A recent article in Nature reported findings that impartiality towards other people is increased by a belief in moralistic god's knowledge and punishment of their actions. This impartiality is claimed to be a cause of pro-social behavior and so the authors hypothesize that the belief in these kinds of gods is one of the cause of the rise of large, complex human societies we have today. More colloquially, that belief in a powerful punishing god helped create civilization.

I know that a few of the atheists that post on this forum are morally opposed to hellfire-and-brimstone style religions. I wonder if this theory changes their view.

Correction to your paraphrase: They claim it increases impartiality towards other people of the same faith, or co-religious as they call it.

I skimmed the article at work, but it's subscription-based access. Here is is synopsis from sciencenews: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...-punitive-gods

And to answer the question, no it doesn't really change my mind. That people of the same in-group tend to view each-other more favorably is well known. The study is interesting in that it also shows this trends towards strangers from other cultures, but it is not earth-shattering stuff. I would have guessed this trend in advance.

Sure, I know this is not really new- one of the co-authors has written an entire (and good) book on the theory. I was highlighting this study because it provided some empirical support for the theory, and also because of the specific connection between a belief in a punitive god and pro-social behavior. While I am not denying that some people can be psychologically scarred from some religious teachings, including on hell, I think this theory, if correct, provides evidence against the claim that teaching hell is real is immoral.

Are there many here that hold that position? The only recollection I have of someone trying to make some sort of argument like this is a pretty old thread that didn't go well for the OP.

That depends. I wouldn't be surprised to see anti-social behavior towards the outgroup (people from other religions or no religion), observational evidence tells us that this is happens.

But would you be able to form a link between such behaviors and this particular teaching?

I don't really see the connection between the article and the rest of the OP. Presumably those like Dawkins who oppose teaching of hell are arguing that the fear of such suffering in hell traumatizes children or something to this effect. This is likely true for some children, it is certainly a horrific and frightening concept (I think I've mentioned here about my wife's fairly severe child and adulthood fear of death; she was never taught hell by her parents but I can certainly imagine it being traumatizing). But this argument seems to take place at a very different level than someone arguing that there might be some historical social benefits. Certainly it seems plausible that one of the ways rule following (and the expectation of rule following) goes up - so critical to complex societies - is with the belief in a deistic rule enforcer. it would be more surprising is it didn't affect behaviour IMO. In our society today rule following (outside of our highly complex legal and enforcement regimes) seems mainly about inculcating a sense of what is "right" and that people should be a "good person". So sure the Science article might be interesting, but "sure teaching hell might be traumatizing children, but it's not abuse because did you consider its role in encouraging rule following in the development of complex society" seems particularly weak.

Two points here. First, it is consistent with this theory that you would still see anti-social behavior towards the outgroup. However, the important causal question would be if a punishing god caused anti-social behavior to increase over what came previously or in its absence. I have no intuitions on that question, and I'm not sure that observational evidence tells us anything about that (maybe you have something specific in mind?).

Second, insofar as you think the large, complex societies we have now are a good thing--which I do--then even if they increase outgroup anti-social behavior, they might still be a good thing because of the positive impact on creating civilization. Even if they are only a way of priming the pump, of getting these larger and more complex societies started, and are no longer important for maintenance or growth, the simple atheist story that religion = evil would be false.

More generally, this theory should make atheists take more seriously conservative concerns about the effects of the waning of traditional religion on society.

One way to construct the argument is that teaching kids about hell is a subset of teaching a punitive moral god. And since belief in a punitive moral god promotes pro-social behaviors, it is good for people to hold such a belief.

One way to look at it is to suggest that Dawkins is being short-sighted in his moral argumentation. There are many things that are potentially harmful that end up being good in the long run.

For example, I think the "tall slide" argument has been used around here before. (Basically, tall slides have a risk of physical harm. But kids who experience fear on the playground by pushing their boundaries -- climbing to the top of the tall slide -- tend to be better adapted at confronting challenges as adults.)

