Greg Robie, facilitator
Please see original workshop description for details before posting here.
This workshop will focus on the denomination church of the Christian religion. As institutions of waning social relevance in the privileged societies of globalized capitalism, this workshop will considering what roles motivated reasoning may have played in the decline and inter-denominational shifts of membership. Both those who are active in a religious community, and those intentionally disengaged from institutional religions are welcome. The summary report will be framed as a series of questions that grow from the discussion that may be helpful tools for understanding motivated reasoning’s role in the rise of apostasy in the Christian religion and how this has fed into environmental, social, and economic injustice.
December 19th, 2012 at 7:39 pm
Before one can discuss religion, either generic or specific, the wheat must be threshed from the chaff. In any rational discourse on religion the scientific method is de rigueur. What falls out is the chaff of religion: superstition.
December 19th, 2012 at 9:13 pm
The problem with religion is the whole dualist notion that this world is ‘sub’ to some higher spiritual plane. Therefore, it puts this planet in low regard – as a big diaper meant to be shit on till it is rotten and then discarded. There is absolutely no reverence of nature in the ‘dominate, subdue, overpopulate’ theme of the Abrahamic religions.
December 20th, 2012 at 3:50 am
Religion is the ultimate hopium and death denial
From the youtube poster Theramin Trees
Of all the escapes from the pain of living, from food to sex to drugs, religion stands alone
Only with religion is everyone else required to shoot up in order to sustain the high.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syNVg8V4EQU
December 20th, 2012 at 5:45 am
Religion is the ultimate hopium and death denial
I think that is too general and too narrow. Santa Muerte is a religion which celebrates death. There are other examples where death, far from being denied, is seen very differently from anything mentioned in the Theremin Trees video, e.g. Kapalikas, who take their daily meals from a bowl made from a human cranium, so that they never forget that they are mortal and that life is short and will end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Muerte
December 20th, 2012 at 6:10 am
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Muerte
” In Latin America, the human skeleton was used to remind Catholics of the need for a “holy death,” (muerte santa) fully confessed of sins.”
Still about life after death – still denial of mortality in the sense that some part of you, in fact the essence of you, continues.
Again from the link “An hourglass indicates the time of life on earth. It also represents the belief that death is not the end, but rather the beginning of something new, as the hourglass can be turned to start over.[2]“
December 20th, 2012 at 6:13 am
Following out the Aztec contribution to Santa Muerte
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_religion
“After death the soul of the Aztec went to one of three places: the sun, Mictlan, or Tlalocan. Souls of fallen warriors and women that died in childbirth would transform into hummingbirds that followed the sun on its journey through the sky. Souls of people who died from less glorious causes would go to Mictlan. Those who drowned would go to Tlalocan.[5]“
December 20th, 2012 at 6:54 am
Okay, so define the terms. Death, as in the ending of the physical body, something entirely different to a belief in an imagined afterlife, isn’t it. Death is a factual temporal event.
What is being talked about here, is beliefs, ideas, isn’t it ? Which, in effect, are stories, that we tell ourselves, embedded in our neurochemistry.
I’m not a Christian, far from it, but I have been indoctrinated by at least three varieties if Christianity during the course of my life, and have had discussions with many others that have crossed my path. I’ve also studied all the world’s ‘religions’ in so far as I’ve been able. I probably shouldn’t be on this thread, because my thesis would be that ‘religion’ is a spurious category that arose from eurocentric academia, heavily weighted by prejudices, as was early anthropology. I think belief systems is a much more useful concept, ( alternative terms might be cosmologies, worldviews, etc ) and then one can appreciate that everyone has a belief system, and that all belief systems can be subjected to critical evaluation, deconstruction and analysis.
That said, it’s probably wise for me to retreat graciously before I divert the thread further.
December 20th, 2012 at 9:25 am
Motivated reasoning when it comes to religion and the environment cannot be talked about without addressing the perceived afterlife that it promises. That is not to say that all religious people refuse to look at the environment because they believe in an afterlife. However it is a strong theme that many adopt and given its power to let people think that what they do to the environment doesn’t matter, it is not a diversion of the thread but IMO central to the topic.
The hopium that the good life funded by ancient fossil fuels and water and soil can go on for ever is very much similar to the hopium that even though our mortal bodies die our souls go on forever. Celebrating death can be just as much a part of that hopium as are more ordinary religious modes, if it also promises eternal life. Thus the celebrating of the martyrs, whether it St Stephen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or suicide bombers, reinforces the belief that some part of us, often called a soul, goes on after.
If the eternal life is going to be so wonderful, the task of the believer is to do what their religion requires, and the fate of this planet becomes immaterial. Perhaps belief in reincarnation could be more amenable to bringing the focus on the planet, but to the extent that it promises a better reincarnation to those who accept their place in life without complaint, it fails. The wielders of religious/political power well know how to use afterlife promises or reincarnation to keep the plebes in line.
Funny memory, I knew of a woman who had her leg amputated. She had it buried where her body was to be buried so God could find all the parts. Many still believe in a resurrection of the body. One Christian author I know of thinks that God might reward him with 10 cities to rule after he dies.
No adult with a fully functioning mind can really deny death as we don’t see any 300 year old people running around. Death denial not saying our bodies don’t die, it is the tricks people use to not think about death and for many to project some sort of continued existence when the body turns to mush. Embalming corpses is one trick (oh doesn’t he look good? No he looks awful he is dead). Believing our works (or works by others in civilization) will live on – books, music, art, science. Having children to pass our genes into future generations another. These are tricks we play on ourselves to pretend that we don’t end somehow.
