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Multiheaded comments on Rationality Quotes November 2012 - Less Wrong
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Not in this comment specifically - just a general thing about your view of economics' relation to social structures having similar focus (determinism etc) to the Marxist view. TimS has called you out on it recently, no?
But still, "moral fashion doesn't ever cause revolutions on its own" is a statement any Marxist would sign under. So in this regard you ironically proved closer to Marxism than the view you kinda-opposed as insufficiently strongly worded ("causal link about as evident as for crusades and Christianity"). See?
Ok, so you did misunderstand my intent.
My point, was mainly that the Crusades are not a good example of "religion causes people to do something evil".
Wait, why are the Crusades not a good example of religion causing people to do evil things? Do you think they weren't evil, or that religion wasn't to blame?
That depends on what you mean by those terms. Was the battle of Normandy a good thing?
I'm confused. Yes, D-Day was a good thing. Yes, D-Day was violence in service of democracy.
What does this have to do with whether (1) the Crusades were a good thing, or (2) whether religion (particularly Catholicism) was a substantial cause of the Crusades?
The crusades are often portrayed as violent Christians invading Muslim lands, which forgets that the Muslims violently took those lands from Christians in the first place.
On the other hand, no one complains that the battle of Normandy consisted of violent democracies attacking the lands of the Third Reich.
There probably would be people complaining if D-Day had occurred four centuries after the fall of France.
We could debate the reasoning that led the Western and Northern Europeans to militarily support the Byzantines until the heat death of the universe - but it's not a particularly interesting discussion.
But the Crusades did spark a lot of in-group / out-group violence in Europe itself. De-tangling the Crusaders related pogroms from the base rate of pogroms in Europe is very difficult - but it is at least plausible that the increased religious fervor was a partial cause of the Crusader pogroms.
If it's a question of whether religion has a history of motivating violence, it's worth considering why the Muslims took those lands to begin with.
I agree that's a better example. One thing to notice is that the propensity of a religion to cause violence varies by religion.
Plunder and glory?
edit: To put it another way, I'd argue the conquest of traditionally Christian territories under the Rashidun and Ummayad Caliphs was due to religion in the same way the Spanish conquests in the Americas were - enabled and justified by religion, but motivated primarily by the desire for wealth and fame. I can go into further detail if anyone wants, though I doubt that is the case.
Fair enough.
What about what the Conquistadores did in the Americas, or what the Inquisition did to heretics? Were they good things too?
The Conquisadores destroyed the human-sacrificing Aztecs. A better example for religion causing people to do bad things would be the Aztecs themselves.
1) There no rule that says the Spanish and the Aztecs can't both be wrong.
2) That doesn't resolve the invasion of the Inca in South America
3) The Spanish occupation over the next few centuries probably caused more suffering than the Aztec (or possibly even the Crusades).
The main suffering caused by the Spanish was through the unknowing introduction of European diseases, not because of their religion. I haven't studied the issue of the invasion of the Inca but I haven't heard it religiously motivated either.
My point remains that the actions of the Aztecs are a far better example of religion causing people to bad thing.
Um... technically that's a geographical impossibility. Once the democracies liberated French territory (violently taken by the Third Reich from France in the first place) and launched offensives beyond the "lawful" borders of Germany as drawn under the Treaty of Versailles, it wasn't called the "Battle of Normandy" anymore. Normandy is a mid-sized region on the northwestern French coast. (Wikipedia article)
You are being extremely uncharitable to Eugine's point. D-Day or "Battle of Normandy" is a reasonable shorthand for the Allied liberation of France and followup invasion of Nazi Germany.
I know, I know. It's just that I'm a pretty hardcore (read: obsessive) World War 2 geek :).
The Third Reich considered northern France a part of itself.
That depends where you draw the line. The Third Reich considered Vichy France a client state, dependent on but legally separate from itself. The north and west of France, including Normandy, fell under German military occupation after 1940 (as did the rest of the country after 1942), but that ostensibly represented wartime defense needs rather than a permanent territorial claim.
Germany did administer some French lands as part of itself during the war, all in France's northeast along the German border. There's some indication that territorial expansion would have proceeded further had the Nazis won, but most of the Third Reich's annexations took place east of Germany's prewar territory.
That religion wasn't to blame. Read the grandparents, most notably this.
EDIT: Wait, no. I had that backwards.
TGGP defends economic determinism here.
Heh! Cool, thanks.