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Sure, but the phoenix and the pelican in question are pretty crazy creatures to believe in. If they believed these creatures existed based on testimony, and believed it for centuries, then they had a default level of gullibility that has been lost since the advent of science. You can no longer say “this prophet says so” or “this magical creature shows that resurrection is possible” or “the Greek Oracles prophecied the coming of Christ” or “500 people say they saw resurrected Jesus” and expect smart people to believe it. Especially when they now have different competing faiths making claims of the exact same quality. If these intellectuals were so gullible, we can only imagine how gullible the common folk were.
If I were asked on a poll if I believe in ghosts there’s a fair chance I’d say yes for the hell of it. I don’t think smart people really believe in ghosts outside of tricks of the mind. I think if a smart American were consistently haunted by a ghost, he would book a visit with a psychiatrist. He probably wouldn’t be telling his coworkers about the ghost he hangs out with every night. Although maybe it would help on dating apps for picking up goth chicks.
No religion emphasizes eternal life more than Islam. Do you think their constant obsession with the rewards of the next life have aided their cooperation and virtue? I imagine not. I think the reason that the 20th century social movements failed is that the clung to the wrong moral focus. They missed the mark by a lot. They needed to focus on something which induces epistemic humility, local sphere of concern, and selflessness.
That’s tangential to my main point. I know religious people give more to charity. This is one of the reasons religion should never go away. (Although I find collection baskets extremely evil, subtly shaming the poor). If you believe that this life is not even 0.01% of your whole existence, and you can ensure the 99.99% of your life will be even better by selling everything to the poor, then what reasonable person wouldn’t do it? This is like Mr Beast giving you a contract saying, “sell everything, spend a week begging for alms, and I’ll give you 100 million dollars”. Everyone would do this, surely. So why aren’t any Christians doing the eternal cosmic 100% assured Mr Beast challenge? I know I would if I really believed it. And there are Hindus who do this with their gods and traditions! Do the Hindus have more faith in their demons than the Christian has faith in the True God? I would like to think that there’s something else at play here, a deeper psychology.
If I believed this, I would sell everything to go preach Christianity to Muslims in the most remote corners of the Middle East. If they kill me, it only expedites my paradise. But it’s a frankly unbelievable proposition, which is why no Christian sells all he has to go preach somewhere he knows he will be killed. It’s not because they’re cowards or anything, it’s just that the more reasonable part of them prevents their “put on social identity” from really believing in the claims. IMO.
The Phoenix is a little weird. The Pelican's not really weird at all; matriphagy is a real thing, it just happens that actual pelicans don't seem to practice it. The sexual parasitism practiced by the anglerfish is weirder than matriphagy in my mind, should I not believe in that?
This is absolutely not true, just in my personal experience. (Incidentally, did you know that increased education in the United States is correlated with increased levels of religious attendance?) But you don't have to believe in my experience: the educated class in the States takes stuff like poltergeists seriously enough that outlets like the New York Times write serious stories about exorcists. (To be fair, I am collapsing ghosts and demons into one category here, I suppose.)
Yes, absolutely. You can see this, for instance, in how the Taliban (religious zealots) outcompeted the nominally Islamic tribal grounds in Afghanistan and started cracking down on pederasty, which was traditionally practiced and accepted. Cooperation led to victory, and victory led to virtue.
Well, under certain circumstances Christianity actually condemns selling everything to the poor, so presumably that's at least part of the reason Christians don't do it. I cannot really speak to the Hindus.
This famously does happen, though! The last guy killed by the Sentinelese was a Christian missionary.
The other groups in Afghanistan were not nominally Islamic, they were all practicing Muslims. The Taliban succeeded not because of a belief in the afterlife, which is shared by all Afghans, but because they are an extremist brotherhood oriented around a moral ideal that they are constantly reinforcing to the exclusion of everything else literally all the time. The Bolsheviks had no belief in an afterlife, yet they completely defeated the Orthodox Christians who had such a belief. Same re the French revolutionaries. Did the Greeks and Romans lack courage in battle? Or the North Vietnamese, or the North Koreans? Or the Japanese — who fought more courageously than the Japanese? There’s no clear evidence that an afterlife is instrumental here.
