My sister works for CPS.  She is on vacation right now, but I will ask her when she gets back.  I would hope there we be some sort of mental evaluation that must be preformed in order to get the child back.  As it was a mental reason why the child was taken away.

You appealed to laws last time too.

 

The point of this one and the last one isn't what we HAVE to do by law, it's what we SHOULD do if we want to protect the best interest of the child. That is not what the laws DO say, it's what they SHOULD say if we want the best interest of the child in danger or a girl conteplating suicide. Such as SHOULD CPS/APA consider religious belief as a disorder?

 

Ok, say Obama changes the laws. The new law says you do whatever you have to in order to ensure the safety of the child.

 

 

On a side note, maybe I should of put it in the perspective of the Judge, who can grant or deny custody, rather than the CPS agent.

 

 

You're wanting a moral perspective on this, then, rather than legal? If so, the perspective has to be of an observer, any actor in this case is bound by laws.

Or are you just wanting someone to come out and say that religion is a mental disorder so you can pounce them? I've seen you do that before.

 Morally, I believe children have rights that are not explicitly granted to them.

I believe children have a right to grow up without being brainwashed.

They have the right to complete and scientifically/epistemologically accurate education.  (Yes, I mean I'm opposed to home schooling unless it is strictly controlled and monitored.)

They have the same rights as adults with regard to physical and mental assault and abuse.  (Yes, I consider hitting children to be assault and abuse.)

They have a right to grow up with competent guardians.  (Yes, I believe parents who abuse/brainwash/assault their children forfeit their right to parenting.)

 

Then, morally speaking the religion and its delusional beliefs are beside the point. If the momma isn't thinking about slaughtering the kiddos any more and she is otherwise demonstrating an ability to parent, then return the kids. The newfound atheism isnt really germane.
 

Everyone knows that cute and evil have a strong correlation

(Ask anyone who owns cats.)

Muwahahahahahaha! The Cap's trap has been sprung!

 

 

My answer: it's hard to know you could take her word for it. If she says she's left her religion and no longer believes in God telling her to kill her kids, it's because she knows, or believes, you think it is germane to her having access to them you have to take it with a grain of salt no matter how she swears to it. She could be just telling you what she think you want to hear.

In my opinion, anyone who has gone that far over the line with their kids, just once, should never have them returned to their full and unsupervised care.

If I found, on investigation, that she had actually abandoned the faith and, thus, made definite moves in her life to improve her mental state, I would open the door to more interaction and communication between her and her children but I would not give them back, because it's impossible to tell if ever God might "talk to her" again.

As Eloise pointed out, religion has nothing to do with it. A crazy person is a crazy person.

Studies indicate that most people who believe in god think god is on their side. Their morality is god's morality. Their opinion is god's opinion. Take away god, and the person still has the same morality, the same opinion. (This is a simplification, of course, as religion is a social grouping, and individuals of the group are more likely to partake of the group opinions and morality.)

From a "correct" point of view, you'd have to be damned sure the mother really was cured (for some socially-defined value of 'cured').

It seems that's the current protocol, or something close to it. I'm not sure I'd go as far as Eloise, and never give the kids back. Not that I think a functioning uterus or set of testes gives one the right to raise kids; but there're practical limits involved, as well. In addition, there's always the chance that the initial removal was an over-reaction to an offhand comment ('start behaving right now, or so help me god, I'm going to kill you').

In any case, I guess all I can say is, 'It depends on the circumstances.' Taken at face value, I'd tend more to Eloise's solution. But in any circumstances, crazy is crazy. A religious crazy person is no more and no less crazy than a non-religious crazy person. The main problem is, groups of religious folks might help cultivate the crazy, whereas in other cases, crazy people are generally on their own.

I don't see how, I said exactly what you said.  How did I misstate my point?  Unless you are omnicient there is no way to know the truth about her motivation, and the problem is not with her religion, it is with a behavior that breaks social norms.  Either she wants to kill her kids or she doesn't, and the only way to know whether or not it is 'moral' to give her kids back is to know whether or not she is going to kill her kids...and her telling a judge about a deconversion has nothing to do with that.

