Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being — Truth or Fiction

[Ronja]

Much appreciated, apophenia! Thanks also to Rum for a further significant quote from the paper.

Slightly relatedly (maybe):
I have vague memories of two papers, one describing how common apparently "congenital" atheism (a seeming inability to believe in anything supernatural) is among people with Asperger's syndrome, and another dealing with pessimism and depression among people with Asperger's syndrome. IIRC, both non-depressive pessimism and atheism are strongly over-represented in people with Asperger's syndrome, compared to neuronormals and the population averages.

Remind me to dig them up if I don't remember to post soon - I still have some study related writing to do now, which I have to get done today.

[Hermit]

Why would anyone be surprised that people who believe that they don't "really" die, people who believe that they'll get the pie in the sky when they die, will bear the vicissitudes of this cruel world with greater equanimity than those who believe that there is no blissful afterlife in heaven as a reward to the deserving. Sir Thomas Browne (1605 – 1682) expressed the psychology most clearly from his personal point of view: "Were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities of this world should not entreat a moment's breath from me: could Death work my belief to imagine I could never die, I would not outlive that very thought." That sentiment has been reflected in one of the earliest surviving writings. The dramatist Menander (ca. 342–291 BC) wrote: "Whom the gods love die young." Herodotus later on explained that the gods caused the death of good people as a favour to them. Given the state of existence on earth "it is better for a man to die than to live."

Once religions become institutional powers, they know how to exploit this phenomenon. In The Case Against God, George H. Smith argues that: "In exchange for obedience, Christianity promises salvation in an afterlife." Most other religious institutions, be they Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or whatever, do likewise. We are told by each of them that unless we do as we are told by the religious authorities, there will be no nirvana, valhalla, 72 virgins and whatnot for us.

Conversely, if the drift of my line of argument is accepted, it also won't surprise anyone that atheism tends to be more prevalent in affluent societies where people feel more comfortable and safe than in those where the incidence of suffering and mortal danger is more likely. It is also unsurprising that women tend to be more religious than men within each society; they tend to be more oppressed. And lastly, it makes sense that religiosity in affluent nations is more prevalent in those that lean towards individualism/libertarianism than those that are more community minded.

Karl Marx did sum the role and effect of religion up rather well: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." That is precisely why it works best to pacify people where conditions are the worst. Only Aldous Huxley's Soma could be more efficient, but we haven't got to that Brave New World - yet.

[Seth]

Why would anyone be surprised that people who believe that they don't "really" die, people who believe that they'll get the pie in the sky when they die, will bear the vicissitudes of this cruel world with greater equanimity than those who believe that there is no blissful afterlife in heaven as a reward to the deserving. Sir Thomas Browne (1605 – 1682) expressed the psychology most clearly from his personal point of view: "Were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities of this world should not entreat a moment's breath from me: could Death work my belief to imagine I could never die, I would not outlive that very thought." That sentiment has been reflected in one of the earliest surviving writings. The dramatist Menander (ca. 342–291 BC) wrote: "Whom the gods love die young." Herodotus later on explained that the gods caused the death of good people as a favour to them. Given the state of existence on earth "it is better for a man to die than to live."

Once religions become institutional powers, they know how to exploit this phenomenon. In The Case Against God, George H. Smith argues that: "In exchange for obedience, Christianity promises salvation in an afterlife." Most other religious institutions, be they Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or whatever, do likewise. We are told by each of them that unless we do as we are told by the religious authorities, there will be no nirvana, valhalla, 72 virgins and whatnot for us.

Conversely, if the drift of my line of argument is accepted, it also won't surprise anyone that atheism tends to be more prevalent in affluent societies where people feel more comfortable and safe than in those where the incidence of suffering and mortal danger is more likely. It is also unsurprising that women tend to be more religious than men within each society; they tend to be more oppressed. And lastly, it makes sense that religiosity in affluent nations is more prevalent in those that lean towards individualism/libertarianism than those that are more community minded.

Karl Marx did sum the role and effect of religion up rather well: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." That is precisely why it works best to pacify people where conditions are the worst. Only Aldous Huxley's Soma could be more efficient, but we haven't got to that Brave New World - yet.

Haven't gotten to the paper yet, but I want to say that you make good points here. Yes, religion is the opium of the people, but people appear to need opium in order to make their lives more bearable and happy, which is why I first suggested that religion is an evolutionary behavioral (and potentially genetic) adaptation that exists because it has substantial survival utility.

As a very simplistic example, if two people are suffering from depression and are suicidal, and one is an atheist and the other a person of deep Catholic faith, which is more likely to commit suicide? I would say clearly the atheist, who has no programmatic indoctrination that constrains self-harm as a mortal sin that eliminates even the possibility of an afterlife full of joy and happiness and imposes instead an eternity of torment in hell that a Catholic receives as a part of religious training.

And I can say that with some authority from personal experience. Having suffered in the past from deep clinical depression and suicidal ideology caused by chronic pain, I can say that the lack of any hope for any future of any sort, even in an afterlife, made it very difficult to resist completing the act and it required serious medical intervention and pharmaceuticals to reverse. On the other side of the coin is an acquaintance who likewise suffered from deep clinical depression who was devoutly Catholic who told me that she resisted suicide precisely because of her belief that it was a mortal sin that would doom her to eternal torment.

