Furthermore, I would expect to see, in countries where it is not a majority religion, it would slowly fade and die (as social ostracism is used against it by the majority)
No, it just has to get big enough that Christians have enough other Christians around that the social structure becomes self-sustaining. Social ostracism is used to get rid of spontaneously appearing non-Christian individuals, not large groups.
But assuming it to be an exhaustive list does not appear to match reality -
So don’t assume it’s an exhaustive list.
It really doesn’t matter for the purposes of my point that it also spreads through peaceful missionaries. You seem to think that I’m complaining that Christianity spreads violently, so you’re bringing up non-violent missionaries. But that isn’t my point.
My point is that Christianity spreads as a meme system. Belief systems have traits which lead them to spread regardless of their truth. Some of those traits I listed above. Other traits include, of course, the belief system telling its members to send out missionaries to spread the belief system. Having missionaries is an adaptation which helps the belief system to spread, in the same way that coconuts being able to float so they can travel to distant islands helps coconuts to spread. Belief systems which spread efficiently will do better than belief systems that don’t, and will soon cover as much area as they can right until they run into other well-adapted belief systems.
No, it just has to get big enough that Christians have enough other Christians around that the social structure becomes self-sustaining. Social ostracism is used to get rid of spontaneously appearing non-Christian individuals, not large groups.
Fair enough. A neighbourhood or other small community can be self-sustaining, then.
But it still needs to be started.
So don’t assume it’s an exhaustive list.
As soon as I don’t assume it’s an exhaustive list, your point collapses. Yes, it does spread as a meme system, This is because it is a meme system.
Newtonian physics is also a meme system. And Newtonian physics can also spread as a meme system, in all three of the ways you describe. (I don’t think anyone ever has tried to spread Newtonian physics by the sword, but it could be done in theory; but Newtonian physics has most certainly been spread by parent-to-child transmission and by social ostracisation).
Similarly for relativistic physics. Or, for that matter, any other descriptive model of the universe, including ones that are perfectly accurate and 100% true. Because any descriptive model of the universe is a meme system, and can therefore be spread as a meme system.
Your conclusion, in short, relies on the idea that Christianity is only spread by means that are not dependant on the truth of its ideas, and never spread by means that are dependant on the truth of those ideas. This you have not shown.
It isn’t all or nothing. These methods of transmission exist for Newtonian physics, but they are much less fundamental to how Newtonian physics spreads.
If it’s medieval times, and I announce to the members of my village that I’m not a Christian and act accordingly. I may end up dead, lynched, expelled, tortured by the Inquisition, or sent to a ghetto. If i get up now and announce that I don’t believe in Newtonian physics, not much is going to happen to me unless I have a job that depends on Newtonian physics. The social ostracization may not be completely missing (people can still laugh at me), but it’s far weaker than for Christianity.
And parents teach Christianity to their children because Christianity directly asserts that it is good to teach itself to your children, and implies that their children will be in terrible supernatural peril if they don’t. There really isn’t anything comparable for Newtonian physics that isn’t related to the fact that Newtonian physics works—if parents don’t teach their children not to walk off cliffs, the children won’t grow up to refuse to teach Newtonian physics to their own children.
I’m pretty sure that the main modern transmission vector for Newtonian physics is schoolteacher-to-child (which is very similar to parent-to-child, except that the parent hires an intermediary). Mind you, I don’t have any stats or data handy to back that up, it’s just a general impression.
But again, that happens because it’s piggybacking on the fact that people teach things that work. Since science works, it gets taught. If science didn’t make factual claims with real-world implications, nobody would teach it. Religion is not bound by this; it gets taught even in the absence of such factual claims, because it has a bunch of commands that amount to “spread this religion regardless of the facts”.
I think there’s some equivocation here between different meanings of “expert”. Experts in Shakespeare are experts in what Shakespeare said and what things mean within the context of Shakespeare’s plays and Shakespeare’s life. A comparable “expert in Christianity” would be able to tell me what Christianity claims and put it into context as a whole.
But “amateurs should defer to experts”, in reference to Christianity, doesn’t mean “amateurs should accept the experts’ word about Christianity,” it means “amateurs should accept the claims presented by Christianity”. There’s nothing comparable for Shakespeare. In this sense, neither experts nor schools teach Shakespeare at all.
