Chapter 10 Cooperation without God

Chapter 10 Cooperation without God
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In the summer of 2007, I visited Denmark’s attractive second city, Aarhus, and was surprised to see that anyone can borrow a bicycle,
Note:FIDUCIA NELLA TERRA SENZA DIO

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Denmark tops the lists of societies high on cooperation, social cohesion, and public trust.
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one of the least religious societies on earth.
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If you have a financial dispute with a stranger, you go to an independent court. Trusting the institutions
Note:I SUPPLENTI DI DIO

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policing authorities, and effective contract-enforcing mechanisms in modern societies—
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Big Gods were replaced by Big Governments.
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Big Eye

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Climbing the Ladder of Religion, Then Kicking It Away
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if you have followed the reasoning in this book, you can see that secular societies are really an outgrowth of prosocial religions.
Note:SECOLARISMO COME SCRESCENZA DELLE RELIGIONI

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Marcel Gauchet

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it was the monotheistic religions that reduced the role of the sacred and the supernatural from the material world, confining them to a supreme
Note:PRIMA CONTINUITÀ

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Second, the monotheisms introduced another innovation—other gods were denigrated as false gods.
Note:SECONDA CONTINUITÀ

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Universal monotheisms created two new concepts in human thought: individual free choice and collective humanity.
Note:DUE CONCETTI... INDIVIDUALISMO E UMANITÀ

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People not born into these religions could, in principle, choose to belong (or remain outside) without regard to ethnicity, tribe or territory.

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outsourcing religion’s functions to new forms of government.
Note:LA SECOLARIZZAZIONE

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Replacing God with Government and Vice Versa
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in peoples’ minds, gods and governments occupy a similar niche.
Note:DIO E IL GOVERNO

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Big Gods reign supreme in places where government is corrupt
Note:CORRUZIONE

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gods and governments both have surveillance
Note:SORVEGLIANZA

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they can both provide comfort in the face of adversity
Note:RISCHIO

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Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart

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strong and stable secular institutions erode religion.
Note:EROSIONE

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Religion has declined most steeply in welfare states such as Denmark, Sweden, and France.
Note:WELFARE

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psychologists Aaron Kay, David Moscovitch, and Kristin Laurin

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Their work explores the basic need to feel “in control.”
Note:SENTIRE IL CONTROLLO

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When people feel that their grip on life is shaken, they turn to external forms of control: it could be God, or it could be the government.
Note:CONTROLLO ESTERNO

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faith in government and faith in God appear to compensate for each other.
Note:LA COMPENSAZIONE

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These findings show, contrary to popular belief, how intertwined divine and secular authority can be. We cannot understand religious belief in isolation from secular cultural beliefs.
Note:LA CONNESSIONE LA SUCCEDANEOTÀ..POSSIBILE SPIEGA DELLE PAURE

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The Problem of Disbelief
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Disbelief is a puzzle—historically, when people lost faith, they gravitated to new religions.
Note:L ENIGMA DELL ATEISMO.... PERCHÈ NN C ERA?

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while self-reflectively there are atheists, intuitively, everyone is a theist.
Note:L OPINIONE DEGLI PSICOLOGI

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Paul Bloom,

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People everywhere naturally have some tacit supernatural beliefs;
Note:TUTTI CREDONO ALLO SPIRITO.... ESEMPIO LA MENTE

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even the most sophisticated of cognitive neuroscientists might believe, at an intuitive level, that their mental life is something above and beyond their physical nature.
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What Bloom is referring to here is an intuitive belief in mind-body dualism—
Note:TUTTI SIAMO DUALISTI

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Pascal Boyer explains: Some form of religious thinking seems to be the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems.
Note:LA RELIGIOSITÀ COME VIA NATURALE

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philosopher Robert McCauley compares religion’s intuitiveness to science’s counterintuitiveness. In Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not,
Note:INTUITIVITÀ DELLA RELIGIONE

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atheism is more widespread and enduring than expected if it was merely driven by effortful rejection of intuitive theism.
Note:OBBIEZIONE... C È QUALCOSA CHE RIGUARDA IL QUI ED ORA

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mind-blind atheism, which is caused by deficits in understanding God’s
Note:L ATEO SCANCERTATO

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analytic atheism; which arises when habitual analytic thinking encourages religious skepticism;
Note:L ATEO SCETTICO

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apatheism, which is a feeling of indifference to religion found in places where people enjoy safe and secure environments;
Note: L ATEO APATICO

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Mind-Blind Atheism
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We saw that when people pray to God, the same mind-reading or mentalizing skills that help people understand other people are recruited
Note:EMPATIA

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Of all these symptoms, perhaps the most critical aspect of the autism spectrum that causes social difficulties is selective deficits in reasoning about the mental states of others.
Note:ESTRANEITÁ E ASOCIALITÀ COME FONTE DELL ATEISMO

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an association between autism and religious disbelief.
Note:ATEO AUTISTICO

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evidence that autistic individuals seem to be indifferent to religion,

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Jesse Bering
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What is noticeably absent in the autistic accounts is a sense of deep interpersonal relations between the worshipper and the deity,
Note:ADORAZIONE

