Remember, this is in general. But I'd suggest that the more educated a culture is, the less questions are answered by god, and thus the less spiritual they are. If you don't disagree with the overwhelming evidence... does that tell you something?
The Jews might disagree! Weren't the Greeks & Romans educated? Didn't they worship large numbers of gods? Who says the Aztecs were uneducated? It also depends by what you mean by "spiritual", & even "educated". People can be religious without being spiritual, IMO, & people can be educated in the wrong things as well. And, if you disagree with me, then you, sir, are worse than Hitler!
What your over whelming evidence doesn't take into account is that education for the masses follows & begats wealth. Wealth is what provides other interests that are more self gratifying to most people. I don't think that the percentages of really religious people are radically different now than they were two hundred years ago. Religion provided a social life, education and for that matter government to a lot of societies. People had to be part of religion to climb the ladder of success. They paid lip service to it because they had to. People aren't smarter, they simply have more outlets and have lost the requirements that religion used to impose. You put the Aztecs up as uneducated & religious. The first is certainly true but the second was likely more the spectacle of the human sacrfice and the lack of a decent movie theater more then anything else. Hell, England was still sticking heads on London Bridge 200 years ago. How would you explain the American plains Indians which were a very religious & uneducated society but waged warfare where touching your enemy (counting coup) was more important then killing him. Rather more civilized than shock & awe, wouldn't you say?
Hope that last bit's a joke, but anyway; you can't compare the information that existed in Greece and Rome to what we've got today. Yes, they were very educated, far more educated than most people realize, but they still had no idea compared to us. Nobody can be educated in the wrong things if they are facts. They can have opinions that may not be unpopular, but no fact has ever been a "bad fact". They are only facts. How they are interpreted or utilized may be questionable.
But these days, you've got people who know far more things than people back then did, and you don't think it leads them to have less questions answered by God and more questions answered by science, and you don't think that contributes to a higher agnosticim/atheism rate? People are definitely smarter now, perhaps not with respect to mental ability to retain information but they just know more information that science has found out than people ever had access to back then. Are you aware of how much further advanced and educated we are even from 100 years ago? It's exponential. I suggest you research the rate of information that exists in this planet compared to even 30 or 40 or 50 years ago. For example, in 25 years, technology will be- LITERALLY- a BILLION times as advanced as it is now. Not to the extent of the aztecs, and for political reasons, not religious. The aztecs executed hundreds of people a day for the Gods, and the people ate it up because they knew no better. It's not their fault- they had no other information to believe things. Shock and awe was designed by greedy, corrupt politicians. Please don't misunderstand my suggestions here- I'm not saying anything is "better" or "worse" than anything. I'm just saying more education directly correlates to less religion. Whether that's good or bad I'm leaving up to you. I'm just curious if people disagree that those correlate. People can be extremely religious without being violent; I'm not talking about violence- I'm talking about religion. But I'm not judging it.
The overwhelming evidence that what? We've got to tidy up the premises significantly before they have any meaning. I think first you need to clarify what you mean by education. Do you mean generally diffuse through a population? Or perhaps cultures with the most learned people? Does it matter which disciplines?
I'm keeping this very broad. I'm not comparing two cultures that are very close in level of education and very close in religion or anything, I'm trying to say in general. I think it can also be correlated with time. Examples: Old, less educated civilizations firstly with Druids, then aztecs and mayans, Egyptions and the like (I'm not saying they were dumbasses, but they just aren't at the level that we are), and then you've got 2-3 millennia ago where religion swept around like wildfire, like Christianity, Zoroastrianism (basically the exact same concept), Islam. Would anything like that spread today with the level of education? I think it's obvious that no, it wouldn't- people know too much to believe that "A guy in the middle east died and came back from the dead. You should join and give money to this religion." Why is it more plausible back then than it is now? Coincidence? Everybody was just more open minded? Or do you think it is because people didn't know enough to realize that it's probably not possible?
I get that you are trying to keep it general. I'm saying the level of the generalizations make the initial assertion meaningless...not to mention that I think it's awfully hard to say that religion swept around like wildfire 2-3 thousand years ago.
I've studied the comparative cultures of the Valley of Mexico extensively, and wonder why you started with the Aztecs rather than the comparatively ignorant (and at least equally religious) Spaniards. That the latter had steel and horses, plus deadly microbes, didn't make them more educated.
Really? Are you talking world-wide or in America or in develpoed countries? Becasue I'd say for certain that in Europe, at least, the percentage of religious and "really religious" people will have plummeted in the past 200 years. Among my friends and people I know and meet it is the extreme, extreme exception for anyone to believe in a god or to be religious at all. I do know quite a few people who have the 'we can't say anything so there might be something' attitude but even they're in the minority. I'd imagine that'd be unthinkable in Scotland (or anywhere else in Europe) 200 years ago. I'd imagine that a table of percentage of kids attending school (or university) in a country versus a table of percentage of religious people in a country would show a significant anti-correllation.