But “amateurs should defer to experts”, in reference to Christianity, doesn’t mean “amateurs should accept the experts’ word about Christianity,” it means “amateurs should accept the claims presented by Christianity”. There’s nothing comparable for Shakespeare. In this sense, neither experts nor schools teach Shakespeare at all.
Um.
Going back to the comment that started this all—over here—shows that the quote originally comes from this page, which is an essay written from the atheist perspective on how to go about arguing the historicity of Jesus. The ‘experts’ in question appear (to me) to be not theologists but historians, seeking whether or not a given person, referenced in certain historical documents, actually lived at one point or not, and the author bluntly states that he expects the odds of said existence, using his best estimate of requisite probabilities, to be about one in twelve thousand. (He then goes on to say that this is far from the least likely claim in the Christian faith; supernatural miracles are far more unlikely, and thus far better things to call into question).
So, no, the original context does not say that amateurs should accept the claims made by Christianity (and it does not define professionals by their religious leanings). It says that amateurs should not take a firm position on a question where the experts do not take that firm position. (It does not say that the amateurs have to agree with the experts when those experts do take a firm position, amateurs are allowed to remain uncertain).
You made a claim that schools teach their curriculum because the curriculum is useful. (e.g. If science didn’t make factual claims with real-world implications, nobody would teach it)
Teaching Shakespeare is an example where it’s not clear whether there any use to it. Schools might simply teach it because teaching Shakespeare is high status.
The math curriculum is also not optimized by teaching children the kind of math that’s likely to be useful for them. It instead tries to teach them calculus because calculus is high status while making Fermi estimates isn’t.
I didn’t claim that the only reason schools teach their curriculum is that it is useful. There can be (and are) different parts of the curriculum taught for different reasons, some related to being useful and some not.
How well do they serve each purpose? I’m given to understand Newton’s Laws are highly useful in engineering. How do they compare with alternative means of producing status, like teaching everyone ‘Ubik’ and ‘fnord?’
Or latin. Theres a bedrock sense of what works, and there is a more socially defined sense. If your society values some religion, dead language or author, then it works to teach it, because it gives people acceptability and status.
I live in a suburban school district in the Southeast US. The public middle and high schools here do teach Latin as one of the foreign language options, along with Mandarin, French, German and Spanish.
No, it just has to get big enough that Christians have enough other Christians around that the social structure becomes self-sustaining. Social ostracism is used to get rid of spontaneously appearing non-Christian individuals, not large groups.
So don’t assume it’s an exhaustive list.
It really doesn’t matter for the purposes of my point that it also spreads through peaceful missionaries. You seem to think that I’m complaining that Christianity spreads violently, so you’re bringing up non-violent missionaries. But that isn’t my point.
My point is that Christianity spreads as a meme system. Belief systems have traits which lead them to spread regardless of their truth. Some of those traits I listed above. Other traits include, of course, the belief system telling its members to send out missionaries to spread the belief system. Having missionaries is an adaptation which helps the belief system to spread, in the same way that coconuts being able to float so they can travel to distant islands helps coconuts to spread. Belief systems which spread efficiently will do better than belief systems that don’t, and will soon cover as much area as they can right until they run into other well-adapted belief systems.
Fair enough. A neighbourhood or other small community can be self-sustaining, then.
But it still needs to be started.
As soon as I don’t assume it’s an exhaustive list, your point collapses. Yes, it does spread as a meme system, This is because it is a meme system.
Newtonian physics is also a meme system. And Newtonian physics can also spread as a meme system, in all three of the ways you describe. (I don’t think anyone ever has tried to spread Newtonian physics by the sword, but it could be done in theory; but Newtonian physics has most certainly been spread by parent-to-child transmission and by social ostracisation).
Similarly for relativistic physics. Or, for that matter, any other descriptive model of the universe, including ones that are perfectly accurate and 100% true. Because any descriptive model of the universe is a meme system, and can therefore be spread as a meme system.
Your conclusion, in short, relies on the idea that Christianity is only spread by means that are not dependant on the truth of its ideas, and never spread by means that are dependant on the truth of those ideas. This you have not shown.
It isn’t all or nothing. These methods of transmission exist for Newtonian physics, but they are much less fundamental to how Newtonian physics spreads.
