The 'Benefits of Religion' Thread

[Fortigurn]

This has become humorous. Mr Fortigurn, keep those sources coming. There are people who do read them.

Thank you. It's refreshing to discuss the topic with someone who is intellectually honest.

I for one wonder why it would be so and since I do some research myself, wonder sometimes if there are other variables involved when research is done that can not be controlled or the researcher might not be aware of.

You'll note from the studies I've cited that a very broad range of variables is controlled for. However, the simple fact (as I've pointed out previously), is that religious groups are more 'fit for purpose' when it comes to providing social benefits, because they are specifically aimed at this purpose; your local chess club or photography club isn't designed or intended to encourage risk avoidance behaviour, building of broad social capital, reinforcing family ties, providing safe environments for children, etc.

As I said previously:

The fact is that religious groups tend to promote closer, deeper, longer, and more robust social ties than other social organizations. This is hardly surprising given the typical concerns and aims of religious groups and those who join them. People don't join chess clubs for spiritual and emotional fulfillment. Religion is a better social adhesive than other social bonding motives.

Specific points for consideration.

1. Whereas religious groups typically provide for individuals over an extremely long duration (often from birth to death), starting from a very early age (birth or early childhood), secular social groups typically do not; no one joins the local Toast Masters or Rotary club at five years old and leaves only when they die.

2. Religious groups typically involve their members in interaction far more regularly and at far deeper levels of social interaction than their secular counterparts; you're a lot more socially connected and close to people you've grown up with in church and known for 20 years than to the people you've been to yoga class with for the last six months. People who go to church don't just meet once a week (as opposed to the yoga class people), they're regularly and personally involved in each others' lives, often on a daily basis.

3. Religious groups promote a range of risk avoidance behaviours, to an extent which their secular counterparts do not.

4. Religious groups address people's deepest concerns and most personal hopes and fears, which doesn't happen when you join your local hiking club. Sharing these personal hopes and fears, and reinforcing the religious solutions offered, is of significant psychological benefit.

5. Religious groups often (typically, in the case of the Judeo-Christian tradition), encourage a high level of care and concern for out-group members, even while providing greater benefits for in-group members. This encourages (but does not guarantee), out-group members to view them with greater trust and respect, improving the social capital of in-group members.

For one, I wonder if the self preservation behavior is a result of religion and the community that comes with it, or a fear of death and not satisfying a deity.

Religious people generally have less anxiety about death specifically because of the comfort and confidence religion brings in the face of mortality; anthropologists and psychologists have cited this as one of the functions of religion, and one of the reasons for its development. The risk avoidance behaviour in religions is typically related to purity concerns; taboos against high risk sexual behaviour, and substance use and abuse (drugs, tobacco, alcohol), for example, are often focused on maintaining bodily purity as an act of respect for the creator, as a reflection of spiritual purity, and as an act of personal sacrifice.

Turning the question around, you may ask why risk avoidance behaviour isn't typically promoted by secular social groups. One key reason is that most secular social groups simply aren't interested in promoting risk avoidance, the purpose of their group is something completely different. And who would join a secular group which is going to tell you how to live your life?

Another is that certain specific forms of risk are promoted at a grassroots level within secular society, even if they are illegal and even if at a higher level of society they are warned against. Sexual promiscuity and substance use/abuse are prominent examples, high risk behaviours which school aged children find are engaged in by their peers, and which are reinforced as necessary for acceptance into peer groups, regardless of what they're taught by teachers or parents (parents who are often excellent examples of these very behaviours themselves).

It takes considerable emotional strength and independence of mind to resist this peer pressure, and religious groups can provide not only the encouragement to avoid such behaviour but also an alternative peer group providing support for those who are resisting that pressure. And this isn't just about promoting safe sex through prophylactic measures; quite apart from the fact that a number of common STDs can be transmitted regardless of prophylactic use, there's also the fact that risk of STDs increases with the number of sexual encounters and sexual partners, regardless of the use of prophylactic measures.

What I do find humorous is that this thread has become exactly what fortigurn has said. People make claims and become all excited to the point of fanatic about what they believe, and then refuse to properly engage in conversation when provided with alternative points of view. When cooking, please only provide us a fifth of the recipe as we are too lazy to read and the cake will be a f-up whether we read the whole recipe or not, seems like a bad idea in my opinion.

