before you!' they say. 'Why aren't you impressed? We have done much penance, and you don't even notice it!'

"I will tell you why! It's because you are living for yourselves even while you are fasting. You keep right on oppressing your workers. 4 What good is fasting when you keep on fighting and quarreling? This kind of fasting will never get you anywhere with me. 5 You humble yourselves by going through the motions of penance, bowing your heads like a blade of grass in the wind. You dress in sackcloth and cover yourselves with ashes. Is this what you call fasting? Do you really think this will please the LORD?

6 "No, the kind of fasting I want calls you to free those who are wrongly imprisoned and to stop oppressing those who work for you. Treat them fairly and give them what they earn. 7 I want you to share your food with the hungry and to welcome poor wanderers into your homes. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help.

8 "If you do these things, your salvation will come like the dawn. Yes, your healing will come quickly. Your godliness will lead you forward, and the glory of the LORD will protect you from behind. 9 Then when you call, the LORD will answer. 'Yes, I am here,' he will quickly reply.

"Stop oppressing the helpless and stop making false accusations and spreading vicious rumors! 10 Feed the hungry and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as day. 11 The LORD will guide you continually, watering your life when you are dry and keeping you healthy, too. You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring. 12 Your children will rebuild the deserted ruins of your cities. Then you will be known as the people who rebuild their walls and cities.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm


This one’s fairly obvious. In spite of Genesis, God did not create people, people created God – and ‘in their image’.



Instead of facing reality and dealing with the world as it is, the religious individual invents an ideal of what the world is, an imaginary world, in order to give meaning to the world, i.e. provide it with a purpose that it doesn’t have – maybe because he finds the world meaningless (and misses the meaning that he doesn’t see) or because he does not want to recognize the meaning that it actually has. (The lack of divine meaning is actually what makes us free - unless we have to serve somebody else's purposes.)



No, man is an island. We don’t live like Robinson Crusoe, isolated and alone, we live in societies governed by states, and this influences our fantasies. It is no coincidence that medieval religion is full of hierarchies: of angels, humans and nature, the great chain of being. Since people don’t control their world, i.e. society, they invent fantasies to give meaning to, i.e. justify, the world as it is. (The rational answer to conditions like this is obvious.)

Philosophers of enlightenment may have dreamed of the truly free individual, but this freedom was not yet reality. (compare with: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it”)



Unless you prefer to do battle against windmills …



Well, a very servile protest, if at all …



In other words: Don’t fight the symptoms, fight what causes the symptoms.



If people not only want to believe but actually need to believe, you should do something about the conditions causing this. (If they feel that they have no other options, showing them these options, i.e. a way out of their misery, is already a step on the way. And the way out of their misery depends on the conditions that cause their misery. If they imagine that God in his wisdom has punished them with the clap, you should tell them about penicillin. But if they don’t have access to efficient health care anyway, a mere explanation is rather futile. And access may be a question of poverty. Information alone does not make witchdoctors redundant ...)



More metaphors. But the chain is a rather obvious symbol, isn’t it?, and throwing off the chain even more so. And so are the flowers, the joys that life (in principle) has to offer.



Again I find the parallel obvious: the geo-centrism (of the dark Middle Ages) versus the helio-centrism of the Renaissance, compared with ‘deus-centrism’ versus ‘humano-centrism’.



The “task of history” is Hegelian rubbish and so is ”in the service of history’”/i]. Unlike what also the CP movement claimed, ‘history’ does not have any ‘task’ nor can it be ‘served’. The aim of revolutionaries (which the 25-year-old Marx was only evolving into at this stage) is to persuade people to “throw off the chain” and stop being serfs.

Thank you for interpreting that Marx quote for me. His meaning's clearer now. Or at least it will be as long as I can remember what you said.

If I had to read any more of his writings in that style though, I think I'd still need a Marx to plain English phrase book.

He does seem to have had a more mature attitude to religion than a lot of people, in that rather than just denouncing religious people as stupid and trying to go all out to prove to them that religion's false, he looks at the reasons for its existence and points out that they're the things most in need of change.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

You could equally say that if scientists are living with the "contradiction" of science and religion, then those scientists are clearly not rational beings, and so what hope is there for science!

Yes, you could easily say that, but you would be wrong. Nobody (that I know) is rational 24-7. Making an error does not make you an 'irrational being'.

No; but anyone who's committed to a religion will self-identify as a member of that religion, just as a scientist will think of being a scientist as an actual part of his identity. It'll be much more of a significant part of his life than any irrational error he might make along the way. Thus, if it's true that religion and science are inevitably contradictory, then any scientist who's religious will be self-identifying as two contradictory things simultaneously.

Yes. They have ways of rationalizing the contradiction, but that does not make the whole thing more rational.

Doesn't that depend on how rational their rationalisations are?

Well, you've got a point. But what if it turns out that only part of what you're calling an illusion really is one, or that you think it's an illusion but you can't be 100% sure?

Then I'll try to make sure.

But what if what's being called an illusion is something like God's existence? It's impossible to have absolute proof that it is one.

I'm not too fond of ethics, but I hate the ethics of the Bible, including #2, even though it wasn't nearly as bad as #1. I think that The Bible 3.0 should scrap the prequels completely and start anew. I honestly cannot think of any parts of the Bible that I'd want to keep.

Oh, but a lot of the New Testament commands are beautiful, and they can prompt people to think about their lives and inspire them to live a better life. See what I wrote in Post 76, from paragraph 6 onwards, where I quoted lots of the nice New Testament commands.

But again, eliminating religion altogether would be to eliminate its benefits as well as its drawbacks.

Yes, of course. You could say the same thing about addiction to crack.

But religion at its best can benefit society and has no concrete drawbacks. Crack addiction on the other hand will be in danger of bringing a community down.

Christian ethical teaching can inspire people to live better lives.

Yes, and it can inspire people to live worse lives too.

In what respects? I might have an idea of what you mean. I know there are people who are embittered against Christianity because they were shunned by the Christians they grew up around for being illegitimate, for example. But if the people shunning them had had an informed view of Christian ethics, they wouldn't have thought ostracising someone just for that was acceptable Christian behaviour.

I know that many Christians like to believe that if it weren't for 'the good book', they'd be out there murdering, raping and pillaging. It's appears to
be part of the delusion.

I don't know any Christians who think that.

Or ... No, surely not.

I'm thinking of a more moderate form of thinking Christianity's inspired you to improve your life, such as teenagers who started off not getting drunk like their friends because of what the Bible says, but then being glad they did, realising there were good reasons not to get drunk, when they see some of the trouble their friends get into because they do.

Yes, but Genesis was wrong a long time before the Origin of Species.

But what made Marx so sure religion was just an illusion in the days before there was an alternative explanation for how life began?

Having said that, Atheists go back in time a long way.

In fact, I'd say some of the kings and church rulers of the Middle Ages can't really have believed in the God of the Bible, because if they had, they'd have taken instructions such as some of the ones quoted in post 76 seriously, and wouldn't have gone around recklessly starting wars, executing people on false charges, and so on.

Interestingly enough, nearly 500 years before Marx, a priest called John Ball was a leader in what could have turned into a revolution, The Peasants' Revolt, that Marx might have been pleased with, apart from the fact that it got out of control and unnecessarily violent. Actually, I expect you've heard of him. He preached social equality in opposition to church leaders and was very popular with the peasants.

On June 14, 1381, Richard II met with the rebels at Miles End and agreed to "abolish serfdom, feudal service, market monopolies, and restrictions on buying and selling."

But then he didn't. Still, there were long-term improvements in their working conditions.

 

[lightfire22000]

I draw complete distinction between science and religion. They shouldn't ever conflict.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

I draw complete distinction between science and religion. They shouldn't ever conflict.

What? You mean they shouldn't ever be allowed to do so, lest it cause one to fall ignominiously by the wayside? But what if some people can perfectly happily reconcile one with the other?

Still, I'll agree if you're saying they should serve completely different purposes. Science is about progressing mankind by advancing knowledge, and religion, or at least some religion, is supposed to be about advancing the good of mankind by making an appeal to people's better nature, to inspire them to live lives that further the social good of mankind, and to behave in a way that's less likely to harm their communities than they might have done otherwise.

That's the ideal. Unfortunately, things often go horribly wrong on both the science and religion fronts.

 

[dann]

Science is about progressing mankind by advancing knowledge,

No, it isn't. Science is the kind of actual knowledge about the world that you don't achieve simply by looking at it. It requires research and analysis. Whether or not it 'progresses mankind' is a question of how this knowledge is put to use.

and religion, or at least some religion, is supposed to be about advancing the good of mankind by making an appeal to people's better nature, to inspire them to live lives that further the social good of mankind, and to behave in a way that's less likely to harm their communities than they might have done otherwise.

No, it isn't. You invent a purpose with or use of religion that really does not describe what religion actually is, i.e. you make up a false abstraction from what characterizes religion.
Consider this: What is required in order to come up with the idea that a god created the universe or that we live forever after we die? Would these ideas come about as the result of somebody sitting down pondering on the question: 'Now, let's see: What is the best way to further the social good of mankind and to make people stop harming their communities?'

By the way, you seem to be unable to grasp that the "social good of mankind" is in itself an abstraction from the living breathing humans of the real world: There is no actual mankind with shared interests and a shared purpose. The "social good" of most of mankind is very much in contrast to the "social good" of the rich and powerful exploiting them. Indeed, refusing to acknowledge the actual conflicts of interests between people may inspire you to seek a solution to your imaginary problem that is out of this world:

Since there is no 'mankind' with 'universal aspiration' in the real world, Ronald Reagan dreamed of the threat from alien invaders in order to make his idea of 'world peace' credible.
In other words: If you ask very stupid questions based on very wrong premises, you may come up with religious answers. If you ask sensible questions based on premises taken not from flimsy ideals but from actual knowledge, you may have taken the first step towards scientific answers.



PS Even if aliens had threatened to invade planet Earth back in the 1980s, I'm not sure that I would have considered joining forces with Ronald Reagan to be my best option. Depending on the purpose of their invasion, I might have joined the aliens in their struggle against Ronald Reagan!

PPS What is the best way of making communities stop harming 'mankind'?

PPPS A cry for peace is not a critique of war.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

No, it isn't. Science is the kind of actual knowledge about the world that you don't achieve simply by looking at it. It requires research and analysis. Whether or not it 'progresses mankind' is a question of how this knowledge is put to use.

You're right; that's why I ended by saying that the idea that science progresses mankind is the "ideal". After all, there has to be a purpose to investigating how the world and everything in it works, or people wouldn't be motivated to do it. Many have doubtless been motivated by a desire to make the world a better place in various ways, while some have unfortunately made it a more dangerous one, by creating nuclear weapons and the like.

No, it isn't. You invent a purpose with or use of religion that really does not describe what religion actually is, i.e. you make up a false abstraction from what characterizes religion.

It isn't made-up and it isn't false. I agree that bettering mankind isn't the entire purpose of religion, and much of religion has to do with other things entirely, some of which can be detrimental to some people. Again, I qualified what I was saying at the end by saying I was talking about the "ideal".

I expect you're absolutely right that religion wasn't invented to further the good of mankind but much of it was invented as an effort to control the uncontrollable, such as appeasing gods in an effort to make the rain fall so the harvests wouldn't fail leaving them starving etc. But I think you fail to recognise that social control, and a benign social control at that, is a large part of some religions, or at least Christianity, hence the many commands to do good and not commit crimes etc. As I said in an earlier post, thinking it's God commanding you to live a better life can surely have a bigger impact on many people's decisions than just thinking that some far-away political authority wants you to live like that. Obviously it's impossible to generalise about such things, since there's a massive history of people who supposedly believed in God but did things totally contrary to New Testament commands, and on the other hand a lot of people who'd want to obey such commands regardless of where they came from, because they coincide with their own moral values.

Again, in post 76, I list a lot of Bible quotes that would certainly further the good of the common people if they were put into practice by everyone. I'll quote a bit of what I said:

If everyone obeyed the New Testament, there would be no financial crisis. Thus, houses would not be being repossessed because of it. Jobs would not be being lost because of it. Families would not be suffering because their breadwinners were being thrown out of work. Etc. etc. In fact, not only would there not be a financial crisis, but throughout the centuries, landlords would not have exploited peasants to the point of starvation; governments would not have brought tragic suffering on their people by enacting evil laws that favoured the rich while exploiting or disregarding the poor; callous profiteers would not have set up businesses where the making of money was put very much at the top of the agenda, at the expense of the well-being of workers, such that health and safety in the workplace was neglected, leading to numerous tragic accidents, and wages were so low that it was impossible for workers to have a good standard of living. Property investors would not have built with the cheapest materials available, such that in regions where earthquakes are common, they wouldn't have built houses in the most risk-prone regions which were nowhere near earthquake-proof. There would be no sweatshops. There would be no exploitation by multi-national companies of workers in places where regulations concerning workers' rights are weak. This list could go on for a very long time. But I'll just conclude by saying that nothing like that would happen.

And Why? Because none of the fraud and callous transactions that led to such things would have been committed. Why? Because everyone would be obeying the many Bible verses that admonish against greed, and urge people to use their money not just to make themselves rich but in the care of others. Verses such as these:

1 Timothy chapter 5 (NLT)

17 Tell those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which will soon be gone. But their trust should be in the living God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment. 18 Tell them to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works and should give generously to those in need, always being ready to share with others whatever God has given them. 19 By doing this they will be storing up their treasure as a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of real life.

1 John chapter 3 (NLT)

16 We know what real love is because Christ gave up his life for us. And so we also ought to give up our lives for our Christian brothers and sisters. 17 But if anyone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need and refuses to help - how can God's love be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really show it by our actions. 19 It is by our actions that we know we are living in the truth.