I think “under certain circumstances Christianity actually condemns selling everything to the poor” is an enormous cop-out. But instead of getting into the weeds with whether poverty is literally a mark of perfection, I’ll say that I know a lot of Christians and they all enjoy your typical American consumer activity and wasteful purchases. I know one particularly prominent Catholic family and they have enormous mansions and nice cars. How is it that Warren Buffet lives more frugally than a major Catholic figure who sits in the front row at Papal visits? It can only be that they don’t genuinely believe in the rewards of heaven, which if believed would necessarily result in maximal charitable activity (certainly not mansions and luxury cars). At the very least, the threat of hell for being rich should be enough to get them to abstain from these sorts of purchases.
As a 1 in 200 million chance? It’s famously unusual.
God presumably knows you're rich whether or not you make ostentatious purchases. Certainly he knows that Warren Buffet is rich, that little house doesn't fool anyone. If you're going to hell for being rich, you may as well enjoy yourself before you go.
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I suppose this depends on who you ask but the Taliban seem to think that practicing pederasty is incompatible with correct Islamic practice.
There's very clear evidence that an afterlife is instrumental. You're shifting the standard to claiming that the belief in an afterlife will always and everywhere prevail. But remember, you said
And I would say – yes, clearly.
Why? Why shouldn't Christians be judged according to their own teachings? I don't even disagree with you that Christians often fall short of their own teachings – and it's fine to criticize that – but it's important to understand those teachings first. If Christianity specifically teaches that one's first duty is to one's family and dependents it is silly to criticize Christians with family and dependents for not impoverishing them to give to charity (see perhaps most notably 1 Timothy 5:8, which compares failing to provide for one's own house with apostasy!)
Now – I don't disagree with you that Christians often act as if they do not believe what they say that they do. I do this, to my shame. But – to your point about faith – the people in the first century whom you suggest had such an easy time believing in Christ ALSO did this! If your idea that belief is harder now is correct and that is why Christians today act as if they do not believe was right, we would expect the first century church not to have that issue. One need only read the writings of first century Christians to be disabused of that notion.
And today people do this in other areas quite frequently (for instance lots of people know that drinking is bad for them...), unfortunately. The fact that people today, or in the first century, act contrary to their own professed belief and knowledge has little bearing on the belief itself (alcohol IS bad for you even if you act as if it isn't!)
Well perhaps they are familiar enough with Catholic doctrine (as I think I am, although I am not Catholic) to know that that's not how salvation works in Catholic teaching.
The verse you are probably thinking of is as follows:
Not stated in the text here (even as a riddle or hyperbole): "rich people go to hell." Nor is that a teaching of Catholic doctrine as I understand it.
Now, it IS true that there's a certain tension in Christianity, especially early Christianity, with wealth (see for instance James 2, but note that James does not advocate for kicking the wealthy out of the church!) But on the flip side, I certainly can't think of any sort of general command in Christianity for people to sell all they have and give it to the poor (the instruction in Matthew 19 was to a specific individual – although quite arguably it applies more broadly! – and you can see in Acts 5:1 - 4 that even in the early church described in Acts 4 liquidation of wealth to give to those in need was entirely voluntary.)
I don't disagree that the very specific thing you said never happens is unusual. :)
What is the clear evidence that an afterlife belief is instrumental? Afghanistan of the 90s and before was possibly the most theistic country in the world, and all Muslims believe in an afterlife. Bacha Bazi is an Afghan costume that coexisted alongside Islamic belief for a millennia until the Taliban banned it.
This argument falls short because the Christians who do not have dependents also don’t give all superfluous possessions to the poor, neither do the wealthy Christians with dependents usually live austerely after providing for their relatives.
I grant this point to a degree, but I don’t think we really know how many Christians sincerely gave all their surplus to the poor, as we lack records here. But if you believe Acts then the Apostles shared everything in common, and we see condemnation in the Church Fathers about nearly every conspicuous expression of wealth, even rings.
