The God report

Too much apology for religion...why do people always declare that religion is soooo important?

Maybe he is planning on running for public office some day?

...which then ties the excuses of "community" and "ethics" and "purpose" to the nonsensical pig-slop ...

And you actually expect people to take you seriously when you write about religion??

Good grief ... I've been a convinced atheist for 35 years, and I find your writings about religion to be ... well, since this is the level on which you seem to want to conduct the conversation ... pig swill.

It's stunning how someone who can write logically, coherently, and even elegantly about science just throws about 40 IQ points on the floor when the topic is religion ...

To be fair, he doesn't state (at least not in the excerpt you've provided) that religion is sooooo important but rather that it's immensely important to people - which I don't think can be disputed (that's to say nothing of the validity of either their beliefs or the importance they place on them).

I view them as addicts - they were fed early, acquired a taste and then a dependence; it's not going to be easy to get them off of their crank -not for us and not for them.

The other way to look at it, though, is that maybe GW Bush has done more to drive people away from God than any of the most vocal atheists in the country.

Soooooo . . . maybe a third term, then?

Oh, and nice touch, equating an atheist's testimony about finding purpose in helping people to a terrorist's decision to commit murder.

I think this is important personal testimony from Andrew Sullivan. It indicates that if he has a crisis of faith (and let's face it, it's not hard to see how a homosexual who considers himself Catholic might be on shaky ground in that respect) he is a danger to commit acts of mass terrorism.

Homeland Security please take note.

Andrew Sullivan might be reasonable on some topics, but he is a nitwit indeed on faith. Does he truly not get it?

Maybe if a Hindu dogmatically insisted that he'll come back in the next life as a slug, because he doesn't believe in *insert Hindu deity here*. Of course that's nonsense, and the same is true of those of us who don't believe in God.

It's all nonsense, regardless of whether it's the monotheistic religions (moderate or radical) or the polytheistic ones. Why do they blindly refuse to see this?

Let's continue the pig-slop comment, shall we?

…nonsensical pig-slop of their absurd and unjustifiable delusions about an afterlife or a drop-in personal deity or strangely archaic social conventions…

How can an atheist fail to see that religious ideas about an afterlife, personal deity, or archaic social conventions areabsurd and unjustifiable? My IQ is at a constant level; it seems to be others who are willing to sacrifice their brain to support strange illusions about religious belief.

Good grief ... I've been a convinced atheist for 35 years, and I find your writings about religion to be ... well, since this is the level on which you seem to want to conduct the conversation ... pig swill.

Oddly enough, that's exactly what I thought about your comment...

Perhaps it's not more meaningful to the person doing it. I expect that the act of flying a plane into the WTC was intensely meaningful to those who carried it out.

Which forces us to ask - where would we like people to find meaning in their lives? Theists have been finding meaning in suicidal violence for thousands of years. Atheists tend to find meaning in the here and now, which so far as I can see leads more consistently (though not univerally) to ideas of peace and love and such.

If both theism and atheism are characterized by a search for meaning and fulfillment (ie, if life is), and the theist's ends in a murderous fireball, which is the better system?

But why is that more meaningful than flying a plane into the World Trade Center?

There's a double irony here. First, it's not more meaningful. Clearly, millions if not billions of people around the world found the 9/11 attacks to be extremely meaningful, not least Sullivan himself.

Second, what made it meaningful for the people who flew planes into the WTC? Glorifying a sky fairy, of course. This is hardly an argument against atheism, or even in support of theistic morality.

Kitcher is making a factual point and a practical/strategic point, not an evaluative one. His factual point is that religion *is* important to people (i.e., they feel it to be important), not that it *should be*. His practical/strategic point is that telling people their religion is not important to them will not be an effective way of changing their minds, since it will be hard for them to believe they can live without it, given how important it *seems* to them. He is not, I guarantee you, saying that religion is *necessary* for "community," "purpose", (and *certainly* not "ethics")--he is merely saying that people perceive it as necessary, and because they do we have to be very strategic about how we go about dealing with them.

Kitcher is a great asset to the pro-science, anti-religion movement, and he doesn't have any crazy views about religion being necessary to lead a good life. PZ, I think you are too quick to attack him here, and I think it's pretty clear from the excerpt that you've read too much into his words.

Since human beings are culture-dependent creatures, we can't operate without the mass of defaults and themes we inherit. We literally wouldn't know what to do next. That doesn't mean that we can't reject traditional ideas or reinterpret them, but simply that it isn't possible to act as if we were writing our lives on a blank sheet. Atheists of the militant subspecies tend to think of religions as a systems of propositions, which makes them automatically rather absurd; but for most people, in most of history, religions have had more to do with shared forms of feeling, acting, and dreaming than with knowing about anything.

I don't see how human beings can dispense with religion in the broad, sociological sense, or why, for that matter, one would want to. Piety, as respect for the traditions and symbols of the ancestors, goes along perfectly well with disbelief. And it's not just a politically expedient stance; it's arguably a better approach to life. Sign me up with the philosopher.

I don't read Kitcher as making an apology for religion. I rather think he's stating some fairly obvious facts: That lots of people do indeed consider their religions and religious beliefs as important, that these do indeed serve social and personal functions for many, and that many religious people view science as threatening. He further suggests that these people are not likely to change in response to "brace up" exhortations (alone), either in their religious views or their hostility to science when it conflicts with those. This may or may not be so but it's not nuts to think it might be (as a matter of tactics, if nothing else). There is a difference between recognizing that religion and religious beliefs do in fact serve purposes for some people, and calling for those facts to be taken into account when trying to change things, versus calling for them to be "respected" on their substance.

There is, to be sure, an implication that "shouting at" people about their delusions should play no part in trying to wean people away from religion and their related hostility to science. If so, this, again, strikes me as a tactical choice, and one with which I disagree. However, Kitcher's comment to this effect is made in the context of his views about how to get "beyond the impasse" of science conflicting with religion, and his primary contention about this seems to be that "shouting at" people won't work by itself (rather than that it is always a mistake).

I don't see anything in his essay which implies that Kitcher thinks that "accepting superstition" really has anything to do with "being a good person in a social environment," except for his assertion that that religious beliefs and institutions have, in fact, been entwined with that historically. I think that's true, irrespective of whether it's been good.

Sullivan wrote: But why is [being nice] more meaningful than flying a plane into the World Trade Center?

What makes 'meaningful' so damn great, anyway? Who lived the most meaningful life, Hitler, Stalin or the WTC hijackers? Discuss.

Jim Harrison,

I don't see how human beings can dispense with religion in the broad, sociological sense, or why, for that matter, one would want to. Piety, as respect for the traditions and symbols of the ancestors, goes along perfectly well with disbelief. And it's not just a politically expedient stance; it's arguably a better approach to life. Sign me up with the philosopher.

There's no longer much "piety" or "respect for the traditions and symbols of the ancestors" regarding Zeus and Odin. We recognize these "traditions and symbols" as primitive superstitions that intelligent and educated people need not take seriously. Why should the God of the Bible or the Koran be any different? The fact that Christianity, and organized religion more broadly, is declining rapidly throughout the developed world, especially outside the U.S., gives the lie to this silly claim that human societies somehow need religion to survive or flourish. We don't need religion. We don't need to "respect" ancient superstititions. It's not a "better approach to life." It's a silly, infantile, self-deluding approach to life.

I find it extremely amusing that of the three blogs I read every day--yours, Dispatches and the Dish--none of the three of you like each other. I have to admit, though that I read Sullivan because he doesn't agree with me and he's not a moron. It's a vanishingly rare combination.

"maybe GW Bush has done more to drive people away from God than any of the most vocal atheists in the country."

Amen. If he and James Dobson didn't exist we'd have to hire someone to play them on TV.

"or gut the old institutions of the bad ideas and restructure them to new, enlightened ends"

Hello, Unitarian Universalism!

"here's a philosopher....and as usual when I read these guys, I agree very much with part of what they say, and think much of the rest is nonsense." lool i think many people feel the same way about them.

But religion itself is utmost interesting, for instance i am almost convinced that any species has to undergo such a phase during the cycle of becoming a technologically advanced civilization and we are merely stuck in such an era. A human lifetime seems like a lot but it really is virtually nothing - it is all about our very own perception. In a few hundred years kids will be taught in history classes about the transitional era where people abandoned religion and new countries emerged whose politics was centered around education and knowledge in accordance to the demands of that time.

I agree with Jason. Combining traditions and disbelief IS doing away with religion, by the way. Having a December party with presents is not "piety" for atheists, it's just fun.

And was the Mohammed cartoon craze part of this "arguably better approach to life"?

Like Jeff Chamberlain, Jim Harrison, VC, CJ, and Scott Belyea, I too find it jarring when PZ switches from thoughtful-scientist into the guy who authored this post -- but then we all have an irrational side. It's just that not all of us get to expose it to 25,000+ readers per day. (And let's face it, most of those tens of thousands don't keep coming back for the science any more than millions watch Bill O'Reilly for his dispassionate presentation of the news.)

I agree with Lo. Mr Myers, you lack a sense of history, of how much time it takes for mentalities to evolve. In other circumstances you would be a Robespierre. Go with the flow, dude...

In other circumstances you would be a Robespierre.

I'll bet you're one of the historically illiterate morons who believe Robespierre was an atheist...

I, too, must disagree with the tradition-and-symbol-fondling approach to atheism.

Tradition and symbols have failed. They no longer explain the world as we know it.

I'll respect your goat-herding Doctrines on the Placing and Removal of Our Shit According to Our Lord and Savior Yaweh H God just as much as I respect the Doctrines on the Placing and Removal of Our Shit According to 'All-Father Odin' or 'Zeus, King of Olympus'.

That is, they get zero respect. They're useless. They lack meaning or relevance.

Traditions generally mean 'stuff your great grandfather made up, so do it or I'll kick your ass'. That's not a good enough reason for me.

Traditions generally mean 'stuff your great grandfather made up, so do it or I'll kick your ass'.

You mean traditions you don't like with me that.

Really, PZ. Martin Luther shouldn't have been so rude as to question the church, marring their wood doors. If he'd just waited, the rest of the world would surely have come around, eventually.

I keep hearing that humans NEED religion. When I was a kid, every Christmas & Easter my parents' church was overflowing. I suspect other churches are as well. Where are these people the rest of the year? Are they ignoring these NEEDS the rest of the year?

I agree with Jason's response to Jim Harrison also, who said above:

I don't see how human beings can dispense with religion in the broad, sociological sense, or why, for that matter, one would want to. Piety, as respect for the traditions and symbols of the ancestors, goes along perfectly well with disbelief. And it's not just a politically expedient stance; it's arguably a better approach to life. Sign me up with the philosopher.

OF COURSE we as humans will always need a basis for making reasonable assumptions of the world in which we exist. Duh!

But such norms and values as Jim refers to are not the exclusive domain of monotheism. Atheism isn't without a belief system, it merely includes in that belief system the revelation that God doesn't actually exist. Why is that so hard to understand?

Maybe monotheism is the new paganism - just as polytheism was outgrown for much of the western world a couple millenia ago, maybe one god is now too many. Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man comes to mind. We no longer need magical thinking to construct belief systems about those things we're uncertain about; prayer has no effect over placebo in effecting reality, miracles happen no more frequently than one would reasonably expect odd freaks of chance to occur, and so on.

Science has so effectively marginalized the utility of a belief in the Judeo-Christian God, that perhaps we need a new belief system. I don't think that atheism is mature as a belief system, but at least it's integrating proven facts into the framework.

Just my 2c.

This whole thing about a "meaningful" life is a load of crap.

What the theist typically means, stated or not, by the Meaning of Life, is that they think that they were specifically designed and intended to be put on the earth to fullfil some divine purpose -- a purpose of which they may be entirely ignorant, or only dimly aware, but a purpose at any rate. They view themselves as god's liitle tools, torquing down the nuts of the universe, and such. Instead of course they are the nuts of the universe.

For the atheist though, this sort of meaning does not exist. The answer to the endless refrain of the theist, "without God, life has no meaning" is not "Life does too have meaning without god!" it is instead, "So what?"

The theist who complains that life has no meaning is not making an argument. He is just complaining, in the same manner as the delusional person who looks at his bank statement and says, "This can't be right! This says I only have $200.00! I know I'm a millionaire! I don't believe this bank statement." The theist with his "meaning of life" is the same as the delusional "millionaire."

Oh, and nice touch, equating an atheist's testimony about finding purpose in helping people to a terrorist's decision to commit murder.

It's fascinating that an act of religious devotion is the most nihilistic thing a religious believer can imagine. Even more fascinating that he attributes this act of devotion to atheism.

The question of what approach yields the higher rate of success - i.e. the higher number of people who adopt critical thinking and come to doubt or reject religion - is a manifestly empirical question. Different people can try different methods and when we compare the results we should see, and all agree upon, what is more effective. There is no reason to feel anger or smugness or any other emotion about this question. If you have evidence that your preferred tactic is better, present it. If you don't, then don't make claims you can't substantiate.

There is another question, and that is what do you feel like doing - do you feel like treating religious people with kid gloves, or like ridiculing them. This is not an empirical question but more or less a matter of taste. The problem here, the reason why so many arguments get started on this topic, is that people confuse these two questions, and take their feelings that justify their stance on the second question as evidence for their stance on the first question.

Dr. Myers,
If you ever have doubts about creating pharyngula, please feel assured that there is one (more) person out here in internetland who appreciates it. Other "places" I have visited on the internet are chock full of people who think I am too aggressive in my atheism. They admonish me for writing about how sure I am that God does not exist. Are they right? Am I equally as bad/wrong as a *Christianist* for "believing" that science has all the answers?

Pete,

There is another question, and that is what do you feel like doing - do you feel like treating religious people with kid gloves, or like ridiculing them.

So religious folk should be left alone to spread their ignorance, free of ridicule for doing so?!?!

AndyS,

You mean traditions you don't like with me that.

Gibberish.

Meaning is very individualized. What may mean something to someone is simply pig-swill to another. While I find religion to be a "crutch", to others it is their whole life. Certainly not a life that I would choose but so be it. The lifers are not going to suddenly switch sides because we call them ignorant and superstitious. We must seek to teach the indifferent about the fallacies of religion and attempt to "convert" them. The vast majority of the population is this very population. They are the ignorant and their ignorance allows this foolish superstition to continue. The minute that the majority of the population finds the religious way of thinking as barbaric then the lifers will crawl back into their cave and pray to be resurrected in the future.

Since the values of classical civilization are still very much a part of the tradition of literate people, it's quite natural to regard many features of paganism with respect and affection. This sort of piety has nothing to do with imagining that Zeus and Hera ever sported on Mt. Olympus like animated statues--even in antiquity, educated Greeks and Romans regarded such literalism with a sense of humor. The Gods represented human powers such as desire (Aphrodite) and wisdom (Athena), which are quite real; and Western art has never ceased to use these venerable and beautiful images to celebrate and enhance life. Seems like a pretty good program to me, especially if the alternative is listening to some droning bore of an atheist on public access television.

What would you provide as evidence of the existence of "community" and "ethics" and "purpose" apart from religion. You have a few examples of where these things have arisen without the influence of religion? Or instances where these things clearly grew up independently of religious influence and were then "co-opted" by religion?

Or are you just speaking from the wrong orifice?

Daniel -
I get the joke. =)

Jason, here's the gibberish corrected.

stogoe wrote: Traditions generally mean 'stuff your great grandfather made up, so do it or I'll kick your ass'.

I meant to write: You are referring to traditions you don't like.

The most innacurate picture of what people believe is gained by asking them to describe their beliefs.
Why not, instead, look at what people do?

Oran,
You confuse correlation with causation. Yes, sociologically speaking, norms and values have been associated with religious belief systems. But you forget that no society has existed without a belief system. Even atheism has a belief system - humanity has just been going from poly- to mono- to a-thesistic. Note the trend there... I wonder why that is? Maybe we're moving from having Gods being nature, to a God in our own image, to being our own gods (in the sense that we don't need a God anymore to be obey societal norms and values, or to feel comfortable in our ignorance, anymore). Regardless, I as an atheism have plenty of purpose, very much apart from a belief in God. It's called family.

Methinks it's you who is speaking out of your arse.

About Kitcher: don't get me wrong, I think he's a smart guy and in a large part correct. But when commenting on someone else's stuff, it's uninteresting to list where I agree with him and more useful to talk about where we differ. And I do disagree with the statement that "Religion is immensely important to people". I don't think it is. I think community is important to people. Religion is this parasite that has hitched a ride on humanity's social nature, and I will continue to protest when people, even smart people, make that fallacious conflation.

AndyS,

"I meant to write: You are referring to traditions you don't like."

It still reads like gibberish to me. Of course they mean traditions "they don't like", more or less. They're clearly referring to traditions which have their status as tradition as their main, if not only, justification for continued observation.

Practices which have other justification are "traditions", but they generally won't be referred to as such.

As others have pointed out, you are criticising Kitcher for saying something he did not in fact say.