James chapter 2 (NLT)

14 Dear brothers and sisters, what's the use of saying you have faith if you don't prove it by your actions? That kind of faith can't save anyone. 15 Suppose you see a brother or sister who needs food or clothing, 16 and you say, "Well, good-bye and God bless you; stay warm and eat well" - but then you don't give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? 17 So you see, it isn't enough just to have faith. Faith that doesn't show itself by good deeds is no faith at all - it is dead and useless.

Mark chapter 10 (TEV)

42 Jesus called [his disciples] together to him and said,

"You know that those who are considered rulers of the heathen have power over them, and the leaders have complete authority. 43 This, however, is not the way it is among you. If one of you wants to be great, you must be the servant of the rest; 44 and if one of you wants to be first, you must be the slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served; he came to serve and to give his life to redeem many people."

Luke chapter 12 (TEV)

13 A man in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide with me the property our father left us."

14 Jesus answered him, "Friend, who gave me the right to judge or to divide the property between you two?"

15 And he went on to say to them all, "Watch out and guard yourselves from every kind of greed; because your true life is not made up of the things you own, no matter how rich you may be."

In fact, there are a few real foaming-at-the-mouth rants against rich people in the Bible, which could have influenced some people to change their ways and stop exploiting people, like this for example:

James chapter 5 (TEV)

1 And now, you rich people, listen to me! Weep and wail over the miseries that are coming upon you! 2 Your riches have rotted away, and your clothes have been eaten by moths. 3 Your gold and silver are covered with rust, and this rust will be a witness against you and will eat up your flesh like fire. You have piled up riches in these last days. 4 You have not paid any wages to those who work in your fields. Listen to their complaints! The cries of those who gather in your crops have reached the ears of God, the Lord Almighty. 5 Your life here on earth has been full of luxury and pleasure. You have made yourselves fat for the day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered innocent people, and they do not resist you.

That could have shocked some people into changing their ways, which was doubtless its intention.

I'm not saying anyone made up any religion specifically as a means of social control over people. But it does seem to be one of its important functions.

By the way, you seem to be unable to grasp that the "social good of mankind" is in itself an abstraction from the living breathing humans of the real world: There is no actual mankind with shared interests and a shared purpose. The "social good" of most of mankind is very much in contrast to the "social good"
of the rich and powerful exploiting them. Indeed, refusing to acknowledge the actual conflicts of interests between people may inspire you to seek a solution
to your imaginary problem that is out of this world:

But though the self-interests of some conflict with the interests of others, as I said before, I believe the idea that it's possible to further the social good of mankind as a whole is not necessarily erroneous. For instance, there are rich people who'll benefit from their tenants living in slums which they don't maintain properly, but those same people benefit from slum clearance, if safer neighbourhoods are created so they're less likely to be robbed by people who grew up there. In 18th century London where there were big wealth inequalities, when rich people went to parties at night and had to walk through poor areas that were badly lit, they would often hire a boy to walk in front of them with a light so they could see properly and hopefully be alerted to anyone sneaking up to them who might want to rob them. But sometimes the boys holding the lights would be part of a gang that would rob them during their journey. When those rich people started to have to pay higher taxes for better street lighting and for the creation of safer neighbourhoods with a police force to deal with crime, (a police force didn't exist as we know it in the 18th century), they might have complained bitterly that they didn't have the money to go on such expensive holidays and to throw so many expensive parties. But they would have benefited by having the streets made safer to walk around, a benefit far greater than their loss.

It's been said before that if the standard of living of people in poor countries is to be significantly improved, it'll mean a drop in the standard of living of the rest of us, for instance because if they're all receiving fair wages, products sold in the West will be a lot more expensive. But I wonder whether and how much that would have such a significant impact it was a real burden on Westerners.

Since there is no 'mankind' with 'universal aspiration' in the real world,

I totally agree that there aren't universal aspirations.

I find it bizarre that Ronald Reagan should have been speaking out against war when he started or financed so many. But he was a politician after all. :-7

PS Even if aliens had threatened to invade planet Earth back in the 1980s, I'm not sure that I would have considered joining forces with Ronald Reagan to be my best option. Depending on the purpose of their invasion, I might have joined the aliens in their struggle against Ronald Reagan!

That might have turned out to be the most compassionate and wise move. LOL.

PPS What is the best way of making communities stop harming 'mankind'?

Well, I'd say it's probably a combination of benign social control, work towards social equality and a good social care system, and education in the risks of certain behaviours like drug taking, and education in critical thinking that encourages people to challenge any harmful indoctrination they've been given or any attitudes they hold that could lead to them harming others. To the extent that religion promotes moral values, it can be a part of what makes for better societies, although I think it would be interesting to read a genuinely objective analysis of whether the world might actually have been a better place if religion had never existed. Taking religion as a whole, it might well have been.

For instance, the caste system in India keeps a lot of the population down. It's possible that it would be easier to get rid of it if it wasn't for people who feel sure it's god-ordained. But then, there would be so many self-interested people who wanted to keep it in place even without religion that it's difficult to know how much religion would really be a factor in its maintenance.

 

[dann]

You're right; that's why I ended by saying that the idea that science progresses mankind is the "ideal". After all, there has to be a purpose to investigating how the world and everything in it works, or people wouldn't be motivated to do it. Many have doubtless been motivated by a desire to make the world a better place in various ways, while some have unfortunately made it a more dangerous one, by creating nuclear weapons and the like.

Whatever the desire: Knowledge of nuclear physics (nuclear fission) enabled the guys at the Manhattan Project to create the bomb, i.e. the intentions of the scientists who delivered the science behind nuclear weapons is irrelevant.

It isn't made-up and it isn't false. I agree that bettering mankind isn't the entire purpose of religion, and much of religion has to do with other things entirely, some of which can be detrimental to some people. Again, I qualified what I was saying at the end by saying I was talking about the "ideal".

It not only isn't the entire purpose of religion, it is not the purpose at all. And the purpose of something does not always explain what it is. (The explanation of what something is, however, often decides what it can be used for: nuclear fission.)

I expect you're absolutely right that religion wasn't invented to further the good of mankind but much of it was invented as an effort to control the uncontrollable, such as appeasing gods in an effort to make the rain fall so the harvests wouldn't fail leaving them starving etc.

Or rather: To give people the soothing delusion of, at least to some extent, being in control of the uncontrollable. Irrigation is an actual way of 'controlling the uncontrollable' - when it stops being uncontrollable.

But I think you fail to recognise that social control, and a benign social control at that, is a large part of some religions, or at least Christianity, hence the many commands to do good and not commit crimes etc.

Crimes against whom? Who decides that taking a loaf of bread to feed yourself or your family is a crime?

As I said in an earlier post, thinking it's God commanding you to live a better life can surely have a bigger impact on many people's decisions than just thinking that some far-away political authority wants you to live like that.

Yes, if you share the delusion, it may. On the other hand, the "political authority" never counts on religion as its sole instrument to make people obey. Preachers and policemen complement each other.

Obviously it's impossible to generalise about such things, since there's a massive history of people who supposedly believed in God but did things totally contrary to New Testament commands, and on the other hand a lot of people who'd want to obey such commands regardless of where they came from, because they coincide with their own moral values.

So don't generalize.

Again, in post 76, I list a lot of Bible quotes that would certainly further the good of the common people if they were put into practice by everyone. I'll quote a bit of what I said:

Luke chapter 12 (TEV)

13 A man in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide with me the property our father left us."

14 Jesus answered him, "Friend, who gave me the right to judge or to divide the property between you two?"

15 And he went on to say to them all, "Watch out and guard yourselves from every kind of greed; because your true life is not made up of the things you own, no matter how rich you may be."

'So you're dirt poor and your brother is fabulously rich? Get used to it and stop coveting thy brother's private property, stop being so greedy! A good Christian should not be concerned in that kind of selfish materialism.'
Yeah, right!

In fact, there are a few real foaming-at-the-mouth rants against rich people in the Bible, which could have influenced some people to change their ways and stop exploiting people, like this for example:

1 And now, you rich people, listen to me! Weep and wail over the miseries that are coming upon you! 2 Your riches have rotted away, and your clothes have been eaten by moths. 3 Your gold and silver are covered with rust, and this rust will be a witness against you and will eat up your flesh like fire. You have piled up riches in these last days. 4 You have not paid any wages to those who work in your fields. Listen to their complaints! The cries of those who gather in your crops have reached the ears of God, the Lord Almighty. 5 Your life here on earth has been full of luxury and pleasure. You have made yourselves fat for the day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered innocent people, and they do not resist you.

That could have shocked some people into changing their ways, which was doubtless its intention.

Yes, that's possible: 'I wanted to put a stop to the exploitation of these bastards, but now you have convinced me that it is probably better to wait. The rich will be punished by God in the next life and we'll get pie in the sky when we die.'

I'm not saying anyone made up any religion specifically as a means of social control over people. But it does seem to be one of its important functions.

Again: Don't confuse the thing with its functions (or purposes).
(And again: You are a fan of social control, aren't you?)

And another fairy tale that doesn't even say what you want it to say:

But though the self-interests of some conflict with the interests of others, as I said before, I believe the idea that it's possible to further the social good of mankind as a whole is not necessarily erroneous. For instance, there are rich people who'll benefit from their tenants living in slums which they don't maintain properly, but those same people benefit from slum clearance, if safer neighbourhoods are created so they're less likely to be robbed by people who grew up there. In 18th century London where there were big wealth inequalities, when rich people went to parties at night and had to walk through poor areas that were badly lit, they would often hire a boy to walk in front of them with a light so they could see properly and hopefully be alerted to anyone sneaking up to them who might want to rob them. But sometimes the boys holding the lights would be part of a gang that would rob them during their journey. When those rich people started to have to pay higher taxes for better street lighting and for the creation of safer neighbourhoods with a police force to deal with crime, (a police force didn't exist as we know it in the 18th century), they might have complained bitterly that they didn't have the money to go on such expensive holidays and to throw so many expensive parties. But they would have benefited by having the streets made safer to walk around, a benefit far greater than their loss.

Yes, armed policemen are probably more efficient than boys holding lights. Very rich people tend to rely on both: A police force to secure the system of private property in general supplied with bodyguards - also when they go on their expensive holidays. They consider it a necessary expenditure in conditions where some people own it all and others own nothing. (And they never rely on praying to God for free protection instead!)

It's been said before that if the standard of living of people in poor countries is to be significantly improved, it'll mean a drop in the standard of living of the rest of us, for instance because if they're all receiving fair wages, products sold in the West will be a lot more expensive. But I wonder whether and how much that would have such a significant impact it was a real burden on Westerners.

The reason why people in developing countries are poor is not that their wages aren't fair.
The burden on "Westerners" of proper standards of living, in developing as well as Western countries, depends on which Westerners you are talking about and the solution you suggest:
If the inhabitants of poor countries decide to kick out the exploiters and take over the means of production, a couple of Westerners will lose their fortune, but it won't hurt most of 'us', I think. So at least to that extent, it wouldn't be very different from what will happen if the poor inhabitants of rich countries do the same thing.

I find it bizarre that Ronald Reagan should have been speaking out against war when he started or financed so many. But he was a politician after all. :-7

That should be a lesson to all idealists of peace: Reagan was one of them! (And also: mankind is to race (or people) as Earth is to nation: an abstraction from actual conflicts of interests.)

Well, I'd say it's probably a combination of benign social control, work towards social equality and a good social care system, and education in the risks of certain behaviours like drug taking, and education in critical thinking that encourages people to challenge any harmful indoctrination they've been given or any attitudes they hold that could lead to them harming others. To the extent that religion promotes moral values, it can be a part of what makes for better societies, although I think it would be interesting to read a genuinely objective analysis of whether the world might actually have been a better place if religion had never existed. Taking religion as a whole, it might well have been.

Why do you think that moral values based on a delusional interpretation of the world "makes for better societies". I don't think that the question "whether the world might actually have been a better place if religion had never existed" could be be answered 'genuinely objectively'. It's fiction. Religion was (and is) a part of acutal history.

For instance, the caste system in India keeps a lot of the population down. It's possible that it would be easier to get rid of it if it wasn't for people who feel sure it's god-ordained. But then, there would be so many self-interested people who wanted to keep it in place even without religion that it's difficult to know how much religion would really be a factor in its maintenance.

Religion does not create caste or class systems. It supplies them with the illusion of justification.

 

[dann]

Yes, but Genesis was wrong a long time before the Origin of Species.

But what made Marx so sure religion was just an illusion in the days before there was an alternative explanation for how life began?

Having said that, Atheists go back in time a long way.

Exactly! Heliocentrism had been established a couple of centuries earlier, and only the most pigheaded of scientists still insisted that the universe was only 6.000 years old.

In fact, I'd say some of the kings and church rulers of the Middle Ages can't really have believed in the God of the Bible, because if they had, they'd have taken instructions such as some of the ones quoted in post 76 seriously, and wouldn't have gone around recklessly starting wars, executing people on false charges, and so on.

But this was not what a 'revolutionary' Christian like Martin Luther would have them believe:
"The religious dissident Martin Luther, already condemned as a heretic by the 1521 Edict of Worms and accused at the time of fomenting the strife, rejected the demands of the rebels and upheld the right of Germany's rulers to suppress the uprisings. Luther based his attitude on the peasant rebellion on St. Paul's doctrine of Divine Right of Kings in his epistle to the Romans 13:1-7, which says that all authorities are appointed by God, and should not be resisted."

He did have more subversive colleagues, though:
"His former follower Thomas Müntzer, on the other hand, came to the fore as a radical agitator in Thuringia."

Interestingly enough, nearly 500 years before Marx, a priest called John Ball was a leader in what could have turned into a revolution, The Peasants' Revolt, that Marx might have been pleased with, apart from the fact that it got out of control and unnecessarily violent. Actually, I expect you've heard of him. He preached social equality in opposition to church leaders and was very popular with the peasants.

Yes, as it appears from the link above they had them in Germany too: Peasants’ War

But I think you fail to recognise that social control, and a benign social control at that, is a large part of some religions, or at least Christianity, hence the many commands to do good and not commit crimes etc.