Alcohol is a physiological addiction. If students can live in poverty for four years with the hope that they will later receive a great reward, then it should follow that those who believe in the greatest reward imaginable for all of eternity should be able to put up with a few decades of poverty. I’m at a loss for why this wouldn’t happen unless the belief is not quite fully believed. If this life is a light and momentary affliction, a simple trial for the real important joy of heaven, why is almost no one pursuing the full reward? Or, if a greater reward for saints is no longer believed, why aren’t they at least super-securing their salvation with fear and trembling? As again, if we really had the Mr Beast contract offering 10 billion dollars for a year in poverty, I think most people would do it. The natural explanation here is that this isn’t really believed, not that in the sense that a belief is normally believed; it hasn’t actually convinced us, and we required something more to cajole us morally. I think we can feel that we hold beliefs without truly holding them, especially if the belief is as socially reinforced as the dogmas of a religion.
We also see this warning in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus and Luke 12:33.
Well, in Acts 4-5 we find: “the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common […] there was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need”. Then we read the story of Ananias, who didn’t give the church all of his profit, and he died after Paul’s rebuke. Then the wife died after Paul’s rebuke.
What I am suggesting is that without the belief in the afterlife, that Taliban would never have done what they did, which makes it instrumental. The fact that other people believed in the afterlife is immaterial to the question of whether or not belief in the afterlife was instrumental for the Taliban.
But if you like, we can take another angle: we've already discussed (and agreed) that religious people give more to charity. Surely belief in an afterlife is at play in at least some individual cases?
"Give all superfluous possessions to the poor" as such isn't really a clear Christian teaching (which the exception of some sects, I think) so, again, if we are judging Christians by their own standards I don't really see the issue here. (Might be different for the specific sects).
I think criticizing Christians who do no charitable works at all (and I am sure such Christians do exist) is fair. But also they are (arguably) not supposed to be ostentatious about donating, so it can be tricky.
Sure, but setting aside the fact that the Church Fathers said a lot of things, many of which many Christians do not hold to today (unless they are in Scripture, they are not considered canonical, although they are often considered helpful) criticizing displays of wealth is not the same thing as saying wealthy people will go to hell (as you seem to suggest above).
Well, first off, this does happen. There are nuns and monks and religious orders and missionaries. Those all exist. There are still people being persecuted and even executed for their faith. That actually happens. But secondly you seem to think that Scripture says "be poor and you get into heaven" which isn't the case. Really, your soteriology isn't in line with what most major Christian congregations teach.
In all of these cases I think you are stripping out some context. Your gloss of Acts 5 is misleading; it's very clear from the text that Ananias died after Paul's rebuke because of dishonesty – here's Acts 5, versus 1 - 10:
There's probably a good argument that Luke 12:33 ("Sell what you have and give alms; provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys.") applies to Christians broadly, particularly viewed in light of 12:15 (" Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.") and it's often viewed this way. But we should also consider the context of Luke 12 is that Christ is preparing the apostles for persecution (see e.g. Luke 12:11 "And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say: For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.")
In my experience Protestants do take Luke 12:33 seriously, but not literally – that is, they do believe (and act as if they believe) that giving alms is good, and giving possessions to charity is good, and stores up rewards in heaven, but they also don't try to liquidate everything that they have immediately to give alms – perhaps because they often have or aspire to have families, perhaps for the same reason they don't expect to be taken into the synagogues and questioned, perhaps in some cases as you suggest because they don't really believe, perhaps because they have reasoned their way out of the application of the verse through various means. (The standard line in Protestant denominations, I think, is that "you should tithe.") And certainly it's quite arguable that while the principle of giving alms is good, the context of the passage suggests the specific instruction was meant to be acted on by the Apostles. Now, maybe you don't find this persuasive! And maybe Christians who would argue that are wrong and you are correct! But contextualizing it like that is not crazy.
As for the story of Lazarus, I think the closest suggestion to rich = hell is this line:
A full reading of the parable might lead one to wonder if his sin was being insanely wealthy, or not doing alms to the beggars outside of his gate. Considering that the moral of the parable seems to be as follows – "And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." – it seems likely that the actual thrust of the parable was aimed at the Pharisees (see Luke 16:14 - 18) who would not hear Christ's message even after His resurrection. That doesn't mean that there's no theological information about wealth here, of course, but again the context needs to be kept in mind.
