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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jttmab who wrote (209996)	12/6/2006 2:10:56 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Thank you for exploring the issues Iktomi should have. Brooks made several points. His primary point was that religiousity is very strongly associated with generosity. But he also depicted liberals as decidedly less charitable tahn conservatives: "Brooks writes that the very act of receiving welfare may make recipients more liberal - and hence less likely to give." Also: ".. households headed by a conservative give roughly 30 percent more to charity each year than households headed by a liberal, despite the fact that the liberal families on average earn slightly more." Now, he also said: "Religious liberals give nearly as much as religious conservatives, Mr. Brooks found. And secular conservatives are even less generous than secular liberals." The rub is that while conservatives include healthy shares of both religious and non-religious folks, liberals are overwhelmingly non-religious. People who are truly religious and truly liberal are simply a very small group. The claim that liberalism eroes character is my own opinion. I find a primary difference between non-religious liberals and non-religious conservatives to be the attitude to our culture's traditional religiously derived moral values (virtues and vices). Non-religious conservatives are generally respectful of traditional values recognizing that they serve as good and useful guides to conduct regardless of whether one shares the religious beliefs that originally produced them. Liberals tend to be dismissive of traditional values at best and contemptuous and hostile at worst.

To: jttmab who wrote (209996)	12/6/2006 2:37:55 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

It's all quite fascinating. It's too bad people, in their haste to be political, draw the wrong conclusions. But then, that's what Freakonomics was all about. People love to draw the wrong conclusions, even when the data showing the correct conclusion is eyeball to eyeball with them... I do think it is very likely the religious people are indeed more charitiable- especially since they have to tithe. But even outside of tithing, for those who believe that deeds, not words, will get them in to heaven, of COURSE they have to get out there and do deeds. "Now "latria signifies servitude," as Augustine states (De Civ. Dei x, 1). And we are bound to serve not only God, but also our neighbor, according to Gal. 5:13, "By charity of the spirit serve one another." Therefore religion includes a relation to one's neighbor also" It is funny to see someone unequivocally deny that commandments to charity, and the even more powerful social impetus to charity among one's religious peers (so that one appears "good" in one's social circle), would not make it logical to at least examine the idea that sometimes charity is motivated by things other than pure unselfishness, and at times might be bribery to God, or an attempt to "pay" God for prior wrongs done (which is fine with me. I have no problem with selfish charity- it serves a useful purpose if the charity itself is beneficial). I never thought such an idea, which I remember discussing in both undergraduate and graduate school, would be thought so outre.