Religious Texts and Politics
- Burning ghost
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Religious Texts and Politics
Let us say there are three religious texts as follows:
A) This text has many passages that can be said to incite hatred and murder. It does possess enough to promote peace above all else.
B) This text has few passages that can be said to incite hatred and murder. It does possess enough to promote peace above all else.
C) This text is moderate compared to both A and B.
Obviously we can see that text A poses the biggest possible risk to peace. This is a no brainer. What we are saying is POSSIBLE, not probable, nor definitively.
Now let us say that the population of followers of each religion is as follows:
A) 100
B) 200
C) 50
Which one now is the biggest threat to peace?
Now let us consider the more EXTREMIST views of these religious texts let us say the populations look like this:
A) 50
B) 50
C) 50
This levels the field and the extreme positions of each ( for and against peace) will cancel out? I think maybe not? When I say extreme I mean extreme adherence to either a passive or aggressive attitude. Already this is a difficult position to consider.
Now let us look at the governing bodies where these followers live. Let us say that they live under either a religiously sympathetic government or a non-religious government and note the figures accordingly (50/50) for (religious/non-religious):
A) 10/40
B) 20/30
C) 40/10
Now we can see that to start with we would easily view Text A to have been potentially the most harmful for peace. Yet when we expose a few different factors we see that what would have been regarded as the least likely to cause harm turns out to be the one most likely to in the given climate.
The question is then do we choose to oppose one text more than another? And if so how do we go about this? What other factors are there to take into account? What can we do to decrease the harmful interpretations of the words in these texts?
My view is that if we consider these simpler examples we can better come to a general agreement on a course of action. As we further intricate the problems and think of other factors to add we can begin to apply these ideas to real life situations. Of course I am not suggesting we can ever grasp every factor, but at least through this method we can perhaps come to appreciate things we have not considered before, and/or consider connections previously hidden from consideration.
I am sure many of you can argue against my simplistic hypothetical and say you disagree with my sweeping statements in claiming which one is the biggest threat to peace. This is because I have most likely not said everything that is on my mind because there is an awful lot to consider. The aim is not to propagate confusion, but simply to look as many angles as possible and as individuals decide on what points we see as most important. There will unlikely be agreement, but I don't think that is a bad thing. I think agreement creates apathy, makes us blind to viewing a problem beyond our own personal understanding of the situation.
And for those of you wishing to destroy all religions simply alter this hypothetical into a question of political philosophies/regimes/doctrines, if you are unwilling to regard any part of religions as being of use to people. Practically speaking I don't see the eradication of all religions as a viable option!
- LuckyR
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Re: Religious Texts and Politics
Wow, you are quite the tap-dancer. Saying, yet not saying various things.Burning ghost wrote:I will extend a discussion here and look at a hypothetical to help us unearth the issues involved.
Let us say there are three religious texts as follows:
A) This text has many passages that can be said to incite hatred and murder. It does possess enough to promote peace above all else.
B) This text has few passages that can be said to incite hatred and murder. It does possess enough to promote peace above all else.
C) This text is moderate compared to both A and B.
Obviously we can see that text A poses the biggest possible risk to peace. This is a no brainer. What we are saying is POSSIBLE, not probable, nor definitively.
Now let us say that the population of followers of each religion is as follows:
A) 100
B) 200
C) 50
Which one now is the biggest threat to peace?
Now let us consider the more EXTREMIST views of these religious texts let us say the populations look like this:
A) 50
B) 50
C) 50
This levels the field and the extreme positions of each ( for and against peace) will cancel out? I think maybe not? When I say extreme I mean extreme adherence to either a passive or aggressive attitude. Already this is a difficult position to consider.
Now let us look at the governing bodies where these followers live. Let us say that they live under either a religiously sympathetic government or a non-religious government and note the figures accordingly (50/50) for (religious/non-religious):
A) 10/40
B) 20/30
C) 40/10
Now we can see that to start with we would easily view Text A to have been potentially the most harmful for peace. Yet when we expose a few different factors we see that what would have been regarded as the least likely to cause harm turns out to be the one most likely to in the given climate.
