In a new Northwestern Medicine study, scientists sought to better understand how humans evolved to become so skilled at thinking about what’s happening in other peoples’ minds.
Amygdala is the organ in the limbic system (inner mind) —though a tiny little one is significantly responsible for our emotions which falls in the bracket of implicit memories.
Few things upset creationists more than evidence that they are not only apes and share a common ancestor with the other African apes, but that they also share a common ancestor even with non-mammals such as reptiles, and yet, as the American evolutionary biologist, Theodosius Dobzhansky reminds us, nothing in biology makes sense without the Theory of Evolution (TOE).
And one thing that does make sense is how the human brain is the result of an evolutionary process with ancestry in those common ancestors, including lizards.
A second thing that creationists who have deluded themselves into believing that mainstream biomedical scientists are giving up on the TOE and adopting the childish notion of intelligent design, will find distressing, is the news that the team who did this piece of research are firmly convinced that the structure of our brain and the way it works is the result of evolution, not magic.
The third thing is how this explains empathy, of which creationists often feign ignorance, claiming they get their sense of right and wrong from their invisible friend and have a handbook to tell them how to behave. The curious belief that even influenced supposed Christian intellectual 'giants' such as the smugly self-satisfied, C.S. Lewis, is despite the fact that one of the Golden Rules of human society, that even the founder of Christianity, Jesus, allegedly told his followers to apply - "Do unto others what you would they do unto you" or words to that effect, depend entirely on having the empathetic ability to know what someone else would want.
The research explains how this ability in humans comes from an ancestral ability to read social signals and form relationships, including an understanding of social hierarchies, possessed even by lizards.
Although religions claim ownership of human morality and demand the 'God-given' right to dictate right and wrong to the rest of us, there is no evidence at all that being religious make a person more moral than others.
The children's story-teller and self-proclaimed Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis, once claimed to have found proof of the Christian god in the 'fact' then he could tell right from wrong. He reasoned that because he had no objective way of doing so, he must have been given his morals by a god - who of course was assumed to be the one he was promoting. Sadly, he had failed to establish a priori, that any such god exists, so his argument was never more than the intellectually dishonest circular reasoning and the false dichotomy fallacy, coupled with the arrogant assumption that he had the 'right' morals, so demonstrating the exact opposite of what he claimed as his 'proof'.
'Objectively moral' American far-right Christian Nationalists during the Jan. 6, 2021, failed violent coup d'etat
In fact, the evidence is that antisocial, far-right extremists are much more likely to be hiding behind religion, merely using it as an excuse for hate and violence. The same can be said for the Christian priests, prelates and nuns who routinely used their supposed high moral status to gain trusted access children and vulnerable adults and to cover up and facilitate the sexual abuses of others around them. Meanwhile the pro-social center-left are more likely to be Atheist/Agnostic and are demonstrating a much higher regard for others.
And now, new research involving long-term study of a cohort of 230,000 Americans has shown that moral values are, at least in part, influence by seasonal changes - people are more likely to enforce moral values that improve social cohesion in spring and autumn, than in summer and winter. A similar pattern was found in smaller studies in Australia and Canada.
The research, by Ian Hohm and Professor Mark Schaller of the Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada and assistant professor of psychology, Brian A. O’Shea of the School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK, is the subject of a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
Firstly, as a fascinating background to the subject of moral values and how they originate and impact on society, here is a dialogue with AI ChatGPT 4.0:
Figure 2
Adult female green and golden bell frogs, Litoria aurea, preying on adult spotted marsh frogs, Limnodynastes tasmaniensis in proximity to an exclusion fence on Kooragang Island, NSW, Australia. The females can be seen swallowing their frog prey vent first, with the back legs already consumed.
Creationists who try to pretend to be the moral superior of other people like to pretend their imaginary creator friend has provided them with a set of objective morals, although bearing false witness to trick others into agreeing with them - something that their Bible says is wrong and something most honest people would agree with, seem to be one of them, as does abusing their opponents and even threatening strangers, as these are all part of the set of 'objective morals' on display in any on-line creationist or creation vs evolution group.
But even if the claim of there being a set of objective moral which their god has handed down to them (and only them) had any merit, you would expect it to be true for all species, not restricted to human cultures. After all, if eating people is wrong, then you would expect cannibalism to be unknown in the animal kingdom, and yet it's commonplace.
The childish notion of human exceptionalism took another blow recently when a group of researchers showed how macaque monkeys can change their culture to adapt to changes in their environment.
As with humans, macaque cultural ethics is an agreed standard of behaviour that enables the group to remain cohesive and survive in adversity. Unlike creationists, macaques don't require a handbook to know how to behave decently towards others because, like normal humans, they too have empathy and will treat others as they would want to be treated.
This was illustrated recently when macaques were seen to change their behaviour when hurricane Maria destroyed the 63% of the vegetation on their home island of Cayo Santiago, reducing the amount of shelter from the heat of the sun.
In an unguarded moment, for which he has had to apologize, Pope 'Mr. Nice Guy' Francis, revealed the hypocritical difference between his private and public declarations.
Trying to give the Catholic Church a more tolerant and understanding face, in place of the bigoted and judgmental church of his predecessors, that had been driving decent people away, and aware that many Catholic Priests are practicing homosexuals, Pope Francus has previously advocated tolerance and understanding, whilst falling short of allowing same-sex marriages in Catholic churches and ordaining openly gay priests.
But that mask of kindly affability and tolerance was revealed to be a lie intended to deceive when Francis let slip his true feelings when asked if he would allow gay men to enter seminary to be trained and eventually ordained as Catholic priests.
He replied (in Italian):
Seminaries are already too full of “frociaggine”.
This translates as 'faggotiness' and is an especially abusive term for gay people in Italy.
Attempts to give legal protection to religious people to practice their religion without fear of discrimination in Australia have run up against a predictable problem - Christians demanding the right to victimise, exclude and bully LGBTQ+ people and claiming it as their right under the anti-discrimination law.