So it may potentially cause some children trauma to believe in a punitive moral god, but it may have the benefit of maintaining pro-social behaviors, which promote bigger-picture positive behaviors that help maintain a functioning society. There seems no reason to consider the article to be talking only about a historical value of this belief. It speaks about present tense behaviors.

I am in general fairly skeptical of the claim that teaching about hell is child abuse. I know some Christians who say they were traumatized by these teachings as a child. Fine. But one of my closest friends (a lifelong atheist) describes a similar kind of traumatization from his realization from a very young age that he would die someday and then no longer exist. My suspicion (not based on evidence), is that many of the people who have been traumatized by hellfire-and-brimstone style religion would have similar traumas if taught some other religion or worldview.

However, my argument is not directed against the child abuse allegation, but against the view that teaching children that hell is real is morally wrong. This view usually rests on empirical claims like Dawkins' that it is or can be a form of child abuse, or even just that it causes unnecessary mental anguish to children. My argument is that even granting the child abuse claim, there is a strong argument that teaching children about hell is morally right or acceptable.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/13...-abuse-937697/

In this thread, there are also some links to "Religious Trauma Syndrome" (start from post #108) which are related to the question of the morality of religious teachings about hell. The thread is pretty old so there's a chance that some actual research has gone into it (or some updated version of it), but I'm doubtful.

Can you make this argument clearly for me on the "morally right" claim? It seems the argument here is that this teaching is granted as being child abuse, but that we have one study that suggests it might be one mechanism by which members of an ingroup change the rate they help out distant members of their ingroup compared to local members of their ingroup, and so....morally right? Maybe my kid will be abusively traumatized by telling them this disgusting idea we have no evidence actually exists, but hey it might be one mechanism to encourage prosocial behaviours in societies so "morally good"? I just don't see how you are going to build a "strong argument" here that should be persuasive to people who think teaching hell is child abuse, the ideas seem very disconnected.

Maybe this theory is an interesting explanation for the rise of prosociality since the origins of agriculture. Maybe it even has relevance today as one of the mechanisms for maintaining prosociality in today's society. But these points just seem to be way off on a tangent from the types of criticisms Dawkins et al are advancing here, even if we grant this theory a huge amount of stature not yet deserved. When you push back with your example of an athiest friend traumatized by the fear of the death that is a "good" argument in the sense that it is actually pushing back at the direct issue being raised by dawkins and may or may not be persuasive as such. This theory of the development of prosociality just feels like trying to throw something, no matter how unrelated, that could be said to be good and then claiming "ahha! see how short sighted your condemnations are!".

Are you familiar with "The ones who walk away from Omelas" by Ursula LeGuin? My argument is very similar to that story, where I am positing that some belief has large social value, large enough to justify teaching it even if it creates psychological trauma on the part of some members of society.

The basic argument is probably something like this.

1) Large and complex societies are better than small tribal societies.
2) Religions with knowledgeable and punitive gods causes and maintains the kind of human behavior necessary for large and complex societies to function.
3) Therefore, all else being equal, religions with knowledgeable and punitive gods cause better societies.
4) The belief in knowledgeable and punitive gods causes psychic pain and negative behaviors in some people.
5) The society-wide good created by this belief is greater than the individual harm caused by this belief.
6) Therefore, (all else being equal) religions with knowledgeable and punitive gods are morally beneficial.

Obviously many of these premises will be controversial. But I think Dawkins and many others will accept (1), (2) is supported by the study I'm citing, and (4) is being assumed. I guess some people can still reject (5), but I would be pretty suspicious of bias if they thought the opposite was true.

I presumed when you said there was a strong argument that it was morally good you actually had a strong argument for why 2 (or a version strong enough to get to 3) was the case here. Sure, you can put it as a premise that teaching hell is actually some critical component of complex societies functioning then you will get amazing conclusions like 3 out of it. But do you think there are strong arguments for 2, in particular, 2 as it stands today (and not in the studies attempt to theorize larger theories of development since the dawn of agriculture from the modern predilection of ingroup preference)? Saying this premise is "controversial" seems like a massive understatement. And I just don't see how "I accept this is bad under all the metrics you are talking about, but did you consider that possibly its actually critical for the development of complex societies because I have this one study about coreligionist preferences" just seems like a bizarre argument very unlikely to persuade people.