Kitcher's point, which you miss, is that shouting at people about the (albeit genuine) irrationality or absurdity of their religious beliefs isn't going to do anything to convince them that something other than religion can provide the structure they feel they need in their lives. This is not simply a question of what the best way to go about dealing with religious people is. The point is that your shouting targets only their superstitions, and simply fails to address their conviction that nothing but religion can perform the social and personal functions it does for them. And without addressing this, you are going to find people much more resistant to the rethinking and restructuring you hope to inspire.

What a loaded answer Andrew Sullivan gave. I have lost the minuscule piece of respect I had for him after reading his debate with Sam Harris. In the debate I totally agreed with Harris but at least had some respect for Sullivan although I totally disagreed with his opinion. That respect is gone after reading "But why is that more meaningful than flying a plane into the World Trade Center?". He could have almost been doing a report from Fox News.

I think the point you are missing is this: taking away the crutches that people don't need is the most effective way to demonstrate that they don't need them. Reassuring them that they need the crutches because they think they do is what perpetuates the myth, and makes the crutch salesmen very happy.

For Christ's sake (whoops!) Atheism, like religion, can support several belief systems, or like religion, none at all.
Religion can ( if we believe individuals statements about their beliefs) cause a man to step in front of a bullet intended for a child, or it can cause him to fire that bullet. I suppose atheism could, too.
But has anybody flown a jet into a building in the name of atheism lately? (not that I believe that religion necessarily motivates terrorists- research suggests otherwise- Robert Pape, anyone?)
On the other hand, were I to save a child by jumping into a ragin river and pulling him out, I would of course say I did it cause of my powerful religious beliefs. Mainly cause I love being admired.
What people say they believe is the most irrelavant thing in the world. What they do, on the other hand...

Jim Harrison,

Since the values of classical civilization are still very much a part of the tradition of literate people, it's quite natural to regard many features of paganism with respect and affection.

Whatever values of classical civilization are still part of the tradition of literate people, they don't include belief in pagan religions. We rightly reject such beliefs as the superstitious nonsense that they are. Increasingly, people are rejecting more recent religions, such as Christianity, in the same way. The faster that process occurs, the better.

"You confuse correlation with causation."

Where did I say anything was caused by anything else, Mr. Savvy Reader? It'd be nice for you perhaps if I did, but I didn't. Try real hard not to read your favorite errors into what other people writing, it's tiresome.

Myers' point was that ethics, etc. grew up independently and were co-opted by religion. I simply ask to be pointed to some societies in which ethics and morals grew up where we can clearly RULE OUT a causitive role for religion, because I'm not aware of any. And I kinda think Myers really has absolutely no idea what he's talking about in disputing Kitcher on this point.

It's not a question of reassuring people that they need the crutches, it's a question of convincing them that they can stand without them. Taking them away will work if you can do it, but many people are going to cling very hard onto crutches they think they need.

PZ-

You've switched from saying that religion isn't important to ethics, etc. to saying the ethics,etc. could exist without religion. There's a substantial difference between those two points. (Not that I think there's any evidence to support your later point either, because even if you do not yourself believe, it does not mean that your ethical behavior is not, in fact, caused by the religious milieux in which you grow up.)

But bobtheguitar, you need to assimilate PZ's point- how on earth will you convince them by continually talking about how the crutches are too important??

As to Kelley:

I simply ask to be pointed to some societies in which ethics and morals grew up where we can clearly RULE OUT a causitive role for religion, because I'm not aware of any.

And what makes you so sure the arrow of causation points the way you think it does? The observed correlation is just as compatible with this story: in an earlier state of human understanding, people invented religions in order to provide sanction for their pre-existing ethical intuitions.

I simply ask to be pointed to some societies in which ethics and morals grew up where we can clearly RULE OUT a causitive role for religion, because I'm not aware of any.

Bonobo societies
Chimpanzee societies
Orca and pilot whale societies
etc...

...and more instances where it would be rather contrived to credit religion for the sense of community, ethics and morals:

-Sports
-Sport fans
-Star Trek fans
-Kindergarten kids
-etc.

Bonobos and Chimps ARE different from humans, no? And how, precisely do we know that there is no bonobo religion if we concede there is bonobo ethics? Could it not be possible that there is a pre-verbal equivalent to our religions--after all, the religious impulse may be reducible to certain cognitive biases and predispositions of which doctrine and myth are (albeit important) epiphenomena--and that bonobos have got it?

More to the point, How about a human society?

"And what makes you so sure the arrow of causation points the way you think it does? The observed correlation is just as compatible with this story: in an earlier state of human understanding, people invented religions in order to provide sanction for their pre-existing ethical intuitions."

I didn't say I was sure the arrow goes one way or another. What I'm saying is that WE CANNOT COCKSUREDLY SAY THAT ETHICS, ETC. AROSE INDEPENDENTLY OF RELIGION.

Less strongly, I also doubt we can say, for that matter, that any ethics, etc exists independently of religion anywhere.

Religion also offers genuine community with others, providing spaces for joint ethical commitment and joint action.

This kind of comment is almost meaningless. Give us examples! Give us examples of both the good and bad commitments made by religious people.

There are all kinds of ways to cooperate with others to achieve good ends that don't involve lying to oneself about an afterlife and all the rest of the tripe that religion does so well.

Do we have to turn ourselves into ignorant, deluded fools in order to make the world a better place?

Of course not.

I didn't say I was sure the arrow goes one way or another. What I'm saying is that WE CANNOT COCKSUREDLY SAY THAT ETHICS, ETC. AROSE INDEPENDENTLY OF RELIGION.

But you seem quite unwarrantedly confident of the opposite. Pot, meet kettle.

"...and more instances where it would be rather contrived to credit religion for the sense of community, ethics and morals:"

In your examples, am I to understand that the people involved have no religious background wahtsoever that might influence their behavior, their notions of self, authority, etc. etc.?

P.S. How they arose is in any case irrelevant to their current status. Google "genetic fallacy".

Steve, as I said, it's not about saying that the crutches are important. It's about saying that standing is important, but convincing them that they can stand perfectly well without the crutches. To step out of the analogy, I'm not suggesting we say 'Oh, of course religion is important, but...'. I'm suggesting that we go some way towards showing that secular beliefs can "play an important role in people's sense of their own lives, explaining why those lives matter", and that secular communities can offer "genuine community with others, providing spaces for joint ethical commitment and joint action". (This involves agreeing that these things are important, but it is not the same thing as saying that religion is important.) And no amount of shouting about the absurdity of religious beliefs is going to do this.

"But you seem quite unwarrantedly confident of the opposite. Pot, meet kettle."

By which you mean you would like me to think this so you can say "pot meet kettle." Suppose for a minute I'm neither pot nor kettle and rather than responding ad hominem, you were thrown back on responding to the actual point. Where does that leave us?

Three point, PZ: First, I think you're wrong about community being the primary need and religion being the parasite. Dan Dennett's suggestion that people have come to "believe in belief" is closer to the mark, I think.Second, I too thought Sully's comment was grotesquely offensive,, and I told him so. It'll be interesting to see if he sees this and apologizes; I wouldn't be surprised.Third, I'm convinced that what will eventually undermine religion is not a recognition that it's superstitious nonsense (even though it is), but the withering away of the notion of the soul. Steven Pinker has an excellent piece in Time this week, and I would expect accounts like his to be far more corrosive to traditional belief than strident confrontation, however enjoyable.

"P.S. How they arose is in any case irrelevant to their current status. Google "genetic fallacy"."

Yes, I'm quite familiar with this fallacy as well, but it doesn't mean that one can speak as if there is definitely no causation when all we know is that there is not necessarily causation.

C'mon, this isn't that hard.

I simply ask to be pointed to some societies in which ethics and morals grew up where we can clearly RULE OUT a causitive role for religion, because I'm not aware of any.

This is akin to asking evolution scientists to point to a piece of the fossil record 'where we can clearly RULE OUT a causitive role' for God. There's no reason to believe religion is necessary for any particular moral.

Beyond that - Bonobos clearly have a certain set of morals, but there's no evidence they have religion. The same can be said for many social animals. In fact, of all the social animals known to have social rules for promoting the well-being of groups or individuals, only homo sapiens is known to practice religion. Why should homo sapiens require religion, when none of our extant relatives are known to practice it?

bobtheguitar,

Kitcher's point, which you miss, is that shouting at people about the (albeit genuine) irrationality or absurdity of their religious beliefs isn't going to do anything to convince them that something other than religion can provide the structure they feel they need in their lives.

Subjecting religious claims to rational scrutiny is not "shouting." Promoting the values of reason, science, evidence and skepticism is not "shouting." Pointing out that religious claims are not consistent with those values is not "shouting." And again, there is no credible evidence that human societies somehow need religion to survive or to be moral and decent. The power and influence of religion in the U.S. and other industrialized democracies is clearly declining. There's no reason to believe that it cannot and will not continue to decline to the point at which religion is essentially irrelevant to human affairs. A number of western European nations are already close to that point. So spare us this "you're never going to get rid of religion because people need it to give their lives meaning and purpose" nonsense.

My, that is one sloppy philosopher! He of all people should realize that the meaning to ones life can NEVER, by fact of principle, be as profound, respectable, and meaningful if it is dictated to you by an outside entity.

The meaning to ones life that one develops internally through independent thought will ALWAYS be superior to the meaning that one acquires through the dictates of another.

Having someone else value you never trumps, much less equals, you valuing yourself. And who the fuck values others that dont value themselves first and foremost anyway?

"This is akin to asking evolution scientists to point to a piece of the fossil record 'where we can clearly RULE OUT a causitive role' for God. There's no reason to believe religion is necessary for any particular moral."

It absolutely is NOT like the demand that someone disprove the existence of God.

If I told you that Porsces are not necessarily black, you could not affirm from that that I believe that no Porsches are black. And what I ask is not a theoretically impossible task (like the God example), all you'd have to do is find a human society that clearly had morals and community, but no religion, or where the two can clearly be shown to have developed independently.

"[...]It doesn't mean that one can speak as if there is definitely no causation when all we know is that there is not necessarily causation."

Your claim is really thin for something that caused you to talk about orifices.

No, you clearly don't know all about it. You're committing the genetic fallacy right now by acting as though the answer re historical origins proves anything at all about whether ethics currently have any need to be conencted to religion. C'mon, this isn't that hard.

..while you probably can't find a society where "we can clearly RULE OUT a causative role for religion" in the formation of ethics or community, for the simple reason that there aren't a lot of atheistic societies in human history, it is interesting to note that the shape of those ethics and community is remarkably similar even in societies that don't share any religious background. Whether your society is Hindu, Jew or Ah-ni-yv-wi-ya, there's probably something in your ethics that condemns violence against the defenseless, urges charity for the poor and cooperation with neighbors, frowns on excess, etc. There's more than one interpretation for this, I guess (maybe there's just one, largely inconsistent, deity who appears to different societies at different times, like an omnipotent travelling salesman with a speech impediment?) but the simplest explanation is that our values are human values, and are common to all of humanity.

"Beyond that - Bonobos clearly have a certain set of morals, but there's no evidence they have religion. The same can be said for many social animals. In fact, of all the social animals known to have social rules for promoting the well-being of groups or individuals, only homo sapiens is known to practice religion. Why should homo sapiens require religion, when none of our extant relatives are known to practice it?"

1. Has anyone *looked* for religion in bonobos?

2. Isn't there a distinct difference between what we might call morals and the other kinds of "social rule"-based animal behaviors you point out?

3. If homo sapiens has no need for religion, why is it so prevalent? Universal, as far as I know. Why would something unnecessary, in fact pernicious according to some, spread so much and become do prominent?

...or, going further, that some ethical values are simply, logical or self-evident. I sincerely believe a moderately advanced computer could arrive at "treat others as you would like to be treated". (Arguably, in the limited scope of games like the Prisoner's Dilemma, they already have).

Bonobos and Chimps ARE different from humans, no? And how, precisely do we know that there is no bonobo religion if we concede there is bonobo ethics?

The lack of hang-ups over sex suggests that they don't have religion. ;)

If they have religion, sign me up for it.

Could it not be possible that there is a pre-verbal equivalent to our religions--after all, the religious impulse may be reducible to certain cognitive biases and predispositions of which doctrine and myth are (albeit important) epiphenomena--and that bonobos have got it?

Even if true, I can't imagine how this would be an argument *for* preserving the trappings of traditional religion and respect for its symbols. Bonobos do well without them.

More to the point, How about a human society?

Well, how about those kindergarten kids? They are able to be nice (and mean) to each other and build communities before they understand religion.

PZ Myers: "Accepting superstition has absolutely nothing to do with being a good person in a social environment"

Agreed, but the same is true of accepting atheism. Is atheism (or agnosticism or Deism) necessary, sufficient, or even a guaranteed push in the right direction for "being a good person in a social environment" - any more than is religion?

The history of 'reason'-based anti-theistic movements that promised to be the foundation of a better world by, among other things, following the prescription of "kick the medieval grab-bags of crazy ideas to the curb and build anew, or gut the old institutions of the bad ideas" would caution otherwise. For example, the French Revolutionary Cult of Reason, dialectical materialism, the Monist League*, Objectivism.

(*Haeckel's 'God' was Nature as understood by science.)

I ought to be on the side of Dawkins, Harris, Dennet et al., but this bland optimism about the benefits of a godless world gives me pause. I am an atheist, yes; an evangelical atheist, no. Not because I have doubts about the nonexistence of God, but because I have doubts about human visionaries.

You can take theism out of human institutions, but you cannot take fallible humanity out of human institutions.

Rejection of beliefs that one finds unsupportable is its own reward. It does not need to to be justified by the expectation that convincing the whole world to share those conclusions will promote more ethical behavior or lead us to the answers for building a better world any better than religion does. Can even science in general (or more broadly, naturalism) do that for us? If only it were that easy.

And how, precisely do we know that there is no bonobo religion if we concede there is bonobo ethics?

Pointed to societies which have ethics, and no evidence for religion, you suggest ethics is evidence for religion.

In fact, there is a bonobo religion. The question is, why do we not hear of it? Simple. Darwin, an atheist and a Mason, organized a Secret Cabal to take over primatology and hide the bonobo religion from God-fearing Americans. Do you ever wonder why PZ publishes so few papers? It's because he's in Africa, working to keep bonobo religion a sekrit. All that guff about Minnesota is a distraction. He's flying a black helicopter right now, mind-beaming bonobos to prevent them from Witnessing Jesus to you.

"3. If homo sapiens has no need for religion, why is it so prevalent? Universal, as far as I know. Why would something unnecessary, in fact pernicious according to some, spread so much and become do prominent?"

Drug use, murder, war, rape and so on.

WHAT bland optimism? We so-called "hard atheists" have in common only the conviction that, in the realm of real cash-value belief commitments, truth is to be preferred to fiction. (I could budget as though I'm about to win the Mega-Millions jackpot, but don't you think that would be a bit unwise?) For the rest I take a rather dim view of human nature and prospects, myself. But rather than be depressed about that I prefer to do my tiny bit to ameliorate things. (Among other things that's why I like working at a job that has a clear social utility I can see every day.)

And what I ask is not a theoretically impossible task (like the God example), all you'd have to do is find a human society that clearly had morals and community, but no religion, or where the two can clearly be shown to have developed independently.

It's a stupid request. It's like asking for an example of a human society that had "morals and community" but no violence. Religion may be an inevitable feature of any society of intelligent beings that lacks the understanding of the world provided by science and reason. All modern human societies grew out of such ignorance. The rise of science is a historically recent phenomenon, and is still largely limited to the wealthy democracies. So religion is still a pervasive force in most of the world. But that fact is not evidence that religion is necessary for ethics or community. And the fact that religion has been in steady decline in the west for at least a century as ethics and community have improved is clear evidence that it is not necessary.

"No, you clearly don't know all about it. You're committing the genetic fallacy right now by acting as though the answer re historical origins proves anything at all about whether ethics currently have any need to be conencted to religion."

Myers affirms "religion is not important."

I say where's the proof? Where's the evidence? In light of that statement how do expalin some facts we all agree upon.

Where is the genetic fallacy in that?

Holding out the possibility that something that (may have) caused something else may be integral to that that something else (until that possibility is disproven) IS NOT an instance of the genetic fallacy.

Just for review:

1. I am not saying religion DID cause the rise of morality. I am saying we DO NOT know that it didn't.

2. I am not saying human morality will collapse without religion. I am saying that we don't know exactly what the realtionship is between religion and morality, and we ought not speak as if we do.

If you think we do know these things that I say we don't know, make a showing.

This is one of the things I found hugely annoying while watching the "Beyond Belief" conference. Every critic of Dawkins would start by saying there wasn't evidence for the bad things religion does and then proceeded to parrot the idea that religion gives people hope or fulfills some great need. It's the unquestionable dogma that lies as the centre of all debate about religion.

If you look at anthropological studies of religion, including indigenous belief systems, organised religion, and fundamentalism, the one constant is that the content of these beliefs are arbitrary. The "paradox" that atheists often point out - that the most pious believers usually know very little about their own religion - is not ironic at all: the content of these belief systems plays no role in their acceptance.

What people value is not religion; they value piousness and allegiance. They get angry when questioned not because Jesus has some special meaning for them, but because you're questioning their dedication. This is not a strange phenomenon, it's everywhere in human society. People show their patriotism by believing certain (questionable) historical events and if you question those beliefs they'll become offended because you're questioning their allegiance to their country, not because they're particularly interested in history, or because that event holds special meaning for them. It's just become something one has to believe in order to prove one is patriotic.