I wouldn't say exactly, exactly.

 

A fair guess what Cpt Pineapple is getting at here is to see if those of us who argue in the affirmative that superstition is a source or cause of crazy, as opposed to merely a symptom,will contradict ourselves in practice.

What you're saying affirms the idea that dangerous adherence to religious superstition is consequent to crazy. Some of us here believe cases go the other way - so adherence to religious superstition is inherently dangerous of itself. For those people the Caps thought experiment could pose a dilemma, but if you don't believe that religious superstition can be inherently dangerous, you're in the clear.

 

I see.  I don't think it is necessarily consequent, it can be either way depending on circumstance.  Some people are driven to do 'evil' by their religion (or any other belief/philosophy/dogma) but would be perfectly 'good' if that belief were taken away or replaced.  They are just ignorant or misinformed.  Others are malfunctioning mentally and latch on to religion as a consequence of their delusion, like a schizophrenic who decides they are hearing the voice of God and creates a doomsday cult.

That is why I mentioned omniscience...with the data she gave us, I have no way to know the root cause of her behavior.

 

I'm confused though, it seems like Capt. starts multiple threads with the exact same purpose.  I am sure I have had this conversation before...religion is not special, it is just like any other social meme...and it should be held accountable to the same standards.

 The fundamental flaw (which has been repeatedly pointed out) in Captain's model of humanity is that she's trying to throw one blanket over crazy.  For some reason, when I and others say that faith based reasoning is uniquely dangerous in its ability to cause crazy behavior, it seems like she hears "Faith based reasoning is THE cause of all religious crazy."

Of course, that's not what any of us are saying.  In this hypothetical case, the woman's homicidal thoughts towards her children might be attributable to postpartum depression.  We could easily say she's clinically depressed, and isn't in her right mind.  So postpartum depression is "the cause of the crazy."  However, if she is experiencing postpartum depression AND believes that God speaks to her, AND believes that God is telling her it's a good idea to kill her children, she's in a uniquely vulnerable position.  Since she believes that God's word trumps reason, it's possible that she will go through with a homicide she might otherwise avoid.  After all, there are plenty of women who have homicidal thoughts towards their babies and don't follow through because gee... they don't want to go to jail, and they use sound critical thinking and override their urges.  However, a religious person who believes that her loyalty to an unseen, untestable God outweighs any earthly inconvenience she might experience would be uniquely vulnerable to following her own instincts because she has been taught to believe that her instincts are the "still small voice of God" whispering instructions.

So... maybe it's the faith based belief that causes it, and the postpartum depression was simply a catalyst, not a cause.

Again, this is what Captain's model misses.  She is assuming (with absolutely no empirical evidence) that human behavior is inextricably linked to some kind of hardwired desires, and that people will do exactly what they're going to do regardless of what justification they pick.  This is absurd from a psychological and sociological point of view.  One of my good friends whose PhD dissertation was on morality, and dealt with this very subject, has told her essentially that her view on human morality is equivalent to creationism in that it completely defies all the evidence.  But she persists.

 

 And I, and people with degrees in this shit, have repeatedly told you that Atran's research DOESN'T ADDRESS THE CLAIM YOU THINK IT'S REFUTING.

You seem to think this can be discussed in absolutes. There are far too many variables to manage that.

For religious abstinence education to work, the indoctrination of authority must be deeply set. There simply aren't enough people who are pre-indoctrinated for there to be a significant impact by religious abstinence education.

There are people who are primed for it, though, and they do change their behavior to match the abstinence education (to varying levels).

Similarly, religion effects the behavior on other subjects. A person's behaviors might fall within the bounds of generally accepted choices until you add a religious imperative - for instance, that abortion is a deadly sin in god's eyes and needs to be stopped - after which they step into the realm of "crazy" by killing someone. More often it drives people into less drastic acts, a prime example being California's Prop. 8 where religions was the basis for an irrational and unwarranted repression of a minority.

