No, I challenged the question. What 'society' (and at what stage?) does the question address? If it's this one (this one being, to paint with vague broad strokes, I take to mean post-Enlightenment, industrial 'western' society) then very little any more - as, to reiterate, I think the norms, rules and customs of 'religion' (taking religion to refer to Judeo-Christianity) have been almost entirely eradicated by capital (though some, it's probably valid to say, still exist in vestigal forms as traces, echoes and simulations).
What role has religion played in shaping society?
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No, I challenged the question. What 'society' (and at what stage?) does the question address? If it's this one (this one being, to paint with vague broad strokes, I take to mean post-Enlightenment, industrial 'western' society) then very little any more - as, to reiterate, I think the norms, rules and customs of 'religion' (taking religion to refer to Judeo-Christianity) have been almost entirely eradicated by capital (though some, it's probably valid to say, still exist in vestigal forms as traces, echoes and simulations).
crackerjack
Well-known member
So you would presumably contend that all socio-economic improvements gained over the last century or so - free education, health, basic welfare, union rights, universal suffrage etc - were designed to protect capitalism (ie buying people off to prevent revolution) and had nothing to do with the moral arguments of those who campaigned to bring them about?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
OK, what about...
Christmas, Easter, Lent, Valentine's Day, Hallowe'en, eating fish on Friday, not working on Sunday, saying 'God' or 'Christ' to express surprise, frustraion etc., birthday presents, getting married in church, heavy metal bands that play at being Satanists, saying 'bless you' when someone sneezes, 'turning the other cheek', 'love thy neighbour', funeral and rememberance services...OK, some of these could be called 'traces, echoes and simulations', but there's a hell of a lot of them.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
but that's not his DAMNED point! oh wait...
sorry the devil made me do it
Well he's claiming that all our 'norms, rules and customs' are now based solely on capital, rather than religion, and I just thought I'd give a few counter-examples. I don't see how that's not to-the-point.
I think its role has been superficial.
It’s too simplistic to say that religion has played any sort of role in shaping society.
To do so is to ignore the social and economic factors that impact on our everyday lives. Ultimately it’s these things that shape our attitudes and even our religious views.
Religion is simply a by-product in my view.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
That's bollocks. Why should we have to accept the reality of social and economic factors (which I'm sure no-one here is denying) at the expense of recognising the religious influence?
That's true to an extent, but most of the world's religions began long before capitalism, as the term is usually understood, even existed. I'm sure there has been influence from the religious to the soico-economic and vice-versa, of course there has, but Victorian society (which ended just over a hundred years ago - there are people who were born then and are still alive) was structured in a way that was extremely heavily influenced by Christianity, whose most basic doctrines date back some 2,000 years, and include many elements of Judaism, which is far older still. Obviously we've come a long way in the last century or so, but it'd be ridiculous to say that there isn't still a huge cultural effect being felt from that time.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Yes dear, I got the joke (
) - I just thought you were making a serious point as well. Mmkay?hundredmillionlifetimes
Banned
Yes, and just to make two further points:
Under capitalism, religions - from Christian fundamentalism to the assorted New-Ageisms - serve as fetishisms that permit (the pretense of) the acceptance of social reality "the way it actually is." They enable the full involvement in the frenetic, fragmentary, and destructive pace of the global capitalism while sustaining the illusion that you are not really a part of it, Christian fundamentalists retreating into the safety of a simulation of "family values" as capitalism simultaneously destroys those very same values, New-Agers retreating into the peace of an imagined inner Self which only serves to further facilitate capital accumulation ("self-actualization", the Ego ideal, etc). In this very precise sense, the old Marxist cliche of religion as the "opium of the people," as a phantasmatic counterpart or supplement to the terrestrial socio-economic misery remains urgently relevant.
In the West, historically, Christianity - in historical contrast to the divine hierarchical global order of cosmic principles associated with the pre-Christian pagan cosmos - effectively provided the essential foundations to human rights, to freedoms, and to the adoption of proper ethical attitudes. Christianity was a violent interruption, an intrusion of difference into the pagen order of a unified, whole, and balanced cosmos - the recognition of the real of social antagonism.
I think you’re over stating the impact of religion.
Social and economic factors are the things that drive progress. The agency for change is an evolutionary impulse not a religious one.
The foundations to human rights, to freedoms, and the adoption of proper ethical attitudes were a result of a broad range of sociological factors that impact on society.
