Religion as a societal force

For some reason tonight I was thinking about a subject I occasionally return to in thought with more of a passing interest, which is the idea of religion being a negative force in the world. This is an argument often made by those who identify themselves as atheists: religions create collective paradigms that tend to generalize certain aspects of reality which leads to misunderstandings which are acted upon en masse, resulting in intolerance, violence, and hurtful legislation. In my opinion this is an observation which must receive merit by history buffs or really anyone who is aware of current events. One question that may naturally arise, then, is that if these religions have negative effects on individuals and societies in this manner, how can any of these religions be from a loving deity? As I said I thought of these ideas lightly and for some reason tonight I managed to articulate a possible response that I had been considering.

As I postulated in a previous post (if I remember correctly), as individuals go through the process of self-identity, they discover/establish connections between sensory input and the "pleasure center" region of the brain. With the reinforcement of these connections over time they carve deeper ridges into the neural network so as to streamline these regular processes. "Non-objective" information (i.e. hearing that your friend is upset, as opposed to hearing a single tone of 440 Hz) that is put through this network may be rejected or assimilated into the paradigm of the individual based on the inertia of the difference facets of his identity. In a scientific sense, religion is simply a suggested paradigm of reality; it is a set of assumptions that has its basis more in faith than in empirical formula. It is thereby able to conquer some of the dark regions of man's understanding, such as life and death, the cosmos, and other mysteries understood by observation only. From what I have observed, religions generally have an established set of doctrine as well as a culture or multiple cultures resulting from the interpretation of the doctrine. From God to man there occurs the process of interpretation which takes place in every individual, no matter how exhaustive and cogent the syntax of the doctrine. Either undergoing socialization with these assumptions or assimilating them at a later time - which is to say, either growing up under the auspices of religion or converting to one later - these assumptions fill holes in the minds of those who adopt them, holes which may or may not be better filled with different pieces of information. I recognize that there is a difference in the case of one growing up and believe in the practice of teaching children plasticity of thought in these areas. In any case, the idea that I was wording earlier this evening is that the individuals who make manifest the negative effects of their religion upon society haven taken upon them their religion because they failed to complete their identity by alternative sensory input. In other words, their problem is not in the ideas they have adopted but rather in the intellectual holes they could not fill with better information. Had they never heard of the specific religion they chose to espouse, they would have filled the parched mental landscape with other pleasing generalizations, having already rejected more logical information. Now I suppose that this does not apply to all individuals to perpetuate this negative reputation of religion, and acknowledge that identity - the complex connections between sensory input and the pleasure center - is often shaped by religiosity in the home during formative years, and here enters the argument of nature vs nurture, which I won't get into right now. I do believe, however, that this is a measurable consideration in the argument of whether or not religion is a negative force. Would the devout followers of the Westboro Baptist Church have been crazy people if Fred Phelps never existed? Of course there's no way to know, and I suppose it probably would not be to the extend that it currently reaches, but I also suppose many of them would likely have latched onto other illogical things - as we all do to some extent - to fill their psychological needs.

Inertia

Interaction with other entities necessitates identification of that entity. Since people are incapable of omniscience, the process of identification is the creation of assumptions. Since the properties of physical entities are literally infinite and our understanding of physics relatively limited, the probability that identification is 100% accurate is 1/∞. This means that, inherently, everything individuals know about external entities has some untruth. Identification is a simplification of infinitely complex things which is necessary for interaction. It is like a jar we put flour in. The process of establishing personal identity is the process of creating identities for all the things that are received by the mind of the individual. Sensory information is received, bundled, identified, then assimilated. Assimilation is where self-identity formation takes place. Introducing new information into an organized system of information (paradigms) has potential to shift or nullify existing information, which affects all information connected with that information, in effect necessitating re-organization on different scales. Any re-organization means changing association between bits of information, which means that the information must be identified differently. Information that stimulates pleasure will carry greater weight. Inherent desires as well as socialization channels positive interaction into pleasure centers, but interaction can only occur when information has been organized, which requires identification. Thus, breaking down identification to allow re-organization of information has potential to temporarily inhibit a level of stimulation of the pleasure center. The greater this potential, the greater inertia acting against the assimilation action. Improper socialization or inherent mental attributes may channel non-social thoughts and behaviors into the pleasure center. If the inertia is too great, assimilation into the realm of comprehension will fail and the information will be rejected.