You're rather stupid, aren't you. Here's where the genetic fallacy comes in. I'll type r-e-a-l s-l-o-w so you might be able to understand. Proving... the... truth... or... falsity... of.. PZ's... claim... (or... the... contrary... claim...) CANNOT... rely... on... an... account... of... the... historical... origins... of... religion...and... ethics... because...their... origins...are... logically... unrelated...to...their...current... status. Read that over a few times until you get it. Then come back with arguments for the inability NOW of ethics to subsit without religion, if you have any. (You'll have a job explaining away the easily observable existence of many highly ethical atheists and highly unethical beleivers, I'd say.)

"And what I ask is not a theoretically impossible task (like the God example), all you'd have to do is find a human society that clearly had morals and community, but no religion, or where the two can clearly be shown to have developed independently."

It still seems like a practically impossible task to collect proof where there isn't really much of a burden.

"Religion may be an inevitable feature of any society of intelligent beings that lacks the understanding of the world provided by science and reason."

Can you show that religion is crucially motivated by the need to expalin the world in a quasi-scientific manner.

Seems to me to be a pretty convenient way for those who like science to expalin religion (Well, religion is just a faulty, primitive version of what I most love: scince).

What if religion were actually up to something different?

Bare-backing HIV'er Sullivan is certainly a moral reference.

Maybe someone can find his sex ads on archives for barebackcity.com. I won't give the link but just paste it in, so to speak.

http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Andrew_Sullivan

Oran Kelley:

The religion of the Tupi did not include any code of ethics (with the possible exception of "thou shalt not overhunt". Cultural norms and spirits were completely different things. You are coflating "Europe"+"Middle East" with "world". It is a close relative of the "United States=world" fallacy. Bot are common, both are invalid and ethnocentric.

The history of 'reason'-based anti-theistic movements that promised to be the foundation of a better world by, among other things, following the prescription of "kick the medieval grab-bags of crazy ideas to the curb and build anew, or gut the old institutions of the bad ideas" would caution otherwise. For example, the French Revolutionary Cult of Reason, dialectical materialism, the Monist League*, Objectivism.

There's reason to be concerned about what kind of morals an atheist society should work for. However, do not forget secular humanism, the nuclear disarmament movement, or the life-long peace activism of Bertrand Russell and Carl Sagan. Dawkins himself has many times spoken out in favor of sound morals (unfortunately, he often does so clumsily, but that's a matter of appearances.)

Steve:

"Then come back with arguments for the inability NOW of ethics to subsit without religion, if you have any. (You'll have a job explaining away the easily observable existence of many highly ethical atheists and highly unethical beleivers, I'd say.)"

What "arguments for the inability of ethics (blah blah blah)"

Where have I made such a claim, please? Evidence, please. Not wishful thinking and arrogance.

Just because I say "I don't believe there is sufficient evidence for you to say X in the cocksure way you do" Doesn't mean I believe -X. It means I there is room for doubt on X, and we oughtn't pretent there isn't.

I am making an essentially negative, skeptical argument here.

Ah, you just like to hear yourself blather. Well carry on then.

Jason,

First of all, I was only using the term 'shouting' because both Kitcher and PZ used it. Continuing the debate using the words in which it was framed didn't strike me as much of an issue, even though I wouldn't normally use the words myself.

Anyway, I didn't say that "human societies somehow need religion to survive or to be moral and decent", and I agree that there is no credible evidence to support such a view. I am aware that "[t]he power and influence of religion in ... industrialized democracies is clearly declining" and I am thankful for it. I am also aware that "[a] number of western European nations are already close to" "the point at which religion is essentially irrelevant to human affairs". I wasn't aware, however, that I was subjecting you to any "'you're never going to get rid of religion because people need it to give their lives meaning and purpose' nonsense". I suggested no such thing. Did you even read my comment?

colugo,

You can take theism out of human institutions, but you cannot take fallible humanity out of human institutions.

You can fashion institutions that minimize the corrupting influence of human fallibilities, such as the tendency to jump to conclusions, to believe without evidence, to engage in wishful thinking, to acquire power over others, and so on. As someone said, American democracy was not designed to be run by gentlemen, it was designed to be run by scoundrels. That is why it has so many checks and balances and safety valves to limit the concentration of political power. Ditto for science, with its elaborate procedures of systematic observation and experiment, publication, peer-review, replication, etc. Compare this with religion, in which claims about ethics and about the nature of the world are to be accepted on the basis of faith or the authority of clerics or sacred writings. I don't see how anyone can seriously conclude that a society based around religion is more likely to be decent and wise than a society based around science and humanist ethics.

I have never claimed that atheism confers any moral sense at all on anyone -- all it does is remove one obstacle to thinking clearly, religion. There are others, but they tend not to be as ardently defended or as pervasively drilled into people as religion.

Steve LaBonne:

I like to listen to myself blather! Hah!

I at least read your posts! You are the equal and opposite of the worst ignorant Christ-bots out there!

Check yourself, guy. The possibilities of the human mind are many and subtle. Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I have to disagree with you IN THE WAY YOU PREDETERMINE FOR ME.

Sorry I won't play your solipcistic little game!

Ours is not an age that will be remembered for its historical sense. For example, the atheists in these parts don't seem to recognize that modern confessional faiths are historical novelties. They take the peculiarities of modern Christianity or Islam and project them backwards as if paganism were just like Methodism except with a different catachism. The irony is that atheism, considered as a social movement, is organized like a modern Protestant sect, which is to say it defines itself by belief in a series of propositions.

All human societies, including putatively secular systems such as the Soviet Union, have been structured by rituals and myths even though most of them didn't feature religions organized around a creed. Religiosity, in the sociological sense, is not primarily a matter of adherence to the truth or falsity of sentences; and what we call religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism) are parasitic on a more basic religiosity even or especially when, as is usually the case, they define themselves against the idolatry of the peasants or the errors of other religions. Religion isn't going to go away until we start putting our dead out in the trash even if the historical religions, which are really meta-religions, go out of fashion.

Please excuse my tone: I tend to panic in confined spaces like the ideological imagination, for whom the only options appear to be a barren scientism or some absurd form of retail religion.

bobtheguitar,

The point is that what you call "shouting" (that is, the subjection of religious claims to rational scrutiny and skeptical inquiry) does indeed seem to be eroding religiosity (the depth and breadth of religious belief and practise exhibited by a society). The process is further along in Europe than in America, but it's happening in both places. And I think one reason it's more advanced in Europe is that European cultural and intellectual institutions are more forthright in their critiques of religion and religiosity than are their American counterparts. The deference to religion that pervades the media, the government, the academy and other important institutions in America is much less pronounced in Europe.

PZ Myers wrote, "There are others, but they tend not to be as ardently defended or as pervasively drilled into people as religion."

With the possible exception, IMHO, of patriotism.

Your opinions may very. ;)

Yeah, I'd agree with you about patriotism.

"Religion isn't going to go away until we start putting our dead out in the trash"

I don't call this kind of confusion "historical sense".

... a barren scientism ...

Not here! This is a blog for the advocation of fertile scientism.

Jim Harrison,

All human societies, including putatively secular systems such as the Soviet Union, have been structured by rituals and myths even though most of them didn't feature religions organized around a creed.

The influence of religious rituals and myths on western societies has been declining for at least a century. There is evidence that the decline is accelerating. Even in America, often considered among the most religious of the industrialized democracies, religious rituals play almost no role in the lives of most people. As poke mentioned earlier, for most nominally "religious" Americans, religiosity is already more a matter of symbolic piety, of paying lip service to religion, of being seen to be religious, rather than any kind of substantive committment to a life-directing set of beliefs and behaviors.

Please excuse my tone: I tend to panic in confined spaces like the ideological imagination, for whom the only options appear to be a barren scientism or some absurd form of retail religion.

"Barren" scientism, you say. Golly. Who could be for that? Fortunately, the scientism we "militant" atheists like is the fertile variety.

Oran,

Where did I say anything was caused by anything else, Mr. Savvy Reader?

Here:

What would you provide as evidence of the existence of "community" and "ethics" and "purpose" apart from religion.

You were insinuating that "community" and "ethics" and "purpose" cannot exist apart from religion, were you not? Hence, in your estimation, religion is the root of those concepts. I was merely pointing out that such a notion is absurdly false.

Note - I assume that you're talking about organized religion. I take it as a matter of fact that values and norms are inseparabel from community, ethics and purpose, but values and norms have their basis in social interactions, not in interactions with god(s). If you're using religion to describe these things (socially-reinforced belief systems), but not talking about organized religion, then my apologies for misunderstanding. Perhaps you shouldn't use religion to describe such things however, because most people (myself at least) would easily assume you meant the organized form.

"Oran,

Where did I say anything was caused by anything else, Mr. Savvy Reader?

Here:

What would you provide as evidence of the existence of "community" and "ethics" and "purpose" apart from religion."

That is called a "question." It's not a statement of anything I do or do not believe.

You are assuming way too much when you assume

"You were insinuating that "community" and "ethics" and "purpose" cannot exist apart from religion, were you not? Hence, in your estimation, religion is the root of those concepts. I was merely pointing out that such a notion is absurdly false."

I don't assert any of that. I merely question PZ's assertion that religion is unimportant. I don't think we know enough to say that, and I think there are a lot of reasons NOT to say it.

I don't say, or insinuate, that I think we can assume the opposite of what PZ says.

"Religion isn't going to go away until we start putting our dead out in the trash"

I don't call this kind of confusion "historical sense".

**********

Why shouldn't we put the dead out with the trash. What are the non-religious motives which make us repulsed by that idea?

Man, did Ed Brayton's entire readership descend on this post?

1. Has anyone *looked* for religion in bonobos?

Can you suggest some methods to do that? :D

Why shouldn't we put the dead out with the trash. What are the non-religious motives which make us repulsed by that idea?

They would stink.

"1. Has anyone *looked* for religion in bonobos?

Can you suggest some methods to do that? :D"

Rituals related to death?

Your 5-year-olds, btw, are, according to some psychologists, incapable of moral reasoning. And while they are not theologians, they are pretty crucially influenced by all the adults around them, who are capable of understanding and being influenced by religious concepts.

Trash already stinks.

The dead bodies could be segregated from the waste stream and fed to livestock or zoo animals or incinerated, whatever was most practical.

And I don't think the smell is why we cringe when we imagine dead relatives going off in the trash truck.

Oran,

That is called a "question." It's not a statement of anything I do or do not believe.

Yep, your question has nothing whatsoever to do with what you believe. Sure.

I don't assert any of that. I merely question PZ's assertion that religion is unimportant. I don't think we know enough to say that, and I think there are a lot of reasons NOT to say it.

You weren't arguing that religion is inseparable from those concepts, yet you were criticizing PZ for arguing that religion is separable from them?

Okay, okay, that's just what it sounded like you said. I take it though that you just mean that the answer is unresolvable either way. Kinda wishy-washy, but so be it, if that's what you meant. To that though, I'd just add that there are a lot of things that we cannot conclusively resolve in this world of ours, with no basis for rationality whatsoever.

Do you have an invisible friend? Believe in the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy? You can't really prove or disprove those either, you know, but I'd still think you're a moron if you started criticizing PZ for asserting that those things don't exist. The same goes with god(s), or the utility of organized religion. You can't disprove them, sure, but I think you're an idiot for arguing that "but you can't prove me wrong."

"What are the non-religious motives which make us repulsed by that idea?"

What are the religious ones -- apart from, say, ancient Egyptian beliefs? It's it all, ashes to ashes and dust to dust?

Why shouldn't we put the dead out with the trash. What are the non-religious motives which make us repulsed by that idea?

What a strange question. We are social creatures. The rituals attending the disposal of dead bodies are a way of honoring the lives and grieving the loss of people we care about. There's nothing necessarily religious about it.

Why shouldn't we put the dead out with the trash. What are the non-religious motives which make us repulsed by that idea?

You're kidding, right? How about empathy? How about self-respect and concern for our future treatment? How about hygiene?Maybe you've got the wrong idea, but atheists do like to keep themselves presentable and don't like wandering about with the scent of putrescine clinging to them.

The human body is still a recognizable piece of the dead individual. I could care less about what is done with my corpse but those that love me may find it a tad disrespectful to chuck it in the trash. What a glorious last memory that would be for them.

Oran Kelley,

"Your 5-year-olds, btw, are, according to some psychologists, incapable of moral reasoning. And while they are not theologians, they are pretty crucially influenced by all the adults around them, who are capable of understanding and being influenced by religious concepts."

The adults around them can also understand and be influenced by moral reasoning. So what?

"The dead bodies could be segregated from the waste stream and fed to livestock or zoo animals or incinerated, whatever was most practical."

Other posters have already made most of the objections to your original corpse disposal comment I could think of, but on this particular note: methods of corpse disposal through history and the world are very varied. Some do include the corpse being devoured by animals.

Which is why my original objection works both ways: what makes collecting bodies in a trash truck automatically non-religious (especially considering Harrison's very broad definition of religion)?

In an episode of Absolutely Fabulous, Edina told her daughter Saffy that when she dies she wants to be laid out on a rock in the middle of the Ganges and pecked at by birds. I kinda like that.

P.S., is this conversation making anyone else involuntarily play out the "Bring out your dead" portion of Holy Grail in your mind? Or is it just me?

The comment left by bernarda that begins "Bare-backing HIV'er Sullivan is certainly a moral reference" is repugnant. That sort of talk has no place in any civilized discourse. Please don't leave it there, PZ.

Wishy-washy? Why is it wishy-washy to acknowledge when we have insufficient data. I'd call that scientific. Much preferable to saying "OK, What do I wish to be true, then?"

God and the Tooth Fairy: I'd say any entity we are to believe in requires an fairly good argument FOR. Our default position on any force/person/whatever would be negative, because the supply of putative entities is infinite.

But this is not a case like that. We all agree that religion exists. We cannot, unfortunately, conduct experiments to determine whether religion and morality an dependent or co-dependent or whatever, and so we can only look back at history, and that shows us a great deal of past correlation between the two.

Theoretically it is possible to have all the morality and fellow feeling we want without religion, or at least religion as we know it. But the way to proceed is first to gain a thorough understanding of religion, the role it plays in people's lives and social imaginaries and then to start imagine other ways we can accomplish whatever it is that religion does.

It may be that we can have an entirely secular society. It may be that there are core cognitive biases toward (very generic) religiosity that make it unlikely that large populations will ever be without it in some form, however mutated and different from today's organized religions. I don't think we know.

Being able to say "I don't know" it would seem to me is the first qualification of the rational thinker.

I don't think it's possible to say "Philip Kitcher is being stupid when he says religion is important." Even if religion is some sort of idiotic delusion that is not at all "needful," we can't deny it is a powerful and important delusion.

The point about the dead is just this: the (imo) better thinkers on religion relate religiosity strongly to poignant feelings of loss, fear of death, the need for a sense that one's own life and those of loved ones have a lasting significance.

I would say, contrary to some of the above respondents, that there is something deeply religious in the impulse to respect, even revere, the carcass of a departed loved one and to heavily ritualize the disposal of said carcass. That, I'd say, is deeply and fundamentally a religious impulse.

And I don't think the smell is why we cringe when we imagine dead relatives going off in the trash truck.

Indeed, relatives. If religion is responsible for our sentiments, why not equal concern for any random dead person lying in a ditch on the other side of the world?

Is religion also why we cringe when imagining a dead pet in the trash truck, but not when imagining a dead wild animal in the forest?

Religion need not precede sentiment in order to (possibly) play a crucial development of more general moral codes vis-a-vis entire kin systems, tribes and societies. I doubt very much it does, actually.

Why shouldn't we put the dead out with the trash. What are the non-religious motives which make us repulsed by that idea?

This was a great lunchtime thread. Thanks, everyone.

Something tells me it would be harder for the government to keep track of the mortality rates.

"Grandma, don't forget to call the coroner after you put grampa out on the curb. Do you want me to come over and help you with that? What landfill did they say he was going to be taken to?"

Disposal of aborted fetuses would certainly be easier.

Funeral homes might not like it much. You're messin' with their livelihood. But the garbage disposal companies might like the idea. All those extra fees!

Oran Kelley,

"The point about the dead is just this: the (imo) better thinkers on religion relate religiosity strongly to poignant feelings of loss, fear of death, the need for a sense that one's own life and those of loved ones have a lasting significance.

I would say, contrary to some of the above respondents, that there is something deeply religious in the impulse to respect, even revere, the carcass of a departed loved one and to heavily ritualize the disposal of said carcass. That, I'd say, is deeply and fundamentally a religious impulse."

I'm still not impressed by this tendency to stretch the definition of religion until it covers every part of the inner life save for rational thought.

Oran,

We all agree that religion exists. We cannot, unfortunately, conduct experiments to determine whether religion and morality an dependent or co-dependent or whatever, and so we can only look back at history, and that shows us a great deal of past correlation between the two.

