The misunderstanding of religion

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Interesting article, very long:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haid...t07_index.html

The first half is a discussion of moral psychology--more science than backroom related. He concludes that humans evolved with five basic spheres of morality:

The individual spheres:
harm/care
fairness/reciprocity

and the binding spheres:
ingroup/loyalty
authority/respect
purity/sanctity

Surveys show that liberals place much more emphasis on the first two, while cultural conservatives weigh them all about equally (this is in the west).

He takes this as the definition of morality:

Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, practices, institutions, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.

And shows that there are two ways to accomplish this. In the contractual approach you fine tune the laws and institutions based on the two individual spheres--the other three get in the way since the emphasis is on freedoms. In the beehive approach, instead of emphasizing freedoms the binding spheres of morality are unite to unite people behind a shared moral code.

I'm more of an individualist, so I prefer the contractual approach, however the author makes the point that:

religious believers in the United States are happier, healthier, longer-lived, and more generous to charity and to each other than are secular people. Most of these effects have been documented in Europe too. If you believe that morality is about happiness and suffering, then I think you are obligated to take a close look at the way religious people actually live and ask what they are doing right.

I agree, and the secularism vs religion debate should be held on this framework instead of the strawmen that are usually thrown around:

a) The new atheists treat religions as sets of beliefs about the world, many of which are demonstrably false. Yet anthropologists and sociologists who study religion stress the role of ritual and community much more than of factual beliefs about the creation of the world or life after death.

b) The new atheists assume that believers, particularly fundamentalists, take their sacred texts literally. Yet ethnographies of fundamentalist communities (such as James Ault's Spirit and Flesh) show that even when people claim to be biblical literalists, they are in fact quite flexible, drawing on the bible selectively—or ignoring it—to justify humane and often quite modern responses to complex social situations.

c) The new atheists all review recent research on religion and conclude that it is an evolutionary byproduct, not an adaptation. They compare religious sentiments to moths flying into candle flames, ants whose brains have been hijacked for a parasite's benefit, and cold viruses that are universal in human societies. This denial of adaptation is helpful for their argument that religion is bad for people, even when people think otherwise.

Anyone who claims to favor science over religion should take a long hard look at the reasons they use to criticize it...thinking of few people from the backroom

-edit-

It's also interesting to note that there's a strong purity/sanctity strain in the environmentalist camp--which is why the come off as somewhat religious.