The question is then do we choose to oppose one text more than another? And if so how do we go about this? What other factors are there to take into account? What can we do to decrease the harmful interpretations of the words in these texts?
My view is that if we consider these simpler examples we can better come to a general agreement on a course of action. As we further intricate the problems and think of other factors to add we can begin to apply these ideas to real life situations. Of course I am not suggesting we can ever grasp every factor, but at least through this method we can perhaps come to appreciate things we have not considered before, and/or consider connections previously hidden from consideration.
I am sure many of you can argue against my simplistic hypothetical and say you disagree with my sweeping statements in claiming which one is the biggest threat to peace. This is because I have most likely not said everything that is on my mind because there is an awful lot to consider. The aim is not to propagate confusion, but simply to look as many angles as possible and as individuals decide on what points we see as most important. There will unlikely be agreement, but I don't think that is a bad thing. I think agreement creates apathy, makes us blind to viewing a problem beyond our own personal understanding of the situation.
And for those of you wishing to destroy all religions simply alter this hypothetical into a question of political philosophies/regimes/doctrines, if you are unwilling to regard any part of religions as being of use to people. Practically speaking I don't see the eradication of all religions as a viable option!
I don't have a problem with what you said (nor what you were trying to say). But topics of this nature ie comparative analyses, suffer from two common problems, and your's does as well. The first is that noting a true difference between A and B is not enough to justify treating them differently because almost all human things fall out into distributions much, much wider than the mean. So wide that the two curves (which I agree are statistically different) overlap to a greater extent. Thus there are numerous members of the "inferior" group who are better than some members of the "superior" group. The second issue was even if you discount the first idea, what should society do, from a practical perspective with a thing that has a 6% chance of causing badness in a world were everyone else has a 2.5% chance of turning bad?
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Re: Religious Texts and Politics
I agree with your model and principles but we need greater precision if we are to deal with reality and consider the existing religious texts.Burning ghost wrote:I will extend a discussion here and look at a hypothetical to help us unearth the issues involved.
Let us say there are three religious texts as follows:
A) This text has many passages that can be said to incite hatred and murder. It does possess enough to promote peace above all else.
B) This text has few passages that can be said to incite hatred and murder. It does possess enough to promote peace above all else.
C) This text is moderate compared to both A and B.
Obviously we can see that text A poses the biggest possible risk to peace. This is a no brainer. What we are saying is POSSIBLE, not probable, nor definitively.
When considering religious texts we need to take into account this very critical factor as in this thread;
"Fear of Death" a Primary Motivator of Religions?
http://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/ ... =4&t=14794
This subliminal fear will drive believers to do whatever their God commands them to do in their religious texts to please their God so that they can be assured of eternal life and a place in Heaven instead of in HELL. This is why some are so willing to sacrifice their own life for an eternal life in heaven.
As per the existing reality, I would classify the categories of religious texts as follows;
1. Text A: Has many passages that can be said to incite hatred and murder without any unconditional restraints. It has very minimal passages that are positive to non-believers.
2. Text B: Has some passages that can be said to incite hatred and murder, without any unconditional restraints. It has passages that are positive to non-believers.
3. Text C: Has some passages that can be said to incite hatred and murder but has an pacifist maxim of love as overriding all else. It has passages that are positive to non-believers.
4. Text D: Do not have any passage that be said to incite hatred and murder. It has passages that are positive to non-believers.
Let say all the above texts insist their doctrines must be the standard for any government, thus politicize religion and theocracy.
If the above texts are to be adopted by any government [into politics], Text A would be the greatest threat to humanity when it is exercised literally by the book.
Since this is a religious subject, we must take this into account;
"Fear of Death" a Primary Motivator of Religions?
http://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/ ... =4&t=14794
Under such terrible primal fears, believers will take the book of God as priority. The evil prones [being most forceful and dominant evident in History] will take over and they could even exterminate the human species if necessary as they have nothing to loose if anything were to happen to Earth since they are assured of a place in heaven regardless of whatever the outcome.
Religions must be separated from Politics at all costs.