I have to agree here. The concept that westerners were smarter simply because they possessed better weapons is as arrogantly stupid as it is inaccurate. Ancient peoples possessed knowledge & approaches to knowledge that we do not. One only need look at the precision of Chichen Itza or the Pyramids to realize this. Our advantage is not that we are smarter but that we have their knowledge as well as ours and perhaps even more important, we have devices that do much of the preliminary work for us. If you have a compass, you don't need the vast amount of knowledge about the ocean, currents, winds & sea life that the Polynesians had. Am I smarter because I can get to Hawaii with a device that someone else invented rather then the knowledge I learned at the feet of my father?
The Aztecs were a fairly advanced civilization compared to, say, hunter-gatherer tribes in the Great Basin. Which is why they had a developed theology and extensive, documented religious beliefs and complex rituals involving a pantheon of gods. Versus the simple, primitive animism of lesser developed cultures. Does that make more, or less, spiritual? Your terms are so broad to make the comparison meaningless, IMHO.
I think you're overshooting the mark. There are obvious parallels, but there are distinct differences, so saying "exact, same concept" would not hold up to close scrutiny. There are reasons why there are millions and millions of self-proclaiming Christians and far fewer Zoroastrians today. Constantine's creation of a state church is the most profound, but I think it's fair to say that the idea that God came as a man and lived out a perfect life that we are to imitate ( duplicate ) as his followers is more immediate. Broader, more science-based education will have an impact on a segment of the culture, but you have to recognize that there is a bell curve that represents intelligence, and there are people within the top 1% who are as devoutly religious as any. I don't know whether the percentage of people who are exceptionally bright and also reject religious ideas has increased over the past 100 years. Certainly Europeans have turned more to the idea of being secure here and now as having more relevancy than eternal security, as evidenced by diminishing influence of Protestantism, but I'm not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg.
I would suggest it's completely obvious that religion spread far more quickly back then than it did now. You really disagree? This is beside the point. This isn't a discussion about who is more educated than who; we can agree that the aztecs were less educated than we are now. This is all that matters. One IS more educated (not smarter) than another based on information that he has been given even if it's discovered by somebody else. I didn't discover myself that the sun is a mass of... incandescent gas (sorry), but the fact that somebody else discovered that it was makes me realize it's not made out of God magic. I'm not talking about level of complexity or presentation of religion or spirituality (for the record, I've always hated the word "spirituality". It means "religion," that's all there is to it.), I'm talking about percentage of the population that is religious, and if we're going deeper and discussing how actually religious the people are, just how religious on average the population is, for example if you were to assign everybody a level of religious belief and find a mean. I think it's obvious That's probably true; I exaggerated on that but they are similar. The reason why Christianity is more popular is due solely to politics. The religion which a person is apart of is arbitrary and is due solely to where he is born or who and what has affected him in his life; absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter. There are slight exceptions, such as the religions that are more along the lines of "ways of thinking". But anybody with a good knowledge of religion understands that which religion a person believes has nothing to do with subject matter. I'd say it's obvious that, the higher up on the bell curve you go, the less religion you have. Quite obvious, in fact. You disagree?
The Bell Curve is supposed to represent basic intelligence - i.e. the ability to learn. Knowledge on the other hand is a compilation of facts. A person can be quite intelligent without having any knowledge. I'll refrain from the obvious example. A person can also know a lot of things without being intelligent. Simple life experience teaches you things. What of the knowledge that the ancients possessed that we do not have today? What several here have pointed out that your comparing apples & oranges. Most catholic priests have served in several countries, speak two or more languages, are highly educated and most, I dare say, are quite religious. The percentage of people who leave the religious life is quite small. Wouldn't this advanced education cause an exodus of people as their education level grows? In my first entry on this thread I said that it isn't education but wealth that steers people away from religion. I stand by that.
If you're going to interpret pretty obvious observations as chauvinism, that's not my fault. If you disagree with the suggestion that the aztecs were less educated and had less information than current under-developed nations, and that current under-developed nations have less education than more highly-developed nations, then argue that. But I request you not steer this pertinent discussion away by arguing something that needn't be argued.
Catholic priests are hardly a good example to use are they? Take three groups of 100 kids and raise them to believe in God and the stories from the Bible. Not heavily involved in the church but enough so that all of them would believe in it. Deny the first group any kind of standard education that all of us would have recieved, give the second group and school education similar to what they'd recieve in America or Europe and give the 3rd group a university education in a range of subjects. Do you think you would see identical numbers of these children 'losing their faith' or do you think that the more educated ones would drop their beliefs more readily?
