This is all true, but to stick to your examples, the don’t seem to be working very hard on this kind of thing around here apparently were are almost at full equality already, and the second, if done well, is largely just values and morality education, not much mythology.
Now, on the plus side, I do see half-believer churches trying to give people moral education where there is no secular alternative or it does not really motivate them. Look, talking about universalistic ethics based on either rational logic or a generic feeling of universal empathy works only for some people, largely for people who feel they have a surplus, they live in safety, and their upbringing was not very traumatic either. For the rest you need to make it emotionally more motivating and more relatable. Very often, you need to drop the universalistic aspect as it is very, very hard to understand, from that background and angle i.e. why care about someone just because he is human, they find it easier to do it tribal. Very, very often I see people who were raised to care only about themselves, and even the idea to look out for your tribe (fellow compatriots, fellow coreligionists, whatever) is an improvement.
All too often I see kids from Budapest or Bratislava having horribly broken values, basically nothing you would realize as ethics, respecting nothing but money and power, having an every man for himself, rob or get robbed view, and I do see religious ethics having an improvement there. One thing that is working fairly well even in America is prison conversions. I do not have stats and hand, but my impression is they do prevent recidivism. The more a whole society looks like deteriorating into gangsta mores, the more useful religion looks like. I have read 50 Cents autobio and basically he was saying in between the lines that in the most desperate black ghettos in America generally only kids from religious families have what it takes to resist the allure of criminality. That many a black mother things there it is either the church or the prison. And yes, over here, I saw “gypsy pastoring” working, i.e. priests working over Roma subcultures, village-end favellas practically, where every second male was an ex-convict and yes, recidivism improved, finding work and sticking to it improved, alchoholism improved, wife-beating improved, things like this improved. Or look into how the Irish in America went from a universally hated underclass to respected people - it was priests, the good kinds of priests, the kinds of priests who focus more on training everybody to behave functionally than on mythology: there are plenty a situation where lies like “stop getting drunk all the time and beating the wife or the devil will take you away” DOES result in increased utility for all.
Intellectuals are better off atheists. But I am not at all sure it is ideal for all, at this current stage of human development. Some people really need that sort of a “if the police does not catch you in this life the devil will in the next” kind of message.
The ideal solution for the short term would be designer religions, carefully engineered by skeptical intellectuals as Plato-style noble lies. In the long term, everybody should be intellectual and then we can drop the whole thing but that requires economic plenty, economic safety, non-traumatic upbringing, functional families etc.
All too often I see kids from Budapest or Bratislava having horribly broken values, basically nothing you would realize as ethics, respecting nothing but money and power, having an every man for himself, rob or get robbed view, and I do see religious ethics having an improvement there.
Seems to me this happens mostly at dysfunctional families. But there are many of them. Otherwise, there is this “what would my parents think of me?” factor.
In a society where families are fragmented, religion can serve a role of a substitute family.
This is all true, but to stick to your examples, the don’t seem to be working very hard on this kind of thing around here apparently were are almost at full equality already, and the second, if done well, is largely just values and morality education, not much mythology.
Now, on the plus side, I do see half-believer churches trying to give people moral education where there is no secular alternative or it does not really motivate them. Look, talking about universalistic ethics based on either rational logic or a generic feeling of universal empathy works only for some people, largely for people who feel they have a surplus, they live in safety, and their upbringing was not very traumatic either. For the rest you need to make it emotionally more motivating and more relatable. Very often, you need to drop the universalistic aspect as it is very, very hard to understand, from that background and angle i.e. why care about someone just because he is human, they find it easier to do it tribal. Very, very often I see people who were raised to care only about themselves, and even the idea to look out for your tribe (fellow compatriots, fellow coreligionists, whatever) is an improvement.
All too often I see kids from Budapest or Bratislava having horribly broken values, basically nothing you would realize as ethics, respecting nothing but money and power, having an every man for himself, rob or get robbed view, and I do see religious ethics having an improvement there. One thing that is working fairly well even in America is prison conversions. I do not have stats and hand, but my impression is they do prevent recidivism. The more a whole society looks like deteriorating into gangsta mores, the more useful religion looks like. I have read 50 Cents autobio and basically he was saying in between the lines that in the most desperate black ghettos in America generally only kids from religious families have what it takes to resist the allure of criminality. That many a black mother things there it is either the church or the prison. And yes, over here, I saw “gypsy pastoring” working, i.e. priests working over Roma subcultures, village-end favellas practically, where every second male was an ex-convict and yes, recidivism improved, finding work and sticking to it improved, alchoholism improved, wife-beating improved, things like this improved. Or look into how the Irish in America went from a universally hated underclass to respected people - it was priests, the good kinds of priests, the kinds of priests who focus more on training everybody to behave functionally than on mythology: there are plenty a situation where lies like “stop getting drunk all the time and beating the wife or the devil will take you away” DOES result in increased utility for all.
Intellectuals are better off atheists. But I am not at all sure it is ideal for all, at this current stage of human development. Some people really need that sort of a “if the police does not catch you in this life the devil will in the next” kind of message.
The ideal solution for the short term would be designer religions, carefully engineered by skeptical intellectuals as Plato-style noble lies. In the long term, everybody should be intellectual and then we can drop the whole thing but that requires economic plenty, economic safety, non-traumatic upbringing, functional families etc.
Seems to me this happens mostly at dysfunctional families. But there are many of them. Otherwise, there is this “what would my parents think of me?” factor.
In a society where families are fragmented, religion can serve a role of a substitute family.