We had a similar problem in UK some years ago when the ECHR was incorporated into UK law as the Human Rights Act, which, amongst other things, gave people the protection to practice their religion, free from discrimination as a basic human right. It also gave people freedom from discrimination on the grounds of gender or sexual orientation.
The two rights quickly came into conflict when Christians began demanding the right to carry on their tradition of bullying, victimizing and excluding gays, or denying them goods and services, on the grounds that denying them that right, deprived them of their privileged right to deprive other people of their human rights and decide to whom the law of the land applied.
This was clarified by the European Court which ruled that freedom from discrimination did not include the freedom to discriminate against others of your choosing on the grounds that your religion entitled you to do so. Human right applied to all and did not grant special privileges or exemptions to any group, no matter how entitled they felt to them.
Nevertheless, the argument rumbles on and Christian extremists are still lobbying for changes to the Human Rights Act or its abolition, to restore their right to bully and victimise minorities of their choice and decide who is entitled to what in society. The same bigots would react with outraged indignation if Muslims were demanding the right to impose Sharia on society or Jewish groups were lobbying for the right to impose Halakhah on the rest of us
In Australia, where this issue has recently emerged, it has done so against a growing distrust for organized religion, at least partly because of their record of bullying and discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community, and also because of the recent child sex-abuse scandals that have engulfed the Christian churches in Australia. It is these routine abuses of children and their subsequent cover ups by church authorities who often acted to facilitate them, that has probably cost the churches the trust of, especially, women in Australia.
A recent report found one in three Australian women had no trust at all in organised religion, a figure which rose to one in two for women between the ages of 18-29. Even one in ten religious women had no trust at all in organized religion and two in three LGBTQ+ women have no trust at all in organized religions.
The fact that so many Australian women are concerned about the treatment of LGBTQ+ by organized religion illustrates how far Australian cultural ethics have moved on, leaving Medieval Christian ethics struggling to keep up and faced with the familiar old dilemma of abandoning the old dogmas (and so in the eyes of purists, ceasing to be the religion they recognise) but retaining the support of the more enlightened elements in society or retaining their 'purity' and so keeping the die-hards but losing popular support in the process. Their problem is exacerbated by the fact that, as more and more moderate and progressive members leave in despair at the bigotry of the purists, so the purists become a larger proportion of the remaining members, and so the more powerful voices within the churches.
This quickly sets up the exponential declines we have seen in Europe, especially recently in Ireland and Spain where the decline in the power and influence of the Catholic Church has been in freefall since the child sexual abuse scandals broke and the Church tried to maintain its opposition to basic human rights such as same-sex marriages, family planning services and a woman's right to choose.
Incidentally, this illustrates how society doesn't get its morals from God and the church; they evolve as society evolves and the churches act as a break on progress trying to hold society back in order to retain control and its 'entitled' privileges. The Christian churches are anchored in the past and try to keep society there too. Eventually, religion is left so far behind that it becomes an irrelevance to the majority of the population. History shows this is the eventual fate of all religions and will be that of Christianity too.
This catastrophic decline in Australia, from the point of view of the churches, is illustrated in this chart which shows how net trust (i.e., the balance of those who trust the churches minus those who don't, fell from +3% in 1991 to -49% in 2018.
Gleeson, K. & Ashton, L. (2024). Trust in Religion among Women in Australia: A Quantitative Analysis. https://doi.org/10.60836/5jz3-t630
The authors of the report, Kate Gleeson, Associate Professor of Law, Macquarie University and Luke Ashton, Research Assistant, Institute for Public Policy and Governance, University of Technology Sydney have written about their findings in an open access article in The Conversation. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic purposes:
Crisis of faith: why Australian women have so little trust in religious institutions
The Albanese government is weighing up the costs of delivering an election promise to protect religious people from discrimination in Commonwealth law. Such protections were relatively uncontroversial when included in state anti-discrimination laws. However, the religious discrimination debate became toxic under former prime minister Scott Morrison when it became tied to
the rights of religious schools to discriminate against LGBTIQ+ staff and students.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said the government has draft legislation ready to go. However, it won’t introduce it without bipartisan support because, “now is not the time to have a divisive debate, especially with the rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia”.
Religious discrimination might not be addressed by the Australian parliament any time soon. Albanese must first persuade Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to support legislation to protect both religious people and LGBTIQ+ staff and students at religious schools.
Our new research report, Trust in Religion among Women in Australia, highlights some electoral realities relevant to legislating to protect religion in Australia today. The report analyses data from the nationally representative Australian Cooperative Election Survey, taken from May 2–18 2022. We surveyed 1,044 voters, of whom 531 were women. While we analysed the data for both men and women, we found that women are significantly more likely than men to express distrust in religion, and so our report focussed on them.
Our findings present a bleak picture for religious organisations hoping to gain political traction based on trust in their ability to act ethically and responsibly.
Child abuse scandals have played a big part in eroding the trust of women in particular.
When compared internationally, Australians – particularly women – have very low trust in organised religion. This gendered outcome makes Australia an outlier in the Western world and is likely related to women’s concerns for children in the care of religious organisations. Key findings include:
about one-third of Australian women have no trust in organised religion and religious leaders
distrust is highest among younger women: almost half of all women aged 18-29 have no trust in religious leaders
among religious women, around 10% have no trust in organised religion and religious leaders, while around half have “not very much trust” in either
LGBTIQ+ women have some of the lowest levels of trust in Australia. Almost two-thirds have no trust in religious leaders
Women living in outer regional and remote Australia are significantly more likely to distrust religion than women living in cities and inner regional areas.
Child abuse scandals have eroded trust
Consistent with international studies, our research indicates religious child abuse scandals have greatly affected trust. Australian women are highly sceptical about the capacity of religious leaders to protect the children in their care. In fact, almost half report low, or no, trust.