The level of intellectual curiosity I think is related to the degree an individual has learned to stimulate the pleasure center from information assimilation. Learning can be a very enjoyable experience for many. The realization that successful assimilation increases understanding channels the feeling of successful assimilation to the pleasure center, so that the force of assimilation is much greater and more often overcomes the inertia of stagnation. Of course each assimilation is unique, so different types may not be as much facilitated by this learned channeling.

Thoughts on Morality

Stepping out of theological context for this post. I think the idea of social morality is refined into "pro-social" and "anti-social" behavior. Laws are created to establish pro-social behavior. What pro-social behavior is changes on account of majority consent. Whatever allows for greater mutually beneficial social bonds will be endorsed. Communication technology has very great affect over this, since it affects the scope of influence of power. Communication is central to establishing consent of pro-social behavior among groups. The greater the communication power, the larger the scope of change is possible. Of course many aspects of social context act as inertial forces fighting against these changes. The smaller and more relevant the changes are, the less force will act against them. Given time and power great social changes may occur in this way. The idea of "relative morality" is essentially a reflection of this principle on a smaller scale. Most normal humans will seek to establish social bonds to improve their chance of survival. Thus, their motivation is pro-social and, if socialized properly, will result in pro-social behavior. These behaviors change with the social definitions of pro-social behavior, but the motivation is the same. Improving chances of survival can be labeled synonymous with finding individual peace. Improper socialization or other unusual issues may cause either a reversal of motivation (anti-survival) or a means of achieving survival via anti-social means. This then creates the seeming paradox of morality, where the individual is trying to find inner peace (attempts to be pro-social) but is acting in an anti-social way. The disparity of understanding between different groups concerning the definition of 'pro-social' creates a similar issue, i.e. how members of one family interact with each other may be detestable to members of a different family. This is a social issue of pro-social against anti-social, and is often used as an argument against a single universal system of morals.

The process of individual socialization and the process of group consent communication is the connection between the first and second part. Both will cause change for the purpose of greater success in social interaction, stronger mutually beneficial social bonds. Failure will create confusion and dissent.

Thought as I was reading

This isn't, of course, the first time I've touched on this idea, but I think one of the main reasons why reading the Book of Mormon strengthens one's testimony of the Gospel and brings him/her closer to the presence of God, at least for me, is that the thoughtful and truth-seeking reader will become increasingly aware, with each verse, of the gulf of reason inherent in the idea that the pages of the Book of Mormon - all 531 pages - were written for a self-serving purpose. It simply does not make sense why anyone would write it other than what it claims to be, and I believe this realization that is gained as one reads the book is one of the main sources of the power of conversion of the Book of Mormon.

thought

A brief thought: I thought of Bill Maher just a minute ago. A few weeks ago I said in a conversation that I disagreed with about 20% of what he says, but later that day I realized what I meant to say was that I disagreed with about 20% of his apparent mindset. As much as I rally around many of his ideals, I can't help but feel that he is very close-minded. Self-righteous. Like many of the well-known people who I agree with about 80% of the time, he believes himself to be (I'm pretty sure this is a near-exact quote) the only person with his head screwed on right. Well actually I'd suppose most people have that belief to some extent (including me). Anyway the point is that as I thought about this close-mindedness I came up with this sentence: the more open-minded a man is, the more capable he is of converting his enemies. I think I would also argue that the more open-minded, the greater potential to reach truth one has - whatever it is that you want to define truth as, your deviance from the direct path is determined by your weight of bias. So, no matter what ideals you pursue, you are more likely achieve the greatest happiness, as well as inspire the most people to join you, the more you disavow yourself of personal infallibility.


Also, open-mindedness inhibits institutionalization, or brainwashing. How can you be brainwashed if you incorporate the possibility of fallacy into your paradigm?