To step back for a moment, I think what's happening here writ large is that you're taking a (not necessarily incoherent) reading of Scripture – which I do think some Christians share – and then insisting that all Christians are hypocrites for not sharing it. (Notably absent from your collection of verses: the many verses in Scripture that celebrate accumulating wealth and offer concrete advice on how to do so.) Setting aside the fact that your methodology here is unmistakably Protestant (and thus your root assumptions are not shared by many Christians!) it's just true that Christians' reading of Scripture and what it means varies considerably and that it might be more parsimonious to assume that most Christians simply do not share your interpretation of Scripture, rather than insisting that most Christians are hypocrites. Certainly (although a great many Christians are hypocrites) it's a bit more charitable, I think.
I want to circle up on this entire thing by saying, firstly, apologies for the late reply (I've been busy, but I found our conversation thought-provoking and I appreciate that!)
Secondly, to circle back on the broader point – you've been arguing that nobody is convinced by Scripture in the Year of Our Lord 2025. But the reasoning you offer suggests at best that few people believe this. (Which some Christians would agree with emphatically, citing Matthew 7:14!) Moreover, your original point was that it's harder today to believe than it was in the past. But all of your arguments (that Christians don't truly believe in the teachings of their religion because they engage in conspicuous displays of wealth) were true throughout most of the history of the Church. The problem of hypocrites and pretend believers was real even in the 1st century, and the accumulation of wealth and power by the Church over the course of history – which you seem to suggest is downstream of a lack of conviction on the part of Christians due to modernity – happened long before modernity and the scientific method as we currently would identify them posed an ideological threat to Christianity as such.
But if we have evidence that secular organizations in history have been as violent, dogmatic, and successful as the Taliban, then I’m not sure how you are reasoning that the Taliban’s afterlife belief has been instrumental to some particular “benefit” of their movement. Even in regards to their suicide attacks, we have plenty of cases of suicidal acts from secular organizations, like the Japanese in WWII or among the Romans. It is not sufficient to claim that the Taliban benefits from their afterlife belief just because (1) they have such a belief & (2) their movement is highly motivated, because there’s also a dozen other things that the Taliban are doing.
In some cases, sure. But I think it’s complicated by a lot. Jews give proportionately more to charity than Catholics and usually do not possess an afterlife belief. Bekkers’ “The Pursuit of Differences in Prosociality Among Identical Twins” finds that charitable donations are mediated by frequency of church attendance, with each additional visit resulting in $20 more to charity. Something noteworthy about Jewish charity is that its mediated by perceived victimhood, such that Jews who have “experienced antisemitism” donate 10x more on average to Jewish charities. This little factoid is very insightful in explaining how prosociality functions within group dynamics generally: the perceptions of injustice as a class and a common enemy propel in-group benefitting. Not only does this make sense in light of evolutionary biology, but it also makes sense in light of early Christian history, as they emphasized their victimhood, their enemy, and their common “class”. And of course this propelled Marxism too.
You will not be able to find any early Christian Father who said that one can be spiritually perfect while being wealthy. Catholicism venerates those like St Francis in part because he gave all of his wealth to the poor — and his family was quite wealthy.
In many cases these are career decisions decided a young age. How many rich Catholics ever decide to do this? 0.1%?
If giving your surplus wealth to the poor instead of buying a mansion earns you a greater reward, which every Christian thinker of the first 500 years would have told you, then we should expect reasonable self-interested afterlife-believer to do this given the cost / benefit analysis. Do you disagree that giving to the poor and abstaining from worldly pleasures provides a greater reward? Do you disagree that it makes salvation more secure?
This narrative line begins at the end of Act 4 (as you know, chapter divisions are not original to the text). At the end of Acts 4 we read:
We learn that the true believers were of one heart and soul, did not believe their surplus was their own, and distributed to the needy from all of their profits. This same narrative continues —
The problem of Ananias is brought up as an exception to the Godly conduct which Luke had just relayed (think I accidentally wrote Paul in my last comment). Luke highlights the problem of Ananias and why he is being mentioned at all: “for himself”, “only a part”. It follows:
The word “keep back” is important because it has the connotation of a moral crime in itself. This is not neutral terminology: this is the sin being called out.
