Rationalism or Peity?

Civilization impossible without religion? This is the craziest statement I have read here.

Sounds like something someone very religious would say, who is very ignorant of many cultures. What are we considering a religion here?

Did the native Americans have a religion? Did the Inuits? Did early Neanderthals have a "religion"?

I am going to assume that you are talking about a Judeo/Christian belief. This is fairly evident by your notion of 1 maker.

You do realize "civilization existed before these beliefs right?

Religion is not a prerequisite for civilizations. A civilization is a prerequisite for a religion. You can't have a religion without people discussing and trying to understand their surroundings.

Next case in point. Religion does not go hand and hand with science. In fact, throughout history, science and religion have been at strong ends.

Saying that science is guided from religion is like saying that red must follow from green. Do we have better understanding of the color red because of the color green? Probably but one does not lead to the other.

Science and religion are 2 things attempting to achieve the same goal. They want to explain the unexplained. They go about it very different ways. Religion relies on faith, word of mouth, emotions per say. Science relies on experimentation, documentation and theorizing.

And Albert Einstein was not perfect. Was he a smart man, a genius? Yes. Did he know everything? No. He was raised Jewish. He didn't like the fact that on the molecular level things appeared to be random. He claimed, "God doesn't play dice"

So far no evidence has been found to support his claim. As far as we can tell, things do appear to be random on small scales.
 
Please stop bringing Einstein into the discussion, he was clearly not a religious man and didn't think much of the judeo christian religions and labeled them as very childish and naive (which they are, of course ;)). If you're really interested you can read all his quotes here http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Einstein_and_Religion_.281999.29.

I find the distinction in Civ 5 quite okay. Having a deep rank in Piety is like being a modern Theocracy (Iran, Wahabist States) which should be bar you from things things like the scientific method etc. It's probably also a gameplay mechanism to "split" culture and science.
 
Reason and piety are opposites. Their depiction in the game is appropriate.
 
kingsfan said:
I think that the only way the Civ 5 social policy tree makes sense is if you are an atheist. The comments listed here sticking up for the tree are obviously from people who are atheist. While those that oppose are from people with some kind of belief. I think the makers of Civ 5 did this on purpose. Not one of the posts listed here has given concrete evidence of ONE civ that has graced this Earth that has progressed scientifically without piety.

It's the sign of the times.

I'm sorry but Civ 4 covered religion much better. Civ 5's pov still doesn't make any sense to me at all. Where is their model for dividing the two throughout history?

If you are going to argure this; why not give some examples of Civ's that relate to this? Show how they were not pious at all and totally rational and advanced scientifically throughout time...
Click to expand...

Yes Civ 4 did cover religion much better. You could declare no state religion " free religion" and get a 10% boost to your science.

Oh wait, that just disproved what you said, didn't it? Its treated the same way.

Lets also clarify what you mean by religious. Was Ancient Greek religious? Surely they had Gods, but was the civilization as a whole religious? No, it was largely secular. It was the start of philosophy that really questioned existence, questioned whether principles of God made sense.

Religion is easy to explain with how you using it. Think of an early civilization as a young child. The child does not understand the things around him, so he makes things up to explain them. Noises in the dark? Must be a monster under the bed.

Ironically Grissom from CSI explains this very well. In one of the episodes, when asked why he thinks people are religious he said, "When we were starting out, we had 2 natural reactions, fight or flight. If there was a noise in the bush, we assumed a lion, and ran away. These people are the ones that lived to reproduce. The ones that had a fear of the unknown and attempted to explain it." Paraphrased of course.

And saying, "the ones supporting it are obviously atheist". Well the people against it are obviously Theistic! Does either claim make any sense?

This is vastly off topic, but all of the "religious" people should read the watch maker argument. It is a classic "proof" of God and has been shown to be an invalid argument time and time again.

PS: Don't tell people to prove God doesn't exist. You can't prove a negative(this is classic philosophy and even math proof logic). The burden is always on the one making the claim. As such, I can not make a claim that there is a giant spaghetti monster holding the earth and tell you to prove it isn't true. It would be my burden to show that it is there.
 
OrsonM said:
This is getting a bit armchairy, but here's a few points about it:

1- A civilization doesn't need piety in order to achieve technological superiority, Piety sometimes and most times goes against advancing. Of interest is the impecable achievements in the Muslim Empire, that for the most part had more to do with secularism and wealth than religion itself (though religion helped getting that wealth).

