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Originally Posted by well named
I think you're taking that definition from Wikipedia, but if so you're misunderstanding it. The article is defining pro-social behavior as involving intent, but in this thread the pro-social behavior in question is not the teaching of hell, but the behavior of people who have been taught that hell is real and because of that belief act in a certain pro-social way out of fear. Whether or not the teaching itself was intended to promote pro-social behavior is irrelevant as far as the definition of pro-social behavior is concerned, as well as from a functionalist perspective in sociology.
Could the ongoing activity of teaching hell not could be considered a pro-social behavior in itself? It's the behavior of teaching and learning a shared belief, and that process facilitates acceptance, unites believers, and encourages friendship, i.e. group cohesion, but are those things, or the benefits of having a population that now acts in a more pro-social way through fear of divine punishment because of this belief, the intention of teaching hell?
I think that actually it is the intention of both, even though those actually doing it don't, they do it because they think it's true or because it's simply what one does, but that's because I don't believe that any gods exist, so what else could explain it's success? But I don't accept this '
ah, it helped us, so it's ok really' argument. I think it's a weak argument that fails to take into account all those other helping factors, and that in any case fails to take our more modern context into account when used to support continuing this behavior. Even if it did help historically, that doesn't mean that we still need it. I think that both results can be achieved in ways that don't require terrifying, and risking traumatizing, young children. Murdering strangers once helped us survive, as did many other behaviors that have been abandoned as we've become more 'civilized'. I would add terrifying young children, by teaching hell, to that list.
Quote:
Originally Posted by well named
altruistic behavior is a narrower category of behavior than pro-social behavior, at least as far as the studies you are looking at are concerned. That is, we might count it as "pro-social" behavior if people being afraid of hell avoid acting in ways that are directly harmful to others, but that's not altruism, and it's not what the studies about altruism look at.
I was offering it as an example of an anti-social behaviour that results from religious teaching.