What role has religion played in shaping society?

ari

Member
Many self-serving religious types like to remind us that their religion is the foundation of our law our society and our ‘civilisation’ and that ‘decent’ moral standards are grounded in religion.

But is this so?

How much of a role has religion played in shaping our society?

And are religious doctrines responsible for our morality, values, laws and ‘civilisation’ or are these things simply born out of changing social dynamics and human evolution from which religion is simply a by-product?
 

zhao

there are no accidents
Many self-serving religious types like to remind us that their religion is the foundation of our law our society and our ‘civilisation’ and that ‘decent’ moral standards are grounded in religion.

But is this so?

highly complex history, but a grossly condensed version:

all religion come from the same source. from the first shamen/king/artists which arose in the nature worshipping fertility cults of the fertile crescent. when religion, politics, art and music were one, inseparable. pre-monotheism where god(s) being all around us, in the trees, in the ground, instead of being above us, male, and judgemental.

so in this sense, religion (as well as "art" as we know it, and centralized power) is the foundation of all civilization.

but to say that any modern form of any one religion is responsible for shaping our society... it becomes more difficult to judge. i suppose if you are talking about a specific place, say, Utah, USA., it was probably shaped more or less by the Mormons (for the past few hundred years), and i'll be bold enough to say not for the better.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
i think we live in an age where it is very trendy for self-congratulatory "progressive" types who in reality still live in the last century, who are still wholly invested in modernism, to slag off all religions as an umbrella scape-goat for "everything wrong with the world", and to forget that all of these traditions have immensely valueble things to offer us.

the sufi mystics are so amazing... (not to mention the Old Man of the Mountain whom Hash was named after and his ganja toking assassins)... Islamic architecture, music, and typography are probabaly THE most beautiful things i have ever seen and heard. the Kabbala and Jewish mysticism is fascinating in so many ways... and Catholicism, in its older, less bastardised, corrupted forms, is a sublime one on one relationship with the divine, a powerful spiritual path.

to judge all religious practice by today's fucked up institutions, or the wars waged in their names, is absurd. it is like judging hiphop by how stupid some of today's rappers are. it is like judging rock music by Linkin Park.
 

Chris

fractured oscillations
i think we live in an age where it is very trendy for self-congratulatory "progressive" types who in reality still live in the last century, who are still wholly invested in modernism, to slag off all religions as an umbrella scape-goat for "everything wrong with the world", and to forget that all of these traditions have immensely valueble things to offer us.

...to judge all religious practice by today's fucked up institutions, or the wars waged in their names, is absurd. it is like judging hiphop by how stupid some of today's rappers are. it is like judging rock music by Linkin Park.

Soooo agree with this.

The problem are corrupt people using religion, or any other distinction, as an excuse to exploit people, simple as that. My brother and his wife teach at an orphanage in Kenya (and no they're not even preaching to the kids), and the opportunity was given to them through the Lutheran Church... And I grew up seeing good things like this come out of religion my whole life, so it gets old when people spout the same tired old bullshit about it dividing people and causing all of society's woes etc. etc. I'm not religious myself, but I'm sympathetic to believers who IMO take the right message from their teachings and use it to altruistic ends, in fact I consider them to be for the same basic cause as the left. Naturally I'm not refering to the Christian Coaliton, religious right et al... them's the enemy for sure...
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Christ, has everyone got coursework to hand in this week or something?
Between this and the 'disposable society' guy yesterday... :cool:
 

Chris

fractured oscillations
I was kidding with the enemy line, but I really don't think the rest of that was such a radical statement...?
 

John Doe

Well-known member
I think money/capital is the single most important transformative/structuring factor in contemporary 'western' society. Religion, as such, is an absolute irrelevance and it's staggeringly naive to suppose anything else.
 