2- As mentioned before, it is a mix of secularism and wealth that usually provides a solid ground for science. Some of the early European Christian scientist had the hardest of times either coming up with new theories (because it would go against their beliefs) or getting them published to begin with (would go against the beliefs of the ruling classes). The Scientific revolution took generations to get anywhere, from kepler's shy attempts to revive interest on the Copernican system (even though it made far more sense than the Ptolomaic and Tychonic systems) to Galileos rather embarrasing trial (which was far less dramatic, yet still a shameful sign of the times).

3- The Scientific revolution really began when rationalism was fully on it's way, now the game over simplifiest this, but for the most part the most prominent scientists of our time have nothing to thank religion for. Newton, for example, was a pious christian, yet he spent countless of hours trying to decypher secret codes in the bible, occultism and alchemy (another topic of mysticism just not mixing with science). His real advancements are vastly smaller than his non-contributions in the occult.

4-When the first optical instruments were made, early "scientists" spent countless hours making absurd and ultimately useless contributions on worshiping the fine details of the "work of god" through these instruments. Sadly enough if we made a book about discoveries and real scientifical discoveries, let's just say that the first 5 pages would cover the rather anecdotical and cute discoveries made before the 20th century (useless sciences, the basics of chemistry and physics, steam power, electricity and calculus being it's main highlights). Real Science began around the turn of the century, when tools were perfected, when perceptions changed and secularism was in full swing.

If the last statement sounds bogus, it's likely because our education can be rather simplistic about these things in School. eg: do you know the states of matter?, liquid, solid and gas?, does anyone really thinks scientists still work with that obsolete ass theory?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_matter

Science is supposed and meant to always be advancing, you can have early knowledge of psychology as a reference, but no Psychiatrist or Psychologist still uses Freud or Jung. Same thing as a biologist having Darwin as an early early reference, but not using The Origin of Species as the basis of his work. Science is meant to be constantly changing, religion however doesnt have that quality (it actually does... when it's secular).

The game, and trying to get back on topic, could be a bit more forgiving perhaps. It would be hard for an early scientist (likely a higher member of society) to have been agnostic at the time and there probably should be an option to be pious and rational at the same time. America for example would be a civilization that is Pious and Rational at the same time, yet Civ 5 doesn't allow that.
Click to expand...
1) *sigh*
2) the Heliocentric Theory had a gaping massive flaw that was first realized by Aristotle, stellar parallax. The final proof for a non-geocentric model was in the 19th century which was a couple years after the Galileo trials. Galileo was actual "his own worst enemy. It is important to remember that he was condemned not for his belief in heliocentrism but for his insistence that heliocentrism was literally true and could be proved to be literally true. Most people at the time regarded scientific theories as predictive models, not as literal truth (and indeed many scientists to day have the same view). It was Galileo's insistence that in fact his theory could be proved to be true - not to mention his ridiculous of the Pope in his published works - that landed him in hot water. Ironically, of course, Galileo's purported proof of heliocentrism - which revolved around the claim that the tides of the sea are caused by the water sloshing around as the earth wheels around the sun - was complete rubbish. What any of this has to do with the inquisition or the Albigensian crusade is, naturally, quite beyond me." -Plotinus, CFC resident philosopher and Moderator
3) funnily enough occultism and alchemy are claimed by Christians to be BS
4) really now, would you happen to have proof of that? Plus science experiences almost exponential growth so uh...


killmeplease said:
you can still build temples under rationalsim, right?
choosing rationalism does not mean all of your people become atheists.
piety tree represents some kind of dogmatic fundamentalism. and reformation policy should be moved to rationalism.
i don't think anyone would ever claim that fundamentalism does propel science.
Click to expand...

You are aware that the Reformation caused the epitome of theocracy right? the Reformation caused the concept of divine right and allowed absolutism. Sadly it addled Europe's brain and made life worse.

Really this needs to be moved to the history forum
 
civ_king said:
You are aware that the Reformation caused the epitome of theocracy right? the Reformation caused the concept of divine right and allowed absolutism. Sadly it addled Europe's brain and made life worse.

Really this needs to be moved to the history forum
Click to expand...

Theocracy and Divine Right as concepts were already there... all the Reformation did was remove them from the hands of the Pope.

Allowing the power to all concentrate in the hands of individual kings+their appointed church leaders instead of split between the individual kings and the pope (who had limited ability over all of Christendom) reduced the checks and balances in theocracy+divine right.

And it made the checks+balances between nations.
 