Precisely; Teddoman keeps making claims without providing any substantiating evidence whatsoever, and ignores completely any evidence contra-indicatory to his claims. This is fundamentalist behaviour.

[MikeN]

1. Whereas religious groups typically provide for individuals over an extremely long duration (often from birth to death), starting from a very early age (birth or early childhood), secular social groups typically do not; no one joins the local Toast Masters or Rotary club at five years old and leaves only when they die.

2. Religious groups typically involve their members in interaction far more regularly and at far deeper levels of social interaction than their secular counterparts; you're a lot more socially connected and close to people you've grown up with in church and known for 20 years than to the people you've been to yoga class with for the last six months. People who go to church don't just meet once a week (as opposed to the yoga class people), they're regularly and personally involved in each others' lives, often on a daily basis.

3. Religious groups promote a range of risk avoidance behaviours, to an extent which their secular counterparts do not.

4. Religious groups address people's deepest concerns and most personal hopes and fears, which doesn't happen when you join your local hiking club. Sharing these personal hopes and fears, and reinforcing the religious solutions offered, is of significant psychological benefit.

5. Religious groups often (typically, in the case of the Judeo-Christian tradition), encourage a high level of care and concern for out-group members, even while providing greater benefits for in-group members. This encourages (but does not guarantee), out-group members to view them with greater trust and respect, improving the social capital of in-group members.
First, I'd like to apologise to Fortigurn for my snarky and ill-tempered post, and thank him for his courtesy in replying, when he would have been quite justified in telling me to go and get stuffed and dig up the information myself.

To resume

It takes considerable emotional strength and independence of mind to resist this peer pressure, and religious groups can provide not only the encouragement to avoid such behaviour but also an alternative peer group providing support for those who are resisting that pressure. And this isn't just about promoting safe sex through prophylactic measures; quite apart from the fact that a number of common STDs can be transmitted regardless of prophylactic use, there's also the fact that risk of STDs increases with the number of sexual encounters and sexual partners, regardless of the use of prophylactic measures.

So once again we come up against a seeming paradox

Context: Adolescent pregnancy, birth, abortion and sexually transmitted disease (STD) rates are much higher in the United States than in most other developed countries.

Results: Adolescent childbearing is more common in the United States (22% of women reported having had a child before age 20) than in Great Britain (15%), Canada (11%), France (6%) and Sweden (4%); differences are even greater for births to younger teenagers. A lower proportion of teenage pregnancies are resolved through abortion in the United States than in the other countries; however, because of their high pregnancy rate, U.S. teenagers have the highest abortion rate. The age of sexual debut varies little across countries, yet American teenagers are the most likely to have multiple partners. A greater proportion of U.S. women reported no contraceptive use at either first or recent intercourse (25% and 20%, respectively) than reported nonuse in France (11% and 12%, respectively), Great Britain (21% and 4%, respectively) and Sweden (22% and 7%, respectively).

Conclusions: Data on contraceptive use are more important than data on sexual activity in explaining variation in levels of adolescent pregnancy and childbearing among the five developed countries; however, the higher level of multiple sexual partnership among American teenagers may help explain their higher STD rates.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3324401.html

Top ten states ranked by rate (per 100,000) of reported STD cases: United States, 2009

http://www.avert.org/std-statistics-america.htm
Basically, the usual suspects- Southern Bible Belt states.
Of course it's important to note the extremely high rate among African-Americans, which skew the figures, but even for whites the comparison holds- Southern states are at the bottom of the table.

These figures, along with the others I cited previously (longevity, wealth, education, infant mortality, social equality etc.), do not show that religion causes societies to be more dysfunctional; rather that dysfunctional societies produce higher levels of religious belief. As people become wealthier, more educated, and more able to control their own lives they become less religious.

Sex serves as a good example. Far more so than fear of STDs, it was control of female sexuality that was necessary, to safeguard male paternity rights- men want to pass down their genes, and don't want to expend resources on some other man's. Thus resulting in everything from Biblical commands to kill non-virgin brides on their father's doorstep to current honour killings, female genital mutilation, and Father/daughter Purity Balls (no Mother/son ones, of course).