Unfortunately we have brains big enough to know we die. I don’t know when belief in an afterlife came to humans, but in modern religion it seems to always offer the idea that this world is not our eternal home, its just where we start on the way to heaven or Nirvana. If we are good little boys and girls we get to go to heaven or get reincarnated in a better life. The next life becomes the salvation and saving the planet plays little part. The more progressive churches make small concessions to the environment but seldom recognize that our whole way of life would have to crash for the planet to be saved. A death of the planet denial if you will, ie the planet can be saved if we all drive electric cars.
December 20th, 2012 at 9:55 am
Kathy C. :I don’t know when belief in an afterlife came to humans, but in modern religion it seems to always offer the idea that this world is not our eternal home, its just where we start on the way to heaven or Nirvana.
Your ignorance on the subject could be remedied if you studied it more. Nirvana is NOT ‘belief in an afterlife’, so what you have said is a gross and nonsensical distortion of the concept.
The Buddha’s teachings in the Pāli Canon present nirvāṇa as a radical reordering of consciousness.[14] This reordering is made possible through the cultivation of special states of absorbed concentration called jhānas. These are states of deep relaxation in which a high degree of mental alertness and concentration is present. The jhanas in turn are made possible by a training in the establishing of mindfulness. In Theravada whose concept of the bodhisattva differs from that of the Mahayana the arahant abiding in nirvāṇa is “the ideal personality, the true human being”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana
December 20th, 2012 at 10:31 am
Kathy C Says: Believing our works (or works by others in civilization) will live on – books, music, art, science.
My writing is for the ages:
Soon the fame of my pages
Will be equally starred
As the works of the Bard
And all of the well-known sages.
December 20th, 2012 at 11:18 am
Signing up and introducing myself:
If Myers-Briggs personality types can help introduce a person, I tend to oscillate between testing out as an ENTP (the architect) and an ENTJ (field marshall). It is in this latter orientation that I tend to get kneecapped (or worse).
My interest in the subject matter of this workshop, besides being integral to my religious experience over my adult lifetime (10-61), is shaped by a report a musician in my community gave after attending the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. He reported that Third World elders were praying for a religious revival in the 1st World. From their experience of what constitutes religious practice, what was needed to save the environment was religious in nature: the ability to live a life of delayed gratification; to be spiritually mature and suffer for what is right.
My being [nicely] kneecapped (or worse) when, as an active contemplative, I explored effecting such a revival, both before and since then, led me to the insight that to the degree that that which invokes motivated reasoning is what one is religious about, those in the First World denominational churches, like those who are not in them, appear, motivated reasoning withstanding, to be religious about the economic meme and unable to be other than piously apostate/without moral integrity due to this condition.
December 20th, 2012 at 11:25 am
The big three religions of the Middle East are definitely problematic, but I don’t think they are the root of the problem. After all, you could just as easily decide that since you personally are going to die there is no reason to care about the future of life on earth. Further, science tells us that the planet itself will eventually be destroyed, so again, why bother? As much as I hate Christianity as an insane belief system, I think our predicament goes much deeper than just religion. Don’t forget, the real religion of the USA and most of the developed world is capitalism, technophilia, and “progress”.
My point is that if religion disappeared tomorrow it would not affect the trajectory that we are on. We would continue full speed ahead towards self-induced extinction.
December 20th, 2012 at 11:52 am
@ Ulvfulg
“Your ignorance on the subject could be remedied if you studied it more”.
Could this not be said about every religion (belief system/concept of transcendence) which number in the thousands, if not tens of thousands.
Don’t confuse ignorance with utter indifference.
IMO this is a perfect example as to why any discussion of personal “belief systems”, is inappropriate in context to a science blog. It usually gets ugly real fast….
December 20th, 2012 at 12:25 pm
Ulvfugl, belief in reincarnation IS a belief in continued existence is it not? Do not the common people of India believe they get many lives? I don’t know what they believe about Nirvana, but it probably is different from what westerners believe, just as what the ordinary Christian believes can be quite different from what theologians believe. They desperately believe in an afterlife while clinging to this one as long as they can.
per wiki “Reincarnation is the religious or philosophical concept that the soul or spirit, after biological death, begins a new life in a new body that may be human, animal or spiritual depending on the moral quality of the previous life’s actions. This doctrine is a central tenet of the Indian religions[1] and is a belief that was held by such historic figures as Pythagoras, Plato and Socrates. It is also a common belief of other religions such as Druidism, Spiritism, Theosophy, and Eckankar and is found in many tribal societies around the world, in places such as Siberia, West Africa, North America, and Australia.[2]”
At one time I thought Buddhism might be worth exploring. Luckily I read Michael Parenti before I wasted my time.
Many of the gurus who attract Westerners were those who fled out of Tibet and were part of what Parenti describes in Friendly Feudalism
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html
A must read for the torture and oppression of ordinary Tibetans by the Buddhist elites
The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation–including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation–were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.”21 Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. 22
This too is of particular interest
“Meanwhile in the United States, the American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA-financed front, energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in that organization. The Dalai Lama’s second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA as early as 1951. He later upgraded it into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet.28″
Religion IS bad for the world.
