[PLEASUREMAN]

One of the debates going on about religion is whether it is adaptive or accidental--did it come about because it offered better odds of survival (shades of group evolutionary strategy), or because it developed as a side effect of the development of higher cognitive functions which are the true adaptive trait.

This is the least interesting question one can ask with respect to religion, a kind of quizzical atheist version of "tell me of this emotion you call...love". To dispense with the question, I don't see why the answer cannot be both--that it developed as a side effect of higher cognitive functions, which religious "instinct" then evolved over time in ways that promoted the spread and scale of human society to global dominance (I suppose some would say this is merely taking the adaptive side by way of roundabout). But it hardly matters, as it is one of those useless questions which never can be answered in the scientific sense, only pondered.

A more interesting and pressing question is, what will society look like without religion? That is the course that Western civilization is on. I think we are beginning to see atheism's first notable cultural form, in the shape of contemporary missionary atheism--that is to say the promotion of atheism as a necessary advancement from a state of religious belief, and atheistic logic-based morality as an advancement from religious morality and tradition.

As religion evolved from tribal paganism to tribal monotheism (Judaism) to universal monotheism (Christianity, Islam), it developed the important concept of the moral life; I say "developed" and not "invented", because while philosophers grappled with ideas of virtue and goodness, religion gave them a super-motivating character in the form of one's personal relation to divinity--the moral life thereby becomes an end in itself, not merely the facilitator of communal harmony or trade or protection from the strong or any other practical benefit of religious practice. (Perhaps this clarifies what I mean in arguing that religion is both accidental and adaptive.)

Religion did not create morality, nor the opposite, but religion has changed in response to the moral needs of civilization to become entirely caught up in the question of morality. It makes as much sense to continue to discuss religion as a means to explain the unknown as it does to regard barbers as experts in dentistry. Here we come to the problem: it is not clear that a morality sufficient to sustain our large civilization can develop without the presence of a dominant religion to protect it from corruption or atrophy.

Missionary atheists will have none of this, of course, as it directly opposes their enterprise. There is no sense in attacking religion if it is a necessary ingredient for civilization, therefore to be a missionary atheist is to deny religion its special relationship to morality (there is even an element of this denial in the facile belief that religion is necessary to keep "stupid people" in line--another way of saying that smart people can live well without it, but this seems not to be true). When Razib Khan recently reviewed The Faith Instinct, his comments were quickly filled with the extremely stupid retorts of missionary atheists (who all seem rather broken):

Simon Gardner:

Clearly theistic religion without the superstitious silliness would not exist. Religion is the superstitious silliness.

J-Dog:

But I still think all religions are vestigal - and useless now - remnants of our cave-dwelling ancestors, and we will need to put all religious stupididty, symblism and superstition behind us to achieve world peace. God(s) kill.

Tsutsugamushi:

Question. Do you think it possible that -if religion is somehow inherent in the way our brain functions ("byproduct")- we are capable of "shutting off" that mechanism? Or, better still, like the heat in the above example, find ways to neutralise this?

There is some improvement following these wondrously dumb examples of nerd atheism, however the discussion remained along the lines of a sociopath marveling at people who experience emotional bonds with each other--how very suboptimal. (I am always entertained when nerds discuss suboptimal behavior--and then resume emotionally shallow, technology-oriented lives that involve a very suboptimal use of personal resources and a tendency to depression and beta male abstinence.)

The trouble with atheists is that atheism has not to date produced a fully formed and robust morality, and at times appears to aspire more to an anti-morality or laissez-faire philosophy (missionary atheists are often hostile to traditional moral values). This is in part the clever silly problem--the tendency of the high IQ to regard themselves as better judges of complex moral issues than the collective judgement of hundreds of years of socialization. It is also a problem specific to any attempt to found a morality on logic when the necessary data to form resilient logical rules is, for all practical purposes, impossible to collect.

The use of custom in tradition is imperfect, but it has the benefit of being cognitively efficient--that is, it is able to compress via custom the experiences of a great many people, so that it does not require too much mental energy to promulgate. Logic-based morality, on the other hand, must not only acquire an immense quantity of data regarding human experience systematically (and absent significant collection error), it must also somehow impartially sift through this data and synthesize a set of rules that can be applied to a class- and IQ-diverse (and possibly ethnically-diverse) society, as well as ensure that its rules will be accepted by society. This latter point is crucial; a perfectly logical morality is compromised if it is rejected by the people it was designed for--people with emotional responses and personal and group loyalties.