We are not islands of consciousness separate from everything and everyone else. We are as much the ongoing experiences we have as we are the internal reactions to it. Religion is clearly part of that landscape, and can and does drive people out of what is accepted as "sane" and into the "insane" - it is in particular so dangerous because religion is in itself is already an irrational precept, adding to the "be irrational" valence many people may already have.

 

We've been down this road.  Let me try again.

1) Regardless of the "cause" of "the failure of abstinence only education," you don't get to scientifically claim that the existence of ONE phenomenon in which religious behavior and non-religious behavior are comparable means that ALL religious and non-religious behaviors are comparable.  That's atrociously bad logic.

2) Your implied hypothesis completely ignores established scientific fact, specifically, the fact that humans ARE quite malleable in their interpretation of morality, and their beliefs about the nature of their environment DO have very specific causal effects on the actions they choose.  (Milgram, anyone?)

3) Returning to abstinence only education, your implied hypothesis assumes (with no evidence) that public education is the PRIMARY CAUSAL AGENT for young Americans' sexual practices.  In fact, the EVIDENCE suggests otherwise, as American teens behave approximately the same, regardless of whether they've had ANY formal sex education or Abstinence Only education.  Furthermore, when we survey more progressive countries where the predominate socially accepted morality is safe, responsible premarital sex, we find that -- Gee Willikers, teens practice more safe sex and get less diseases.

4) Your implied hypothesis seems to rest on the assumption that teen pregnancy and disease transmission are the only measures of the EFFECTS of the culture of abstinence only morality.  This is not the case.  Spend twenty minutes hanging out with a group of young Europeans discussing sex and dating, and then do the same thing with a group of similar Americans.  You'll find that the two groups are remarkably dissimilar in their attitudes.  Spend some time in a therapist's office talking with young girls struggling with their sexuality.  You'll see that abstinence only morality has far-reaching consequences, and that your straight-line reasoning, using only pregnancy and disease transmission, is methodologically bankrupt.

I've explained it several times.  The failure of abstinence only education lies in its extreme claims and essentially impossible demands.  Our culture is rooted in Christian morality, in which sex before marriage is strongly discouraged, but the fact is, very few humans will wait until marriage to have sex.  Furthermore, the factual claims of many AO programs are easily refuted.  Children know how to use google.  Finally, there's no evidence I'm aware of to suggest that school education is the primary source of teens' sexual morality.  Expecting wholesale changes in morality from highschool classes is... naive.

I'm sorry, Alison.  You've latched onto this one issue, and I get that it seems incongruous to you, but that's because you're treating religious behavior as some sort of all-or-nothing affair, where you ought to be able to take any old religious teaching in any old setting and equate it with wholesale societal changes.  That's patently absurd, for the reasons I've explained above (among others).  Abstinence only education is a bloated government program.  If you're going to hang your hopes of proving religion=nonreligion on a pork barrel thank-you note from George Bush to the Fundamentalist Right who got him elected... well, that's pretty naive.

 

 

 OH NOES!!!  CAPTAIN PINEAPPLE CAN FIND EXCEPTIONS TO RULEZ!!!!

 

For crying out loud, Alison.  You're the only person who takes your cherry picking approach seriously.  This is very simple:

Faith based belief makes people UNIQUELY VULNERABLE to environmental factors which can alter their moral perceptions.

As a general trend we see that when other factors are approximately equal, highly faith-based religious cultures TEND to be more dysfunctional than otherwise comparable non-faith-based cultures.

Duh.

 

Why is it so hard for you to understand that human behavior is not an all-or-nothing one for one phenomenon?  Religion is egocentric to a large degree, but it also shapes people's egos in very specific ways.  If your parents are Christian, you're overwhelmingly likely to be Christian as well, but if you're naturally a Type-A person, you may not feel comfortable in your parents' laid back country church.  You may go straight for the evangelical go-getter congregations who enjoy passing out pamphlets and organizing Christmas pageants in the park.  But you're still going to a Christian church.  Get it?  

