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Source: (consider it) Thread: What causes religious observance and violence to peak in the same societies?
HughWillRidmee
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If there is a clear relationship between how religious a society is and how violent it is LA Times do we presume that the tendencies to violence and religion are products of the same conditions?

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The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things.. but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them...
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HCH
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How does one measure how "religious" a culture is? Does this refer only to theistic religions or to all religions?

The suggested correlation seems highly suspect to me. How could one adjust for other factors?

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Leorning Cniht
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quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
do we presume that the tendencies to violence and religion are products of the same conditions?

I don't think we presume that, no.

I'm not terribly impressed with the article (if you're claiming that the important difference between Sierra Leone and Sweden is religion, you rather abandon all your credibility before you start), but I would suggest that it's likely that people feel they need religion less when they have comfortable, secure lives, whereas people who are at significant risk of random bad things happening to them are more likely to look to religion, superstition, magic and so on.

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LeRoc

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I do have the feeling that living in a violent environment can have an influence on the kind of religion you profess. A friend of mine, who is a theologian, once told me about research done in one of the violent favela neighbourhoods in Rio de Janeiro. It turned out that the people who live their have a much more rigorous good vs. bad, angels vs. demons kind of Christianity than the average of other populations. I guess that's understandable.

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Marvin the Martian

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quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
I would suggest that it's likely that people feel they need religion less when they have comfortable, secure lives, whereas people who are at significant risk of random bad things happening to them are more likely to look to religion, superstition, magic and so on.

Bingo.

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Lamb Chopped
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Very much so. The interesting thing is that it's not clear from the correlation whether the surrounded-by-violence supernatural-forces-believers are perceiving reality more clearly or less than those in safer, otherwise-believing groups. (Drat these lengthy paraphrases)

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Martin60
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I accept the premiss hands down. Violence is correlated with religion. As religion is predicated on redemptive violence.

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Kwesi
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Martin60
quote:
I accept the premiss hands down. Violence is correlated with religion. As religion is predicated on redemptive violence
Correlation and association, however, should not be confused with causality. Furthermore, if there is a causal link which is cause and which effect?

[code fixed]

[ 05. November 2015, 18:01: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]

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Martin60
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The cause is religion. The effect is violence. The cause of religion is ignorance. The cause of ignorance is deprivation. Poverty. Class. Inequity. You know the kind of thing. Religion oils the wheels all the way.

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rolyn
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Religion can cause tension, it can cause anger. It plays around with the whole concept of good and evil, aswell as defining love and hatred. All these can, but not always, lead to violence.
Then you can get religous entrenchment over various issues with a group, or several groups, believing it/they are right and everyone else is wrong. Conflict or violence may the the result. Also, on the larger scale, there is the odered institution wherby religion and politics are combined to manipulate the masses into militarism and warfare.

So the link between religion and violence is extremely broad and, as is also obvious, violence occurs quite readily in the absence of any religiosity or religious influence whatsoever.

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Kwesi
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HughWillRidmee
quote:
If there is a clear relationship between how religious a society is and how violent it is LA Times do we presume that the tendencies to violence and religion are products of the same conditions?
.
The article in the LA Times does not claim a causal relationship between religion and violence rather it questions the claim that a high level of religiosity increases social peace, and a low level of religiosity increases social disintegration and violence.

LA Times:
quote:
The theory is simple: If people become less religious, then society will decay. Crime will skyrocket, violence will rise, and once-civilized life will degenerate into immorality and depravity. It's an old, widespread notion. And it's demonstrably false.


Having examined the evidence it concludes:-

quote:
It is, of course, impossible to conclude from any of this data that secularism, in and of itself, causes societal well-being, or that religiosity causes social ills. Peacefulness, prosperity and overall societal goodness are undoubtedly caused by multiple, complex factors — economic, geographic, cultural, political, historical and so forth. That said, it is clear that a strong or increased presence of secularism isn't the damaging threat to society so many continually claim it to be.
I therefore find it difficult, HughWillRidmee , to see how your question arises from the LA article, which is sceptical of the claimed link between religion and violence, positive or negative.
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Helen-Eva
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Not all highly religious cultures are deprived of course - there are very religious parts of the USA which seem to have plenty of resources and also of course Arab states like Saudi Arabia. I wondered whether some cultures are more likely to express things outwardly than others - the most expressive might seem most religious and most violent simply because they let things out more.