More society

Primary relationships, i.e. very close relationships, employ a pragmatic system of interaction. Tertiary relationships, or those with people we don't know at all, are most commonly handled idealistically because there are no distinguishing features between any individual of any tertiary party other than their potential to be anywhere between completely fine and completely inimical. Secondary relationships are with those who we may know "casually", such as normal friends, co-workers, employees of frequently frequented establishments that you've gotten to know on a first-name basis, take a very uncertain middle-ground that differs from relationship to relationship. With this perspective, I think I better understand how insanely difficult social and economic policies can become in a society of such numerous and complex social structures, and quite honestly I believe most of the American public (yes I'm generalizing) is not equipped to comment on or tamper with such policies. I don't mean they're not mentally equipped, but rather they don't have enough understanding of said social structures and other important social factors, and (more generalizing) are generally not found possessing the intellectual and psychological framework to process this information correctly, i.e. are too biased. I'd almost say there's decent merit in requiring a passing grade in a standardized college-level introductory sociology course in order to allow people to vote, or for that matter enter political forums or be a journalist for a news station or a political talk-show host, etc. I say standardized because I'd want to brainwash people I believe an understanding of the objective principles of the "science" of sociology is fundamentally important to accurately process information about other societies and the interaction between them, and so I would want the curriculum  to be unaffected by the emotional input of its teachers, a thing which I think sociology would tempt of the more emotionally loose professors.

Society

Recently I had a partially heated discussion with two of my roommates. I didn't have a specific point I was trying to make, rather I was hoping to dispel some of the misconceptions manifested in my cohorts. The discussion began because I commented on a story given to one of my roommates in an email. Here's the basic idea: At the request of his students, a professor implements a grading system where the scores are averaged and awarded to everyone. Test scores drop because the students who don't study demoralize those who do, and the story ends comparing this to Obama turning the country socialist. In hindsight I should never have had that conversation, because I realize my friends were not equipped with the proper mindset to accurately analyze this field. I realize this is my word alone, but I am adamant about this opinion. This post is more about some afterthoughts and refinements that were made as I reviewed my argument.

I don't know if I consider myself "socialist". Here's how I see it: You cannot rally around the flag of capitalism 100% and be a "true Christian" (I use this term loosely to describe empathetic people). Capitalism by default means that some people will be screwed no matter what. One of the ideals of socialism is to account and provide for those people, even if it means bringing the outrageously well-off people down a bit to do it.

Here I must bring up a point that was made in the discussion. I used the example of tribal societies to show the positive outcomes of socialistic ideals put into practice ("social context", an extremely important concept for this discussion, was a word I used many times, but that appeared to have been acknowledged exactly 0 times). The counter argument was that it was obviously terrible because so many of these societies were destroyed or absorbed by the agricultural societies (I had to explain to them this period of social history). I then brought up the fact that there were still societies like those that exist today, so therefore the society itself was fine in that regard, but that it was the world around them that changed. The reply: well that just shows that those societies are inferior to the agricultural societies. I don't know how I couldn't make this argument at the time as it is pathetically obvious. The great depression, one of the many economic dips inherent in a capitalist society, caused many people who were formerly possessors of what we consider the standards of living to drop below the poverty line, in many cases the absolute poverty line; so much so that not only was heavy government regulation necessary, but bread lines and other government handouts were necessary. Basically, people were suffering, not necessarily because their way of life was unsustainable (if you are to insist that capitalism is sustainable, and also assume that the majority of people at this time were not directly responsible for the over-speculation and other major contributors to the economic crisis), but because their social circumstances changed.

I'm short on time. There's one other idea I had. The example of the professor failing his class has a host of critical differences from American society, something which I don't have time to mention. But, as my brother pointed out recently, we have a tendency to mentally group people - you might use the categories of primary, secondary, and tertiary. Basically the farther away from primary people are, the less human they naturally register in our minds unless overridden by a higher though process. Example: Muslims vs. your family. Consciously you may recognize them all as humans and thus equal, but that is contrary to the natural reaction. So, I assume the professor's class must have been your average large class where people form their many personal social groups and consider everyone outside of them lesser. On the other hand, such a system would have worked marvelously in my Arabic class, because it was small enough and full of smart enough people to where we were all one close social group, and issues like a lack of desire to study could be addressed, which would be nearly impossible in larger groups due to the natural social grouping process exhibited by us humans.