Is religion really that bad of a thing?

[Quintessence]

There's lots of mindless following (submission, remember?). Just think of the murderous mobs set on by clerics: the lot of them boasting how righteous they are.

If I grant this, it still doesn't change the fact that the exact same things happen with individuals who are not behaving in the context of a group. It isn't a convincing argument for a distinction between group-driven behaviors and individually-driven behaviors.

In the context of what we're discussing, I don't consider mindlessness and submission to be the same thing, and I don't think "mindless" is the correct term to use what is going on. Assuming you believe in free will, mindlessness implies a total lack of conscious choice. In the human organism, mindless behaviors are automated processes, such as the regulation of heart rate or reflexive muscular responses to pain. Submitting to a set of social norms always involves decision-making and "higher order" thought processes; it isn't mindless.

I suspect you call following social norms that happen to be labeled religious "mindless" because you wish to paint them with a negative brush by using this word and do not mean it literally. Would this be a fair observation?

 

[Iti oj]

If I grant this, it still doesn't change the fact that the exact same things happen with individuals who are not behaving in the context of a group. It isn't a convincing argument for a distinction between group-driven behaviors and individually-driven behaviors.

In the context of what we're discussing, I don't consider mindlessness and submission to be the same thing, and I don't think "mindless" is the correct term to use what is going on. Assuming you believe in free will, mindlessness implies a total lack of conscious choice. In the human organism, mindless behaviors are automated processes, such as the regulation of heart rate or reflexive muscular responses to pain. Submitting to a set of social norms always involves decision-making and "higher order" thought processes; it isn't mindless.

I suspect you call following social norms that happen to be labeled religious "mindless" because you wish to paint them with a negative brush by using this word and do not mean it literally. Would this be a fair observation?

Perhaps they hold to naturalistic determinism

 

[Looncall]

If I grant this, it still doesn't change the fact that the exact same things happen with individuals who are not behaving in the context of a group. It isn't a convincing argument for a distinction between group-driven behaviors and individually-driven behaviors.

In the context of what we're discussing, I don't consider mindlessness and submission to be the same thing, and I don't think "mindless" is the correct term to use what is going on. Assuming you believe in free will, mindlessness implies a total lack of conscious choice. In the human organism, mindless behaviors are automated processes, such as the regulation of heart rate or reflexive muscular responses to pain. Submitting to a set of social norms always involves decision-making and "higher order" thought processes; it isn't mindless.

I suspect you call following social norms that happen to be labeled religious "mindless" because you wish to paint them with a negative brush by using this word and do not mean it literally. Would this be a fair observation?

If one transfers one's morality to a religion and its officers, that will produce mindless (or unthinking or whatever term you prefer) behaviour. That is, the behaviour is no longer an individual choice, but is dictated by the religion.

Surely, the people of Pakistan, for example, are not a nation of homicidal maniacs. However, when goaded by religion, they gather by the thousands to commit atrocities. They have handed their morality to the clerics who set them on to their rampages.

I think that Steven Weinburg was onto something when he observed that it takes religion to make good people do bad things.

Sure, individuals do bad things, but it seems to require religion, or something very similar such as certain kinds of ideology, to produce mass evils.

 

[Quintessence]

If one transfers one's morality to a religion and its officers, that will produce mindless (or unthinking or whatever term you prefer) behaviour. That is, the behaviour is no longer an individual choice, but is dictated by the religion.

Granting that you are correct in some of the basic assumptions of your argument (which I don't, but I'm going to run with it for now), don't you think that the decision to transfer your morality or behavior to an external source is exactly that? A decision and a choice? If so, then isn't their resultant behavior a manifestation of choice anyway?

I guess I'm not seeing how this works unless you are, as Iti oj suggested, a naturalistic determinist. Assuming you believe in free will, there was always a point of choice in there somewhere. And there continues to be points of choice every single time a person decides to defer to an external authority. Just because someone chooses to follow the external authority one time doesn't mean they'll do it again. For example, we have a great number of law-abiding citizens who, on occasion, choose to ignore that external authority on occasion.

I think you are giving people far too little credit, particularly if you happen to believe in free will. I don't disagree that there is such a thing as conditioned behaviors and that this is powerful, but I think you're making your case a little too strongly. You make it sound like as soon as someone submits to an external authority, they magically lack free will. This makes no sense to me.

Sure, individuals do bad things, but it seems to require religion, or something very similar such as certain kinds of ideology, to produce mass evils.

Sure, it should be obvious to anyone that motivating people in large numbers requires some sort of organizational structure or environmental impetus that is common to a large number of people. This is true both of what you call "mass evils" and of "mass good" (though frankly, I'm not a dualist, so use of either term doesn't agree with me). I don't see it as being a numbers game, though. On the level of the individual, the source of motivation for their behavior isn't particularly relevant to their actual behavior. I'm not talking about issues of scale here; pardon if that wasn't clear.