Catholics and Protestants alike are less depressed when bad things happen to them – for example, when they lose their jobs. Religious belief provides comfort in troubled times.

Glock²² has also contributed to the discussions
on the conceptualization of religious orientation by proposing a five-dimensional
model²³ of `conceptual framework for the systematic study of
differential commitment to religion.' Glock argues that despite the great
variety of details, all world religions share general areas in which religiosity
is manifested. These are the five core dimensions of religiosity: `the
experiential', `the ritualistic', `the ideological', `the intellectual',
and `the consequential'. According to Glock²⁴, the `experiential
dimension' of religiosity refers to the achievement of direct knowledge
of the ultimate reality or to the experience of religious emotions in
the form of exaltation, fear, humility, joyfulness and peace. The `ideological
dimension' gives recognition to the fact that all religions expect that
the religious person should hold certain beliefs to which followers are
expected to adhere. The `ritualistic dimension' includes specific religious
practices expected of religious followers to perform either individually
or communally. Among them prayer, worship, pilgrimage and feasting can
be mentioned. The `intellectual dimension', in Glock's framework, is constituted
by the expectation that the religious person should have some knowledge
about the basic tenets of his/her faith and its religious scriptures.
The `consequential dimension', on the other hand, encompasses man's relation
to man. This means that the `consequential dimension' includes religious
prescriptions, which determine the attitudes of the adherents as a consequence
of their religious belief. Glock argues that these are the core dimensions
of religious commitment being shared by different religions of the world.

One's acceptance of and position towards a supernatural being, towards
an ultimate reality and its manifestations involve a multidimensional
process comprising attitudes, beliefs, emotions, experiences, rituals,
the community and the feeling of belongingness. Hill and Hood¹⁹
argue that `any construct as complex as religion is likely to be multidimensional
in nature' `because religion deals with people's ultimate concerns and
provides both personal and social identity within the cosmic or metaphysical
background.'

Most Russians themselves did not care as long
as they could stay at home, as they had for many years past. But for the new
Russian state, the problem of November was emblematic of its difficulty from
the start. The older generations that had lived through Soviet times could
hardly forget the rituals of their previous life. Meanwhile, the new generation
faced with the hardships of a painful transition had more important concerns
than to demand new rituals and celebrations. As a result very few people were
even aware that the name of the 7 November holiday had changed; or (for
example) that the whole nation was supposed to celebrate Russia Day on 12 June.

Mr Roh will also visit the Pyeonghwa car factory near Pyongyang, a joint venture with the Unification Church led by Reverend Moon Sun-myung and he will also go to the Kaesong industrial complex, a group of Southern factories on the northern side of the border.

Atheism Debate - "We'd be better off without religion"

Last week, I attended a debate organised by Intelligence Squared, an organisation devoted to high-level public argument. The subject was so popular that, instead of the usual venue, the Methodist Central Hall in London had to be hired. More than 2,000 people crammed in. The motion was "We'd be better off without religion".

One of Lal’s most significant contributions to economic science is his recognition of cosmology as a factor endowment. This recognition enriches institutional theory by explicitly introducing religion and superstition into institutional settings and further illuminates the problems of path dependency. There have been great civilizations in the past, but none produced the Promethean growth that came with capitalism. The older agrarian civilizations grew extensively to the limits of their natural resources, but they lacked the innovation and creativity for the kind of intensive growth that capitalism generated. The reason for this lack is not that our ancestors had no instinct for enterprise, but that they were constrained by social norms and communal bonds and, as Lal asserts, by prevailing cosmological beliefs that suppressed individualism.

The second papal revolution occurred when Pope Gregory VII asserted the power of the church over that of the king or the emperor in the eleventh century. Lal argues, following Harold J. Berman (Law and Revolution [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983]), that this revolution set in place all the legal concepts and institutions needed for commerce.

mars/avril 2007

Effervescences religieuses dans le monde

Man asks of religion, "What is it for?"
Religion asks of man, "What are you for?"

Abstract  Most versions of secularization theory expect advanced modernity to weaken religion. In contrast, this chapter argues that
two different dimensions of contemporary society affect religion in opposite ways. Rising levels of human security and well-being
are assurned to drive towards religious decline, while growing cultural diversity is assumed to push towards religious growth.
These two hypotheses are simultaneously investigated, using world wide data for 50 000 respondents from 37 countries with
a predominantly Christian heritage. As dependent variables, two dimensions of religious involvement which relate to two core
aspects of secularization theory are analyzed: church-oriented religious involvement and preferences for a religious impact
on politics. The findings from three different analytical strategies demonstrate that each of the two religious orientations
is positively related to the cultural diversity, and also that each of them is negatively related to human security and well-being.
Furthermore, the results also indicate that the religious changes which took place between 1981 and 1999/2000 are negatively
related to human well-being and security, and positively to cultural diversity. Thus, a set of comprehensive analyses of one
and the same set of world wide data indicate that human security and cultural diversity affect religious involvement in opposite
ways. It seems too simplistic, therefore, to view modernization as a universal cause of religious decline.

I do not think we will rid humanity of religious faith any more than we will rid humanity of romantic love or many of the irrational but fundamental aspects of human cognition. While orthogonal from the scientific rational components, they are no less real and perhaps no less worthy of some celebration when we consider our humanity.

Dawkins: As an aside, such pessimism about humanity is popular among rationalists to the point of outright masochism. It is almost as though you and others at the conference where this dialogue began positively relish the idea that humanity is perpetually doomed to unreason. But I think irrationality has nothing to do with romantic love or poetry or the emotions that lie so close to what makes life worth living. Those are not orthogonal to rationality. Perhaps they are tangential to it. In any case, I am all for them, as are you. Positively irrational beliefs and superstitions are a different matter entirely. To accept that we can never be rid of them—that they are an irrevocable part of human nature—is manifestly untrue of you and, I would guess, most of your colleagues and friends. Isn’t it therefore rather condescending to assume that humans at large are constitutionally incapable of breaking free of them?

But this is surely a key characteristic of comtemporary proselytizing atheism: a desire to assert control over the world, manifest in an intellectual mission to force all human experience into rational or empirical categories - a mission that is inspired by the power of science as seen in technology - and that is born of a frustration with their 'unenlightened' fellow human beings who persist in seeing human experience as set against a horizon of ultimate mystery. Hence the modern atheist can be compared to the ancient gnostic - in claiming access to enlightened categories of knowledge into which all should be initiated.