Since sex is one of our strongest desires, it took very strong social sanctions to control it- and religion was the major controller, through both explicit threats and punishments and orchestrating condemnation by the community. With modern contraception, child-bearing becomes a matter of choice ( and while, yes, STD rates are way too high, they are for, normal heterosexual intercourse at least, not that dangerous)- and the need for religious control over people's sex lives vanishes too.

So while some societies continue to push abstinence on teenagers, others stress sex education and access to contraception and abortion- and by their fruits ye shall know them.

You'll note from the studies I've cited that a very broad range of variables is controlled for. However, the simple fact (as I've pointed out previously), is that religious groups are more 'fit for purpose' when it comes to providing social benefits, because they are specifically aimed at this purpose; your local chess club or photography club isn't designed or intended to encourage risk avoidance behaviour, building of broad social capital, reinforcing family ties, providing safe environments for children, etc.

Very true.
Whereas in the countries I've been using as examples, the modern welfare state takes over a lot of these functions, leaving many of the social functions of religion redundant. If you're a Swede in your sixties, you've had a nice stable life- somewhat harsh in the Fifties, but you and everyone around you becoming more prosperous as time goes by. A nice steady job, no great worries about losing it, increasing disposable income, holidays on the Baltic changing to weeks in Ibiza or Naxos, education for your kids, a pension and medical care for your old Mum, with the same waiting for you- life is good; who needs God?

(And this just in: in the latest Australian census, "No religion"(22%, up from 16%) has overtaken Anglicanism to become the second-largest group, behind the Catholics at 25%- though the place is still 61% Christian)

[sandman]

PLEASE! Would people PLEASE stop e-mailing me and facebook messaging me with ideas for baiting this poor bugger -- he doesn't deserve it, and most of your suggestions would be censored by him right quick. Do it yourselves! And leave his religion out of it. Its not fair. You know who you are. From now on, I'm deleting such messages without reading them.

[urodacus]

Even if not true, that was very funny, Sandman.

[Fortigurn]

First, I'd like to apologise to Fortigurn for my snarky and ill-tempered post, and thank him for his courtesy in replying, when he would have been quite justified in telling me to go and get stuffed and dig up the information myself.

Thank you, much appreciated. I respect your apology greatly, and I admire your intellectual honesty.

So once again we come up against a seeming paradox

Let's take a closer look, phrasing the situation thus:

* Religious communities which value sexual abstinence in youth but which teach little or nothing about measures for preventing pregnancy or STDs, and whose teens are embedded in a broader society which encourages promiscuity and is more influential than their religious community, are more likely to experience high rates of teen pregnancy, birth, abortion, and STDs than secular counterparts which are equally as promiscuous but better educated about preventive measures

Not really a paradox, is it? Not only are US teens more promiscuous generally than those of other countries, but the states providing the least education about measures which can prevent pregnancy and STDs, are those in which teen pregnancy and STDs are highest. That's not remotely surprising, and it's certainly not a paradox.

The fine grained study of Strayhorn & Strayhorn, 'Religiosity and teen birth rate in the United States' (2009), makes the following excellent point.

Our findings by themselves, of course, do not permit causal inferences. There could be unstudied confounding variables that account for the correlations we report. But if we may speculate on the most probable explanation, drawing on the other research cited above: we conjecture that conservative religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging use of contraception among their teen community members than in discouraging sexual intercourse itself.

This makes perfect sense in light of other studies on the same subject; teens in conservative religious communities in the US are more influenced by secular pressure to be promiscuous than they are by their religious instruction to be abstinent, and since they are typically highly ignorant of prophylactic measures they are at higher risk of pregnancy and STDs than their secular counterparts.

These figures, along with the others I cited previously (longevity, wealth, education, infant mortality, social equality etc.), do not show that religion causes societies to be more dysfunctional; rather that dysfunctional societies produce higher levels of religious belief.

It is probably more accurate to say that certain forms of dysfunctional society encourage higher levels of certain forms of religious belief; there's likely to be a psychological defense mechanism at play here.

