Does foretelling "the end of the world" license people to behave badly?

If they’re idiots, yes. I would think most people would have the intelligence to be skeptical of people like this and do more research, leading them to dismiss the idea.

When combined with a final judgment, it seems to send the message that you should clean up your act right away, and possibly clean up the actions of others.

@Blackberry I don’t think that people research in order to lose faith. Seems to be asking a lot of them. Especially when you consider the social cost they will have to pay when they get to a place where they say “You all are wrong.”

If you’re born into a community with these kinds of beliefs, there’s only “intellectual honesty” to be gained by acting that way. Intellectual honesty doesn’t pay the bills, or get a honey on your bed.

@Aethelflaed Obviously, that’s the ostensible message. But as with all human endeavors there are unintended consequences. I’m sure there’s someone shaking their head over the burning of the Qurans by US service men somewhere, thinking, “Is that what they heard me say?”

The “end” has been coming for centuries. No, we are here NOW and we should comport ourselves according to the moment. Do unto others…you don’t have to be religious to absorb the myriad of wisdom available in that statement and in many great philosophies.
Our integrity is the only thing we take with us, regardless of how it all ends.

@6rant6 Yeah, so I guess it’s up to the individual: do what you want or try to leave the earth a better place.

If you believe in the being able to predict the end of the world, you probably also believe in being judged at the end. So it would make sense to be on your best behavior.

@Sunny2 Of course for some, being on your best behavior means killing folks with different beliefs, or marrying someone old geezer nominated by your pastor, or persecuting homosexuals. So I think most of us would agree that being on your best behavior is only meaningful if the standard that behavior is measured against is valid.

Which leads me to my original question. Does a religion which tells people that the end is nigh shield them from seeing the harm that excessive breeding may cause?

There’s an interesting quote in this article about evolution and human beliefs.

The premise of Shermer’s book is that evolution left the human race with a tendency to make what he calls Type 1 errors — false positives, or beliefs in things that don’t exist. We also miss things that really do exist, which he calls Type 2 errors.

Evolution favors Type 1 errors because Type 2 errors are more likely to get you killed. If the grass rustles, and there’s a possibility it’s a lion, those who wrongly assume it’s nothing make a Type 2 error and end up as evolutionary dead ends. Those who tend to err the other way and imagine a few lions that don’t exist make Type 1 errors and survive.

Shermer concludes that evolution shaped us to be susceptible to figments of the imagination.

Elaborating on these Type 1 errors, Shermer describes a tendency to construct nonexistent patterns — “patternicity.” Another chapter details what he calls “agenticity” — our predilection to attribute accidental or natural occurrences to the conscious action of an agent.

For a professional skeptic and founder of Skeptic Magazine, Shermer is surprisingly forgiving of Type 1 errors. People who make a lot of these aren’t necessarily stupid, he said. Creative people can be particularly prone to patternicity, he said.

It is interesting to think of the answer to this question in light of these ideas. You will notice that these beliefs about the end of the world actually work quite well in an evolutionary sense.

The belief, itself, is a type 1 error, and thus, is harmless evolutionarily. The behavior of breeding like crazy is a good one to make sure your genes get to take over the gene pool.

I see these beliefs as signifiers or a certain set of genes. There is, as far as I can tell, no evolutionary advantage in thinking about the long term future. Perhaps one will show up. But right now there is a competition between those who want to breed like hell (the traditional way to ensure evolutionary survival) and the thoughtful, prepare for the future stance by not overburdening the environment.

It’s not clear to me who will win. It seems to me that the environmentalists are likely to volunteer to not breed, thus helping to ensure the evolutionary success of the breed like hellers. Perhaps it makes sense to breed first and cull later. But if you don’t have children, your genes will be a dead end. The non-breeders may help ensure the survival of other relatives. But it makes no sense to stop breeding entirely. The only way to make sure you have a future is to make sure you have future generations. You can’t do that if no one is there.

@wundayatta I’m not sure I concur that “you have a future” is assured by having kids. I plan on being dead, myself. No future. Maybe you have an unfounded belief that needs challenging?

I think there are probably beliefs that people hold that are not advantageous in terms of long term “success”. I’m not sure about nonviolence for example, which seems to be a tenet of many religions. They seem to adapt to that limitation nicely by ignoring that idea.

The religious belief in marriage may facilitate females’ genetic line, but it probably reduces the males’ potential.

The belief that one can advance to the next level by dieing for the cause doesn’t directly advance one’s blood line, particular in larger conflicts.

More from the article I cited:

Why should any of us care what other people are doing? The monogamous people are most successful in a culture where everyone else is monogamous, said Kurzban. If the rules change, their partners get more chances to cheat.

One of the most popular human mating strategies is to have a faithful partner, lie to that partner, have lots of sex with other people, and then make public statements judging others for being promiscuous.

Kurzban explains why this is so successful in Darwinian terms in his book, Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite. Our brains aren’t necessarily wired for consistency, he said. The part that dictates personal behavior isn’t as well-connected as we think to the part that judges the behavior of others.

“Morality is strategic,” he said. Most people choose moral values that help them, whether it’s powerful people favoring rules that preserve their power, or promiscuous people fighting to preserve their more freewheeling behavior.

Look at what people do, not what they say. The rules of morality have a different function. They help bind together larger communities. Being a member of a strong community is important. Following the rules that bind that community together is not so important.

It is our genes that seek immortality, not us, as individuals. We are but servants to our genes, in a way. When I said “you” have a future, I was referring to your genes, not you, the individual. None of us individuals have much of a future in geological terms. We can only hope our species has a future.