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LeRoc

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The LA Times article asks a different question than what Hugh is asking here. It is looking at the claim "A decline in religion will make societies more violent" and concludes that this claim is false. I agree with their conclusion, and it isn't very upsetting for me. I never agreed with this claim in the first place (in fact, I haven't heard it much).

But this is different from what Hugh is asking in the OP.

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quetzalcoatl
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This made me nostalgic - in the good old days, there seemed to be numerous articles arguing that religion made people violent. They seemed to die out, as it was realized that correlation was being conflated with causation. For example, in some countries, black areas have more crime, and so on.

I remember after 9/11, even in England there were articles in church magazines saying that it happened because God had been rejected. Gulp.

Sleeping with your shoes on causes headaches!

Look for the confounds (confounding variables), as Leorning Cniht does above.

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Enoch
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quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
The LA Times article asks a different question than what Hugh is asking here. It is looking at the claim "A decline in religion will make societies more violent" and concludes that this claim is false. I agree with their conclusion, and it isn't very upsetting for me. I never agreed with this claim in the first place (in fact, I haven't heard it much).

But this is different from what Hugh is asking in the OP.

I think the article goes further than that. The writer wants you to conclude that "A decline in religion will make societies less violent".

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Martin60
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He's empirically right now we're the other side of communism.

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Evensong
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quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
If there is a clear relationship between how religious a society is and how violent it is LA Times do we presume that the tendencies to violence and religion are products of the same conditions?

There is no clear relationship.

Poor article. Might do better if they controlled for first vs third world countries.

I grew up in Indonesia - religious country. I now live in Australia - quite a secular country. Indonesia was much more peaceful and safe than Australia is. Violent crime was unusual there, it's pretty common here.

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Kwesi
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Ironically, the views of the religious right being castigated in the article are not too dissimilar from those of Marxists who regard religion as a conservative influence inhibiting the emergence of the class war. The cost of social peace is the maintenance of injustice.
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Gramps49
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Correlation does not mean causation.

An example

A month ago our son taught our 23 month old grandson the fight song of our local university. After that the university's football team won three straight games. Does that mean the 23 month baby had to do something with the winning streak?

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Kwesi
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Who knows?!
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Truman White
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'Spose the other thing to remember is that abandoning religious practice doesn't mean the loss of religious influence. You can have religious values - introduced through missional and worshipping communities - embedded deeply in your culture through years of practice. People can abandon worship of the God that inspired these values but carry on with some of the social and moral behaviours that religion introduced.
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quetzalcoatl
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quote:
Originally posted by Truman White:
'Spose the other thing to remember is that abandoning religious practice doesn't mean the loss of religious influence. You can have religious values - introduced through missional and worshipping communities - embedded deeply in your culture through years of practice. People can abandon worship of the God that inspired these values but carry on with some of the social and moral behaviours that religion introduced.

I'm not sure if that helps, if there is a supposed correlation between religiosity and crime/violence. The article seems to be saying that secular states are more peaceful, which doesn't mean that secularism causes peace, of course. Then the hunt is on for other variables.

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Martin60
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quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Ironically, the views of the religious right being castigated in the article are not too dissimilar from those of Marxists who regard religion as a conservative influence inhibiting the emergence of the class war. The cost of social peace is the maintenance of injustice.

The Marxists are of course right. How is that similar to the religious right saying that the country is going to the dogs?

Evensong. Sooooo, is Australia better or worse than it was? Is there more or less institutionalized, conservative, religiously clothed violence? The same will go for Indonesia of course. From a different starting point. With a long and recent history of paroxysmic violence.

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Evensong
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Don't know Martin. But sanctioned, institutionalised violence is different from violent crime in society.

That pathetic article speaks of the United Nations' 2011 Global Study on Homicide.
Here is a map of that study. Indonesia and Saudi ( both religious countries ) come in low.

Looks to me like political and economic stability is the biggest factor followed by drug cartels and organised crime.

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LeRoc

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I'll do it in more detail when I have time. I got religion numbers per country from here and homicide rates from here. I did it very quickly, but I got an R-squared of 0.063. My statistics courses were some time ago, but does this mean that there is a 6.3% correlation between religion and homicide? In any case, it's rather low.

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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)

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Gee D
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Don't know Martin. But sanctioned, institutionalised violence is different from violent crime in society.