Krikkitone said:
Theocracy and Divine Right as concepts were already there... all the Reformation did was remove them from the hands of the Pope.

Allowing the power to all concentrate in the hands of individual kings+their appointed church leaders instead of split between the individual kings and the pope (who had limited ability over all of Christendom) reduced the checks and balances in theocracy+divine right.

And it made the checks+balances between nations.
Click to expand...

Wait, so brutal theocratic authoritarianism such as Geneva under Calvin is an improvement????????
 
kingsfan,
in USSR religious people were discriminated so there virtually was no religious freedom. Religious freedom should be in Freedom tree not in Piety. I agree with Mark the Bold's conciderations about what bonuses Piety should give: growth, happiness, war. maybe faster grabbing of territory also.
 
killmeplease said:
kingsfan,
in USSR religious people were discriminated so there virtually was no religious freedom. Religious freedom should be in Freedom tree not in Piety. I agree with Mark the Bold's conciderations about what bonuses Piety should give: growth, happiness, war. maybe faster grabbing of territory also.
Click to expand...

agreed.

No tribe has ever been found that did not have some form of religion... and most of the people who say they are not religious are religious, if only they knew it!

Religion can be following the local football team... not everyone can win, but most fans believe in their team... or even going down to the pub "religiously" every friday... or even playing civ regularly (yes, that is very much a religion!)... it depends on your attitude to it! It is just as valid, by definition, as following some form of "god".

I, too, liked how religion was treated in IV, and believe religion could have been treated better in V. However, there is some religious wonder buildings, with some interesting bonuses available... imho, it could use a couple more...
 
civ_king said:
Wait, so brutal theocratic authoritarianism such as Geneva under Calvin is an improvement????????
Click to expand...

I didn't say it was an improvement, I said the checks and balances were moved/shifted around. (the theocracy was already there, it just got more authoritarian... count that as the golden Age.. a burst of ideas that are implemented harshly forcing more work out of the already oppressed people)

In any case, think of it like the French Revolution... introducing new ideas, some will get overblown... but the fact that there is a possibility of competing ideas (which wasn't available pre-Reformation in Christendom..even between two different states) made it Possible for the concept of religious freedom to develop.
 
Yzman said:
Civilization impossible without religion? This is the craziest statement I have read here.

Sounds like something someone very religious would say, who is very ignorant of many cultures. What are we considering a religion here?

Did the native Americans have a religion? Did the Inuits? Did early Neanderthals have a "religion"?

I am going to assume that you are talking about a Judeo/Christian belief. This is fairly evident by your notion of 1 maker.

You do realize "civilization existed before these beliefs right?

Religion is not a prerequisite for civilizations. A civilization is a prerequisite for a religion. You can't have a religion without people discussing and trying to understand their surroundings.

Next case in point. Religion does not go hand and hand with science. In fact, throughout history, science and religion have been at strong ends.

Saying that science is guided from religion is like saying that red must follow from green. Do we have better understanding of the color red because of the color green? Probably but one does not lead to the other.

Science and religion are 2 things attempting to achieve the same goal. They want to explain the unexplained. They go about it very different ways. Religion relies on faith, word of mouth, emotions per say. Science relies on experimentation, documentation and theorizing.

And Albert Einstein was not perfect. Was he a smart man, a genius? Yes. Did he know everything? No. He was raised Jewish. He didn't like the fact that on the molecular level things appeared to be random. He claimed, "God doesn't play dice"

So far no evidence has been found to support his claim. As far as we can tell, things do appear to be random on small scales.
Click to expand...

You assume a lot of things LOL. Not only do you assume a lot of things it seems that you make up things as you go. Red and green ROFL. The argument is about Civ 5 and just how horribly unrealistic it is that a Civ can go throughout their existence without any sort of piety. Hasn't been done. Somewhere along the way a state religion or theocracy or freedom of religion creeps in there... (native americans) The settlers and others brought religion to the new world but just for the sake of arguing...

lets say you have a machete and you were to go down into the amazon... cutting through foliage as you made your way... you find a tribe of people that have not seen outside man... EVER... one thing that I would bet on would be that they worship some sort of deity or deities... (hows that for assuming????) LOL
 
kingsfan said:
You assume a lot of things LOL. Not only do you assume a lot of things it seems that you make up things as you go.
Click to expand...