If a robust logic-based morality is impossible, where will it most likely break down? I believe in three areas. First, the indulgence of self-gratification, and through this a weakened resistance to future impulses. Logic-based morality, with its self-conceit as a scientific endeavor, is slow to find reasons why instances of personal gratification are in themselves harmful, especially when harm is the product of successive behavior. Hedonism and deviant sexuality are examples of self-gratification that logic-based morality is less willing to condemn, despite the social costs of permissiveness.

Second, logic-based morality will tend to be the product of a narrow spectrum of class, intelligence, and experience, and therefore the farther one gets from this spectrum, the more resistance its morality is likely to encounter. Moreover, it will tend to produce unintended consequences when applied far outside this spectrum due to second order effects and a failure to account for the diversity of social interactions beyond its common experience. (Thus from the sexual revolution of white bourgeois youth proceeded the collapse of the black family unit.)

Third, a preference for novelty, the clever silly problem, will make it prone to undermine social stability while pursuing short-term advantages and unproven theories. To take an example from the financial sector, it was the "logic" that homeowners were better citizens that resulted in a policy of reckless lending practices, as if lowering the financial requirements would automatically embue new homeowners with the traits that higher requirements selected for. (In fact the reverse seems to have happened.) Contemporary morality, already infected with logical pretensions, had little to say about such fundamentally unproductive activity.

To date logic-based morality has been protected by the fact that atheists are a minority--enough other people subscribe to a robust morality derived from religion and tradition that atheists, as free riders, are able to enjoy the fruits of a society unified by a religion-derived moral outlook. As religion continues to decline (assuming traditional forces do not reassert themselves), one should expect greater instability and greater division. I expect atheists to follow through on human nature and blind themselves to both developments while continuing to seethe about minor political figures and remnant religious institutions.

[PLEASUREMAN]

mlad had better read this fucking massive wall of words.

[Zoroaster]

Well said. I've had similar thoughts, but never got around to pulling them together like this.

-- Z

[BushrodButtram]

I'm not mlad, but I read it anyway.

Intellectual nerd atheists (INA) are in the same boat as next-quarter thinkers of all kinds. They have no tools for deciding what is good or right except a blunt, hedonistic, utilitarianism. They think of society as composed of individuals whose utility is the product only of a series of economic transactions taking place in an ideal, contextless, anonymous market. This explains nerd libertarianism (obviously there are higher libertarianisms) since they imagine that any interference in this ideal market is going to cause deadweight losses. Since religions create and sustain traditions, which are mostly irrational hindrances on the market, they may well be the leading institutional source of anti-utility. This explains why the mostly harmless Jesusland fundies are such hate figures for INA. They are usually described by INA in terms right out of Der Stürmer, focusing on their physical hideousness, awful fashion sense, bad teeth and hair, etc., coupled with ridiculous caricatures of their beliefs and speech that anyone who's known any socially will realize are at minimum broad-brush and more usually completely wrong in both big picture and detail.

There's also an aesthetic side to this. INAs really believe in Star Trek, etc., and really want to live in a post-scarcity society where everyone has a 4-digit IQ. They see Jesusland as an impediment to the realization of this fantasy. See, e.g., http://www.electrics...mostguy/05.html for one unusually self-aware INA's take on the nerd fantasy future. INAs are always male, of course.

[thras]

The nerds have always been with us, but we didn't get libertarianism until recently. So it feels like there should be something more too it than just pointing out how the nerd habits of mind lead to Richard Dawkins.

Maybe it's just that Scientism has become the only 'ism' that everyone agrees on. If Christianity had brought us the atom bomb, people would still think that Jesus was pretty awesome.

[PLEASUREMAN]

thras, 21 November 2009 - 09:18 PM:

The nerds have always been with us, but we didn't get libertarianism until recently. So it feels like there should be something more too it than just pointing out how the nerd habits of mind lead to Richard Dawkins.

Maybe it's just that Scientism has become the only 'ism' that everyone agrees on. If Christianity had brought us the atom bomb, people would still think that Jesus was pretty awesome.

I don't think the nerds have always been with us. I think they are a product of technology and post-industrial specialization. It's difficult to conceive of someone with functioning autism in, say, 16th century Venice. (Difficult but kind of entertaining.) But this isn't really about nerds, it is about what we have for morality when religion fades.

[thras]

PLEASUREMAN, 21 November 2009 - 08:26 PM:

But this isn't really about nerds, it is about what we have for morality when religion fades.