Even when people tell children about God or Santa Claus in order to control them, I have a hard time seeing what's supposed to be benign about it. And when they are talking to adults, I just don't think that you can fool people into being "good". Again I get the impression that your major problem with the world is that you think that people misbehave, which is why you wouldn't mind tricking them into behaving. Therefore you tend to come up with with benign aspects of religion - even when you know that they aren't integral parts of religion. Obey thy lord and master seems to be central to most religions - even though lords and masters don't tend to be very benign.
But then again: I'm sure the malign lords and masters will live to regret it when they die ...

 

[Baby Nemesis]

Whatever the desire: Knowledge of nuclear physics (nuclear fission) enabled the guys at the Manhattan Project to create the bomb, i.e. the intentions of the scientists who delivered the science behind nuclear weapons is irrelevant.

Perhaps. But the reason I mentioned it in the first place was simply to agree with the previous poster that science and religion don't have to conflict, because they serve different functions.

It [furthering the good of society] not only isn't the entire purpose of religion, it is not the purpose at all. And the purpose of something does not always explain what it is. (The explanation of what something is, however, often decides what it can be used for: nuclear fission.)

But it must be a large proportion of what the purpose of at least some religions are, because there are so many commands in them. For instance, the books of the Jewish Old Testament law contain an entire 613 commands, about how communities should behave, what was punishable by what, (and the way to worship God). A large part of the New Testament is taken up with instructions about moral living.

Crimes against whom? Who decides that taking a loaf of bread to feed yourself or your family is a crime?

There's a lot more variety than that in the Bible. And apparently the Laws of Moses weren't always carried out to the letter, but they were meant as guidelines, and there were local courts where people could plead their case, and were sometimes pardoned if there were extenuating circumstances. At least some of the rabbis responsible for handing down judgments might have thought it was inferred that they were supposed to see things in terms of a moral hierarchy anyway, to some extent, because of stories like the story of Pharaoh and the midwives in Exodus, where pharaoh wanted all Israelite baby boys killed, and the midwives lied to cover up the fact that they were protecting them, saying Israelite women gave birth so quickly the babies were already born when they got there.

But it's quite possible that in some courts, the law was interpreted more strictly than in others, just as in Britain some judges have been more lenient than others. For instance, I heard of a case in the 1930s where a girl was taken to court for stealing coal, but was acquitted, because she needed it to keep her and her younger brother warm. Other courts may have obeyed the letter of the law and punished her as if she took it when she didn't need it.

Yes, if you share the delusion, it may. On the other hand, the "political authority" never counts on religion as its sole instrument to make people obey.

I know.

'So you're dirt poor and your brother is fabulously rich? Get used to it and stop coveting thy brother's private property, stop being so greedy! A good
Christian should not be concerned in that kind of selfish materialism.'
Yeah, right!

Interpreting that Bible verse about not being greedy that way would not only be putting a spin on it, but it would be ignoring all the Bible verses urging people to improve the lot of poor people. Really, the fact that Christianity was by far the dominant religion in the West for centuries could have been a great boon to humanity if only everyone who professed to be Christians actually behaved as if they were. The massive wealth inequalities that existed, and the oppression of the poor, just wouldn't have happened, or at least they wouldn't have been nearly so bad, because all those rich people who so proudly sat in church thinking they looked pious would have lived Christianity out in practical ways as it was intended. Thus, more consideration would have been given to workers' rights, in line with several Bible verses, like one I quoted earlier from Isaiah:

Isaiah chapter 58 (NLT)

3 'We have fasted before you!' they say. 'Why aren't you impressed? We have done much penance, and you don't even notice it!'

"I will tell you why! It's because you are living for yourselves even while you are fasting. You keep right on oppressing your workers. 4 What good is fasting when you keep on fighting and quarreling? This kind of fasting will never get you anywhere with me. 5 You humble yourselves by going through the
motions of penance, bowing your heads like a blade of grass in the wind. You dress in sackcloth and cover yourselves with ashes. Is this what you call fasting? Do you really think this will please the LORD?

6 "No, the kind of fasting I want calls you to free those who are wrongly imprisoned and to stop oppressing those who work for you. Treat them fairly and give them what they earn. 7 I want you to share your food with the hungry and to welcome poor wanderers into your homes. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help.

8 "If you do these things, your salvation will come like the dawn. Yes, your healing will come quickly. Your godliness will lead you forward, and the glory of the LORD will protect you from behind. 9 Then when you call, the LORD will answer. 'Yes, I am here,' he will quickly reply.

"Stop oppressing the helpless and stop making false accusations and spreading vicious rumors! 10 Feed the hungry and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as day. 11 The LORD will guide you continually, watering your life when you are dry and keeping you healthy, too. You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring. 12 Your children will rebuild the deserted
ruins of your cities. Then you will be known as the people who rebuild their walls and cities.

Of course, people wouldn't need to have gone to the Old Testament to find examples. They jump out at you throughout the New Testament. It's true that nowhere does it hint at suggesting poor people should rise up against oppressive employers. But that would have probably been irresponsible advice anyway, when such attempts may well have been greeted with violence/eviction from land/refusal to pay employees, thus perhaps leading to them going hungry in the entire absence of a welfare state. Besides, Christianity is supposed to be a unifying force, bringing employers and employees and other groups together to work towards the common purpose of the betterment of themselves and mankind. To have promoted the idea that one group should have agitated against another would have been divisive, and thus would have defeated the object. There are, however, several stern passages that should have given any well-off person or employer a conviction that it was important to care for the needs of disadvantaged people rather than oppressing them, such as something Jesus is reported to have said:

Matthew Chapter 25 (TEV)

31 "When the Son of Man comes as King and all the angels with him, he will sit on his royal throne, 32 and the people of all the nations will be gathered before him. Then he will divide them into two groups, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the righteous people at his right and the others at his left.

34 Then the King will say to the people on his right, "Come, you that are blessed by my Father! Come and possess the kingdom which has been prepared for you ever since the creation of the world. 35 I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger and you received me in your homes, 36 naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me.' 37 The righteous will then answer him, "When, Lord, did we ever see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? 38 When did we ever see you a stranger and welcome you in our homes, or naked and clothe you? 39 When did we ever see you sick or in prison, and visit you?' 40 The King will reply, "I tell you, whenever you did this for one of the least important of these followers of mine, you did it for me!'

41 "Then he will say to those on his left, "Away from me, you that are under God's curse! Away to the eternal fire which has been prepared for the Devil and his angels! 42 I was hungry but you would not feed me, thirsty but you would not give me a drink; 43 I was a stranger but you would not welcome me in your homes, naked but you would not clothe me; I was sick and in prison but you would not take care of me.' 44 Then they will answer him, "When, Lord, did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and we would not help you?' 45 The King will reply, "I tell you, whenever you refused to help one of these least important ones, you refused to help me.'

46 These, then, will be sent off to eternal punishment, but the righteous will go to eternal life."

Yes, that's possible: 'I wanted to put a stop to the exploitation of these bastards, but now you have convinced me that it is probably better to wait. The rich will be punished by God in the next life and we'll get pie in the sky when we die.'

I very much doubt that anyone would have interpreted such Bible verses like that. I meant rich people might have been shocked by them into changing their ways, not wanting to be punished. There's nothing in the Bible that actually speaks out against the idea of poor people organising to campaign for workers' rights.

(And again: You are a fan of social control, aren't you?)

And another fairy tale that doesn't even say what you want it to say: ...

Yes, armed policemen are probably more efficient than boys holding lights. Very rich people tend to rely on both: A police force to secure the system of private property in general supplied with bodyguards - also when they go on their expensive holidays. They consider it a necessary expenditure in conditions where some people own it all and others own nothing. (And they never rely on praying to God for free protection instead!)

But you know that isn't what I was saying. Yes, I'm a fan of "social control" up to the extent that it keeps people safe. Surely everyone is. I wasn't suggesting you could ever make anyone stop abusing their power or addressing that issue, and rich people probably had heavy security around their properties long before the introduction of an effective police force. I was talking about Britain, where police generally aren't armed, and the introduction of a good police force would have benefited rich and poor alike. In fact, it would have benefited the poor more than the rich, since they're the ones most likely to be victims of crime. What I was saying was that a measure introduced to help one sector of society could end up having unforeseen benefits for others.

From an article called The world's first modern police force 1829

Robert Peel introduced the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 and set up an organised police force for London, ...

They became known as 'Peelers' and 'Bobbies' after their founder, and wore a dark blue long coat and a tall hat which they could use to stand on to look over walls, a pair of handcuffs and a wooden rattle to raise the alarm. By the 1880s this rattle was replaced by a whistle.

Blue was chosen because it was the colour of the popular Royal Navy rather than red which was the army's colour and struck fear into the people because of the way soldiers had been used to smash protests. The only weapon was a truncheon.

So that was actually an improvement from the way the common people were treated before, at least when they grouped together to protest, when before, protests had been sometimes put down by soldiers carrying arms.

The police force was apparently founded on nine principles, including:

• The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.
• The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.
• The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.

They weren't very good at first. From another site:

Many were poor quality - drunks and bullies. Of the first 2,800 new policemen, only 600 kept their jobs. The first policeman, given the number 1, was sacked after only FOUR HOURS! (He was legless)

But things improved:

Eventually however the impact upon crime, particularly organised crime led to an acceptance, if not approval, of the Bobbies.

And from another page on that site:

The system of crime prevention and law enforcement had hardly changed since the Medieval times. JPs or Justices of the Peace were appointed by the Crown (and had been since 1361). These were assisted by Constables who only worked part-time and were very unreliable as the pay was so bad!

Watchmen were also employed. These were called Charleys after King Charles II who introduced them.

*The problem with Charleys was that they were useless! The Lord Mayor of London, Matthew Wood said that they spent very little time patrolling, instead they would be in their boxes playing cards, going to pubs with prostitutes or sleeping! He also said that some of them took bribes from criminals.

*London was growing fast, and so was the crime rate, and something needed to be done. ...

And as I said, it's poor people themselves who are most likely to benefit from "social control" in the form of a good police force. From a summary of some American statistics:

Who is Most Likely to be a Crime Victim?

5. Low-income people are more likely to be victims

The NCVS data reveal that those with household incomes below $7,500 are more than three times more likely to be robbed than those with incomes above $75,000. This might seem counterintuitive; wouldn’t wealthier people have more and better stuff to take? They probably do, but poorer people are more likely to live in higher crime neighborhoods, and criminals typically victimize those around them the most. It’s more convenient.

Poor people are not just more likely to be robbed. Those at the lowest income level are victims of aggravated assault at the rate of 13 per 1,000, compared with 3 per 1,000 in the $75,000 and over category.

If the inhabitants of poor countries decide to kick out the exploiters and take over the means of production, a couple of Westerners will lose their fortune, but it won't hurt most of 'us', I think. So at least to that extent, it wouldn't be very different from what will happen if the poor inhabitants of rich
countries do the same thing.

But the big question is whether if they did that, they'd have the organisational skills and the resources to actually make things better for themselves. For instance, multi-national companies have often been known to exploit workers in developing countries. But if, rather than them being forced to improve working conditions and improve wages, they were just kicked out, things might not really improve, since workers might not know of, or have the resources to ship, their products to markets where they could sell a lot of their goods and get a good price.

And wouldn't forcibly kicking them out involve them in violence where a lot of those in the uprising might get hurt or killed?

Why do you think that moral values based on a delusional interpretation of the world "makes for better societies".

It depends how the interpretation manifests itself. Some religious convictions might be harmful because they inspire people to look down on others deemed to be less moral and to become bigoted against those not in their group. But what I was saying is that religion sometimes teaches some very good moral values and so its contribution can be valued, especially if people are inspired to follow them all the more because of the God they believe in.

I don't think that the question "whether the world might actually have been a better place if religion had never existed" could be be answered 'genuinely objectively'. It's fiction. Religion was
(and is) a part of acutal history.

Yes, but investigating the matter could have a purpose, because it might tell us things that could help current society. For instance, if the matter was investigated of whether it really was the Catholic/Protestant divide in Northern Ireland that caused so much of the animosity between communities, or what other factors were involved, a fuller picture of what causes the animosity might emerge after research, and then such things could be addressed, for instance in classes where young children are taught critical thinking in order that they question the attitudes of older members of their communities who spread bigotry.

 

[lightfire22000]

I'd distinguish mythology from religion, though I may distinguish alone. I'd characterize mythology as an attempt to articulate religion with stories.

 

[dann]

Perhaps. But the reason I mentioned it in the first place was simply to agree with the previous poster that science and religion don't have to conflict, because they serve different functions.

That you had an intention with your statement does not make it right. Science and religion can co-exist in as far as they are two different attitutes to the world: Science wants to know what the world is. It requires truth. Religion doesn't. On the contrary, religion does not want to know. Faced with reality, religion wants to make sense of the world by making up a meaning - beyond reality. I believe in Jesus because the illusion makes me happy, I enjoy being loved by God, which is why I invent him. Science doesn't care about stuff like that, and scientists throw themselves off the scent as soon as they start looking for comforting (instead of true) insight.
There's nothing comforting about black holes, primarily because they show us that the universe not only doesn't but actually cannot give a **** about us.

But it must be a large proportion of what the purpose of at least some religions are, because there are so many commands in them. For instance, the books of the Jewish Old Testament law contain an entire 613 commands, about how communities should behave, what was punishable by what, (and the way to worship God). A large part of the New Testament is taken up with instructions about moral living.

And for some reason you seem to think that moral living is a good thing.
I once saw some kind of American bishop on the CBS 60 Minutes denounce the 10 Commandments because they obviously put women on the same footing as cattle and property: Thou shallt not covet thy neighbour's house, wife, ox ....
Moral living, my ...

