What Would Durkheim Do?

You're using a straw man argument.

Religious belief is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for molesting children.

I agree that fundamentalism is a disaster, but all religion is not necessarily a disaster.

I am not arguing that religious belief is the only cause of violence, and certainly not the sole cause of child abuse. I am saying that the fundamentalist worldview encourages violence because it values authority and devalues dissent. People who see the world as good v. evil are more likely to dehumanize those who disagree with them.

In this case, I am sure that the priests and nuns at the school believed that the children deserved what they got because they were sinful or that their "discipline" was good for them.

All religions have fundamentalism. We need to be rid of it.

"I am saying that the fundamentalist worldview encourages violence because it values authority and devalues dissent. People who see the world as good v. evil are more likely to dehumanize those who disagree with them."

I wouldn't dispute that, but you need to show both that all religious viewpoints discourage dissent and that all religions take the Manichean perspective you are talking about. Hinduism, Asatru, and a number of other Indo-European belief systems in particular tend to take the view that things are neither entirely good nor entirely evil. You are limiting yourself artificially to a narrow Abrahamic stereotype of all religions.

"All religions have fundamentalism. We need to be rid of it."

My religion, Neoplatonism, does not have and has never had a fundamentalist aspect. Neither have Daoism and a whole host of others. When you make a sweeping universal statement like that, be sure it's actually true: even one counterexample invalidates it.

Besides, the general form of your argument can be used to reach unusual conclusions. You are arguing that, if X has some undesirable aspects, it should be eliminated entirely. X can be technology, fatty foods, agriculture, alcohol, government, *representative* government, cannabis, and so on. Now all of these things have some negative aspects, some of them horribly negative, but it's a lot harder to argue they should all be eliminated. Same with religion.

Hinduism, Asatru, and a number of other Indo-European belief systems in particular tend to take the view that things are neither entirely good nor entirely evil. You are limiting yourself artificially to a narrow Abrahamic stereotype of all religions.

I'm afraid you don't know what you're talking about. For a few decades now, it's been fashionable in the West to say that non-Abrahamic religions are fundamentally different from their Western counterparts because they are non-hierarchical, nonviolent, pro-environment, and blah blah blahbity blah blah. Buddhism and Hinduism are special favorites of the "everyone else does religion better than us" crowd.

But the reality is that all religions DO have fundamentalist components, and adherents who are violent, intolerant, and generally not nice. Yes, even Hindus:

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/07/world/hindu-militants-destroy-mosque-setting-off-a-new-crisis-in-india.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/01/world/hindu-rioters-kill-60-muslims-in-india.html

So the argument put forth by Timothy Shortell, Ph.D. remains sound: all religions have a fundamentalist component, and fundamentalism leads to violence, so religion necessarily creates violence.

My religion, Neoplatonism, does not have and has never had a fundamentalist aspect.

I didn't think it was possible for modern humans to believe in a sillier religion than Scientology, but I guess I was wrong:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism

I'm afraid you don't know what you're talking about. For a few decades now, it's been fashionable in the West to say that non-Abrahamic religions are fundamentally different from their Western counterparts because they are non-hierarchical, nonviolent, pro-environment, and blah blah blahbity blah blah. Buddhism and Hinduism are special favorites of the "everyone else does religion better than us" crowd.

I wouldn't and haven't said these things. If you read my post, I simply asserted that the Indo-European religions do not have a strict good vs. evil viewpoint. Their deities are almost universally more rounded in nature. For instance, although Kali is a goddess of evil in Hinduism, she is also worshiped for her beneficial maternal qualities. That is the only claim I was rebutting there, that not all religions have the Manichean view the OP describes.

As someone who has followed South Asian issues for years, I am well aware of acts of violence perpetrated by Hindu and Buddhist groups, sometimes religiously motivated. However, religiously motivated violence represents a minority in these areas. In India, a Dalit, Mayawati, is already the Chief Minister of that country's most populous state and may even enter the running for the Prime Minister in the near future.

