Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
If you spend enough time, well, virtually anywhere, you’re bound to come across a seemingly rational, intelligent person who sees different patterns than you do.
I suppose that’s what falsifiability is for.
Month: May 2015
Has Christianity Selected for an Atheistic Upper Class?
I’ve been trying for a while to figure out when atheism became mainstream in the West. Sometimes I answer, “Around the end of the English Civil War,” (1650) and sometimes I answer, “Late 1980s/early 1990s.”
Medieval Europeans seem to have been pretty solidly Christian–probably about as Christian as modern Muslims are Muslim.
Modern Westerners are highly atheistic–even many of the “Christians”. So what happened?
I speculate that the upper classes in France, Britain, and the Colonies (and probably that-which-would-become-Germany and a few other places I’m less familiar with, like the Netherlands,) were largely atheistic by the 1700s. Look at the writings of the Enlightenment philosophers, the behavior of the French nobility, the English distrust of any kind of religious “enthusiasm,” German bishops actively encouraging Jewish settlement in their cities and attempting to protect the Jews from angry peasant mobs, various laws outlawing or greatly limiting religious power passed during the French Revolution, the deism of the Founding Fathers, etc.
By contrast, the lower classes in NW Europe and especially America retained their belief for far longer–a few isolated pockets of belief surviving even into the present. For example, see the Pilgrims, the Counter-Revolution in the Vendee, maybe German peasants, televangelists in the 80s, blue laws, and Appalachian snake handlers in the ’50s, etc.
So how did that happen? I propose that the upper class and lower class followed different evolutionary trajectories (due to different conditions), with strong religiosity basically already selected out by the 1700s, meaning the relevant selection period is roughly 500-1700, not post-1700s.
During this time, the dominant religion was Catholicism, and Catholicism has generally forbade its priests, monks, nuns, etc., from getting married and having children since somewhere abouts the 300s or 400s. (With varying levels of success.)
Who got to be an official member of the Church hierarchy? Members of the upper class. Peasants couldn’t afford to do jobs that didn’t involve growing food, and upper class people weren’t going to accept peasants as religious authorities with power over their eternal souls, anyway. Many (perhaps most) of the people who joined the church were compelled at least in part by economic necessity–lack of arable land and strict inheritance laws meant that a family’s younger sons and daughters would not have the resources for marriage and family formation, anyway, and so these excess children were shunted off to monasteries.
There was another option for younger sons: the army. (Not such a good option for younger daughters.) Folks in the army probably did have children; you can imagine the details.
So we can imagine that, given the option between the army and the Church, those among the upper class with more devote inclinations probably chose the Church. And given a few hundred years of your most devote people leaving no children (and little genetic inflow from the lower classes,) the net result would be a general decrease in the % of genes in your population that contribute to a highly religious outlook.
(This assumes, of course, that religiosity can be selected for. I assume it can.)
Since the lower classes cannot join the Church, we should see much more religiosity among them. (Other factors affected the lower classes, just not this one.) If anything, one might speculate that religiosity may have increased reproductive success for the lower classes, where it could have inspired family-friendly values like honesty, hard work, fidelity, not being a drunkard, etc. A hard-working, moderately devout young man or woman may have been seen as a better potential spouse by the folks arranging marriages than a non-devout person.
Religiosity probably persisted in the US for longer than in Europe because:
1. More religious people tended to move from Europe to America, leaving Europe less religious and America more;
2. The beneficial effects of being a devout person who could raise lots of children were enhanced by the availability of abundant natural resources, allowing these people to raise even more children. NW Europe has had very little new land opened up in the past thousand years, limiting everybody’s expansion. The European lower classes historically did not reproduce themselves (horrific levels of disease and malnutrition will do that to you), being gradually replaced by downwardly-mobile upper classes. (There are probably regions in which the lower classes did survive, of course;)
3. By the time we’re talking about America, we’re talking about Protestant denominations rather than Catholicism, and Protestants generally allow their clergy to marry.
A complicating wrinkle of uncomplicating insight via two images:
So I happened to be browsing Stanford Magazine, and happened across two articles immediately in a row on religious issues. Each had a picture:
The contrast between the level of respect for the religion/religious believers in question really couldn’t be starker.
The respectable lady is Jane Shaw, Stanford’s new Dean of Religious life, notable for being both the first woman to hold the position and the first gay person. A few quotes from her article:
“Q. At Grace Cathedral and at Oxford, you led programs far afield from what might be considered religious: Hosting forums with politicians, activists and authors; bringing in atheists and believers; and commissioning artists-in-residence to create plays and installations. What’s your guiding light?
