Study shows religion is a potent force for cooperation, conflict

[rug]

Across history and cultures, religion increases trust within groups but also may increase conflict with other groups, according to an article in a special issue of Science.

May 17, 2012

"Moralizing gods, emerging over the last few millennia, have enabled large-scale cooperation and sociopolitical conquest even without war," says University of Michigan anthropologist Scott Atran, lead author of the article with Jeremy Ginges of the New School for Social Research.

"Sacred values sustain intractable conflicts like those between the Israelis and the Palestinians that defy rational, business-like negotiation. But they also provide surprising opportunities for resolution."

As evidence for their claim that religion increases trust within groups but may increase conflict with other groups, Atran and Ginges cite a number of studies among different populations. These include cross-cultural surveys and experiments in dozens of societies showing that people who participate most in collective religious rituals are more likely to cooperate with others, and that groups most intensely involved in conflict have the costliest and most physically demanding rituals to galvanize group solidarity in common defense and blind group members to exit strategies. Secular social contracts are more prone to defection, they argue. Their research also indicates that participation in collective religious ritual increases parochial altruism and, in relevant contexts, support for suicide attacks.

They also identify what they call the "backfire effect," which dooms many efforts to broker peace. In many studies that Atran and Ginges carried out with colleagues in Palestine, Israel, Iran, India, Indonesia and Afghanistan, they found that offers of money or other material incentives to compromise sacred values increased anger and opposition to a deal.

http://phys.org/news/2012-05-religion-potent-cooperation-conflict.html

Abstract here. Free registration for access to full article.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6083/855.abstract

[Goblinmonger]

1. And in other news, the sun sets in the west.

Who didn't know that if you were the same religion/sect as other people you can get along and if you aren't then "fuck you, heretic"?

[rug]

2. There's a bit more to it than that.

From the article:

"Religious beliefs involving sacred values facilitate both large-scale cooperation and enduring group conflict. For example, the mainly nonviolent Civil Rights Movement and extremely violent Al-Qaeda movement were strongly motivated by religious commitment—to “right the national sin” of slavery in one case (18), to “restore God’s law” against indignity and injustice in the other (19)—however important other economic, social, and political factors. Yet, ever since the 9/11 attacks in New York, New Atheist thinkers claim that religion is chiefly responsible for war and much human misery, which its demise would greatly reduce (15).

"In fact, explicit religious issues have motivated only a small minority of recorded wars (20). There is little religious cause for the internecine Russian and Chinese conflicts and world wars responsible for history’s most lethal century of international conflict. Indeed, inclusive concepts of “humanity” arguably emerged with the rise of universal religions. Buddhism spread beyond India by eliminating social castes, and early Christianity became the Roman Empire’s majority religion through growing social networks built on trust grounded in self-sacrificial displays (e.g., caring for non-Christians during epidemics) (21). Fourteenth-century historian Ibn Khaldūn found that for North African Muslim dynasties with comparable military might, long-term differences in success “have their origin in religion…group feeling [wherein] individual desires come together in agreement [and] mutual cooperation and support flourish” (9), the more religious societies enduring longer."

It's worth subscribing to.

[AlbertCat]

3. Then there's the afterlife and reincarnation...

... excellent for getting people to go to war!

[rug]

4. Which raise the question of what, if anything, people with neither belief will risk their lives for,

and why.

[skepticscott]

5. Exactly who does it raise the question with?

Certainly no one with an ounce of sense or real life experience would wonder about that. Or do you imagine that no atheist has ever risked their life for something?

[rug]

6. Me.

Now you can answer it.

[dmallind]

7. Same reason anybody does

A belief that something greater than themselves is worth risking dying for. Take away "paradise" as an answer and you still have:

country
cause
leader
protecting others
fear of the alternative, be it loss of "honor" or preferring combat to imprisonment etc.
psychopathies ranging from a desire to kill the "other" at any expense to an inability to accept the probability of one's own death

Only 2, 4 and 5b make much sense to me and only then in restricted cases, but I'm a utilitarian. YMMV.

[rug]

8. Which renders the comment about reincarnation and the afterlife rather silly.

I tend to agree with your answer.

[dmallind]

10. Well it renders the comment incomplete, but does not reflect at all on its truth

Just like I am sure people can find other reasons than the ones I listed without invalidating them. The afterlife certainly is a good way to get people to kill or die (or, as in 9/11, do both rather spectacularly). That there are other reasons does not change that.

[dimbear]

11. Cain killed Abel because Abel's sacrifice was more acceptable to God.

Understand this is not to be taken literally, it is more a model for all future murders.

[FarCenter]

12. God is not a vegan

Genesis 4

Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor.

God favors the sheepherder over the sodbuster.

[rug]

13. Why did David kill Madalyn?

http://www.atheists.org/content/murderer-dies-prison

[dimbear]

14. Most suspect it was for money. Very strange case, tho.

Loudmouthed atheists beware.

[Iggo]

15. Man!

I gotta get me some study money!

[rug]

16. You can use it to get a PhD.

http://www.lsa.umich.edu/psych/people/directory/profiles/faculty/?uniquename=satran