Religion tends to absorb these factors, that’s why scripture is nearly always ambiguous and includes various layers of meaning depending on societal & historical context.
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IdleRich
IdleRich
Do you know what simplistic means? A good example might be to broadly state that religion has had no role in shaping society whatsoever.
No it isn't. I think religion and social and economic factors have been instrumental in bringing us to where we are today.
Well, that's a role isn't it? I agree that it's role has diminished, possibly to being nothing more than being "the opiate of the people". As you recognise though, its historical effects which are still felt today make religion of far greater significance than its place today would suggest.
Let me be clear about this, what I’m saying to you is that religion is a by-product of social and economic factors driven by an evolutionary process. So it is these factors that shape our society.
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IdleRich
IdleRich
You've got that backwards haven't you? Evolution is a desire to survive; society and economics are a by product of it and are driven by it not vice versa. One of the social factors that is a product of this desire to survive is religion, it's something that exists and has had consequences which would not have happened if it didn't. That means it has had a role in shaping society.
ps I should have said "religion and other social and ecomnomic factors" in my last post.
firstly describing social changes as "evolutionary" i think is problematic. it is an inacurate and irresponsible use of the word. because social change does not depend on mutation, or adhere to the other "rules" of biology. the factors which influence social systems are much more complex than a straight forward pragmatism - why is marijuana still illegal then?
the priest/king figure at the dawn of civilization as the first embodiment of centralized political power is an accepted notion in anthropology. the first power was of a divine nature. all ancient kings saw themselves as descendent of heaven, or conduits of other worlds, or even god incarnate -- and it is this which gave them the right to rule. the same in China, in the Middle East, in the Americas.
but maybe I see what you are saying -- that these hierarchies and subsequent social institutions such as marriage arose because of economic and social necessity, and the claim of divinity or any appeal to religious sentiments is only a by-product, an excuse, a made-up reason. but this is almost a meaningless claim because everything was one, there was no separation of church and state. and socio-economic realities are very much a part of religious thought and doctrine.
it might come down to an inconsequential difference in choice of words we use to describe the same thing.
the priest/king figure at the dawn of civilization as the first embodiment of centralized political power is an accepted notion in anthropology. the first power was of a divine nature. all ancient kings saw themselves as descendent of heaven, or conduits of other worlds, or even god incarnate -- and it is this which gave them the right to rule. the same in China, in the Middle East, in the Americas.
but maybe I see what you are saying -- that these hierarchies and subsequent social institutions such as marriage arose because of economic and social necessity, and the claim of divinity or any appeal to religious sentiments is only a by-product, an excuse, a made-up reason. but this is almost a meaningless claim because everything was one, there was no separation of church and state. and socio-economic realities are very much a part of religious thought and doctrine.
it might come down to an inconsequential difference in choice of words we use to describe the same thing.
Well picked up, I accidentally put it backwards.
I’m not entirely sure I agree with this though:
I think the broad range of sociological factors, that impact on society, manifest them selves through religion. So it’s really the sociological factors rather than religion that shape society.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Bollocks. People have been worshiping the sun and fire and trees and the Great Mother since long before 'social and economic factors' existed. Economies didn't exist in the Palaeolithic: religion did. Of course, it's a long way from that sort of primitive nature-worship to the great church institutions of the Middle Ages, but it was stil fulfilling the same basic need in people (a need I think many people in developed societies no longer feel).
a lot of things are wrong in this thread
I just don't have the time to go into them with long replys and the running and the screaming and the shouting - ueh! eh that's my professor frink impression...seems apt for this part of the board lol
'an imagined inner self' - lol...who are you to say that?
when you say 'pre-Christian pagan cosmos' - where exactly and at what period of time are you basing this on?
*EDIT*
actually this is decent
I like Linkin Park though
how far can you go back to redeem Catholicism? that would mean probably forgetting most of it to be honest and not to be rude
I just don't have the time to go into them with long replys and the running and the screaming and the shouting - ueh! eh that's my professor frink impression...seems apt for this part of the board lol
'an imagined inner self' - lol...who are you to say that?
when you say 'pre-Christian pagan cosmos' - where exactly and at what period of time are you basing this on?
*EDIT*
actually this is decent
I like Linkin Park though
how far can you go back to redeem Catholicism? that would mean probably forgetting most of it to be honest and not to be rude
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