I thought that you were suggesting that logic-based morality was causing the fade of religion.

So, to turn that around, and to take the fade of religion as a given, what alternative is there to logic-based morality? Maybe you can crown the tooth once the root dies, leave the dead tradition, but it'll be worn down with time. And once we're stuck with logic-based morality we have rule by lawyers or Bolsheviks or worse.

[Moondog]

thras, 22 November 2009 - 02:23 PM:

PLEASUREMAN, 21 November 2009 - 08:26 PM:

But this isn't really about nerds, it is about what we have for morality when religion fades.

I thought that you were suggesting that logic-based morality was causing the fade of religion.

So, to turn that around, and to take the fade of religion as a given, what alternative is there to logic-based morality? Maybe you can crown the tooth once the root dies, leave the dead tradition, but it'll be worn down with time. And once we're stuck with logic-based morality we have rule by lawyers or Bolsheviks or worse.

why is the only alternative to religious morality purely logic based morality? humans already have an innate ability to decide what's right or wrong. we're able to identify that "thou shalt not kill" is right while stoning women for adultery isn't.

[BushrodButtram]

I think it's a bit short-sighted to say that stoning women for adultery doesn't work. It appears to work just fine for the Saudis. You may think that Saudiland is a disgusting fucked-up shithole - I certainly do - but they feel the same about us, so it's not like our society's broad moral values are so obvious and necessary that you can't have perfectly functional societies that deny them.

[PLEASUREMAN]

thras, 21 November 2009 - 10:23 PM:

PLEASUREMAN, 21 November 2009 - 08:26 PM:

But this isn't really about nerds, it is about what we have for morality when religion fades.

I thought that you were suggesting that logic-based morality was causing the fade of religion.

So, to turn that around, and to take the fade of religion as a given, what alternative is there to logic-based morality? Maybe you can crown the tooth once the root dies, leave the dead tradition, but it'll be worn down with time. And once we're stuck with logic-based morality we have rule by lawyers or Bolsheviks or worse.

No, I think religious morality is fading and don't see what will stop it, and am concerned about the new, hubristic morality of the atheistic elites which is replacing it--which I think is going to have disastrous consequences. A return to tradition sounds good but runs into practical problems--there is nothing protecting it, back to square one. I don't have a solution, beyond the advocacy of more traditional roles and institutions and an organized effort to protect them against the forces of technocracy and political correctness--which is hardly a solution.

[PLEASUREMAN]

Also I don't think we can accurately estimate how much of our morality is innate--I have my doubts there--given that we all grew up in a society heavily determined by Christian morality. But the question is not would we still have a primitive form of morality, along the lines of the ten commandments--which, getting down to it, are hardly adequate as a basis or condition for a sprawling civilization that aspires to liberal democratic values. I see logic-based morality as an attempt to out-wrestle a snake.

[KGB]

PLEASUREMAN, 22 November 2009 - 12:17 AM:

Also I don't think we can accurately estimate how much of our morality is innate--I have my doubts there--given that we all grew up in a society heavily determined by Christian morality. But the question is not would we still have a primitive form of morality, along the lines of the ten commandments--which, getting down to it, are hardly adequate as a basis or condition for a sprawling civilization that aspires to liberal democratic values. I see logic-based morality as an attempt to out-wrestle a snake.

This is where you get to much more fundamental issues within philosophy. If you apply yourself to say Realist or Thomistic schools of thought, Natural Law is what will take precedent, even in the absence of religion. Society wouldn't necessarily crumble because Natural Law is argued as being innate, and it acts as a functional basis for many governmental approaches on Law, especially in regards to International Law, Just War Theory, and what are considered to be universal human rights. Locke, Hobbes, Hume, Aquinas, Maritain, etc. all come from this school of thought.

If INA's more materialist philosophy takes hold however everything is either going to be reduced to Kant's Categorical Imperative, or some form of Rule Utilitarianism. Actually, for that special breed of Libertarian INA's, they'd all be jerkoff egoists or objectivists with no real sense of strong morality outside of their own self-centered bullshit.

You could argue that the functional basis could be greater as a whole for Utilitarianism isn't necessarily all that bad necessarily, and I personally agree with Mill's assertions on what he says about Natural Law in regards to the ideas of fundamental human rights. In order for society to be stabilized within the context of the INA's ideal world, ironically, you'd have to take an approach of going at the crux of the matter which is, totalitarian societies, or radical democratic societies are the only societies that would allow for ANY of the INA's assertions to fully manifest themselves. Are these ideas feasible or possible within the context of society today? Absolutely not, the culture and the fundamental structures and institutions that hold it together wouldn't allow for it, and the basis for these forms of abolishment are spurious at best, and destabilizing at worst.