True, I don't know of any hard data on the association of religion and morality. I just know anecdotally that through history, the two are extremely loosely connected - being religious at some times in history has been connected to profoundly amoral social activities (think the Inquisition, for one). Further, I know a number of atheists and agnostics, and they're good people - no immorality there that stands out.

Anecdotal, to be sure. But I'm not ruling it out, any more than I'm ruling out the Easter Bunny. I'm just being extremely skeptical in the face of zero evidence in favor of a connection between religion and morality. There's far more evidence that morality (or lack of it) is a group phenomenon... altruism, trust, the fear of reprisal for "cheating" the cultural norms of a group... all things that sociologists have been studying for years and years.

And anyway, to your claims of "being scientific" about this, you forget that being scientific requires a healthy dose of skepticism. In that mode, perhaps the most reasonable conclusion would be "we don't know, but the answer is very likely negative."

Oran Kelley,

Emotion is not religion. Grief is not religion. The desire to honor the life of a loved one through the ritualized disposal of their corpse is not religion. Try to understand the difference.

PZ Myers: "one obstacle to thinking clearly, religion. There are others"

"Patriotism" was cited as a possible candidate.

Any others?

Are these obstacles identifiable by naturalistic methods, or, if not, recourse to other rational principles?

(For example, moral sense has been suggested. But who gets to assert what "moral sense" is, as opposed to "arbitrarily socially constructed"? Do some people's alleged "moral sense" lead them terribly awry - e.g. animal rights, anti-abortion...)

Can some of these obstacles even be reliably "correctly" identified, or are they more of a matter of consensus? And what factors determine that consensus?

Well, I suppose I might be stretching religion a bit, but what definition shall we use to cover things most people accept as religion now, from all kinds of animistic religions to the most philosophical versions of Buddhism to deism to fundamentalist religions to sufism, whatever.

Can we come up with a definition that isn't pretty damn near as general as what I've suggested in my "fear of mortality and the rituals and beliefs related to" post?

Are there two Oran Kelleys in this thread?

Sorry I won't play your solipcistic little game!

Classic projection, coming from someone who just likes to blather away without committing himself to any proposition except that everybody but himself has got it wrong...

"Emotion is not religion. Grief is not religion. The desire to honor the life of a loved one through the ritualized disposal of their corpse is not religion. Try to understand the difference."

Emotion is not religion. But irrational social rituals and beliefs and taboos that help us cope with emotion ARE religion, I'd say.

Oran,

Can we come up with a definition that isn't pretty damn near as general as what I've suggested in my "fear of mortality and the rituals and beliefs related to" post?

How about just using tried and true terms from basic sociology?

Wow.

You've pretty much defined-in all human reaction to emotion, haven't you? Why on earth is all of that "religion"?

Oran Kelley,

"Can we come up with a definition that isn't pretty damn near as general as what I've suggested in my "fear of mortality and the rituals and beliefs related to" post?"

I'd say most operative definitions of religion fit the bill.

"But irrational social rituals and beliefs and taboos that help us cope with emotion ARE religion, I'd say."

I think you'd be wrong.

Why commit yourself when your point is that there is insufficient evidence?

For poor Steve LaBonne's sake who so likes to think I'm stupid that he keeps dreaming up stupid things that I ought to have said? Why should I bother when you'll argue both sides for me?

"I'd say most operative definitions of religion fit the bill."

Let's have one.

Oran Kelley,

We cannot, unfortunately, conduct experiments to determine whether religion and morality an dependent or co-dependent or whatever, and so we can only look back at history, and that shows us a great deal of past correlation between the two.

We have been gradually abandoning religious ethics and replacing them with secular ethics for hundreds of years. Our public discourse on ethics today is dominated by secular utilitarian arguments that define unethical behavior almost entirely in terms of causing harm to others. Religious ethical positions that cannot be supported by secular arguments (e.g., prohibitions on contraception and homosexuality) are increasingly rejected. The whole history of western civilization since the Enlightenment gives the lie to your hypothesis that religion is needed for an ethical society.

"You've pretty much defined-in all human reaction to emotion, haven't you? Why on earth is all of that "religion"?"

No. Social rituals I think are key, because they are never explicitly there to serve merely social functions, but rather are more or less performed for some supernatural entity to bear witness to it. Be it God, or the spirits of the departed or whatever.

I suppose it'd be possible to have emotional reactions, and even to have ritual gatherings for the explicit purpose of coping with the loss without it being religious, necessarily. But I think almost all death related social rituals are essentially religious in nature.

But why is that more meaningful than flying a plane into the World Trade Center?

I don't even understand the question. What $^%&* stupid question. Did a bunch of atheists fly a plane into a building somewhere? News to me.

That is how I got treated at UD, too. "Prove to us that your life has meaning without God!" etc. Prove it? You mean mathematically (because that's the only realm in which anything can be proved)?

Why is an atheist supposed to justify him/herself in the face of a question that is never an issue for him or her? The question of flying a plane into a building does not arise for me. Okay? I can barely get out of bed in the morning. Doesn't flying a plane into a building feel differently than having "the chance to leave this world a bit better than when I came into it... for my children and for the rest of humanity"? Are people like Sullivan so cut off from their emotions and so dead inside that they can't sense a major difference between the two, and have to have a verbal, conscious, house-of-cards rationale not to fly planes into buildings?

That, I'd say, is deeply and fundamentally a religious impulse.

Of course you would. The religious love to appropriate everything good about humanity and take credit for it. Filthy parasites.

"Social rituals I think are key, because they are never explicitly there to serve merely social functions, but rather are more or less performed for some supernatural entity to bear witness to it."

Might that be because, if you already believe in a supernatural entity, you're already going to believe they ARE bearing witness?

But I suppose, as an atheist, this relieves me of the heavy financial burden of having a wedding or a funeral...

I gave evidence for disbelieving in the claim that religion is needed to underpin ethics- namely, the easily observable lack of correlation between belief and ethical behavior, on both individual and societal levels. Rather than address such obvious observations you prefer to babble about throwing corpses in the garbage. We don't care about your perverted fantasies, dude.

Oran Kelley,

But irrational social rituals and beliefs and taboos that help us cope with emotion ARE religion, I'd say.

I have no idea why you think a ritual that helps people cope with the emotion of grief is irrational. I have no idea why you think it is religion.

Well, I suppose I might be stretching religion a bit, but what definition shall we use to cover things most people accept as religion now, from all kinds of animistic religions to the most philosophical versions of Buddhism to deism to fundamentalist religions to sufism, whatever.

I think Steve Bruce's definition is pretty good:

Religion consists of beliefs, actions and institutions predicated on the existence of entities with powers of agency (that is, gods) or impersonal powers or processes possessed of moral purpose (the Hindu notion of Karma, for example), which can set the conditions of, or intervene in, human affairs

"Not by shouting at people about "the God delusion". "

It seems telling to me, and supportive of PZ's position, that the above is a common response to almost any raising of questions or objections to religion, or religious thinking. It speaks to the "specialness" granted to religion; any disagreement is viewed as uncivil, out of line. Metaphorically speaking, to hell with that.

Oran Kelley,

Social rituals I think are key, because they are never explicitly there to serve merely social functions, but rather are more or less performed for some supernatural entity to bear witness to it.

So when my friends and I get together for our annual Academy Awards party later this month, where we dress up as movie stars, hold a contest to see who can guess the most Oscar winners, and watch the awards ceremony together on TV, you think we're doing it because we believe a supernatural agent is watching us, do you?

Honestly, your claims are getting more and more ridiculous.

"Why shouldn't we put the dead out with the trash. What are the non-religious motives which make us repulsed by that idea?"

I heard somewhere (sorry I don't have a reference but it makes sense to me) that the custom of burial began so that predators like lions and tigers would not gain a taste for human flesh.

On the topic of "shouting", I like to think of it as the time-honored good cop/bad cop procedure, where Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers are "bad cops" and Larry Krause and Ed Brayton are "good cops". (Bad cops have more fun; too bad public personnae can't switch roles like cops do.)

Exactly. Religion only deserves tolerance. Not respect.

I think you are wrong about rituals Oran.
I think their main purpouse is to limit choice and reliev people from making decisions that they best be put on autopilot experiencing.

If human mating behaviour was similar to that of the praying mantis, I'm sure the Oran Kelley-equivalent would be busy exclaiming how there is something deeply religious about eating the corpses of loved ones, after you first rip their head off.

(But only if they are male, of course. It would be stated that without religion, men would be free to rip off women's heads as well, and where would that leave us?)

Oran, you've become so intent on "proving" your point - which is not entirely without merit in some respects - that you're not even listening to yourself anymore.

Do you realize that you're arguing that going-away parties, college commencements, high school graduations, birthday celebrations, pre-game tailgating, and the tooth fairy charade are Religion?

He's quite wrong about that, but quite right that we do need to build institutions that carry out those social and personal functions...but what we need to do is either kick the medieval grab-bags of crazy ideas to the curb and build anew, or gut the old institutions of the bad ideas and restructure them to new, enlightened ends.

A lot of atheists have the stupid notion that what the world needs are more essays explaining why atheism is the more rational belief. I spent a fair amount of time last year arguing that atheism and agnosticism haven't gone anywhere in 100 years because they doesn't provide the social and community benefits religion does. Good to see that I'm not a lone voice in the wilderness.

Oran Kelley,

"Let's have one."

Look some up. I'm a bit unsettled by this demand.

"No. Social rituals I think are key, because they are never explicitly there to serve merely social functions, but rather are more or less performed for some supernatural entity to bear witness to it. Be it God, or the spirits of the departed or whatever."

Of course, a ritual conforming to the only specific characteristic you've given here are religious. The point is: not all rituals, as you say, conform to that characteristic, and it's not fair to say that rituals which are similar to religious rituals or descend from religious rituals are themselves religious by default.

Jason,

"So when my friends and I get together for our annual Academy Awards party later this month, where we dress up as movie stars, hold a contest to see who can guess the most Oscar winners, and watch the awards ceremony together on TV, you think we're doing it because we believe a supernatural agent is watching us, do you?"

Oran Kelley has admitted the possibility of non-religious rituals, altough the fact that they call it a "possibility" and not something the existance of which is self evident, and the first sentence of the post in question, are sort of confusing in that respect.

The comment left by bernarda that begins "Bare-backing HIV'er Sullivan is certainly a moral reference" is repugnant. That sort of talk has no place in any civilized discourse. Please don't leave it there, PZ.

I'm pretty sure Bernarda meant that Sullivan was a poor moral reference because he is irresponsible and hypocritical, not because he is HIV-positive.

To someone who doesn't know me, the above post is a little ambiguous and someone might get the mistaken impression that I'm opposed to atheism, which being an atheist I'm obviously not, so let me clarify that I think it's a bad thing that atheism doesn't have the institutions which provide direct social benefits churches provide. If I found myself broke on the streets tomorrow, the first thing I'd do is seek out a church, and I lament that fact.

I meant the second sentence, not the first: "Social rituals I think are key, because they are never explicitly there to serve merely social functions[...]", the "never" being in contradiction to the second paragraph.

The Parsi community in Bombay has a
"...centuries-old tradition of leaving the corpses to be devoured by vultures..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6079870.stm
which instead of being a sign of the decline of religion, is actually a part of the religion.

lo said:

i am almost convinced that any species has to undergo such a phase during the cycle of becoming a technologically advanced civilization

"Cycle"? I think you mean "process."
Anyway, how many examples of this can you show?

Myself: "Of course, a ritual conforming to the only specific characteristic you've given here are religious."

Slight correction. We should allow for the possible exception of "the spirits of the departed", which can be thought to be bearing witness in a metaphorical way.

Steve, if you found yourself broke on the streets tomorrow and found yourself a church, I'm sure they'd pray for you ;)

The other way to look at it, though, is that maybe GW Bush has done more to drive people away from God than any of the most vocal atheists in the country.

Oh, I'd say so, at least here in the Bible Belt. Before he was blabbing about God all the time, I did have some doubts, but, being ten, figured I'd better just keep 'believing' in case God got pissed at me.

Seven years later, I'm thinking I might want to be an evolutionary biologist. And I've set foot in a church once in this whole year, and it was Christmas Eve to visit family. I spent the whole time looking up patron saints in the back of the Bible (though Dymphna, saint of mentally ill, remains my favorite, I was amused to learn that there's a patron saint of skaters).

I owe it all to Dubya, really.

steve s,

I spent a fair amount of time last year arguing that atheism and agnosticism haven't gone anywhere in 100 years because they doesn't provide the social and community benefits religion does.

The power and influence of religion in the west has declined significantly over the past 100 years. Notions of God are increasingly fuzzy and abstract. I agree with Steven Pinker that Christianity in the west is evolving into a kind of deism, and while that's not strictly the same thing as atheism or agnosticism, it's a lot closer than any traditional form of theism.

If I found myself broke on the streets tomorrow, the first thing I'd do is seek out a church, and I lament that fact.

I'm not sure why you think you'd be better off going to a church instead of, say, a homeless shelter. And government programs keep far more people from being broke on the streets than churches ever have. The biggest anti-poverty measure ever is Social Security.

Oh, I'd say so, at least here in the Bible Belt. Before he was blabbing about God all the time, I did have some doubts, but, being ten, figured I'd better just keep 'believing' in case God got pissed at me.
Seven years later, I'm thinking I might want to be an evolutionary biologist.

Welcome to the club then :)

I'm not about to weigh in on the sweeping debate on religion's social utility (or lack thereof), because virtually everything worth saying has probably been said already somewhere on this blog. However, I will say that I think the impulses that drive us to bury/cremate/otherwise ritually dispose of our dead belong to roughly the same category of impulses that drive us (as a species) to religious behavior.

Whatever practical psychological functions ritualized corpse disposal may serve for the living, I would argue that it historically was, and to a large extent still is, motivated by a belief in some sort of life after death. Even PZ's statement that we shouldn't just toss our dead in the trash because of "empathy" and "concern for our future treatment" suggests some sort of reflexive magical thinking linking a dead body to an enduring self. (Of course, I am not saying that PZ consciously subscribes to any such notion. Please don't hurt me.)

After all, purely rational examination of the matter would lead us to conclude that empathy for a corpse is no more meaningful than empathy for a well-made wax doll. And why shoud we be concerned about our own future post-death treatment? It's not as if we'll know or care what people are doing with our bodies. In a truly superstition-free world, I think we would cheerfully ship our dead to the Soylent Green factory.

Kurage,

"However, I will say that I think the impulses that drive us to bury/cremate/otherwise ritually dispose of our dead belong to roughly the same category of impulses that drive us (as a species) to religious behavior."

Strangely enough, I agree with this, but not with the extended version.

"I would argue that it historically was, and to a large extent still is, motivated by a belief in some sort of life after death."

Not all religions have, unless I'm mistaken, have the notion of a proper life after death and there are a wildly variating relationship in cultures with the portrayal of the afterlife and the method of corpse disposal.

The connection doesn't seem to be that strong. Trash is treated inthree ways that are the equivalent of the three corpse disposal methods that come to mind.

Burial, cremation, exposure to the elements.

Not all cultures insist or insisted about individual disposal of corpses as being proper.

"Even PZ's statement that we shouldn't just toss our dead in the trash because of "empathy" and "concern for our future treatment" suggests some sort of reflexive magical thinking linking a dead body to an enduring self."

You're equating irrational with the religious. PZ doesn't want to think of himself in the trash, and he imagines other people might not, hence empathy and concern for his future treatment.

"After all, purely rational examination of the matter would lead us to conclude that empathy for a corpse is no more meaningful than empathy for a well-made wax doll."

Again, irrationality doesn't equate religion. We identify corpses with the persons when they were alive.

We want to be respected in memory, and we think others want the same treatment.

"Religious Scholar" is still an oxymoron.

What makes 'meaningful' so damn great, anyway? Who lived the most meaningful life, Hitler, Stalin or the WTC hijackers? Discuss.

Bingo. SteveC is right about "meaning", "sense", "purpose" and all this nonsense.

kurage,

I find it truly bizarre that you think grief, respect, love, honor and the other emotions that motivate people to hold funerals and wakes for a dead friend or family member constitute some kind of superstition or rest on some kind of belief in the supernatural. How does that follow? It's like the silly claim that one must believe in a "higher power" or a "supreme lawgiver" in order to have a reason to behave ethically towards others. Emotion is not religion. Grief is not religion. Our moral sense is not religion. I see no reason to think a superstition-free society would abandon end-of-life rituals any more than it would abandon the celebration of birthdays or charming traditions like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

Consider two things that can evoke repugnance ('yuck factor'):

1) human-animal experimental chimeras, hybrids, etc.
2) disposal of dead relatives 'like garbage'

Given what we know about behavioral ecology, reaction norms, developmental psychology, cultural anthropology (sky burial, Wari cannibalism, mythology), is one of these repugnance associations less culturally constructed, more innate, or somehow more "respectable" than the other?

I think an aversion to disposing of dead relatives like garbage is almost certainly innate and is rooted in emotions such as love and grief. I don't see any such clear biological basis for an aversion to the idea of human-animal hybrids, although that's not to say it doesn't have some kind of biological basis.

I think Oran and another above have made some interesting claims.

