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Post by sandwiches on Jan 2, 2011 21:02:35 GMT
My parents were wholly irreligious - not atheists - just indifferent and ignorant of religion. I was embarrassed when my schools visited Church as I had no clue what was going on. I picked up a knowledge of Christianity through school. Oddly enough a couple of the most unpeasant teachers at secondary school were teachers of RE.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Jan 3, 2011 13:58:17 GMT
Both of my parents are observant Christians and Christianity is prevalent but not omnipresent in my extended family.
I am not sure whether Kaufmann's thesis will ring true. Denominations and churches can change after all, for instance in the 50s the Reformed Church of the Netherlands would be classified as orthodox Protestantism, but it changed in the following decades to become a largely moderate church during the 70s and simultaneously became more friendly towards ecumenism. It's also important to note that during the same time, many left this church, with the reasons for this still unknown, but many of the writers who left it (or rather those who left it and became writers) attacked it for its dogmatism (still a popular Dutch pastime). Similar things happened to the larger Dutch Reformed Church, though it has always been a rather diverse church since its formation in 1814. The Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands has also undergone changes like this, though it might prove to be partially reverted. Anyway, we have an example of an orthodox Protestant church shifting to a moderate position and I wonder how Kaufmann argues on this issue (yet another book to put on my reading list).
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deef
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 87
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Post by deef on Jan 3, 2011 14:50:41 GMT
+1 - in fact these days my family gatherings are like a meeting of the 'League of the militant godless' Anyone here actually born to religious parents? Raised in a christian household in a pretty much secular invironment. All my friends and classmates were atheists.
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Post by davedodo007 on Jan 12, 2011 3:53:37 GMT
Nah! There will be enough people who learn critical thinking abilities and notice BS when they see it, we'll be aright:-)
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Post by krkey1 on Jan 12, 2011 4:36:03 GMT
Yes we know Christianity will be fine Dave
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Post by wraggy on Jan 12, 2011 4:58:15 GMT
Anyone here actually born to religious parents? I was one of seven kids (not unusual for post war families) and we were sent to the Salvation Army Sunday school every Sunday until we were old enough to make enough noise about it to not have to go. I suspect that we were sent to Sunday school so the our parents could at least have one 1/2 day of the weekend free from screaming kids as they only attended church for weddings and funerals. I did receive some anti-Catholic indoctrination when I was a kid, although not from the Salvos but mainly family members. Because of this I grew up claiming that I was a "Protestant", but I thought that meant that I did not believe in God at that time. I suspect that if I mentioned that to some Catholics it may bring a wry grin to their face.
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Post by sandwiches on Jan 12, 2011 13:30:36 GMT
Nothing can stop the religion gene!: www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8252939/Believers-gene-will-spread-religion-says-academic.html'Believers' gene' will spread religion , says academic Religion and spiritualism may grow because religious people will spread a 'believers' gene' among the population at large, according to a Cambridge academic.
Robert Rowthorn, an economics professor at Cambridge University, said studies showed that more religious people tended to have more children.
This, coupled with the existence of a genetic predisposition in some towards belief, led him to speculate that religion could spread.
Some religious sects had fertility rates three or four times the general population, he noted.
If people in these groups only married within them, he said "ultra-high fertility groups would rapidly outgrow the rest of the population and soon become a majority".
In practice, however, many tended to leave these sects or marry outside them and consequently have less children than they might have done
"Defections from such groups will spread religiousity genes to the rest of society," he concluded.
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Post by eckadimmock on Jan 12, 2011 21:28:43 GMT
Nothing can stop the religion gene!: www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8252939/Believers-gene-will-spread-religion-says-academic.html'Believers' gene' will spread religion , says academic Religion and spiritualism may grow because religious people will spread a 'believers' gene' among the population at large, according to a Cambridge academic.
Robert Rowthorn, an economics professor at Cambridge University, said studies showed that more religious people tended to have more children.
This, coupled with the existence of a genetic predisposition in some towards belief, led him to speculate that religion could spread.
Some religious sects had fertility rates three or four times the general population, he noted.
If people in these groups only married within them, he said "ultra-high fertility groups would rapidly outgrow the rest of the population and soon become a majority".
In practice, however, many tended to leave these sects or marry outside them and consequently have less children than they might have done
"Defections from such groups will spread religiousity genes to the rest of society," he concluded. If this were true, shouldn't atheism have died stillborn centuries ago instead of becoming trendy? This kind of genetic argument is very 1980s: people were 'discovering' genes for alcoholism, religion, bad temper and so forth. Luckily we've realized that single-gene explanations of social behaviour are seriously deficient. I'd have thought that an economist could have found better economic explanations for belief.
