Does Religion Influence Epidemics? 547
sciencehabit writes "Whether or not they believe in God, evolutionary biologists may need to pay closer mind to religion. That's because religious beliefs can shape key behaviors in ways that evolutionary theory would not predict, particularly when it comes to dealing with disease. According to a new study, some of today's major religions emerged at the same time as widespread infectious diseases, and the two may have helped shape one another. The same dynamics may be reflected today in how people in Malawi deal with the AIDS epidemic."
Translation: Religion is born .... (Score:4, Insightful)
... from FEAR and IGNORANCE.
Too narrow a cause (Score:2, Insightful)
Article is wrong about Christianity (Score:1, Insightful)
Jesus never claimed that healing the sick was a sure way to heaven. That's ridiculous, and against what the rest of the Bible teaches. This person doesn't know what they are talking about.
Cue the fun.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Before you get started this time, how about you give it a rest? We understand your opinions, but most of us are agnostic if we even care one way or another; likewise most of us realize that religion inspires good as well as evil, and see no need to throw the baby out with the bath water. Most of all it just gets really fucking boring listening to your hate fest.
You hate "religionists" and they hate you. The rest of us would rather you all shut the fuck up.
Re:I think we've known this... (Score:4, Insightful)
You forgot, religion is an epidemic in itself (Score:5, Insightful)
Still, nice set of arguments you had. ;)
Re:In China (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would anyone eat powdered tiger cock? Chinese medicine is largely hokum.
Religion can also be a survival manual (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: Religion is born from FEAR and IGNORANCE.
Actually the opposite can sometimes be true. Religion can also be a practical survival manual based upon observations. For example I believe if one adheres to the old testament prohibitions against eating certain types of seafood then one will avoid most of the unsafe species in that part of the world. We say don't do something because the surgeon general says so, thousands of years ago they said don't do something because God said so. Maybe its the telephone game: "great healer says" becomes "great shaman says" becomes "God says", all based on a scientific sort of process - at least the observation part, can't say if they also did the experimentation part.
Are you sure you are not operating on fear of a particular 3 or 4 thousand year old book and rejecting everything in it in an irrational and ignorant way? If we were talking about Hawaiian kapu and its instructions on fishing and such would you be more open minded?
Re:Isn't religion an epidemic itself ? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's killed more than most illnesses I've heard of. And still does.
Mao, Hitler and Stalin were atheists. The 30 years war, the Crusades, the Spanish inquisition, Al Queda were religious. Your point is? Most mass murder is because of greed, not religion. Religion is used to justify the greed in some cases. In other cases, politics or biology are used as justification. But greed is at the heart of almost all killing and war. An atheistic world would be neither more peaceful nor less peaceful because even atheists are just as greedy as everyone else.
Re:Translation: Religion is born .... (Score:4, Insightful)
As Socrates said, at least I know that I know nothing. Those who replace "I don't know" with "it was God" forfeit their ability to learn more and those who militantly cling to their answer even as "I don't know" gets replaced with a proper explanation hold us back.
Re:Religion can also be a survival manual (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah but it's kinda silly that we've got people adhering to food safety laws from millenia ago, before the refrigerator was invented.
Re:Cue the fun.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe your post was a joke. It really doesn't seem like it, though, so I'll assume it's not.
You do not care about all the raped children?
Obviously, not wanting to hear about pedophilia in the church yet again makes one not care about raped children. Flawless reasoning. Apparently I couldn't care less about the Holocaust either--what a load off my mind!
What does your continued outrage actually accomplish? What religious person is going to listen to your litany and say, "oh hey, I was wrong. Oops."? It also makes people defensive to be yelled at, regardless of where the truth of the matter lies. I suppose you can hope to recruit the non-religious to your view, but I don't see what that accomplishes either. The people you have a problem with are happily unaffected by your views because of your belligerence, the people who agree with your outrage... agree, and the people who just want to live their lives continue to wish you would shut up. Picking a single issue to champion would probably be more effective. That way it's not "you vs. religion" but instead "you vs. priest pedophilia". You might find a way to make some useful progress that way, too, when the issue is small enough.
