Is religion to blame for Europe's problems?

The outlaw

It is a startling fact, based on findings from a 2005 European-wide poll, that the PIIGS countries are the most religious countries in the Euro zone (excluding Cyprus and Malta who are recent members).
I feel we seriously have to ask this question, is religion to blame for our current economic problems?
Was it religion that inevitably caused the previous governments of the pig countries to be so narrow-minded and look at things in a black and white way, and laugh at the economic/business experts suggesting they commit suicide? There is no escaping the strong fact that the 5 most religious countries of the 12 founding euro member states are the pigs which hasn’t really been addressed (I stand to be corrected).
In these countries religion seems to have probably infected the minds of so many people that it went all the way to cabinet government level (personally I wouldn’t be surprised if our previous government at cabinet meetings, were too busy saying their hail Marys, rather than looking at what smarter countries were doing which wasn’t exactly rocket science).

seanybiker

Nope. Not at all.

juice1304

No.
If everyone was'nt so self-centred and greedy they would see what was going on around them and would'nt let it happen in the first place.

seanybiker

juice1304 wrote: »

No.
If everyone was'nt so self-centred and greedy they would see what was going on around them and would'nt let it happen in the first place.

exactly. Religious people or non religious people are self centred.


Op is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill IMO.
I fooking hate all these " newly found atheists" trying to blame everything on religion.
It's so bad I'm not even an atheist anymore, I'm simply a non believer.
I don't worship everything that that Muppet Dawkins says.

Peregrinus

If you’re going to argue from correlation to causation, you’ll need to do more than point to the correlation. You’ll need to suggest how, in this instance, greater religiosity led to greater financial improvidence.

And, to get you anywhere, the argument has to be coherent and persuasive, and not too obviously silly. The suggesting that the Greek government, for example, “looked at things in a black and white way” is completely the opposite of the usual critique of the Greek government, and its attitude to fiscal matters. And the claim that the Irish government spent their cabinet meetings saying hail marys is amusing, but no substitute for things like evidence, or an argument that anyone could take seriously.

You’d also need to explain why the high religiosity of Malta and Cyprus can be discounted. Yes, they were late entrants to the eurozone, but is this a reason to exclude them? Is your thesis that religiosity only leads to fiscal imprudence if and when a country joins the eurozone? Why does it not have this effect on non-eurozone countries? Plus, Greece was also a late entrant to the eurozone. It looks suspiciously like you are including countries if they support your hypothesis, and excluding them if they don’t.

cavedave

Hanson has a good piece this week on how few of our problems are caused by religion Religion Gets Bad Rap

But instead of being religious, most barriers today are regulatory and risk-based. As we have grown rich and eager to regulate each other, we have become more risk-averse and made it harder to introduce new disruptive techs. For example, computer-driven car tech is basically here and ready to go, but it will be a long time before we allow it. Same for automated flight and medical diagnosis,

efb

It's everyone else's fault!

MagicMarker

No.

Ellis Dee

I somehow doubt that religion is to blame for Europe's current economic problems. In fact, you could put it the other way round and suspect that the economic problems might share part of the blame for the fact that people still fail to see how pointless religion is.

There are many causes of our economic problems, but as people feel the squeeze, it is far too easy for them to be misled by promises of pie in the sky rather than trying to identify the real causes and deal with them.

Peregrinus

What the PIIGS countries have in common is that the are all on the (geographic) margin of Europe.

In fact, an interesting trend appears if you look at a map of the Eurozone. To the South and West, the PIIGS countries, who joined but (in German eyes) defrauded the system. To the East, countries like Poland, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Romania and others which are committed to joining but haven’t joined. And, to the north, countries that have opted out - the UK, Sweden, Denmark. In the middle France, Germany and a cluster of smaller neighbouring states who are all relatively good euro citizens.

It’s very hard to avoid the inference that what we have here is a tension between the centre, which actually runs the show, and largely for its own advantage, and the periphery, divided between those who want to get what they can out of it but are cynically aware of their own marginal status (hence their irresponsible behaviour) on the one hand, and those who are reluctant to get involved on the other hand.

OK, that’s a bit of an over-simplification, and it doesn’t account very satisfactorily for a couple of outliers like Finland. On the whole, though, it stacks up a lot better than the religious/non-religious divide suggested in the OP. Which means that it’s not really of much interest on an atheist discussion board.

Sonics2k

No, don't be silly.

Dades

We all know what Ireland's problems were caused by. Greed, denial and bad governance.

Nothing whatsoever to do with religion.

The OP's post reminds me of the correlation between pirates and global warming.

strobe

Mark 4:35-
35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” 36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. 37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. 38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

40 He said to his disciples, “Go forth and facilitate unsustainable cash flow bonanzas from export strong countries to periphery euro nations with unsustainable bubble economies run greedy thieves and liars."