So the argument put forth by Timothy Shortell, Ph.D. remains sound: all religions have a fundamentalist component, and fundamentalism leads to violence, so religion necessarily creates violence.

That is simply not true. Ba'hai, Taoism, my own religion, etc. do not have violent fundamentalist elements. As you may now, one counterexample is sufficient to invalidate a universal generalization. I have given three, which is more than enough, and can supply more.

Furthermore, the existence of fundamentalism in itself is not a sufficient argument to banish religion entirely, as I pointed out.

I didn't think it was possible for modern humans to believe in a sillier religion than Scientology, but I guess I was wrong

You'll have to do better than that. The appeal to ridicule is unfortunately not a valid argument.

The Appeal to Ridicule is a fallacy in which ridicule or mockery is substituted for evidence in an "argument." This line of "reasoning" has the following form:

1. X, which is some form of ridicule is presented (typically directed at the claim).
2. Therefore claim C is false.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because mocking a claim does not show that it is false. This is especially clear in the following example: "1+1=2! That's the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!"

I wouldn't and haven't said these things.

I didn't say you did. Maybe you need to work on your reading comprehension.

As someone who has followed South Asian issues for years, I am well aware of acts of violence perpetrated by Hindu and Buddhist groups, sometimes religiously motivated. However, religiously motivated violence represents a minority in these areas.

I hope you don't mind if I use your rather awkward construction in response:

Guess what? Religiously motivated violence represents a minority everywhere, including countries and regions dominated by Abrahamic religions. Timothy Shortell, Ph.D. was not arguing that MOST religious people are violent. He was saying that fundamentalism (which, as you acknowledge, is present even in non-Abrahamic religions) "encourages violence because it values authority and devalues dissent. People who see the world as good v. evil are more likely to dehumanize those who disagree with them."

Baha'i, Taoism, my own religion, etc. do not have violent fundamentalist elements.

Properly understood, Taoism is just one branch of a more complete religious tradition (neo-Confucianism). It would be as wrong to think of Taoism outside this context as it would be to think of Unitarianism as being apart from the Christian tradition. So to say that fundamentalism is virtually absent from the Unitarian tradition is not to say that there is a religious tradition devoid of fundamentalism. Rather, it is to say that not all Christians are fundamentalists. You can say the same thing about Taoism vis-a-vis Confucianism, and I suspect that the same principle applies to Baha'i.

As for neo-Platonism, I think it would be hard to make a case for it being an organized religion, or anything more than an adolescent affectation.

As for the ridicule, it was completely gratuitous and not part of my argument.

I didn't say you did. Maybe you need to work on your reading comprehension.

I can read fine in several languages. It's just that, when someone lets loose with angry, blustering language, I'm inclined to make inferences that might not be proper. My apologies :)

I mean it seemed like you were describing me as the kind of person, like a hippie, who would party irresponsibly at UCB for a few years and then drop out without completing a degree.

Properly understood, Taoism is just one branch of a more complete religious tradition (neo-Confucianism). It would be as wrong to think of Taoism outside this context as it would be to think of Unitarianism as being apart from the Christian tradition.

Daoism was a school of philosophy which developed parallel to and in some opposition with Confucianism during the Warring States period, well before Neo-Confucianism. It was not quite as opposed to Confucianism as, say, Mohism, and you are right in saying that Neo-Confucianism incorporated some elements of Daoism. The Chinese Wikipedia article on says “宋明理學雖以儒學內容為主，同時也借鑒了佛學和道教思想。”, that is, "[Developed under the Song and Ming dynasties] Neo-Confucianism, although consisting primarily of Confucianist thinking, also borrowed from Buddhism and Daoism."

However, I ran your unusual characterization of Daoism as a proper subset of Neo-Confucianism, as it were, by several of my Chinese contacts, and all of them disagreed. Neo-Confucianism incorporates elements of Daoism, but Daoism itself is not a part of Neo-Confucianism, if you take my meaning.