Probably also worth saying that nobody teaching hell actually thinks like this. People teach hell because they believe it is true. I would say the set of people who teach hell because they have been persuaded there is benefits to development of prosociality is empty. It just feels like a rationalization after the fact because you don't like that Dawkins is using strong words like "child abuse". But then dispute him directly on his claims, not this sort of weird roundabout prosociality utilitarian benefit stuff.

I quoted from one study, as it was recently published in a prominent journal and in the news, but this is just one piece of evidence for the theory. If you are interested in a more complete story, I would recommend Ara Norenzayan's Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict and some of his other essays. That being said, I regard this as an interesting hypothesis that explains some aspects of the rise of modern religion, and that has some evidence supporting it, but by no means settled science. It is the most promising theory I've seen, but evidence for cultural evolution theories are usually hard to come by.

Second, my interest here was more in the hypothetical: would this theory if true cause them to reevaluate their opposition to teaching about hell. Partly this is a BS-filter. If someone responds by just emphasizing how little evidence there really is for this theory, but doesn't deal with the hypothetical, then I'll think it likely that their moral views are distracting from their ability to evaluate the scientific merits of this proposal and that they are poor at updating their moral views.

Partly though, there has been a lot of discussion in this forum over the years on whether religion is a net negative on the world. My own considered opinion on this has been skepticism towards either answer, but with some relatively weak evidence pointing to no. The usefulness of this study is that it provides a mechanism that can explain how religion, even if incorporating largely false beliefs, can still be a net positive in human history.

My interest in this is due to the fact that my biggest disagreement with the New Atheists and much of contemporary atheism is that I think it largely does a poor job of understanding religion and is much too quick to condemn it as being harmful.

Eh. I made an OP that made a real argument, numbered with premises so you can easily figure out where you disagree and say why. It is poor form to already start speculating about my hidden motives in making this argument or claiming I should be making an argument on a different topic. I don't want to argue against Dawkins on his child abuse claim because I don't know enough about the topic, and I suspect that it will end up being largely a semantic dispute. I am, however, interested in the topic I cite in the thread title, and the conclusion to the argument I give above.

Here is my motive. I think those like Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Coyne, Myers, etc. who claim that religion is inherently bad for the world are either wrong or insufficiently skeptical. This study provides us with a clearly formulated theory claiming that certain types of religion had a massively positive beneficial effect on the world (in at least one way). I don't really know how to measure that effect against the negative effects of religion. I also don't think the evidence for the theory is all that strong. But, it is plausible enough, and I believe in paying attention to places where empirical results inform our moral views. Should my view of the goodness of Big Gods-style religion rests in part on whether this cultural evolutionary theory is true? I think so, but others might disagree.

As for people teaching hell--so what? Why are their motives at all relevant? That being said, you are clearly wrong in your empirical claim. I have heard many, many Christians claim that if they thought there was no God or eternal punishment/reward that they would act much more immorally. This is clearly part of the motivation for those who teach about hell. They might also think that their view of hell is true. But still, part of the their motive for teaching it to people is because they think it will incentivize them to act morally.

Shame

That "punitive religion" was somehow "necessary" for civilization is a strenuous assumption at best.

Remember that these punitive religions that are tested for did not exist at the dawn of civilization, if anything we know that in many of the most ancient civilizations plurality of religion was the norm (for example Babylon), so it seems peculiar that "fair treatment of people of the same faith" should be the pillar of those societies. It is administration, bureaucracy and written legal systems that stands as the cornerstone of large early civilizations.

You are taking willingness to offer someone of your own religion "a fair game" way too long if you look at is as evidence that "punitive gods" should somehow be necessary for civilization to arise. Consider this: I can experimentally show the exact same effect for people who wear the same shirt.

I don't believe it to be wrong.

