My March 19 piece on religion and morality (discussing a recent Pew survey of people’s attitudes about God and morality) has been rewritten and published in The New Republic as “Want to support secularism? Then fight poverty.” If you want to promulgate the secularist message of Professor Ceiling Cat in a mainstream venue, do go over and give ’em a click, or, if you’re so inclined, engage in whatever debate ensues.
Over there, it’s usually not so much debate and argument as it is abuse…
…but I won’t let that stop me from clicking through and perhaps commenting!
b&
Is the New Republic’s “daily free newsletter” worth signing up for? (and Harper’s, Atlantic, New Yorker, assuming they also have one.) I’m already dealing with a quasi-tsunami of interesting cyber reading. I find it hard to get the NY Times read. (My fault in that I get out the red ink pen and go after fatuous reportorial opinionating posing as reporting.) And I’ve got a couple of books going, including Hitch’s “Arguably,” which I’m not doing justice to. I’ve bought a few issues of (Lewis) Lapham’s Quarterly. Only get bits and pieces read. Current one is entitled, “Revolutions.”
From my observation, the New Republic’s political style could best be compared to Fox News’ token progressive, Alan Colmes.
Dysfunction produces anxiety and folks, especially the less educated, often turn to religion to alleviate that feeling. Others turn to drugs which includes alcohol. Some turn to both. The irony is that the religious vehemently oppose efforts to ameliorate dysfunction.
Unfortunately governments are largely in the pockets of wealthy lobbyists representing an extreme minority of the population. It is little wonder that most governments promote greed and extreme inequity – having a dumb enough population means you have a population unwilling to demand its fair share of things. Just look at how Switzerland voted to maintain inequity by rejecting a proposition to limit executive salaries to 12x the least paid worker. Years before that I’d been telling friends I see no reason why executives should be paid any more than 6 times what the janitors get and that even that is probably too generous. 12x the lowest paid is still absurd and yet even that was rejected by the public.
I don’t think American corporations have ever paid as low as 12x for top executives. A couple generations ago, it was hundreds of times. Today, it’s tens of thousands of times. I’d be thrilled simply seeing it capped at 365.25X — prohibiting somebody from earning more in one day than somebody else earns in an entire year.
Ain’t gonna happen, though — at least, not without a revolution (and probably not the peaceful kind, either).
b&
“Just look at how Switzerland voted to maintain inequity by rejecting a proposition to limit executive salaries to 12x the least paid worker.”
I doubt I’d be in favor of that, either. That’s a form of price control and I don’t think the government should be in that business.
I’d be more interested in looking at policies that would help fix what might be a market failure.
If Bill Maher can believed (and is there much reason to think that he cannot?), he quoted some source to the effect that the richest 85 people in the world possess at least as much if not more wealth than the bottom 3.5 billion.
Do you see that also as possibly a “market failure” (as opposed to possibly a moral failure)?
“Moral failure” is a vague term. I know it means something like “whatever I don’t approve of”.
There are all sorts of practical problems to wealth concentration and I would be in favor of looking at tweaks to the prevailing market systems to reduce the disparity, but without damaging the automatic adjustments that markets are good at.
Erm…I think we can safely conclude that we have incredibly overwhelming empirical evidence that markets are the diametric opposite of “good at” setting executive salaries. To continue to think that the markets really could set executive salaries in a manner consistent with societal values despite the extreme evidence to the contrary can only be described as a faith-based position.
Remember, reality doesn’t give a flying fuck what your theory says is supposed to happen or what you want it to do. And the reality here is that the disconnect between theory and reality in this case is every bit as big as it is with Christianity. The Invisible Hand is every bit as mythical as the Holy Ghost.
See
for an excellent presentation of the data.
Cheers,
b&
“empirical evidence that markets are the diametric opposite of “good at” setting executive salaries.”
No, it doesn’t. It says our current market structure isn’t good at that.
There’s clearly a premium being paid to executives over what they’re actually worth, and that’s an indication of a problem in the market. Many of the possibilities are listed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition
No market structure ever anywhere in the entire history of Capitalism has ever been good at that.
You’re effectively claiming that it’s possible to salvage epicycles if you just tweak them enough. Sorry, but it’s time to let this particular theory die a graceful death, especially since it’s resembling astrology more and more by the day.
Capitalism is no different from the other utopias from the era in which it was born. If you start with certain unrealistic assumptions about reality and human nature in particular, the conclusions follow perfectly. In Capitalism, it necessarily assumes that all actors have complete information about all relevant facts of the system and that all actors have equal access to resources. It’s also big at externalizing costs, especially in the form of pollution and natural resource extraction. All those assumptions are hopelessly naïve at scales anywhere beyond a toy model.
