Mr. Hume’s post on “Religion & Age” left hanging the question whether there might be a general trend for individuals to get more religious as they get older. The Inductivist has taken up the issue. He says no.
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But I wonder if there is a big uptick for the very old? I notice my own aged parents (80’s) getting more religious as they close in on their final exit, but they have only just recently begun to do so.
For a group of folks who think that religion is just a bunch of superstitious nonsense, y’all sure spend a great deal of time thinking and talking about religion!
C’mon, why aren’t all you liberated freethinkers using your amazing intellectual firepower to brainstorm wonderful insights that supposedly accompany the decision to jettison the fairy tales?
Derb, you’ve been an atheist for several years now – surely your ability (now that you’ve become ever so much more rational and reasonable) to throw together syllogisms and provide keen policy insights ought to placed you ever so much ahead of a superstitious moron like, say, WFB Jr.
What gives?
As perhaps the elder statesman of this blog, I believe that religious habits die hard and the travails of old age do nothing to diminish those habits.As an atheist for much longer than kids like David Hume, I have a greater sense of the importance of religion as a source of morality for the vast masses of ordinary, non-intellectual folks who “see” no farther than the tip of their noses.For me it is the moral dimension that provides the glue of the social order and allows civility to triumph.
Conversely, the secularization process that attends the vast but inevitable decline of culture is an epiphenomenon(as Bradlaugh puts it) because most narcissistic young people, so full of themselves after years of hearing about their unlimited virtues, simply absorb a mindless materialism with their drugs, sex, and rock n’ roll-or is it hip-hop?Check out 100 of Hollywood’s last movies and the teen channels on cable TV and see the stupendous wasteland that cannot but lead to a demented, cynical mind. National decay on a panoramic scale as seen in Spring Break.
Once the now elderly lived in a society where the Protestant ethic was diligently followed and adult authority was solid and real.It was next to impossible to be a narcissist because children were not viewed as already perfect little gods. They were often subjected to physical beatings and they failed-yes failed- in school when they deserved it.Only my Jewish friends were not beaten because their liberal parents could not imagine such abuse.While they were indeed a bit more snotty than non-Jews, they still conformed to the general atmosphere of introverted silence in school classrooms. By the Sixties, however, this cultural milieu was in a shambles. We now face the consequences of that liberal victory..
Real atheists who earn their stripes also gain a moral sense that should carry to their graves. Since all the ones I know were once Christians, i find the other kinds hard to appreciate. How on earth do real atheists today learn morality? Paul Kurtz has some good ideas but his FREE ENQUIRY is full of crazy liberal ideas like those of one Barack H. Obama. A culture of cynicism and vulgarity is not a good place to learn moral principles. Christianity has already been compromised by the triumph of leftist ideas, so its continued decline based upon humanist values cannot lead to good ends.Perhaps I lived in an intermediste period after WWII when the Protestant ethic still held sway before Vietnam and Civil Rights.We lost more than the young today can ever imagine by quite easily succumbing to the virulent left.With their hero now in the Presidency they have by no means finished the dissolution process.
“No Atheists on the Shuffleboard Court?”
My dad was an atheist in the proverbial (WW2) foxhole and would’ve been so on the shuffleboard court if he’d ever played shuffleboard.
“C’mon, why aren’t all you liberated freethinkers using your amazing intellectual firepower to brainstorm wonderful insights that supposedly accompany the decision to jettison the fairy tales?”
False assumption.
“If only you would be altogether silent! For you, that would be wisdom.” – Job 13:4-6
“Since all the ones I know were once Christians, i find the other kinds hard to appreciate.”
1- Then your sample is very narrow.
2- Do you find it hard to appreciate people that you don’t know?
3- Does “other kinds” refer to former Buddhists, Jews, Shamanists, etc?
4- What is a “real” atheist? What is a not-real atheist?
“How on earth do real atheists today learn morality?”
Human morality is mostly genetic, but on the other hand…
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070606_christopher_hitchens_religion_poisons_everything/
Jon Wiener: … But why blame God for the bad things that men do?
Christopher Hitchens: I don’t blame God. I blame religion. I don’t believe there is such a thing as God. Religion makes people do wicked things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. It doesn’t make them behave better—it makes them behave worse. You couldn’t get people to hack away at the genitals of their newborn children if they didn’t think there was a religious obligation to do so. The licenses for genocide, slavery, racism, are all right there in the holy text.
Also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtdmKrSHjfU
#2: Bite me.
