Me, expecting a bemused response: “I love this country. Everybody’s Catholic, and no one believes in god”
My host: “Exactly! It’s perfect!”

As usual, the discussion here is predicated on the author’s own tastes and mores being themselves free from any determining factors. And the discussion dwells within the bounds of the rational-actor theory of the moderate left.
[I like my new tag-line.]

“Good cultural explanations need to identify the specific mechanisms that make for cultural stability and change.”

There’s no need to be specific in themselves. All that’s necessary is that they can be shown to undermine anti-determinist arguments. And that’s not very hard.

Well to be fair the Church of England does receive some government money.

From the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England.

Out of 166 million spent , the HB&MCfE give 8 million to ‘Cathedrals & places of worship’.

Including 127,000 to a Buddhist centre which occupies a listed building.

So i guess we can now expect to see stories about the collapse of the Buddhist congregation.

Henry, I don’t know what biases you’re working with, but you can’t have incentives without culture; it’s culture that makes the incentives meaningful. Sahlins etc.

Number 45 with a bullet!

http://tinyurl.com/s7p5q

Something science stopped working on sometime in the 60s.

Ah, yes, my parents tell me October 17, 1967 was a remarkable day: when the order came down to cancel all applied and medical science and retrain the researchers as elementary particle physicists.

Seriously, this is a truly bizarre claim. There have been various counterarguments in this thread about the worth of elementary particle physics, and I’ve defended it myself from time to time (having been trained in it), but it’s also worth mentioning that elementary particle physics never was characteristic of science as a whole and is certainly not now. If anything, the life sciences, with all their potential for benefit to human and ecological health, are a greater center of excitement and activity in modern science, as Jakob Bronowski predicted decades ago.

the Babyklappe that I am familiar with is the “Operation Moses” in Frankfurt, an RC initiative. And (at least, when the Babyklappe project began) the Klappen wereviolating law by declining to record and report information as to the mother. As you note, the state seems to be accommodating such projects now.

My point is that everyone believes in the scientific method…as long as you agree to their core beliefs and biases first.

Bush is the greatest president ever.

Iraq is a tremendous success.

The tens of billions of dollars we’ve sunk into the search for the Higgs boson has gone towards extremely important research.

etc.

The average American couldn’t name a single living American scientist because?

They’re a bunch of self-interested wankers who don’t want anyone to judge them by any standards but their own, maybe?

Similarly, I’ve seen the post-WWII Western European attitude believed to be helped by a very disasterous few decades – WWI and WWII. After that, people didn’t trust strong ideologies.

I´m not sure but I think I´ve read Internet articles saying that the decidedly pro-war stance of the UK Anglican Church at the beginning of WW1 did hurt them after that war ended?
Likewise I can readily believe that after two World Wars – where each European country´s church blessed the armed forces of that country – the citizens might become a tad cynical…

In Germany, some RC-run hospitals have reintroduced that “wheel” (Babyklappe). Mothers can give up a newborn at the hospital, with no questions asked and nothing reported to the authorities.

Just to mention it, the first “Babyklappe” in 2000 was introduced by a civic group (is that the right term?) in Hamburg-Altona. It´s a private group of citizens called “SterniPark” financed by private donations. And while some RC-run hospitals have followed that example, publicly-owned ones have done the same.

It is all the more admirable in that the catholic hospitals that do this are, technically, breaking the law (or at least were, when they started doing this a few years ago; the legislature might have made some accommodation since then).

Uhh, not exactly. At least not now.
Actually German law uses a legal “fiction” here. The one who might be in trouble here is the mother because she abandons her newborn child. Thus breaking the law. However for a period of 8 weeks German law will view this as simply giving away your child to someone trusted because you were unable to care for it. Like for example a single mother having to stay in hospital and letting her parents care for the child.
Which means that the mother can rethink things and reclaim her baby during this 8 week period without any legal problems.
After 8 weeks though the hospital has to inform the state child care agency. After which legal proceedings are started for an adoption.

The hospital or private group isn´t in any legal trouble here. In fact they can even advertise their telephone numbers to advise troubled pregnant women. Or advertise the locations of their “wheels”. Just common sense since otherwise the newborn babies might end up in less “hospitable” locations and face death.

The remaining legal problem is that according to German Basic Law, adopted childs (when grown up) have a right to know who their birth parents are if they want. Obviously that´s impossible with the anonymous “Babyklappe”.

@isabel

Mrs. Tilton, apparently in the US 45 States have instituted similar “safe havens” (like police stations, hospitals, etc) where people can anonimously abandon newborns. While I can understand that this was an acceptable solution at a time where no effective contraception existed, it saddens me to see that it still has a role in our time. I would much prefer to see sexual education and free contraception more available.

Well, contraception probably isn´t the main problem here. After all, in Germany a girl aged 16 can go to a gynecologist to get the pill without the consent or knowledge of her parents. In fact the doctor is legally forbidden to mention it to her parents without her consent.
However “incidents” do happen (especially in the passion of the moment so to speak). And I can well believe that some young girls, afraid of the reactions of her parents, try to hide their pregnancy. And then try to get “rid of” their newborn baby because they simply don´t know what to do.
Now that´s true for any society. But I should point out the director of that program mentioned that some of the telephone calls they´re getting about the program come from young Muslim girls. Which parents are maybe a bit more “conservative” than German society at large.

And I certainly hope that the survival rate of these babies is higher than before, where it was little more than acceptable infanticide, anyway.

That´s probably a given.
If the newspaper articles are right, in the years before that program around 30-40 newborn babies were abandoned by their mothers per year in Germany. More than half of them didn´t survive.
Since then the death rate has gone down dramatically.

Just a small nitpick. :)
It wasn´t seen as “acceptable infanticide” before. I mean, the numbers were “small”. But each case did get a lot of coverage in the media. Because it involves helpless little babies. And everything that might help them is okay in my book.