1. First there is a society, I think it was mentioned above with noknown Gods and they get along just fine.

2. All religions have roughly the same core ideas on behaviour. This leads one to think of a purely natural cause that has evolved different forms for different groups.

3. Number 2, along with studies of our relatives, makes a strong case for an evolving natural state of behaviour within our primate group.

Call it whatever you want but it seems evidence points to a primate group dynamic that has simply evolved as the group has expanded. That seems to me to be where religion stepped in.

Otherwise how does one explain the origin of not one religionbut so many varied religions. Not to mention the fact that they are still appearing and evolving and that means in some cases and countries evolving away from religion altogether as other acceptable 'groupings' rules come along be they government or other.

And it should be mentioned the value of a 'religious' ethics system is very much in doubt. They all seem to have their positives and negatives so I don't think they should be held up as some end all beat all system of ethics.

By the way, "death rituals" appears on anthropologist Donald Brown's List of Human Universals. These are traits that have been found in every human culture without exception, which suggests that the trait has a biological foundation. I see no corresponding entry for anything regarding "human-animal hybrids" or some generalized notion of mixing together human and non-human species. Even a taboo against zoophilia (bestiality) does not seem to be a human universal.

"But why is that more meaningful than flying a plane into the World Trade Center?"

Huh?

The theist honoring his god by flying a plane into the World Trade Center is certainly meaner than an atheist living/loving/working to improve the world for his/her children.

What is this thing about "meaningful"? How about being concerned with what something means (good/bad, happy/sad, harmfull/helpful) rather than whether is has some meaning or other?

Scott Belyea:

"It's stunning how someone who can write logically, coherently, and even elegantly about science just throws about 40 IQ points on the floor when the topic is religion ..."

It's stunning that someone can read something that perturns him and declare on this basis that the writer must magically have become much dumber than usual. Ockham's Razor would in theory inform such an observer that the writer and his attitude are probably not the real problems.

If PZ expressed exactly the same opinion about religion in a more dutifully watered-down way - e.g., called religion a set of potentially damaging unsupported beliefs rather than pig slop - you would likely have no quarrel with it. And, while not every atheist chooses to be a vocal atheist, I can barely fathom why someone who has rejected gods for almost 4 decades would take offense at the terms Dr. Myers used - seems almost like a crisis of non-faith, if there is such a thing.

Oran:

What would you provide as evidence of the existence of "community" and "ethics" and "purpose" apart from religion. You have a few examples of where these things have arisen without the influence of religion? Or instances where these things clearly grew up independently of religious influence and were then "co-opted" by religion?

Oran, your first question is easy to answer.

(a) Community: Many, many people (such as myself) have friends who do not share any religious beliefs. In many troublespots (from Israel to Northern Ireland), non-religious groups have often been the uniters and problem-solvers of divided communities). Many people band together to support environmental or social campaigns irrespective of others' religions.

(b) Ethics: The value of the Golden Rule, which almost single-handedly underpins the concept of human rights, can be demonstrated in game theory in the form of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, with no recourse to theistic arguments. And which came first? Religious practice in Homo sapiens, or social (and even altruistic) behaviour in primates?

(c) Purpose: The overarching "purpose" to life in theism (I use this word to exclude Buddhism) is invariably to say the right words and perform the right ceremonies to avoid eternal punishment. How is that a more rewarding or edifying purpose to life than that of the atheist whose letter above received Sullivan's snarky reply?

Or are you just speaking from the wrong orifice?

It appears not. You may, however, be thinking from the wrong lobe...

Numad -

I am not claiming that all irrationality is necessarily religion; rather, I am claiming that religion is a major subset of irrationality. More specifically, I am suggesting that some of our irrational behaviors (like ritually disposing of the dead) are cousins to the religious impulse, if not necessarily direct extensions of it.

"Not all religions have, unless I'm mistaken, have the notion of a proper life after death and there are a wildly variating relationship in cultures with the portrayal of the afterlife and the method of corpse disposal."

Honestly, I think you might be mistaken here. I am not aware of any religion that does not in some way espouse the notion of life after death and/or the immortality of the soul. (I'm assuming you agree that reincarnation falls into the "life after death" category?) I can't claim with total confidence that every single sect of every single religion EVER believed in life after death, but I am quite sure that an overwhelming majority of them did (and for that matter, still do; nowadays, individuals who nominally subscribe to any given religion may have their private doubts about the existence of the afterlife, but even they know that they're "supposed" to believe in it.) If you know of a specific exception, I'm eager to hear it.

As for the huge intercultural differences in modes of corpse disposal and specific beliefs about the afterlife, that's beside the point. The point is that concerns about "improper" handling of the dead offending supernatural forces, usually the spirit of the dead person in question, are a near-universal phenomenon.

kurage,

All, or almost all, religions have a rule that murder is wrong. That doesn't mean religion is needed to support a social rule against murder. Such a rule may also be justified by secular ethics. Similarly, the fact that all or most religions have rituals for the disposal of dead bodies does not mean that there is no reason for such a ritual in the absence of religion. All that is a required to sustain the practise is a broad agreement that it is desirable, a desire that flows from our shared emotional response to death, especially the death of a loved one.

And I would add that kurage also seems to be committing the genetic fallacy; he seems to be implying that if it could be shown that these taboos historically arose from religious beliefs, that would be an argument for thinking that religion is now needed to sustain these behaviors. But such an argument is flagrantly invalid.

Jason -

Grief and love transcend religion. Absolutely agreed. But _why_ is ritualized disposal of a dead body widely held to be the best way to deal with grief? I would say that the practice has undeniable historical roots in the near-pancultural (and, needless to say, irrational) belief that proper handling of the dead improved their prospects in the afterlife. Even today, many people view death rituals as a way of providing solace for the dead, not merely catharsis for the living. I suppose it is possible that such rituals will one day be purged of all supernatural associations, but that day will be a long time coming.

And then there's the question of our treatment of the dead when personal grief is not at all a factor. Why do so many people consider disturbing a grave to be a particularly heinous crime? Why do we dispose of unidentified remains with rituals similar to those we conduct for our loved ones? While these impulses have been eclipsed by pragmatism many a time (particularly in the last century), the fact that such impulses exist at all argues for a lingering belief in a connection between mortal remains and an immortal soul.

Steve -

(a) I am by most accounts a "she", and (b) I plead "not guilty" to your charge of genetic fallacy. I acknowledge, in theory, that religious practices can over time undergo a kind of bleaching and become strictly secular. In practice, I suspect that entirely secularized practices with religious parentage are fairly rare, and burial certainly is not one of them.

This is in any case tangential to my main thesis, which is that our enduring concern about "proper" and "improper" treatment of human corpses is in large part a product of magical thinking, even if it is not linked to any specific religious doctrine.

Which leads to the point I've been very obliquely hinting at, namely: even if we as a species do manage to rid ourselves of the canonized superstition that is religion, the proto-religious magical thinking inherent to the human psyche will be all but impossible to root out.

(This is not at all to say that I am in any way a religious partisan - I am not. My personal philosophy regarding religion is "tolerate it, don't celebrate it, and do what you can to keep it safely quarantined from the rest of the world.")

The "and why is that purpose better than other purposes" argument is easily dismissed as dumb.

It essentially critiques the atheist who finds meaning in doing good unto others for finding a "meaning in life" that is subjective and essentially made up by the atheist. As opposed to how the religious person views their own "meaning in life," which they naturally believe is objective truth.

Except of course religion is also made up.

So it creates the spectacle of one person believing in a made up, subjective "meaning in life" critiquing another person who also believes in a made up, subjective "meaning in life," on the grounds of subjectivity and making-it-up-ness (technical philosophical term). Except that of the two people in the conversation, only one of them believes in magic.

All that is a required to sustain the practise is a broad agreement that it is desirable, a desire that flows from our shared emotional response to death, especially the death of a loved one.

And that is probably why funeral rites comes about.

It is rumored that elephants have burial rites with mourning:
"When an elephant dies, its family members engage in intense mourning and burial rituals, conducting weeklong vigils over the body, carefully covering it with earth and brush, revisiting the bones for years afterward, caressing the bones with their trunks, often taking turns rubbing their trunks along the teeth of a skull's lower jaw, the way living elephants do in greeting." ( http://www.unbossed.com/index.php?itemid=1201 )

Similarly, it is said that chimps have rituals too, which is considered to be a confounding factor for tracking chimp-human infection transmission:
"we are not sure because chimpanzees have funeral rites and take away the bodies after death," ( http://www.antara.co.id/en/seenws/?id=24254 )

I can believe mourning as a natural explanation behind different cultural beings funeral rites, but not easily religious feelings. Not that some researchers does not completely reject religious or pre-religious feelings as possible part in explanations for some animal behavior, as in gorilla's awe for water falls et cetera. But mourning seems to be the displayed behavior here.

"I am not claiming that all irrationality is necessarily religion; rather, I am claiming that religion is a major subset of irrationality. More specifically, I am suggesting that some of our irrational behaviors (like ritually disposing of the dead) are cousins to the religious impulse, if not necessarily direct extensions of it."

I still agree to that, but with particular stress on the notion that they are kin, with one not being subordinate or product of the other, because they share the same type of sources (emotions) and are created through the same means (creative thought).

"Honestly, I think you might be mistaken here. I am not aware of any religion that does not in some way espouse the notion of life after death and/or the immortality of the soul. (I'm assuming you agree that reincarnation falls into the "life after death" category?)"

Yes, I did consider reincarnation.

"Honestly, I think you might be mistaken here. I am not aware of any religion that does not in some way espouse the notion of life after death and/or the immortality of the soul. (I'm assuming you agree that reincarnation falls into the "life after death" category?) I can't claim with total confidence that every single sect of every single religion EVER believed in life after death, but I am quite sure that an overwhelming majority of them did [...]If you know of a specific exception, I'm eager to hear it."

It's going to have to wait, since a single or several examples don't seem to make much of an impression on you, considering the way this comment is phrased, and a search for this information promises to be difficult, since even when I encountered some notes about the absence of afterlife in a religion (Sadducees, monolatrous mosaic religion) with a quick internet search, the subject didn't seem to be deemed worthy of a lot of interest. That and I'm lousy at research.

However, it seems obvious that you're right about these instances being in the minority (if they exist), I never meant to imply otherwise; it would have been counter-intuitive otherwise, but more ancient recorded religions did put less emphasis on the fate of the deceased.

"As for the huge intercultural differences in modes of corpse disposal and specific beliefs about the afterlife, that's beside the point."

I don't think it is. Showing care is a constant, but in religious belief, there's certainly not always a strong correlation drawn between the treatment of the body and the fate of the deceased.

"The point is that concerns about "improper" handling of the dead offending supernatural forces, usually the spirit of the dead person in question, are a near-universal phenomenon."

That's a different thing altogether. Or several different things. In any case, since the necessity of taking care of corpses is universal, religion is near-universal and the psychological implications of the corpse's identity as a former person is also near-universal, it seems impossible that the latter elements wouldn't bleed into the former to some degree in nearly every culture.

Having spiritual protection (either coercive or by interest) to corpses is logical in that regard.

"But _why_ is ritualized disposal of a dead body widely held to be the best way to deal with grief?"

Closure. But the fact is that it doesn't need to be a good way to deal with grief: it's a necessity. The lack of ritual being a bad way of dealing with grief is reason enough.

"Why do we dispose of unidentified remains with rituals similar to those we conduct for our loved ones?"

That's where it being ritual comes in. You take the fact that the corpse needs to be dealt with, factor in tradition and factor in empathy and the belief in human dignity and there you go.

You seem to be arguing, at least in that last comment, out of some belief out of a belief in pan-religious elements, or at least some heavy generalization on the link between the body and the soul.

That is, the penultimate comment, since I was so long in writing my response.

Not that some researchers does not completely reject religious or pre-religious feelings as possible part in explanations for some animal behavior, as in gorilla's awe for water falls et cetera.

Gorillas and Francis Collins :)

In a few hundred years kids will be taught in history classes about the transitional era where people abandoned religion and new countries emerged whose politics was centered around education and knowledge in accordance to the demands of that time.

O Brave New World, please come soon!

The Rapture, the Singularity, the Millenium, and other trite prophecies have nothing on the vision of a world ruled by reason and empiricism.

Wait. Perhaps that's not the same as education and knowledge ...

I would say that the practice has undeniable historical roots in the near-pancultural (and, needless to say, irrational) belief that proper handling of the dead improved their prospects in the afterlife.

Well, funeral rituals seems to have its roots in pan culture, all right :-)

Orangutans, chimps, bonobos and gorillas are said to have cultures, different learned behaviours across genetic lineages, as well as many other animals. ( http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/060228_ape_culture.html )

It seems unlikely, to me at least, that each hominidae genus has picked this up independently, which could make this cultural behavior at least 14 mya old. Religious type feelings may be older, but religious reasoning doesn't seem feasible without language like thought processes. That would make religions as we know them much younger, and specific for homo species.

windy, I think you've hit the nail on the head. Francis Collins ought to be spending his energy on the Great Ape Project, rather than Xtianity.

windy, you are a beacon of light on the murkiest threads. (Or perhaps at times a waterfall to admire along the way.)

I hadn't made the connection, but it is apt!

To make sure I had to track that gorilla thing down:
"[In fact, I have to say that, because] Jane Goodall, who is such a renowned and loved figure for her chimpanzee studies, has said very provocatively that chimpanzees may have an incipient sense of religious awe. For example, when she comes upon them looking at a waterfall -- something in nature that is amazing -- they're riveted. She's wondering what's going through their minds and if they may be spiritual in some sense." ( http://www.salon.com/books/int/2007/01/31/king/index.html )

Who cares if ethics arose as a result of religion originally? You could make a convincing argument that astronomy arose because of astrology. However the former is a bona fide science and the latter is known by all rational people as a discredited pseudo-science at best.

Primates have rituals for their dead relatives?

For some 20 years, Christophe Boesch and Hedwige Boesch-Ammerman have been studying the pygmy chimpanzees (bonobos) of the Taï Forest in Ivory Coast. In 1989, they observed a particularly remarkable example of mortuary behaviour around one corpse - that of Tina, a 10-year-old female who died after being ambushed by a leopard. Several individuals gathered quickly around the corpse, making loud calls. After a brief period 12 adults sat in silence around the body, with some males occasionally showing aggression, making ostentatious 'displays' nearby and dragging the corpse around for short distances.
High-ranking females inspected the body, seemingly allowed to do so by high-ranking males who were guarding the corpse, and who chased off individuals of lesser rank. Some 30 minutes after Tina died, two high-ranking males began to groom the corpse - an action that lasted for well over an hour, while lower-ranking adults and infants were at the same time intensively inspecting the spot at which she was killed. Occasionally, the individuals guarding the body would make 'play' faces and laugh, probably to ease tension or confusion.

Since we know little about the minds of chimps, can we rule out that the high-ranked chimps above were perhaps investigating the corpse to see if the cause of death would be a concern to the community? Maybe this isn't a "religious" observation for bonobos; maybe this is a rational inquest into the cause of death to try and prevent such in the future. Anyone have more information one way or the other?

The pessimistic way to look at it, though, is that less than a third want less religion in public life, less than a third want more, and over a third think it's perfect as is. That's a lot of self-satisfied apathy.

PZ, if I recall my American history, before the founding of your nation, one third of the American colonists wanted independence from Britain, one third opposed it, and the other third were apathetic. Apparently a third was enough. I think a third is a substantial stratum of society that can achieve much if they're dedicated.

In ancient Egypt and Rome the existence of God was barely an issue, since the ruler, considered divine, was self-evidently about for the beholding. Possibly there were peasant agnostics who had never beheld the ruler, and no doubt blasphemers who did not believe the ruler was divine, although perhaps that the animals were. Pity the peasants. Today's atheists, not to split hairs, simply deny the existence of all divinity. Indeed divinity seems a notion hard to distinguish. Yet many people having been exposed to religion or indoctrinated feel embarrassed to exist without it, and many people feel embarrassed to put faith in icons and unscientific scriptures. Thus without recourse to abject nihilism the whole thing is inevitably emotional and best resolved in liaison with a shrink or other health professional. ftr I prefer to think the president is indeed divine, for kicks. All who are with me get naked and meet me at the town hall, you will know me by my chequered duffle coat and jeans.

maybe this is a rational inquest into the cause of death to try and prevent such in the future.

That could fly if it is ritualized, not if it is contingent - the leopard ambush could hardly have been missed by the group. Since the remains were substantial ("corpse", "grooming") it is even likely the group chased the leopard away.

But considering the mourning displays over these types of behavior, my guess is that it is mourning that drives these behavior. The group must come to terms with a substantial loss, and could be preparing for rearranging the group order.

Hey Guys and Gals off topic I know, but did you hear that more the ID great scientist thinks drinking your own semen will fix all that ails ya!! But remember wanking is sinful so maybe you'll have to use the width drawl method and have a cup ready. Now that's funny..

On topic
I'm very happy that I live in a place where if anybody at a public place said "let us pray" they be laughed out of the room, keep up the good work PZ.

I acknowledge, in theory, that religious practices can over time undergo a kind of bleaching and become strictly secular. In practice, I suspect that entirely secularized practices with religious parentage are fairly rare, and burial certainly is not one of them.