#4: Good comment. Nothing is stranger to me (& I’d guess to you, too) than the notion that you need some sort of instruction book for morality. Hunter-gatherers treat each other decently for the most part. Not as well as we do; but then, we have greater population density and pleasanter lives. Morality concerns behavior, and attitudes to behavior. Why does homo sap. have the typical behaviors he has, and the typical attitudes to behaviors he has? Because he’s homo sap & that’s the brain he’s equipped with. Why do ants have the behaviors they have? Why do baboons? Etc., etc. I don’t think I even understand the question here.
Hunter-gatherers did not treat each other decently for the most part. The evidence to date indicates that violence was common.Across the globe remains often show mutilation and torture. They instinctively protected their kin but alien tribes were attacked almost automatically.Things calmed down with agriculture but still warfare with “the other” was commonplace.
You do not grasp the kind of society America once was. While I am giving you a very personal perspective, I was once in the tiny 1% that was athiest before 1960.Bertrand Russell was a freak as an openly atheistic thinker in 1950. It was simply a condition ranking with insanity for most Americans. Remember that psych texts called morons morons in those days! Imagine that.Atheists were pure outsiders. The only species one would meet were fallen Christians, so to speak.I resepect those who work through the superstructure of eschatology compared to the passive ones who fall off logs. If you can’t grasp that point I can’t help you.
Finally, morality has a cognitive dimension that does require instruction.In the past parents had support from church and school about basic rules of right and wrong behavior.Kohlberg’s entire moral development scheme is heavily cognitive. However, IQ could profoundly affect one’s abilty to reason through various dilemmas, so natural intellect helps.Many in prison today have IQ’s below 90, as you must know.Combine that with impulsivity and you have an inferior moral agent.Learning definitely affects our morality by interacting with weak general tendencies.In a laissez-faire world like today, precious, highly protected but spoiled children are rarely if ever punished or reasoned with effectively, leaving them the only source of their unique morality. This useually narcissistic morality is parasitic or exploitatious.Instruction can make a huge difference if parents are kind, firm, and determined.
C. Hitchens is often an opinionated buffoon.He is special pleading and chery picks to make a point. A model of Christian morality was one Albert Schweitzer, Man of the Half Century of Time Magazine.Christianity can be blamed for abuses as well as credited for vast amounts of good.Indeed, nearly all good people I have met have been Christians(but for a few Jews. Most Americans are still Christian, after all. Being a dominant group means that the subpopulation of miscreants committing various crimes will also call themseves Christian, although that is diminishing.
They instinctively protected their kin but alien tribes were attacked almost automatically.Things calmed down with agriculture but still warfare with “the other” was commonplace.
How silly!
Of course, morality is an in-group behavior, not an “universal value”.
Would be or “pretend” universal values are a hallmark of religion.
Cornelius J. Troost isn’t a “real atheist” that’s for sure.
Iam amazed that defending the good side of Christianity makes me less than a real atheist.I guess that many atheists today feel they must replicate the venom of Dawkins and Hitchens to feel part of a movement or club. No-one wants isolation so it is a temptation to “join the cause.” Sorry, I was an isolated and rare atheist long before Dawkins began his shouting.I don’t change my colors to fit my surroundings.I simply don’t like special pleading.
Kevembuannga: You are making assumptions about universal values not existing. If there are moral facts there potentially could be a case for moral universals, but I don’t have the time to do a disquisition on that topic here.In a world full of anarchy and evil, we better hope that morality is more than local!!
Even Paul Kurtz and his humanist movement have universal values. You must pick up a copy of his Free Inquiry at a local bookstore.
“you couldn’t get people to hack away at the genitals of their newborn children if they didn’t think there was a religious obligation to do so.”
Nonsense and absurdity! I live in America, where the vast majority of people hack away at the genitals of their newborn children, and yet most of them do not believe they’re under a religious obligation.
Instead, they do so because 1) they’re familiar with it, 2) society views it as normal and they don’t wish to go against the flow, and 3) they don’t want to acknowledge even the possibility that it might be harmful because the consequences of such acknowledgment are more than they want to deal with.
Religion tends to produce conformistic norms, but it’s not necessary. People will conform even in its absence.
Can’t believe I’m about to stick up for good ol’ Cornelius here, but…
Any morality that is merely an “in-group” system is not only worthless but is affirmatively dangerous, because there’s the sticky little matter of all the other people out there in the world who you now have license to kill, and have license to kill you back. Sounds like a great recipe for peace and understanding, there…
Any morality that does not apply to every human being (really, every rational agent, since it is not metaphysically necessary that all rational agents be human) is counterproductive. We have to recognize that each and every person living in the world is a potential value to us, until they prove otherwise, say by violating others’ rights or generally showing themselves to be a ‘tard. There are but two groups that concern me when it comes to morality…the individual (particularly myself), and all rational agents. No other division, in my mind, is helpful or productive, ESPECIALLY not any division revolving around tribalistic group identity.
