http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/09/religions-correlation-with-poverty/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheBigPicture+(The+Big+Picture) (http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/09/religions-correlation-with-poverty/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheBigPicture+(The+Big+Picture))
Poverty causes Religion? Religion causes Poverty? The US is crazy? It's interesting, to say the least.
Quote from: winkio on September 10, 2010, 01:03:42 am
Poverty causes Religion?
I would agree on that, though. Poor people have a harder time to get by so they cling to god since it's their only hope in their life of darkness.
Not always. If people were devout before they got povertised, then they'll most likely lose faith since their god didn't save them.
Not unless there religion has several gods and demi-gods.
Then they blame the "evil" gods, and become MORE devout to the "good" gods
Quote from: The Niche on September 10, 2010, 05:55:05 am
Not always. If people were devout before they got povertised, then they'll most likely lose faith since their god didn't save them.
That's a good point. But usually people who are rich don't believe too much in god in the first place so that case is relatively rare.
Not necessarily rich. Or, you could be spiteful and poor. That's not a good combo.
Quote from: Blizzard on September 10, 2010, 10:51:00 am
Quote from: The Niche on September 10, 2010, 05:55:05 am
Not always. If people were devout before they got povertised, then they'll most likely lose faith since their god didn't save them.
That's a good point.
Not really. Those people can easily believe that god is testing them. That was actually a common belief in the medieval times, with all that "hurr I've got to suffer in my mortal life to get into paradise" and I can imagine people still believing it today.
Yeah, but that's really rare nowadays. It's so much easier to blame your misfortune on somebody else like god so people do it. -_-
Yeah, people are lazier and they have less pain tolerance.
Quote from: Blizzard on September 10, 2010, 12:12:34 pm
Yeah, but that's really rare nowadays. It's so much easier to blame your misfortune on somebody else like god so people do it. -_-
Well, I don't know about you but I still heard alot of people say that, and I'm not exactly from the middleages.
Though I don't think that people who lose their religion that easily were really believing in it to begin with.
I'm too tired to end this thought someone do it for me.
You've got a good point, to convert a true believer is nigh on impossible. But being pissed on by society can have strange effects on people.
Quote from: Subsonic_Noise on September 10, 2010, 04:21:30 pm
Though I don't think that people who lose their religion that easily were really believing in it to begin with.
I totally agree with you. (My own faith is there and nothing is ever gonna shatter it, regardless of what happens.)
Quote from: Blizzard on September 10, 2010, 05:35:57 pm
Quote from: Subsonic_Noise on September 10, 2010, 04:21:30 pm
Though I don't think that people who lose their religion that easily were really believing in it to begin with.
I totally agree with you. (My own faith is there and nothing is ever gonna shatter it, regardless of what happens.)
Though I might wanna add here that I'm not religious myself, but I like to try and figure out how the psychology and the social aspect of religion works, and I do think that religious people, especially when something bad happened to them, will turn to their respective god or gods. If for complaining (or even blaming) or to seek help ultimately depends on the person, but it's still a religious act either way, which does support the theory.
Yeah, I've seen it happen in many ways. I don't know how I could explain my own faith. Of course, it wasn't always that strong. I've gone through hard times and once I even lost my faith. At one point I regained it and I kind of realized that it ultimately doesn't matter. I believe because I choose to. I know what I believe in and why I do. It's not blind faith so it cannot be destroyed in a way that blind faith can. I'm not even sure it is possible to destroy honest and sincere faith.
I also find the whole psychology behind it fascinating. Though, more of the blind faith psychology. A man who believes blindly in something will even give his life without understanding why if others tell him to. A man who truly believes in something will give his life because he wants to, not because somebody else told them to.
You're onto something there. A lot of the rules set down by religions are set down to confuse people and thus make them more biddable.
Anybody here watched the movie The Book of Eli? Very interesting movie to view from this perspective.
To be honest, I've know people who're very rich and devout, and people who are very poor and devout. At the same time, I know poor atheists and rich atheists. From my experience, religion isn't related to your social status, but more related to the type of person you are. I'm not really sure how to explain this, but I've met different people who have a variety of different beliefs. I think trying to pin down a trend is sort of meaningless as well, since my life experiences lead me to see that people tend to believe what they do for a variety of reasons. Marking one cause to the status of one's religion life is something I'm sure we all can see is a bit foolish and pretentious, since very rarely are things so simple as 1+1=2 in life, especially in psychology.