- Burning ghost
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Re: Religious Texts and Politics
LuckyR -
I am asking for other things that play a role into how the more violent passages are doted upon. I have included the idea of secular societies and could have added numerous other factors involving education, disparity of wealth or national relations. I could have added several dozen other steps to this hypothetical. The question is generally trying to grasp the how all these factors extend into each other and that to point at a singular source as the problem is often misleading and blinds us from pieces of information that are blatant to others.
I think the list could get quite extensive and then we would look at all the interconnecting factors on the list and how they could wax and wane to different degree depending on each other.
Spectrum -
Not interested in that here. The question is hypothetical for the purpose of looking at other factors that influence the interpretations of religious texts and how they are put to use.As per the existing reality, I would classify the categories of religious texts as follows;
- LuckyR
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Re: Religious Texts and Politics
Again, I don't disagree with how you are setting up the situation, but you didn't address my question: "what should society do, from a practical perspective with a thing that has a 6% chance of causing badness in a world were everyone else has a 2.5% chance of turning bad?"Burning ghost wrote:The percentages are only important when looking beyond the immediate propositions. They are that one is text is more likely to incite hatred and one is in the middle. For simplicities sake it was easier to apply percentages to see how what originally looks like potentially the worse could in fact be the least likely to incite hatred given its geopolitical position (which would include numerous factors such as ones I have mentioned below to LuckyR).
LuckyR -
I am asking for other things that play a role into how the more violent passages are doted upon. I have included the idea of secular societies and could have added numerous other factors involving education, disparity of wealth or national relations. I could have added several dozen other steps to this hypothetical. The question is generally trying to grasp the how all these factors extend into each other and that to point at a singular source as the problem is often misleading and blinds us from pieces of information that are blatant to others.
I think the list could get quite extensive and then we would look at all the interconnecting factors on the list and how they could wax and wane to different degree depending on each other.
- Burning ghost
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Re: Religious Texts and Politics
- LuckyR
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Re: Religious Texts and Politics
Let's say members of religion A do evil things 2.5% of the time and members of religion B do them 6% of the time. Clearly there is something in the teachings of religion B that incites evil more so than religion A. Yet the vast majority of the members of religion B (94%), are just as righteous as the vast majority of religion A.Burning ghost wrote:Can you reword the question please? Something about the way you've structured the sentence makes me a little uncertain what you are actually asking/saying.
What, if anything, should be done with religion B?
- Burning ghost
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Re: Religious Texts and Politics
You are posing a hypothetical so saying "clearly" is not good enough. Either you are saying in your hypothetical that the teaching are the cause or you are not. If you are saying the teachings are the cause (rather than suggesting so which makes no sense for a hypothetical question) then what you believe you "should" do is up to you.LuckyR wrote:Let's say members of religion A do evil things 2.5% of the time and members of religion B do them 6% of the time. Clearly there is something in the teachings of religion B that incites evil more so than religion A. Yet the vast majority of the members of religion B (94%), are just as righteous as the vast majority of religion A.Burning ghost wrote:Can you reword the question please? Something about the way you've structured the sentence makes me a little uncertain what you are actually asking/saying.
What, if anything, should be done with religion B?
If we are saying the "evil" is judged by me as growing out of control and I wished to stop/hinder it then I would try and understand the position of these "evil" acts and get a better appreciation of why they are doing it. My personal approach would differ depending on personal circumstances obviously.
As a hypothetical I would then expand the question you pose into different areas carefully and see how would respond to tweaks. For example I would then ask if the "good" done by religion A and B outweighed the "bad", or I could take this idea of % "evil" as being the over all hypothetical mean of the "good" against "bad", in which case I would have to oppose both religions A and B (this is considering that the only relevant factor involved in the "evil" is the religious teachings rather than other external influences ... which can itself led into the more practical question of how to judge ideology A or B is necessarily completely "bad" or can be more productive for society if tweaked.)
The point of this for me is to look at the possible influence of other factors and drawing a stark line under real life situations. By looking at distanced hypotheticals we have a better chance of dealing with the chaotic nature of the real world situation, and viewing common beliefs in day-to-day life from multiple perspectives (but never all perspectives!)