A. I don’t think I am a very churchy person, if that makes sense. I have always been interested in how you engage people in discussing questions of ultimate meaning, really—values, ethics, spirituality, all that stuff.
…
Q. But do you also value the “churchy” side of faith?
A. Ritual and liturgy? I love it.
Q. What new directions will you bring to Stanford?
A. …It is certainly my desire to make sure that Memorial Church is a place for extremely lively intellectual engagement, a place where possibly difficult issues can be discussed, a place where ethical and spiritual issues can be discussed. I am hoping we’ll have different sorts of people preaching here as guest preachers, not just clergy.”
The second photo is most likely a van owned by an unmedicated schizophrenic. You’d be forgiven if you therefore assumed the second article had something to do with mental illness.
It’s actually an interview with Stanford alum Kathryn Gin Lum about her new book, “Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction.”
Right. So whoever put the picture on this article equates the faith of the Founding Fathers (and many Americans today) with literal mental illness.
To be clear, Lum herself does not appear to be condescending toward the people/beliefs she studied, but her interview reveals that respect for the views of 60% of Americans is not common in our nation’s most respected centers of academic thought:
“Separate from any personal considerations, hell seemed to offer the best intellectual grist. ‘People in the academy,’ says Lum, tend to dismiss the notion that any consideration of hell could drive ‘how rational people think.'”
“Does hell have contemporary relevance, despite its lousy reputation in higher education?
“Strongly, thinks Lum. Much of her analysis highlights the connection between ‘people who believe in hell’ and their impulse ‘to damn other people to it.’ It’s that sensibility about calling out the world’s evils, says Lum, that suffuses today’s hot-button issues, including abortion and same-sex marriage.”
(Note that whatever insights she may have about rational people who believe in hell, or any potential good sides to the belief, the article does not mention them. It only mentions the ways in which people who believe in hell are problematic for the rest of the country. Those darn hell-believers, mucking things up for everyone else.)
“Writing about hell’s pertinence, Lum notes in her epilogue, ‘is to invite raised eyebrows.’ Her interest in the subject, she adds, has stirred reactions like ‘But you look so well-adjusted!'”
All right, so let’s review:
According to Stanford, a gay woman who isn’t very “churchy” but likes discussing ethics is one of the country’s best religious leaders, and the 60% of Americans who believe in Hell are literally insane and make trouble for everyone else.
One set of religious views is respected. The other is not.
Now, let’s try to imagine a contemporary article from any sort of respectable college or university (not one of the ones that make you mutter and stare at your feet while admitting that one of your relations was interested in the school,) that conveys the inverse: respect for people who believe in hell; disrespect for gays, women, and people whose faith isn’t based on Biblical inerrancy.
Can you? Maybe Harvard? Yale? Oberlin? CalTech? Reed? Fine, how about BYU? No, probably not even them.
I can’t imagine it. A hundred years ago, maybe. Today, no. Such notions are completely incompatible with the beliefs of modern, upper-class people.
I know many perfectly decent folks who believe in hell, and think they should be respected, but “be decent to people who hold denigrated religious beliefs” is not actually my point. My point is that the American upper class, academia, and the people with a great deal of power and influence over the beliefs of others clearly agrees with Pastor Shaw’s religious beliefs (when it is not outright atheist). Upper-class liberals in America are their own ethnic group with their own religion, culture, morality, and endogamous breeding habits. Conservatives are the out-group, their religious views openly mocked by the upper class and banned from the halls of academic thought.
Thing is, we happen to live, more or less, in a democracy.
One of the intended effects of democracy is that even groups with no real power can still express themselves via voting. If you have the numbers and bother to go to the polls, you can get someone in who more or less kinda sorta might represent your views.
As a result, even though conservatives are low-class and not cultural or intellectual movers and shakers, they can still influence who gets to be president or in Congress, and thus pass laws on things like abortion and stem cell research.
As a result, a group that has very little power in real life may end up with a fair amount via elections.
Think of it as a for of political power redistribution.
Society Constantly Lies: A Theory
Let’s suppose there’s a group that society thinks is totally awesome and deserves social resources to protect, honor, and generally help them succeed.
For example, let’s suppose society really loves old people. They are given places of honor at family and cultural events, politicians make speeches about the importance of old people to society’s success, etc.
Any mistreatment or abuse of old people would be seen as a very serious problem, and any stories on the subject–the more sensational the better–would prompt total outrage.
By contrast, stories about an actually despised and persecuted outgroup would excite nary a yawn from people who don’t give a crap about them.
