Friday, January 27, 2012

What religion is for

One of the principles of my moral philosophy is that morality is actually quite natural. Culture does not exist to promote morality, but rather, to diminish it: the point of Culture is to enshrine exceptions to the plain, simple obviousness of fairness. Culture creates traditions and institutions that justify and maintain unfairness. A simple example is the Old Testament, where the priestly class is given the best cuts of meat.

A more complex example can be found here:
The work of Solt et al., which I’ve discussed before, shows that income inequality is also highly correlated among nations with religiosity: the more unequal a nation, the more religious its inhabitants.
Religion, as a form of culture, justifies economic unfairness. This rather neatly explains why Republicans are the party of poor white working class religious folk and rich, rich, rich people.

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