The Wealth of Religions by Rachel Mccleary

Sophy Ramírez  | 06 de diciembre de 2019  | Vistas: 422

Rachel McCleary came to Universidad Fransico Marroquín to talk about the book she co-wrote and recently released titled The Wealth of Religions about how religion affects economic development. 

In her book, she focused on studying how religions compete, how they price their goods and what type of beliefs drive economic behavior. Also, states that religion tends to be a voluntary choice in which we let religion promote values that would affect our interactions, productivity, labor and savings.   

So when you join a religion you are asking the question, what am I getting out of this? what is it giving me? and what of the things that religion gives you is other world compensators because you are interested in salvation and damnation, you are interested in what is going to happen to you in the afterlife.” 

The philosopher defines rational choice as the demand in religion and describes some regulations and subsidies that religion may impose to make people go to church and its relation with the government. 

Then she explains maxed behavior like the salvific merit, which consists on doing something that would take you to heaven and get you out of hell, and mentions the salvific merit in the Buddhism, Hinduism, and Catholicism, she also mentions how the ideas of some big thinkers such as Martin Luther and John Weasly influence in religion. 

McCleary describes some indicators such as GDP (gross domestic product), urbanization, life expectancy and education, and how they may affect religious participation. Then mentions some important scholars and their perspective in religion such as Richard Feiman and Albert Einstein. 

What they’re thinking about is outside the box, they’re not thinking about religion in a normal sense that you and I might think about religion, they’re not thinking about going a catholic church or a synagogue, they’re talking about a religion that is beyond those types of parameters, traditional orthodox parameters, what they are doing is talking about religion about beliefs that are heterodox.”

Finally, she exposes the conclusions of her investigation about secularisation, orthodox and heterodox ideas, and what could lead to a productive economic life with or without religion.

Watch this video and learn how religion can influence economic behavior and productivity.