If it’s medieval times, and I announce to the members of my village that I’m not a Christian and act accordingly. I may end up dead, lynched, expelled, tortured by the Inquisition, or sent to a ghetto. If i get up now and announce that I don’t believe in Newtonian physics, not much is going to happen to me unless I have a job that depends on Newtonian physics. The social ostracization may not be completely missing (people can still laugh at me), but it’s far weaker than for Christianity.
And parents teach Christianity to their children because Christianity directly asserts that it is good to teach itself to your children, and implies that their children will be in terrible supernatural peril if they don’t. There really isn’t anything comparable for Newtonian physics that isn’t related to the fact that Newtonian physics works—if parents don’t teach their children not to walk off cliffs, the children won’t grow up to refuse to teach Newtonian physics to their own children.
I’m pretty sure that the main modern transmission vector for Newtonian physics is schoolteacher-to-child (which is very similar to parent-to-child, except that the parent hires an intermediary). Mind you, I don’t have any stats or data handy to back that up, it’s just a general impression.
But again, that happens because it’s piggybacking on the fact that people teach things that work. Since science works, it gets taught. If science didn’t make factual claims with real-world implications, nobody would teach it. Religion is not bound by this; it gets taught even in the absence of such factual claims, because it has a bunch of commands that amount to “spread this religion regardless of the facts”.
Do schools also teach Shakespeare because “that’s what works”?
I think there’s some equivocation here between different meanings of “expert”. Experts in Shakespeare are experts in what Shakespeare said and what things mean within the context of Shakespeare’s plays and Shakespeare’s life. A comparable “expert in Christianity” would be able to tell me what Christianity claims and put it into context as a whole.
But “amateurs should defer to experts”, in reference to Christianity, doesn’t mean “amateurs should accept the experts’ word about Christianity,” it means “amateurs should accept the claims presented by Christianity”. There’s nothing comparable for Shakespeare. In this sense, neither experts nor schools teach Shakespeare at all.
Um.
Going back to the comment that started this all—over here—shows that the quote originally comes from this page, which is an essay written from the atheist perspective on how to go about arguing the historicity of Jesus. The ‘experts’ in question appear (to me) to be not theologists but historians, seeking whether or not a given person, referenced in certain historical documents, actually lived at one point or not, and the author bluntly states that he expects the odds of said existence, using his best estimate of requisite probabilities, to be about one in twelve thousand. (He then goes on to say that this is far from the least likely claim in the Christian faith; supernatural miracles are far more unlikely, and thus far better things to call into question).
So, no, the original context does not say that amateurs should accept the claims made by Christianity (and it does not define professionals by their religious leanings). It says that amateurs should not take a firm position on a question where the experts do not take that firm position. (It does not say that the amateurs have to agree with the experts when those experts do take a firm position, amateurs are allowed to remain uncertain).
You made a claim that schools teach their curriculum because the curriculum is useful. (e.g. If science didn’t make factual claims with real-world implications, nobody would teach it)
Teaching Shakespeare is an example where it’s not clear whether there any use to it. Schools might simply teach it because teaching Shakespeare is high status.
The math curriculum is also not optimized by teaching children the kind of math that’s likely to be useful for them. It instead tries to teach them calculus because calculus is high status while making Fermi estimates isn’t.
I didn’t claim that the only reason schools teach their curriculum is that it is useful. There can be (and are) different parts of the curriculum taught for different reasons, some related to being useful and some not.
How do you know that the reason students teach Newtons laws is them being useful and not for status purposes?
How well do they serve each purpose? I’m given to understand Newton’s Laws are highly useful in engineering. How do they compare with alternative means of producing status, like teaching everyone ‘Ubik’ and ‘fnord?’
But most students will not do jobs as engineers.
Touch typing is a useful skill for nearly all jobs yet most schools don’t teach it.
There are no professors of touch typing that give the subject academic prestige. On the other hand academic physic has prestige.
Calculus has more academic prestige than statistics and thus schools are focusing more on teaching calculus.
Or latin. Theres a bedrock sense of what works, and there is a more socially defined sense. If your society values some religion, dead language or author, then it works to teach it, because it gives people acceptability and status.
Schools still teach Latin?
...mine didn’t. (It did teach Shakespeare, though).
I live in a suburban school district in the Southeast US. The public middle and high schools here do teach Latin as one of the foreign language options, along with Mandarin, French, German and Spanish.
Ive no idea if they do now. I went to a old fashioned school, a long time ago, which did.