They also doubt the ability of religious leaders to respond to the findings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Over half report low, or no, trust in this. Concern for children is highest among LGBTIQ+ women, likely reflecting concerns about discrimination against LGBTIQ+ school children, as well as child abuse.
Trust affects how women view the role of religion in the public sphere. We found that about four in five women who have no trust in religion believe religious organisations should no longer be granted tax-exempt status by the government. Around two-thirds of this group also believe the government should stop funding religious schools.
Similarly, two-thirds of women with no trust in religion think religious organisations should play a smaller role, or no role at all, in counselling in schools. Around 60% of this group also think religious organisations should play a smaller role, or no role at all, in primary and high school education.
Can trust be regained?
The report concludes that organised religion is facing a profound crisis of trust, particularly among women. Concerns for children are paramount in shaping women’s opinions about religious organisations and the services they offer. The high level of distrust among younger women suggests the crisis is generational and cannot be corrected without dedicated interventions on the part of religious organisations and governments.
If left unchecked, this crisis has the potential to undermine the social and economic fabric of Australia, given the prominence of religious organisations in the provision of education, healthcare, and social services.
Religious organisations must work to establish or regain the trust of the electorate, especially among regional and remote communities. The current national emergency of violence against women perhaps provides one opportunity for religious organisations to build this trust. This is especially so given the pivotal role they now play in the outsourced domestic violence services sector, which was once community-run.
Politically, this crisis of trust does not bode well for governments seeking support for any legislation that might appear to offer greater protections to organised religion.
In particular, any protections that are perceived to encroach on children’s rights will almost certainly be rejected by those large sections of the Australian electorate reporting low or no trust in religion. Albanese will need to get the balance right.
Kate Gleeson, Associate Professor of Law, Macquarie University and Luke Ashton, Research Assistant, Institute for Public Policy and Governance, University of Technology Sydney
Published by The Conversation. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)
Although this article is about Australia and deals with the Australian legislature's difficulty in reconciling the opposing forces of social progress and Christian reactionary bigotry, it reflects the situation throughout much of the Christian world, and which will eventually be faced in the Islamic world too.
As religious superstition loses its grip on society, society will either drags it kicking and screaming into the future, or consign it to the dustbin of history along with all the other irrelevant and unwanted religions that failed to keep up, also held back, no doubt by their increasingly internally powerful but externally despised, die-hard fundamentalists and dogmatic purists.
Advertisement
Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It
This book explains why faith is a fallacy and serves no useful purpose other than providing an excuse for pretending to know things that are unknown. It also explains how losing faith liberates former sufferers from fear, delusion and the control of others, freeing them to see the world in a different light, to recognise the injustices that religions cause and to accept people for who they are, not which group they happened to be born in. A society based on atheist, Humanist principles would be a less divided, more inclusive, more peaceful society and one more appreciative of the one opportunity that life gives us to enjoy and wonder at the world we live in.
Available in Hardcover, Paperback or ebook for Kindle
A promotional poster for Liberty Gospel Church with Helen Ukpabio, a modern 'witchfinder'(Lady Apostle Helen Ukpabio/Facebook)
You might think that enlightened Humanism had sufficiently civilised Christianity to put a stop to the Medieval sport of burning old ladies alive because someone had accused them of witchcraft and 'God sez' they should be killed, but think again. According to a UN report, the practice is still widespread in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of India and Southeast Asia, where an estimated 20,000 people across 60 countries were victims of abuse and summary killing between 2009 and 2019,4 although the true figure is likely to be much higher because such instance often go unreported.
The problem is that the belief in Biblical inerrancy and a mind-reading, ever watchful god can make people think the barbarity in the Old Testament especially, is the will of God and 'moral' in some arbitrary definition of morality as "what God sez!"
And 'God sez, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. (Exodus 22: 18)
And running throughout the Bible is a belief in evil spirits and a world running on magic in which magic words, signs and thoughts can cause bad things to happen. The result is horrendous abuse of vulnerable people and especially of women and children, as the UN report states:
It's axiomatic that people who can believe absurdities can be persuaded to commit atrocities.
One only need look at the history of just about every world religion to know that is especially true of people who hold to religious beliefs, yet most religious people will look at other religions and wonder how on Earth they can believe that nonsense, while having no understanding why others who look at their beliefs have the same thoughts.
How many devout Christians, for example, would find nothing strange in the belief that the sun was swallowed each evening by the goddess Isis, who then gave birth to it every morning or that ancient Celtic chiefs physically mated with the Earth goddess at Tara to unite the Irish people with the land they lived on?
Yet those same Christians have no difficulty believing that the blood sacrifice of an innocent person can atone for collective 'sins' inherited from ancient ancestors or that the dismembered bodies of ancient holy men can somehow persuade a god to change his perfect plans for their better one, or an omniscient, omnibenevolent god needs to be told about a wrong and why if should be righted, or a mind-reading god needs to be told their thoughts.
And a Moslem who believes the founder of their religion split the moon in half and flew to Heaven on a magic flying creature finds it incomprehensible that saying prayers to a painting of an ancient holy man or priest can change the direction of the universe, or that the prohibition on 'graven images' doesn't apply to gold-covered icons or depictions of a god nailed to a stick, worn by people who believe tiny images of a blood sacrifice or miniature instrument of torture worn around their neck protects them from evil spirits?
There are even people who believe the sun can be made to perform strange maneuvers in the sky while no-one else on Earth noticed it and without Earth itself needing to suddenly change its speed and direction of rotation or orbital path round the sun. Even the leaders of a major branch of Christianity, with a whole panel of expert scientific advisors, believe that really happened and continue to send people to Fatima where it is alleged to have happened - just one of the many equally implausible and evidence-free beliefs orthodox Catholics needs to hold.