So to say that fundamentalism is virtually absent from the Unitarian tradition is not to say that there is a religious tradition devoid of fundamentalism.

That's not a very germane observation. I was talking about religions, full stop, not "religious traditions" and, if anything, it shows that fundamentalism can be eliminated from religion. Regardless, the existence of fundamentalism in itself isn't sufficient justification to get rid of all religion.

As for neo-Platonism, I think it would be hard to make a case for it being an organized religion, or anything more than an adolescent affectation.

It's not an organized religion per se. However, it is still a religion. I find it strange that you consider it an adolescent affectation, given that most Neoplatonists of the present day (e.g, mathematician Roger Penrose) are middle-aged intellectuals. You would be hard-pressed to find someone in the 12-19 age range who knows about Neoplatonism, much less follows it. The original Neoplatonists, Plotinus and Porphyrus, lived to a ripe old age. Another star of the Neoplatonic school, Hypatia of Alexandria did not, unfortunately, but she certainly can't be blamed for that.

And in any case, pouring scorn on this influential school of philosophy / religion hasn't advanced your case at all. Exactly why is it ridiculous?

As for the ridicule, it was completely gratuitous and not part of my argument.

I'm afraid you made a faulty appeal to ridicule, and you'll have to come up with a better argument against my religion than a horse laugh.

However, I ran your unusual characterization of Daoism as a proper subset of Neo-Confucianism, as it were, by several of my Chinese contacts, and all of them disagreed. Neo-Confucianism incorporates elements of Daoism, but Daoism itself is not a part of Neo-Confucianism, if you take my meaning.

Likewise, Neoplatonism incorporates elements of Stoicism, but Stoicism is not somehow a "branch" of Neoplatonism.

Hope that clears things up.

It is an insignificant detail — to all but the undergraduate philosophy student — whether or not there is some belief system that might be called a religion that does not feature fundamentalism. The main point is valid, even if it ought to be phrased more precisely: all of the major world religions, the players on the world stage at this historical moment, contain fundamentalists who are prone to violence. The influence of religion on politics, in the US and elsewhere, is detrimental.* Getting rid of religion would not eliminate political violence, but it would be a step in that direction.

* Note: I know that it can be otherwise, even if it rarely is. I wrote my dissertation on the Catholic Church in El Salvador, an example of progressive religion. The Church ended silenced liberation theology long ago, and worldwide is dominated by sex-obsessed reactionaries.

"Getting rid of religion would not eliminate political violence, but it would be a step in that direction."

Getting rid of humans altogether would eliminate political violence entirely and immediately. If carried out properly, it could replace them with something arguably superior. Are you in favor of that, too?

Don't be childish.

Humans don't need religion to be human. Getting rid of superstition would make us appreciate our connections to each other and the planet. I'm an optimist in that regard.

The only eliminationists on our public stage are the religious extremists, who want to kill all those who believe differently. That's the difference between fanatics and humanists.

I explain the connection between religion and violence more fully in my essay, Death Mobs.

I'm not being childish. I'm being inquisitive and open-minded. And you are using a runaway train argument. Religion has some extreme, negative aspects, so get rid of it, you say. Should anything that has some extremely negative aspects be gotten rid of entirely? Or is reform a more temperate middle way?

Humans in general have some extreme, negative aspects, too. And that's worth thinking about. Being as you are an atheist, you necessarily believe that the mind, like everything else, consists entirely of matter and energy. It is an emergent phenomenon of the billions of neurons and neural interconnects in every head. In other words, there is no special élan vital behind it.

That being said, what would be inferior about a mind designed deliberately, rather than by the slipshod mechanism of evolution, using the exact same principle of using a massive network of threshold gates that our brains use, but to a higher degree? All the biases and faults of primitive humans could be eliminated in this new mind, and housed in much stronger, hardier bodies.