There's a lot more variety than that in the Bible. And apparently the Laws of Moses weren't always carried out to the letter, but they were meant as guidelines, and there were local courts where people could plead their case, and were sometimes pardoned if there were extenuating circumstances. At least some of the rabbis responsible for handing down judgments might have thought it was inferred that they were supposed to see things in terms of a moral hierarchy anyway, to some extent, because of stories like the story of Pharaoh and the midwives in Exodus, where pharaoh wanted all Israelite baby boys killed, and the midwives lied to cover up the fact that they were protecting them, saying Israelite women gave birth so quickly the babies were already born when they got there.

And that, of course, is the way that most Christians handle the Bible: They ignore the most disgusting parts of it and reinterpret the rest.

But it's quite possible that in some courts, the law was interpreted more strictly than in others, just as in Britain some judges have been more lenient than others. For instance, I heard of a case in the 1930s where a girl was taken to court for stealing coal, but was acquitted, because she needed it to keep her and her younger brother warm. Other courts may have obeyed the letter of the law and punished her as if she took it when she didn't need it.

Do you actually read what you're writing???! And did you actually read the law? So a court case took mercy on a girl stealing a little cole to keep herself and her brother from freezing. Did the law ever question the law of property that decrees that freezing and starving people are excluded from the abundance of solid fuel and food because they belong to other people who don't need them but produce them to get rich?
And every Xmas we are encumbered with innumerable versions of A Christmas Carol (I gave up counting them last year) with the predictable Dickensian moral of the well-behaved, needy and pathetic poor people waiting for the cold-hearted Scrooge to come to his senses and see that poor people deserve to be helped by the altruistic filthy rich - if they so decide. [/QUOTE]

Interpreting that Bible verse about not being greedy that way would not only be putting a spin on it, but it would be ignoring all the Bible verses urging people to improve the lot of poor people.

Are you saying the Jesus doesn't criticize the guy who's grumbling about his brother?

Really, the fact that Christianity was by far the dominant religion in the West for centuries could have been a great boon to humanity if only everyone who professed to be Christians actually behaved as if they were. The massive wealth inequalities that existed, and the oppression of the poor, just wouldn't have happened, or at least they wouldn't have been nearly so bad, because all those rich people who so proudly sat in church thinking they looked pious would have lived Christianity out in practical ways as it was intended.

But they did, didn't they? And all the poor families in Dickensland would have been so much happier if all the rich guys were converted to the spirit of Xmas the way Scrooge was, right? Don't forget that these are fairytales.

Thus, more consideration would have been given to workers' rights, in line with several Bible verses, like one I quoted earlier from Isaiah:

Yes, the world would be a better place if only the oppressors stopped oppressing. They don't, however, in spite of 2.000 years of Christianity. And nobody would ever get AIDS if everybody abstained from having sex until they were married and never slept around.

Of course, people wouldn't need to have gone to the Old Testament to find examples. They jump out at you throughout the New Testament. It's true that nowhere does it hint at suggesting poor people should rise up against oppressive employers.

You are right. Nowhere.

But that would have probably been irresponsible advice anyway, when such attempts may well have been greeted with violence/eviction from land/refusal to pay employees, thus perhaps leading to them going hungry in the entire absence of a welfare state. Besides, Christianity is supposed to be a unifying force, bringing employers and employees and other groups together to work towards the common purpose of the betterment of themselves and mankind.

Yes, it is, isn't it?!

To have promoted the idea that one group should have agitated against another would have been divisive, and thus would have defeated the object. There are, however, several stern passages that should have given any well-off person or employer a conviction that it was important to care for the needs of disadvantaged people rather than oppressing them, such as something Jesus is reported to have said:

Yes, so in other words the Bible preaches that you should never stop acting like a true Xian sheep. The flock should obey its betters and hope that they appreciate it so much so that they use a little of their earnings caring "for the needs of disadvantaged people".

I very much doubt that anyone would have interpreted such Bible verses like that. I meant rich people might have been shocked by them into changing their ways, not wanting to be punished. There's nothing in the Bible that actually speaks out against the idea of poor people organising to campaign for workers' rights.

No, "workers' rights" did not exist as a concept 2.000 years ago. And so far the rich people haven't "been shocke (...) into changing their ways", so let's wait another 2.000 years and see if it may happen.

But you know that isn't what I was saying. Yes, I'm a fan of "social control" up to the extent that it keeps people safe. Surely everyone is. I wasn't suggesting you could ever make anyone stop abusing their power or addressing that issue, and rich people probably had heavy security around their properties long before the introduction of an effective police force. I was talking about Britain, where police generally aren't armed, and the introduction of a good police force would have benefited rich and poor alike. In fact, it would have benefited the poor more than the rich, since they're the ones most likely to be victims of crime. What I was saying was that a measure introduced to help one sector of society could end up having unforeseen benefits for others.

From an article called The world's first modern police force 1829

Yes, it's back to the old fairy tale: You don't even seem to notice the contradiction that in your fairy tale the police is supposed to benefit "rich and poor alike", and yet the poor are "the ones most likely to be victims of crime".
It could not be because this is the ideal and not the reality of the law?
And it isn't even strange that the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer. Only if you refuse to look at the reality as it is because you would rather dream of the wonderful blessings of capitalism if only people behaved under the benign auspices of an ideal of social control.

So that was actually an improvement from the way the common people were treated before, at least when they grouped together to protest, when before, protests had been sometimes put down by soldiers carrying arms.

What exactly is your point? That it is better to have your protestors truncheoned than shot? The problem is that this 'choice' does not depend on the protestors. It depends on the employers of the truncheoneers and riflemen: A state may decide that the lenient way of putting down protestors is preferable and hold back the people with guns in case the truncheons don't work. That's progress for you.
And in the centres of capitalism it may even progress to the point where police hardly ever use real ammo against protestors because politicians prefer peace on the home front. Armed soldiers are then 'only' used abroad. That's progress for you.

The police force was apparently founded on nine principles, including:

They weren't very good at first. From another site:

But things improved:

And from another page on that site:

And as I said, it's poor people themselves who are most likely to benefit from "social control" in the form of a good police force. From a summary of some American statistics:

Again you fail to notice that your facts contradict your ideal:

Poor people are not just more likely to be robbed. Those at the lowest income level are victims of aggravated assault at the rate of 13 per 1,000, compared with 3 per 1,000 in the $75,000 and over category.

The police obviously help secure the safety of rich people and their property. They don't do much for you if you are dirt poor and living in the slums - except maybe harass you now and then.

But the big question is whether if they did that, they'd have the organisational skills and the resources to actually make things better for themselves. For instance, multi-national companies have often been known to exploit workers in developing countries. But if, rather than them being forced to improve working conditions and improve wages, they were just kicked out, things might not really improve, since workers might not know of, or have the resources to ship, their products to markets where they could sell a lot of their goods and get a good price.

And wouldn't forcibly kicking them out involve them in violence where a lot of those in the uprising might get hurt or killed?

Yes, we get the message: Poor people are unskilled and not able to market their (non-existent) products. That they also don't have the resources is fairly obvious. The resources already belong to the corporations, and they wouldn't accept poor people repossessing them so "a lot of those in the uprising might get hurt or killed".

It depends how the interpretation manifests itself. Some religious convictions might be harmful because they inspire people to look down on others deemed to be less moral and to become bigoted against those not in their group. But what I was saying is that religion sometimes teaches some very good moral values and so its contribution can be valued, especially if people are inspired to follow them all the more because of the God they believe in.

So what we need is good religion teaching "very good moral values" by means of the big bogeyman in the sky.

Yes, but investigating the matter could have a purpose, because it might tell us things that could help current society. For instance, if the matter was investigated of whether it really was the Catholic/Protestant divide in Northern Ireland that caused so much of the animosity between communities, or what other factors were involved, a fuller picture of what causes the animosity might emerge after research, and then such things could be addressed, for instance in classes where young children are taught critical thinking in order that they question the attitudes of older members of their communities who spread bigotry.

And I'm sure that your teaching of critical thinking wouldn't mind looking at the 'factor' of British imperialism in Northern Ireland and its collaboration with religion.

 

[dann]

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/wilde_soul.html

"Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them. What is said by great employers of labour against agitators is unquestionably true. Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. (...)

The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less."

 

[dann]

Sorry, I forgot something in the Oscar Wilde quotation above, which could lead to a misinterpretation:

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/wilde_soul.html

Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

But this was not what a 'revolutionary' Christian like Martin Luther would have them believe:
"The religious dissident Martin Luther, already condemned as a heretic by the 1521 Edict of Worms and accused at the time of fomenting the strife, rejected the demands of the rebels and upheld the right of Germany's rulers to suppress the uprisings. Luther based his attitude on the peasant rebellion on St. Paul's doctrine of Divine Right of Kings in his epistle to the Romans 13:1-7, which says that all authorities are appointed by God, and should not be resisted."

Oh yes. I heard about Luther's ferocious incitements to violence against the peasants who revolted. It sounds to me as if he'd gone a bit nuts by then. But maybe he was a bit unstable all his life. Pity. I thought he sounded like a hero when I learned about him at school, standing up to the religious authorities and condemning their defrauding of the common people, at great risk to himself. But I've since learned he developed some rather unsavoury views about people who refused to see things his way or whose actions he didn't like, like the peasants in the uprising.

It's interesting that in his younger years, he didn't set so much store by that verse about obeying authorities. :-7

From a brief outline of his life:

Summoned before Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in April 1521, Luther again refused to recant and was put under the ban of the empire.

While Paul urged the people he was writing to to obey the government in his Letter to the Romans, he, and other apostles like Peter, certainly weren't averse to disobeying the authorities themselves, when the authorities were trying to stop them preaching. Peter said, "We must obey God rather than men". There's no reason to suppose that should have been limited to matters of being allowed to preach. In fact, a very plausible theological case could have been made for the right of the peasants to have revolted, if Luther had felt like making it. When Paul was instructing the Romans he was writing to to obey the authorities, there may have been no law on the books that specifically contravened the laws in the Bible. If he'd written to them ten years later, when Nero's persecution of Christians was in full swing, he might have said something very different indeed, as he might have done if the people he was writing to were clearly being forced into extreme hardship by unjust laws or taxes, although Christianity was very much a minority religion at the time, so it would probably have been impossible for the people he was writing to to have done anything en masse that had a hope of easing the situation of people like them, because there weren't enough of them, and thus it wouldn't have made sense for him to have suggested such a thing. Of course, if he had, he'd probably have suggested something non-violent.

From Wikipedia on the Peasants Revolt in Germany:

... Princes had the right to levy taxes and borrow money as they saw fit. The growing costs of administration and military upkeep impelled the princes to keep raising their subjects' cost of living. The lesser nobility and the clergy paid no taxes and often supported their local prince. Many towns had privileges that exempted them from paying taxes, and so the bulk of the burden of taxation fell on the peasants. Princes often attempted to force their freer peasants into serfdom through increasing taxes and the introduction of Roman Civil law. Roman Civil law was advantageous to those princes who sought to consolidate their power, because it brought all land into their personal ownership and eliminated the feudal concept of the land as a trust between lord and peasant that conferred rights as well as obligations on the latter. By maintaining the remnants of the ancient law which legitimized their own rule, they not only elevated their wealth and position in the empire through the confiscation of all property and revenues, but also their dominion over their peasant subjects. ...

As the guilds grew and urban populations rose, the town patricians faced increasing opposition. The patricians consisted of wealthy families that sat alone in the town councils and held all the administrative offices. Like the princes, they could seek to secure revenues from their peasants by any possible means. Arbitrary road, bridge and gate tolls could be instituted at will. They gradually revoked the common lands and made it illegal for a farmer to fish or log wood in what was once land held in common. Guild taxes were exacted. All revenues collected were not subject to formal administration, and civic accounts were neglected. Thus embezzlement and fraud were commonly practiced and the patrician class, bound by family ties, became ever richer and more exploitative.

Exploiting the peasants would have been in direct contravention of some of the laws and instructions in the Bible. In fact, there's even a passage in exodus 22 where it says God was saying:

22 "Do not exploit widows or orphans. 23 If you do and they cry out to me, then I will surely help them. 24 My anger will blaze forth against you, and I will kill you with the sword. Your wives will become widows, and your children will become fatherless.

Obviously it means people would actually be doing that. So Luther could have even claimed the uprising was God's will, if he'd chosen to interpret things in that way, except that it would have meant he lost favour with the princes who were protecting him, so it was unlikely that he'd ever have done such a thing.

Even when people tell children about God or Santa Claus in order to control them, I have a hard time seeing what's supposed to be benign about it. And when they are talking to adults, I just don't think that you can fool people into being "good". Again I get the impression that your major problem with the world is that you think that people misbehave, which is why you wouldn't mind tricking them into behaving. Therefore you tend to come up with with benign aspects of religion - even when you know that they aren't integral parts of religion. Obey thy lord and master seems to be central to most religions - even though lords and masters don't tend to be very benign.
But then again: I'm sure the malign lords and masters will live to regret it when they die ...

But I'm not talking about tricking people into believing in God so they'll behave better, by convincing them there's a God you're sure doesn't exist who wants them to be good. Actually, I don't think it's possible to prove God doesn't exist, or that what the gospel writers say happened to Jesus was based on delusion. And in the absence of such proof, I don't think you can say people are being tricked if they perceive obeying the Bible as all the more compelling because it has the authority of God. In fact, in the unlikely event that it could be proven that the story of Jesus was just a myth and God doesn't exist, I think it might be sad, because the New Testament could be seen as less inspirational. Here's a modern-day example of something else that illustrates what I mean:

I read an inspirational story called Little Teddy Stoddard, about a teacher who had a boy in her class who was a troublemaker and who she didn't like at all. She came to take great delight in marking his work with a fail. His work was never very good. But one day, she read his records from former years, and previous teachers had said he worked well, but that he had a troubled home life that was affecting him more and more. She was so moved by what she read that she decided to take special care to help him improve his work. She did, and he got much better, leaving school with high grades and even eventually becoming a doctor.