Now Ananias lied in doing this, but the narrative is not written in such a way that the lie is the weighty crime of Ananias. The narrative is about sharing surplus, and the emphasis is on the lack of sharing by Ananias. This section of Acts had just mentioned that none of the Christians believed that their surplus was their own. The section did not previously mention lying, neither did it mention anything about a promise or oath that the Christians made with respect to charity, neither did it mention that Ananias would have obtained some social benefit from the completed charity. You will find no saying among the early Christians that lying about how much you make deserves death. But we do find such sayings against greed among the early Christians. We can look at the Didache, one of the oldest Christian texts:
Now certainly, people can believe whatever they want about God and religion. But But I think that believers of new age thought, those who believe in “the righteous rich”, should have the honor to not lie about what they believe. Why corrupt the name of Christ? Because the religion of Jesus and his first followers is very beautiful and pristine, and it’s all in plain language. If someone wants to take some aspects of Christ’s teachings and conform them to fit their own base instincts, that’s in their right, but I wish they wouldn’t claim to actually follow Christ, because that’s not accepted in the actual religion. It’s some other thing. We have the primary documents! We know what was taught and what was practiced.
Jesus completed our understanding of things and we now know not to store out treasure on earth.
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Efficient central planning.
Iron laws of history.
New Soviet Man.
Sluggish Schizophrenia.
Lysenkoism.
Sparrow Extermination.
Rape Culture.
Stereotype threat.
Growth Mindset.
Structural racism.
Gender Identity.
Masks stop the spread.
The wage gap.
The science of Criminal Rehabilitation.
How long do you think we could make this list if we actually tried to be rigorous about it?
No "default level of gullibility" was lost with the advent of science. The overwhelming majority of people do not understand science and do not base their beliefs on scientific rules. Not even the overwhelming majority of scientists do this. I am skeptical that even a slim majority of scientists do this even with regard to the science they themselves personally conduct.
For at least half of these, a scientist could point to real data, but they misinterpreted or fudged the data. That’s different than believing the claims of supernatural religion, which do not require a scientific intermediary for interpretation. Why would it be gullible to believe in “growth mindset” if there are studies on it, but then later studies disproved it? The issue here is that the common person is led to believe in the findings of popular science, because schools teach that.
If I make a claim like “prayer works” or “God does miracles”, even someone with a very low IQ can tell that prayer does not work as claimed, and that miracles appear to have stopped around the same time that scientific instruments and recording came along. The issue of superstition is an enormous stumbling block that prevents tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of people, from ever considering religious activity. Because they don’t like to be tricked. And trust in science similarly suffers when people realize they are tricked by science. But trust in reasoning doesn’t normally suffer.
For all of these, a human wrote symbols on a page, and then some other human read those symbols and assumed they accurately reflected ground truth. Coincidentally, I am pretty sure this is exactly how people came to believe in the phoenix. I do not see why I should consider the Phoenix as meaningfully more fantastical than the snail darter. Both are creatures that do not exist, whose salient properties are entirely fictitious.
Yes, because "studies" just reduces to "authorities said so", and who these authorities are and why they're considered authorities doesn't seem to ground out in any rigorous scientific process, now or ever. "Studies show" is an assumption of reliability, in the same way that people used to assume Plato or Aristotle or whoever were reliable. I see no evidence that it is any more rigorous that the authorities that preceded it. Sure, you can up the reliability by carving away the worst examples via arbitrary hindsight. And I can do the same for the ancients; I bet Pythagoras' math is pretty solid.
It appears to me that scientists also routinely believe the findings of popular science as well, for similar reasons. People trust authorities to be reliable, and the important word in "consensus reality" is consensus. Also, scientists remain people.
IIRC, we actually have records of first- and second-generation Christians writing about how miracles had dried up over the course of their lifetime, and the bible itself records numerous instances of fraudulent or illegitimate miracle-workers or magicians. And this about a millennia and a half before scientific instruments and recording came along. Nor is it obvious to me that "prayer does not work as claimed", in contrast to "most people do not understand how prayer is claimed to work".
But more importantly, the point is not that people used to believe in things that did not exist, that they had no good reason beyond appeals to authority and peer pressure to believe existed. The point is that people never stopped believing such things, and continue to believe them to this day.
...But notably does not prevent them from believing any variety of other superstitions, so long as those superstitions are framed as "scientific". There is no functional difference between sacred oil and patent medicine; it's a paint job, that's all.
No it doesn't. That's how they keep getting fooled; science was used to lie to them a hundred times before, but that was all isolated bad actors; this new claim is of course trustworthy, because it's science! Everyone knows that, how silly could you be to doubt it?
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