Ah, finally the first glimmerings of an argument, rather than the bare assumption that religious parentage = everlasting association with religion. Not yet much of an argument though (and no supporting data), and it veers uncomfortably close to the argument from personal incredulity. Now, have the notoriously irreligious Swedes, for example, shown signs of beginning to casually dispose of their dead without ceremony?

Religion also offers genuine community with others, providing spaces for joint ethical commitment and joint action.

But it also offers community exclusion. There seems to be this unwarranted assumption that the form of community cohesion offered by religions is necessarialy a good thing, without offering the rebuttal that this is a selective cohesion, with a strong element of exclusion.

Sure, people going to a particular church may help each other out, and may know that the lady two streets away makes a mean carrot cake, or that the guy three doors down is a car mechanic who other members of that church can go to. But that isn't community cohesion. They don't necessarialy know what the people two doors down do for a living - or even know his name - because they dont' go to a church, or they go to a different church.

I would contend that the idea that religion at least offers community is an illusion: it offers community only so long as you elect to abide by the rules of that religion. It's an exclusive community, and does not necessarialy lead to a good local community, which is what most people think of when they discuss the concept.

Teenagers love a rebel cause. Keep shouting! It's having a measurable effect on the hyperbole of religion.

That quote from Kitcher appears to be from a review of Dawkins's The God Delusion. Is it? If so, I think he needs to read it again. Dawkins dealt with both of Kitcher's main objections. In my view he did so successfully, but if Kitcher disagrees, he's not offering here a counter-argument. He's just reasserting the claims Dawkins debunked without offering a rejoinder. That's sloppy work for a philosopher of Kitcher's standing.

I don't exist. QED

Baldy, I think you expect too much community. I read somewhere that we have the social capacity to interact with only 100-140 people at a time. Getting my 140 at church doesn't mean my religion excludes the other 234,999,860. They'd be excluded anyway.

And when I go to church I get hugs. When I go to Center for Inquiry functions I don't. You atheists can rail about religious community all you want, but you do not have and will likely never get anything to replace it. So when somebody says yeah, religious community, you need to figure out why he's right rather than rail that as soon as atheists decide to get busy they'll create community too.

I have no use for "communities" of credulous drones. You're more than welcome to yours.

I can think of one good reason not to throw the dead out in the trash, and that is potential for performing autopsies. I, for one, would like to know more about why people die, and whether, in specific cases, it can be avoided. Even those who die from natural causes can provide useful information. So why do we generally ignore the huge potential for advancement of knowledge here?

So God has an e-mail address?

And when I go to church I get hugs.

America is a strange place.

Wow,

After reviewing this thread, a couple of things jump out at me.

First, I don't think everyone is using the same definition of religion. Some appear to be arguing about 'religious' emotions, particularly the emotion of awe, and suggesting that human beings are not going to be able to supress this emotion.

Others are writing about religion as an organized set of rituals embedded in a particular culture.

Still others seem to be suggesting that religion is expressed in our society as organized groups of people who use are guided in their opinions and rituals by individuals who profess revealed knowledge.

There are, of course, minor variations to any of these expressed views depending on who is espousing them.

All are correct in some sense.

What I understand PZ to be saying is that rituals, including religious rituals, should not be excluded from rational evaluation. (And I'll add that I don't think this is all he is saying.)

That we feel sorrow when a creature has died, whether it be a relative, a tramp, a soldier, a dog, or a sparrow doesn't make this sorrow is necessarily religious. That we use a ritual to help us cope with the change in our world does not require religion. These rituals can be explained rationally, without having to invoke religion.

There are rituals, as part as organized or non-organzied religion, which serve these functions. There is no reason that a religion has to be the sole source for these rituals.

The rituals which help us individually deal with the world can be retained, as can the feeling the awe which often inspires curiousity about the world, without requiring the religious trappings.

Most organized religions have plenty of non-sensical and legacy components. This has been recognized for centuries. So not only is religion not required in order for someone to function perfectly well in today's world, religion can also espouse and reinforce concepts which are nonsense. We know these concepts are nonsense, we can show these concepts are nonsense with evidence. But many religions have claimed that the nonsense they promote is a special catagory of knowledge, and is exempt from rational examination.

The crutch of religion is it's requirement to accept it's dogma without questioning it. This crutch is not only unnecessary, it prevents clear thinking. Of course, not all theists use this crutch. Martin Gardner, as an example, is a theist who doesn't use a crutch. He recognizes the unprovability of the existance of God, and recognizes that he choses to believe in God. He also rejects organized religion.

Whether organzied religion was required to perform these rituals in the past is irrelevant. There is plenty of evidence that organized religion is not necessary to live a satisfying life today. In fact, because of the legacy costs of the crutch of religion, the crutch can be abandoned to a persons benefit! Their happiness and enjoyment of life can increase by abandoning this crutch!

The pernicious part of organized religion is that because of the respect given to the religious leaders, nonsense is allowed to spread unquestioned.

Religious beliefs, patriotism, to some people political party membership, all fall into the catagory of beliefs which are accepted without question. These are loyalties which are granted to people or organizations, when these loyalties are granted it is very hard to revoke them.

There are people who would never lie which have given their fealty to G.W. Bush, and manage to rationalize away the lies he has made.

The Dover Penn. school board prided themselves on their fealty to their religion, and were willing to bend, even break, the doctines of that religion in order to express their fealty.

Another science-blogger, Josh from Thoughts from Kansas, maintains that real problem is authoritarianism, and that religion is well poised to promote authoritarianism. I agree with him.

Two lessons need to be learned:
1. The method of science teaches us that there is no area of knowledge which should be exempt from evaluation and examination.
2. Fealty distorts rational thought, so Think for Yourself, schmuck! (HT to R.A. Wilson)

Cheers!

Don't know if anyone is still interested in this, but I wanted to pick up a few interesting points above:

(a) Community: Many, many people (such as myself) have friends who do not share any religious beliefs. In many troublespots (from Israel to Northern Ireland), non-religious groups have often been the uniters and problem-solvers of divided communities). Many people band together to support environmental or social campaigns irrespective of others' religions.

I am of the opinion that these sorts of examples can't be counted because my atheistic morals and yours are tainted or possibly tainted by the fact that we grew up in and live in societies with strong religious traditions. (I'd make this point even of less-than-religious European states, where the public morality is more or less a vestige of Christian ethics.) We'd have to find a society without religion or where religion developed late. (BTW: I haven't been able to find much yet on the people who purportedly had religion and no ethics, mentioned above. The wiki article is pretty barebones.)

(b) Ethics: The value of the Golden Rule, which almost single-handedly underpins the concept of human rights, can be demonstrated in game theory in the form of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, with no recourse to theistic arguments. And which came first? Religious practice in Homo sapiens, or social (and even altruistic) behaviour in primates?

I'll have to look this up, but I remember that another observation made through Game research has been the extremely corrosive effect of free-riding. While most people get, or eventually get the fact that everyone benefits from general compliance, in games structured to reward individual defectors in groups of compliers, the presence of the defector has a very marked effect on general compliance rates, especially if compliers are given no means of seeing retribution.

So, I'd agree with the general drift here: there are fundamental principles which might drive us toward the Golden Rule, I think there may also be compliance problems that ten toward the rise of social authority, and perhaps even notional supernatural (Santa Clause is watching) retribution. In short, I think it possible that over the long haul, continued compliance might need supernatural guarantees, especially in cases where social authority is weak.

(c) Purpose: The overarching "purpose" to life in theism (I use this word to exclude Buddhism) is invariably to say the right words and perform the right ceremonies to avoid eternal punishment. How is that a more rewarding or edifying purpose to life than that of the atheist whose letter above received Sullivan's snarky reply?

I'm not in the business of defending Sullivan, God bless him.

But, I think one possibility we might entertain is that most people really only need the question of ultimate meaning to be deferred (die and go to heaven and all will be well and Big Daddy will take care of everything). The purpose of this stage is the accomplishment of the next stage and no further inquiries are made.

One observation I've made: a lot of restless discontented people find purpose and comfort in their lives by having children. By bringing someone else into a life they themselves found rather dissatisfying, they think they a) have accomplished something deeply meaningful; and b) that their lives serve some higher purpose now. All of this without their basic outlook on life changing. This has never made much sense to me.

But evolution has apparently equipped us in such a way that we don't need truly final answers to some big questions--we only need to put them off to not be bothered by them.

Interesting:

Changes in solar irradiance since 1750 are estimated to cause a radiative forcing of +0.12 [+0.06 to +0.30]
W m-2, which is less than half the estimate given in the TAR. {2.7}

Please ignore my previous post, which was intended for a different blog.

Adam, I think you've pretty much demonstrated my point. When the religious talk about "community", they're talking purely about the exclusive religious community of their demonination within their church; they are not talking about local community.

The religious sense of community in this respect is no different from that of a chess club or a writer's circle, and should certainly not therefore be offered up as a defense of the "good" the church is allegedly doing. When religious groups discuss "community" with the media, they're attempting to associate their "community" as cohesion within a local community per se, which simply isn't true.

In this context, anyone can say "we're a force for good in the community", so long as they know that they're discussing purely the selective and exclusive community that is their little club.

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/02/01/bc-sextuplets.html

Here is a story from Canada that may strike a chord with some of you. It is a pure and simple case of religion based actions being forced on kids....newborn children! Prayer is being chosen over blood transfusion....and then the province stepped in. Take a look if you care to.
cheers.

kurage,

Grief and love transcend religion. Absolutely agreed. But _why_ is ritualized disposal of a dead body widely held to be the best way to deal with grief?

Because it comforts those in grief. Because it is a way of expressing respect and honor for the deceased. I really don't understand why you can't see this difference between a funeral and throwing a loved one's dead body out with the household garbage.

And then there's the question of our treatment of the dead when personal grief is not at all a factor. Why do so many people consider disturbing a grave to be a particularly heinous crime?

I don't think many people do think that that's a "particularly heinous" crime. To the extent that it is opposed, the opposition is primarily a matter of concern for the feelings of the dead person's relatives, not some worry about offending God or a supposed spirit or soul of the deceased. The police will exhume bodies from graves for forensic purposes, and scientists will do the same thing for scientific purposes.

Oran Kelley,

I'd make this point even of less-than-religious European states, where the public morality is more or less a vestige of Christian ethics.

Nonsense. The public morality of highly secular modern western European nations has almost nothing to do with Christian ethics. A Christian of the middle ages would be horrified by the contemporary public morality of a country like Sweden or the Netherlands. The fact that orthodox/traditionalist Christians today consider such nations to be the epitome of western moral decadence and godlessness illustrates the degree to which those countries have abandoned Christian ethics.

Because it comforts those in grief. Because it is a way of expressing respect and honor for the deceased. I really don't understand why you can't see this difference between a funeral and throwing a loved one's dead body out with the household garbage.

But don't you wonder why/through what mechanism rituals surrounding an inanimate body provide comfort? It's not something we can just take for granted. Precisely what are the comforts to be had through ritualized disposal of bodies?

I think, as someone else mentioned here, that these customs are every closely linked to belief in supernatural entities of some sort or other.

Which does NOT mean that it is impossible for someone somewhere to hold a non-religious rite of passage. (Though I wouldn't close the door on the issue, either.) It just means that historically, religion has played a huge role in people's lives in helping them cope with one of the greatest traumas we face.

Does this mean that we can never NOT have religion to cope with these things? No. But it does mean that before jettisoning religion as a society we ought to have a careful look at the functions it serves. Because they may be quite important and not immediate replicable for a variety of reasons.

Oran Kelley,

But don't you wonder why/through what mechanism rituals surrounding an inanimate body provide comfort? It's not something we can just take for granted. Precisely what are the comforts to be had through ritualized disposal of bodies?

As I said, it provides a way of expressing respect and honor for the deceased. It provides an occasion for the loved ones of the deceased to come together, grieve together, say goodbye together, comfort one another, and share their memories of the person who has died. Throwing out the body of a loved one as if it had no more significance than a piece of household trash would not provide this kind of emotional benefit. I really don't know why you can't understand this simple point. It seems blindingly obvious to me.

It just means that historically, religion has played a huge role in people's lives

Historically religion has played an important role in the lives of many people. But today, the influence of religion on the lives of people in the U.S. and other western nations has declined dramatically and is continuing to decline.

Does this mean that we can never NOT have religion to cope with these things?

I doubt that religion will disappear entirely, at least not in the foreseeable future. But the evidence suggests that it will likely continue to decline to the point at which it is essentially irrelevant to human affairs. As I said, a number of western European nations are already close to that point.

For what it is worth this late in a long comment thread, rituals for the dead are not confined to primates, or even mammals. If that is a sign of religion, then magpies have religion.

This is from the Birds of North America monograph on Black-billed Magpies (Pica hudsonica), Trost, C. H. 1999. Black-billed Magpie (Pica hudsonica). In The Birds of North America, No. 389 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Birds of North America, Inc., Philadelphia, PA.:

Magpies conduct gatherings ("funerals") around a dead magpie, a behavior that is poorly understood (Miller and Brigham 1988). When a dead magpie is encountered, the individual that discovers it usually, but not always, begins calling excitedly. This calling attracts all magpies within earshot, who perch in trees or other nearby structures, calling loudly. Up to 40 birds have been known to gather in this manner within minutes after a corpse was discovered. Some magpies fly down 1 or 2 at a time and, calling loudly, walk around the body, often pecking at the wings or tail; if food is placed near the corpse, they will drag the food a short distance away and consume it (CHT). These gatherings last 10-15 min before all participants fly off silently.

Primary reference:
Miller, W. R., R. M. Brigham. 1988. "Ceremonial" gathering of Black-billed Magpies (Pica pica) after the sudden death of a conspecific. Murrelet 69: 78-79.

I have actually witnessed one of these "funerals". It is difficult to avoid anthropomorphism in these situations, but it sure seemed like a "ritual" to me!

Odd that biologists who study the evolution of animals and plants have become dubious about "just so" stories-- explanations of adaptation that aren't backed up with research--but people still trot out them out when it comes to the development of cultural institutions. For example, this thread is full of explanations of human burial customs that amount to a series of likely stories made up on the spot as if the anthropologists hadn't piled up mountains of real evidence about how and, to some extent, why specific societies deal with their dead in specific ways. Unless I missed it, for example, nobody seems to have alluded to one of the most common themes in the funeral practices of many peoples, namely the need to make sure that the dead stay dead and don't return to menance the living--there is concrete ethnographic and historical evidence that the whole mumbo-jumbo about vampires arose in its European form from the period when the ancient Slavs, who cremated their dead, were obliged to bury them once the Christians took over.

My point is not to argue for the correctness of this or that account of the rationale of a custom, however. I'm trying to illustrate a more general problem. I'm protesting the tendency of a certain kind of atheist to propound absurdly oversimplified theories of human history and culture as if the fact that they don't know much history or ethnography themselves means that nobody does. Obviously I'm also unhappy that this sort of scientism doesn't do justice to the richness of the world; but it's worse than uninspiring. It's wrong. The phenomena refuse to be as simple as would be convenient for polemical purposes.

Excuse me Jim? It's the religion apologists in this thread who have repeatedly, and fallaciously, invoked history to support claims that religion has indispensible positive functions nowadays. Perhaps you should go back and actually read the thread.

Jim Harrison,

If you think you have evidence that death rituals such as funerals and wakes are inextricably linked to religion and that in the absence of religion the desire for such rituals would disappear and people would be content to treat the disposition of dead bodies simply as a matter of garbage disposal, please present it. I very strongly doubt that you have any such evidence to offer, since the idea is absurd on its face.

namely the need to make sure that the dead stay dead and don't return to menance the living--there is concrete ethnographic and historical evidence that the whole mumbo-jumbo about vampires arose in its European form from the period when the ancient Slavs, who cremated their dead, were obliged to bury them once the Christians took over.

Unless I am missreading this or it's intent isn't cremation as successful at removing the dead as burial? So what exactly where the slavs doing wrong? Are the cremated dead as dead as the buried?

but people still trot out them out when it comes to the development of cultural institutions.

I think material has been presented in this thread about how these institutions developed naturally.

I doubt that religion will disappear entirely, at least not in the foreseeable future. But the evidence suggests that it will likely continue to decline to the point at which it is essentially irrelevant to human affairs. As I said, a number of western European nations are already close to that point.

But it's pretty absurd to say that public morality in those countries owes nothing to Christianity. Kind of like saying public life in secularist pre-Gulf War Iraq owed nothing to Islam.

This is what I don't get about your argument Oran. Exactly what would be different in those nations if Christianity had never been there?

A better case could be made that during it's heydey the continent was much worse and as it has moved away from it the situation has improved.

You keep saying they owe something but what exactly was better then than now?

Excuse me Jim? It's the religion apologists in this thread who have repeatedly, and fallaciously, invoked history to support claims that religion has indispensible positive functions nowadays. Perhaps you should go back and actually read the thread.

Really? And yet when asked to provide examples you bluster.

Sheesh, discussions on these threads are like knife fights in a phonebooth. Surely there are alternatives to the Religion-is-the-root-of-all-evil line of the professional village atheists and the traditiional-versions-of-religion are-indepensible line of the cultural conservatives. In fact, it seems to me that both of these stances, are obviously pretty inadequate. I'm not trying to win a polemic. I'm trying to figure out how culture works.