It was disappointing to discover that was fiction, and I wonder if teachers finding that out could see it as less inspirational, because rather than thinking it was possible that someone could be transformed like that, they might think, "Well, it's only fiction; such things might never happen in real life", and not be so encouraged to try, which might mean some children might not achieve what they could have done if those teachers had been encouraged about the potential of some students who seem unpromising, by thinking about what had happened to one. I can't say for sure that that would happen. But I wonder.

Similarly, anyone inspired to live morally because they feel sure there's a loving God who wants them to might not be so inspired if they come to believe it's all fiction. Some people have made dramatic changes in their lives that have gone on to benefit them and their communities when they've been inspired by becoming Christians. Here are several examples:

Son of Hope.
The Coin Momma Lost.
Charles Barry Mayson's Testimony.
Shoplifting - breaking free. There is hope!
The Story of Walid - Former Palestinian Troublemaker.
The Story of Adel Mohammed El Naggar.
Boyhood Dream Almost Ate His Soul!
Freedom (Escape from) a Life of Violence.
Still Changing Lives!
The History of Keith Green.
The Testimony of Eric & Melanie Barger.

 

[dann]

I don't have much time, so for now I'll comment only on one of your points:

I read an inspirational story called Little Teddy Stoddard, about a teacher who had a boy in her class who was a troublemaker and who she didn't like at all. She came to take great delight in marking his work with a fail. His work was never very good. But one day, she read his records from former years, and previous teachers had said he worked well, but that he had a troubled home life that was affecting him more and more. She was so moved by what she read that she decided to take special care to help him improve his work. She did, and he got much better, leaving school with high grades and even eventually becoming a doctor.

It was disappointing to discover that was fiction, and I wonder if teachers finding that out could see it as less inspirational, because rather than thinking it was possible that someone could be transformed like that, they might think, "Well, it's only fiction; such things might never happen in real life", and not be so encouraged to try, which might mean some children might not achieve what they could have done if those teachers had been encouraged about the potential of some students who seem unpromising, by thinking about what had happened to one. I can't say for sure that that would happen. But I wonder.

That's what you get when you actually consider it a good idea to lie to people as a 'benign' way of manipulating them into being good. But you are right that in order to encourage teachers to be inspirational and try, it takes an awful lot of lies. And Holywood is an always willing procurer of those.
The truth would disillusion teachers about their profession. And you don't seem to want that to happen, do you?

b. The organization of the education system as a screening process
The state organizes education for capital: It provides knowledge on the basis of the criterion of the necessary minimum: do not teach everything, but only what's necessary for functioning. At the same time the transfer of knowledge serves as a sorting of trainees into the hierarchy of occupations. Education takes place as a screening process (that all children are obligated to participate in this selection, that they all must participate in this comparison, is understood as permission – "the right to education “):
• That knowledge which can be obtained at school emerges as prerequisites, thus as an obligatory demand that a certain quantity of knowledge in a certain quantity of time is gone through, independently of the understanding of the pupils. Within this period the pupils must pick up the material, whether it is difficult or easy.
• The material in test questions: Within a certain time the pupils must prove that they can reproduce the selected material. Thus not their knowledge, but their efficiency, knowledge per time, is determined.
• The test is not only of their efficiency, but their efficiency in comparison with the other pupils: The individual results of the tests are set in relationship next to each other and thereby evaluated: Only from this comparison then results what the individual’s (in-)efficiency is worth.
• The result is a grade. It gives final and comprehensive information about the efficiency of the pupil. It not only completely abstracts from the knowledge and ignorance of the pupil, but it does not help him at all if, after the test, he can correct his errors to the teacher.
• The grades not only give information about the efficiency comparison, but the further education of the individual depends on them: Depending on how easily one advances in the requirements and in the school competition – the less help he needs - the longer his higher education may continue. Turned around, those who need more time and help to acquire knowledge are excluded early on from further education - so that illiteracy belongs to the normal results of liberal education.
Knowledge is thus given to most people in this country very economically. State expenses should be as low as possible to produce the training needed by the world of occupations: lots of stupid people for the normal jobs and a few more highly trained for supervision of the former and for other responsibilities. The content of learning functions the same as the prerequisites: to produce differences in people’s school performances. At the same time, the learners are brought into the learning competition with their conditions abstracted from -- previous teaching by parents at home, material and personnel support from the parents -- so that it is no wonder that education reproduces the class position of the parents in the children. http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/science&education.htm

Lying to people about this unpleasant institution is cynical.

Similarly, anyone inspired to live morally because they feel sure there's a loving God who wants them to might not be so inspired if they come to believe it's all fiction. Some people have made dramatic changes in their lives that have gone on to benefit them and their communities when they've been inspired by becoming Christians.

Yes, there you go again about "Some people": Some people have made dramatic changes in their lives that have gone on to benefit them and their communities when they've been inspired by giving up their addiction to Christianity. All in all, some people do all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons.
Not the best of arguments for lying ...

 

[dann]

Actually, I don't think it's possible to prove God doesn't exist, or that what the gospel writers say happened to Jesus was based on delusion. And in the absence of such proof, I don't think you can say people are being tricked if they perceive obeying the Bible as all the more compelling because it has the authority of God.

This feels like , but don't worry about the absence of proof that (any kind of god) doesn't exist, as long as there is absolutely no proof that it/she/he does.
Anyway, appeals to imaginary authority are just as bad as appeals to false authority.
You appear to be advocating a kind of benign delusional authoritarianism.
See also: The Unbelievability of Christian Theism.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

That you had an intention with your statement does not make it right. Science and religion can co-exist in as far as they are two different attitutes to the world: Science wants to know what the world is. It requires truth. Religion doesn't. On the contrary, religion does not want to know. Faced with reality, religion wants to make sense of the world by making up a meaning - beyond reality. I believe in Jesus because the illusion makes me happy, I enjoy being loved by God, which is why I invent him. Science doesn't care about stuff like that, and scientists throw themselves off the scent as soon as they start looking for comforting (instead of true) insight.
There's nothing comforting about black holes, primarily because they show us that the universe not only doesn't but actually cannot give a **** about us.

But I still say they don't have to be seen as opposites, as you seem to think they are, because a religious person won't necessarily bury their head in the sand when it comes to scientific enquiry. Religion doesn't have to stifle science or vice versa. A religious person might think of science as the investigation of what we can prove about the universe, but God as being beyond the realm of science, something that can't be proved or disproved, but something they believe in because they feel they have an emotional or an intuitive conviction that he exists, for example. They might be very involved in trying to further knowledge in their particular branch of science. But they might think of religion as being a part of their lives which has to do with the emotional side, thinking of the scientific side as separate. They might see their conviction that God exists and their desire to participate in religious activities as being in the same category in some respects as their enjoyment of reading history books, or skimming stones on ponds, or feeding the ducks in the park with their children, or looking at a nice view, or enjoying melodic music. They might see the enjoyment they find in doing all those things as barely explainable by science, but nevertheless no less valid.

And for some reason you seem to think that moral living is a good thing.

I once saw some kind of American bishop on the CBS 60 Minutes denounce the 10 Commandments because they obviously put women on the same footing as cattle and property: Thou shallt not covet thy neighbour's house, wife, ox ....
Moral living, my ...

Some of those Ruthlesscriticism articles you've linked to just go right over my head for some reason, including the one on morality. Could you explain in simple terms just what you perceive as being wrong with moral living, or the way you define morality? There can certainly be arguments as to whether specific things are moral or not, such as euthanasia. But I don't understand why you'd think morality in itself is a flawed concept.

I bet that man condemning the Ten Commandments would have shouted even louder if Moses had been talking to women and told them not to covet their neighbour's husband or their ox. But the fact that men were told not to covet both other people's wives and their property in the same commandment isn't proof that women were treated as property, ... or that houses and oxen were treated as human.

In a very brief article called Weren't women considered property in the OT, like cows or something? Didn't the Law say a father could even SELL his daughter?!! it says:

... Fourthly, who ever heard of "property OWNING property"?!

Yet women in the OT...

• Gave their personal belongings as offerings (Ex 35.22,29) ...

• Unmarried daughters could inherit property (Num 27.1-7; Elephantine papyri, Job 42.13)
• Female servants could buy their own freedom (Lev 27.1ff)
• Receive revenues from land (2 kgs 8)
• Possess nice homes (Mic 2.8)
• Sell property (Ruth 4.9)

There are several New Testament passages that I consider to be basic overviews of the biblical concept of morality, including this one. It's not comprehensive, but you get the general idea:

From Ephesians 4:

21 Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, 22 throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. 23 Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. 25 So stop telling lies. Let us tell our neighbors the truth, for we are all parts of the same body. 26 And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.” Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27 for anger gives a foothold to the devil.

*28 If you are a thief, quit stealing. Instead, use your hands for good hard work, and then give generously to others in need. 29 Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them.

*31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. 32 Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.

To what extent it's right to follow that to the letter, or whether some of it is lost in translation, can be disputed; but surely no one can dispute that the general intent is good.

And that, of course, is the way that most Christians handle the Bible: They ignore the most disgusting parts of it and reinterpret the rest.

Actually, it's probable that most Christians have never read most of the Bible. And I don't see why they should, unless they want to preach or debate about it, since the Old Testament is pre-Christian.

But I didn't say the rabbis making judgments in the courts might have re-interpreted the Bible, just that they might have used examples from it as guides to help them determine how strictly to enforce the law. They would also have used their own judgment and common sense to determine whether there were mitigating circumstances that made it sensible not to carry out the punishments prescribed. There's ancient documented evidence that they did. Some of it can be seen in an article about some laws of Moses that on the face of it seem barbaric: Are the laws in the Old Testament about rape and virginity unfair to women?

Do you actually read what you're writing???! And did you actually read the law? So a court case took mercy on a girl stealing a little cole to keep herself and her brother from freezing. Did the law ever question the law of property that decrees that freezing and starving people are excluded from the abundance of solid fuel and food because they belong to other people who don't need them but produce them to get rich?
And every Xmas we are encumbered with innumerable versions of A Christmas Carol (I gave up counting them last year) with the predictable Dickensian moral of the well-behaved, needy and pathetic poor people waiting for the cold-hearted Scrooge to come to his senses and see that poor people deserve to be helped by the altruistic filthy rich - if they so decide.

What could a judge in a law court have done about the state of social welfare? He wouldn't have had the power to decree that the government should be helping such people more. All he could do was to ensure that judgments against people who appeared in his court were no more harsh than they should have been. The case I referred to happened in the middle of the Great Depression. Those who should be blamed are the ones who caused it. And a case could certainly be made that the government should have been doing more for disadvantaged people. But progress was being made in those areas. There's an article about it called Britain's long road to the welfare state.

... Radical Liberals, led by David Lloyd George, took the first steps towards Britain's first welfare state after their huge electoral victory in 1906.

Among the key measures introduced were old age pensions, a system of health insurance, and labour exchanges to help tackle unemployment.

However, the Edwardian welfare state was incomplete.

It was limited to the working class, its funding basis was insecure, and little progress was made in tackling poverty among people of working age. ...

Workers in munitions factories forced the government to introduce rent control in 1915 after a series of rent strikes, and in 1918 Lloyd George - now Coalition Prime Minister - pledged to provide "homes built for heroes" for returning war veterans.

Two million council homes were eventually built.

The end of the war also brought a slump, particularly in northern industrial towns, that deepened into the Great Depression by the 1930s.

By the time Britain entered the Second World War, the pressures for social reform were mounting.

And the shared sacrifice during the war enhanced the belief that "never again" should Britain fight for an unequal and unfair society. ...

Beveridge's report on social insurance galvanized opinion ...

His report called for a universal flat rate benefit, payable to all, on the basis of fixed national insurance contributions. It was to cover old age, unemployment, and sickness. ...

Are you saying the Jesus doesn't criticize the guy who's grumbling about his brother?

No, I'm saying you have no way of knowing how much money that brother had in the first place. Here's the full story, from which you will be able to determine that the brother was very unlikely to have been "dirt poor" as you suggested, and that Jesus wasn't saying any such thing as, "Be satisfied with being poor":

Luke chapter 12 (TEV)

13 A man in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide with me the property our father left us."

14 Jesus answered him, "Friend, who gave me the right to judge or to divide the property between you two?"

15 And he went on to say to them all, "Watch out and guard yourselves from every kind of greed; because your true life is not made up of the things you own, no matter how rich you may be."

16 Then Jesus told them this parable: "There was once a rich man who had land which bore good crops. 17 He began to think to himself, "I don't have a place to keep all my crops. What can I do? 18 This is what I will do,' he told himself; "I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, where I will store
the grain and all my other goods. 19 Then I will say to myself, Lucky man! You have all the good things you need for many years. Take life easy, eat, drink, and enjoy yourself!' 20 But God said to him, "You fool! This very night you will have to give up your life; then who will get all these things you have kept for yourself?' "

21 And Jesus concluded, "This is how it is with those who pile up riches for themselves but are not rich in God's sight."

In fact, the early apostles lived in a socialist-type community:

Acts chapter 4 (TEV)

32 The group of believers was one in mind and heart. None of them said that any of their belongings were their own, but they all shared with one another everything they had. 33 With great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God poured rich blessings on them all. 34 There was no one in the group who was in need. Those who owned fields or houses would sell them, bring the money received from the sale, 35 and turn it over to the apostles; and the money was distributed according to the needs of the people. 36 And so it was that Joseph, a Levite born in Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means "One who Encourages"), 37 sold a field he owned, brought the money, and turned it over to the apostles.

Really, the fact that Christianity was by far the dominant religion in the West for centuries could have been a great boon to humanity if only everyone who professed to be Christians actually behaved as if they were. The massive wealth inequalities that existed, and the oppression of the poor, just wouldn't
have happened, or at least they wouldn't have been nearly so bad, because all those rich people who so proudly sat in church thinking they looked pious would have lived Christianity out in practical ways as it was intended.

But they did, didn't they? And all the poor families in Dickensland would have been so much happier if all the rich guys were converted to the spirit of Xmas the way Scrooge was, right? Don't forget that these are fairytales.