December 20th, 2012 at 1:04 pm
Kathy C. : ” I don’t know what they believe about Nirvana,”
What an appallingly patronising attitude…. It’s totally obvious that you don’t know what ‘they’ ( you mean those strange brown native people who live far way ? ) believe, and you couldn’t be bothered to find out. You might at least have read what the Buddha and buddhists mean by Nirvana, what Hindus mean by Moksha, etc, but you’ve already decided that YOU know better…
Anyway, I’ve tried very hard to discuss with you before and it really was a waste of time. I find your entrenched narrow dogmatic view every bit as repellent as the religious dogma you attack. So this time I will withdraw permanently, otherwise this whole thread will become as tedious and unproductive as the last time.
December 20th, 2012 at 1:36 pm
@ Daniel
Don’t confuse ignorance with utter indifference.
If someone is going to criticise anything, any topic at all, then they ought to take the trouble to know something about it first, no ?
As I understand it, although the wording seems far from clear, the topic is something to do with apostasy ( of Christianity ), which, as I understand it, means rejection.
Before you can reject, you have to know what it is that you are rejecting. To reject Buddhism, without even understanding what Nirvana means is kinda like rejecting science on the grounds that Darwin said we had monkeys for grandparents. Stupidity.
December 20th, 2012 at 2:09 pm
‘the rise of apostasy in the Christian religion and how this has fed into environmental, social, and economic injustice’ -greg robie
are u suggesting that christian faith promotes justice in all these realms? if so, i heartily disagree. particularly re. the environment. as kathy and others have pointed out, in the book of genesis ‘god’ basically says that this world and everything in it has been created for humans to do with as they please, go ahead and trash the place, treat other species like chattel, it doesn’t matter… all that matters is having faith in the ‘one true god’… so that one may be ‘saved’.
December 20th, 2012 at 2:10 pm
Pardon me, but if I may politely interject, ulvfugl, Darwin didn’t say we had monkeys for grandparents. He said that monkeys and us had ancestors in common. Evolution works like a tree, not like a line.
December 20th, 2012 at 2:43 pm
Pardon me, Librarian, I know that full well. The subtlety of my comment obviously escaped you.
The ignorant ones, who tried to discredit science and Darwin, made that foolish claim, which was a travesty of evolution.
I was trying to illustrate that it is of comparable ignorance to attack buddhism with the foolish claim that ‘nirvana equals belief in an afterlife’, when nirvana means nothing of the kind.
Does that make sense to you now ?
You could say that both are strawman arguments.
December 20th, 2012 at 3:46 pm
As facilitator, is there any helpful role I can play regarding what is being posted here? Would reminding folks that this comment space is for this workshop’s topic and the conference’s theme, “Motivated Reasoning: savior or sycophant?”, make a difference?
Given were the conference is in the self-organizing process, signing in and sharing something about yourself and/or your interest expectations about the workshop is welcomed.
December 20th, 2012 at 4:00 pm
@ Daniel
IMO this is a perfect example as to why any discussion of personal “belief systems”, is inappropriate in context to a science blog. It usually gets ugly real fast….
Thing is, classical buddhism, of which nirvana is a key concept, is not ‘my personal belief system’, so I am not ‘defending myself’, I am trying to convey accurate information. So let it at least be understood here, something of what is meant in buddhism by nirvana, rather than Kathy C.’s totally misleading and erroneous distortion.
As it states in the quote from wiki : ..nirvāṇa as a radical reordering of consciousness. This reordering is made possible through the cultivation of special states of absorbed concentration called jhānas. These are states of deep relaxation in which a high degree of mental alertness and concentration is present. The jhanas in turn are made possible by a training in the establishing of mindfulness.
That’s taken from the Pali Canon, the earliest existing recorded buddhist teachings. What they are about, in western terms, is ‘meditation’, a crude and inadequate term, because western traditions have no comparable nomenclature that permits adequate translation. You, Daniel, may think that is inappropriate on a ‘science’ blog, but that is ridiculous. These meditation practices change the structure and functioning of the brain. That’s not some superstition or speculative fanciful notion about ‘the afterlife’ or anything vaguely related to such. This is a phenomena scientifically demonstrated and accepted as validated in peer reviewed journals.
See, for example
http://youtu.be/m8rRzTtP7Tc
Neuroscientist Sara Lazar’s amazing brain scans show meditation can actually change the size of key regions of our brain, improving our memory and making us more empathetic, compassionate, and resilient under stress.
December 20th, 2012 at 5:11 pm
…is there any helpful role I can play regarding what is being posted here?
Hmm, don’t really think I should be here at all, just that I got pulled in by Kathy C.’s remarks.
I don’t really understand what this is about, so perhaps clarification would be helpful ?
I mean, I agree with the general NTE thesis that has been elucidated here over recent months, so complaints that ‘religion is bad for the world’ or whatever are kinda absurd, at this late stage, because billions of humans are not going to suddenly change their beliefs just because Kathy C. or anyone else doesn’t like what they think, are they, nor are they going to suddenly care about social, environmental, or economic justice, in any sort of relevant time frame to make any difference, are they ?
Perhaps that’s being too negative. Cultures do change all the time, and a new generation of children could, in theory, be raised with an entirely different set of values and attitudes, if parents could agree what those should be… which they will not.
Kathy C. states dogmatically that ‘religion is bad for the world’ but attempts to banish religion, such as the communist systems of China and the USSR were just as bad as any ‘religion’ both for humans and for the environment, and I’d argue that it is the materialism, the physicalism, that Kathy C. advocates, which de-sanctifies reality and dis-enchants the world, which permits its exploitation and destruction as much as anything, along with other cultural forces, of course, science, capitalism, all of which view the world, the biosphere, as merely ‘stuff’ to be used.