Even coeliac suffering Catholics can believe a piece of wafer, when the right spells are cast over it, miraculously becomes the body of a dead god to be consumed in a cannibalistic ritual, while knowing they need to avoid eating it to avoid the consequences of gluten intolerance! That's a condition of belonging to a cultural group called 'Catholics'.
Atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of any god or gods, nothing more and nothing less. This position is based on the self-evidence fac that the only intellectually honest basis for belief is evidence and the equally self-evidence fact that there is not (and cannot be) any definitive evidence for the existence of anything supernatural because, by definition, nothing supernatural can be detected. All there is, is the material universe and anything beyond that has nowhere and no time to exist in and could not interact with or influence events in the material universe, so is indistinguishable from nothing. Belief in anything supernatural is thus a superstition for which there is no supporting evidence.
Atheism is a belief position, not a knowledge claim. Since again the only intellectually honest position is that all knowledge has a degree of uncertainty, atheism is not Agnosticism since Agnosticism allows for the possibility of Atheism being wrong, but any assessment of the probability of the existence of any god must be subjective since there can be no observations to base it on. So, an Agnostic cannot express that probability without it becoming a belief position. As it is, Agnosticism is a pedantic knowledge claim which has no measurable probability of being different to Atheism, in the accuracy of its claim.
Recently, the Pew Research Center published 8 facts about Atheism based on its opinion polling in the USA and elsewhere. Most of them refer to Atheism in the USA, where Atheists make up 4% of U.S. adults, according to their 2023 National Public Opinion Reference Survey. That compares with 3% who described themselves as atheists in 2014 and 2% who did so in 2007.
That figure of 4% for the USA lags someway behind the UK (12%), Netherlands (17%), Sweden (18%), France (23%) and even once staunchly Catholic countries of Spain (10%) and the Republic of Ireland where 14.2% gave Atheist/No religion, as their religion, (if any) in the 1922 census (an increase of 187% since 2011). However, with a great deal of stigma still attached to Atheism in the USA and pressure to conform with regular church attendance, the true figure for Atheism is probably very underestimated and hidden within the large and growing 'Nones, which currently stands at 28% in the USA.
Pew Research Center's eight fact about Atheism are:
Religious fundamentalists like to assume they have ownership of the institution of marriage because the 'right' form of marriage was dictated by their imaginary god so we should all subscribe to their approved form of it. In many formerly majority Christian countries, the Christian-based marital laws are one of the few remaining vestiges of a time when Christianity imposed itself on everyone, believers, non-believers and non-Christians alike, arrogantly believing it had a divine right to rule.
But recent research has shown that a form of flexible monogamy, or more or less stable social parings of a female and a male is common if not the norm in the primate family. It was most likely incorporated into religions because some human tribes thought of monogamy as the 'right' form of sexual relationship, so any god whom the priesthood wanted to be taken seriously had to hand down 'morals' that the people thought were right and proper. After all, the only way to tell if a god is a good god or an evil god is to compare its morals and behaviour to that of an external standard of 'good', is it not?
If you think not, you have to believe that if your god had told people to hurt babies, rob banks and hit old ladies, those would now be considered moral acts and people who didn't do them would be regarded as immoral and deserving of punishment or other social sanctions. Christian apologist for faith-based genocide, William Lane Craig, has even declared that a seemingly immoral act such as infanticide, is morally right if you believe his (but only his) god commands it, and it would be immoral not to carry out such a divine command.
But William Lane Craig's repugnant idea of what constitutes morality is straying somewhat off the point, which is the 'right' form of marriage in human society, which William Lane Craig presumably believes is divinely commanded by his god and therefore mandatory for the rest of us.
But, absolute monogamy is not the universal norm in modern human sexual relationships, even in societies which only permit monogamous marriage, and probably never has been. Humans can best be described as mostly monogamous, most of the time, with 'infidelity' by both sexes being fairly common to the extent that some estimates put the number of people who have a different father to the one they think is theirs at about 25%. In some cultures, such as Islamic, bigamy is normal and, as evidenced by baptism records, pre-marital sex was commonplace in 19th Century England.
Kill them all for the Lord knoweth them that are His!
Abbot Arnaud Amalric of Citeaux
Papal legate in charge of the Cathar genocide.
Citing 2 Timothy 2:19
Burning the Cathars at Béziers
Another reminder of the brutal, blood-soaked history of Christianity is to be found in the history of the French town of Béziers on the banks of the River Orb, in the Languedoc region, southeast of Montpellier, on the edge of the Camargue.
It has been, in turn, along with much of the area south of Toulouse, under the control of Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, Moorish Moslems from Andalucia, Catholic Spain and latterly, Catholic France. Until recent times, the local language was a dialect of French, Occitan, which has close links with Catalan. This gave it a sense of a separate identity from that of France - something that concerned King Philip II, keen to exert the same control over the southern provinces as he had over the North.
Béziers is now a peaceful, quite little market town and cultural centre but it was not always so. It was, until 1209, a stronghold of the Cathars, a religious sect which rejected Roman Catholicism and the authority of the Pope, which was brutally suppressed in the 'Albigensian Crusade' on the orders of Pope Innocent III in alliance with King Philip II of France.
For more information on the Albigensian Crusade and Pope Innocent III's and King Philip II of France's reasons for launching it, see:
Fresh from their success in laying siege to and then massacring the inhabitants of the Carcassonne, the crusaders moved on to other towns in the area, including Béziers.
Street below the Cité De Carcassonne with the Citadel on the Hill
We've just spent a day in Carcassonne, in southern France, just north of the Spanish border. It's a place every Christian should visit as a reminder of the blood-soaked history of their religion because Carcassonne was the site of one of the most brutal periods of Catholic history until the conquest of the Americas, the Albigensian Crusade.
The Albigensian crusade was conducted on the orders of Pope Innocent III, surely one of the most misnamed Popes in history; a crusade with the objective of nothing less than a total genocide of the Cathars and their religion.