The moral commands in the New Testament can't be described as fairy tales by anyone's definition. They're just instructions. I'm not talking about rich people going out every now and then and handing out baskets of food to poor people, as many well-off Victorians did do. What I mean is that if people like landowners and factory owners genuinely believed in the Christianity they claimed to believe in, they wouldn't have exploited the people who worked for them, but would have given them decent wages, done their best to ensure a safe working environment, and not over-worked them. To give an example:

From a web page on the social effects suffered by workers during the industrial revolution:

Also thousands of new workers were needed to work machines in mills and foundries and the factory owners built houses for them. ...The workers' houses were usually near to the factories so that people could walk to work. They were built really quickly and cheaply. The houses were cheap, most had between 2-4 rooms - one or two rooms downstairs, and one or two rooms upstairs. Victorian families were big with 4 or 5 children. There was no running water or toilet. A whole street would have to share an outdoor pump and a couple of outside toilets. Most houses in the North of England were "back to backs" (built in double rows) with no windows at the front, no backyards and a sewer down the middle of the street. The houses were built crammed close together, with very narrow streets between them. Most of the houses were crowded with five or more people possibly crammed into a single room. Even the cellars were full.* Most of the new towns were dirty and unhealthy. The household rubbish was thrown out into the streets. Housing conditions like these were a perfect breeding grounds for diseases. More than 31,000 people died during an outbreak of cholera in 1832 and lots more were killed by typhus, smallpox and dysentery.

Those factory owners who claimed to be Christians would have done their best to ensure living conditions for their workers were better if they'd actually been sincere enough to take seriously the many commands such as:

Colossians chapter 3 (NLT)

5 Don't be greedy for the good things of this life, for that is idolatry.

To give another example:

While thousands of children worked down the mine, thousands of others worked in the cotton mills. The mill owners often took in orphans to their workhouses, they lived at the mill and were worked as hard as possible. They spent most of their working hours at the machines with little time for fresh air or exercise. Even part of Sunday was spent cleaning machines. There were some serious accidents, some children were scalped when their hair was caught in the machine, hands were crushed and some children were killed when they went to sleep and fell into the machine.

Those factory workers who proudly paraded themselves as Christians would have done their best to make sure working conditions were much better than that if they'd been genuinely Christian and thus had aspired to obey Bible commands like:

Colossians chapter 3 (NLT)

12 ... you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

The whole ethos of the New Testament is anti-exploitation. But it was obviously ignored.

These were the conditions Marx saw around him; so it's no wonder he thought the solution was a revolution of workers!

But now conditions for workers have been improved so much under enlightened Capitalism, at least in the West, I don't understand why anyone would think a revolution in the West would be a good idea nowadays. Perhaps you can explain?

Yes, the world would be a better place if only the oppressors stopped oppressing.* They don't, however, in spite of 2.000 years of Christianity. And nobody would ever get AIDS if everybody abstained from having sex until they were married and never slept around.

And Communism didn't stop them either. Why do you think Communism would be so much better?

I'm certainly not saying Christianity is the best tool there is to combat social inequality. Obviously there are much better ones available. But that doesn't mean Christianity may as well be discounted altogether, because it has changed a lot of people for the better.

Yes, so in other words the Bible preaches that you should never stop acting like a true Xian sheep. The flock should obey its betters and hope that they
appreciate it so much so that they use a little of their earnings caring "for the needs of disadvantaged people".

You sound as if you think Christianity was all a big conspiracy to benefit employers and keep workers down. While it might have sometimes been twisted to fit that agenda, it was certainly not intended to do so, which it's possible to tell from the number of passages there are warning rich people against oppressing their workers or the needy, or telling them to care for the needs of less fortunate people.

No, "workers' rights" did not exist as a concept 2.000 years ago. And so far the rich people haven't "been shocke (...) into changing their ways", so let's wait another 2.000 years and see if it may happen.

Not en masse, certainly. But no one ever expected it to. Such verses may, though, have had sobering enough effects on some individuals to make them change. Certainly the founder of the Salvation Army thought so. From an article called Kapital ideas meet fire and brimstone:

Ann Woodall's study of William Booth and Karl Marx is prompted by a striking coincidence: the founder of the Salvation Army and the father of Marxism both moved to London in 1849. Furthermore, she argues, what goaded each of them into action was horror at the intractable poverty of the London residuum - what Booth called the "submerged tenth" of the population and Marx dubbed the lumpen-proletariat.

Both men were domineering, impatient characters with a taste for fire-and-brimstone sermons. "Nothing moves people like the terrific," Booth wrote. "They must have hell-fire flashed before their eyes, or they will not move." Marx thought so too, portraying capital as "dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour". ...

Yes, it's back to the old fairy tale: You don't even seem to notice the contradiction that in your fairy tale the police is supposed to benefit "rich and poor alike", and yet the poor are "the ones most likely to be victims of crime". It could not be because this is the ideal and not the reality of the law?

But there certainly isn't such a simplistic reason for that as, "The police aren't really benefiting the poor because they're tools of the rich", or any such thing. Poor people are more likely to be the victims of crime not simply because they aren't so protected, but because there are more people committing crime in their neighbourhoods. I certainly didn't suggest the police are the only solution. A whole range of things can help to reduce crime, even down to giving teenagers somewhere enjoyable to go in the evenings so they're not hanging around the streets. Education can help them become high enough earners to get out of high-crime neighbourhoods and resettle in more well-to-do ones; but that's not a simple solution either, since for example, there's a cultural attitude in some communities that it's not cool to settle down to learning. Also, in families where children aren't encouraged to get down to homework, it's more difficult, as it can be for a number of other reasons. Full employment can also cut the crime rate significantly. But one problem is a catch 22 situation where companies aren't willing to invest in high-crime areas because of the risk to their facilities, but because they don't, people who might otherwise be gainfully employed resort to crime.

So an attempt to solve the problem would have to involve several things. I'm becoming curious as to how you think a Communist revolution would help.

What exactly is your point? That it is better to have your protestors truncheoned than shot? The problem is that this 'choice' does not depend on the protestors.
It depends on the employers of the truncheoneers and riflemen: A state may decide that the lenient way of putting down protestors is preferable and hold back the people with guns in case the truncheons don't work. That's progress for you.

The introduction of a police force went along with a raft of legislation that made things fairer for poor people, such as prison reform. From an article called Conditions in Prison and Types of Punishment during the 19th century:

During the 18th century the number of crimes punishable by death rose to about 200. Some, such as treason or murder, were serious crimes, but in other cases people could be sentenced to death for what we would think of as minor offences. For example, the death sentence could be passed for picking pockets, stealing bread or cutting down a tree. These were the kinds of crime likely to be committed by those in most desperate need.*

In 1823 Sir Robert Peel reduced the number of offences for which convicts could be executed by over 100. Lord John Russell abolished the death sentence for horse stealing and housebreaking in 1830. ...

And with the introduction of the police force, soldiers were no longer being ordered to break up protests even if it meant killing people in the process. Yep, things were certainly progressing. Obviously things were nowhere near ideal, but they were progressing.

And now, when things have improved out of all recognition, you'd still like a Communist revolution? Can you tell me why, in the space of one or two sentences?

Again you fail to notice that your facts contradict your ideal:

The police obviously help secure the safety of rich people and their property. They don't do much for you if you are dirt poor and living in the slums -except maybe harass you now and then.

But again you assume that the reason there's a higher crime rate in poorer neighbourhoods must be simply because the police aren't interested in protecting poorer neighbourhoods, when the situation's in reality far more complex than that. A case could certainly be made that those neighbourhoods should have better policing. But the fact that there's a high crime rate in some poor neighbourhoods isn't just a matter of lack of effective policing.

For instance, there's a self-perpetuating cycle where those involved in crime who have a criminal record are much less likely to get employment, so they can't afford to move to better neighbourhoods and they resort to crime again. Also, some of the criminal element will just be too unreliable or disruptive to hold down a job, so they'll be out of work a lot, and thus they'll have to live in poor neighbourhoods. Criminals are mostly low academic achievers, so they're more likely to live in poor areas. Many people who commit crimes are on drugs, which they're more likely to get into if they're living in miserable conditions. The solutions to the high crime rate in some poor areas are more complex than just allocating more police to them, although it's quite possible that should be done. But don't forget that no matter how many police there are in the area, they won't be able to prevent crime that they don't know is going on. Obviously, if there's more crime in poor areas, there will be more crime that the police just didn't foresee and thus couldn't prevent. You seem to think there's a conspiracy to protect the rich and neglect the poor. But unless you have actual statistics that prove that there are consistently more police allocated to well-off neighbourhoods per head of the population, you can't make a case for yourself. I think if you look at the statistics, you're likely to find just the opposite. Part of the problem though may be that many spend too much time doing paperwork in their offices rather than out on the beat.

Yes, we get the message: Poor people are unskilled and not able to market their (non-existent) products. That they also don't have the resources is fairly obvious. The resources already belong to the corporations, and they wouldn't accept poor people repossessing them so "a lot of those in the uprising might get hurt or killed".

A lot of people might get hurt or killed because the violence they were perpetrating while "kicking out" their exploitative employers would inevitably be returned with violence. Tell me why this would be acceptable to you in your vision of a good Marxist revolution.

Again, your views are simplistic. If poor people in developing countries took over the means of production, they might well be taking over large enterprises; but if they didn't have the knowledge to market their products effectively or enough money to ship them out to places where they could sell a lot of them, - and after all why should they, if such matters have always been dealt with by people far away, - chances are the enterprises would fade quite quickly, and they wouldn't be all that much better off than they were when they were working for the multi-nationals. Instead of just making morose attempts at criticism, perhaps you could spell out your vision of how much things could improve, and exactly how they would be enabled to improve if your vision of a Marxist revolution took place? Perhaps you could tell me in a few brief sentences the essence of what is wrong with Capitalism and why a Communist system would actually be better?

Also consider whether the people would genuinely be better off, since if one set of masters was kicked out, there would be a power vacuum, and there would be people who'd want to take over and lead, and those people might not be any better. Why do you imagine they would?

It's impractical to think there could be a society where there was no hierarchy at all. A hierarchy of authority is necessary for efficiency. At least, so says John Cleese of Monty Python fame, who has made several business training videos. I once heard him say that making those changed his views on the importance of a hierarchy of authority.

So what we need is good religion teaching "very good moral values" by means of the big bogeyman in the sky.

It's interesting how you can at the same time hold the view that God is represented as a big bogeyman in the sky, and the view that religion is based on the fact that people erroneously turn to him for comfort. Your views are beginning to strike me as a bit strange.

And I'm sure that your teaching of critical thinking wouldn't mind looking at the 'factor' of British imperialism in Northern Ireland and its collaboration with religion.

If it was a factor that bigotry was being fuelled by the spreading of inflammatory historical stories, whether they be true or not, that issue of course would need to be looked at, in terms of how relevant it should be to forming people's current attitudes.

That's what you get when you actually consider it a good idea to lie to people as a 'benign' way of manipulating them into being good.

But the inspirational "Little Teddy Stoddard" story was never meant as a lie. It was actually written in a different form by someone who looked at some school records and wanted to convey in story form what she felt could happen if only teachers took a different attitude. She was surprised when she discovered the story had been changed a bit and was being circulated as fact. Whether the story is more powerful if people believe it's factual or not is open to question.

It's true that there's a lot wrong with the educational system and things need to change. A lot of teachers aren't happy with the pressure to teach according to what's going to be in important tests children are taking too young, rather than having the freedom to teach around the subject more. And literacy could certainly be improved if more inventive methods of teaching were used. I myself posted on a few ways education ought to be improved in a thread about dyslexia.

However, education is yet another thing you seem to see as a big conspiracy to keep the masses down. While I've heard an account from someone who worked in a school where he was convinced that people were in fact being educated merely for low-level jobs, because the standard of education was so poor, it's simplistic to imagine the entire education system is designed to serve the purpose of filtering a mass of slower learners out to go into menial jobs. After all, there's a skill shortage in jobs like science and engineering that need a high level of qualification. Menial manufacturing jobs, on the other hand, are becoming far fewer. So apart from anything else, it wouldn't be in the government's interests to perpetuate an education system that kept people down. It's in the government's interests to make it as good as it can be, and there have been efforts to improve it.

Yes, there you go again about "Some people": Some people have made dramatic changes in their lives that have gone on to benefit them and their communities when they've been inspired by giving up their addiction to Christianity. All in all, some people do all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons.
Not the best of arguments for lying ...

But as I said, it isn't lying, and couldhn't possibly be, because it would be impossible to teach about Jesus and the other New Testament characters knowing that what you were teaching wasn't true, because it's impossible to be certain it wasn't true. Teaching it believing it's true and then discovering it wasn't, if that was possible, wouldn't mean you were lying when you were teaching it. Teaching it saying many people believe it to be true would be an adequate compromise. Then people could make up their own minds.

This feels like , but don't worry about the absence of proof that (any kind of god) doesn't exist, as long as there is absolutely no proof that it/she/he does.
Anyway, appeals to imaginary authority are just as bad as appeals to false authority.

But on the contrary, many Christians believe they have good reasons for believing God and Jesus exist, including things like these: The Impossible Faith.

... Below I offer a list of 17 factors to be considered -- places where Christianity "did the wrong thing" in order to be a successful religion. It is my contention that the only way Christianity did succeed is because it was a truly revealed faith -- and because it had the irrefutable witness of the resurrection. ...

Skeptics and critics must explain otherwise why, despite each and every one of these factors, Christianity survived, and thrived.

Are you up to the challenge?

You appear to be advocating a kind of benign delusional authoritarianism.

But of course, I'm not advocating authoritarianism at all, since I'm certainly not recommending people be forced to believe in God and follow the moral teaching of the New Testament, hence my belief that schools should teach critical thinking skills.

 

[dann]

But I still say they don't have to be seen as opposites, as you seem to think they are, because a religious person won't necessarily bury their head in the sand when it comes to scientific enquiry. Religion doesn't have to stifle science or vice versa. A religious person might think of science as the investigation of what we can prove about the universe, but God as being beyond the realm of science, something that can't be proved or disproved, but something they believe in because they feel they have an emotional or an intuitive conviction that he exists, for example.