That it will affect more people positively, than it does negatively, sure.

That it will create unnecessary in-group/out-group bias, sure.
But then again, an interest in anything and/or lack of education will tend to do this.

On another effect, it may instil a useful sense of integrity during the young, formative ages. Nothing like the threat of eternal hell to teach one to stick to their moral beliefs and promises. This may perhaps explain why I practice integrity more firmly than other people in my life, that were raised in atheist households.

No you can't. Remember, the study found higher willingness to share to ingroup at a distant members amongst those putting more emphasis on the omnipotent judging god parts. ie it is more than just observing ingroup sharing, its about different rates of ingroup sharing based on the content of their beliefs. Not that I disagree with the tenuous of the observational data and the grand sweeping theory of civilizations developing complex structures.

Of course it works on people too young ( or less self-knowledgeable) to be aware that some self-asserted authority or another has taken "providence" to artificially manipulate their own survival instinct.

It seems that you, like Original Position, are somewhat played by the study.

Game studies like this have been performed on everything from rooting for the same team in sports to being part of similar political movements, the results are largely the same.

We can show almost identical trends of in-group favoritism and deferential treatment in minimal group affiliation studies, for example ones based on individuals wearing the same color of shirts. Me saying that you'd expect similar results based on something as simple as similar shirts isn't even a controversial statement.

The researchers performing this study knew pretty well what results they would find. They also knew very well that these results are not unique to being co-religious.

Right, and this is precisely where your OP fails. If you want to talk about this promising theory of cultural evolution, that is an interesting topic to explore. If you want to talk about whether teaching kids today about hell is child abuse and/or "morally wrong" , that is a somewhat less interesting topic but OK sure. What falls apart is this "BS filter" where one needs to change their view on whether teaching hell is child abuse/morally wrong based on this theory of cultural evolution.

Firstly, whether this is or is not important in the historical development of society simply doesn't affect whether it is morally wrong/child abuse today. Could it be theorized that the history of slavery in the US had various benefits such as the building of a strong economy or whatever that led to the success of today's world? Possibly. But I don't see that this should mean people who claim that slavery is abusive or moral wrong better update their views.

Perhaps you would then argue that it IS still relevant today, that today views of hell are a net benefit. That seems harder to hold. Today, we have a huge range of complex mechanisms that encourage various rule following from a complex legal system, contract enforcement, strong social convention (ex tipping), various social enforcement mechanisms like peer pressure and fear of embarassment, strong sense of what is "right and wrong", prevalence of disney et al secular morality tales since childhood, unexploitable business models, new tech*, etc etc etc. Does fear of omnipotent pushing god's also play a role to some degree? Probably. Western Christians donating to African Christians certainly maps fairly well from this study. But at best this sits in as one of many, many, mechanisms that encourage rule following in our complex society today. Maybe we wouldn't have developed to where we are not, but certainly it is hard to imagine it being necessary now.

As far as being a "BS filter", well sure if we accept for the sake of argument that indeed teaching hell has all these magical properties and if we didn't then modern civilization would collapse then okay under those assumptions utilitarian minded people might agree that it is a net benefit - by assumption - over the obvious and direct harm being caused to children today. But you didn't initially say you were creating a BS filter where one ASSUMES the world about this theory, you said you had a "strong argument" that teaching children about hell is "morally good"; you are nowhere close to this thus far.

Christians, sure. But the point is can you find people who DON"T think hell is true teaching it to their children because of the various prosociality benefits? You seem to think people like Dawkins et all should be persuaded by this theory, that they fail some "BS filter" if they haven't bought into your framing. So can you actually find people who are persuaded by the evidence alone here and thus teach their children about hell despite not believing in it? Sure arguments exist in a vacuum and whatever, but it does seem worth pointing out from the standpoint of setting expectations that afaik nobody has actually been persauded their view of the morality of teaching hell is wrong because of a historical theory of cultural development. And it would seem rather strange to me if they had.