The technique put into practice many of the methods used to terrorize populations and force them into submission that had been developed in the Crusades against the Moslems of the Eastern Mediterranean, where the method was to promise land to the barons and noblemen who led the armies, and the spoils of looting and pillage to the mobs of mercenaries that comprised to soldiery. There were no provisions for feeding and supplying the rag-taggle mobs as they raged through the countryside, so they had to take wheat they needed from the local populations. Towns and villages were ransacked, and the inhabitants slaughtered as a matter of routine.
And bloodletting was encouraged and glorified, to the extent that one observer recorded enthusiastically how the streets of Jerusalem were ankle-deep in blood when the Christian mob over-ran it.
The origins of Catharism are somewhat obscure, as it contained several different ideas fused into a loose system of beliefs with no central authority, so it tended to vary in different communities. A central idea was the essentially Gnostic belief in two gods - a good god of the spiritual domain and an evil god (Satan) who created the physical world and trapped angels inside human bodies. The creator (evil) god was the god of the Old Testament and the good god was the god of the New Testament, who Jesus was sent to tell us about. Escape from the physical world was through death and a special form of baptism to enable reunion with the god of the spiritual realm.
Like Catholicism does today, Catharism was obsessed with sex and saw sexual intercourse as sinful unless performed in the prescribed manner and pre-blessed by a priest in a special ceremony.
A consequence of their belief that the physical world was the domain of Satan and created by him to keep people away from God, was that everything to do with sexual intercourse was to be avoided because it produces more physical reality and more angels trapped in human bodies, so they were Pescatarians, believing that meat, cheese, milk and eggs were the result of sexual intercourse, but fish spontaneously generated and thus were safe to eat. The general disapproval of sexual intercourse caused some obvious problems for some Cathar communities, but others had found a way round it in a legend that the origins of the battle between good and evil in Heaven was because Satan had seduced one of God's wives (he has two, apparently), or maybe it was God who seduced one of Satan's two wives. This was sufficient evidence that God has sexual intercourse, so doesn't prohibit it.
Burning witches alive was common in Germany and other parts of Europe, but in Scotland the convicted were usually strangled before their bodies were burned.
News that there is now a museum to the Scottish witch hysteria, prompted me to do a little bit of research into witchcraft and societies changed attitude toward the idea of witches casting evil spells and suspending the laws of nature with their thoughts.
Our modern-day attitude toward the whole idea of witches and witchcraft, compared to what it was when the atrocities of witch-finding and witch burning were being committed, mostly but not exclusively, by the Catholic Church at the behest of the Pope, shows how our morals are evolving and consigning religious 'morals' to the dustbin of history where they belong.
On of the main driving forces behind witch hysteria in Europe was a book, "Malleus Maleficarum" (Hammer of Witches) written by a sex-obsessed and misogynistic German Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer (under his Latinized name Henricus Institor). This classified witchcraft as heresy and thus punishable by burning alive, and recommended torture as the best way to discover the truth. Kramer's hatred for women whom he blamed for tempting him to 'sin', could scarcely be disguised, and on that faith-based misogyny, the witch burnings were based.
Although it was rejected by the Catholic Church at the time, "Malleus Maleficarum" was later revived by insecure royal courts during the renaissance for the same reason witch hysteria has been promoted since - to unite a frightened population behind a 'war' against an internal threat. The same way America's Republicans are waging a 'culture war' against the 'evil of liberalism' today.
Protestant Christianity also did its share of the persecution and murder of (mostly) unmarried or widowed women, of course, as the Pendle witch trials in England, the Salam witch trial in the Puritanical Massachusetts Bay Colony in Colonial America and the witch trials in Presbyterian Scotland attest.
The change in attitude towards the idea of witchcraft between then and now illustrates how societies do not get their morals from religion but religions get their morals, such as they are, from society. No organized church ever spoke out against the witch trials and demanded they cease or preached that they were immoral. But the churches, inspired by the Bible (Exodus 22:18) were very much the instigators of the atrocities, as they still are in some parts of Africa, where children are regularly targeted by preachers and accused of witchcraft in order to spread fear and distrust amongst their followers to keep them dependent on the church for 'protection against evil'.
What brought about the changes was an injection of a large dose of enlightened Humanism into western culture, with its sense of fairness, justice and evidence-based decision-making in place of faith-based superstition and reactionary dogma.
More evidence today that creationism is a fallacy. Scientists at Lund University, Sweden, have shown that what creationists proclaim to be the unique ability of humans, thus proving special design by their putative designer god - the ability to empathise - may have its origins, not even in ancestral mammals, but in common ancestors of both mammals and birds, i.e., dinosaurs.
Creationists normally get themselves in a terrible muddle over empathy, preferring to ignore it as an evolved source of morality in favour of their supposedly God-given morals, and yet their holy book, in which they claim their designer god wrote down these morals includes an assumption that empathy is a human trait.
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
Matthew 7:12
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Luke 6:31
But creationists, while arguing that humans have this unique ability, argue that they, like a sociopath, can't work out how their actions might affect others, so need a handbook to look it up in.
The evidence that this trait first arose in a common ancestor of birds and mammals comes in the form of a paper in Science Advances by three researchers from Lund University, Sweden.
A Lund University press release explains the research:
With 99% of all known species having gone extinct, creationists still like to imagine an omniscient god created them. One must assume, therefore, that they believe it created them to go extinct!
It's a strange sort of intelligence that would intelligently design something to fail, but that's the sort of double think creationists need to be capable of to be members of their anti-science cults.
But the good news is that one of these 'creations', the Mediterranean Monk seal, is making something of a comeback, having been reduced to about 800 individuals, mostly around the coast of Greece.
The Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus) is one of the world's most endangered marine mammals and is the only seal species endemic to the Mediterranean Sea. The species is characterized by its monk-like hood, and its gray-brown fur with lighter colored undersides.
