Religions Role in Social Movements, Essential or Accidental?
October 3, 2018 at 10:34 am
(This post was last modified: October 3, 2018 at 10:57 am by Neo-Scholastic.)
The dilemma currently playing out on another thread is between whether religion is an essential or accidental motivation of human behavior. I would like to point out that as a general rule theists in general, and most Christians specifically, consider religion an essential motivator while most atheists consider religion an accidental one. In other words, do the actions of individuals and larger socio/cultural phenomena follow from religion's presence? These positions come forward when talking about any one of the following:
-The Scientific Revolution
-Civil Rights Movements
-Totalitarianism
-Personal Transformations, such as overcoming addictions
In each of the above, believers will generally say that religion played an essential role in cultivating positive social movements (American Revolution) and the lack of religion allowed some cultures to deteriorate into horror (Maoist China). In contrast to this, atheists would generally claim that the presence of religion was incidental in those movements. In similar movements like the Scientific Revolution, changes would have happened anyways and that once in full force they divest themselves of their religious trappings. Similarly, a recovering believer will attribute his new found freedom to a higher power working through him while a nonbeliever may simply say that he got the help and support he needed to turn his life around.
How many licks does it take to get to the center of Tootsie Roll Pop? The world may never know.
The notable exception to this list is war. Many atheists will speak of wars fought in the name of religion claiming that having different religions was often the prime source of conflict. Believers will respond that the vast majority of conflicts were based on other factors such as territorial disputes and that religion was used by people in power to manipulate the masses.
I would say that war in fact shows the complexity of the discerning the relative importance of various causal factors. Perhaps, as atheists might say, the initial argument between two adjacent societies may have been over territory but those rulers would have found it much more difficult to mobilize their forces without appealing to religious sentiments. Believers might counter that those peoples of differing religion could have peacefully coexisted and had there not been material stressors such an appeal would have been unnecessary. Maybe, maybe not. How do we explain this curious change in positions between believers and atheist when it comes to war? I don’t know. It’s an interesting question.
Where I stand…It seems to me obvious that religion is every bit a part of a people’s culture as its language, diet, familial traditions, and customs. For example, queuing is very much a part of some cultures and almost absent in others. It clearly has little if anything to do with religion. And yet queuing and the belief that people should wait their turn has been the cause of much righteous indignation and occasional violence. It seems odd to argue against the notion that strong culturally ingrained beliefs about queuing do not motivate people to act in certain ways, such as forming and patiently waiting in lines, as opposed to everyone bunching and shoving their way to the front. Why wouldn’t one expect a more powerful set of beliefs, like religious ones, to move people to think and act in certain ways?
-The Scientific Revolution
-Civil Rights Movements
-Totalitarianism
-Personal Transformations, such as overcoming addictions
In each of the above, believers will generally say that religion played an essential role in cultivating positive social movements (American Revolution) and the lack of religion allowed some cultures to deteriorate into horror (Maoist China). In contrast to this, atheists would generally claim that the presence of religion was incidental in those movements. In similar movements like the Scientific Revolution, changes would have happened anyways and that once in full force they divest themselves of their religious trappings. Similarly, a recovering believer will attribute his new found freedom to a higher power working through him while a nonbeliever may simply say that he got the help and support he needed to turn his life around.
How many licks does it take to get to the center of Tootsie Roll Pop? The world may never know.
The notable exception to this list is war. Many atheists will speak of wars fought in the name of religion claiming that having different religions was often the prime source of conflict. Believers will respond that the vast majority of conflicts were based on other factors such as territorial disputes and that religion was used by people in power to manipulate the masses.
I would say that war in fact shows the complexity of the discerning the relative importance of various causal factors. Perhaps, as atheists might say, the initial argument between two adjacent societies may have been over territory but those rulers would have found it much more difficult to mobilize their forces without appealing to religious sentiments. Believers might counter that those peoples of differing religion could have peacefully coexisted and had there not been material stressors such an appeal would have been unnecessary. Maybe, maybe not. How do we explain this curious change in positions between believers and atheist when it comes to war? I don’t know. It’s an interesting question.
Where I stand…It seems to me obvious that religion is every bit a part of a people’s culture as its language, diet, familial traditions, and customs. For example, queuing is very much a part of some cultures and almost absent in others. It clearly has little if anything to do with religion. And yet queuing and the belief that people should wait their turn has been the cause of much righteous indignation and occasional violence. It seems odd to argue against the notion that strong culturally ingrained beliefs about queuing do not motivate people to act in certain ways, such as forming and patiently waiting in lines, as opposed to everyone bunching and shoving their way to the front. Why wouldn’t one expect a more powerful set of beliefs, like religious ones, to move people to think and act in certain ways?