Absolutely. The Aztecs adapted common Mesoamerican religious beliefs which were indigenous to the region and developed them further, but how far did they "spread" their belief system? Compare that to the modern era. Look at the 19th Century--many new religions were developed in the USA during the first half the 19th Century; one of the most successful and long-lasting was Mormonism, which was already attracting converts from Europe within a few years after Joseph Smith died. When I was born, Latin America was almost uniformly Catholic. Today, evangelical Protestantism has made huge inroads in many Latin American countries. But they were better educated than primitive hunter-gatherers. They had a high degree of civilization, writing, government, architecture, engineering, etc. The Mayans were even more advanced in some ways. Yet were they less "spiritual" than less advanced cultures? But many societies had a great wealth of information which did NOT contradict a God-centered view of the world. Medieval Europe, for example. Forget the Aztecs; what about the Sumerians? The ancient Egyptians? You're taking pre-Enlightenment societies and comparing them to modern societies with mass literacy, the scientific method, secular governments, etc. It's a pointless comparison. I know that I'm better "educated", if you want to put it that way, than Ramses II or Hammurabi. So what? That's a testament to how far we've come. You should know--I'm an atheist, and a fairly militant one. I just don't think you've picked very good parameters for your argument.
[sorry for the double-post] Agree 100%--this is a MUCH better example than the thread-starters criteria.
Right. The past. Less information. As said before, information has grown exponentially. And while religion may have spread and grown differently in different eras, I'd suggest it's pretty clear that a new religion couldn't very well spread like semitic ones. Why do you think? Because people come in with their missionaries, shove bibles in everyone's faces, make promises that are outlandish but can't be disproven, and people gobble it up. More in the past than now, but still among under-educated areas and populations. Again, we're keeping it general; there are going to be some things that don't directly keep to the curve but are close. The Mayans and Aztecs were probably 99% religious, with only perhaps a few scientists or philosophers who doubted it. Foragers, I don't know much about their religious practices, but I would assume they were pretty much completely religious. I'd suggest you aren't arguing against the actual point I'm making, but arguing semantics. As said- not NEARLY the amount of information that we've got now. And when more information arrived, things tended to change in general. ...I don't think you're getting it here. You just MADE the comparison. They had less literacy, no scientific method, religious governments. And who had a higher percentage of religious people do you think? There aren't too many parameters. The suggestion, in word form, is that the more information and knowledge a culture has, the less religious it becomes. The argument could be made for specific cultures or the entire world. Whether or not you disagree with that is the discussion. They're pretty much the same point, except he's making a very good example about specific scenarios. It might be a better example but it's based on a very similar idea.
it makes more sense to you to believe that our Sun -- and other suns -- are natural phenomena that are explainable in rational -- as opposed to God-based -- terms, but you can't prove either position. your animus toward a particular term -- spirituality -- doesn't change the fact that there are lots and lots of people who would consider themselves seeking "spiritual" truth who don't align themselves with any codified religious system. add to this the fact that the main prophet of the second most widely-spread "religion" -- Jesus -- was extremely critical of the "religious" leaders of his day and spoke mostly of being followers of God and himself as the most tangible manifestation of God, and what you get is a movement that sought to personalize religious experience. it's not about organizations and legalistic systems with Jesus, so your notions about "religiousness" don't fully apprehend the focus of biblical Christianity, which is supposed to be about something other than programs and dos and don'ts. but there are people who were born into Islam who are now Christians and vice-versa. people gather information which they consider persuasive. sometimes things happen that are not rationally clear, phenomena that are considered miraculous, which are persuasive to individuals. we, as people who are too far removed from those phenomena to evaluate whether they should be persuasive or not, can only say, "it's hard to see how that would turn a Muslim into a Christian, but i guess that made sense to Abdul..." i would venture a guess that it's more likely that a person who has been exposed to a highly refined, science-based explanation of The World would tend to accept that view if the individual in question was in the top range of intelligence, but not every "genius" rejects a biblical worldview. as i said, i have no idea what the percentages are, and i don't think it really matters. it doesn't change metaphysical truth.
There is very, very little information on the amount of religiosity throughout history. That combined with the fact that for the short window we do have information on, the religious have been more powerful than the religious taints the information we do have. Most of the philosophical debate about creation, design, and so forth was at least as advanced in antiquity as it is now. The very small fraction of the Classics that survive tell us this much. Hell, the philosophical advances that were lost in the Library of Alexandria were likely greater than you could get in any modern education. I do have to congratulate you though Mr. Lakey, this is the most the atheists and the religious have ever agreed in this forum.
I really disagree with the absolutism of this argument. All three groups would have to have the same economic level for this to be true. Education in western society generally means wealth. Were back to apples & oranges or Gordon & Nebraska. Take your pick.
I didn't specify any differences at all between the three groups so I'm just assuming that (across the 100) each group is equal in terms of wealth and intelligence. I asked if you thought we'd see an equal number dropping their belief, assuming all things other than education are equal. I'd be interested in what you thought. Why do you think wealth would make a big difference?