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Post by sandwiches on Jan 12, 2011 22:21:27 GMT
If this were true, shouldn't atheism have died stillborn centuries ago instead of becoming trendy?Perhaps not. The Prof says here: www.livescience.com/culture/religion-and-fertility-110111.html"This is a purely speculative exercise," Rowthorn said of his research. He noted that the differences in fertility are variable and likely to change. In fact, up until about 150 years ago, this contrast in the size of religious and nonreligious families did not exist at all. Then birth rates fell globally, and the transition affected some groups more than others.
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Post by sandwiches on Jan 12, 2011 22:29:34 GMT
In fact here is full article in what seems a serious journal in case anyone understands such things and wants to give an opinion: rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/01/07/rspb.2010.2504.fullReligion, fertility and genes: a dual inheritance model Robert Rowthorn Abstract Religious people nowadays have more children on average than their secular counterparts. This paper uses a simple model to explore the evolutionary implications of this difference. It assumes that fertility is determined entirely by culture, whereas subjective predisposition towards religion is influenced by genetic endowment. People who carry a certain ‘religiosity’ gene are more likely than average to become or remain religious. The paper considers the effect of religious defections and exogamy on the religious and genetic composition of society. Defections reduce the ultimate share of the population with religious allegiance and slow down the spread of the religiosity gene. However, provided the fertility differential persists, and people with a religious allegiance mate mainly with people like themselves, the religiosity gene will eventually predominate despite a high rate of defection. This is an example of ‘cultural hitch-hiking’, whereby a gene spreads because it is able to hitch a ride with a high-fitness cultural practice. The theoretical arguments are supported by numerical simulations.
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Post by eckadimmock on Jan 13, 2011 1:39:55 GMT
If this were true, shouldn't atheism have died stillborn centuries ago instead of becoming trendy?Perhaps not. The Prof says here: www.livescience.com/culture/religion-and-fertility-110111.html"This is a purely speculative exercise," Rowthorn said of his research. He noted that the differences in fertility are variable and likely to change. In fact, up until about 150 years ago, this contrast in the size of religious and nonreligious families did not exist at all. Then birth rates fell globally, and the transition affected some groups more than others. Yes, but the lack of difference prior to 150 years ago (the industrial revolution, I suspect) suggests that the reasons are not truly genetic but cultural. I have no trouble believing that religious families have more kids that nonreligious ones, but whether this is a heritable, genetic difference is another question.
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Post by sandwiches on Jan 13, 2011 19:19:00 GMT
Well Rowthorn's theory rests on the assumption that there is a genetic tendency to religion and may indeed be a load of bunkum. But if there is any genetic disposition to be religious then isn't Rowthorn's hypothesis likely to be correct? i.e. those with the strongest such disposition are more likely to be religious and therefore will breed more (as the religious "outbreed" the non-religious) and this genetic disposition will become stronger?
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Post by eckadimmock on Jan 13, 2011 21:10:24 GMT
Well Rowthorn's theory rests on the assumption that there is a genetic tendency to religion and may indeed be a load of bunkum. But if there is any genetic disposition to be religious then isn't Rowthorn's hypothesis likely to be correct? i.e. those with the strongest such disposition are more likely to be religious and therefore will breed more (as the religious "outbreed" the non-religious) and this genetic disposition will become stronger? If there is such a genetic tendency, then I guess it might. However, not all religious views embrace procreation (consider Catholic clergy, the Cathars and Tibetan monks, for instance). Then there's the direction of causality: perhaps people with a genetic predisposition to breed need religious communities as a source of babysitters? All animals have the instinct to procreate: the aberration among humans is that so many prefer not to. For me, a more significant question would not be why the religious have children by why the irreligious do not.
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Post by gymnopodie on Jan 14, 2011 1:26:25 GMT
eckadimmock wrote:
Because they are intelligent and realize that can't afford a dozen rug rats without some sort of welfare assistance? Because they don't have someone telling them that it's wrong or evil to use birth control?
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Post by eckadimmock on Jan 14, 2011 1:47:26 GMT
eckadimmock wrote: Because they are intelligent and realize that can't afford a dozen rug rats without some sort of welfare assistance? Because they don't have someone telling them that it's wrong or evil to use birth control? Possibly, although I'm not sure if that's the whole answer it's a better one than a 'religious gene'.
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