The New "Religion Vs Science" Thread

The issue here is the idea that external forces can transform someone's basic nature. That is, if you hang around with killers, you will become one, and that the group ethos and whatever doctrine is associated with it are sufficient "causes" for this transformation.

Here we see the danger of trying to apply a physical causal model onto the behavior of human groups, where there are far more moving parts, and a "cause," and the ability to transform or change is not only taken as matter of course, it is ascribed to outside powers entirely, to such things as "blind faith," etc.

If we look at our own process, and our own lives, we can easily see that achieving radical or even incremental change in our fundamental nature is possible, but probably the hardest and most confounding task there is. The various ways psychology uses to categorize basic or inborn personality types - and how accurate these are - attests to this. In terms of character transformation, we are always up against the way we are made.

This is made even more complex when we introduce conditioning, and consider this in light of changing or transforming one's basic nature. Certainly we can learn to be a certain way, or acquire new skills and habits. But again, we are always up against our inborn tendencies and aptitudes.

For example, I grew up playing music, which was my first love. After many years of practice, instruction, state honor bands and playing in countless groups and bands, including with very skilled professionals, I realized that there was no way of me getting to the next level because I simply didn't have it in me. I could hang out with and play with and rehearse with Grammy caliber musicians but they couldn't transform me into one of their own because by nature, I wasn't, and no amount of practice could change that.

This and other reasons is why ascribing the "cause" of psychopathic killers to a collective group think ("blind faith," etc.) is such a slippery slope. We come into the world with certain specific tendencies and aptitudes, and these basic tendencies will find play in the world no matter our conditioning and how blindly we believe in this or that.

Point is, we could theoretically wipe out all vestige of radical Islam, or fundamental religion, etc., and aggressive, criminally-inclined psychopaths would still be reigning terror on the world. We would just find another "cause" to which we could ascribe their behavior.

All the explanation of evil in the world with or without religion is beside the point and has already been agreed upon. That's not the argument here. Ridding the world of religion won't eliminate all evil. But it would eliminate the evil that religion commits, by definition. Crazed killers could find some other excuse but those who deliberately provide the excuse bear responsibility too.

Really? then we must eliminate political belief, which is its own form of blind faith, and love and all inequality of any kind as all of these provide excuses for the commission of evil. Silly stuff.

Except "religion" does not "cause" or commit evil, or anything. People do. In fact it's a strange and curious angle you are working. Simplistic or at least cut and dry in your propensity to look for efficient causes in complexity of human behavior, while at the same time extolling the plasticity of the human psych, which given the right doctrine to blindly follow, and sufficient voltage from the tribe or cult, is enough to make Ghandi cut his mother's heart out with a can opener.

That much said, Hitler and company must have tapped a collective psychopath though the Teutonic dynamics were certainly more convoluted than blindly following Nazi doctrine. In all of these cases, while there is every reason to want to nail the behavior to one cause, it's basically grey all the way.

What is being discussed is basically nature versus nurture. If and when we look at either aspect in terms of a rigid, strictly determined or blindly mechanical process, we overlook the amazing plasticity of the human psych, to both external and internal factors and forces. We also forget that folks like Jung and many others have shown that to greater and lesser degrees we all have the whole rainbow of human traits which only need the right conditions to jump into play. The pacifist (by nature) who gets thrust into a war zone discovers his instincts for self preservation, his aggression, his loyalty to his brothers in arms, and lets his rifle rip once the action heats up.

In this sense, "Who am I" is always a moving target when we look at only what we do, or are capible of doing.

Is the amazing plasticity of the human psych somehow related to neuroplasticity?

n my view you're still searing for some logic to justify a coherent, linear, causal means of looking at this, while what I am suggesting is that there are too many variables to make global claims with any confidence. What's more, the plasticity of people's psych is itself a variable impossible to nail with a metric. There's nothing to norm anything off of, so to speak.

One thing is for certain: A somewhat balanced person, not trapped in a survival situation, is not going to start raping little girls and blowing up his neighbors if he is not, by nature, prone to aggressive, psycopathic tendencies. Blind faith in anything is not normally enough or even close to enough to the character type we have all seen in those heinous Isis clips where people are set on fire and so forth.

Point is, there's no telling how far into darkness a "normal" person might go in terms of violent and evil acts, but there's little to no chance blind faith is going to transform the very character of a person from sane, sober, social and conscientious, into the ruthless killers and psychos on those vids, people who are the embodiment of evil. Are there exceptions? Of course there are. This is human behavior, not math.

Chances are almost certain that the sh#t heels seen in those Isis vids didn't need blind faith in radical Islam to be the way they are. In fact I'd wager that most of those gangsters are not religious whatsoever, certainly not in the way we normally use the term.

Can radical organizations encourage violence and evil. Of course. Should they be stopped by any means. Ditto. But the truly evil and criminally insane ones who do and sponsor rape and mass murder were not made that way though religious indoctrinization. And blind faith in same is not the sufficient "cause."