Good and Evil

[Hatshepsut]

It isn't a question of making you or I wealthier, it isn't about wealth. India is wealthier than most countries in the world. But Denmark, a much smaller country, has a better quality of living. Why? ... They are mostly secular.

India is a conglomerate of at least 26 national languages and national states which, incidentally, espouse a wide variety of religions. About 80% of Indians are at least nominally Hindu, and a Hindu nationalist party is currently in power. I doubt that means they live in the 15th century, however: recent generations of Indians have established a reputation for welcoming modernity even when choosing not to disavow whatever religious traditions they came out of. Secularism does eliminate problems of sectarian conflict, but can't explain everything. Denmark really has an easier problem of governance than India does, religion aside: an ethnically and linguistically homogeneous population which, despite their secularism, all descend from the same Lutheran church, proximity and preferred access to EU markets, no armed enemies on their borders, and so on.

And wealth does matter. Wealth can be put into gold coins and accumulated indefinitely to lever credit in turn. Modern equity markets and compound interest make wealth accrual very efficient for those who have wealth, while raising walls of debt against those who don't have it. Like Monooply the board game, whoever's lucky enough to land on and buy Boardwalk first has an advantage. Europeans were just lucky enough to be the first of the world's regions to get their hegemonic plans in order at a time when technology and naval shipping would give them global reach. If Europe had dallied another thousand years, we might be learning Chinese instead.

Buddhism is an atheistic belief system, yet the economically most advanced areas of the globe are not the Buddhist ones...the notion of secularism=better quality of life/higher wealth is debatable.

Buddhism is one of the two dominant religions in Japan, along with Shinto, which hasn't kept them from understanding and adapting modern Western ideas to their own culture as well. I don't know that Buddhism is atheistic, many Buddhists accept Hindu deities and concepts of rebirth. It might be better to describe Buddhism as "on top of" other religion since instead of new gods, it introduces a different, more abstract way of viewing the nonsecular and its relationship to human life. I admit not knowing details here: But Japan is plenty advanced. That should prove your second thesis, which I agree with. Secularism and quality of life are independent in most respects. Although religious fanaticism is clearly detrimental to quality of life, moderate religion may be neutral or beneficial.

The purpose of scientific inquiry is to understand the nature of the things we observe. Without essences you don't get very far.

Since the thread has already correctly discounted pure essentialism as adequate fount for ethics, we now see why science, which does so well at questions of nature, is nearly helpless before questions of value.