The Kat, kickin’ it at the other end of the age spectrum…
because there’s the sticky little matter of all the other people out there in the world who you now have license to kill, and have license to kill you back.
I am afraid that in principle this isn’t going to go away anytime soon, though it is not a “license to kill” it is an armed peace.
“One does not have peace longer than one’s neighbour wants.” Gustav Vasa
It is preposterous (and dangerously delusional…) to expect a fully unified humanity, i.e. a single group, therefore both in-group and out-group policies have to be considered, furthermore there are “degrees of belonging” to any group (and a sort of hierarchy in group membership).
Don’t we apply some restraint even to so-called terrorists and by the same time put “our” criminals to death or into long term jail?
It is not an all or nothing matter and the subject of “proper” retaliation is and always will be debatable, with no end in sight.
As every utopia, well meaning idealistic delusions like the ICC will do more harm than good.
ESPECIALLY not any division revolving around tribalistic group identity.
Yes, but you don’t come to choose OTHER PEOPLE “tribalistic identity”, pretending to do so IS the totalitarian idea you vainly hope to shy away.
Out of curiosity, how many of the commenters here have children and grandchildren?
How many have seen identical twins duking it out, then ganging up on anyone who dared insult either one?
I am sure it is wrong in many ways, but I see children as our rawer selves, with nature’s ways more fully exposed. They can be vicious little devils one minute and infinitely sweet the next. Adults have merely learned to tone down both to a reasonable level. Is that learning the foundation of morality, or not?
Regardless the religion or lack thereof, all parents teach their children morals of some kind. It may be of the “eye for eye” type or “turn the other cheek” or something else entirely.
Children are quite capable of coming up with moral reasoning of their own also. I well remember my three-year-old’s comment at the grocery check-out when we had to put back a few items because I had miscalculated. She expressed astonishment that anyone had to pay for food because everyone had to eat.
Darling little budding socialist that she was at that time, she’s now quite conservative. Her morality at the time made perfect sense to her — no one should be denied what they must have for existence. You wanna argue with her? I didn’t!
(That same trip, her brother filled his stocking cap with candy while no one was looking and we all had another lesson in morality when I took him back into the store to return it.)
Morality is perhaps not so intellectual as some would like to make it. It’s merely the restraints placed on members of a community and those they interact with.
My thinking is that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam co-opted morals that were ‘in use’ at the time of their beginnings and have subsequently fine-tuned them to fit circumstances.
“Out of curiosity, how many of the commenters here have children and grandchildren?”
I do. A quote, from about age five: “Church people are mean!”
It’s not an “environmentally stable strategy” for everyone to be “nice.” For example, if everyone were honest, nobody would bother with locks, and cash-registers and such would exist only to correct honest mistakes. Now imagine how easy it’d be for a dishonest person to take advantage of that situation.
“I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.” – J. Handy
Back to Mr. Derbyshire’s original question, the people that I have known in my own family who have gotten older and faced death tend to be all over the map in terms of their piety. Several decades ago a family member of mine who was a religious man but not overly demonstrative in his personal piety was dying. Aside from regular church attendence, I never saw him pray until he was was terminally ill. My grandmother as she got older became more prayerful — she spent a good deal of time praying the rosary — but she became less interested in attending church. One friend of mine who is an agnostic has become an even more determined agnostic as he has moved through his elderly years, partly I think because he loathes the “new atheism” movement and because he has become more and more convinced that there simply is no way to rationally know whether or not there is a God or gods. I have one friend a church who is an older fellow who was an atheist when he was younger, but I also work with an older fellow who once was devoutly religious but became an atheist as he got older.
So, based entirely on my own anecdotal experience, I would answer Mr. Derbyshire’s question thusly: “it depends.”
This discussion stimulated me to return to a book I wrote called Teaching Goodness: The Answer to Columbine.As an atheist I had to imagine what effects it might have on children growing up in a godless environment.Today many stheists are ex-Christians and retain the basic morality of the Ten Commandments,etc. However, our society destroyed much of the legal, moral, and pscychological authority of parents and teachers in the Sixties revolution, leaving only rampant capitalism intact(until now!) in an increasingly amoral society. A society entertained by sex and violence is ever more corrosive for those really interested in goodness.Liberalism knows no boundaries.