I am slightly religious, but even then I don't see why a machine can't be conscious if an animal can. Roger Penrose, the Neoplatonist mathematician I mentioned earlier, objects to strong AI using Goedel's incompleteness theorems, but as much as I agree with him about religion, his argument has been considered very tenuous: neither humans nor machines must necessarily behave as formal systems, which fact immediately invalidates his argument.

Outlandish as it seems, developments in neuroscience and artificial intelligence are slowly encroaching on our territory. In Wuhan University, the eminent AI researcher Hugo de Garis is working on a model of a full human brain, and invasive neural prostheses first started showing signs of success several years ago. CMU AI researcher Hans Moravec is enthusiastically in favor of eventually eliminating the human kind, an idea MIT's Joseph Weizenbaum has compared to Nazism. Given that someone with a name like "Joseph Weizenbaum" is probably from an Ashkenazic Jewish background, that's a pretty heavy indictment for him to make, meaning that he takes Moravec seriously even if he does not agree with him. Whether you are for or against what one would call "transhumanism," don't pretend the technical details of its vision can't eventually be carried out.

Anyway, you might argue that there should be an effort to reform the human race before getting rid of all together. The same reasoning would apply to religion. Personally, I don't see any reason to keep us around if machines can do the same things as us much better. Maybe you analogously believe that secular humanism can do a much better job of filling religious needs than religion can. But I think, if you examine your writing more critically, you will find it is based on falsely dichotomous thinking and loose, unjustifiable generalizations that don't hold water. As Aldous Huxley put it in his foreword to Brave New World, I believe that religion should be "the conscious and intelligent pursuit of man's Final End, the unitive knowledge of the immanent Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead or Brahman." Fundamentalism does not have any role in this vision.

Personally, I don't see any reason to keep us around if machines can do the same things as us much better.

This is just silly. It makes sense to say, for example, "Computers can do math better" because faster and more accurate are desirable in computation. But to say that you think computers should replace humans because they can live better is just plain nonsense.

Go read the manifesto of the Anti-Naturals if you want to know what I think about humanism.

I don't think humanism is a substitute for religion. I don't think there is any empirical evidence of a "religious need." We can pursue questions about the meaning of life without any reference to the supernatural or mysticism.

This is just silly. It makes sense to say, for example, "Computers can do math better" because faster and more accurate are desirable in computation. But to say that you think computers should replace humans because they can live better is just plain nonsense.

Why can't they? What significant distinction is there between an evolved, electrochemical neural network and an artificial electrical counterpart? Why can't a machine have a range of emotions (if it so desires)? Explain.

And there is an assumption you are making which I find questionable: that "living well" has inherent value. I imagine a society of machines would want to pursue scientific, mathematical, and philosophical endeavors, and hopefully even have some aesthetic sensibility. But there is no inherent value in those aims either.

So, neither party being more justified, may the best rational agent win! That being said, I can't imagine we humans would have much of an edge at all on sufficiently advanced machines, such as Hugo de Garis describes in the following paper:

http://www.agi-08.org/artilectwar.pdf

In fact, an analogy to ants or other small insects would seem appropriate. And if you're a bug, there's no use saying "nonsense" in the shadow of a boot coming down on you.

(Oh and his research, as I see, is being conducted at Xiamen University, not Wuhan University. My bad.)

I don't think there is any empirical evidence of a "religious need."

Neurotheology might differ.

We can pursue questions about the meaning of life without any reference to the supernatural or mysticism.

Maybe, but it is not necessary to discard them entirely either.

Here's progress on the China Brain Project, which is moving along at a good clip, even foraying into self-awareness:

http://www.agi-09.org/papers/paper_7.pdf

Here's Hugo de Garis' talk on the possibility of a gigadeath war:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7001819700508362993

He believes, quite justifiably, that "species dominance" will ultimately be the predominant political issue of this century. I can't blame you for being unaware, since the media are all about discussing terribly small, petty things, and rarely entertain scientific issues in depth, but you would do well to consider what he is talking about seriously, regardless of what opinion you hold.