Clarifications and Comments

So I do get comments these days, however I wish they would be added to the blog for all to see, as they are full of great points! I would like to take the latest, from my best friend, ze German  For the sake of this blog, let's call him, uh, something Swedish, like Sven.

So 'Sven' started by reminding me how important it is to remain skeptical until the evidence of something is overwhelming, and to not be convinced by my personal biases. Exactly right. He started by saying:

I recently read your post. An interesting topic ! I want to add my 2 cents. I personally am convinced there is some sort of correlation of religiosity and development. Yet it is very complex. Just a reminder the observation of two issues behaving in some way  does not necessarily mean they are connected. 

So to start with, you are spot on here, Sven, and I should highlight for everyone that the information I gave in the previous post about development and religiosity is simply a CORRELATION, and not necessarily caused by each other.  This correlation, however, is quite strong, and it is important to ask many questions to try and find out why.

You rose the question of cause and result. Does religion cause low development, or does low development foster religion? Well, it looks established that even if religion and development do not have much to do with each other

Here is where we will have our first disagreement. When you say they do not have much to do with each other, I want to reiterate some ideas most organized religions proudly and loudly display in order to show you my point of view.

1) Most world religions encourage poverty, plain and simple. Buddhism teaches to avoid all earthly possessions, Hinduism teaches to keep one's head down avoid all luxury while remaining humble to the gods. Jesus reflected on the Sermon on the Mount that it is easier "for a camel to go through the eye of a needle to than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." If Jesus existed, his hatred of money and wealth was abundantly clear. Islam venerates the figures in history who have taken poverty upon themselves.

2) Not a single world religion encourages the empowerment of women, as I have previously noted, the single greatest cure for poverty.

3) Most religions encourage a form of subjective learning and the largest religions, especially the monotheisms, have gone out of their way in the past to discourage standardized education, or limiting education to the few who have wealth and power. "Eastern Solutions" are nothing but spiritualism which undermines objective learning and Human Rights.

4) Most religions I have come across in my travels strongly suggest, if not demand, procreation to the max. I met a woman yesterday who said she had 11 brothers and sisters. "Ahh catholics?" I asked, and got an affirmative. Muslim families in Europe are bragging about the low birth rate of the locals and declaring that Muslims have so many children, the countries will soon become Islamic states. People who have more children then they can afford to give medicine, education, and food will fall into poverty.

5) Denial of reality. When science is in doubt, you are undercutting the development of the future. The Dark Ages were caused by total control of the papacy. For over a thousand years, there has been very little development in the Middle east, apart from modern oil money. In the USA, the christian right denies evolution, global warming, and keeps trying to defund science programs.

Then you mentioned:

there were cases when religion influenced and interacted with existing knowledge. It is not all easy though. Here are some classic examples.  A bunch monks building a church in the middle of the jungle, will put (another) religion on the folks, yet they teach reading and writing. The likelihood of the literate to enter "developed" jobs is actually higher than the illiterate ones. Can we claim that secular schools accelerate the process?

Of course, as far back as we can go in human history, superstition has always played a part. I will not deny that for the development of society and social structure, religion and superstitions played a major role. They helped to define group morality, help to keep groups cohesive, and helped the people to understand the unknowns around them in a way they could comprehend. That time is long gone, however, and now those needs are met by more true, peaceful, and universal concepts.

When you discuss clerics of history, you are highlighting an important point, and although I can not remember which Greek philosopher said it, but the path to education comes through empty hands. As in, until the people had time on their hands and did not have the struggles of keeping food in their mouths, education never had a chance. The priests, monks, teachers, philosophers, and imams were the first to do this in their respective societies. Looking back, we can be grateful, however in the modern world we live in, it is superfluous.

"Can we claim that secular schools accelerate the process?" ---yes! An emphatic yes. If you want more of an answer, I will write about it next time.

There are examples where religion inspired to  push a discipline => architecture, building.How do they tie in? In some cultures priesthood (ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece) was an educated elite, that pushed their people into very developed cultures.

We must be careful throughout history to label something as a Christian accomplishment, or a Muslim accomplishment. In the same way find it unfair to label children as Hindu, or Jewish, we must learn to divide Muslim culture from Islam, and Christian culture/architecture/science from Christianity. The Atomic bomb is not the result of democracy, the Autobahn is not due to the tenets of national socialism, and mustaches do not make people into dictators, despite Hitler and Stalin.

Even the Sistine Chapel was the embodiment of art and architecture, from great minds as Pontelli and Michelangelo were representative of their time and the abilities they had. I admit, take religion away, and you have taken away these works of art, however we can not forget that the ancient Greeks invented cement and the Romans mastered reinforced masonry, yet these ideas were lost throughout the middle ages until the Industrial Revolution. The mass burnings of heretical materials might be the reason for this it is speculated.

Some officially secular countries are anything but developed. What are the factors limiting those? Did they just transfer the concept of religion to a leader ? Is that all?

There are many examples of this either way, and I find the most important detail is the attitudes of the people and the strength of the Leviathan, or the security and trust the people have in their government to solve disputes. One of my favorite topics to discuss, I think it is too long for this entry, but let me give you some examples. India is secular, and has a solid constitution to back it up, yet people are still being arrested for blasphemy and local officials refuse to touch any disputes involving religious tensions. There is such a strong admiration for faith, religion and traditions, that Human Rights, education, and safety falls to the wayside.

In Indonesia, officially a secular country, it is still punishable to offend religions, and explicitly illegal to have no religion. Where people feel free to speak out about religion, religion recedes from public view, and that means it is limited from influencing schools and government. Italy is secular, yet we all see how much influence the Vatican has on it. Turkey is secular but with a majority of Muslims, people are still oppressed within families. Somalia and Ethiopia are both secular, but it take more than a word on a document to cement this into place, it takes the understanding of an entire people. Not to mention, those two countries contribute the most to the more than 100 million women who have had mutilation of their genitalia.

The Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba etc. have an ideology that sometimes can be represented as a state religion, and sometimes as a political ideology which coincides with the lack of a religion. As Hitchens pointed out, Kim Il-Sung started his autocratic society the same year as the book Nineteen Eighty-Four came out, joking that it was a personal challenge to see if he could replicate the story in real life. Correlation is not causation, as you have pointed out.

The last part of the email, 'Sven' pointed me in the direction of a Pew Poll regarding the public's knowledge of religion. I read it with glee and plan to use to for a future post. for now though, I have already mumbled enough. I will finish with a quote from 'Sven':

Knowledge is power they say. I disagree with that one. I'd change it to: Knowledge empowers.