Status Updates From A Mente Moralista

just got the part ab raves and the spiritual impacts they have on individuals

“The only thing that was reliably and powerfully associated with the moral benefits of religion was how enmeshed people were in relationships with their co-religionists. It's the friendships and group activities, carried out within a moral matrix that emphasizes selflessness. That's what brings out the best in people.”

“Whether you believe in hell, whether you pray daily, whether you are a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Mormon… none of these things correlated with generosity.”

“Putnam and Campbell put their findings bluntly: "By many different measures religiously observant Americans are better neighbors and better citizens than secular Americans—they are more generous with their time and money, especially in helping the needy, and they are more active in community life." ”

“So religions do what they are supposed to do. As Wilson put it, they help people "to achieve together what they can-not achieve on their own." But that job description applies by binding them together into superorganisms that can prey equally well to the Mafia. Do religions help their practitioners on or at least turn their backs on everyone else? Is religious altruism a boon or a curse to outsiders?”

“In Wilson's account, human minds and human religions have been coevolving…for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. And if this is true, then we cannot expect people to abandon religion so easily. Of course people can and do forsake organized religions, which are extremely recent cultural innovations. But even those who reject all religions cannot shake the basic religious psychology…”

lol 67 - but on a serious note, haven’t had a slump like this in ages

“People bind together subjectively against external forces of evil… The dance draws everyone together. Whatever their relationship… they become a unit, singing, clapping, moving together in an extraordinary unison of stamping feet and clapping hands, swept along by the music. No words divide them; they act in concert for their spiritual and physical good and do something together that enlivens them…”

“In his book Darwin's Cathedral, Wilson catalogues the ways that religions have helped groups cohere, divide labor, work together, and prosper. He shows how John Calvin developed a strict and demanding form of Christianity that suppressed free riding and facilitated trust and commerce in sixteenth-century Geneva. He shows how medieval Judaism created "cultural fortresses that kept outsiders out and insiders in."”

“If Durkheim is right that religions create cohesive groups that can function like organisms, then it supports Darwin's hypothesis: tribal morality can emerge by group selection. And if Darwin is right that we are products of multilevel selection, including group selection, then it supports Durkheim's hypothesis: we are Homo duplex, designed…to move back and forth between the lower…and higher…levels of existence.”