*there is an interesting view on some of the new tech companies like airbnb and uber, in that they effectively commoditize trust. As in they don't just allow for communication between supply and demand (I have a car and time, u need a ride, how do we find each other), but that the uber verification/rating systems mean you can reasonable trust the other person in this transaction. This is one of those mechanisms that allows for a highly complex and efficient system where people follow the required conventions to make it possible.

I think you are missing the point again. Yes "ingroup vs outgroup" dynamics are powerful and measured under a whole range of different ways to define groups. I am sure you can show that people wearing the same colour shirts will share more or whatever else. But the DEGREE of said sharing can change. In particular, it seems people share MORE within their ingroups when they have higher amounts of certain beliefs than others. For instance, christians might always share more with distant christians than they would with distant muslims. But christians who particularly emphasize a punitive god might share even more with distant christians.

It seems that any cultural norm could be "proved" to be responsible for the treatment of strangers or "others", not in the group.

Without considering a causal effect to this sympathetic activity a history of ancient cultures leading up to our present times there is the progression of the human soul within family, people, clan, nation, race and even gender. the salient factor in this progression is the "blood" of a people.

Though most would say that "blood" cannot be a factor but perhaps the idea of the "blood" somehow accepted by the individual within a nation or particular group. Blood ties, blood sympathies, blood bonds are and were the main sustenance of the individual human up to our present times. The human being, prior to our times didn't come to an intellectual understanding of the "blood" and decide that he would protect his brother but the forceful activity of the blood itself was an innate part of the human being and continues to the present time .

To this one considers the activity of the "blood" as the binder of nations/peoples clans, etc.. which in progression is gradually loosing its forceful benevolence . Man practiced "Love" within the clan or family and in this he grew and became more ennobled. We were not a community of humans but within our nation or race as "I am a Hittite" or "I and Abraham are One" or "I am an Egyptian", all through the "blood" the carrier of the Ego in men. What was present is the 'group ego" of the nation which in the case of the Hebrews was experienced as Abraham. This again wasn't an act decided intellectually but a physiological fact , the power of the "Ego" through the "blood".

Associated with the purity of the 'blood' is an atavistic clairvoyance to which this ancient man could experience and see himself
"within Abraham" and likewise for other cultures. the memory was also much stronger in that this ancient man could literally have a memory of his ancestors and in the Bible we have the life spans of 900 years which was the perspective that human beings, within the "blood: were able to experience the activities of their ancestors until another patriarch came to the fore and so Methuselah lived 900(?) years etc...

Times change until the story of the "good Samaritan" offers some understanding as only he would help the stranger, the others immersed within their "blood". The New testament parable of bringing division between daughter and mother in law and members of her family is the future of Man. the old ties are being broken and whereas the "old" was the community of "blood" the "new' is the bringing together of all peoples into the "community of man", the community of the Christ.

the Christ being sits in the hearts of all men, as spirit of the earth subsequent to the spilling of the "blood" on Golgotha, the loss of the "egoistic" and guides us into this community . the strange (not a good word) part of this is that each man, will be an individual personality which means that there will no longer be a determinative element but "free men" within the common community of man.

Underpinning this is that sexual love between the relative in the "blood" reinforces the atavistic which means "not so individual", or egocentric. the mixing of "bloods" is that very activity in which man loses his natural atavistic clairvoyance. the Galileans were peoples who were of many nations who did this very thing, mix the 'blood' and were the very peoples to whom Christ Jesus could speak to.

And so, from all the above, the idea that a punitive hellish demonized coercion made one a better person with respect to others doesn't really reach the point as All peoples, to a lesser or greater extent are meeting each other in full compassionate understanding but of course some individuals progress faster than others. And so we meet our "enemies" in hopes of some rapprochement.

I wonder if Dawkins admits or denies that religion has served as a necessary survival mechanism for society.

In regard to the OP, I suspect the caution should be in how a child grows up to deal with uncertainty, or if its different, that which cannot be known.

Then I think we might worry religious teachings can not or do not adapt fast enough in relation to the society the child must live in. But again, going back to Dawkins, it must be that it will.