Most human preferences are not ingrained.  Sexual preference, our taste for salt and fat, and our general personality type appear to be essentially set in our genes.  Beyond that, what we like and what we believe are highly malleable.  I'm going on the assumption that you're still something of a homebody and that you don't socialize much, so you may not have first hand knowledge of this.  I've had many circles of friends in my life.  Everything from pot smoking hippies to jet-set yuppies.  As my peer groups have changed, my tastes have changed.  Not only that, but my beliefs about acceptable behaviors have changed, too.  Nothing incredibly drastic -- it's not that I've decided murder was ok and then changed my mind -- but within a surprisingly large array of preferences, I've shifted perspectives many times.

Our environment shapes us.  It's undeniable.  

Why do people cherry pick religion?  Because it's impossible not to.  It's as simple as that.  Some churches have tried to follow every single word in the Bible down to the letter, and the attempt always fails because the Bible is contradictory and demands behaviors that are illegal and/or immoral.

Let me try another time to explain this.  Faith based belief is UNIQUE in that it provides a justification for people to do things that are otherwise unjustifiable.  I don't just mean morally.  Prayer is an unjustifiable action.  There's absolutely no logical reason to do it.  There's no evidence that it works.  Yet, most Christians do it.  By any empirical method, prayer would have been abandoned long ago.

Of course, many religious people use faith to justify immoral behaviors.  This is the fact that for some reason, you just can't get through your thick skull.  You're well aware that most people have an innate tendency towards us-them dichotomies.  What you're failing to take into account is that by any empirical, logical system of evaluation, extreme or blanket us-them dichotomies are ill-advised on a number of levels.  People who live in cultures where empiricism and logic are primary are in an environment that encourages empiricism and logic.  Their environment encourages them to be less bigoted, and so the cost-benefit analysis shifts.  Bigotry becomes difficult to justify, and so it is practiced less.

By contrast, faith-based religions often encourage and justify bigotry.  Have you noticed that among non-Christians, gay bashing is generally frowned upon in America, or that all of the most zealous anti-Gay groups have faith based religious beliefs as central tenets?

That's because faith based reasoning gives people JUSTIFICATION they wouldn't have otherwise had, to engage in behavior that would OTHERWISE BE UNJUSTIFIABLE.

 

 

 Yes, Pineapple.  Atran has discovered what I've been saying all along -- that people have innate propensities.

ATRAN'S RESEARCH DOES NOT ADDRESS THE CLAIM THAT FAITH PROVIDES A UNIQUE AND UNFALSIFIABLE JUSTIFICATION NOT OFFERED BY ANY OTHER BELIEF SYSTEM.

As near as I can decipher from what you've linked, Atran has discovered that atheism doesn't remove scapegoating and dogmatism completely from the human psyche.  Well, bully for him for discovering the obvious!  Nobody here is claiming that ATHEISM is opposite THEISM.  Nobody here is claiming that ATHEISM CAUSES ANYTHING.

The claim that I make is that NON-FAITH BASED IDEOLOGY is better than FAITH BASED IDEOLOGY.

See?  Atran DOES NOT ADDRESS MY CLAIM.

 

Pretty much this, the problem coming from the fact that it isn't (held to the same standards).  

Religion is a social institution, and I don't think it has any Super Special Awesome Brainwashing Power of Doom(tm) inherent in its structure or status as Religion, but rather it is imbued with this power by the people who praise it. In other words, it's Voice gives it Super Strength. Religion thus forms a sort of self reinforcing cycle of behavioral modification, and the extent to which it can affect people is largely dependent on how much attention they pay it in the first place, and this is largely dependent on its power over the adults and when those adults start trying to do the influencing. If they try it young, it works, if they try it on teenagers, the teenager's naturaly tendency to Rebel overrides it, it becomes 'too little, too late.'

