Societies don't have to be secular to be modern

[Pat]

I'm with you. It's just that it's a good example of the GIGO principle. If you start with the assumption that there is an after-life, and you go there by doing certain things, then it can lead to things like that.

To expand on this. I was in India during the Bombay attacks (had been sitting at Leopold cafe drinking beer just a few days before they attacked it with hand-grenades and automatic weapons).

On TV, in the papers, on the streets, everywhere: the mantra was that of "Terrorists have no religion". Yes, that is what they were telling themselves. That these terrorists, who had so eagerly given their lives, had no religion. When it was so obviously the opposite. Those terrorists were some of the most religious people around.

[The Brain]

It's also why insufficiently religious societies will always fail.

Somalia is one of the most religious places around.

And?  What exactly are you arguing?

America is like Somalia only with more hispanics.

[PDH]

America is like Somalia only with more hispanics.

And the Pirates suck.

[dps]

Well, even well-meaning, religion is a fallacy. It relies on false information. It supports lies about reality. Even if these lies are used for a good purpose, they are still lies, which may have - and often does have - negative long term consequences.

Are you familiar with informatics and programming? There is a concept called GIGO - garbage in, garbage out. If you feed false premises to a reasoning process ("There is a judge in heaven." "We will live after death." "This life is not important") this will lead to all kinds of fallacious conclusions ("Why bother saving human lives? It's important we save souls instead." "There is no point trying to improve out lot here - justice will be served in the afterlife." "The earth is just a short stop - no point to save it from ecological oblivion then.") 

Well I am in Voltaire's camp that a true religion cannot have claims that cannot be arrived by rational thought.

What does it even mean in that context? I am talking about truth and facts, not about rational thought, in any case. There is nothing rational in stating that we will go to heaven after we die, or that Jesus resurrected on the third day, or that God created the Earth 6000 years ago. These are statements about reality, and they are false.

I would challenge you to show any evidence  that proves Jesus was not resurrected, or that we do not go to heaven.

If the "we" still includes Marty, someone sufficiently snarky could argue that there's pretty evidence that we're not going to heaven.

[Neil]

Presumably you would make the case that Islam is to Christianity what Aircraft Carriers are to Dreadnaughts?

Not at all.  I'm saying that insufficiently religious states will fail.  Sure, Chrisitianity is superior to Islam because of its' subordination to the authority of the state, but any faith is better than none.

[citizen k]

Those terrorists were some of the most religious people around.

How do you quantify that? By the body count?

[PDH]

Was there some different quality to religion in the Middle Ages that allowed rational scholars to use consistent logical means to reach conclusions, was William of Ockham a mutant religious type, for he was both religious and deeply questioning of universals?  Perhaps the blanket condemnation of religion is better suited toward a pentecostal/fundamental variety of religion that obviates logic for those who have such a mindset?

I find that the consistent scientific endeavors of the Jesuits, the religious nature of others in the sciences, shows not that a strict compartmentalization of religion and logic need be the case, but rather that a worldview combining such factors in the human mind (quite capable of such radically different beliefs, religious or otherwise) is more important.

[citizen k]

blah, blah, blah

<miglia> Religion is bad, mmkay? </miglia mode>

[The Brain]

Remember, the Middle Ages was a time when religion didn't have to be about anything.

[citizen k]

Remember, the Middle Ages was a time when religion didn't have to be about anything.

Yep, most folks went into the monastery for the "three hots and a cot".

[CountDeMoney]

To expand on this. I was in India during the Bombay attacks (had been sitting at Leopold cafe drinking beer just a few days before they attacked it with hand-grenades and automatic weapons).

Please don't tell us you're one of those weirdo Indian dudes with an English accent.  That only works for the chicks.

[grumbler]

There is a significant difference, however, in that if there is no life after death, then our life here on earth becomes a lot more important. We have all seen the nihilism of those certain of life after death. 

This is a statement of personal belief, though.  Many nihilists have existed in societies without a belief in life after death.   Your implication that the WTC bombers believed that there was no purpose to life (i.e. were nihilists) is curious, because you seem to be arguing the opposite in your other statements.   Whether they were or not is not really relevant to the discussion, though, since no one here is arguing that they are typical of anything in particular.

[Pat]

It's also why insufficiently religious societies will always fail.

Somalia is one of the most religious places around.

And?  What exactly are you arguing?