So the moral milieu of America, like the formerly beneficent UK, has become quite dangerous for decent Christians and good atheists who at least admit that certain virtues should be taught-like honesty and responsibilty.When a society is drug-ridden, crime-ridden, and full of predatory low life, it endangers any and all efforts to raise children as moral agents.If you read newspapers or watch the news you know that depravity may be closer than you think.Even teachers, especially women, are sexual predators chasing 13 and 14 year-old children in school.
One must remember that shame has been driven out with our materialism and radical individualism. Christian morality cannot function without shame. Can a return of shame come about? Can a restoration of adult authority take place? Can the entertainment industry learn morality? Will Obama use his cultish power to lead a moral crusade? Not likely.The loss of a moral compass may not be complete quite yet, but the contaminated environment will corrupt any emerging character traits or moral thinking.When teachers punish children for cheating or lying, when parents really punish kids for deviant behavior as they once did, when, Hollywood restores morality and meaning to life on the screen- these changes could provide hope, but our government and liberal elites want muticultural delights that will crush our last remnants of morality as we worry about offending “the other.”Cynicism is everywhere growing.
“environmentally stable …” should’ve been “evolutionarily stable strategy.”
“The Answer to Columbine” – the worst school massacre in the US happened in 1940 or so: a janitor PO’d about taxes filled the school basement with dynamite.
“..in the Sixties revolution, leaving only rampant capitalism intact(until now!) in an increasingly amoral society.”
You mean like this? “Homicide rates recently declined to levels last seen in the late 1960’s”
Or this? Also “Serious violent crime levels declined since 1993.”, and are about the same now as in 1973. (Keep in mind that the white murder ‘n’ crime rates often remain stable while the rates of others increase and decrease).
Click thru some the links on the FBI page and you’ll find more info, such as that the murder rate for most age groups decreased steadily over the last 30 year, while it oscillated for other groups (esp 18 to 24 yo). I use murder rates because they’re the most reliable over time and place: other types of crime are frequently re-defined (or re-grouped) to make things look better or worse, depending on what politicians are pretending to prove.
And how about those wonderful 1800s? Fairly common slavery followed by mass murder … Gimme dat ole time religion!
IOW, I don’t think there’s any reason to believe your assertions about everything getting worse since the 50s or 60s, and/or getting worse because of atheism or atheists, who are a *very* small part of the population at any point in time. And then there’s those pesky Japanese – very low crime rates and very low levels of religious belief, but different genes.
Mr. F. Le Mur… surely I misread your intent… Are you saying that low crime rates are attributable to low levels of religious belief which are attributable to genetic differences?
Please educate me here, as I do not understand. Yet.
Mr. Le Mur and Donna B.: Mr. Le Mur is saying that any claim of cultural decline is wrong because disorder and incivility were basic qualities of our social life and fluctuate in mild ways over time.However, he is wrong about this question and wrong about my alleged implication of atheism as a cause of any decline. Le Mur did not claim that crime rates were low.
First, America has indeed declined in what we call public morality.Of course you can reach out and locate isolated atrocities as Le Mur did.That is misleading because we want to know how life was in general in previous times.He is right that life gets increasingly more difficult as we move back in time, but people here were fortified by the Protestant ethic and much hope for the furure.Good character was important in all aspects of public life.Of course blacks had a historical burden and were really not emancipated fully until the Sixties, exactly when all types of crime rose steadily.
One has to appreciate the devestating and complex effects of the Sixties revolution.It greatly modified whole institutions by eviscerating all forms of authority. The leaders of the revolution were mostly Marxists but all were liberals of some degree and determined to create the kind of society we have today-one where liberal values prevail in a country crumbling under the weight of stupendous diversity that must engender disorder and malaise.
If one looks at the homicide data from 1950-2000(FBI Uniform Crime Report)one notes the obvious huge increase after 1960.Le Mur is right that the current rate is actually only slightly higher than that of 1960.What he fails to acknowledge is that ALL forms of crime steadily WENT UP after 1960 and we have lived with an unusually high level of criminal avtivity for the past forty odd years.For example, the rape rate in 1960 was 9.6 while in 2007 it was 30.0!!!!! Rape today is an astronomical problem. For aggravated assault the 1960 rate was 86.1 and in 2007 it was 283.8!!! Things are absolutely much worse.