Once, for some peoples, the whole world was sacred. To cause harm to it, was a sin, a crime, sacrilege.
Part of a ‘religions’ job was to ensure that everyone understood that. I use the word ‘religion’ there, in the sense of the belief system of small tribal groups, typically centred around shamans rather than priesthoods, although the term religion is not appropriate and not comparable with large mass institutionalised organisations.
In this culture, we have science and technology as religion. We no longer have a religious or philosophical basis for making choices regarding the evolution of technology. All those decisions are made in the corporate world.
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/AoS/theSun.html
December 20th, 2012 at 5:15 pm
Greg Roble, it’s unclear to me if you’ve spent much time in the comment sections of Guy’s blog. You wrote: Would reminding folks that this comment space is for this workshop’s topic and the conference’s theme, “Motivated Reasoning: savior or sycophant?”, make a difference? I think most regular commenters would say, no, it would not make a difference. I realize that probably feels frustrating to you. There is a particular culture here; it’s not static, but I think it’s safe to say it’s not all that amenable to externally-imposed structure.
I’m wondering if your application of open space technology to this virtual space is useful. What are you, Greg, hoping to get out of this? I feel like you have some unstated needs. I hope you will make them plain. You say your personality type is part-architect and part-field marshal; I’m concerned that you may have some control issues. (And don’t we all.)
For my part, I’m finding it difficult to engage with this process, despite a concerted effort to focus and give it a chance. I’m usually game for discussions in various formats, but I’m feeling alienated.
December 20th, 2012 at 6:18 pm
Externally-imposed structure. Yep.
December 20th, 2012 at 6:50 pm
Greg, what you need is that rare, now almost impossible to find book, The Anarchist’s Guide to Herding Cats…
Other news.. ..In just a few weeks, a small campaign launched against the Conservative government’s budget bill by four aboriginal women has expanded and transformed into a season of discontent: a cultural and political resurgence.
It has seen rallies in dozens of cities, a disruption of legislature, blockades of major highways, drumming flash mobs in malls, a flurry of Twitter activity under the hashtag #IdleNoMore and a hunger strike by Chief Theresa Spence, in a tepee minutes from Ottawa’s parliament. Into her tenth day, Spence says she is “willing to die for her people” to get the prime minister, chiefs and Queen to discuss respect for historical treaties.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/20/canada-first-nations-new-alliance
December 20th, 2012 at 7:53 pm
merry solstice? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9PgWmb2JD0
December 20th, 2012 at 8:27 pm
Merry Solstice and Happy cat herding to ya’ll!! ♥
December 21st, 2012 at 1:47 am
ulvfugl + Jennifer Hartley * others
I have been trying to get a grip on this new fangled approach that Guy and Greg Robie have initiated here.
What I feel is being attempted is to use a different discussion structure to make some ‘progress’ beyond the finality of NTE and Peak Oil in this forum .
My view is that bringing into the discussion the concept of ‘motivated reasoning’ is an attempt to throw in a circuit breaker on the logic that leads those here to agree with the NTE and Peak Oil thesis, and those who don’t.
Does motivated reasoning, insofar as it identifies a real problem able to be named and identified, offer any reflective and greater educative value to us, if any of our views fall in either camp, or even in another?
After looking at this a bit puzzled I have come up with some ideas and I am willing to throw them up…
Motivated reasoning to me involves the kind of reasoning that comes from a sophisticated mental development that is just not yet into ‘adult’ stage regarding complex issues. It describes why some ‘educated’ people can come to differing opinions on the same topic.
If one disregards the scientific data for the moment on say Peak Oil, it then comes down to who you normally use as a sourse of authority on issues you know not a lot about, and then how you actually first encountered the concept of peak oil say,(ar any other issues).
Modern media and political spin doctors, are very refined and intellegent at covering these two bases regarding how a public issue ‘breaks’ into the mainstream, and who the messangers appear to be.
A news Anchor is a parental figure to a child and to some degree adolescent mind. The child accepts the Anchor’s ‘views’ via that authority, the adolescent, requiring more rational information because ‘authority’ is no longer enough, requires a coherent story and some evidence.
I would venture that the ‘Adult’ mentality is swayed by niether of these things, but uses all their functions, some of which are not rational, to asses an issue over time.
One of the things that has impressed me from reading some historical accounts of some Indian holy men, like Ramana Maharsi ,and Swami Nityanunda, and others, is that even as their spiritual awareness is very great, they would still listen and discuss very ordinary things, details from the life of a devotee, who may have expertise or other experiences from a field of life endeavour, and they would respect these reports in a straightforward manner, and learn new things, about which they even had little knowledge. There was to my untrained eye, no motivated reasoning, but no over or under critical appraisal of the issues, new information, and the individuals attitude to it. In other words, there are acceptable real gaps in the world knowledge of the Adult mind, but no prejudice there as an attempt to cover up those ignorances. That is one sign to me of an adult mind – no pretence of omnipotence and no arrogance concerning real time and real world information. Just an open mind to get more informed, without uncritical acceptance, nor defiant rejection of others’ abilities skill and knowledge.
An adult is not swayed by unconscious processes in these regards, either by authority, or shonky biased selective data or reasoning. The adult if in doubt makes no hasty conclusions, but looks for more evidence, and tests it.