I assume this is a variance of the argument that a man who do not believe in god will not die for his country. Indeed, I do not doubt that many of the Americans who died in Iraq believed themselves to be doing god's work.

But let's look at it from a larger perspective. What is Fukuyama's thesis? That we have reached, what he calls, "the end of history". I haven't read his books but I have been thinking in similar lines myself. My conclusions, however, are different.

In a malthusian state of nature red in tooth and claw, with exponential population growth, you will have competition over resources. War, has, therefore, been a necessity of human life. Life has been nasty, brutish, and short. In this respect we have been no different from other creatures of nature. All traditional organized religions are pre-malthusian, adapted for these conditions.

You may, however, have noticed that human life has changed somewhat in the time following the industrial revolution for those people who participated in it. The industrial revolution led to, among many things, the invention and wide-spread use of contraceptives. Today almost all developed countries have stable or negative population growth (and so would America have, if not for hispanics and other immigrants who still maintain the reproductive habits of their countries of origin, but can not be expected to do so for much longer).

The global population is expected to peak around 2050 and then decline. It would have peaked, and declined, sooner, if America hadn't since Reagan worked against family planning in the third world (thankfully Obama removed these american conditions for "aid"). Of course religious people opposed all development, at every step of the way, in what is now the developed world, and now oppose it, at every step of the way, in the undeveloped world. This is because their religions are adapted to the conditions of the status quo and if society changes too much then they'll have to come up with something new. And sometimes the changes warranted are simply so incompatible with earlier doctrine that change is impossible. This is why the pope tell the Filipinos not to use condoms. He wants them to be poor, because catholicism is irrelevant in post-malthusian societies. One block away from the Vatican you will find a machine selling condoms. No one, even in Rome, cares what the pope has to say on the matter.

I will give you that newer mutations of christianity, merely based on different vague and mutually incompatible testimonies of the life of Jesus that can be interpreted pretty much any way you like, have an easier way of adapting and changing it's message. Islam, however, with it's necessarily literal interpretation of the Quran, which is the final revelation of God, recited to Mohammed by the arch-angel Gabriel, simply can not adapt - try to imagine, if you will, improving on the final word of God - and is therefore utterly incompatible with modern society with rules in the Quran that no one can pass off as merely symbolic, such as death for apostates, for example. Which is why they, more than anyone else, have made modernity their enemy.

What violent competition for resources there still is, today, are in places too poor to have military-industrial complexes of any importance. There is already almost no violent competition over resources, and we'll only see less of it. The Europe of the late 1800s saw little need for war, but of course, sooner or later the old order, entirely incompatible with what the world had become, must collapse. This was the Great War, which, indeed, might have been the war to end all wars, had it only gone differently. Though there is no way of knowing if that, indeed, was possible. Instead, as we know, the lack of satisfactory replacement of the old order gave way to competition over what new order would replace the old order. These were wars over ideas, not wars over resources. There is really very little reason to make war over ideas which is why we today prefer to vote on things and not make war over them, but of course, fascism and communism were not democratic ideologies. Fascism and communism are now dead, and I am grateful to America for their work to accomplish just that. But there is no longer any ideological competition to democracy resting on foundations claiming to be rational. Those are all dead. The American way of thinking that was relevant to the cold war is now archaic.

All rational people today see little reason for war. The problem is with those who remain irrational. As we have seen, and as America has had to experience. This is why there is no longer any use for religion in modern society, and why religions are the enemy of stability and modernity.

[Pat]

There is a significant difference, however, in that if there is no life after death, then our life here on earth becomes a lot more important. We have all seen the nihilism of those certain of life after death. 

This is a statement of personal belief, though.  Many nihilists have existed in societies without a belief in life after death.   Your implication that the WTC bombers believed that there was no purpose to life (i.e. were nihilists) is curious, because you seem to be arguing the opposite in your other statements.   Whether they were or not is not really relevant to the discussion, though, since no one here is arguing that they are typical of anything in particular.

To just give away your life as if it had no meaning is to be a nihilist. There are other irrational ways of thinking, some of them not related to religion, that can produce nihilism as well.

And you're wrong when you say no one here is arguing they are typical of anything in particular. *I* am arguing they are.

[Pat]

To expand on this. I was in India during the Bombay attacks (had been sitting at Leopold cafe drinking beer just a few days before they attacked it with hand-grenades and automatic weapons).

Please don't tell us you're one of those weirdo Indian dudes with an English accent.  That only works for the chicks.

No, I'm not