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Religious organizations/churches already ‘actually help society’ i.e. Feed the Hungry, World Vision, Salvation Army and so on. From my perspective, if it takes religion to motivate folks to give/do something about the world we live in and those less fortunate, why would I (or any atheist) want to stop it?
But does religion motivate folks to give/do something? People are naturally charitable, so is it religion causing this, or is it simply that people are charitable, and some are also religious? While one bonus is that organized religion has the facilities and experience to provide charity, some will avoid some charities on religious grounds, while others think it is good to sen e-Bibles to tsunami victims.
Religion is a concept; it can’t control anyone. This is similar to believing guns kill when, in actuality, it’s a (small) percentage of persons behind a gun that are the problem. Hence the reason for laws and formal means of social control.
Bullets kill. Pretty sure running around throwing bullets isn't going to injure someone. That is literally the purpose of a gun, to kill.
But does religion motivate folks to give/do something? People are naturally charitable, so is it religion causing this, or is it simply that people are charitable, and some are also religious? While one bonus is that organized religion has the facilities and experience to provide charity, some will avoid some charities on religious grounds, while others think it is good to sen e-Bibles to tsunami victims.
I'm not sure that I see people as "naturally charitable".
I'm not sure that I see people as "naturally charitable".
We agree on this one; I don’t either, as evidenced by many posts in this forum (and the economic/political climate as well).
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
A fair rhetorical question. I am uncertain that religion is still effective as such a motivator though.
I am highly dubious that it was the only way to motivate people, ever, even if that was the default.
Of course it’s not the only way; atheists contribute to said charities as well. :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by considerforamoment
Would I be relieved if people came to their senses and woke up? Of course. Lots of problems in the world would go away and all of the hours and money apparently wasted could be put to good use actually helping society - feeding hungry, cleaning and beautifying cities, making art, etc.
Point being, it’s ludicrous to suggest ‘good use to actually help society’ is nonexistent when almost half of the largest charities are faith-based (and when one calculates the economic value of such activity).
We agree on this one; I don’t either, as evidenced by many posts in this forum (and the economic/political climate as well).Of course it’s not the only way; atheists contribute to said charities as well. :-) Point being, it’s ludicrous to suggest ‘good use to actually help society’ is nonexistent when almost half of the largest charities are faith-based (and when one calculates the economic value of such activity).
yes, regarding bold above i agree
"BBC research shows that religious people are more generous than non-believers when it comes to giving to charity. Research commissioned by the BBC found that people who profess a religious belief are significantly more likely to give to charity than non-believers."
I'm not sure that I see people as "naturally charitable".
Well, we are social animals. For the 99.99+% of the time the genus Homo has existed (and based on what we know about our closest great ape ancestors, for eons prior to that) we have depended on a tribe or band for survival. While there is always the competing primary interest of the self as paramount, it has long been in the interest of individual humans to assure the general welfare of the greater social unit. To this end, evolution encourages a degree of concern for those beyond ourselves, though that concern wanes with 'distance' - family, neighbors, town, state (for Americans, for example), country, the rest of the world.
On some level, we intuit that our welfare depends to some degree on the collective. So we tend to cooperate. We feel empathy. We tend to look out for children and the elderly. We let people merge, we return wallets we find, and so forth. Obviously, this does not always happen. But my concern for a child, or the good feelings I get when helping someone, have been in part specifically nurtured by selection because those tendencies enhance the chances of the survival of my progeny.
Now, some of this is conditioning overlaid by social pressures to make modern societies - which haven't been around long enough to influence much evolutionary change in our behavior - more functional. And intelligence allows gaming of this system, to be sure. And some individuals are, shall we say, dysfunctional in this regard (sociopaths, for example). But in the end, we are not unlike the vampire bats that share blood. They do it for the exact same ultimate reasons.
And, yes, I know it's much more fashionable to take the dour misanthropic view that we're all (well, usually 'most other people') completely selfish and care nothing about anyone else. But that does not comport with general human behavior.
...I know it's much more fashionable to take the dour misanthropic view that we're all (well, usually 'most other people') completely selfish and care nothing about anyone else. But that does not comport with general human behavior.
When I was an evangelical my view of humanity was dour indeed, informed as it was by the doctrine of the utter depravity of mankind. "The [human] heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"
When I came out of that particular reality distortion field, I no longer had the need to pearl-clutch or demonize people who were different from me in belief or practice, and I could see the human condition in a more realistic light. So I went through a period of saying, basically -- that given half a chance, most people mean well and try their best to do the right thing, and that's what they aim for even though they fall short (which is actually not that different from the less regimented view of sin -- it is simply "missing the mark" and requires mercy, not judgment).