The other problem with INA's is that they are way too focused on religion as being a bane of society. It fundamentally isn't, especially if you read through any of Maritan's work or study some of the works of other Natural Law catholic theologians and philosophers. An argument can be made for the Catholic Church's aggression within the Middle East through the Crusades as supporting INA's, but anybody with some background in middle eastern history can just as easily point to how the Abbasid Islamic Caliphate maintained one of the strongest and most equitable societies that has ever existed. Both the Catholic Church and Islam have had a historical series of great intellectuals that have created a wellspring of information and arguments that advanced the entirety of Academia tremendously. Without the Catholic Church, academia wouldn't even exist in Western Europe, and it would have lead to the true domination of the Caliphate over the majority of Europe as for Western Europeans to acquire stability instead of having to rely on a Hobbesian existence.

Another issue is the INA's viewpoint has never been tested by any stretch of the imagination. Yes, somebody could make a stretch argument and say Russia was an example of such a society, but it really wasn't, and the structure of the USSR was not anything that was really all that congruent with what the INA's take as some form of a strong viewpoint anyway.

When you break everything down to its fundamentals, I'd say that in the end that religion is still necessary as a fundamental force in order to maintain society, and these institutions need to continue and present within society for the sake of keeping some sense of stability within it.

This post has been edited by KGB: 23 November 2009 - 12:37 AM

[rob_ot]

Whatever the evolutionary origins of religiosity are, I think the most interesting question is more like what's wrong with(for the prickly atheists out there, I mean better about) atheists? My friend Pseudonym grew up a snake handler. When he left the cult he didn't drop religion, he became a "spiritual person." That seems to be true of most people who grew up in awful religions. They still have the religious instinct. Whereas tons of atheists grew up milquetoast, hanging-out style religions, not fire and brimstone fundie churches.

Many atheists don't have have the religious instinct because they don't attribute intention to things that actually have intentions. Why would they do it to rain and stuff? They don't attribute minds to things that actually have minds. For the social and socializing aspects of religion, well autistics aren't into those in nonreligious settings either. Because they don't really understand that some people want different things, they don't really see religions socializing the savage. They only see it being dickish to nerds.

Readers of Vox Day and Pharyngula took an aspergers quotient. Vox day is some kind of free range Christian, and Pharyngula is a very angry atheist. The results, if people were mostly honest, are pretty consistent with autistic traits leading to atheism.

Schizos really attribute minds and meaning to everything. Some people think autism and schizophrenia are opposite disorders. Involvement in cults, gnosticism, UFO, etc. is a common trait in people with schizotypal personality disorder.

I think they are a product of technology and post-industrial specialization. It's difficult to conceive of someone with functioning autism in, say, 16th century Venice. (Difficult but kind of entertaining.)

Pleasureman, I would watch that sitcom. It could be the next costume drama(dy) on HBO. I do wonder why there's so much autism and aspergery-ness now. Maybe it caused by young children watching more tv. Or they could could just have been born at roughly the same rate awhile ago and died of various causes.

I don't think that most people will ever be post-religion, so they won't have post-religious morality. Other things, Green or liberalism, or whatever will replace religion for some people, others will still speak in tongues...If religion ain't dead yet, it never will be.

[rho]

I suppose even a hand-rolled atheist society would work out, for sufficiently small values of "work". Hell, the Aztecs built a respectable civilization around the concept of "No Heart Left Behind (In The Chest)". While I wouldn't want to live there, they managed pretty well. It seems so long as we humans have some kind of order, even a bad one, we can muddle through. Assuming the order is consistently applied. Privilege breeds revolution--eventually.

While a believer myself, for some reason I tend to get along really well with the atheists I know than a lot of the gung-ho Christians I know. That may be because, living in the Bible Belt as I do, the atheists I know have the good sense to keep their head down and show some humility, while the God-botherers don't. Nothing quite so well turns on the assholery spigot like utter confidence that everybody else agrees with you.

[BushrodButtram]

I approve of the Vox Day/Pharyngula drama migrating to this site, ty.

[rho]

Somewhat apropos (from a BoingBoing commenter).