Chris

fractured oscillations
I don't know, divisive "moral" issues (abortion, gay marriage) are constantly being invoked in American politics to rally the support of the religious right, quite successfully too.
 
as much as I could agree with this

I think money/capital is the single most important transformative/structuring factor in contemporary 'western' society. Religion, as such, is an absolute irrelevance and it's staggeringly naive to suppose anything else.

it's too simplistic to agree with

the two are too mixed together to disassociate easily like that

I would say religion first and then money after...or soon after as an influence
 

John Doe

Well-known member
The fact that a number of posters have quoted the supposed importance of religion in American politics misses the point. The fact that US political discourse is dominated by cultural issues like abortion/gay marriage etc doesn't refute my point, merely proves it. As such, American political discourse, the supposed 'choice' between 'right' and 'left', is no choice at all: free market capitalism, the dominance of the market etc, is now a matter of (manufactured) consensus. The workings of shareholder capitalism is now taken as a given. It is this which predicates US political discourse to such a profound extent it is entirely overlooked. The fact that Democrats and Republicans fight over the issue of civil partnerships for homosexual couples, for example, just goes to show the extent that neither wishes to fight over protecting the rights of workers, say, or regulating the marketplace to protect labour/the consumer.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Religion, as such, is an absolute irrelevance and it's staggeringly naive to suppose anything else."
Have you somehow misread the question? I simply cannot believe that you actually think that religion has had no role in shaping our society.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
i hear what john doe is saying. and it does make sense. but it is a slightly different discussion than what the original question is dealing with... US policy these days is certainly about capital, with religion being a front, an excuse, a card to be played. but that does not mean religion did not shape the foundations of all civilizations and the social codes that are passed down through the ages.
 
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crackerjack

Well-known member
Have you somehow misread the question? I simply cannot believe that you actually think that religion has had no role in shaping our society.

Judging from JD's answers I'm guessing he might be a super-structuralist Marxist. In which case he's honourbound to say that - it's his religion.

(Can you see what i've done there?)
 

swears

preppy-kei
I wouldn't call myself a marxist, but I'd basically agree with that. The centre-left in America has taken on social issues because they know there is no prospect of any real change economically. Didn't the real earnings of the average American worker (adjusted for inflation) peak at around 1970? And they've been declining ever since.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
John Doe seems to be talking about the influence exerted by religion on 'our' (British? European? American? 'Western'?) civilisation at the moment - and to an extent I agree with him that a great many American politicians probably play the 'faith card' for ulterior motives of power and wealth* - but the original question seems to be more about how much influence religion has had historically (to which the answer is, undeniably, 'shitloads').

*OK, so that's not what you're saying exactly JD, but I agree with you about the irrelevance of non-capitalistic ideologies in mainstream US politics
 
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John Doe

Well-known member
Have you somehow misread the question? I simply cannot believe that you actually think that religion has had no role in shaping our society.

I didn't say I thought it had no role - more that while people naively muse on abstracts such as Judeo-Christian 'morality' they entirely overlook the central structural determinant of our society: capital. Capital has entirey replaced Christian morality as the foundational reference of western society. One piece of evidence: capitalism is entirely irreconcible with the teaching of the medieval Catholic church on usuary (let alone some of the New Testament's more hardline anti-acquistitve statements). In short, captialism has completely routed religion, inverting its norms, destroying its moral framework, exploding the very assumptions on which it operated. And yet I find myself continually astonished that so few seem to recognise this central fact. If I sound somewhat impatient or dismissive, well that's because I find discussions such as this (in which various participants debate the influence of Judeo-Christianity in shaping social laws, say) as the discursive equivalent of pissing in the wind, frankly. Those 'religious' norms that once conflicted with the successful operation of capital have been entirely eradicated from the social, and religion for a very long time has existed merely to legitimate the norms on and through which capital perpetuates itself.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
No one's denying the focus of US politics has shifted from socio-economic to socio-cultural - or that this shift is in large part down to the nature of campaign financing - but how can this be construed to prove that religion has no role in shaping society?

Edit: this was a reply to Swears.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
I didn't say I thought it had no role - more that while people naively muse on abstracts such as Judeo-Christian 'morality' they entirely overlook the central structural determinant of our society: capital. Capital has entirey replaced Christian morality as the foundational reference of western society. One piece of evidence: capitalism is entirely irreconcible with the teaching of the medieval Catholic church on usuary (let alone some of the New Testament's more hardline anti-acquistitve statements). In short, captialism has completely routed religion, inverting its norms, destroying its moral framework, exploding the very assumptions on which it operated. And yet I find myself continually astonished that so few seem to recognise this central fact. If I sound somewhat impatient or dismissive, well that's because I find discussions such as this (in which various participants debate the influence of Judeo-Christianity in shaping social laws, say) as the discursive equivalent of pissing in the wind, frankly. Those 'religious' norms that once conflicted with the successful operation of capital have been entirely eradicated from the social, and religion for a very long time has existed merely to legitimate the norms on and through which capital perpetuates itself.
Ah ok, you misread the question.
 
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