Nautilidae wrote:

Dogmantic Pyrrhonist wrote:

I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that religion has not in fact aided society at all. The perceived morality that is supposedly instilled by religion is in fact a feature of society itself. With the less sane members of society, the threat of invisible sky daddies may aid somewhat in getting them to stick to the rules, but I don't think religious rules have ever quite coincided with society's idea of what moralistic behaviour is. Even in theocracies, the society's morals will tend away from the legal system, just as it does in secular legal systems.
Also, in the sub-complete testing of the idea of atheism in society we have in the current secular governments, where there is a sub-set of society that's atheist, with the rest theist of some sort, the statistics clearly show that the section of society that is atheist causes the legal system and law enforcement much less trouble. Not more.

The ironic thing about this is that people often argue that atheists are less moral than theists.

What is moral in terms of a society is decided by the society. If a society allows stoning without resulting in chaos, most will see nothing morally wrong with this. I am in no way saying that stoning people is a rational course of action, but for the time, it served it's purpose. A perfect example of this is murder; if murder was dubbed legal, there would be chaos. This is the purpose of an authority figure in society; without someone to enforce laws, no one would see a reason to follow laws. This is the role that God played throughout history. God was an omnipotent being that enforced laws; he could either A} send you to a utopia of happiness as long as you followed his rules until you died, or B} send you to Hell, an ultimate realm of pain and suffering, for all eternity if you did not follow his laws. This is essentially the role that religion, at least monotheistic religion, has played throughout history: it is a quasi-government.

However, this in no way indicates that religion itself is a necessary component of a functional society. This indicates that religion played the role of government for many years and nothing more.

Dogmantic Pyrrhonist wrote:
I think you'll find it's an anomaly of the monotheists where religion takes this function. And that when monotheistic religions claim to take the function, they never really do. If you step back to pre-monotheism, the legal systems (what we can reconstruct, mostly Greek, Roman, and Gaul) was based on some very basic standards we'd recognise even now. And apart from the ever present "don't dis' the gawds" rules in these early legal systems, they were, by and large, secular, and inspired by a need to administer justice and order to society.
The god function was explaining the currently unexplained, and providing a common identity to groups larger than the ancestral tribe.

Nautilidae wrote:
I think that it would help us understand your position if you explained the arguments. What arguments have you made thus far?

Dogmantic Pyrrhonist wrote:
I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that religion has not in fact aided society at all. The perceived morality that is supposedly instilled by religion is in fact a feature of society itself. With the less sane members of society, the threat of invisible sky daddies may aid somewhat in getting them to stick to the rules, but I don't think religious rules have ever quite coincided with society's idea of what moralistic behaviour is. Even in theocracies, the society's morals will tend away from the legal system, just as it does in secular legal systems.

Dogmantic Pyrrhonist wrote:
I think you'll find it's an anomaly of the monotheists where religion takes this function. And that when monotheistic religions claim to take the function, they never really do. If you step back to pre-monotheism, the legal systems (what we can reconstruct, mostly Greek, Roman, and Gaul) was based on some very basic standards we'd recognise even now. And apart from the ever present "don't dis' the gawds" rules in these early legal systems, they were, by and large, secular, and inspired by a need to administer justice and order to society.
The god function was explaining the currently unexplained, and providing a common identity to groups larger than the ancestral tribe.

Nautilidae wrote:
I am aware that pre-monotheistic religions didn't play the role. What my argument does is explain why religion, especially monotheistic religion, appeared to be necessary in historical examples. I'm not saying that you are incorrect; you do have a point with which I agree. However, the point of my argument is that the historical examples this man's opponent may give are nothing more than examples of religion behaving as a quasi-government. This is why I suggested that the OP make this argument; any example his opponent may use is likely to show my point and is thus counter-productive. To clarify, religion wasn't a necessary form of government; it simply played that role in some historical examples. As you said, the Greeks had a fundamentally secular system of government, so religion didn't play the role of government in all examples.

S1E wrote:
Now we’re getting somewhere. This is exactly what I was hoping for!

Any chance you two could continue this discussion?

Nautilidae wrote:

Sure.

Since you do not have an argument to give yet, why don't you tell us some of the arguments that he has made? Has the debate ventured beyond his main argument, or is the debate at a stand-still?