Most people have enough to do with living their own lives and dealing with those immediately around them. Maybe it's heartless, and it's not optimal, but it's reality. If you want to change the world, you have to deal with that reality. Shouting at people so you can get an emotional release isn't enough and mostly makes people want to ignore you all the more. You make some very good points, by the way. Your view is incredibly one-sided and falls prey to the fallacy of "the enemy is pure evil", but still, the lack of questioning religion tends to foster is a terrible evil and the other things are awful as well. Your good points are just cast in the light of hatred to such a degree that my instincts strongly tell me to ignore them and latch on to the flaws instead while refusing to change my own positions.
Re:Is the Catholic church still against condoms? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Give free condoms" is superior to "tell people to have a single partner" as a government policy and far superior than promoting abstinence.
It has been proven in studies that the strategies in order of effectiveness are
- promote contraception
- do nothing
- promote abstinence.
Re:I think we've known this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Abortion is not necessarily the easy way out. Abortion is not a pleasant experience, physically or emotionally, and it may be tempting for the mother to keep the child, even if she knows it will be raised under less than adequate conditions. If you don't believe abortion is equivalent to murder, abortion may be the most responsible thing to do.
Also, I live in a secularised country (Sweden) where all school children have sex ed, contraceptives are freely sold to all ages, and abstaining from pre-marital sex is seen as a little weird. We have virtually no problems with teenage pregnancies. Most kids have their first sexual experiences some time during high school, but they don't become particularly promiscuous, and most settle into monoagamous relationships (with or without marrying). When people eventually marry, the reason is commonly to have legal protection in case something unexpected happens, especially for the children's sake.
In case you've heard the rumour about Sweden having the world's highest suicide rates, it's a myth [mac.com].
Re:Translation: Religion is born .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not all people are the same. Whilst it is all well and good to promote greater understanding of the world around you, some people, in fact quite a lot of people are simply incapable of it. Whilst they might by rote remember some facts, they don't ever understand them, not by choice by by genetics and those people will always be drawn to more comfortable answers.
Answers that say you can alter random chance in highly complex interactions, that prevent you and those you care about from suffering by convincing some superior to intercede on your behalf. Whilst that time is better spent on coming up with ways of reducing the probability of harmful outcomes not all people are capable of doing so.
Some people just need religion of one form or another, to maintain a stable psychological attitude in a world of, to them, of chaotic outcomes. So it's not about eliminating religion, it more about minimising the harm of religion and it promoting positive sociological outcomes via religion. The worst of the worst, when it comes to religion, is politicians who use it to gain power. The more a politician reaches for religion the more corrupt they are.
Re:I think we've known this... (Score:5, Insightful)
>I don't understand why people fail to realize this. As an extension, abstinence prevents a world of problems from even happening.
That's a false assumption, it prevents some problems (assuming human perfection in execution on a level that is near impossible to achieve), but it causes a whole bunch of OTHER health problems. Religious people don't like to admit it but any sexologist will tell you that severe sexual frustration causes massive health problems including many psychological ones but also physical ones (and of course psychological problems can have physical symptoms which just throws more fuel on the fire).
That's not even considering the massive and proven health benefits of a regular and healthy sex life.
Sorry, science says it's a BAD SOLLUTION and the negative side effects are far worse than the risks of non-abstinence. The fact that abstinence in reality is a near impossible thing to achieve on a large scale just means that attempts to enforce it actually AGGRAVATES the problems it was meant to resolve - because it means that the sex which DOES happen is now unsafe on a much larger scale.
Ultimately safe sex is a far better compromise than abstinence if your goal is disease control.
Re:Cue the fun.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot is news for NERDS. Nerds tend to like rational thought. Many people who self-identify as nerds are likely to see the idea of an imaginary sky-friend as silly, especially when the people who are most vocal in their support of their sky-friend often are those who seem to want to interfere in the actions of others, or who fight science in ways that would be hilarious if they didn't have an effect on us. It's not surprising that some of both posts and moderation would be dedicated towards promoting a viewpoint that is less than supportive of religion in general, and organized religion in particular.