#libre-sollus

Those were my feelings as well. I'm beginning to learn Irish, so I look at it fairly frequently, and that just didn't seem even remotely related. 

I don't have anything against its use, because it's really fun to say and I've experienced its ability to raise energy really well. What I do have a problem with is lying to people about its origins to make it/yourself sound cooler. It's damaging to you, to the source material, and the culture you're claiming it came from. 

I guess it should be no surprise that such a sensitive topic can generate so much response... and Haidt is so much in the margins between camps, it's hard to know how to respond to some of his thoughts.  Some followers did have reactions, and I thought I'd share some.  Here's the original quote again:

"Societies that forgo the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully on what will happen to them over several generations. We don’t really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few)." - Jonathan Haidt

And here are some responses:

libre-sollus:

Atheism is a non-thing to be honest. Everyone believes in something, whether it be the Abrahamic god, the Hindu cosmology, a shamanistic/animalistic/pantheist view or just “the universe”, which is basically the same thing. Atheism is destined to die.

Maybe this is right - that it's wrong to classify ourselves as non-religious... maybe our sense of sacredness has just been transferred to something else.  Science, or "the universe" for example.  Still, the lack of ritual or mass group activities in the current science/materialist zeitgeist might be a real difference, and a relevant one in the context of this quote.

dialectic:

I think the lack of recognition of so-called “atheistic” communities is an unrelated qualifier that doesn’t really put us on a platform of truth. Atheists have always been here. They were there the first moment someone said “I believe in God"

So maybe Atheism isn't just on or off, but can be present to some continuous degree in any given community.  Maybe.  Still, I think I could say of my own society that atheism seems waaay more prevalent than in any historical time and place I can think of offhand.  If you're claiming that atheism just doesn't correlate with group cohesion, well then I'll have to put my faith (pardon the pun) in Haidt here.  He's a psychologist, who backs up everything he says with data and studies.  The point about religion and group cooperation is one of the main points of his book, so he explains and sources it thouroughly.

frrrst:

That seems like a bold statement. I cannot recall any european society that could be described as atheistic. Also i strongly disagree with the view that the quality of a society should be measured by its efficiency.

You've got me there - I'm not sure which European society Haidt was talking about!  As for measuring the quality by the efficiency, that's an interesting point.  From a long, evolutionary perspective, efficiency (turning resources into babies) is really the only measure to use.  Whichever qualities a society has, it will inevitably surrender to one that out-breeds it.

However, I think there is room for argument.  In a world where we are coming closer to the boundary of our natural resources, birth rate might cease to be the only measure of long-term survival.  If one defined quality to include maintenance of renewable resources, then this might have real survival value.  A high birth-rate could actually be detrimental to this kind of quality!

And of course in the short term, there are so many things about a culture that seem more like appropriate measures of quality.  Music and art.  Food.  Scientific insight.  Kindness.  In the scale of a single life, these are so much more important.

An atheist movement or grouping is a bit strange in my opinion. It’s a group cohesion based solely in a negation, rather than a shared “belief”, as such. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just an interesting phenomenon I suppose.

I think you're right - purely speaking, the lack of a belief wouldn't count as a "movement".  But lots of what I see surrounding "New Atheism", and to a lesser extent, the semi-deification of science celebrities has more in common with an in-group than an intellectual position of any kind.

There's so much vitriol in the (intellectual) attacks on religion.  Some could probably be chalked up to people that have been actually harmed or negatively effected, but I suspect that more than half of it is simply one group slinging dirt at the group it's labelled "the enemy".

I watch/listen to lots of academic lectures, and when the speaker is known as an Atheist, or Popular Science icon, the Q&A sessions always follow a pattern.  The questioner comes to the mic, and says "I come from a religious family.  I just can't make them see reason."

What I hear is "See?  I'm in your group Mr Celebrity, really I am!"