Religion, Violence, Tolerance & Progress: Nothing to do with Theology

Weber introduced, or promoted the idea that Protestants have a certain work ethics thanks to the values imparted by their religion. The idea — like almost all of sociology — is marshmallow-soft. Consider the reverse: that Protestants at the time happened to have a certain culture, and other protestants were likely to embrace the culture of their peers because religion acted as an attractor for identities. For one can always find (thanks to the narrative fallacy) some stuff in a religion that confirms a given theory. Weber and the Weberians missed that the Industrial Revolution hit very early on northern France and Belgium (both extremely Catholic), while the Catholic South remained agricultural and socially conservative, so one can see with the naked eye that it cannot be about something proper to the theologies or the associated doctrines and practices. It is just that cultural norms are contagious within identities, and too mush so. Incidentally such cultural norms haven’t yet hit the Mediterranean since it skipped the industrial revolution. To any statistician, the “Protestant ethics” is a North-South marker, not a Protestant-Catholic one. <a href="https://medium.com/incerto/religion-violence-tolerance-progress-nothing-to-do-with-theology-a31f351c729e">Read More</a>