Today you cannot attend sports events without beer being spit out all over you and the kids copy the bestial behavior they see around them.Contrary to Le Mur’s isolated example, America’s schools were havens of stabilty while college life was relatively pristine before the Sixties revolution. Today teachers quit en masse as they cannot cope with the unruly legions of narcisstic children kept occasionally calm by spoonfuls of candy-rewards for short episodes of “good” behavior.Discipline is an obsession of today’s teachers for good reason.Books are written today about civilty because it is mostly absent.Good manners are relics of the past.
I have refrained from discussing race but it plays an enormous role in our decline.Black crime rates are astronomical since civil rights were achieved and social constraints were relaxed.The natural tendencies for violence were given full reign and blacks today fill our prisons to capacity. They are disportionately incarcerated because, as Heather MacDonald wrote: they do more crime than other groups.While blacks are only 12% of the population, they commit over 30% of the rapes of whites(males raping females, of course). This DID NOT happen in 1950, Mr. Le Mur.
Tatoos, clothing styles, gun ownership, attacks on teachers, single parent families, lying, cheating,etc. are far, far greater today because religion really has less effect than the good ole days. Surrounded by cynical, base, even bestial entertainment is more than a match for one visit to church on Sunday. Religion, the family, and the school combined to spport children in their quest to be good. Such support no longer exists in a society of immense diversity, moral confusion, and almost no ethical models.Political and social babels will have great trouble forming the moral and legal consensus that was easy before 1960.While I hate to win this argument, our decline is real and bottomless.
Mr. Le Mur,
Violent crime has declined significantly since 1993, although it has ticked up the last 3 years. The violent crime rate today is comparable to the late 60’s.
I don’t think the kids, in general, are any worse than they were 20 years ago. I thought the kids I saw in the late 80’s were more sassy than they are today. Most of the teens I run into today are actually quite demure compared to those I ran into in the 80’s. Kids today seem to be more passive than when I was a kid (late 70’s, early 80’s).
Based on anecdotal observations, I’m not sure that the “declinist” position is correct. “Agnostic” has occasional postings on his website (http://akinokure.blogspot.com/) challenging the “declinist” position. I think he is correct.
I do agree with you that the schools have declined in the past 20 years and are far more into leftist indoctrination. However, I think the kids mostly tune out the teachers, correctly perceiving that much of what they are taught is irrelevant to anything that is real. The schools are failing the kids, not the other way around.
Kurt9: As I review the period from 1960-2007(Bureau of Justice Statistics) all forms of violent crime INCREASED both absolutely and by rate. Only homicide, which soared in the early 90’s, returned to almost the 1960’s rate.Stronger police work had much to do with that reduction rather than a change of character.
Studies of cheating inform us that today’s teens lack character and most acknowledge that they would cheat if the opportunity was there.While the nation became wealthier by far after 1960, it was influenced enormously by the liberal values of that revolution. Today the family values orientation is a shadow of its dominant status before 1960.Divorce was once very rare while today it is the norm.Cohabitation-which is a poor man’s form of legitimate sex- further enhances the value of loose and irresponsible relationships.
Iam the one who pointed out the decline of schooling and not Mr. Le Mur.You are also wrong re schools failing the kids because kids come to school these days with the Obama mantra that we are all equally competent and admirable.Teachers pump them with candy and praise out of desperation.Class control is an obsession. Alas, Charles Murray is right and the liberals utterly wrong.Psychological research has never established any kind of equality and has discovered enormous variation in the patterns of distribution of IQ, music aptitude, athletic ability,etc,etc.Europe at least realizes such variation and provides SEPARATE tracks for academic and non-academic children.We, following the 1960’s theme of egalitarian bravado, try to be all things to all people.We fail because the old way was correct: not every child can go to college and not all races will be equally represented in college because IQ distributions are not the same. Sorry, nature intrudes in its ugly way.
The “declinist” position is not slightly correct, it is overwhelmingly correct.I wish it were otherwise but our society is not only declining,the new waves of sub-par illegals streaming across the border under Obama’s watch will tilt America’s schools over the edge of efficacy into third world helter-skelter.The billions he throws at “the problem” are a colossal waste because the “immigrants” are a deadend project and the low achiever(read black) remediation-already a failure after 40+ years- leads only to a higher level of low achievement. The gifted, whom Gates cries for daily, remain unmentionables in Obamaland.Please return when you can locate some good news!
There is an interesting TED video posted today that touches on some of these points – ie. why do some people cheat and others do not. Religion has nothing to do with it. Enforcing (and reminding people) of a shared moral code seems to be the important factor. Well worth watching.