As people become wealthier, more educated, and more able to control their own lives they become less religious.

It's probably more accurate to say that as people become wealthier, more educated, and more able to control their own lives, certain highly common forms of religious belief decline. Other forms of religious belief are more resistant to such factors.

So while some societies continue to push abstinence on teenagers, others stress sex education and access to contraception and abortion- and by their fruits ye shall know them.

Indeed. For example:

Our results show that with the exception of gay males, religion favorably constrains risky sexual behavior. This suggests that if conformist peer group effects are operative in Faith-based HIV/AIDS public health interventions, they are likely to be effective in reducing the incidence of HIV/AIDS among all demographic at-risk groups except for gay males.

Overall, the parameter estimates suggest that, consistent with a theory in which sex is an exogenous argument in individual utility functions, the demand for sex is conditioned on the costs engendered by religious beliefs and participation. In particular, our initial results suggest that risky sexy behavior by individuals is constrained by religious beliefs and participation—-at least for heterosexuals. In the case of gay males, our results suggest that their risky sexual behavior is not constrained by religious beliefs and participation.

We are confident that our results are well-identified, as our empirical demand functions for sexual activity are derived from an explicit economic model in which hominid evolution exogenizes preferences for sexual activity, generating reduced forms with exogenous determinants. As such, our parameter estimates of the effects of religion and religiosity on sexual activity can be interpreted as causal effects.

Our results suggest religion and religiosity as measured by frequency of church attendance, belonging the the [sic] Catholic denomination, and believing that the bible is the literal word of God have the effect of reducing the demand for sexual partners, sex frequency, and extra-marital sex–all risky behaviors associated with contracting HIV/AIDS.

Where external peer pressure to breach community sexual guidelines is greater than internal peer pressure to maintain community sexual guidelines, then the religious individual is more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviour. This shouldn't be any surprise.

Very true.
Whereas in the countries I've been using as examples, the modern welfare state takes over a lot of these functions, leaving many of the social functions of religion redundant. If you're a Swede in your sixties, you've had a nice stable life- somewhat harsh in the Fifties, but you and everyone around you becoming more prosperous as time goes by. A nice steady job, no great worries about losing it, increasing disposable income, holidays on the Baltic changing to weeks in Ibiza or Naxos, education for your kids, a pension and medical care for your old Mum, with the same waiting for you- life is good; who needs God?

Yes that's certainly true. However, as I've previously pointed out, these societies reporting high levels of individual happiness (such as Sweden), also report some of the world's highest suicide rates. The fact is that the modern welfare state doesn't provide the social capital of religious organizations, doesn't provide the same psychological buffering effects, and doesn't provide a peer support group.

(And this just in: in the latest Australian census, "No religion"(22%, up from 16%) has overtaken Anglicanism to become the second-largest group, behind the Catholics at 25%- though the place is still 61% Christian)

This is no surprise to me; even when I graduated from high school I was one of only a handful of religious students among several hundred. It does however cast doubt on the claims of certain atheist groups in Australia that the country is a kind of medieval theocracy.

The fact that you're attempting to justify this intellectual dishonesty and make me the villain for providing substantiating evidence for my case is extraordinary.

Maybe you didn't read what I wrote, since I never justified people claiming you didn't provide sources.

As long as you are saying the solution is for me to post fewer sources, instead of them reading what I write, that is what you are doing.

Neither am I making you a villain, just noting of your posting style and the way you attempt to overwhelm people with sources, which is what you do by posting a WALL of text, then stand over it pointing.

That isn't true. I do not attempt to overwhelm people with sources, and I do not post a wall of text and then stand over it pointing. I post sources as appropriate and as requested, placing them in footnotes at the end of my post specifically so people can read them at their leisure without detracting from my comments on their arguments in my main post. I engage people's arguments point by point, and respond to them with facts. That's what they don't like.

But remember, very often 'less is more'. Provide about 1/5th of the sources you do, and you may have more engaged discussions (if that is TRULY what you want). People will be less likely to ignore your sources then.

Extensive experience shows this is not the case. Feel free to substantiate your claim with evidence, however. Or, you know, sources.