Regarding say Peak Oil, I went to some considderable lengths to find out if the Peak Oil publishers, like Kunstler, Heinberg, Orlov and I should include Guy too, had not some economic incentive to promote this issue beyond its merits.
I was rebuked by Orlov, but I don’t blame him that much.
The point is I needed to find out how real was the alarm, why were they screaming this message. That is testing the source.
Guys site had a scientific rogour , which I believe he set, of putting serious links to peer reviewed reports, and that standard attracted me, because it is democratic, and also no mediation was also democratic.
Motivated reasoning has other angles no doubt, but it can have a go at explaining why a view like Peak Oil, and NTE, seems obvious to some, but light years away from even thier next door neighbours.
I think one aspect of modern culture is that the majority no longer live in villages where it is easy to spot a heratic, and social conformity of views, at least in public, is much more consequential and ‘policed’ by the controlling types.
So people can still have widely differing views, and live nearby, or work closely together.
Cheep Coal, Oil and Gas has provided that luxury, but in reality if all the ‘costs’ of those industries were tallied with a greater conscience, they would never have been cheep, and the world would possibly not have been put into this situation.
Motivated reasoning can offer a chance to reflect and ask ourselves and each other,(here), have we colluded on this intellectual slide to a ‘doomer’ world view, (which by the way is on the Schizophrenia rubric as one factor in a list of issues that get one sectioned – Cathy C aliens is another).
Conversely, it is also a chance to reflect on those who reject these issues discussed here, and remain in the mainstream of ideas and general views, which some may call ‘ignorant suburban consumption’.
My view is that for the majority of individuals they are not very motivated to grow beyond their group views and global concerns, and by global I refer not to the Earth, but the scope of their cosmology.
Only a small percentage want to do that and can cope with the social dislocation that that brings. That is not to heroise these few, but merely to explain that going upstream to the source, even a little way, gains the individual a degree of criticism from the group, and some isolation, even if that is only for short periods. So many learn early that conformity is easier, it feels better in some broarder social sence too.
I think, therefore, this can explain the tendency to find like minds and allies in that upstream journey, but a new problem arrises if one does – how does one get around ‘groupthink’emerging on that journey occurring.
If I have anything positive to say about Marocco Bama, it is his/her attention to this issue that was a worthy contribution, apart from any links put up, as he/she appeared to be committed to rejecting any potential for groupthink setting in and dulling the acuity of the reasoning on the issues and data analysis discussed here. I hope I conveyed that in some exchanges in earlier posts, and it will be an issue to reflect on here I feel.
Many cults are formed from the pressure to resolve ordinary deeply learnt social habituations, to conform to group socialisation, and a desire to unlearn conditioning, which is at the heart of the early stages of any spiritual awakening. The desire to ‘Un’ learning all the ‘un’truths and lies of one’s culture and community and family, is in my opinion an impulse to greater growth, but also it is a growth cycle that is often abandoned in midstream because the worldly demands of group obligation and security come into play as one attempts to cross the threshhold of ‘adult’ consciousness.
Motivated reasoning may in part explain why so many radicals of the sixties and seventies never continued with the ‘spiritual’ journey begun in the protest era, and the ‘make love not war’ times.
Debt slavery and working poverty in the Anex-1 nations serves as a disincentive for many newer generations to never get off their screens and come together in ‘realspace’ for some lasting rejection of the planet killer that is Industrial Civilisation – but it truth, I am willing to say that it is more accurate to say that they lack the courage to swim upstream, because they live in a dominant world culture now that has figured out, at its apex in history, that it works best for the 1%, not the planet, nor the 99%, if individuals are never educated to the required maturity to be independent, full stop.
Swimming upstream thankfully has its rewards, because as you go you get stronger, and by experience it is much easier to ‘sse’ in what ways others are even heading up and down stream, often caught in the strugglt to cut free of either pull in ther overall concerns and worldly responsibilities.
So far this is a great experiment Guy, and good on you for going for it.
December 21st, 2012 at 2:35 am
Sorry that last bit should have been…
“Swimming upstream thankfully has its rewards, because as you go you get stronger, and by experience it is much easier to ‘see’ in what ways others are even heading up and down stream, often caught in the struggle to cut free of either pull in theer overall concerns and worldly responsibilities.”
December 21st, 2012 at 5:00 am
Motivations shift with circumstances. When the Church’s milking the rich with indulgences to assuage troubled consciences became prevalent, those unable to afford such indulgences formed an audience for the Reformation. Congruent reasoning intellectually underwrote the transformation. Every present day denomination is similarly buttressed by a suitably crafted intellectual edifice.
To every such institution views others are fair game, while their own have to be kept corralled. The intellectual edifice caters to the reasoning that stems from the motives of their audience. So any modification to appeal to others also hazards the loss of that audience.
Churches vary over the spectrum from intellectual sclerosis to innovation. The former include both leviathans less susceptible to the vicissitudes of temporal mores, and fringe group diehards of long-established tradition. Some rabid coteries are quite insusceptible.
Most other churches are commercial enterprises with a service to sell: the smoothing of ruffled feathers. They are quite responsive to the needs of their clientele, and will tailor their message to the zeitgeist.
The motives of the lumpenproletariat are moulded by their survival mechanisms in the society: as cogs in the industrial machine. The scope and extent of this machine is all-pervading. Lip service to “environmental, social and economic justice” is de rigueur for a presentable façade but diametrically opposite mechanisms are intrinsic and essential to system.