As a result, news outlets, blogs, etc., benefit from running sensationalist stories about mistreatment of society’s most favored people, and avoid yawn-worthy stories about the outgroup. As a result of that, the average person will be constantly inundated with stories about how this group they love is being horribly abused, leading to a completely false, out of proportion perception that the beloved group is actually one of the most persecuted in society.
Anyone who questions whether the beloved group is actually the most persecuted in society will of course be seen as a delusional hate-monger attempting to further the beloved group’s persecution. This makes reality very difficult to perceive/determine/discuss, while further cementing the dominant position of the beloved group.
Things could be further complicated if some parts of society actually value different groups. So some folks who do not particularly value old people could provide endless fodder for the group that does value old people.
It is pretty easy, especially in retrospect, to think of scenarios in which society has gone totally nuts trying to protect an already protected group against a basically imaginary predator. The conviction of Germans in 1935 that Jews were out to destroy their country and had to be stopped at all costs comes immediately to mind. Pol Pot’s genocide of 1/3 of Cambodia was probably motivated by similar concerns.
Closer to home, children are a highly cared for and protected group, and society demands they be protected from all dangers–including occasionally totally fictional dangers like Satanic Daycares.
Prediction: If the theory is true, then there should be at least one (perhaps multiple) group in society that is incorrectly believed to be oppressed while actually in a position of great power. You might even find that the group/s most popularly believed to be oppressed is actually one of the most popular/powerful.
Someone who doesn’t mind being hated by everyone could put together data on whether or not some of society’s favorite groups are actually being oppressed or not.
The Rise of Atheism
While I question the data on Catholics, the overall numbers look accurate. This is not surprising–frankly, anyone who is surprised has been living under a rock–though I do have to constantly remind myself that even in my generational cohort, over 50% of people claim to be religious, because I find the notion vaguely unbelievable. (Even when I was a kid attending church, I noticed that my fellow “religious” kids didn’t act like they really believed in all of this god stuff, so how religious can all of those people really be?)
The interesting part is simply the phenomenon: society is becoming drastically less religious (even members of the older cohorts are becoming less religious over time.) (I suppose the other interesting part is the insulting hostility of the comments on the piece toward religion/religious people. Is it really necessary to constantly insult the majority of people in the country?)
The big question: WHY?
(I have my own theories, but I’d love to hear yours.)
Twilight Effects?
So, has anyone documented any negative social effects due to the Twilight books?
It has now been several (or more) years since Twilight was a massively super-popular book (and movie) phenomenon beloved by millions of teen (and older) girls. It has also been a while since I heard anyone vociferously extolling the evils of Twilight and how the books are going to lead teen (and older) girls astray, resulting in abusive, fucked-up relationships.
Of course, in the meanwhile, 50 Shades of Grey came out. It sold well, though doesn’t seem to have been quite so actually popular as Twilight. Perhaps because it’s not as good; perhaps because people don’t want to talk publicly about having read it.
Disclaimer: I have read neither Twilight nor 50 SoG, but I did read the first page of 50 SoG. I thought it was remarkably bad. So bad, in fact, that it makes me despair deep down in my soul.
Anyway. My opinions on the books are irrelevant.
At their heights, people predicted that these books would result in a lot of Bad Stuff, especially bad relationship stuff.
Now that the relevant cohort of women has had several years to date other people, have we actually observed any upswing of Bad Relationship Stuff?
Seems like a great opportunity for someone to really test their theories.
Why Do Good? For others or one’s Self?
Returning to the theme of the previous post on morality, I’d like to note that it was inspired by a few different people recently thanking me for my kindness. Since I am a cranky person who disagrees with everyone, this inspired the thought, “How do you know I’m being kind? What if I’m just being self-interested?” Which of course inspired the thought, “This dichotomy between self-interest and kindness is part of Christian morality. I am not a Christian. Therefore, I don’t have to accept this dichotomy.”
Which got me thinking. Which is better, to believe that someone is being kind to you out of a pure desire to do good, or because they’re benefiting in some way?
I suspect that a single or initial act of kindness is best perceived as motivated out of a pure desire to do good, at least in our society. This allows people to accept a single act of kindness without fear of thereby becoming indebted. This allows the net kindness of society to increase.
For repeated acts of kindness, however, I suspect it is best to believe that the other person is receiving some benefit.
Repeated acts of kindness can create a sense of indebtedness, even if totally unintended by the actor. If the indebtedness leads to some mutually agreeable form of reciprocation, then all is well (and the condition is fulfilled.) But if the debt cannot be repaid (for whatever reasons,) this creates unhappiness and conflict.