Seems pretty damning...

Echoes675

seanybiker wrote: »

It's so bad I'm not even an atheist anymore, I'm simply a non believer.

My view exactly. I hate being associated with the "Atheist" crowd who are just as condescending and narrow minded as the bible thumpers!

Penn

eoin_mcg wrote: »

My view exactly. I hate being associated with the "Atheist" crowd who are just as condescending and narrow minded as the bible thumpers!

You prefer to be condescending and narrow minded by yourself then?

ShooterSF

Dades wrote: »

We all know what Ireland's problems were caused by. Greed, denial and bad governance.

Nothing whatsoever to do with religion.

The OP's post reminds me of the correlation between pirates and global warming.

Oh god is gonna noodle-slap you!

(please don't ban-hammer me)

Galvasean

seanybiker wrote: »

It's so bad I'm not even an atheist anymore, I'm simply a non believer.

You do realise that you don't have to like Dawkins, dislike religion etc. to be atheist? Atheism is just a lack of belief in God(s). If you don't believe in God(s) you're an atheist whether you like the word or not.

Sorry, but for some reason I'm feeling pedantic today...

eoin_mcg wrote:

My view exactly. I hate being associated with the "Atheist" crowd who are just as condescending and narrow minded as the bible thumpers!

UDP

seanybiker wrote: »

It's so bad I'm not even an atheist anymore, I'm simply a non believer.

An Atheist is a non-believer.
Thats like saying, There are so many people saying stupid things that I am not even Homo sapien anymore, i'm simply a human.

Echoes675

Penn wrote: »

You prefer to be condescending and narrow minded by yourself then?

Ha ha v.funny. Hardly narrow minded, but world rather be on my own that subjected to pointless arguments.

Echoes675

UDP wrote: »

An Atheist is a non-believer.
Thats like saying, There are so many people saying stupid things that I am not even Homo sapien anymore, i'm simply a human.

That may well be true in a literal sense, but the group of non-believers who belittle others based on whether they have a faith. This is the same kind of oppression that religions all over the world have been guilty of.

As I've already said I'm a non believer but I really don't care whether others want to believe in a god or a flying spaghetti monster or nothing at all.

My life - my choice. Your life - your choice. Their life - their choice.

Penn

eoin_mcg wrote: »

Ha ha v.funny. Hardly narrow minded, but world rather be on my own that subjected to pointless arguments.

nar·row-mind·ed
adj.
Lacking tolerance, breadth of view, or sympathy; petty

eoin_mcg wrote: »

My view exactly. I hate being associated with the "Atheist" crowd who are just as condescending and narrow minded as the bible thumpers!

Dades

Hey people - thread moving off topic into definitions, grammar and possible ad hominems.

So is religion to blame for Europe's problems?

UDP

Penn wrote: »

nar·row-mind·ed
adj.
Lacking tolerance, breadth of view, or sympathy; petty

Is that what one calls irony?

UDP

Dades wrote: »

Hey people - thread moving off topic into definitions, grammar and possible ad hominems.

So is religion to blame for Europe's problems?

Apologies, thought the question posed had been answered in the second post.

OP, I see no credible evidence that backs up your claim.

Dades

UDP wrote: »

Apologies, thought the question posed had been answered in the second post.

Indeed that's likely true but that doesn't mean a free-for-all to wander down the usual rabbit holes.

Rastapitts

its to blame for everything

ShooterSF

eoin_mcg wrote: »

That may well be true in a literal sense, but the group of non-believers who belittle others based on whether they have a faith. This is the same kind of oppression that religions all over the world have been guilty of.

If only! Did you hear about anyone being arrested recently for posting "There is a god" on facebook? Yet that is the oppression people face from regiligous states today.
They don't belittle my belief. They would silence me for it though if they got a chance.

Belittling a belief you find stupid is pretty standard actually. I'd expect it if I went to meet friends in the pub and began telling them that I believe none of them exist and I'm in the matrix.
Ah but then religious beliefs are different right? Deeply held? And belittling them offends the holder of them...



Then I give you the words of another atheist,



Edit to give my answer to the OP - No people are to blame. People are always to blame. Self interest is all people care about and you can't build a society on it.

Echoes675

On topic - Europe has had a lot of history that has been influenced by religion one way or another. (as has the world) It's not so much that the religious doctrine in Europe has done the acts in history, but that people have used it as a weapon and a way of gaining support for some pretty crazy ideas. Personally I don't believe the stories in the religious books but some people do. And some people are easily influenced when one of these crazy ideas is put to them using the "facts" of their religion. I don't think that the financial troubles of Europe have been caused by religion but as ShooterSF rightly says "Self interest is all people care about and you can't build a society on it."

paddyandy

With no religion it would be an unbearable situation and a totally criminalised society ......You ain't seen nothin' 'till you've seen religious restraints removed ....animalised and don't believe altruistic impulses would save us either .See for your self look inside the prisons of America .Pure survival nothing else matters .Good or Bad Religion ; man is in the wild without it where even the strong watch for dear life ...constantly .A religious person may be a fool but he has standards and restraints ..remove those ...well ..In Prisons they are extremly narrow minded in their codes with no margins . Have a look at the vids on utube .Irish jails are holiday camps .
There is a lot of good in most people and some good in the worst .