Well, it really depends on what you call "poor". I see a general tendency that people in really poor countries, like africa or burma, tend to be religious (I have been to Burma and haven't really met any people that weren't religious) while there are much more atheists in post-industrial countries. I think it has something to do with the level of education, but I'm once again too tired to finish this arguement, so I pass it on to whoever wants to use it. (not trying to imply that religious people are stupid though)
Uneducated != stupid. Nobody thinks you're saying that they are stupid.
Quote from: Subsonic_Noise on September 11, 2010, 03:08:37 pm
Well, it really depends on what you call "poor". I see a general tendency that people in really poor countries, like africa or burma, tend to be religious (I have been to Burma and haven't really met any people that weren't religious) while there are much more atheists in post-industrial countries. I think it has something to do with the level of education, but I'm once again too tired to finish this arguement, so I pass it on to whoever wants to use it. (not trying to imply that religious people are stupid though)
I know what you mean, but at the same time, I don't think it's poverty but the culture and the exposure to foreign ideas. You can possibly relate poverty to the state of culture and to the lack of diversity, but the link isn't direct and it's not too strong of an arguement in my opinion.
It is quite impossible to accurately map out anyone's motivations and the causes for them. That is why this debate cannot be closed.
Quote from: Diokatsu on September 11, 2010, 03:55:35 pm
Quote from: Subsonic_Noise on September 11, 2010, 03:08:37 pm
Well, it really depends on what you call "poor". I see a general tendency that people in really poor countries, like africa or burma, tend to be religious (I have been to Burma and haven't really met any people that weren't religious) while there are much more atheists in post-industrial countries. I think it has something to do with the level of education, but I'm once again too tired to finish this arguement, so I pass it on to whoever wants to use it. (not trying to imply that religious people are stupid though)
I know what you mean, but at the same time, I don't think it's poverty but the culture and the exposure to foreign ideas. You can possibly relate poverty to the state of culture and to the lack of diversity, but the link isn't direct and it's not too strong of an arguement in my opinion.
Well there is a pretty direct link between both, but that does involve poverty of the whole country, by which I mean not only poverty in money. A group of people that is struggling to survive will most probabpy not develop the same complex cultural patterns as a postindustrial middleclass society will, and the means of communication are limited by poverty too. The towns in burma I have been in had no way to communicate to other countries at all. And even if they did, to properly understand signals and messages coming from other cultures, there needs to be a certain level of education.Fuck I need sleep.
I actually agree with Diokatsu. I will also have to disagree with Sub here. Poverty and religion don't have quite a direct relation to each other. I think that it is generally accepted to say that poverty is created by a number of causes. The same can be said of religion. Religion, as several of my mentors have pointed out, is an attempt to understand the things that we can't explain. Religion is also something that people turn to in times of hardship, whether to pray or spite it. Science has decreased the need in faith considerably; we know now that it is not a God of lightning tossing his thunderbolts during a thunderstorm. But even so, there are still people who will turn to faith in post-industrial classes; I'm not very religious but there are still some things in the world that I cannot explain. My point is that poverty does not equal religion but is just a factor in whether a person does or does not choose to be religious and that sometimes it will have no effect whatsoever.
And I never said that poverty is the only thing that can cause religion, or the other way around. I just said that people in difficult situations such as poverty tend to
be religious.
when your life sucks, you have a tendency to WANT to blame it on people.
do people like acknowledging their own faults? Would you rather say that it was chance that you life crappily? From there, it's not a far step to reaching a belief that there's a reason for that, and that the reason could make your life better.
Religion is influenced by poverty, but I'd say it's more influenced by the environment around you. When growing up in a environment where it's just accepted as FACT that religion is true, then when something happens you sorta make connections. From religion to poverty and culture.
tl;dr: everything influences everything.
I too have noticed that the poor tend to be more devout. Personally I find religion as an attempt to put you in a box and strip you of your identity, replacing it with that of the religion. So you go from that eccentric chap down the road to the Muslim down the road or the Jew down the road etc. I also think there is a connection between wealth and the church. Wealthy people tend to give more to the church and charities and assume this will make them more pious. (Perhaps that might be an old fashioned thing). Also, poorer people having larger families could be related to religion, although the real reason is that some of the children might die or that the parents want the the government benefit(all dependent on country) or they want an extra pair of hands to increase the family income. Catholics, however or any other religion which forbids the use of condoms for that matter, have larger families due to the lack of contraception.
However it is impossible to say religion is the main cause of poverty. The main cause today is first world countries taking advantage of third-world countries and the world bank sucking countries dry. Poverty within first world countries will always exist even if it is only a few thousand people. Someone has to be on minimum wage and if the economy takes a turn for the worse and jobs are cut, poverty will increase.