There are certain limited domains in which you can reasonably apply Capitalistic principles, but basing the global economic system on it is a recipe for exactly the disaster we’re in the midst of — rampant pollution, immanent resource exhaustion, concentration of wealth, monopolies and duopolies everywhere, practically monarchic power in the hands of the elites. That’s what Capitalism is good at.
Cheers,
b&
“Is God [if he exists] a capitalist?”
– Max Weber (rhetorically speaking, I gather)
It depends. Will the Capitalists give the Church tax breaks that work out to a better deal than whatever the Communists are offering? Then God is a Capitalist. Otherwise, God is a Communist — at least until that better deal comes along.
In other words, we’ve already established what God is; all that’s left is to haggle over the price.
b&
Another fine piece, Ceiling Cat!
I found it very strange that Pew’s poll ignored several important countries with the highest quality of life, best educational outcomes, lowest rates of violence, and lowest mortality. I’m speaking of the Scandinavian region of the planet: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland. Bet they’d skew deep yellow on that chart — is that why they were omitted by Pew? (It can’t be their size or economic importance if Ghana is on their list.)
France was 85:15, the lowest for religion is necessary for morality. That almost surely means that all of Scandinavia was less than 15% on the religion is necessary side. I, too, would be interested in the numbers for that most advanced part of the world.
Clicked. Great venue for getting PCC’s voice to a wider audience.
I’d really like to better understand the correlation between societal dysfunction and religiosity.
What are the causal factors, and are they related? Some of it about conservatives and conning voters rings true. I think it would be interesting and useful to understand how poverty makes people more gullible. Those polls are suggestive but far from providing real insight into the questions.
I don’t think that it’s gullibility that poverty creates, but desperation.
Great article Jerry A Coyne
Religion is a symptom not the cause or treatment
Africa is the poorest and fastest rising population on Earth. Right now, there is extreme Islamic violence in Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, Central African Republic,Somalia, Kenya…. I’m missing a few, but a slow motion genocide killing minorities with impunity. All the victims are looted after they are killed and homes burned to the ground. Militia groups like Boko Haram, and al Shabab will tell you they are doing this for Islam, and promise more civilians will be exterminated. Several of these Nations where these Islamic and Christian militias operate are democratic.
South America.. The same same thing is happening, even rivaled, with drug cartels and gangs on the street level. Looting, extortion, kidnapping, indiscriminate murder. South and Central America has the Highest homicide rates in the world. They are mostly Christian. And some South American Nations are Socialist like Venezuela
The common denominator is Poverty, not religion or politics, Islam in Africa is taking advantage of the poverty situation. Young poverty stricken unemployed, uneducated men, women and children join these militias to escape poverty. Exact same reasons in South America. Poverty. And as poverty and easy access to weapons improve these militias are flourishing and spreading out.
This is the world humans have created. A sobering reminder the conditions exist everywhere that breed extremism and could easily happen in the USA
That’s the reason to fight poverty.
A few articles from the BBC that back my assertions:
UK ‘must do more’ to tackle Sahel-Sahara terror threat
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-26668665
Education subjected to 10,000 violent attacks
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26323295
Colombian port city terrorised by criminal gangs
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-26661384
Religion is far more than merely a symptom – it is an active promoter of inequity. At the very least it promotes belief in nonsense spouted by an elite (the preachers) as opposed to useful thought which may lead people to improve their lives.
“Religion is far more than merely a symptom …”
I’m not disputing that religion is equally unsupported by evidence or that it is detrimental to society.
But when one spends any significant time examining African Islamic militancy,like al Shabab, or Boko Haram and South American gang violence, escaping poverty is the one and main motivation for signing up.
When Nigerian authorities open fire on Boko Haram, or when US drones hit a “wedding Party,” I can assure you, they are not doing so to spread the word of Jesus Christ
as your comment would have to imply in order to be true
If poverty and religiosity are correlated, then Liberation Theology is either ironic or pure genius – the use of theology to achieve its own obsolescence.
Of course theists have a couple of memes to counter the negative implications of the correlation of poverty and religiosity.
1) Material wealth distracts you from the worship of the true God.
2) Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours.
Great piece, Prof. Coyne.
Religion is used as a sedative for the masses, and provides a false sense of belonging. People who think they belong to a team of sorts might be inclined to ‘take one for the team’, i.e. make sacrifices for the team.
As difficult a proposition as it is, I think there is some merit in the idea proposed to limit the salaries of top executives. It would be better if companies voluntarily take this on. Surely some mathematician or economist out there could conjure up a viable figure? That would be one way of making it more feasible for companies to pay a decent wage to the lowliest worker. I’m all for the minimum wage to be increased.