army1987 comments on Meetup : West LA Meetup—Confess Your Unpopular Opinion - Less Wrong

4 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 09 August 2013 06:07AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 11 August 2013 06:49:03PM 0 points [-]

Currently in the world, religion is a net positive, and the increasing secularization of society has led to a damaging cycle where the gap created by people no longer participating in explicitly religious groups allows many people who now exploit society to do so, and they would otherwise be constrained from doing so.

Examples?

Comment author: Davidmanheim 16 August 2013 02:03:46PM 1 point [-]

50 years ago, Investment bankers had to walk into the Church at the end of the week, and if the pastor/community found out that they had been involved in insider trading, their social lives were over.( Social pressure was a powerful motivator when social groups were near-mandatory religious affiliations.)

Similarly, presidents, senators, and other political figures used to need to attend church every week, and they would have been subject to extreme social pressure if it was clear that they were uninterested in the public welfare.