I would say, that the failure of Abstinence Only Sex Education stems from two sources, the Parents belief that it will actually work, and the students in general not giving a damn about Religion. I will state, it seems like Religion is a dominant influence in The United States, however it is only really dominant in the older generations at this point. For the youth, Religion, and Christianity in particular, has been denegrated to that bunch of people that the wierd 'nice' kids belong to, and a source of Pimped Out Jewelry for the 'Gansta's'* and those freaks with the Black Eye Liner to wear.  

I would be interested in a Study of Abstinence Only Sex Education that cross-compared groups based on how long they had been a member of their particular religion, and how strongly they said they believed.

In other countries, this situation is different. I would ask the Captain, if you truly believe that Religion cannot influence people, then do you honestly think all of the Men in the Middle East are just innately Misogynistic and want to throw rocks at people deep down in their heart of hearts? Are you willing to positively state that an entire ethnicity is inherently barbaric? Or is it rather, that because Religion is imbued with a supernatural quality and reverence, that it gains the power to override a person's personality? Or possibly, is it simply that they find in religion a, to Quote TheoWarner, "Social Permission to act with Cruelty, and without Empathy." If that is the case, would not religion still be worth fighting? Perhaps not to the death, but at least to the Pain, or possibly Irrelevance? Or possibly, humans might be fucking complex, and it might be a combination of all of these factors Possibly Maybe...

Of course, religion is hardly the only source for such phenomena. It seems that Poltical Ideology is rapidly replacing religion in the United States, in addition to the massive swell in influence the 'clique' cultures of the youth is having, all exacerbated by gloabalization ensuring that the modern Youth never fully lives in their own Home.

And since you asked; no I don't have any statistical data to back up any of the above.

Speaking of Hypotheses, what exactly is yours? That Atheists are exactly Like Theists? That religion is not inherently more destructive than any other ideology? That Religion cannot influence people at all? I can see nothing in any of those three claims that at all lead to the idea that Religion should be defended, so Help me Out here.


Tis an Important Subject. <Nods>And do I detect a bit of disdain in your post?  Possibly a continued belief in 'proper' sexual conduct?

*The fact that I just typed this makes me want to kill myself. No, No, it makes me want to kill everyone else.

 That's a long way around your asshole to get to your elbow, and I just don't see how it's applicable.

Look, you've been very diligent in searching for specific examples of how faith and non-faith people are the same, and I agree with you.  Faith doesn't make people non-human.  Both kinds of people will still do good and bad.  They will both employ sound and unsound logic.  They'll all fuck and make babies.

What Atran, et al (although I'm not sure who exactly is included in et al) have demonstrated is that within certain boundaries, humans tend to behave approximately the same regardless of faith or nonfaith.  I do not contest this claim.  What I (and Gregory Paul, and Christopher Hitchens, et al) have demonstrated to one degree or another is that there are broad general trends indicative of a relationship between personal and societal dysfunction and faith based thinking.  I don't know how many ways I can explain to you that specific examples of similarities between faith and non faith people do not disprove the general and far reaching dis-similarities.

So both faith and non-faith people scapegoat.  Fine.  Show me the large group of 1st world non-faith dominated cultures in which scapegoating is practiced towards women to the degree that it is in predominately Muslim countries.  As Paul has pointed out in his most recent paper, there's no clear directional indicator in the current data.  We can't say for sure whether non-faith led to more egalitarian cultures, or whether more egalitarian cultures led to less faith.  However, we can certainly see the correlation.  The most egalitarian countries in the world tend strongly towards non-faith.  And within very egalitarian countries, there is still scapegoating, because that's what humans do.

But the severity and cultural acceptance of otherwise unjustifiable scapegoating is lower.

And as I have repeatedly pointed out, faith provides a unique justification for otherwise unjustifiable actions.

Let's turn it around so you can see the implications of your hypothesis.  If what you suggest is true, then the only logical conclusion is that Faith is not used as a justification for otherwise unjustifiable actions.  You repeatedly say that people try very hard to do what they instinctively want to do, but your hypothesis suggests that they DO NOT use the most LOGICAL justification available to them when they GENUINELY BELIEVE IT.