Yes, you still say so, but your argument is not worth much:
That people are able to live with the contradiction does not make it any less contradictory. Some people are able to live in a tenement house in 2009 and believe that they are Jesus or Napoelon. People have all kinds of rationalizations when it comes to religion. They may claim "an emotional or an intuitive conviction that he exists, for example", but it should be very obvious to you that a scientist claiming the same thing as an argument in science wouldn't be taken seriously by his peers.

They might be very involved in trying to further knowledge in their particular branch of science. But they might think of religion as being a part of their lives which has to do with the emotional side, thinking of the scientific side as separate.

Exactly! It takes a lot of 'separation' of the two things, science and religion, in order to 'believe' in both:
'Let me tell you why evolution is a fact: It is because I am emotionally and intuitively convinced that it is.'

They might see their conviction that God exists and their desire to participate in religious activities as being in the same category in some respects as their enjoyment of reading history books, or skimming stones on ponds, or feeding the ducks in the park with their children, or looking at a nice view, or enjoying melodic music. They might see the enjoyment they find in doing all those things as barely explainable by science, but nevertheless no less valid.

Yes, they might rationalize irrationality in this manner, but you should be aware that you are confusing yourself by comparing religion with all kinds of activities that have nothing to do with claims about what is real and what isn't. Feeding the ducks can be very enjoyable, but you don't have to believe in ducks or prove that they exist in order to feed them because they are there. You don't need "an emotional or an intuitive conviction that" they exist in order to feed them.
Feeding people wine and wafers and pretending that they are the blood and flesh of their god is a very different activity. I don't know what the ducks believe, but it also doesn't affect the pleasure I get from feeding them at all.
The pleasure people get from their delusions can be approached and explained by science. The pleasure exists (as do the ducks) even though the gods don't.

 

[dann]

But of course, I'm not advocating authoritarianism at all, since I'm certainly not recommending people be forced to believe in God and follow the moral teaching of the New Testament, hence my belief that schools should teach critical thinking skills.

No, what you're advocating is even less rational and very convoluted:

I don't think you can say people are being tricked if they perceive obeying the Bible as all the more compelling because it has the authority of God. In fact, in the unlikely event that it could be proven that the story of Jesus was just a myth and God doesn't exist, I think it might be sad, because the New Testament could be seen as less inspirational.

You have the Bible, which some people claim to obey (and want the rest of us to obey too) because they are convinced that it is the word of God Almighty. (As a teacher of literature I don't quite get why God chose to use a third-person narrator, but I know that he's supposed to work in mysterious ways.) And you actually want these people to be inspired by this stupid book, not because of an alleged truth in the pages but because it has the authority of the god they believe in.
One thing is to be persuaded by an argument. A very different thing is to be persuaded merely because an authority (and in this case an imaginary one) says so!
Actually your attitude isn't merely that of advocating benign delusional authoritarianism. Your attitude is the same as that of parents who don't want people to spoil their children's belief in Santa because it's such a wonderful tool:

He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!
O! You better watch out!
You better not cry
Better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town

Your attitude is patronizing and paternalistic.

 

[The_Animus]

I never understood the conclusion that religion, atheists, or science was bad. You have religious people purporting that atheists or science is bad or evil. You have atheists and the scientifically inclined saying religion is bad or evil.

Neither is bad. They are concepts. People are bad. People do evil things in the name of religion, in the name of stopping religion, in the name of science. A religious person can treat others far more humanely than an atheist or a scientist, and vice versa. I think we need to stop looking at various labels as evil.

I consistently see atheists point out what may very well be ridiculous religious beliefs and yet act like total ******** in regards to other people.

I consistently see religious people show hatred to a specific group such as gays, and yet sacrifice something of theirs in order to give to someone in need.

This constant hatred and condemnation on both sides serves no purpose and only exacerbates and entrenches the worst characteristics of each group.

 

[dann]

I bet that man condemning the Ten Commandments would have shouted even louder if Moses had been talking to women and told them not to covet their neighbour's husband or their ox.

Well, he wasn't shouting. And the 'fact' of the Bible is that the "Thou" of the Ten Commandments appears to be male.

But the fact that men were told not to covet both other people's wives and their property in the same commandment isn't proof that women were treated as property, ... or that houses and oxen were treated as human.

Now you're getting somewhere: That the Bible says something isn't proof of anything. There are many other examples of the brutal behaviour of the male owners of women, however.

In a very brief article called Weren't women considered property in the OT, like cows or something? Didn't the Law say a father could even SELL his daughter?!! it says:

... Fourthly, who ever heard of "property OWNING property"?!

Yet women in the OT...

• Gave their personal belongings as offerings (Ex 35.22,29) ...

• Unmarried daughters could inherit property (Num 27.1-7; Elephantine papyri, Job 42.13)
• Female servants could buy their own freedom (Lev 27.1ff)
• Receive revenues from land (2 kgs 8)
• Possess nice homes (Mic 2.8)
• Sell property (Ruth 4.9)

This is another example of your contradictions in terms: If you read and try to understand your own argument and documentation, you will notice that the quotation actually gives an example of women being owned:
If female servants could buy their own freedom, they must have been property.
It's like claiming that slavery did not exist in the USA because the negroes were sometimes offered the option of buying their freedom. (And if they were able to buy their freedom, they must also have been able to own things.)

Judges 19
1. And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in Israel, that there was a certain Levite sojourning on the side of mount Ephraim, who took to him a concubine out of Bethlehemjudah.
2. And his concubine played the whore against him, and went away from him unto her father's house to Bethlehemjudah, and was there four whole months.
3. And her husband arose, and went after her, to speak friendly unto her, and to bring her again, having his servant with him, and a couple of asses: and she brought him into her father's house: and when the father of the damsel saw him, he rejoiced to meet him.
4. And his father in law, the damsel's father, retained him; and he abode with him three days: so they did eat and drink, and lodged there.
5. And it came to pass on the fourth day, when they arose early in the morning, that he rose up to depart: and the damsel's father said unto his son in law, Comfort thine heart with a morsel of bread, and afterward go your way.
6. And they sat down, and did eat and drink both of them together: for the damsel's father had said unto the man, Be content, I pray thee, and tarry all night, and let thine heart be merry.
7. And when the man rose up to depart, his father in law urged him: therefore he lodged there again.
8. And he arose early in the morning on the fifth day to depart; and the damsel's father said, Comfort thine heart, I pray thee. And they tarried until afternoon, and they did eat both of them.
9. And when the man rose up to depart, he, and his concubine, and his servant, his father in law, the damsel's father, said unto him, Behold, now the day draweth toward evening, I pray you tarry all night: behold, the day groweth to an end, lodge here, that thine heart may be merry; and to morrow get you early on your way, that thou mayest go home.
10. But the man would not tarry that night, but he rose up and departed, and came over against Jebus, which is Jerusalem; and there were with him two asses saddled, his concubine also was with him.
11. And when they were by Jebus, the day was far spent; and the servant said unto his master, Come, I pray thee, and let us turn in into this city of the Jebusites, and lodge in it.
12. And his master said unto him, We will not turn aside hither into the city of a stranger, that is not of the children of Israel; we will pass over to Gibeah.
13. And he said unto his servant, Come, and let us draw near to one of these places to lodge all night, in Gibeah, or in Ramah.
14. And they passed on and went their way; and the sun went down upon them when they were by Gibeah, which belongeth to Benjamin.
15. And they turned aside thither, to go in and to lodge in Gibeah: and when he went in, he sat him down in a street of the city: for there was no man that took them into his house to lodging.
16. And, behold, there came an old man from his work out of the field at even, which was also of mount Ephraim; and he sojourned in Gibeah: but the men of the place were Benjamites.
17. And when he had lifted up his eyes, he saw a wayfaring man in the street of the city: and the old man said, Whither goest thou? and whence comest thou?
18. And he said unto him, We are passing from Bethlehemjudah toward the side of mount Ephraim; from thence am I: and I went to Bethlehemjudah, but I am now going to the house of the LORD; and there is no man that receiveth me to house.
19. Yet there is both straw and provender for our asses; and there is bread and wine also for me, and for thy handmaid, and for the young man which is with thy servants: there is no want of any thing.
20. And the old man said, Peace be with thee; howsoever let all thy wants lie upon me; only lodge not in the street.
21. So he brought him into his house, and gave provender unto the asses: and they washed their feet, and did eat and drink.
22. Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him.
23. And the man, the master of the house, went out unto them, and said unto them, Nay, my brethren, nay, I pray you, do not so wickedly; seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly.
24. Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing.
25. But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go.
26. Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the door of the man's house where her lord was, till it was light.
27. And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way: and, behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold.
28. And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going. But none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place.
29. And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.
30. And it was so, that all that saw it said, There was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day: consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds.

And to "know him" is, of course, to know him in the biblical sense!

 

[Baby Nemesis]

Yes, you still say so, but your argument is not worth much:
That people are able to live with the contradiction does not make it any less contradictory. Some people are able to live in a tenement house in 2009 and believe that they are Jesus or Napoelon. People have all kinds of rationalizations when it comes to religion. They may claim "an emotional or an intuitive conviction that he exists, for example", but it should be very obvious to you that a scientist claiming the same thing as an argument in science wouldn't be taken seriously by his peers.

Nor should he be. It would of course be extremely bad practice indeed if a scientist were to base his findings on a gut instinct or an intuitive belief. Equally, if a scientist were to announce that his colleagues' enjoyment of certain music and their love of feeding the ducks in the park with their children was just a result of the mechanics of certain brain chemicals coming together, no more, and thus their enjoyment of such things need not be relished but it should be scientifically analysed by those colleagues or rejected, he wouldn't be very popular. They might think that though such things might be worthy of scientific enquiry, to dismiss the entire concept of enjoyment and those who thought it should be a separate part of their lives from their scientific pursuits as irrational because all their enjoyment is is a certain chemical combination, would be to disregard an important fascet of humanity.

There's no reason to suppose that any scientist who has a religious belief for emotional reasons will be more likely to base the results of their experiments on emotional instincts rather than evidence. Thus, I really don't see what the problem is. If you believe science and religion are inherently contradictory, please explain why, and why this is such a problem for mankind. Just what is the key issue here?

It may be impossible to either prove or disprove God; but does that mean the concept of God is inherently unscientific and must be dismissed? If you're walking along and you enjoy the sound of the birds singing, is it possible for you to prove you do? And in the absence of your ability to prove it, should your claim be dismissed as unscientific and not worthy of taking seriously on that basis? Or would you claim that your enjoyment of birdsong was something it would be absurd to subject to scientific enquiry in order to prove its existence, because you saw it as fulfilling a separate role in your life from the scientific realm?

Any claim religion makes that contradicts science and thus threatens to obstruct human progress should of course be vigorously challenged. But you have yet to demonstrate a good reason for viewing religion as inherently contradictory to science and thus in need of being eradicated.

And some people believe it is in fact possible to prove God's existence scientifically, not by proving the being exists, obviously, but demonstrating it by the results. Here are some links to articles that illustrate why some people hold this view:

Evolution vs. Design: Is the Universe a Cosmic Accident or Does it Display Intelligent Design? (Evidence for God from Science)
Science and the Grand Designer.
Is there any Evidence for the Existence of God?

Exactly! It takes a lot of 'separation' of the two things, science and religion, in order to 'believe' in both:
'Let me tell you why evolution is a fact: It is because I am emotionally and intuitively convinced that it is.'

Again, in this quote also, you fail to demonstrate exactly what the problem is here. Why are science and religion inherently contradictory? And why do you imagine that if a scientist believes in one thing partly because of an intuitive feeling, he will necessarily apply that standard to his scientific experiments?

Perhaps you somehow believe that religion must by its very nature reject scientific claims such as research into evolution. If that is your view, it's ill-informed. Perhaps you have never heard of theistic evolution. From Wikipedia:

Theistic evolution and evolutionary creationism are similar concepts that assert that classical religious teachings about God are compatible with the modern scientific understanding about biological evolution . In short, theistic evolutionists believe that there is a God , that God is (in some way) the creator of the material universe and (by consequence) all life within, and that biological evolution is simply a natural process within that creation. Evolution, according to this view, is simply a tool that God employed to develop human life.

Theistic evolution is not a theory in the scientific sense, but a particular view about how the science of evolution relates to religious belief and interpretation. Theistic evolution supporters can be seen as one of the groups who reject the conflict thesis regarding the relationship between religion and science – that is, they hold that religious teachings about creation and scientific theories of evolution need not contradict.

And here's a Christian website full of what it claims to be scientific reasons to believe in God. On this page, the view is put forward that there are scientific reasons to question evolution. If you want to dispute what it says convincingly, you'll have to counter the points it actually makes, rather than just resorting to a sentence or two of flippant ridicule. And if you want to make the point that the entire website contradicts science, you'll have to do likewise, or come up with a critique of their overall methodology that renders what they say unscientific despite all appearances to the scientifically untrained person.

Yes, they might rationalize irrationality in this manner, but you should be aware that you are confusing yourself by comparing religion with all kinds of activities that have nothing to do with claims about what is real and what isn't. Feeding the ducks can be very enjoyable, but you don't have to believe
in ducks or prove that they exist in order to feed them because they are there. You don't need "an emotional or an intuitive conviction that" they exist in order to feed them. Feeding people wine and wafers and pretending that they are the blood and flesh of their god is a very different activity. I don't know what the ducks believe, but it also doesn't affect the pleasure I get from feeding them at all.
The pleasure people get from their delusions can be approached and explained by science. The pleasure exists (as do the ducks) even though the gods don't.