So, regardless of the truth of the promise of either eternal joy or eternal torment, from my personal empirical experience, I can easily see the evolutionary benefit of religious indoctrination that helps to prevent suicide. In the past, without pharmaceutical intervention, I would not have survived that bout of depression and my genes would have been eliminated from the gene pool while a deeply Catholic person might have survived through fear of eternal punishment or the potential denial of eternal reward.

I think that such strictures in fact exist precisely because the early church authorities sought ways to control the behavior of populations to prevent suicide for compassionate reasons, and at the time that the memes and religious precepts were created there was little other recourse to deal with chronic suicidal depression which I imagine occurs in much greater proportions in populations where grinding poverty and oppression are the rule, not the exception.

More after I've digested the paper.

[FBM]

Better to be Socrates and unhappy than a pig and happy...

This value statement is interesting to me. I hope it's not a derail for me to ask about it. Socrates is credited with the aphorism, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Or something very like that. If this is merely a statement of one's personal values, I have no issue with it, as I tend to agree wrt to my own experience. But if it's meant to be something like a categorical imperative, I have to doubt it, based on my direct observations of certain people who are/were relatively uneducated, un-self-examined, intellectually unsophisticated - some even illiterate, and yet somehow, happier than me. That makes me wonder if this self-examination, self-awareness, self-actualization or whatever is an absolute value or a conditional/conventional one.

[Seth]

Better to be Socrates and unhappy than a pig and happy...

This value statement is interesting to me. I hope it's not a derail for me to ask about it. Socrates is credited with the aphorism, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Or something very like that. If this is merely a statement of one's personal values, I have no issue with it, as I tend to agree wrt to my own experience. But if it's meant to be something like a categorical imperative, I have to doubt it, based on my direct observations of certain people who are/were relatively uneducated, un-self-examined, intellectually unsophisticated - some even illiterate, and yet somehow, happier than me. That makes me wonder if this self-examination, self-awareness, self-actualization or whatever is an absolute value or a conditional/conventional one.

I've occasionally posited the hypothesis that intelligence is only a positive evolutionary survival trait up to a certain level, and that above that level it becomes increasingly a negative survival trait.

I base that hypothesis on the idea that in our present society, we encourage those of lesser intelligence to procreate while at the same time those of higher intelligence refuse to procreate based on complex ethical and moral decision making. Clearly this leads to a general decline in the overall intelligence of the species as its most intelligent members die out and do not pass on their genes.

In short, the dependent class go right on breeding, and we essentially pay them to do so, while the intelligentsia get all wrapped up in environmental guilt and refuse to have babies as a matter of conscience and ethics because they feel the planet is overpopulated.

I've also said that in the future, everybody will be either Catholic or Muslim, because those are the two dominant groups who reproduce at accelerated rates as compared to, for example, atheists.

And also, it is the intelligentsia who have developed the means for the stupid people of earth to wipe out all life on earth and take everyone with them.

And by "stupid people," in this case you may read that as "politicians with their fingers on the WMD buttons."

I think there is some deep truth in the aphorism "Ignorance is bliss." Is it better to be an angst-ridden neurotic highly-intelligent human who is unhappy and fearful of the way the world is going or be a Bonobo monkey who does little more than eat and fuck?

Something of a difficult choice, that.

[Animavore]

I've also said that in the future, everybody will be either Catholic or Muslim, because those are the two dominant groups who reproduce at accelerated rates as compared to, for example, atheists.

What fucking Catholics have large families any more in Western society?

FFS!

[FBM]

Well, the fucking Catholics, eh?

[Animavore]

In secular society Catholics and even Muslims have a habit of telling their priests and mullahs to go fuck off when it comes to telling them how to run their family. You just don't see people in Ireland having large families any more and not since the 60s or something. Talk about behind the fucking times.

[FBM]

My angle was that if there are any Catholics having large families these days, it'd have to be the ones who are fucking. Whether it be his/her spouse or not.

[Animavore]

I know that. I'm just fucking incredulous at Seth's 'theory' which comes straight from the movie Idiocracy.

[hadespussercats]

Yeah. Seems to me it'll be the Quiverfull born-again fundies out-breeding everyone else, since so far as I can tell that's their religion's prime directive. Make babies. Then make those babies have lots of babies, until there's no one left on earth but born-agains like us.

[Animavore]

Yeah. Seems to me it'll be the Quiverfull born-again fundies out-breeding everyone else, since so far as I can tell that's their religion's prime directive. Make babies. Then make those babies have lots of babies, until there's no one left on earth but born-agains like us.

Except this doesn't happen in reality. How many of them actually go off and have more babies? How many say, "Fuck this" and leave or go against what everyone is telling them? It happens all the time. Once women start getting any type of education they don't want the hassle of kids any more, they start having other plans.

[hadespussercats]

Yeah. Seems to me it'll be the Quiverfull born-again fundies out-breeding everyone else, since so far as I can tell that's their religion's prime directive. Make babies. Then make those babies have lots of babies, until there's no one left on earth but born-agains like us.

Except this doesn't happen in reality. How many of them actually go off and have more babies? How many say, "Fuck this" and leave or go against what everyone is telling them? It happens all the time. Once women start getting any type of education they don't want the hassle of kids any more, they start having other plans.

Trouble is these groups guard against that by homeschooling. But yeah, it does seem... you'd think it couldn't be sustainable.

[Tero]

Not quite so. Many fundie moms, with 3 or more kids, get educated so they can do home schooling.

[Animavore]

Why didn't youse tell me I had the wrong movie clip?

Fixed now.