MagicMarker

paddyandy wrote: »

With no religion it would be an unbearable situation and a totally criminalised society ......You ain't seen nothin' 'till you've seen religious restraints removed ....animalised and don't believe altruistic impulses would save us either .See for your self look inside the prisons of America .Pure survival nothing else matters .Good or Bad Religion ; man is in the wild without it where even the strong watch for dear life ...constantly .A religious person may be a fool but he has standards and restraints ..remove those ...well ..In Prisons they are extremly narrow minded in their codes with no margins . Have a look at the vids on utube .Irish jails are holiday camps .

Wow, how have I managed to not murder and rape people all these years?

paddyandy

OP :" Politicians saying hail Marys" is a silly statement .

Echoes675

MagicMarker wrote: »

Wow, how have I managed to not murder and rape people all these years?

Indeed!

Knasher

paddyandy wrote: »

With no religion it would be an unbearable situation and a totally criminalised society ......You ain't seen nothin' 'till you've seen religious restraints removed ....animalised and don't believe altruistic impulses would save us either .See for your self look inside the prisons of America .

99.8% of the prison population in America professes some sort of religion, compared to 92% of the population at large. So why would a decrease in religion make us more like the prison population?

recedite

Is religion to blame for Europe's problems?

No, but an interesting question might be; Is there a correlation between the religiosity of the euro countries, and how well their economy does.
Does a population of unbelievers take responsibility for their own situation, and does a population of believers tend to place a misguided trust in their leaders and "authority figures"?
(Lets leave the North Korea out of this, we are comparing like economies with like.)

18AD

I haven't had time to read this, but would love to. It's a classic in social critical theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism

Gbear

recedite wrote: »

Is religion to blame for Europe's problems?

No, but an interesting question might be; Is there a correlation between the religiosity of the euro countries, and how well their economy does.
Does a population of unbelievers take responsibility for their own situation, and does a population of believers tend to place a misguided trust in their leaders and "authority figures"?
(Lets leave the North Korea out of this, we are comparing like economies with like.)

In truth North Korea has far more in common with a theocracy than a secular state. They've very literally deified Kim Il Sung and Kim Jung Ill received similar treatment.

In terms of Europe (from checking this wikipedia page ) the waters are muddied somewhat.
While the old soviet countries are very poor they're also mostly non-religious. I'd put both of those aspects down to Communism. The various glorious leaders' personality cults couldn't have religion interfering with them so they turfed it out and obviously they failed economically.

I'd say education is probably the biggest single factor in everything. It leads to less religion and more wealth, by and large. I'd say that's the reason why Denmark, Sweden and Norway are both secular and rich.

paddyandy

Knasher wrote: »

99.8% of the prison population in America professes some sort of religion, compared to 92% of the population at large. So why would a decrease in religion make us more like the prison population?

Inmates mostly put "religious" on default mode with all surveys because it looks good .Prison makes them "born again" and to be seen at prison religious services is not to be missed unless you are a real hopeless case ."The devil when sick a saint would be the devil when well divil a saint he'd be" an old proverb .

MAGIC MARKER ;Religion might be the reason you remained alive all those years take it away and we are living like rats like they do in the warrens under dun laoghaire east pier.

MagicMarker

Right, in a country where the vast vast VAST majority are religious, only atheists are in prison. :rolleyes:

And with that you're on my ignore list.

Gregor Samsa

I think the problems in the US prison system (compared to here) are probably more down to a number of cultural factors that are present in America as a whole that aren't prevalent in Ireland: Gang affiliation among males from lower socio-economic classes, wider tensions between ethnic groups, a harsher, bigger penal system, etc.

Countries like Mexico and Brazil, that have what seem to be genuinely religious prison populations, have huge problems with violence within their institutions. It almost sounds like you're heading for a "No true Scotsman" fallacy in thinking that if the prisoners engage in the violence you described, then they couldn't be truly religious.

In any case, trying to draw correlations between the prison population and the general population in the first place would appear to be misguided. There's so many factors that separate the prison pollution from the general population, such as IQ levels, education levels, poverty levels, gender imbalance, ethnic imbalance, forced confinement, lack of opertunities
- even the fact that (most) prisoners share a bond of having transgressed society's laws in some way - that picking "lack of religion" as the cause of violence within the system seems a little premature.