To relieve this burden of debt, it is probably best to believe that the actor receives some other benefit, such as really enjoying the activity involved.
For my own motivations: I prefer to live in a world where people are kind to each other. This may be a self-interested motivation, but I reject the idea that self-interest is invalid as a reason to be kind.
Human Admixture Chart
I love these things.
From Haak et al, Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe
The Incompatibility of Christian Morality and Evolutionary Morality
Christianity pretty explicitly states that moral acts should be done for no reason other than that being moral is good/god says, “go be moral.”
“So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. “But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.” Matthew 6:2-4
“Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” Hebrews 13:16
“Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” ” Luke 21:1-4
“But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” 1 John 3:17
“Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.” Luke 12:33
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35
“Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.” Acts 4:32-35
“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” Matthew 16:26
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” Matthew 5:43-48
“The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:31
The result, of course, is that Christian morality is very communist, and anyone who says otherwise is lying or ignorant. Self-interest is occasionally referenced so far as to say, “don’t worry about giving everything you have away, because god will make sure you don’t starve as a result,” but the general thrust of “don’t store up money, don’t do things for material rewards, take care of each other without regard to whether or not you can pay each other back, don’t make a big public deal out of your piety and generosity, etc.,” is pretty consistent.
Christianity is not necessarily quite on board with “treat everyone on earth equally,” since it is coming out of an explicitly ethno-nationalist religious tradition, but it is clearly moving in that direction.
In western society, this leads to a generalized notion that good deeds should be done for their own sakes, that seeing “gifts” as social exchange is bad and that all gifts should be given without strings attached, etc. Since this contradicts reality, people end up fighting over the implications of, say, buying someone dinner.
In reality, while some true charity and kindness exists (and I encourage it to,) most morality exists because we are descended from people who acted that way. We don’t actually take care of our children because of some divine command to do so, but because people who take care of their children historically had more surviving children than people who didn’t, and thus we are descended from people with child-rearing instincts.
The notion that morality is actually a self-interested attempt by our genes at continued propagation conflicts directly with our cultural, Christian norms of morality.
In general, Christian morality is probably a decent kludge, but forgetting reality is not good. If a moral system leads to its followers actually reproducing less than others (say, Shakerism,) then of course the result is that the followers of that morality die out.
Things Have Changed Incredibly Fast, and We have Forgotten —
The past is long, the present is short
We are living in the dreamtime
And it will all fad away
Your culture is, at most, 70 years old. Maybe less.
Everything you take for granted that makes your life possible, everything without which your life would be completely unrecognizable, perhaps not even livable (for you, anyway) did not exist for the vast majority of people 70+ years ago.
Air conditioning. Electricity. Running water. Grocery stores that carry virtually anything you want, any time you want. Clothes you didn’t make yourself.
The general expectation that your children will survive their first week of life.
The general expectation that you and your loved ones will not be crippled by Polio or killed by dozens of other infectious diseases.
Not spending your days in back-breaking agricultural labor and hoping desperately that it rains this year.
Pants on women. Women with their hair uncovered.
Almost all of your values, as you understand them, like equality and freedom of religion, were not popularly believed a hundred years ago. People who thought whites and blacks were equal were generally regarded as mentally unhinged in the mid-1800s. Freedom of religion was understood to only cover Christian denominations, and Catholics were only sort of considered Christians. Parents had a right to decide whom their children married, in order to protect the purity of their family line–a notion we would now call “eugenics”.
Even in the fifties, many American women did not go out with their hair uncovered–a practice we now condemn as Medieval and barbaric among Muslims.
The Spanish Inquisition did not end until 1834. The last auto-da-fe took place in Mexico in 1850.
Auschwitz was liberated 70 years ago.
America and the rest of the West in 1900 or the mid-1800s would be totally foreign to you.
One of our great flaws is that we have completely forgotten this. We act as though the good times have always been here, they will always be here, and that there’s no possible way we could accidentally destroy them.
We take them for granted.
1. Don’t get too uppity about 70 years of good times. Good times can end. They probably will.
2. If you like the changes that have happened over the course of the past 400 years or so–if you like things like freedom of religion, if you like not torturing confessions out of prisoners, remember that these are NOT essential features of your society and must be carefully protected or else we will lose them.
3. We should not feel shame for our past (which is probably no worse than anyone else’s.) We should feel triumph at everything we have overcome and how much we have improved. Nor should we feel complacent, or try to recreate some mythical version of the past: the world is changing, and so must we.