The motivated reasoning of the lumpenproletariat has its motivations shaped by the system, and the reasoning is catered to by a smörgåsbord of churches which are also a part of the “system”.
December 21st, 2012 at 5:05 am
I’ve posted a new essay. It’s here.
December 21st, 2012 at 5:18 am
Twenty Theories On The Origin Of Religion.
December 21st, 2012 at 5:45 am
As an aside, nirvana means extinguishing. In the religious context it refers to extinguishing the sense of self. The “I” would then still be apparent to oneself, but would no longer be regarded as real, just as an image projected on a screen is not considered real. It is something very difficult to comprehend, more so for those moulded in the theistic traditions.
Indian tradition has it that the average “soul” has to go through 84,000,000 incarnations before its final dissolution. Everything that has a beginning has an end. Even a new beginning entails a new end. The sense of “I” identifies with birth as a beginning and death as an end, and indeed both are valid from that perspective. No arguments can be made against it.
December 21st, 2012 at 5:59 am
Personally, I think that a more plausible and convincing origin than any of those cited in the list of 20, is that suggested by Mircea Eliade, that is, stories of the origins of things. He was criticised for lacking empirical support for his ideas, I’m not sure how you could get empirical support, but it seems imaginable that right back to early hominids, the questions as to ‘where did the world come from, where did we come from, what are the stars, where does the sun go at night, etc, etc, would have arisen, and that stories would have been embroidered to provide answers.
And once you have stories, anything is possible, because stories can feature characters with whatever abilities you may care to endow them with, as e.g. Alan Moore of V for Vendetta fame knows so well….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade
The problems re religion arise when humans confuse mythos stories with the empirical reality of logos, and muddle up fantasy and fiction with gravity and all that hard sharp jagged dangerous stuff out there. Of course, the borderline is fascinating, as Moore pointed out the other day, money is a fiction, which only exists because we all agree it exists. As soon as we stop believing and lose faith, it becomes instantly worthless, and its value vanishes. I used to have some Weimar zillion mark notes once. I wonder what happened to them. So to, so many of the ancient gods, once feared and revered…
December 21st, 2012 at 7:27 am
…which only exists because we all agree it exists. As soon as we stop believing and lose faith, it becomes instantly worthless, and its value vanishes.
Was true for the Titanic, too.
December 21st, 2012 at 4:29 pm
Best wishes in your travels Guy. With him mobile, additional workshops are not likely to get posted, even if offered. There’s another I’ve suggested the conference would benefit from: “What are motivated reasoning’s impacts on the dynamics of the Blogosphere?”, with this as a description:
“To the degree the Blogosphere constitutes a place of virtual social communities, what are the roles motivated reasoning play in hi-jacking the enabling social networking tools to amplify trusted, but dead end, memes? The workshop will explore the insights that are shared, and process these with the intent of developing queries to report out that can be available to evolve how the tools are used and engaged with.”
This information was included in this AM’s “check in” comment at the original motivated reasoning blog entry. Should a facilitator(s) step forward, it can proceed in that comment space.
As this space for the workshop, ”The role of motivated reasoning in an apostate church relative to environmental, social, and economic justice.” ‘formally’ opens, I would observe that, to the degree the number of pre-workshop comments is a measure of elevated emotions, “religion” seems to effect such…which, of course, I would like to feel confirms the observation about motivated reasoning and what is religious, but such may be an example of confirmation bias. ;)
A reason I was as specific as I was in the title and description of this workshop, is that I felt it was a good bet that strong feelings would be elicited. Since such are precursors for triggering motivated reasoning, it would create fertile ground if this came to pass. I also would have been surprised if the NBL Blog was populated with a lot of individuals who are active in a denominational Christian church. So, now a confession: to the degree the truism, the faults we see in others are the ones we have ourselves, I would like to proceed as stated in the workshop’s description with the expectation that the results will be far more universally relevant than will be comfortable. I’m suggesting we have fun looking at what the church has done as a consequence of motivated reasoning with an eye toward learning more about motivated reasoning’s role in other social groupings and may hide transformational and rational options in plain sight.
With that as background, here is the denominational church’s condition in a nutshell: the “blue” denominations are in decline and aging in place. The demographic trend of the larger society, the baby bust, has resulted in a formerly trustworthy supply of younger adults, those with a desire to “inoculate”/expose their offspring to religion, to diminish. And this decrease is greater than the demographic trend for reasons reflected in some of the pre-workshop comments. Individual churches within denominations are financially challenged due to the decline in membership, and tend to do the “justice” stuff at the denominational level where some trust funds and pooled “special offerings” monies provide employment for a few activist types– while keeping them far, far away from the seat of change, the local community. Piety is affected within the local church due to its contribution of chump change to the national office, and activist burn-out keeps the few naive members (who need to be about doing justice to feel pious) lost within motivated reasoning and employed for a season.
The “red” churches tend to be of two flavors. One mirrors the dynamics and decline of the “blue” church and the other, the mega-church, is, in relative terms, so successful regarding membership, it appears to be growing. Both iterations of the “red” church tend to be non-hierarchical to the degree they are denominational. The current model that successfully grows the mega-churches involves a rock concert under the guise of such being about prayer and praise, charismatic preaching exhorting members to a disciples life–but with a surprising breath of therapeutic nuisance that it can confound the stereotype it is saddled with, and a plethora of small groups in which social intimacy is effected. Community-building social and economic justice projects are undertaken with a good measure of evangelism included as seasoning. Depending on resources these can be local, international, or both. Iterations of environmental justice projects are also in this mix.