Here are some key facts about the Mediterranean monk seal:
Habitat: Mediterranean monk seals are found in the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern Atlantic Ocean, primarily along the coastlines of Greece, Turkey, and North Africa.
Population: According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Mediterranean monk seal population is estimated to be between 500 and 700 individuals, making it one of the rarest mammals in the world.
Threats: The primary threats to Mediterranean monk seals include habitat loss, human disturbance, entanglement in fishing gear, and hunting. The species has been heavily exploited for its fur, oil, and meat, and has suffered from a decline in its prey species due to overfishing.
Conservation Efforts: The Mediterranean monk seal is protected under various national and international laws, including the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals and the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats. Several conservation organizations are also working to protect the species, including the Mediterranean Monk Seal Conservation Society and the Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk Seal.
ChatGPT. (10 Apr 2023). Tel me about the Mediterranean Monk seal, with references, please. [Response to a user question]. OpenAI.
The Monk seal was once abundant around the Greek coast and used to breed on the beaches but evolved a change of habit due to persecution by humans who saw it as competition for fish. It now breeds in sea caves and tends to stay in them when not in the sea.
The Greek poet, Homer, mentioned what is probably the monk seal in his Odyssey:
Homer, the ancient Greek poet, mentioned the Mediterranean monk seal in his epic poem, the Odyssey. In Book 4, lines 345-347, he describes the sea-monsters that inhabit the waters around the island of Pharos:
…and the great seal (phoke) was in attendance upon her from the bottom of the sea, even the seal that was wont to come forth last from his lair to bask upon the shore.
In this passage, the Greek word "phoke" is used to refer to the seal, which is believed to be the Mediterranean monk seal. It is interesting to note that the word "phoke" is also the origin of the English word "phocid," which refers to the family of true seals that includes the Mediterranean monk seal.
It is worth noting that the Odyssey was written in the 8th century BCE, long before the Mediterranean monk seal became endangered. At the time, the species was likely abundant and well-known to the ancient Greeks.
It is a sign of cultural evolution that humans are now more inclined to protect endangered species than to persecute them, consequently, the monk seal population has rebounded, and they are now present in Croatia and Albania from where they had disappeared. When a female monk seal, nicknamed Argyro, who became so familiar with humans on the island of Samos that she would lounge in beach chairs and hang out in a cafe, was shot, it caused an outrage throughout Greece. In earlier times, Greek fishermen would boast that they had killed a monk seal as this was considered a good thing to do.
This cultural evolution in humans, where the primitive notion that a god had given all the animals on Earth to humankind to use or abuse as they wished, to one where we realise we all share this one planet and depend on maximising biodiversity if we are all to survive, has allowed the monk seal to reverse its cultural evolution and once again start to come out of the sea caves and appear in numbers on beaches. This is another example of how Humanism is replacing the old, harmful religious superstitions as human ethical evolution rids itself of the regressive influence of religion.
The psychological phenomenon of self-licencing or awarding themselves exemptions from the standards they demand others live by, is a characteristic of the pious, and often the reason for the public display of it.
It's as though the pious see their piety as building up credit they can draw on later to provide themselves with a little relaxation of the rules without running the risk of adverse judgement later. Then, of course, there is the useful Christian notion of forgiveness through confession, in effect having your sin counter zeroed by confession and penance.
In this article from The Conversation, Daisy Matthews, a PhD candidate in Sociology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK and Jane Pilcher, Associate Professor of Sociology, Nottingham Trent University, explore the extent to which piety is used by sex workers and their clients to free themselves from any feelings of guilt or responsibility for acts which are condemned as sinful by their respective religions. There is a noticeable flexibility of belief where arbitrary lines are drawn and, so long as they are not crossed, anything else is permitted within the religion.
The practices are not restricted to Christians of one denomination or another but extends to Muslims, Jews, and others.
The article, part of the Insight series, is reprinted under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original can be read here.
Uncovering the secret religious and spiritual lives of sex workers
Tanya* is telling me just how important her Methodist Christianity is to her. We’re chatting over a video call, and I can see Tanya’s living room in the background. This also happens to be her workspace because Tanya, who is 50, is a full-time phone and cam sex worker. For Tanya, earning her living through sex work does not conflict with her religious beliefs at all. Tanya tells me that she had a client who talked to her about his enjoyment of wearing women’s clothing. He confided in her because they both shared the same religious identity.
He [the client] started talking more and more … he said I listen … he told me he goes to church every Sunday and was a church elder and he opened up. I also said to him … that I used to go to Sunday school every week and so we connected … because I am not going OMG when he told me. And he asked me if I still go to chapel now, and I said no but I still pray and believe in God, and he said that’s nice.
Tanya reassured her client that there was “no need to feel guilty”, that what they were doing wasn’t “wrong”. She even told him: “I bet there are other people in the church who do it”.
Tanya was one of 11 sex workers I spoke to who all had spiritual and religious beliefs. I wanted to discover how these two seemingly opposite life choices could interconnect and coexist. I discovered people like Tanya, who spoke to their clients about God and religion, but I also spoke to women who used religion as a kink to arouse their clients or as a tactic to earn more money or, in some cases, protect themselves when they felt threatened.
I found out that rather than being incompatible, religion and spirituality can create unique connections and meaningful experiences for both sex worker and client. Tanya’s story shows how sex work experiences are not one dimensional, and are not only about selling sex for money. They can hold multiple meanings. As the journalist Melissa Gira Grant suggests in her book, sex work is a role where social skills and empathy are regularly performed.
This article is part of Conversation Insights The Insights team generates long-form journalism derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.
My PhD research attempts to shine a light on the realities of the everyday lives of religious sex workers, which include positive experiences as well as distressing ones. I spoke with sex workers who were Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Norse Pagan and spiritual. All the women were over the age of 18 and were consensual sex workers.
