A SKEPTICAL INVESTIGATION IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
INTRODUCTION:
Back in March, we had a discussion on how some evolutionary psychologists & anthropologists have argued that the world's major religions have evolved over the long term to supply a variety of social benefits, for example, promoting cooperation & punishing aggression among non-kin in increasingly complex societies. Conservatives scholars like Jordan Peterson & right-wing pundits like Ben Shapiro have seized upon these arguments to argue that atheists are wrong to attack religion because it fulfills an important social stabilizing function.
As we saw in our discussion, the arguments about the social utility of organized religion don't depend on whether or not a person believes in the literal truth of religion or endorses conservative political views. In fact, several notable scholars that have endorsed the evolutionary view of religion like the biologists David Sloan Wilson, Bret Weinstein & Robert Sapolsky, the psychologist Jonathan Haidt, and the anthropologist Scott Atran are all atheists with progressive political views.
In this discussion, we'll try to keep this distinction in mind between acknowledging the social utility of religion in certain cases and endorsing religious tenets in the manner of a true believer. This time, we'll explore several intriguing & controversial theories about religious trends in American history, concentrating on developments within Anglo-American Protestantism in the 17th, 18th & 19th centuries.
NOTE: The title of this meetup is intentionally provocative, and I'm anticipating that the central premise of this discussion could be challenging for many people in the skeptic movement, since most of our members are atheist or agnostic and many have a negative view of the social effects of religion. However, I'm hoping that most of us are also curious enough about the broader social forces that led to the creation of the modern world that we can reign in any knee-jerk antipathy towards religion we might feel. We should remind ourselves that to say that the Protestant Reformation had some unintentionally positive social effects in the past isn't necessarily an endorsement of Protestant churches today or a denial of some of their negative aspects. We'll address some of these negative effects in our next group discussion, entitled "Has Christianity Made America Dysfunctional?" https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/djzwsrybcmbjb/
In the 1st section of this discussion, we'll look at "Draper-White conflict thesis" that argues the Catholic Church became opposed to science during the Counter-Reformation and the "Merton thesis" that argued that Protestantism inculcated social norms that helped spur the Scientific Revolution, such as collective collaboration, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism, as well as promoting mass literacy.
In the 2nd section, we'll look at Max Weber's "Protestant work ethic" thesis that argues that Protestantism - especially Calvinism - unintentionally created the social & cultural preconditions for the rise of modern capitalism by encouraging hard work & saving while discouraging luxury spending. As we'll see, this ties into broader debates about why Northern Europe is wealthier than Southern Europe and why the United States & Canada are wealthier than Latin America.
In the 3rd section, we'll look at whether the Protestant Reformation was an important precursor to the Enlightenment and the growth of liberal democratic ideals, insofar as Protestantism encouraged Christians to think for themselves on spiritual matters rather than deferring to central authorities like the Catholic Church and promoted literacy which opened Protestants to new ideas. We'll also consider whether the religious disputes between the Anglican Church of England and the Protestant Dissenters of the American colonies may have contributed to the unrest that came to a head in the American Revolution.
In the 4th section, we'll look at whether the Protestant reformation unintentionally led to a gradual process or secularization in the West, and whether the Deism & Unitarianism espoused by some of America's Founders played a role in this. This idea is somewhat connected to the argument that the American Revolution could be characterized as a "Masonic conspiracy" since many of the Founders were Freemasons, and this has spawned conspiracy theories among some paleoconservative groups, like the John Birch Society, who think the Masonic influence on the early American republic was subversive.
RELEVANT MATERIAL FROM PAST MEETUPS:
In the 1st section, we'll talk about whether the Scientific Revolution was enabled by the "Mertonian norms" of collective collaboration, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism. Way back in June of 2017, we had a meetup entitled "What Does the Replication Crisis Mean for Science?" that discussed whether the increasing replication failures in some scientific fields might be due to various factors, such as a lack of strong basic theory & overconfidence from research designs, institutional failures & perverse incentives, or ideological homogeneity & political biases. https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/239904781/
In the 2nd section of this meetup, we'll talk about the "Protestant work ethic". Back in October of 2017, the Philly Political Agnostics had a meetup entitled "Deep Culture & The American Dream", and in the 3rd section, they discussed Yale law professor Amy Chua's controversial "triple package" theory that purports to explain why certain ethnic groups (e.g. Jews, Chinese, Indians, Mormons, Cubans, Nigerians) are so successful in America. Rather than a "Protestant work ethic", Chua argued that 3 cultural traits — impulse control (the ability to resist short-term gratification), a belief that one's group is special & "superior" in some way, and a deep-seated anxiety about inadequacy — combine to make certain ethnic groups high-achievers. A book review at Slate contested this theory, arguing that a group’s immigration history, particularly "selection effects" related to wealth & education, explains differences in achievement much better than does the Triple Package theory. https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/zgmddnywnbcb/
Since the 2nd section deals with the rise of capitalism in America, an alternative explanation for why America became a wealthy country is that this wealth was built on slavery. We addressed this argument in a meetup back in July entitled "Slavery & Pseudohistory" - see the 3rd section. In general, the historical evidence doesn't support the claim that slavery made America wealthy; instead it appears that it trapped the Southern states in an agrarian economy rather than encouraging the urbanization and industrialization the Northern states experienced. While large plantation owners certainly profited & became rich, the overall society remained poor - much like "banana republics" in the Third World today. https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/djzwsrybckbjc/
In the 3rd section, we'll talk about the social norms that support liberal democracy. Back in February of 2018, the Philly Political Agnostics had a meetup entitled "Are We In A Global 'Democratic Recession'?" In the 1st section, they looked at how most political scientists view liberal democracy as having 4 necessary components: (1) free & fair elections, (2) civil liberties, (3) rule of law, (4) civil society. They also talked about how various think tanks like Freedom House and the Economist Intelligence Unit, as well as the Varieties of Democracy Project (V-DEM), have constructed indices that try to measure the level of democracy of various countries, but there's some debates about how objective & quantitative these indices' rankings are. In the 2nd section, they looked at how democracy rankings correlate with economic growth, progress on various social metrics, and reported levels of happiness. https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/xvbrznyxdbgb/
In the 4th section of this discussion, we'll talk about how Protestantism may have encouraged a gradual shift towards secularism via the Deism & Unitarianism espoused by some of America's Founders. In a recent meetup in February of 2020, the Philly Political Agnostics had a discussion entitled "Should We Base Politics on Religion or Science?" and in the 1st section they reviewed some of the common arguments about whether or not the original intent of the Constitution was for the United States to be a "Christian nation" and how that relates to the 1st Amendment's "Establishment Clause". https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/mjlzgrybcfbcb/
Also, since we'll talk about secularization process in the 4th section, it's worth pointing out that we talked about the "secularization thesis" in the sociology of religion in a meetup back in January of 2019 entitled "Can Skeptics Fight Irrationality Without Succumbing To It?" In Section 3 of that meetup, we looked at how many social theorists in the late 19th & early 20th centuries such as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim postulated that the industrialization & modernization of society would cause a decline in levels of religiosity, but this process now appears to have stalled - especially in the United States. Many sociologists & psychologists are beginning to suspect that some types of cognition we'd loosely classify as "religious" or "spiritual" may be hard-wired into the human mind by evolution, and that instead of secularization & rationalization modern societies are experiencing a diversification & fragmentation of spiritual beliefs into a variety of traditional & non-traditional religious movements, "New Age" beliefs & spiritual practices like yoga, meditation, herbalism and "the law of attraction", and a growing interest in "paranormal" phenomena like ghosts & aliens. https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/lckqkqyzcbrb/