Concerning the shifts in membership, that feed into both the decline and growth dynamics, both “blue” and “red” churches tend to trade members, but on different time scales. “Red” mega-churches tend to churn membership with a five year stay in a particular congregation being an average. In the smaller “red” churches as well as the “blue”, a generational trend can be observed. In general terms the Roman Catholic Church is contributing members to mainstream Protestant churches who, in turn are giving their members to Buddhists, the practice of yoga, Unitarians, and Quakers, who, in turn, fill the ranks of the secular humanists, which can be a source of membership for the evangelicals. This is overly simplistic, but it is not without anecdotal, if not statistical, backing.
With this as a generalized framing of the denominational Christian church’s condition, and homeostasis/piety as the product the apostate denominational church provides within capitalism’s privileged societies, to what degree is the referenced work that is intended to be a doing of justice, in fact, motivated reasoning? To the degree it is motivated reasoning, is the motivated reasoning functioning, in the shot-term, as a savior, a sycophant, or both?
If there is interest or a need, an historical dimension can be added to this simplistic framing, but in my experience such will add little of substance to this workshop’s focus. I’m pretty sure such an effort would tend toward being the equivalent of a theological argument concerning how many angels can dance on the heard of a pin. But such is simply my bias, and perhaps, a confirmational one.
In addition, if my assumptions about NBL readership and active church membership is in error, first, my apologies for using language that I assume works for the large majority, but could offend. That said, I believe I can also assume you are used to having what is core to what you experience as the source of wisdom being marginalized and dismissed as irrational; that you’ve the skill set to translate these thoughts.
December 22nd, 2012 at 5:17 am
Hey, this might even be on topic!
http://www.alternet.org/does-bible-make-americans-more-violent?akid=9848.206600.ypIP6N&rd=1&src=newsletter765383&t=3
Does the Bible Make Americans More Violent?
Americans can be notoriously prudish about sex, yet our entertainments are stuffed with violent acts. Could this go all the way back to the Bible?
December 23rd, 2012 at 4:07 am
OzMan, if I’ve heard what you offered–the adult/adolescent duality (http://guymcpherson.com/2012/12/the-role-of-motivated-reasoning-in-an-apostate-church-relative-to-environmental-social-and-economic-justice/#comment-56253)–as intended, I, at least, experience it to be a helpful framing. Reflecting on the “herding cats” comments within this framework, adults cannot be herded, while adolescents tend to feel their best in the center of one. Is that a fair extrapolation of your insight?
If so, outside observers can see that the justice work of the apostate denominational church, is, in statistically significant terms, well, insignificant. So, logically, it follows, that the consequenced insignificance means that these social institutions are not adult in their affect. Is that a fair conclusion/generalization? If so, are they part of the positive feedback cycle in the social dynamics feeding into our tip into catastrophic climate change, near term extinction, and a failed economic paradigm? the_virgin_terry gives reference to their theology being a justification for environmental, social, and economic injustice and our tip into klimakatastrophe, NTE, and CapitalismFail. This charge, as a contradiction, functions as a threat to the authenticity of the piety and salvation these social institutions feel they offer society. Motivated reasoning, as a trusted neurological process*, resolves this contradiction. I would suggest it transforms the threat into a rationalization that enables a doubling down on the piety of the salvation it has to offer. And relative to the query of whether it functions as a savior or a sycophant, it does both.
*at least among those with the male genders brain’s dynamics.
This is a caveat from the original blog entry. The fMRI results in Drew Weston’s 2006 study** of this dynamic only used males. This was because male brains tend to have a more site-specific brain activity dynamics. This allowed researchers to see that the centers of the brain that are associated with feelings were observably more active than the frontal lobes (where rational thought happens) were when the subject was exercising motivated reasoning. Female brains tend to have more diffuse brain activity/processes. This difference means less observable differences between the areas of the brain that are active in a motivated reasoning episode.
**http://psychiatry.uams.edu/upload/docs/PRI/BIRC/Publications/Westen,%20Kilts%202006%20J%20Cognit%20Neurosci.pdf
OzMan, for me this suggests that how you helpfully framed an adult/adolescent duality, may be more helpful and insightful for us as males than females. And I would value female feedback on this.
December 24th, 2012 at 2:45 am
Greg Robie
I appreciate what you are attempting to workshop here much better now given your last two comments.
I am not personally interested in the Christian Church in any particular way, excepting that it has deep roots embedded in Western Culture, and some of that explains how we get to the FUBAR today and henceforth.
I want to answer some of your comments but in a roundabout way.
Australian Aboriginal groups reached a sophisticated level of technology and culture prior to European attack and seeming domination. Those cultural ways were suited to a continent drying in the centre and with migrating seasonal rains. They were successful. A lot of seafood on the coast, and adequite diverse diet.
When the Europeans came their culture allowed them to commmit attempted wholesale land theft and genocide. Granted many individuals never approved of those extremes, but it is yet to be shown how one uninvited group can move in to anothers terretory, and not kill or displace them to the equivelent level of poverty and disease status that leads to social and cultural extermination.
That said, the European culture permitted this and therefor the Christian Churches are entirly responsible, for if they had any cultural institutional Authority and were against killing, homocide, and genocide as I think is one of the commandments – “thou shalt not kill” they were breaking a salvatory demand from thier diety against killing. If they were not in real Authority then the culture itself had moved beyond any spiritual foundation, and had merely a shell of fabricated artiface calling itself religious.