That pathetic article speaks of the United Nations' 2011 Global Study on Homicide.
Here is a map of that study. Indonesia and Saudi ( both religious countries ) come in low.

Looks to me like political and economic stability is the biggest factor followed by drug cartels and organised crime.

With Australia in the same bracket as Indonesia and Saudi Arabia - not very supportive of your earlier comments. It may just be more publicity here.

And look at the rate in Greenland!

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LeRoc

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Here is a quick graph. On the horizontal axis is the religiosity of countries (100% minus the irreligion rate), on the vertical axis the homicide rate (per 100,000 inhabitants). The red line is the trend.

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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)

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Dave W.
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quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I'll do it in more detail when I have time. I got religion numbers per country from here and homicide rates from here. I did it very quickly, but I got an R-squared of 0.063. My statistics courses were some time ago, but does this mean that there is a 6.3% correlation between religion and homicide? In any case, it's rather low.

I believe it means that if you assume a linear relationship between these two variables (this measure of religion and the homicide rate) you can account for only 6.3% of the variance in homicide rates among countries - essentially, 94% of the variation in homicide rate from country-to-country is due to something else.

If all you knew about a country was its score on this measure of religion, it would tell you very little about the homicide rate you should expect to find there.

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LeRoc

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quote:
Dave W.: If all you knew about a country was its score on this measure of religion, it would tell you very little about the homicide rate you should expect to find there.
Exactly. (Here is a graph with axis labels. Because I'm perfectionist like that [Smile] )

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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)

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Raptor Eye
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I think that there is a cycle, at which point we enter according to preference.

I suggest that in peace time, when we do not feel under threat, we are more likely to abandon religion or not to seek it as we become complacent about matters of life and death.

In times when we feel under threat, particularly if helplessly so, we are more likely to wonder about the afterlife and to seek for signs of God, as well as to want to call on someone, anyone, for help. At such times we might look for a correlation between our behaviour and the occurrence of events, so that superstitions spring up (which should not be in any way related to religion, but which often are). Of course, if under threat, we are far more likely to become violent, to protect ourselves, until there is peace.

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HughWillRidmee
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Thanks for some thoughtful answers.

I can't see how my question could be interpreted as implying a causal relationship between religion and violence. It may or may not be there but I was asking if the two are products of the same conditions.

I suspect that those who suggest that poverty and insecurity encourage both greater religiosity and higher levels of violence are right. Clearly other factors such as the availability of weapons and the level of governmental control (which may sometimes employ religion) are involved but if you are oppressed might you see both religion and violence as ways to escape? They constitute a more extreme and uncertain approach than escaping the pit village via university or football but if they are all that is available.....?

In such contexts where education is often basic and life unpredictable don't creeds such as the prosperity gospel and gang membership both offer a gambler's solution. Others may accommodate poverty and fear by deciding, without evidence but also without any alternative source of hope, that a better life will be theirs after this one is complete. As to violence, gang membership offers status, reward and protection whilst fearful people will often over-react to perceived threats and if they have access to weapons their use becomes "getting my retaliation in whilst it's still safe to do so".

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The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things.. but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them...
W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" (1877)

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Martin60
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I vividly remember Trevor McDonald, the black British ITN news reader, 25-30 years ago, being interviewed and asked about his experience of racism. His immediate response was 'I live in Esher'. Meaning that whoever, whatever one is, in Esher one does NOT encounter racism.

Meaning it's about CLASS. Money. Privilege. Education. The higher up the scale of that the less religiously observant one is and the less violent. All exceptions - filthy rich and even yeoman Christians or Muslims or Hindus - prove that rule.

And enshrine institutionalized violence which begets chaotic violence.

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Love wins

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HughWillRidmee
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
I vividly remember Trevor McDonald, the black British ITN news reader, 25-30 years ago, being interviewed and asked about his experience of racism. His immediate response was 'I live in Esher'. Meaning that whoever, whatever one is, in Esher one does NOT encounter racism.

Meaning it's about CLASS. Money. Privilege. Education. The higher up the scale of that the less religiously observant one is and the less violent. All exceptions - filthy rich and even yeoman Christians or Muslims or Hindus - prove that rule.

And enshrine institutionalized violence which begets chaotic violence.

Not sure I agree totally regarding Esher's residents - I wonder how many of Trevor McDonald's neighbours would have been truly happy if their daughter had announced over the Sunday dinner table that she was to marry him.