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Bering cites Temple Grandin, a well-known autistic and animal rights activist:
Note:ANIMALISTI

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Will Gervais,

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if God is transformed from a personlike agent to an abstract impersonal force, then it will lose its intuitive appeal. Faith in such a God will erode.
Note:PROVA: IL DIO DEI FILOSOFI È SNOBBATO

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one conclusion: mind-blind people are not enamored by the idea of a personal God.
Note:CONCLUSIONE CERTA

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Analytic Atheism
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the idea found in Boyer’s quote earlier—that of implicit theism, arising effortlessly but vetoed by reflection and deliberation.
Note:TESISMO IMPLICITO DA SVELLETE CON LA RIFLESSIONE

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Their motto is, “shoot first, ask questions later.”
Note:COME FUMZIONA LA MENTE

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Blaise Pascal had. He said: It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason.
Note:CUORE E MENTE

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Pascal was not fond of the attempts by many medieval Christian theologians, known as Christian Apologetics, to prove the existence of God
Note:DIMOSTRAZIONI MEDIEVALI

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There are many examples of erroneous intuitions being corrected by reflection.
Note:INTUIZIONE E RIFLESSIONE

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people who are habitual intuitive thinkers should be more religious
Note:CONGETTIRA TESTABILE

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any long-term habits or experiences that cultivate analytic thinking also should encourage religious doubt.
Note:ALTRO TEST

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Religious belief is the brainchild of intuitive thinking,
Note:ESITO... CONFERMA

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Amitai Shenhav, David Rand, and Joshua Greene

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Participants who were more likely to overrule the intuitive answer were also less likely to believe in God.
Note:OVERRULE

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the lower levels of belief among the analytic thinkers were not because they had higher education levels, more general intelligence, different personality profiles, or higher income, or were older or younger, more liberal politically,
Note:COSA NON CONTA

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analytic thinkers tend to lose their religious fervor even if they were raised in a religious environment.
Note:FERVORE

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Gordon Pennycook

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belief in a distant, nonintervening God (Deism), and the belief that the universe and God are identical (Pantheism).
Note:IN COSA CREDE L ANALITICO

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Viewing The Thinker compared to Discobolus produced a dip in religious belief.
Note:IL PENSATORE

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exposure to university education also in turn undermines religious belief.

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there is a small but reliable connection between measures of general intelligence and lower levels of religious belief. Intelligence fosters critical thinking, which in turn contributes to religious skepticism.
Note:INTELLIGENZA

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we would not expect this connection to be overwhelming, because, as I said earlier, other factors feed the flames
Note:EFFETTO TRASCURABILE

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Apatheism and InCREDulous Atheism
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as social and economic conditions improve, societies become, in the words of Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, existentially secure.
Note:SICUREZZA

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nations with stronger existential security are less religious
Note:PIPPA NORRIS

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over time,
Note:NESSO

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Al Franken,

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I don’t care what kind of nonsense you believe, I can tell you that religion will be a crutch
Note:GRUCCIA

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thinkers of modernity, from Freud to Feuerbach, would have agreed with Franken:
Note:FREUD

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Reason, logic, or science have little to give us when we face intense anxieties
Note:ANSOA

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death and suffering intensify religiosity
Note:MORTE

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Chris Sibley and Joseph Bulbulia compared levels of religious faith before and after a devastating earthquake
Note:DISASTRI

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Aaron Kay and his colleagues, who showed that, like reminders of death, incidental reminders of randomness also amplify belief in God.
Note:IL CASO

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Lee Kirkpatrick

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attachment figures providing safety and comfort
Note:DIO

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This disbelief is not so much an opposition to religion, but an indifference to
Note:INDIFFERENZA

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Rauch extols the virtues of apatheism as a principled and tolerant
Note:TOLLERANZA

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InCREDulous atheism.

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Joseph Henrich,

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When observers witness acts that reveal sincere commitment or belief—that is, when actions speaker louder than words—they are more inclined to see these beliefs as genuine and more willing to adopt them.
Note:IN CERCA DI UNA REGOLA... EFFETTO VALANGA

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Strong, reliable governments might be another potent factor underlying inCREDulous atheism.
Note:GOVERNO

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supplant religion.

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Bringing the Varieties of Atheisms Together
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mind-blind atheism does not get religion; analytical atheism rejects religion; apatheism and inCREDulous atheism are indifferent toward religion.
Note:RIASSUNTO

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consider why scientists tend to be much less religious than the general population.
Note:ESEMPIO DELLO SCIENZIATO

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analytic thinkers are drawn to science

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willingness to see the world in material terms,
Note:AUTISMO

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scientists come together in the relative security

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in human brains, religion has a head start over atheism and science.
Note:SENSO RELIGIOSO

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Consider literacy as an analogy. Illiteracy is more intuitive and easier to arise than literacy,
Note:ANALFABETISMO

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The Future of Religion
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it is far from clear to me that secular societies will win
Note:CHI VINCE?

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prosocial religions have one crucial advantage over secular ones—the demographic windfall of more children.
Note:DEMOGRAFIA

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Today, most of the world remains religious,
Note:OGGI

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We don’t know enough to forecast
IGNORANZA