It is interesting to look at some historic situations to understand how viable our views are. Often we follow the herd of ideas and opinions fed to us. If someone wants to look at the "bad" of something they are not likely to point out the "good", and likewise someone inclined to pointing out the "good" and ignoring the "bad" will give yet another imbalanced opinion. The best we can do is see the evidence first hand (often impossible!) and make judgement calls about the information we receive, the people who get the information, and the possible motivations involved.
All this is why I asked for people to expand the hypothetical. There are, no doubt, avenues I have not contemplated that may help me broaden my theoretical landscape about this issue.
From your reply if all people generally are 2.5% likely to be "evil" then by disposing of these people do we make the world better or worse? I don't doing so would cut "evil" out of the human genepool and to even think along these lines smells a lot like justifying genocide. We all know this has happened before in human history across the world and those committing the acts are the ones called "evil" not the people they were trying to dispose of.
Of course the is the obvious problem of really getting to the heart of what the phenomenon of "religion" is. No doubt we all have a vague enough concept of this to get the gist of what we're talking about, but regardless there is a certain need once we go so far to delve further into this for some people (that is why I said "ideology" and/or "religion". As an example we could compare Marxism and Capitalism, and further digress this into the relationship these ideals have with world religions.)
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Re: Religious Texts and Politics
- LuckyR
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Re: Religious Texts and Politics
Yes, I am saying that it is the cause (hence my use of the word "clearly"). And a bright person like yourself should be able to deduce that my answer is : we should do nothing, since I essentially said as much already and gave two statistical errors to explain why. More to my point, what do you think should be done?Burning ghost wrote:You are posing a hypothetical so saying "clearly" is not good enough. Either you are saying in your hypothetical that the teaching are the cause or you are not. If you are saying the teachings are the cause (rather than suggesting so which makes no sense for a hypothetical question) then what you believe you "should" do is up to you.LuckyR wrote: (Nested quote removed.)
Let's say members of religion A do evil things 2.5% of the time and members of religion B do them 6% of the time. Clearly there is something in the teachings of religion B that incites evil more so than religion A. Yet the vast majority of the members of religion B (94%), are just as righteous as the vast majority of religion A.
What, if anything, should be done with religion B?
If we are saying the "evil" is judged by me as growing out of control and I wished to stop/hinder it then I would try and understand the position of these "evil" acts and get a better appreciation of why they are doing it. My personal approach would differ depending on personal circumstances obviously.
As a hypothetical I would then expand the question you pose into different areas carefully and see how would respond to tweaks. For example I would then ask if the "good" done by religion A and B outweighed the "bad", or I could take this idea of % "evil" as being the over all hypothetical mean of the "good" against "bad", in which case I would have to oppose both religions A and B (this is considering that the only relevant factor involved in the "evil" is the religious teachings rather than other external influences ... which can itself led into the more practical question of how to judge ideology A or B is necessarily completely "bad" or can be more productive for society if tweaked.)
The point of this for me is to look at the possible influence of other factors and drawing a stark line under real life situations. By looking at distanced hypotheticals we have a better chance of dealing with the chaotic nature of the real world situation, and viewing common beliefs in day-to-day life from multiple perspectives (but never all perspectives!)
It is interesting to look at some historic situations to understand how viable our views are. Often we follow the herd of ideas and opinions fed to us. If someone wants to look at the "bad" of something they are not likely to point out the "good", and likewise someone inclined to pointing out the "good" and ignoring the "bad" will give yet another imbalanced opinion. The best we can do is see the evidence first hand (often impossible!) and make judgement calls about the information we receive, the people who get the information, and the possible motivations involved.
All this is why I asked for people to expand the hypothetical. There are, no doubt, avenues I have not contemplated that may help me broaden my theoretical landscape about this issue.
From your reply if all people generally are 2.5% likely to be "evil" then by disposing of these people do we make the world better or worse? I don't doing so would cut "evil" out of the human genepool and to even think along these lines smells a lot like justifying genocide. We all know this has happened before in human history across the world and those committing the acts are the ones called "evil" not the people they were trying to dispose of.