[PLEASUREMAN]

rob_ot, 23 November 2009 - 01:30 PM:

Schizos really attribute minds and meaning to everything. Some people think autism and schizophrenia are opposite disorders. Involvement in cults, gnosticism, UFO, etc. is a common trait in people with schizotypal personality disorder.

this is a good call, schizotypal seems like the opposite of militant atheism

[PLEASUREMAN]

rho, 24 November 2009 - 12:14 AM:

Somewhat apropos (from a BoingBoing commenter).

Ted videos are either pointless or interesting (usually pointless), but this was pretty good until the end when it got mushy and unfocused...most of the audience will think "hmm interesting idea that society needs conservatives and liberals" then on the drive back to the hotel or gated community talk about how fucking stupid those jesusland idiots are

[antistoic]

Good post, Pleasureman.

Appropriately enough, the idea that religion 'evolved' from a more primitive, polytheistic form into the more sophisticated universalist monotheism exemplified by modern Christianity, with supposedly henotheistic Judaism as a transitionary 'stage' between the two, is simply a slight variation on Comte's Law of Three Stages, which posits a model of socio-historical development beginning with primordial polytheistic fetishism and culminating in the 'positive' era, where rationalist materialism reigns triumphant.

At first glance, modern Western society certainly appears to be following this atheistic trajectory; certainly traditional religion has suffered some major setbacks in the last few decades. But, as you implied, believers may have Darwin on their side: it's long been observed that religiosity and fecundity are often directly proportional, for example, and religious societies tend to produce mentally healthy individuals (contrary to the "religion is mental illness" meme that Dawkins et al promote). The idea that religion is a 'noble lie' necessary for the basic functioning of civilization is nothing new, either; I can recall Schopenhauer, Hume, and Kojeve all making statements to that effect. Along similar lines, Rousseau, although a theist, also believed that man was 'theotropic' - i.e., that there is a universal human impulse towards belief in the supernatural.

The word 'religion' itself, according to modern etymologists, comes from the Latin re + ligare, meaning "to bind". This etymology reveals what should be obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity with Western history: religion has always been sui generis in its ability to unify society behind a common vision of humanity. Philosophy and political ideology have always been poor substitutes for the socially-cohering narratives of religion.

The reasons for this, I think, are twofold: first (and this connects with what you said about the 'moral life' becoming an end in itself), religion inherently involves praxis - a way of corresponding belief with the act of living. By contrast, the sophistry of the philosopher often proves to be nothing more than a vain intellectual exercise for the purpose of personal entertainment - more likely than not, his ideas won't substantially alter his patterns of daily living. The philosopher, freed from any physical commitment to his ideas, is thus able to indulge and pursue every fleeting fancy that crosses his mind. In this respect, Peter Singer is the archetypal 'decadent philosopher'. His contradictory advocacy of both infanticide and moral veganism is what happens when philosophy is separated from behavior and accountability.

The other reason is that religion provides us with a conscious narrative model of the universe, and our role within that model, that is constantly being maintained and recalled by means of prayer, reading of holy books, group worship, communion with fellow believers, etc etc. It also gives us a teleology, allowing us an understanding of our personal destiny within that narrative model.

I think these two reasons go a long way towards explaining why societies that are no longer religious tend to lose their forward momentum and sink into nihilistic decadence, a condition that currently characterizes much of Western civilization. Marxism, progressivism, humanism, and neoconservatism (c.f. Fukuyama's The End of History) have all attempted to satisfy secular Western man's hunger for narrative, but so far none of them have proven successful in stopping our culture's downward anomic spiral.

If there is such a thing as an 'atheist morality', it's basically warmed-over liberal Christianity with all the stuff about self-denial, repentance, and the imperfect condition of mankind removed. Internet atheists often use 'logic' and scientific advocacy as a smokescreen to conceal their seething resentment towards Christians and religious people in general, but most of them are no more logical or scientifically knowledgeable than your average backwoods fundamentalist who believes Jesus walked on the Earth with dinosaurs. To the extent that they actually care about science, it is because they feel that science offers an alternative, nontheistic ontology that contradicts the supernatural worldview of the religious believer.

This post has been edited by mlad: 24 November 2009 - 01:41 AM

[The Jewish Conspiracy]

thras, 21 November 2009 - 09:18 PM:

The nerds have always been with us, but we didn't get libertarianism until recently. So it feels like there should be something more too it than just pointing out how the nerd habits of mind lead to Richard Dawkins.

Maybe it's just that Scientism has become the only 'ism' that everyone agrees on. If Christianity had brought us the atom bomb, people would still think that Jesus was pretty awesome.

If it's not love, then it's the bomb that will bring us together.