But religion isn't just a belief system that allows a person to feel comforted by a delusion. It's a way of life. If you're a Christian, for example, it doesn't just involve a belief in God, but should involve a way of life you're resolving to live because you believe. Some religious people may hold stupid beliefs that are so obviously delusional that they should certainly be questioned, such as the Catholic belief that bread and wine literally turn into parts of a human anatomy. But if you believe God's spirit is healing you from emotional problems and helping you live a better life, for example, really, what's wrong with that?

Here are the testimonies of two people who feel sure that happened:

Jesus Delivers Young Lady from Suicidal Thoughts.
Vicki's Testimony.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

Well, he wasn't shouting. And the 'fact' of the Bible is that the "Thou" of the Ten Commandments appears to be male.

Wow, so it was saying it didn't matter if women stole, bore false witness, blasphemed God, worshiped idols, broke the Sabbath law, and disobeyed the rest of the commandments? The commandments were only given to males?

If female servants could buy their own freedom, they must have been property.

But perhaps you're taking that a bit too literally. After all, women and men could, and did, sell themselves as slaves in the old days sometimes, for example if their crops failed and they'd starve unless they were taken in by a rich household. Not a good situation, obviously. But there was provision for them in the Law of Moses that there certainly wouldn't have been for mere property. They weren't given the full rights of others, certainly. But some laws were concerned with their well-being. For instance, it says:

Leviticus chapter 25 (TEV)

39 If any Israelites living near you become so poor that they sell themselves to you as a slave, you shall not make them do the work of a slave. 40 They shall stay with you as hired workers and serve you until the next Year of Restoration. 41 At that time they and their children shall leave you and return to their family and to the property of their ancestors. 42 The people of Israel are the Lord's slaves, and he brought them out of Egypt; they must not be sold into slavery. 43 Do not treat them harshly, but obey your God.

47 Suppose a foreigner living with you becomes rich, while some Israelites become poor and sell themselves as slaves to that foreigner or to a member of that foreigner's family. 48 After they are sold, they still have the right to be bought back. A brother 49 or an uncle or a cousin or another close relative
may buy them back; or if they themselves earn enough, they may buy their own freedom. 50 They must consult the one who bought them, and they must count the years from the time they sold themselves until the next Year of Restoration and must set the price for their release on the basis of the wages paid hired workers. 51 They must refund a part of the purchase price according to the number of years left, 53 as if they had been hired on an annual basis.
Their master must not treat them harshly. 54 If they are not set free in any of these ways, they and their children must be set free in the next Year of Restoration.
55 "Israelites cannot be permanent slaves, because the people of Israel are the Lord's slaves. He brought them out of Egypt; he is the Lord their God.

Deuteronomy chapter 23 (TEV)

15 "If slaves run away from their owners and come to you for protection, do not send them back. 16 They may live in any of your towns that they choose, and you are not to treat them harshly.

Deuteronomy chapter 15 (TEV)

12 "If any Israelites, male or female, sell themselves to you as slaves, you are to release them after they have served you for six years. When the seventh year comes, you must let them go free. 13 When you set them free, do not send them away empty-handed. 14 Give to them generously from what the Lord has blessed you with-sheep, grain, and wine. 15 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God set you free; that is why I am now giving you this command.

------------

Thank you for quoting that truly revolting Judges passage. But there was no need, since I knew it already. I'm not sure what it has to do with anything we've been talking about. But it has a good moral lesson, and I expect that was why it was put in the book. It's an anti-prejudice story. Notice the servant wanted to lodge in a foreign city, but the man insisted they didn't do that but moved on to an Israelite city. But it turned out that it was Israelites that cruelly abused the man's mistress so she died.

Yes, it was cruel of the man in the story to have pushed her out of the house. Women may well have been treated as second class citizens all over the ancient world. But we don't know all the circumstances. Who's to say a similar thing wouldn't happen today, if someone was a guest in the house of a man, and him and his house were in danger of being attacked. There might be a lot of men who'd push their wives out to the mob if they thought it would make the mob go away, or women who'd do that to their husbands. It was, after all, a crisis situation. People in danger often put themselves first.

Few, though, would call for war to be declared on the town the mob came from, I suspect, as the man did in the next chapter.

You have the Bible, which some people claim to obey (and want the rest of us to obey too) because they are convinced that it is the word of God Almighty.
(As a teacher of literature I don't quite get why God chose to use a third-person narrator, but I know that he's supposed to work in mysterious ways.) And you actually want these people to be inspired by this stupid book, not because of an alleged truth in the pages but because it has the authority of
the god they believe in.
One thing is to be persuaded by an argument. A very different thing is to be persuaded merely because an authority (and in this case an imaginary one) says so!

But that's not what I'm saying. You should know that from having followed my arguments. I'm saying that there are some good guidelines in the Bible that could help societies be better places if only more people obeyed them, and that incidentally, it's possible that people might obey them because the guidelines have the authority of God behind them when they wouldn't otherwise, and from a pragmatic point of view, if that means less people are harmed and the well-being of some is improved, what's wrong with that? God can't be directly compared to Santa Claus, because Santa is obvious fiction, whereas the existence of God is open to debate. So it's not as if I'm advocating feeding people falsehood to make them behave. See post 76 again for my views. One of the things I said was:

Another example of a problem that just wouldn't exist if people obeyed the Bible:

3. Violence.

Imagine if everyone in the world followed New Testament teaching. There would be no more war; no more wife beating; no more mugging; no more bullying, and so on.

And why? Because everyone would be obeying Bible verses like:

Colossians chapter 3 (NLT)

12 Since God chose you to be the holy people whom he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

Hebrews chapter 12 (NLT)

14 Try to live in peace with everyone, and seek to live a clean and holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the Lord.

1 Peter chapter 3 (NLT)

8 Finally, all of you should be of one mind, full of sympathy toward each other, loving one another with tender hearts and humble minds. 9 Don't repay
evil for evil. Don't retaliate when people say unkind things about you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing. That is what God wants you to do, and he will bless you for it. 10 For the Scriptures say,

"If you want a happy life and good days, keep your tongue from speaking evil, and keep your lips from telling lies.
11 Turn away from evil and do good. Work hard at living in peace with others.

1 Thessalonians chapter 5 (NLT)

13 ... Remember to live peaceably with each other.

Ephesians chapter 4 (TEV)

23 Your hearts and minds must be made completely new, 24 and you must put on the new self, which is created in God's likeness and reveals itself in the true life that is upright and holy. 26 If you become angry, do not let your anger lead you into sin, and do not stay angry all day. 27

Galatians chapter 5 (NLT)

13 For you have been called to live in freedom - not freedom to satisfy your sinful nature, but freedom to serve one another in love. 14 For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." 15 But if instead of showing love among yourselves you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out! Beware of destroying one another.

19 When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, your lives will produce these evil results: sexual immorality, impure thoughts, eagerness for lustful pleasure, 20 idolatry, participation in demonic activities, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, divisions, the feeling that everyone is wrong except those in your own little group, 21 envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other kinds of sin. Let me tell you again, as I have
before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

Ephesians chapter 4 (NLT)

2 Be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love. 3 Always keep yourselves united in the Holy Spirit, and bind yourselves together with peace.

... And so on and so on.

I could give you several more examples of problems that wouldn't exist if everyone in the world obeyed various New Testament instructions, but I won't for now.

Yes, you might say it hasn't happened so that proves the Bible isn't a worthwhile book. But while it hasn't happened wholesale, there are recorded instances of communities who turned to Christianity and then stopped warlike activity, and transformed in other ways. And there are, as I've indicated, many instances of individuals who've been inspired to change for the better. See all the testimonies I linked to earlier, for example.

 

[dann]

Some of those Ruthlesscriticism articles you've linked to just go right over my head for some reason, including the one on morality. Could you explain in simple terms just what you perceive as being wrong with moral living, or the way you define morality? There can certainly be arguments as to whether specific things are moral or not, such as euthanasia. But I don't understand why you'd think morality in itself is a flawed concept.

Well, the article What Is Morality? really isn’t all that difficult to understand. The only problem is that a moral individual (and most individuals are!) will want to find confirmation of the beauty of morality, which, of course, the article doesn’t deliver. On the contrary, it criticizes the “self-righteous stupidities of moral consciousness”.

”Everyone sees himself surrounded by egoists, con artists and scoundrels and knows someone who is particularly virtuous above all: oneself. This is only one of the self-righteous stupidities of moral consciousness. With this consciousness people conceive themselves as—valuable—members of bourgeois society and see themselves appointed as guardians of the correct behavior of their fellow humans.”

And its thesis is the exact opposite of yours. Where you would want people to become/stay good, which is why you want them to believe in the authority of God and (therefore) the Bible, this article claims that:

“The world suffers by no means from not enough morality; rather it already has too much of it.” ”The call for morality is the uncritical self-criticism of the competitive subjects.”

Baby Nemesis, you make the mistake, the very basic mistake, of deciding on a solution to what you see as the problem without actually looking at the problem. You don’t look at the reason why people behave in a manner that you don’t appreciate. Instead you present the solution: If only people were more moral, i.e. if they’d only stick to the kind of behaviour outlined in (certain very carefully selected paragraphs of) the Bible, everything would be so much better.
I have already pointed out that this idealism is similar to the idealism of preaching abstinence as a means of fighting VDs: People just shouldn’t behave the way they do, and if only they didn’t, things would be so much better.
Now, it’s fairly obvious why Christian advocates of sexual abstinence come up with this idea as the way of fighting AIDS: They aren’t really concerned about finding the most efficient way of protecting people from the HIV infection. Their good Christian charity is nothing but hypocrisy. On the contrary, they are very much concerned about ‘protecting’ people from having sex and therefore present abstinence as the proper behaviour. (They did so before HIV, and they’ll continue to do so even if it (and every other STD) is eradicated.)

A realist would know and acknowledge that (in general) people enjoy sex, they enjoy it more with a partner, and a lot of people enjoy it with more than one partner (at the time, usually), so the most efficient way of preventing an STD from spreading consists in putting on a rubber during sex.
That Christian advocates of abstinence don’t care about people becomes obvious when they exaggerate the risks of catching STDs during sex with condoms – instead of teaching people the proper way to use them. Which, of course, is also very immoral.
(They have approximately the same attitude to teen pregnancies: Since their enemy is (premarital/extramarital) sex, they only pretend to worry about teen pregnancies. They’ll rather let a lot of teens get pregnant than run the ‘risk’ having them learn how to have sex in a way that safe.)

On the other hand, their argument is very specious: IF ONLY people didn’t have sex (not only unprotected sex but any kind of sex), nobody would get pregnant and AIDS would have lost its most efficient vector.

Your argument is similar to this: IF ONLY people would be good (= moral) instead of bad, there wouldn’t be any bad behaviour in the world any more. If they’d only obey the (carefully selected, by you, passages from the Bible) and believe in them, which, of course, they be much more liable to do if they also believed in the existence of God, the
Almighty Authority. Thus delusional beliefs are benigh – as long as they are the right delusions, of course.
And since you don’t want to know why people do the things they do – be it stealing, killing, hooking or uninspired teaching – the world is transformed into the consequence of morals:
Thus you don’t even see (and don’t even want to acknowledge) the conflicting interests that society not only contains but also produces. What you see is people who don’t behave the way you want them to. You don’t see why (and you don’t care why) because you already have the panacea: More (Christian) morals!
The workers aren’t exploited because the profits of employers rise if they can make workers work harder for the same (or less) amount of money. And workers don’t strike for the same reason. The poverty-stricken don’t misbehave and break laws because unlawful acts give them access to some of the wealth of this society that law-abiding behaviour prevents them from getting.
And schoolchildren don’t give up and don’t give a damn because the purpose of the school system is to produce winners and losers. Instead you idealize the purpose of school, imagine that in principle (and in spite of the obvious selection and competition) everybody can be a winner – if only their teachers were more inspirational. (And as I’ve mentioned before: Holywood is enchanted by this idea: If only all teachers were inspired and inspirational like John Keating or Pierre Dulaine, everything would be good, nobody would lose, everybody would be a winner, the lion would lie down with the sheep etc. Evil only comes into this saccharine world through the bad people who ruin all the good institutions, the evil ’anti-Keatings’, who ruin everything for the Keatings of this world, who understand how to win the hearts and minds of sullen students. (And thus all sullen students are taught that school doesn’t suck, only the incredibly many teachers who, for some weird reason, probably their own ineptitude, cannot turn every lesson into a tango show. And the stupid teachers who try soon discover that reality is not directed like a Holywood movie where the young actors do what they’re told to do: CUT! )

” Once moral consciousness is formed, it sets loose: in every small or large affair of private or public life in which people come into conflict, the moralist examines advantages and damages to see whether the participants correspond to his conceptions of justice or not. The eagerness to condemn immoral actions finds plenty of material in the world of competition with its winners and losers; likewise in the hierarchies of political power and in the vagaries of private fortune.”

You need only go to the Politics forum to find plenty of examples of this kind of ‘criticism’:
”Moralists are notoriously disappointed, constantly exposing every kind of crime, sneaky competitive practice, inter-human tactlessness and abuse. That is presumptuous because it is an idealistic assumption of authority. Moralists constantly announce which misdemeanors of their fellow citizens they would prevent.”

“But morality is needed because humans are bad!”
Morality has a good reputation in bourgeois society. It is needed to tame humans who are bad because of their nature. It is easy to have the image of humans as sheep or wolves: a member of the competitive bourgeois society is someone who must look out for himself at the expense of others. This social role, forced on people by the state legal system, is misrepresented as human nature. And so a human image is designed that is unquestioned (“from nature”) and apparently provable (“but look at how people behave!”).
In addition, “fortunately morality exists in humans, who can tame its bad side.” Where this comes from and why humans do not simply ignore it – since they are bad – is not worth a look: so there is morality nevertheless! Everyone knows it and maintains it – at least more or less! And the second element of the construction is already created and the whole world is turned upside down: the state does not make the law, which the subjects accept and make their own in the form of moral convictions, but the other way around: first morality exists in the world, which initiates the universal need for state force, so that good prevails against evil.”

I hope that this has made it clear: What Is Morality?