Religion, sin and ‘morality’
So, what do different religions say about sex work? Research by independent scholar Benedikta Fones, suggests that in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament representations of sex workers are typically negative. That perhaps doesn’t come as too much of a surprise. The stereotypical “religious” view of sex before marriage is that it is immoral, so why should sex work be any different? Fones argues that these religious ideas, about sex work being “unacceptable”, then spread into wider culture.
Research shows that sex work is generally considered an immoral act within Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
That said, there are some religious organisations or charities that do provide essential support for some sex workers. But there are also “saviour charities”, whose existence gives further insight into the complex relationship between sex work and religion.
Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden of Eden on a stained glass window in the cathedral of Brussels, Belgium.
As the sociologist Gemma Ahearne has written, some religiously motivated groups aim to stop people working in the sex industry and aim to eradicate sex work entirely.
And it’s not just religious doctrines which find sex work to be immoral – some religious sex workers do too, as a research project in Thailand discovered in 2015. But the women I spoke with rejected that narrative of religious condemnation. For them, religion and sex work can co-exist and both were a meaningful part of their lives.
Using religion to earn more
One of my first discoveries was how some sex workers use religion to earn more money. One example of this was how one sex worker had decided to capitalise on her Muslim heritage to boost her “brand”.
Zahra and Islam
Zahra is a 26-year-old British Muslim. Zahra was inspired by other women who use the hijab when sex working. From this, she created her alter ego, where she wore the hijab when she made online sexual content and when working as an escort. She said:
On Twitter … I networked with this one girl, she wears a hijab, not in her real life but using it to make more money and mix it up and she is like earning 150k, she’s up there with celebrities and stuff and so, yeah I decided I would have an alter ego, my “hoejabi”, that’s what I called it and I made content wearing a head scarf and like that and I had jobs coming through from that.
So Zahra utilised the hijab and, in her own words, “made a lot of money from it”.
However, this coexistence of identities – as sex worker and religious person – is not simple, and must be managed by a process of constant internal negotiation. Zahra spoke to me at length about the requests she has had from clients which she turned down, because to agree with them would have challenged her religious values and morals.
She added: “I have had clients go, ‘can you sit on the Qur’an and cum or can I bring a Qur’an and ride it whilst saying this and that’, and I say no. That is too extreme for me.”
So although Zahra uses her religion to earn more money by sexualising Islamic symbols like the hijab, she is still a Muslim woman. She believes in Allah in her private life. She set boundaries within her work to ensure that she doesn’t go against her own religious beliefs.
But sexualising religion in this way can come with risks. In 2015, the former porn actor Mia Khalifa starred in a porn film while she was wearing the hijab. She received death threats as a result and was strongly criticised by some people in Muslim communities. Some claimed she was letting down the Islamic faith (although Khalifa herself was raised Catholic).
But despite – or perhaps because of – the controversy around her film, Khalifa became one of the most searched-for stars on the adult movie site Porn Hub.
Being a Muslim and sex worker may be risky - but for Zahra, it was empowering and positive. And she is not alone. There is a Muslim group called Muslims for Full Decrim whose members are also current and former sex workers who support the decriminalisation of the sex industry. Clearly, religious communities like Islam are diverse and this is reflected in how people feel about their religion and sex work.
Maya, yoga and spirituality
Another sex worker I met used elements of her spiritual life to increase interest from clients. Maya, a 25-year-old British woman showed me her bedroom over a video-call. Maya, like Tanya, is a cam sex worker, so her bedroom is also her workspace. But Maya’s bedroom is also the space where she practises yoga. She told me that she performed yoga on camera for her clients:
Good spiritual link, customers have said they find it relaxing to watch. Yeah, I don’t know why I didn’t mention that! I think it’s even like, called a subculture … I sent a video of myself into the site proving I can do it [yoga], you add it to your list of specialities so people can find you for specifically doing that.
For Maya, yoga can be relaxing and a way to connect with her spiritual identity. But it is also a way to make money and it shows how religion and spirituality are becoming more diverse and less bound by traditional religious rules and doctrines. Maya was managing her beliefs flexibly. This was also true for Zahra.
Maya’s and Zahra’s stories show the evident demand from some clients for religion when they are paying for sex. Zahra and Maya sexualise their religion and spirituality when sex working – meeting the desires of clients who get off on that.
Khan, a trans Norse Pagan
But there were other women I met who needed religion to help them belong.
Khan, a 41-year-old transgender woman, was raised Christian but now has a Norse Pagan religious identity. She told me how she changed her religious path because she felt conflicted between her gender identity, sex work identity and, specifically, her Christian identity.
She said that being a transgender woman created challenges to being a Christian and that Christianity would not accept her occupation as an escort.
I don’t think there is a way to reconcile the sex work with Christianity.
It is these kinds of religious ideas about the immorality of sex work that meant Khan looked for and found a religion – Norse Paganism – which better suited her feelings and identities. Norse Pagan practices are diverse and people engage with the religion differently. An introduction to Norse Paganism on spiritualityheath.com states that it “is an inclusive spiritual practice, open to all who are moved toward it”.
The inclusivity offered by this religion seems to enable people with diverse and marginalised identities to feel accepted within it – in other words, it is a religious community free from judgement. For Khan, it was a welcoming religion. It helped her to overcome the challenges she had experienced as a transgender woman sex worker within the Christian faith.
Khan’s story supports the idea that religious beliefs are becoming more fluid and that people are able to tailor religion to better align with their “self”.
But, as Tanya’s story showed, there are Christian sex workers who do not feel conflicted in the way that Khan did. Religious beliefs – even those within mainstream religions like Islam and Christianity – are diverse and one size does not fit all.
Enhancing sexual pleasure
Another topic I was keen to examine was whether sex workers themselves experience sexual pleasure while working. This point is seldom addressed. But according to a number of the women I interviewed, they not only enjoyed sex with some of their clients, but religion and spirituality sometimes increased that pleasure and led to more of a connection.