Of course the is the obvious problem of really getting to the heart of what the phenomenon of "religion" is. No doubt we all have a vague enough concept of this to get the gist of what we're talking about, but regardless there is a certain need once we go so far to delve further into this for some people (that is why I said "ideology" and/or "religion". As an example we could compare Marxism and Capitalism, and further digress this into the relationship these ideals have with world religions.)
- Burning ghost
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Re: Religious Texts and Politics
I view a lot of deduction as assumption. It is something I guess that expresses my approach. Of course I think I know what you mean, but I remain guarded against taking your meaning as it appears to me. In this sense I guess we are both dancing between skepticism and methodology.
I guess you then find yourself facing that old conundrum doing nothing as being an action itself! haha! but yeah, I kind of get your view, but my point is not about expressing my conclusions only moving the landscape about and seeing how my conclusions change and how my approach to a solution changes in relation to these changes. For me it is more about a general investigation of method so as to enforce action as I would like to act when the time for action is felt by me.
What I would do is not worth sharing because I don't know. What I would like to do opens up a whole number of other problems. What it ends with is me living my life as I see best without weighing myself down with responsibility, yet willing to take on responsibility enough to continue to try and understand and act as best I can (which is partially what I am doing on this forum. I am acting as I see fit. I may be wrong. It is not just on others to keep me in check it is on myself.)
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Re: Religious Texts and Politics
- Burning ghost
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Re: Religious Texts and Politics
As someone helped point out even if we knew which was worst we still don't know what to do about it or if we should?
What is very bizarre is if I tell you that there is an 80% chance you'll get cancer in the next 20years and you thought the chance was only 40% you won't really shift your belief. If I told you that the chance was only 30% you would quickly adjust your belief to 30%. This is a neurological fact of the stupid bias of the human brain ... then we can ask how this has been of use to us as a species maybe? It seems to be a certain "persistence" that may have helped us over the millennia? Who knows!
Given the above maybe we'll do what we believe is best religiously regardless of the piling up of contrary data? If we refuse to shift our beliefs then what makes us worthy of the position of dictating what others should or should not belief? Obviously, we ourselves
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Re: Religious Texts and Politics
There has been a lot of empirical work on the framing of probability statements, and it does seem we are biologically hardwired to look at the world in a non-mathematical fashion at times. At the end of the day, we are all deeply flawed evolved social primates. I'm including myself as part of the deeply flawed.
- Burning ghost
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Re: Religious Texts and Politics
Through each step we say this is bad and this is good, or worse, or whatever. The more we explore the more we at least come to grasp the complexity of factors involved.
There is something to be said about spreading hateful rhetoric. I don't really think looking at statistical data really helps deal with the issue though, it seems to me to just distract us with some ideal vision which points the figure in one direction rather than looking at all the other possible factors. If something is not popular it will go out of fashion. If something annoys or causes aggression people will eventually resist it.
The point of the hypothetical in the OP is to show that even if we make the arrogant presumption that one religious text has the potential to cause more violence and hatred than some others, this most certainly is not effectively going to make it so. There are countless other geopolitical implications including history, economy, nationalism, social inequality, language, and the list goes on and on.
If we are all deeply flawed are nay of us flawed at all? If we set up the pretense that we should be better we're always living in failure and a game of finger pointing to some imaginary "fault". I have had this discussion before in regard to "illusion" with someone who insisted everything was an "illusion", which is quite obviously the same as saying everything is not an illusion. Taking this into account humans are both flawed and without flaws.
We are neither robots nor computers (although the "computer" was named after a human computer). The staggering success of the sciences and mathematical application to the world has, in my view, bred a social problem. We take any old piece of data as some idealized truth, some undoubtable fact. What is usually happening is we conveniently pick up what we wish to hear and then back it up with bits of scientific research and mathematical logic (neither of which really add any human weight to the argument only dress it up as something that it is not).There has been a lot of empirical work on the framing of probability statements, and it does seem we are biologically hardwired to look at the world in a non-mathematical fashion at times.
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