But then in the past decade as the world started to unravel on multiple levels and laid bare, not so much people's depravity as their inability to transcend their desires and wants for the greater good at any needed scale, plus the addiction to the prosperous ease with which we cosset ourselves and ignore the massive societal changes that would be needed to spare us what's coming after a few generations of unsustainably exploiting both nature and labor ... I have gone back to a more pessimistic view. Just based on different things. It comes back to a cartoon I saw, basically: a politician asks a crowd, "who wants change?" and everyone enthusiastically raises their hands. And then he asks a slightly different question: "who wants to change?" and everyone is suddenly pretending they aren't there.
It is beyond the scope of this forum to lay out examples of what I'm talking about and some specific incidents that really drove it home to me that we are, in the medium to long term, screwed ... but suffice it to say, I no longer believe that people in general "care". As someone who doesn't believe in the standard-issue interventionist god, if we don't care, who will? Even if there were some sort of benevolent god in the mix, it's clear he's not winning hearts and minds. So no I am not very optimistic anymore.
"BBC research shows that religious people are more generous than non-believers when it comes to giving to charity. Research commissioned by the BBC found that people who profess a religious belief are significantly more likely to give to charity than non-believers."
And research about that BBC research says that one should be careful when using that BBC research.
When I was an evangelical my view of humanity was dour indeed, informed as it was by the doctrine of the utter depravity of mankind. "The [human] heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"
When I came out of that particular reality distortion field, I no longer had the need to pearl-clutch or demonize people who were different from me in belief or practice, and I could see the human condition in a more realistic light. So I went through a period of saying, basically -- that given half a chance, most people mean well and try their best to do the right thing, and that's what they aim for even though they fall short (which is actually not that different from the less regimented view of sin -- it is simply "missing the mark" and requires mercy, not judgment).
But then in the past decade as the world started to unravel on multiple levels and laid bare, not so much people's depravity as their inability to transcend their desires and wants for the greater good at any needed scale, plus the addiction to the prosperous ease with which we cosset ourselves and ignore the massive societal changes that would be needed to spare us what's coming after a few generations of unsustainably exploiting both nature and labor ... I have gone back to a more pessimistic view. Just based on different things. It comes back to a cartoon I saw, basically: a politician asks a crowd, "who wants change?" and everyone enthusiastically raises their hands. And then he asks a slightly different question: "who wants to change?" and everyone is suddenly pretending they aren't there.
It is beyond the scope of this forum to lay out examples of what I'm talking about and some specific incidents that really drove it home to me that we are, in the medium to long term, screwed ... but suffice it to say, I no longer believe that people in general "care". As someone who doesn't believe in the standard-issue interventionist god, if we don't care, who will? Even if there were some sort of benevolent god in the mix, it's clear he's not winning hearts and minds. So no I am not very optimistic anymore.
I am no more pessimistic today - or, to put it another way, I was no more optimistic ten or twenty years ago - about the human animal [this is a descripotive term, not a disparagement]. We are the exact same biological organisms today that we were then; indeed, that we were 100 or 1000 years ago. The lynchers, the genociders, the slavers, the with-burners, these beings were us. And their presence, current and past, was clear a decade or two ago. We in Minnesota are the same animals as Texans, the volunteer at a local food shelter is the same animal as the Taliban throwing acid in the face of a young female student. I see no more reason to throw up my hands in futility today than someone in Berlin in 1945 or in Salem in 1692. More to the point, I don't see why my view of 2023 today should cause more pessimism in me than my view ten years ago of the ruin that was 1945 should have cause me then to dismiss humanity.
The only changes are the social ripples that come and go, as they always have. A surge here, an ebb tide there. The veneer gets thicker as time goes on, but of course there are periodic regressions. But this has always been the case.
Honestly, it all seems rather self-absorbed to me to think that the challenges of today - which are certainly real and disheartening - are somehow more profound than the challenges of yesterday. I'm a vampire bat, surrounded by the same types of vampire bats I always have been. Some share blood, some don't. What I do think is that some of the aging vampire bats tend to despair that the changes they once hoped for won't come while they're still around, and so dismiss the worth of pursuing those changes as no longer worth the effort because they won't be around to see it. But change for the better has no end. There is always another goal. There are always regressions, either primarily or on the edges than blunt progress or even negate it in the two-steps-forward-one-step-back cycle. It's a myopia that is not unlike that in those who game the system without all the pretense of care and despair.
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