As I keep pointing out, when I'm speaking about the religious dimension of culture, I'm not claiming that particular historical religions are inevitable or even desirable. I agree with Jason that it's highly likely that funeral and other rituals would persist even if Christianity or Judaism disappeared. Thing is, for me, as for most folks who look at things sociologically, such rituals are important parts of the religious organization of society. They don't have to be sponsored or interpreted by Jews or Christians to be religious because they are religious in their own right. Me and Durkheim may be wrong about that, but we've got our reasons for thinking the way we do.

I'm starting to be convinced that those who brought up the genetic fallacy were right.

That and that Jim Harrison isn't saying a whole lot.

This is what I don't get about your argument Oran. Exactly what would be different in those nations if Christianity had never been there?

A better case could be made that during it's heydey the continent was much worse and as it has moved away from it the situation has improved.

You keep saying they owe something but what exactly was better then than now?

When I say modern western cultures "owe" something to their Chritian past, I mean the influence of Christianity hasn't disappeared.

I'm not skilled at alternative history, but I can tell you that scholars in fields like history, legal history, philosophy, sociology, etc. etc. all recognize this christian legacy to one degree or another.

Oran Kelley,

But it's pretty absurd to say that public morality in those countries owes nothing to Christianity.

What does public morality in those countries "owe" to Christianity, then? Give us some examples, and back them up with evidence. There may be a few remaining vestiges of Christian morality in the laws and public morals of modern secular states like the Netherlands, but that's all.

Jim Harrison,

Surely there are alternatives to the Religion-is-the-root-of-all-evil line

I haven't seen anyone here claim that religion is the root of all evil. You're attacking a strawman. My argument is that religious claims of truth are unjustified and most likely false, that religion is mostly bad in its moral effects, and that religion is harmful as an institution in modern societies. The sooner it's gone, the better.

Thing is, for me, as for most folks who look at things sociologically, such rituals are important parts of the religious organization of society.

Again, I haven't see anyone dispute that idea. With respect to death rituals, the idea I am disputing is that there are no non-religious motives for such rituals.

Yes, all cultures have mortuary ritual. The more important point is that some of these rituals would be (inappropriately) viewed by members of some cultures as shocking, disrespectful, and callous, perhaps even treating the dead as akin to refuse or animal carcasses. And some would view encasing the dead in sealed coffins, thereby not allowing them to rejoin the earth, as being repugnant. Today there are controversies about whether the Body Worlds exhibit or Witkins and Seranno's art photography of cadavers are exploitative and disrespectful.

True, bestiality is not universally negatively sanctioned (I'm familiar with Brown's human universals), but specific taboos regarding mixing of human and animal 'essence' are common cross-culturally. I don't share Rifkin and Kass' repugnance for human-animal chimeras and hybrids, but I don't find their position to be utterly contemptuous and baffling either.

Richard Dawkins is ambivalent about animal research and has endorsed the Great Ape Project. How can Dawkins, or anyone, come to the "right" conclusions about these matters?

These three examples of culturally constructed repugnance and morality do not support the superior wisdom and necessity of religion, or even cultural tradition. Rather, these support my assertion that a complete system of 'enlightened' ethics and morality (and hence politics) cannot be entirely derived from rational principles alone (science, logic, game theory, putative evolved 'moral sense', Singer-style utilitarianism).

Really? And yet when asked to provide examples you bluster.

Wrong again. I've repeatedly pointd out the well-known lack of correlation between religiuous belief and ethical behavior, which is visible at both individual and societal levels. (For an example of the latter check out the correlation in the various states of the US between rate of religious observance and various measures of antisocial behavior. Hint: it's positive.)
Thr next time you address this point- which is devastating for your position- will be the first.

typo: should be "Witkin"

What does public morality in those countries "owe" to Christianity, then? Give us some examples, and back them up with evidence. There may be a few remaining vestiges of Christian morality in the laws and public morals of modern secular states like the Netherlands, but that's all.

I think there is a tendency today to take the broadly humanist values reflected in some cultures today for granted. I think those values came from somewhere, that in large part they are a logical continuation of Christian values, as distict from classical values or Chinese values. I don't think that's a particularly controversial point among scholars who have studied in relavent fields (even if you looked just at secularists, I suspect).

Uber at 212 said:

Unless I am missreading this or it's intent isn't cremation as successful at removing the dead as burial? So what exactly where the slavs doing wrong? Are the cremated dead as dead as the buried?

Some Christians have held that your physical body must remain for you to be resurrected by Jesus at the End Times of Doominess.

If yer body be ash, ye cannae be raised by The Jesus, and hence cremation was done away with.

And I'd say that cremation has more certainty to it than having the body put into a pine box and buried. A body still has recognizable human features. If it were mobile, it could probably pass as a living human. A pile of ash doesn't have limbs, eyes, hair, or a mouth.

I think those values came from somewhere, that in large part they are a logical continuation of Christian values

How many times does it need to be pointed out to you that this, even if granted for the sake of argument (and frankly the values we're talking about predate Christianity by a very long way so I grant it ONLY for the sake of argument) has no relevance at all to the question of whether the continued existence of Christian churches is important to the survival of these values? Sheesh.

Where's that legandary genetic fallacy, big boy?

Look all you seme to want to do is use the ammo you've collected to argue with religious people. You seem completely hapless when you actually have to argue with someone who isn't conveniently stupid.

Your study demonstates that the most ostentatiously religious areas have the highest crime rates. But so what: Is it the religiously observant who are committing the crimes? Could it be that a high crime rate makes the non-criminals more religious?

What is the basis of the morality and conduct of those people in the area you would call "less religiously observant?"

What is the correlation between religious observance and religiosity? Seems pretty simplistic to equate the two.

What is the relationship between criminality and morality?

I think if we had answers to these questions your straight-out-of-Dawkins study might apply to the discussion here.

"I think those values came from somewhere, that in large part they are a logical continuation of Christian values, as distict from classical values or Chinese values. I don't think that's a particularly controversial point among scholars who have studied in relavent fields (even if you looked just at secularists, I suspect)."

I really like how you put "classical values" on the same level as "chinese values" on the question of influence (which would be a very controversial point on its own), and how you use "logical continuation" to stress that you don't really limit your claim to how much christianity played a role in the past.

Where's that legandary genetic fallacy, big boy?

In just about every one of your comments. Pity you're too stupid even to understand the repeated objections, let alone address them.

What is the basis of the morality and conduct of those people in the area you would call "less religiously observant?"

As an unbelieving but highly ethical person myself, I have no trouble understanding that- ethical values are just that, they're not religous values. (There is, of course, a highly voluminous philosphical literature on ethics that makes no reference to religion.) You, however, have a big problem- it blows your thesis to smithereens. Pity you lack the intellectual substance to even begin to understand and address the problems with your claims.

Bye, idiot. I'll waste no more time on you.

I really like how you put "classical values" on the same level as "chinese values" on the question of influence (which would be a very controversial point on its own), and how you use "logical continuation" to stress that you don't really limit your claim to how much christianity played a role in the past.

I am afraid I don't understand either of your points here.

Christianity's role in the past, afaics: quite considerable, definitive but not absolute. Presently we live in the legacy of about 1000 years of that situation, with a slow open up to classical influence, muslim influence, etc.

I am not putting christian, classical and chinese on a level, I am using them as three contrasting value systems.

I think those values came from somewhere, that in large part they are a logical continuation of Christian values, as distict from classical values or Chinese values. I don't think that's a particularly controversial point among scholars who have studied in relavent fields (even if you looked just at secularists, I suspect).

But Oran I still think your argument is faulty. No doubt Christianity influenced things in the countries it had force. The question is does any of this matter? Where the contributions of the religion meaningful in a way that improved peoples lives? People and cultures had long held the central values common to all religions. Are you attempting to say that these nations where better with Christianity at their core than today? I don't think that is even remotely true and I doubt you believe that in any event.

These societies where most often much more crime infested and murderous than our current secular enlightened views. As mentioned Christians of these centuries wouldn't recognize their religion today.

But so what: Is it the religiously observant who are committing the crimes? Could it be that a high crime rate makes the non-criminals more religious?

Oh c'mon Oran. What it likely means is that religious views(as stated by Barna as well) matter little in terms of real world behaviour.

I think if we had answers to these questions your straight-out-of-Dawkins study might apply to the discussion here

Actually George Barna evangelical Christian confirmed the same with his own polling.

Religion and being very religious doesn't make one moral(whatever that is)

You seem completely hapless when you actually have to argue with someone who isn't conveniently stupid

Why bother to include this?

And I'd say that cremation has more certainty to it than having the body put into a pine box and buried. A body still has recognizable human features. If it were mobile, it could probably pass as a living human. A pile of ash doesn't have limbs, eyes, hair, or a mouth.

Correct but the person said that the prior people where doing it wrong from a standpoint of vampires coming back from the dead. I think cremation ends that as well:-)

Just to weigh in on the mourning/religiosity discussion, my family is not notably religious and I've been to three memorials for deceased relatives. Only one had any religious trappings to speak of and that was because our chosen venue was the chapel at the university where the deceased had been a graduate student. Even there, we found a Unitarian minister to preside and she mostly presented the speakers who talked about their connections to the deceased and why she was a great person.

It seems to be a family tradition that we cremate the deceased and scatter the ashes, and since we're of Jewish background, we've been known to read the Kaddish... in English, with the least overtly religious translation we can find. We don't really sit shiva although I suppose our family memorials could be derived from the practice.

As for tossing out the corpse in the trash, that's a really bad idea. Leaving aside the psychological issues, a human corpse would be the ultimate in red bag (read "potentially infectious") waste. Feeding human remains to livestock (or turning it into Soylent Green) has similar problems (prions anyone?)

PS There's a memorial fund for the relative (my sister) who was in grad school when she died. Anybody who wants to make a donation to the Carla Kuhn Fund for the Columbia University of Fine Arts Film Division can contact me at tortieconspiracy AT cavtel DOT net, and I'll get you the contact information. Unfortunately, I don't have it immediately to hand.

"Christianity's role in the past, afaics: quite considerable, definitive but not absolute. Presently we live in the legacy of about 1000 years of that situation, with a slow open up to classical influence, muslim influence, etc."

When you say "classical values" you do mean "ancient Mediterranean" right? If you are then I can't see how it can be said that there's a "slow open up" to it, since the influences of these "values" precede christianity, have shaped christianity after its origination (and it's "values" which then influence western Europe) and then were tapped into several times since then and intentionally borrowed from.

"I am not putting christian, classical and chinese on a level"

It seemed like you were. Christian on a level and "Chinese" and "Classical" on the other.

My second point is that I think that your phrasing ("logical continuation") seems to betray the assumption that values in the countries in question are dependent, in the present, on christianity. But that would be saying that you're committing a certain fallacy.

In any case, I'm not sure anyone argued that modern and contemporary Europe came into being out of thin air, so I'm not even sure what the point of contention it.

I know I'm jumping into this pretty late, but I wanted to read through all the comments to make sure I wasn't just out and out repeating what someone else had already written.

The thrust of Oran's comments seems to be, we can't be sure that morality arose independently of religion. Someone offered the example of bonobos and chimps. Oran's response was, "Bonobos and Chimps ARE different from humans, no?" Who cares? Unless the argument is that morality evolved independently between humans and other primates. Considering how many primates exhibit ethics, it seems pretty obvious that ethics were around long before people. Right after the above statement, Oran wrote, "And how, precisely do we know that there is no bonobo religion if we concede there is bonobo ethics?" It's more than just bonobos and chimps - most primates and other social animals seem to have some sort of ethics. And if you're willing to call chimp and bonobo behavior religious, that's a broad enough definition of religion as to be almost pointless. Certainly, organized religion as practiced in human culture isn't present in bonobo and chimp societies.

In another comment, Oran wrote, "We cannot, unfortunately, conduct experiments to determine whether religion and morality an dependent or co-dependent or whatever, and so we can only look back at history, and that shows us a great deal of past correlation between the two." You know what, there's a lot of correlation between bipedalism and human morality, too. Show me a human society with morals that didn't also have the majority of its members having two legs. Just because religion may be a hallmark of humanity doesn't mean it's necessary for morality. Especially considering the above, where other primates show altruistic behavior in the absence of religion.

I'm sorry for my dreadful spelling.

That last word is supposed to be "is".

whether the continued existence of Christian churches is important to the survival of these values? Sheesh.

How did this conversation get reduced to Christian churches? Kitcher was talking about religious beliefs and said they were important, for which he was castigated and I defended him.

So I argue that it is perfectly reasonable to say that religious beliefs are important.

I have no point whatsoever to make about Churches. Why you think I do, I don't know.

Amazingly enough, you have never once responded to anything I did actually say, or ask you to point out. Every post here does nothing but pretend I'm saying something I didn't or bring up irrelevancies.

As an unbelieving but highly ethical person myself, I have no trouble understanding that- ethical values are just that, they're not religous values. (There is, of course, a highly voluminous philosphical literature on ethics that makes no reference to religion.) You, however, have a big problem- it blows your thesis to smithereens. Pity you lack the intellectual substance to even begin to understand and address the problems with your claims.

Ask an philosophic student of ethics what the Christian influence on contemporary public morality and ethical thinking is. What do you think the answer will be?

Do the ethics themselves pre-date Christianity? So what? As far as I am concerned absolutely nothing could be original to Christianity and Christianity is still important because that is the delivery system.

What was the direct influence of these pre-Christian ethics on Western societies? Nil! So why bring them up? Because you think I'm a Christian and you hope that this is some sort of knowckdown argument against me. Too bad, I'm an atheist. Christianity is only of interest to me as a sociological and psychological phenomenon. So don't bother with stories about the true cross and all that business.

The point, by the way, is NOT that ethics cannot exist without Christianity. I concede that they can and always have right from the get-go. I couldn't care less what you believe or how moral you think yourself (a claim which I hope is not as hollow as your comical presumption to intellectual superiority).

The point is that the ethical system we have right now, in the Western societies, is largely based on Christianity. You may be an unbeliever and have ethics, fine. So what? How is that supposed to effect my argument? I am not a believer, either. Big deal. That doesn't mean that I am untouched by Christian influence or that religion isn't important to a lot of other people or that Philip Kitcher is stupid.

In another comment, Oran wrote, "We cannot, unfortunately, conduct experiments to determine whether religion and morality an dependent or co-dependent or whatever, and so we can only look back at history, and that shows us a great deal of past correlation between the two." You know what, there's a lot of correlation between bipedalism and human morality, too. Show me a human society with morals that didn't also have the majority of its members having two legs. Just because religion may be a hallmark of humanity doesn't mean it's necessary for morality. Especially considering the above, where other primates show altruistic behavior in the absence of religion.

Well, we have some pretty good evolutionary theories as to why bipedalism is universal among humans, and what function it serves.

What explanation is there for the universality of religion?

Uber, if the pre-christian Slavs were accustomed to cremating their dead, and then the Christians forced them to stop because of Jesus, the resulting uncertainty as to how dead a dead body really is could certainly contribute to the origins of vampire legends.

I don't see what relevance this has to the meat of the thread, i.e.

LaBonne: Morals and Ethics are almost completely divorced from religious hoo-de-doo today.

Oran: But Morals and Ethics and Carnal Forbearance originated with religion, so that means Christianity is right. Raspek mah athowitay!

LaBonne: The origins of ethics don't matter. They're separate now.

Oran: Raspek! Beefcake! Beefcake!

Ummm, Uber, I think you're a bit confused. Jim's point in post number 210 was that the vampire legends started up when the Slavs stopped cremating their dead because the Christians insisted on burial. Since burial doesn't destroy the corpse, it has the potential to come back. And there are plenty of stories around of corpses moving at certain stages of decay as result of gas build up, so someone who doesn't understand decay processes might well think that the dead had come back to life and was coming after them.

if the pre-christian Slavs were accustomed to cremating their dead, and then the Christians forced them to stop because of Jesus, the resulting uncertainty as to how dead a dead body really is could certainly contribute to the origins of vampire legends.

Upon reading that I agree. As mentioned above I wasn't sure I was reading it correctly. BUT can this be seen as an improvement? But your correct it has little to do with this thread.

The point, by the way, is NOT that ethics cannot exist without Christianity. I concede that they can and always have right from the get-go. I couldn't care less what you believe or how moral you think yourself (a claim which I hope is not as hollow as your comical presumption to intellectual superiority).

The point is that the ethical system we have right now, in the Western societies, is largely based on Christianity. You may be an unbeliever and have ethics, fine. So what? How is that supposed to effect my argument? I am not a believer, either. Big deal. That doesn't mean that I am untouched by Christian influence or that religion isn't important to a lot of other people or that Philip Kitcher is stupid.

Now this I can alomost agree with, I still don't think our system is largely based on Christianity. I do think their is a large influence on how existing natural ethics is viewed because of it. Perhaps this is the same thing. Perhaps not.

Urr. In that last post, I should've referenced post #209. Sigh.

I agree Heather. I was confused. I didn't read it correctly in the original post.