As an aside:

paddyandy wrote: »

"The devil when sick a saint would be the devil when well divil a saint he'd be" an old proverb

I think it makes more sense when you include the punctation:

The Devil was sick, the Devil a saint would be; the Devil was well, the Devil a saint was he!

(I'm not being a grammar nazi, but I honestly couldn't work out what the original quite was supposed to be saying, so I had to look it up. So I post the corrected proverb here to help anyone else in a similar situation.)

Dades

paddyandy wrote: »

Religion might be the reason you remained alive all those years take it away and we are living like rats like they do in the warrens under dun laoghaire east pier.

Holy crap - are you saying rats have developed a fair, modern, technologically advanced society under Dun Laoghaire pier?

You must bring this news to the authorities!

Gregor Samsa

paddyandy wrote: »

Religion might be the reason you remained alive all those years take it away and we are living like rats like they do in the warrens under dun laoghaire east pier.

So, there's no atheists in foxholes, but there is in ratholes.

recedite

The atheist rat civilisation won't last long. Rumour has it the rats of the West Pier are preparing to launch a Great Armada against them, under the banner of the Great Sky Rat.

Dades

Apparently they believe the lighthouse is sacred and are marching to reclaim it from the hordes.

fitz0

paddyandy wrote: »

;Religion might be the reason you remained alive all those years take it away and we are living like rats like they do in the warrens under dun laoghaire east pier.

You might want to tell Sweden. They seem pretty happy with their low levels of religiosity and high degree of secularism. Who knew that all this time they were no better than some suburban Dublin rats.

beerbuddy

seanybiker wrote: »

exactly. Religious people or non religious people are self centred.


Op is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill IMO.
I fooking hate all these " newly found atheists" trying to blame everything on religion.
It's so bad I'm not even an atheist anymore, I'm simply a non believer.
I don't worship everything that that Muppet Dawkins says.

What i would like to know is why the Athiest posts really do seem to echo the New Athiest charter as this one does. I ask this because you dont see the same loathing in the Christianity post

For example i could ask why Church going drops among the less well educated.Basically implying whether true or not that the non church going population are dumb asses. (please take with pinch of salt)

Dawkins and his bunch of crones have basically ended up making the entire philisophical debate a dumbed down mudslinging match.As the saying goes if you throw enough mud it eventually sticks.

Gbear

beerbuddy wrote: »

What i would like to know is why the Athiest posts really do seem to echo the New Athiest charter as this one does. I ask this because you dont see the same loathing in the Christianity post

For example i could ask why Church going drops among the less well educated.Basically implying whether true or not that the non church going population are dumb asses. (please take with pinch of salt)

Dawkins and his bunch of crones have basically ended up making the entire philisophical debate a dumbed down mudslinging match.As the saying goes if you throw enough mud it eventually sticks.

Im confused. Are you suggesting there's no causal link between education and religion?

Pace2008

beerbuddy wrote: »

What i would like to know is why the Athiest posts really do seem to echo the New Athiest charter as this one does. I ask this because you dont see the same loathing in the Christianity post

You didn't read past the first 3 posts, did you? Absolutely no one agreed with the OP's assertion that religion is to blame for the world's problems.

For example i could ask why Church going drops among the less well educated.Basically implying whether true or not that the non church going population are dumb asses. (please take with pinch of salt)

I dunno, why are manhole covers round?

paddyandy

MagicMarker wrote: »

Right, in a country where the vast vast VAST majority are religious, only atheists are in prison. :rolleyes:

And with that you're on my ignore list.

Plenty of Religion in offenders if you look deep enough but it does'nt get nurtured .Plenty of good people make mistakes and behaving badly is not the same as being bad .
Life is not so simple as you make it out to be .

paddyandy

Fitz ; Good point but good values that are naturally in people anyway can remain in a materialistic society as long as the standard of living is high enough .When incomes drop below an acceptable level then common decency starts to evaporate and without a religious 'net' that society will have serious problems .Those societies are no more than a few decades out of poverty any way but it's a very interesting point .I really don't like comparing Ireland to other parts of the world where temperaments and attitudes are different .These are complex and volatile times unlike anything previous it's hard to have certainties .

paddyandy

recedite wrote: »

The atheist rat civilisation won't last long. Rumour has it the rats of the West Pier are preparing to launch a Great Armada against them, under the banner of the Great Sky Rat.

They won't make war like the chickens might do shortly...we wait ....

Galvasean

Dades wrote: »

Holy crap - are you saying rats have developed a fair, modern, technologically advanced society under Dun Laoghaire pier?

You must bring this news to the authorities!

Rats are a much nicer bunch than once thought:
http://blog.united-academics.org/3477/rats-are-capable-of-empathy/