Amy and spiritual vibes
Take Amy, for example. Amy is a 23-year-old American porn actor who has a spiritual identity. Our interview lasted nearly three hours. She explained to me how being a sex worker and being spiritual were not at “odds with each other”. She described how they are two separate things within her life. However, she also told me that sometimes her sexual encounters (for example, when she is creating pornography) can be a spiritual experience.
Sex can still be spiritual for me … And even if you don’t have, like, a connection with the person and you’re not gonna see them again or don’t care about them, or whatever, you can still enjoy … the moment.
Amy told me that sex could “turn her brain off” and “that’s kind of like a spiritual experience”. Amy’s spirituality concerns “high vibes”, which are positive qualities such as love, and “low vibes” associated with negative qualities such as hatred. So for Amy, although sex work and spirituality are separate, there was also a blurring of lines between them, and some sexual experiences when making porn gave her “high vibes”.
LRE, astrology
Another sex worker I spoke to said that the sex part of her work could become especially enjoyable when she and her client connected over a shared love of astrology and star signs.
Zodiac signs on ancient Torre dell'Orologio clock in St Mark’s Square, Venice, Italy.
LRE is a 22-year-old British woman who works part-time as an escort and sexual content creator. Like Amy, LRE’s spiritual identity could sometimes enhance her sexual pleasure with clients.
Oh, he was a Sagittarius [client]… we did bits and then halfway through he was like, what star sign are you? I was like, ‘you are my new favourite person ever’ … he was like laughing and smiling and I was like ‘no seriously, I love that you asked me that’ … and I thought … this is why there is such sexual chemistry.
Although the stories of Amy and LRE have some things in common, their spiritual identities were present in their sex work in different ways. In Amy’s case, her spiritual identity was not necessarily known to the fellow porn actor she had sex with. But for LRE, her spiritual identity was known and openly discussed with her client.
Belief as a coping strategy
Despite the many empowering and sex-positive stories I heard, there was sometimes a reminder that not all sex worker experiences are positive.
Lilly, Christian Orthodox
Lilly is one such example. Lilly was a 25-year-old escort, originally from Romania. She is Christian Orthodox and lives in the UK. She told me how she prays in her head when she is with a client who makes her feel uncomfortable:
If I have a problem or think something is wrong with this guy, I start to pray in my head, and it helps me not to think because if they feel I am scared, they will take advantage. So, when I start to pray, I forget I am scared and go away from those feelings and so, he will be quiet as he doesn’t feel like this.
Safety challenges are an occupational hazard for sex workers. It is important to say, though, that for Lilly at least, feeling unsafe with a client was not a regular occurrence.
Lilly told me that sex work provides her with greater opportunities to earn more compared to other jobs available to her. I did feel concerned that Lilly, at times, was made to feel scared by her clients. But it was also clear to me that, for Lilly, these negative experiences do not outweigh the positive benefits she says she gains from being an escort.
Decriminalisation
One way to keep sex workers like Lilly safer is to decriminalise the sex industry. Those who oppose decriminalisation seem to be under the misconception that all sex workers are coerced, trafficked or exploited. Although this is true for some, it is not true for most and the misconception that all sex workers are victims is itself, as research shows, a result of stigma and lack of knowledge about the industry.
It is also important to differentiate between criminalised, legalised and decriminalised sex industries. Criminalisation of the sex industry makes all sex work-related practices illegal. Legalisation of the sex industry is where sex work is legal under specific state defined conditions.
For example, under legalisation laws within the UK (except for Northern Ireland, who have adopted the Nordic Model) sex work practices are predominantly legal. However, some engagements with sex work such as soliciting on the street and working with another sex worker within the same house (as this is considered a brothel) are criminalised.
Decriminalisation is where sex work is stripped of regulations and sex workers can operate freely. I support the decriminalisation of the sex industry globally because it is under these conditions that sex workers can best protect themselves and it is the first step in abolishing stigma. Research has also shown it is the best strategy for harm reduction.
Stigma heightens risks
Although it is not the belief of all sex workers, the women I spoke to argued strongly for the decriminalisation of the sex industry. Stories told to me by Khan and LRE, who are both escorts, are cases in point.
Khan lives and works in a US state where escorting is illegal. So, if she has a violent client, she will tell staff and security at the hotel where she is working that she is on a date that has gone wrong.
… God forbid, something does happen, like there’s staffed or security and I will say I was on a date and this guy went crazy …
Khan is forced to hide her sex work from staff when she is in potential danger due to fear of prosecution. LRE faces similar issues in the UK. She told me how she has to hide her income around her hotel room when she is escorting to reduce the likelihood of theft and violence.
… If you get money, put like £100 in the safe and then anything else, just stash it around the room …
All the women I spoke to informed me they do not report violence from clients or thefts to the police. This is not surprising, given evidence that women, men and transgender sex workers are all at heightened risk of police sexual misconduct in comparison to non-sex workers.
Not ‘just’ sex workers
I think my interviews show that sex workers are not just sex workers – they have complex and multifaceted identities. You absolutely can be a sex worker and be religious or spiritual. But it is not necessarily easy to always get a balance. It is the result of constant and skilful identity management. The stories of women like Tanya, Maya, Zahra, LRE, Amy, Lilly and Khan underline how important it is to recognise the sheer diversity of people who work in this industry.
Although there are negative experiences in the sex industry, the women I spoke to, on the whole, felt empowered by their profession. They saw it as providing great opportunities for earning money and offering them positive experiences.
And, importantly, it didn’t get in the way of their religious and spiritual beliefs. As Zahra told me at the end of our discussion:
…I do believe in God and believe in Allah and in my private life. I believe in it.
So whether it was Tanya consoling a church elder, or Zahra finding a way to utilise her Muslim faith, these women were opening up new discussions about what it means to be a sex worker.
All names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.