That's absurd.

 

And nowhere did I at all point to your personal taste in sexuality, what I asked about, was your reaction to other's sexuality, and particularly, if you still turned your nose up to it.

This is really just my own curiosity as I remember a thread waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back when that got onto the subject of your prudish-ness or not and other girls slutiness or not, and I remember making the claim that If you don't want others to judge you a prude, you should not judge them as sluts, or something like that, and I don't remember you ever directly responding to me or even broaching the subject again.

I am merely wondering if you would continue to have disdain for those with a few kinks in their fashion or sexual tendencies, or whether you have adopted a 'live and let live'  Worldview.  And just as allowing religious people to live in peace does not mean one has to embrace their lifestyle, so too does one not have to go out and have a bunch of kinky sex just because they are accepting that others do.

 

To clarify, I don't think religion has a special place.  I think FAITH has a special place.  Faith, by definition, is opposed to reason and trumps reason.  Any system of belief which glorifies the act of ignoring the evidence in favor of a preferred conclusion gives believers unique philosophical tools for justifying the unjustifiable.

My current favorite atheist blogger has said it better than me:

LINK

I quibble with Greta on a point of definition.  There can be, I believe, religion without deities.  Like... Buddhism, for example.  But if you replace the word "religion" with "faith based ideology" I agree with her a hundred percent.

 

 

 Buddhism isn't deity based.

 

There are faith based elements to parts of Buddhism.  The point on which I quibble with Greta is that I claim religion doesn't need a deity.  However, religion as I see it is necessarily at least partly faith-based.  If it was science based, we'd call it science, or at least "life philosophy" or something like that.

Spoken like someone who has never raised a child to adulthood.

Trying to "brainwash" a child into believing a religion is generally pointless and stupid, and most parents realize that around the time a child is 12 or 13.  A lot of religious "brainwashing" in places like the US is trying to keep a kid from sexually reproducing.

My son used to tell people he was Jewish (he isn't -- my ex is a Christian and I agreed not to push the kid away from the Dark Side and into the Light of strict monotheism).  Now getting him to think anything positive of religion is a pain.

On the flip side, this "scientifically/epistemologically accurate education" is more likely to produce a Theist than anything -- if only because Theist still outnumber Atheists.

Hi Hambydammit,

Where did you find this phrase? Have I missed something on this forum?

 

 Pineapple, your all-or-nothing thinking is making you look foolish.  Our taste for salt/fat, our general personality type, and our sexual preferences are the only things that have been substantially demonstrated to be essentially set from birth.  That's not to say that our other traits are not biological.  Um... duh.  I'm the guy who writes about how damn near everything we do is rooted in our biology.

This is very simple.  (The whole thing is very simple.  Why do you have so much trouble with it?)  You know... genotypes and phenotypes.  You've heard of them, right?  You've taken biology, right?

Put a goldfish in a small bowl and it will grow as large as it can and stop growing.  Put a goldfish in an open pond, and it will grow much larger.  The genes are the same, but the phenotype is different.   At birth, each human has a template -- a set range of possible gene expressions.  Depending on nutrition, pollution, etc, a given baby could grow as tall as say, 6'1" or maybe 6'2".  If conditions are really bad, maybe it'll only grow to 5'9".  Under no circumstances will he grow to 9'10".   6'1" (ish) is the limit of the genotype.  The actual height the baby grows to will be the phenotype expression.

Likewise, humans have a range of possible intellectual, emotional, and moral possibilities.  This is our genotype.  Within this very large range of possibilities, each one of us will land on one expression.  What shapes this expression?  THE SIZE OF THE GOLDFISH BOWL.  The environment.  Religious indoctrination is an ENVIRONMENT.  Rationalism is AN ENVIRONMENT.

But you believe that phenotype expression is immune from these two environments, because people are so biologically set in their actions that they'll always do exactly what they were going to do regardless of the environment.

And you know what?  That's nuts.  Your position is flat out nuts.