That Capitalism came from the Christian culture can be no accident. But what is it about this world view, Christianity, that did lead to such a world consuming way of life?
My short answer is that it never was an authentic spiritual way of self transcendence that realises the devine being or Self, in the first place. The concepts of original sin are only reasonable to a fearful child mind, and the threat of eternal damnation of ones immortal soul has been enough to fearfully enslave many over the thousands of years till recently.
Science became the lightning rod for thoose who would challenge the corruption and false authority of the Christian Churches, and in my view, it was the impulse to grow beyon childlike cosmologies, into a more rational Adolescent mind that built up the power to challenge religion as a way of being in the world.
However, as with individual adolescence, the danger is that this phase of growth will fail to yield a truly independent relation to relity, experience of reality directly, and if that is so then the adolescent reaquires the views, roles and cultural ways of the child, with a semblence of ‘adult’ awareness.
In my view that is what happened, and the latent generational overspill came to a wave of protest in the 1960′s, because they knew somwhere intuitiveky that this 2western way of life, stripped of its spiritual roots, was merely a killing machine. The boomer generation was not going to put up with that, but several factors set in that also derailed that wave of protest and nullified any cultural change strong enough to alter the killing machines progress.
When I write that Adult consciousness has established a way of relating to or experiencing reality directly it includes the mature exercise of, but perhaps not mastery, of the four functions of consciousness- Feeling, Thinking, Sensation and Intuition.
Christianity as a devotional way to divine redemption(a term that is an echo of realisation), and as such attempts to develop the Feeling function, and some have posed that the lower part of the cross symbol, upon which Jesus was crucified, is elongated to signify the descent into the Feeling mode is demande by the submission to Christian obefdience etc.
From this monastic devotional way of life, emerged the impulse to develop the opposing function, Thinking, and insofar as these two functions normally try to occuoy the same space in an individual consciousness, they will normally struggle for dominance. Science proved fitting, but in a real sense in order to become a true social organising global reference, science needed to retain a subjective component to anchor its relevence to the human world, and it has not done so. With the surplanting of religion, Science lost subjectivity as a component of reality.
The adult consciousness reaffirms that loss of that view and integrates Thinking as a tool to perception, not a dominant mode of experience, and therefore is able to utilise that function when appropriate, and another when it is appropriate.
When in the modern world church religion takes a cosmological backseat to Science, and the kind of material physics that can produce manned Space travel,(like a GOD), and atomic weopons, is evidence of the overall truth of the Scientific theory, it only takes a cursory look at the killing machine of the Western but now World Industrial Economy to understand something has been lost. That something is the Feeling Functions experience of the loss of this Biosphere, and all the unique creatures in it, perhaps even we humans.
If you feel this loss, to its depth your heart breaks at the same time as it is ripped apart by the species shame of overwhelming visceral self disgust, which calls one to DO SOMETHING, and probably explains many of my(others too( wierd and crazy moments of attempting to reconcile insane opposites in one consciousness.
So my point here is that insofar as religion established itself in many civilisations as the foundation organising social processor agency, with the rise of science religion in the west did not let go of the social cohesion amongst its congregation. Science was adopted by Christians in a compartmentalised fashion especially to lay congregationalists who were rather unaware of the historical and theological underpinnings of its false premises,(eg, virgin birth and the resultant undervaluing of femanine energy and gender, and original sin, the smartest sales pitch yet known to humanity).
But if a Christian looked very hard at both Christianity and Science they could only find a similar foggyness at the boundaries of their postulates, (I will asave all from that detail here).
My only view is that we modern humans need to keep going, keep growing and explore the real experience of reality that is free or origin stories, and parent deities and material universes that are theoretically devoid of consciousness.
The posibility is there to experience reality directly, but as Christians and others who are welded to a world view shows the forces of motivated reasoning can lead one away from signficant evidence that contradicts the cosmology one presently holds. There is only one real reason that motivated reasoning could be effecting some bias, and that is fear. Plain and simple, fear of an unknown experience of what the present moment to moment existance would be like, both in self and social terms.
Fear.
Some I know around me believe that a world civilisation or culture running or founded on the politics of fear has lead to this mess we have, and also that that old way is dying, being replaced by one founded on something else, of which I am unsure, but it is supposed to be similar to the great wizdom that preveiled in earlier times through which great cultures thrived like the Australian Aboriginals. It is probably more anarchic, but anarchy only really works when adult consciousness prevails, and we see what happens when Adolescent confusion and overstimulation takes hold, desire wholesale.
I hope I’ve added something worthy to the discussion.
Cheers.
December 24th, 2012 at 5:50 am
Comment as facilitator: it is my daughter’s 35 birthday and, after caring for my homesteads’ critters and my neighbor’s dog, I’ve got sourdough pancakes for a dozen to flip about 6# of fossil carbon north of here. Tomorrow is among my wife’s favorite days. I’m on a facilitator holiday.
Personal comment @ OzMan:
Lots to think about and distract me, so thanks. In case it may similarly be helpful, an initial reaction.
To the degree the problem FUBAR requires thinking that is other than that which created it, I’d suggest that such different thinking would integrate, as you have critiqued re its absence, the unconscious with the conscious; to move beyond motivated reasoning. Toward that end I have found adding a fifth function to the four you’ve shared to be a helpful place to start: action. Don’t our two consciousnesses dance in what we do; rationally, doesn’t action have to be included as one of the functions?