The rich may not need to be violent, nor religious, on a daily basis but they include people who enjoy unnecessarily killing sentient beings and have their own gangs - schools, the upper ranks of occupations - including the military - etc. - one could argue that religious institutions such as the RCC and the CofE were others. I agree that the need for personal religious belief and personal acts of violence is dissipated by a comfortable lifestyle, religion being seen as inconvenient and the capacity for violence simply being outsourced.

I have no doubt that, should they decide that the violence of the plebs seriously threatened them, those who regard themselves as society's natural leaders would do whatever it took to restore their control - which has traditionally been enforced by a combination which included the capacity for unfettered violence and the threat of hell. As the threat of hell becomes less effective will the likelihood of violence increase?

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The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things.. but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them...
W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" (1877)

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Enoch
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quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
Not sure I agree totally regarding Esher's residents - I wonder how many of Trevor McDonald's neighbours would have been truly happy if their daughter had announced over the Sunday dinner table that she was to marry him. ...

Not so sure about that. I think quite a lot of parents would be quite keen on their daughter marrying an intelligent, sophisticated, well dressed, television news reader of whatever ethnic background. They might be rather less keen on her marrying a ganja smoking Rastafarian with dreadlocks. But then, would they be that keen on a shambling white son-in-law smoking weed with no job and wearing a baseball cap back to front and baggy track suit bottoms?

The interplay between racial and class prejudices in modern Britain is complicated and quite interesting. Stability, earning capacity and what the eighteenth century called 'bottom' always impress prospective in-laws in ways in which their opposite does not.

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Truman White
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:
Originally posted by Truman White:
'Spose the other thing to remember is that abandoning religious practice doesn't mean the loss of religious influence. You can have religious values - introduced through missional and worshipping communities - embedded deeply in your culture through years of practice. People can abandon worship of the God that inspired these values but carry on with some of the social and moral behaviours that religion introduced.

I'm not sure if that helps, if there is a supposed correlation between religiosity and crime/violence. The article seems to be saying that secular states are more peaceful, which doesn't mean that secularism causes peace, of course. Then the hunt is on for other variables.
Alright Q? My variable is an historical one. Find a country with a population that used to be more actively religious than they are now and see how the crime rate has moved over time. So what's the impact of secularism on a country that has been deeply influenced by religious values? If the crime rate stays pretty much the same as religious practice declines, then you can make a case for saying that secularism doesn't erode values derived from religious practice.

It's a different comparator from this study.

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mousethief

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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Looks to me like political and economic stability is the biggest factor followed by drug cartels and organised crime.

I think the economic thing is very important. People don't feel a need for God when they're well off the way they do when they're poor. And poverty breeds violence. Stands to reason that as (say) western European countries moved towards a(n at least) decent standard of living for most of their people, both crime and religiosity would fall.

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HughWillRidmee
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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
Not sure I agree totally regarding Esher's residents - I wonder how many of Trevor McDonald's neighbours would have been truly happy if their daughter had announced over the Sunday dinner table that she was to marry him. ...

Not so sure about that. I think quite a lot of parents would be quite keen on their daughter marrying an intelligent, sophisticated, well dressed, television news reader of whatever ethnic background. They might be rather less keen on her marrying a ganja smoking Rastafarian with dreadlocks. But then, would they be that keen on a shambling white son-in-law smoking weed with no job and wearing a baseball cap back to front and baggy track suit bottoms?

The interplay between racial and class prejudices in modern Britain is complicated and quite interesting. Stability, earning capacity and what the eighteenth century called 'bottom' always impress prospective in-laws in ways in which their opposite does not.

I agree entirely - I read the original comment as suggesting that racial prejudice was absent from Esher - my point was intended to question its absence - not its frequency

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HughWillRidmee
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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Looks to me like political and economic stability is the biggest factor followed by drug cartels and organised crime.

I think the economic thing is very important. People don't feel a need for God when they're well off the way they do when they're poor. And poverty breeds violence. Stands to reason that as (say) western European countries moved towards a(n at least) decent standard of living for most of their people, both crime and religiosity would fall.
Economic stability in the sense of 1% always controlling 90+% of the nation's wealth will encourage violence. Redistribute enough of the wealth to enough of the people (throw in state provided pensions/healthcare etc.) and most people will fail to see any reason to practice either religion or violence other than culturally.

