theultimateend said:
ReiverCorrupter said:
It certainly is not limited to faiths, it is the same destructive force that stands behind political parties.
But yes, for the most part the larger a group gets the less likely that group is real.
In that, two people likely share tons of similarities, four people maybe less than that by a factor of 2, and so on.
So you start with say 1:1 similarities, then you have 2:1, and 4:1 and so on. With the first number being the amount of things the group says it believes in, and the amount you actually identify with.
Once you get to the size of a major global religion the average person has probably not even read the rulebook. They just hear a couple things out of thousands of things that they like and put in their support.
That's where lots of fighting breaks out, people get attached to those few things they like and when it is challenged they either break off and establish their own version of that group or they defend the whole even when it doesn't actually benefit them in any way.
I think we're pretty much in agreement. Though I think there are two other factors (aside from false-size bias) that have made
certain organized religions dangerous throughout history: Authoritarianism and Non-objectively verifiable convictions.
Authoritarianism
The authoritarian nature of certain organized religions adds a particular danger that goes well beyond the false size bias, and that it is these types of religions that actually present the most danger. The whole false size bias theory is predicated on the assumption that people have a relative amount of self-determination in what views/values they ascribe and that this means that different people will value things differently given their circumstances. A dogmatic authoritarian system eliminates a significant portion of this self determination.
To put it in more concrete terms: what made the Catholic Church so dangerous during the Dark Ages was the fact that it was the authority that determined what was right and wrong and had the power to excommunicate those who disagreed. That is, it was supported by a monistic value system where there was only one thing of value (i.e. salvation) and everything else as judged as only having value in relation to that one thing. Since the church supposedly had power over salvation this allowed it to use that power to determine the value of everything else such that people couldn't disagree without risking the thing they held to be most important.
While this kind of authoritarianism certainly isn't restricted to organized religions, the specific doctrines of certain religious traditions make it more likely. Worldly life offers all sorts of things that people can value differently, and often times these things conflict. For instance: traditional family values might make a woman feel that she has a duty to her children to be a stay-at-home mom, while this same woman might also have conflicting career ambitions. Only someone who is incredibly arrogant would acknowledge only one of these values as valid (yes, this means that I think that both male chauvinists and extreme neo-feminists are arrogant in that they think that they have the objective moral truth and that everyone else is wrong). Both of these values have their own draw such that not everyone is going to acknowledge one over the other.
In contrast, many organized religions tend to offer things that are so fantastic that they completely outweigh things of worldly value. Let's face it, worldly life
is impermanent and all of its pleasures
are fleeting. A lot of atheists might not like this idea, but it's true nonetheless: all they can argue against is that the promises these religions make are empty. Even then a lot of people are already religious are likely to reason according to Pascal's wager, which although not very convincing to someone who isn't religious, does nicely sum up the fact that religious people don't have much to gain by renouncing their religion.
The point being that a group can only be as powerful as the thing of value that it offers is important. If some group tried to offer people family values at the expense of other things that they value (like personal freedom), they aren't very likely to join up. But if it offers something that eclipses every other good and claims to be the sole means of attaining that good, then the potential for authoritarianism increases greatly.
Non-objectively verifiable convictions
Another thing that is more dangerous than simple false size bias on an individual level is absolute or fanatical conviction. When people have that kind of conviction they simply
don't care whether or not they have a large portion of society on their side. While organized religions by no means ensure that people have this kind of conviction, they do often provide a basis for it in that many religions openly favor supernatural (subjective/not objectively verifiable) revelation or faith as the basis for conviction rather than rational argumentation and group consensus. Of course this is also a problem for morality in general, as there really aren't any universally accessible natural facts in the world that one can point to demonstrate that something is objectively right/wrong (
vis-a-vis G.E. Moore's "Open Question" argument).
Some religions do this a lot more than others. Hinduism and Buddhism, while both containing revelatory/irrational strains of thought, tend to gravitate towards rational argumentation on the whole, and both traditions have allowed for multiple schools of thought to coexist and interact with each other through philosophical discourse. In contrast, Christianity and Islam have historically been very intolerant of divergent doctrinal views. Most Christian doctrinal disputes were ultimately settled either by compromise in order to consolidate power in a central body, or by warfare. The protestant schism was not a happy or congenial affair, nor was the Shi'a/Sunni divide in Islam.
Of course there are always exceptions: Sri Lankan Buddhists are pretty radical. (For instance, the Dalai Llama is considered a heretic and not allowed into the country, and they have a long history of oppressing Hindus and Muslims.) But this is largely due to the fact that Buddhism is seen as part of their ethnic, cultural and national identity, (e.g. the Hindus are typically Tamils; a minority ethnic group) and their actions are really done for the sake of the latter, rather than as an appeal to Buddhist doctrine. The vast majority of Buddhists outside of Sri Lanka would likely tell you that they are acting out of attachment rather than compassion and that what they do goes against not only the doctrines, but the very spirit of Buddhism.
But I'm sure you're well aware of this and that you were just talking about what makes organized religion dangerous in modern society. So I'm not really disagreeing with you so much as pointing out a couple caveats. You're probably right in that the false size bias poses a particular kind of threat in the context of modern democracy.