Like your assumption that anyone who likes a certain feature in a video game is "obviously atheist?" :rolleyes:

I actually agree that Civ 4 handled religion better, but I disagree with one of your various assertions about the advancement of science being dependent on religion. Of course, when confronted with evidence to the contrary, you change you argument to "well they dipped into the Piety tree and obviously had freedom of religion." Errr, okay. :crazyeye:
 
SuperJay said:
Like your assumption that anyone who likes a certain feature in a video game is "obviously atheist?" :rolleyes:

I actually agree that Civ 4 handled religion better, but I disagree with one of your various assertions about the advancement of science being dependent on religion. Of course, when confronted with evidence to the contrary, you change you argument to "well they dipped into the Piety tree and obviously had freedom of religion." Errr, okay. :crazyeye:
Click to expand...

1. I didn't hear anyone argue this point except for you. It's good to know that you are a man of faith. Sorry if I offended you.

2. I still think that Religion drives Science, even when their is an absence of Religion (USSR's big push for atheism) Or great opposition...

3.The real argument is if a Civ can go through the test of time without dipping into the piety tree. I don't know where the developers of Civ 5 came up with their model for this Civ????
 
kingsfan said:
1. I didn't hear anyone argue this point except for you. It's good to know that you are a man of faith. Sorry if I offended you.

2. I still think that Religion drives Science, even when their is an absence of Religion (USSR's big push for atheism) Or great opposition...

3.The real argument is if a Civ can go through the test of time without dipping into the piety tree. I don't know where the developers of Civ 5 came up with their model for this Civ????
Click to expand...

Well if you want a civ with NO 'religion'... that doesn't just mean no piety tree.

That means
1. No Temples/monasteries
2. Probably no Monuments
3. No on most Wonders
4. No on researching Theology

(Which means a civ stuck in the middle ages


The fact that the tech tree has Theology required for education tends to support the idea that you only get science from religion.
The Piety v. Rationalism, means you can emphasize the "Classical" benefits of religion [happiness/community/culture] or the more "Renaissance" benefits of it [a foundation on which to develop science]
 
Krikkitone said:
I didn't say it was an improvement, I said the checks and balances were moved/shifted around. (the theocracy was already there, it just got more authoritarian... count that as the golden Age.. a burst of ideas that are implemented harshly forcing more work out of the already oppressed people)

In any case, think of it like the French Revolution... introducing new ideas, some will get overblown... but the fact that there is a possibility of competing ideas (which wasn't available pre-Reformation in Christendom..even between two different states) made it Possible for the concept of religious freedom to develop.
Click to expand...
When and where? Also what is inherently superior about freedom of religion vs. a state that only has one religion and thus free?
 
Now here's the thing: If the effects of Piety's social policies left lasting effects on your empire that could be taken advantage of by the Rationalism tree, then that would be a much better design.

For instance, religious buildings increase the amount of culture a city generates, and by extension increases the amount of tiles your empire owns. Now, if Piety had a policy to double production of religious buildings, and Rationalism had a policy that increased science based on the number of tiles owned by your empire divided by the number of cities you owned, you would have a legitimate strategy. Open the Piety branch, take the policy that lets you build religious buildings at double speed, then build them in every city to grab a huge amount of land for little to no cost. Your empire quickly laps up a ton of tiles with a small number of cities. Then as soon as you can get Rationalism, jump ship and buy the policy that gives you the science bonus for a large empire with few cities. You give up all the bonuses of Piety, but the effects are still there. You've now created a rational society founded on pious origins.

Okay, granted those bonuses don't make much sense from a historical standpoint, but you see what I'm saying. If Piety's effects can carry over to make Rationalism's effects stronger, then Piety becomes a strategically viable branch for science victories.
 
Ramesses said:
Now here's the thing: If the effects of Piety's social policies left lasting effects on your empire that could be taken advantage of by the Rationalism tree, then that would be a much better design.
Click to expand...

I totally agree
I wish you wes designer of civ5 :)
 
Krikkitone said:
Well if you want a civ with NO 'religion'... that doesn't just mean no piety tree.

That means
1. No Temples/monasteries
2. Probably no Monuments
3. No on most Wonders
4. No on researching Theology

(Which means a civ stuck in the middle ages


The fact that the tech tree has Theology required for education tends to support the idea that you only get science from religion.
The Piety v. Rationalism, means you can emphasize the "Classical" benefits of religion [happiness/community/culture] or the more "Renaissance" benefits of it [a foundation on which to develop science]
Click to expand...

I don't know where you get the idea that post-middle age civilizations rely on temples, monasteries, monuments, wonders and theology. Or the idea that the tech tree is realistic ;)
 
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