And there I'd better leave it - I'm not sure that MT, ES and HWR have ever been so much in agreement!

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The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things.. but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them...
W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" (1877)

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LeRoc

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When I compared religiosity with violence (homicide incidence) across countries, I got a low R². When I have more time I want to compare inequality (Gini coefficient) with violence. I suspect I'll get a much higher correlation.

Cases in point are Brazil and South Africa. Both countries with extremely high inequality, and with high violence.

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Moo

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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
People don't feel a need for God when they're well off the way they do when they're poor.

If there are terrible non-financial problems in their lives, they do.

Moo

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mousethief

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quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
People don't feel a need for God when they're well off the way they do when they're poor.

If there are terrible non-financial problems in their lives, they do.

Moo

I wasn't referring to that, but yes, of course.

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Honest Ron Bacardi
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quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Looks to me like political and economic stability is the biggest factor followed by drug cartels and organised crime.

I think the economic thing is very important. People don't feel a need for God when they're well off the way they do when they're poor. And poverty breeds violence. Stands to reason that as (say) western European countries moved towards a(n at least) decent standard of living for most of their people, both crime and religiosity would fall.
Economic stability in the sense of 1% always controlling 90+% of the nation's wealth will encourage violence. Redistribute enough of the wealth to enough of the people (throw in state provided pensions/healthcare etc.) and most people will fail to see any reason to practice either religion or violence other than culturally.

And there I'd better leave it - I'm not sure that MT, ES and HWR have ever been so much in agreement!

Now it's my turn not to be sure about that.

The fly in the ointment is that crime survey stats*. (in the UK - no idea about elsewhere) have shown us becoming less violent even as we become less equal.

I can only think that something else is involved. Or maybe there is a time-lag here.

(* it has to be crime survey stats. Reported police crime figures vary according to external factors)

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Barnabas62
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Human beings have the propensity for violence. It's built into our survival instincts. Which may explain the corrective significance of Christian teachings about loving neighbours, enemies, practising hospitality, seeking to live in peace with those around you, following the way of unselfish, self-giving love.

A more interesting question for Christians is why such well known teaching gets set aside when facing conflict.

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Martin60
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Because we say the beatitudes are an impossible ideal and God forgives our failure to even approach that bar?

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Love wins

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Barnabas62
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I think Bonhoffer refuted that pretty well,

quote:
According to Bonhoeffer,

"cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ."

Cheap grace, Bonhoeffer says, is to hear the gospel preached as follows: "Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness." The main defect of such a proclamation is that it contains no demand for discipleship. In contrast to cheap grace,

"costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." " [From "The Cost of Discipleship]

In this context, it may be that the hardest aspects of our seeking to follow are trying to love our enemies, and setting aside tit-for-tat by repaying evil with good. Coming in the opposite spirit to those who express emnity to us, persecute us. Breaking the mold of the endless cycling and recycling of violence.

[ 13. November 2015, 07:21: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]

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Kwesi
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Barnabus62
quote:
Human beings have the propensity for violence. It's built into our survival instincts. Which may explain the corrective significance of Christian teachings about loving neighbours, enemies, practising hospitality, seeking to live in peace with those around you, following the way of unselfish, self-giving love.

A more interesting question for Christians is why such well known teaching gets set aside when facing conflict.

Are you referring to a general disposition on the part of Christians when faced with conflicts that could lead to violence, or those situations in which Christians resort to violent solutions. In my experience Christians are amongst those least likely to resort to violence even in the face of great injustice.
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Martin60
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Not in anyone else's here for ooooooh 1700 years.

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Barnabas62
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Kwesi

It's the "fight" part of the fight or flight response of human beings when threatened. I'm making no moral judgment about that, I think it's just the way we are made.

We don't have to follow the instinctive line of behaviour but under strong stimulus it can be pretty hard to resist, even if wise to do so.

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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

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Kwesi
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Martin60
quote:
Not in anyone else's here for ooooooh 1700 years.
Thought you'd fall for that one!
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Kwesi
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Barnabus62
quote:
It's the "fight" part of the fight or flight response of human beings when threatened. I'm making no moral judgment about that, I think it's just the way we are made.
Hobbes, of course took a different view In his opinion what men most feared was violent death and would, therefore, subject themselves to virtually any authority to avoid it. Biologically-speaking ISTM the human species naturally avoids any action that will limit the propagation of the species.
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