Oran Kelley,

I think there is a tendency today to take the broadly humanist values reflected in some cultures today for granted. I think those values came from somewhere, that in large part they are a logical continuation of Christian values, as distict from classical values or Chinese values.

What are these humanist values and how are they a "logical continuation" of Christian values rather than an independent set of values?

Well, we have some pretty good evolutionary theories as to why bipedalism is universal among humans, and what function it serves.

What explanation is there for the universality of religion?

I'm not sure, but that's a whole different question from what role religion has played in human morality. Personally, I think religion is a side effect of our curiosity, wanting to know what causes the things around us, along with our herd instinct.

Do the ethics themselves pre-date Christianity? So what? As far as I am concerned absolutely nothing could be original to Christianity and Christianity is still important because that is the delivery system.

If the ethics pre-date Christianity (or any religion, for that matter), then it can be argued that the ethics are innate, and religion isn't a delivery system, but a veneer.

And to comment on the original theme of this thread, where Kitcher wrote, "Religion is immensely important to people." I agree with bobtheguitar's take. It's a crutch that people think is important. What is necessary is to convince them that it isn't.

Religion is an opiate, and once addicted, if it placates anxieties and leads users to calm, withdrawn lives, fine. They've been suitably medicated to not deal with the Angst of Modernity.

The Enlightenment (yes, that period in the 17th and 18th C.) which replaced superstition, dogma, and the church with freedom, conscience, and science is the Force that birthed America, the first human experiment in an open and free society.

Most of us prefer the Enlightenment, but the tolerance of the Enlightenment "permits" the free exercise of religion, but not its hegemony, nor its imposition of biblical codes, nor indoctrinations. So "exercise" religion, religious zealots, but stop the proselytizing, because only the exercise is constitutionally guaranteed.

Then, let those of us who are alive to the Age of Enlightenment, to pursue a more perfect union, to live and die free, while granting some require the yoke of religious persecution and oppression to feel good, but do it to each other, not to an enlightened society.

logical continuation of Christian values, as distict from classical values or Chinese values

I think it might be helpful if Oran actually told us what the Christian values are in the first place. So please Oran for the sake of clarity what are they:

1.
2.
3.

Colugo,

True, bestiality is not universally negatively sanctioned (I'm familiar with Brown's human universals), but specific taboos regarding mixing of human and animal 'essence' are common cross-culturally. I don't share Rifkin and Kass' repugnance for human-animal chimeras and hybrids, but I don't find their position to be utterly contemptuous and baffling either.

Well, don't leave us in suspense. What merit do you see in their position, then? What valid argument do you think there is against the creation of human-animal chimeras in principle? I would agree that there may be valid practical arguments against such research in the short term (same as for reproductive human cloning), but I consider Kass's "wisdom of repugnance" argument, and any argument to the effect that such research would constitute some kind of transgression of natural law or the natural order of things to be superstitious nonsense.

Richard Dawkins is ambivalent about animal research and has endorsed the Great Ape Project. How can Dawkins, or anyone, come to the "right" conclusions about these matters?

If you mean how can anyone know that their moral beliefs are "true" or "correct," they can't. We don't even know that moral claims have a truth value at all. Dawkins' support for the Great Apes Project presumably follows from his beliefs about the ethical treatment of animals.

Rather, these support my assertion that a complete system of 'enlightened' ethics and morality (and hence politics) cannot be entirely derived from rational principles alone (science, logic, game theory, putative evolved 'moral sense', Singer-style utilitarianism).

Of course not. All moral beliefs bottom out in basic moral intuitions or sentiments that were presumably programmed into us by evolution. Different kinds of environment, including culture, may act to amplify or suppress different intuitions to different degrees, which is one reason for the variation in ethics across different human cultures and eras.

Oran Kelley,

The point is that the ethical system we have right now, in the Western societies, is largely based on Christianity.

So you keep claiming, but you seem incapable of coming up with any actual arguments or evidence to support the claim. As I told you before, modern western public discourse on ethics is dominated by secular utilitarian arguments that define unethical behavior largely in terms of causing harm or the violation of rights, independently of any Christian doctrine or tradition. Christian ethical positions tend to be accepted only to the extent that they happen to coincide with these secular ethics. In cases where Christian ethics conflict with secular ethics--Christian prohibitions on various kinds of sexual activity, for example--the Christian ethic tends to be rejected. Indeed, the influence of secular arguments is so pervasive that defenders of Christian ethics feel obliged to try and come up with (often hilariously stupid) secular justifications for their positions. And so you get things like Christians claiming that homosexuality is a "disorder" or an "addiction" to try and lend secular support to their religious belief that homosexuality is immoral.

Why is a life supposed to have "meaning"? Is it a novel? A movie?

If you want a story with meaning, read fiction. A human life is not fiction. It doesn't have a plot or a formula. We each get one very real life, and we can turn it into gold or crap. Most of us will turn various parts of our lives into a bit of each, not to mention just about everything else in the middle. That tends to hold pretty well for religious and non-religious people alike.

Sorry, but the expression "meaning of life" has driven me bonkers since childhood.

Jason: I think we are mostly in agreement on the foundations of ethics. Even if we do away with all theistic and magical beliefs, there are some tough, perhaps unanswerable (in a final sense) questions on how we out to structure our moral codes and societies.

"What merit do you see in their position, then? What valid argument do you think there is against the creation of human-animal chimeras in principle?"

I view their position on embryo research to be mistaken yet understandable, though I would not describe it as especially meritorious. Repugnance cannot be the conclusion nor centerpiece of an argument, but it can be a starting point - even if that disgust is unwarranted. (A belated correction - I meant "contemptible" rather than "contemptuous" earlier).

That's why I compared the repugnance at animal-human mixing to the culturally specific horror of dead relatives being treated like meat or refuse. We don't dismember relatives to be eaten by vultures and dogs, or cook and eat them ourselves - though these acts can be perfectly reverential in some cultural contexts.

I will not argue the bio-Luddite case for them, but here is one such website: http://www.genetics-and-society.org

"All moral beliefs bottom out in basic moral intuitions or sentiments that were presumably programmed into us by evolution."

Including repugnance and empathy. And with the bio-Luddite, animal rights, anti-abortion, and anti-male circumcision movement, and others, they have been manifested in ways that most of us find misguided. So moral intuitions and sentiments by themselves are unreliable.

"Different kinds of environment, including culture, may act to amplify or suppress different intuitions to different degrees"

Right.

Just to be clear, I am not advocating moral relativism nor nihilism, but rather a dialing back in expectations about how far atheism, rationalism, and science alone can take us.

so many people like Kitcher, otherwise quite clever, fail to see the false connection and continue to perpetuate the myth that the ONLY way you can function in a good way is by buying into an unrelated pack of myth and ritual.

My capitalization. That's exactly what Kitcher doesn't say; and without it, there's nothing much to your critique, PZ. I saw your subsequent different complaint -- that religion isn't even contingently important to religious people; only community is. But that has all the appearance of a face-saving explanation. Kitcher says very clearly that community and the like are *why* religion matters to so many people. His point is very clearly that as long as it does matter (instrumentally), one won't make any inroads just by telling them they're deluded.

A better response is that Kitcher too is making hay by oversimplifying the view he considers. It's not like even Dawkins ONLY says "You are deluded". But Kitcher's point needn't be worded quite that strongly; he probably just means to suggest that if you couch your critique in those terms, the more engaging or conciliatory points will never be heard.

Now, one might still reply that Kitcher's just tactically mistaken -- a blunt bark of "Bollocks!" is the appropriate message to religious folks. That may be true (though I doubt it), but then it's just a difference over effective tactics, and not a "conflation" nor the "perpetuation of a myth".

Now, have the notoriously irreligious Swedes,

Glad we are notorious for something! :-) Oh yes, we also have a lot of natural blonds.

The value of the Golden Rule, which almost single-handedly underpins the concept of human rights, can be demonstrated in game theory in the form of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, with no recourse to theistic arguments.

Actually, both zero-sum and nonzero-sum games (that reduces to zero-sum) seems to have as 'default' one-player winning strategy tit-for-tat with forgiveness. Which is not exactly the golden rule, and treats defectors.

Interestingly, this is the second time that I think Kitcher (whose work I generally find first rate) has made too much of a concession to what one could rudely call "the masses". In his Science, Truth and Democracy, he encourages "people who might have a stake in the outcome" to play a role in science policy. (Note: Not technology policy.) How does one do that, when the outcome of scientific research is at best a challenge, at worst impossible for Popper's "open future" reason (which one need not take in its ridiculously strong form)?

windy: "They would stink" - and worse, spread disease.

Julie Stahlhut:

Sorry, but the expression "meaning of life" has driven me bonkers since childhood.

You're not alone.

Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, makes the case for science and atheism replacing the functions of religion. (I think Miller is overestimating the intrinsic appeal that a scientific atheist worldview would have for most of the public.)

http://edge.org/q2007/q07_4.html#miller

"A great ideological war is raging between the Godless--people like me, who trust life--and the Gutless--the talking heads of the extreme, religious right, who fear death, and fear the Godless, and fear ongoing life in the future when they no longer exist. I'm also optimistic about the outcome of this war, because people respect guts and integrity. People want moral role models who can show them how to live good lives and die good deaths. People want to believe that they are participating in something vastly greater and more wonderful than their solipsism. Science quenches that thirst far more effectively, in my experience, than any supernatural teat sought by the Gutless."

I'm slow at reading all of this stuff (I like the discussion, and the general tone) and slow at typing besides and have more to do than just the computer.
I have been thinking about these questions for while.
It seems to me the Atheism is western in origin and the understanding of the God that is not believed in is of the western tradition also.
In the eastern tradition things seem a little different.
Someone spoke of reincarnation as some form of afterlife. Well, maybe but "who is it that is alive and is reborn" if life and the ego is an illusion, if the Ego is an illusion then what is a soul but another illusion. So how is that an afterlife in the Greco-Roman turned christian-Islamic afterlife heaven sense?
there are it appears to me to be two types or forms of religion. the folk religion and the deeper symbolic form often seen more in monasteries than "ordinary life"
they are very different and I think it is the folk religion that is the bigger issue for people who, live in the rational world. the folk religion is the magical thinking one, the one that more often is involved ordinary life. It is more apt to be filled with a lot of harmful crap like Inquisitions and Holy wars and other less savory things, that have little to do with who or what God is what is it to be alive who am I or anything else very profound.
folk religion is more concerned with identification with the group and its structure and place in the world. It is easily threatened as are ordinary people. Most people just want to eat regular, sleep indoors and not work to hard they do not want to think very much or ask troubling questions (they will follow leaders to get those things)
they want the EasyNet!
you are offering them what they see is as the hard way!
I doubt that deep thought on atheism or religion is the cause of the decline in religion or church membership in the West. I would place the main reason for that decline to it being easier to live indoors and eat regular and not have to work so hard. Look at where religion is growing what is the third world like.

What we need is an Atheist religion? A group to join?

Put the dead out with the garbage? Yes, when there is no longer any mystery in life. "Who cares it is all shit anyway,"
death rituals are about looking at mortality as are birth rituals and just possibly most of the other personal events we mark (rights of passage). It is time and the awe we feel in looking at it.
Paleo-biology is about that in as much detail as can be found.
For me it fills me with humility

What are rituals but symbolic theater some are old and vary formal others can be one time things. Like all theater they tell some kind of story. We as people like stories.

olk religion is more concerned with identification with the group and its structure and place in the world. It is easily threatened as are ordinary people. Most people just want to eat regular, sleep indoors and not work to hard they do not want to think very much or ask troubling questions (they will follow leaders to get those things)
they want the EasyNet!
that was supposed to be EASY WAY not f$%$@$g easy net dam spell check!

Jason: I guess the quick way of answering your question would be to simply reference Nietzsche.

Writing at the end of the 19th century in a society not TOO terribly different from ours, he made what he saw as the Christian ethical tradition one of his big enemies.

Was he deluded? No (well, maybe a bit), I think he saw the continuing influence of Christianity, disliked it and started thinking about viable alternatives.

To see that ethical tradition for what it is, you've really got to set sex to the side for a bit. A lot of believers are obsessed with this matter, and there are certainly important strands of the tradition that are, but it isn't the be all end all.

Christ had very little to say about sex and a lot to say about property and how one was to lead a good life, and that was not by any means totally forgotten about in the development of the West.

The age of the earth and the theory of evolution explain a lot. However, they don't answer my most fundamental questions about the first causes and the tendency for life to develop. Who has not looked at his or her world and been humbled by just how little we really know about this often ridiculous and sometimes sublime existence?

"I, personally, as an atheist, find meaning in my own possibility and will to act in this world. I have the opportunity to interact with others and to create things. I have the chance to leave this world a bit better than when I came into it... for my children and for the rest of humanity. I don't do this because a particular flying spaghetti monster ordained that I do it and will punish me with his noodly appendage if I don't. I do it because I have the power and I believe that it is better for me if I help those around me. What else would give my life more meaning than that?"

You obviously feel like you are living some high ideal, "leaving the world a better place...", etc. but in reality, you're thinking of doing these things because the thought makes you feel good. And that is all that can possibly be a purpose in life without God, i.e. a life lived in seeking good feelings. But that is an inconvenient truth and as with most such truths, in comes self-delusion. A life spent in seeking good feelings is hardly the high ideal we want for ourselves so we deny it. Self-delusion is happier than the truth.

"Why is dedicating your life to Jesus more meaningful than killing yourself?"

The Christian view is not that we dedicate our lives to Jesus. Jesus himself never put any stock in our human ability to dedicate ourselves. In the Christian view, love is something that transcends our merely seeking good happy feelings. I am to help my neighbor, not because that gives me some syrupy good feeling but because my neighbor is my brother. In some sense, loves takes away self.

What makes 'meaningful' so damn great, anyway? Who lived the most meaningful life, Hitler, Stalin or the WTC hijackers? Discuss.

Bingo. SteveC is right about "meaning", "sense", "purpose" and all this nonsense.

All that is a required to sustain the practise is a broad agreement that it is desirable, a desire that flows from our shared emotional response to death, especially the death of a loved one.

And that is probably why funeral rites comes about.

It is rumored that elephants have burial rites with mourning:
"When an elephant dies, its family members engage in intense mourning and burial rituals, conducting weeklong vigils over the body, carefully covering it with earth and brush, revisiting the bones for years afterward, caressing the bones with their trunks, often taking turns rubbing their trunks along the teeth of a skull's lower jaw, the way living elephants do in greeting." ( http://www.unbossed.com/index.php?itemid=1201 )

Similarly, it is said that chimps have rituals too, which is considered to be a confounding factor for tracking chimp-human infection transmission:
"we are not sure because chimpanzees have funeral rites and take away the bodies after death," ( http://www.antara.co.id/en/seenws/?id=24254 )

I can believe mourning as a natural explanation behind different cultural beings funeral rites, but not easily religious feelings. Not that some researchers does not completely reject religious or pre-religious feelings as possible part in explanations for some animal behavior, as in gorilla's awe for water falls et cetera. But mourning seems to be the displayed behavior here.

I would say that the practice has undeniable historical roots in the near-pancultural (and, needless to say, irrational) belief that proper handling of the dead improved their prospects in the afterlife.

Well, funeral rituals seems to have its roots in pan culture, all right :-)

Orangutans, chimps, bonobos and gorillas are said to have cultures, different learned behaviours across genetic lineages, as well as many other animals. ( http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/060228_ape_culture.html )

It seems unlikely, to me at least, that each hominidae genus has picked this up independently, which could make this cultural behavior at least 14 mya old. Religious type feelings may be older, but religious reasoning doesn't seem feasible without language like thought processes. That would make religions as we know them much younger, and specific for homo species.

windy, you are a beacon of light on the murkiest threads. (Or perhaps at times a waterfall to admire along the way.)

I hadn't made the connection, but it is apt!

To make sure I had to track that gorilla thing down:
"[In fact, I have to say that, because] Jane Goodall, who is such a renowned and loved figure for her chimpanzee studies, has said very provocatively that chimpanzees may have an incipient sense of religious awe. For example, when she comes upon them looking at a waterfall -- something in nature that is amazing -- they're riveted. She's wondering what's going through their minds and if they may be spiritual in some sense." ( http://www.salon.com/books/int/2007/01/31/king/index.html )

maybe this is a rational inquest into the cause of death to try and prevent such in the future.

That could fly if it is ritualized, not if it is contingent - the leopard ambush could hardly have been missed by the group. Since the remains were substantial ("corpse", "grooming") it is even likely the group chased the leopard away.

But considering the mourning displays over these types of behavior, my guess is that it is mourning that drives these behavior. The group must come to terms with a substantial loss, and could be preparing for rearranging the group order.

So God has an e-mail address?

And when I go to church I get hugs.

America is a strange place.

Now, have the notoriously irreligious Swedes,

Glad we are notorious for something! :-) Oh yes, we also have a lot of natural blonds.

The value of the Golden Rule, which almost single-handedly underpins the concept of human rights, can be demonstrated in game theory in the form of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, with no recourse to theistic arguments.

Actually, both zero-sum and nonzero-sum games (that reduces to zero-sum) seems to have as 'default' one-player winning strategy tit-for-tat with forgiveness. Which is not exactly the golden rule, and treats defectors.