Randy Cohen, who writes The Ethicist column in The New York Times, has a piece in today’s paper about the politeness of discussing faith. His verdict? Take it on:
Yet despite the risk of provoking the ire of believers, we should discuss the actions of religious institutions as we would those of all others — courteously and vigorously. This is a mark of respect, an indication that we take such ideas seriously. To slip on the kid gloves is condescending, akin to the way you would treat children or the frail or cats. . .
. . . My political beliefs, my ideas about social justice, are as deeply held as my critics’ religious beliefs, but I don’t ask them to treat me with reverence, only civility. They should not expect me to walk on tiptoe. It is not as if religious institutions occupy a precarious perch in American life. It is not the proclaimed Christian but the nonbeliever who is unelectable to high office in this era when politicians of every party and denomination make a public display of their faith.
I’m not sure what he means by “taking such ideas seriously.” If he means “accepting that the ideas may be credible,” I disagree. By now we all know whether we find the assertions of religion credible, and yet we continue to argue about them when they’re not. If by “seriously” he means “realizing that these ideas have a real impact on society,” then I’m with him.
Cohen also has a few words about media coverage of the Vatican’s attempt at Anglican-poaching:
And so it is disheartening that the editorial pages of our most important newspapers did not castigate the Vatican’s invitation to misogyny and homophobia. Some blogs did so. Daily Kos headlined its coverage, “Vatican Welcomes Bigoted Anglicans.” But the discussion provided by, say, network news barely rose above the demure. That’s not courtesy; it’s cowardice.
A nice piece by a guy who can hardly be called “militant.”
h/t: Butterflies and Wheels
A nice piece by a guy who can hardly be called “militant.”
Not any more.
Possibly he means “treat the ideas like their proponents find them to be credible.”
I think that most of us do so with believers we know and who act civilly toward us.
To the charlatans who either know better, or who have the obligation to know better yet do not, we often do not.
I think that the problem can be exemplified by how creationists view Stephen Meyer’s outright lies about “evolutionists” in his latest book. Because they believe them, they actually think that Meyer is quite gracious, as he uses fairly polite language with respect to people who–according to him–simply won’t allow ID to even be considered in academia. When we call him a liar for starting out his “case” with untrue ad hominem attacks, we’re the mean ones, simply because they swallow his lies whole (Meyer is one who, if he doesn’t know they’re lies, should know it).
That doesn’t mean that we necessarily call him a liar in every instance, nor that we don’t consider ID arguments. Yet because he is lying through his teeth (or is heavily in denial, or otherwise cannot think, or some such thing), the only way to treat his claims often is to point out that they are indeed blatant lies, usually doing so with evidence, or at least with an example.
But the many people that most of us know who are believers have worldviews which are tied up with their own sense of self-worth, and it will not do to avoid addressing them and their ideas “seriously,” in the sense of being respectful of them and of their ability to think.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Perhaps “seriously” just means that we expect the holders of such beliefs to be rational and capable of changing their minds?
I think using too much deference means that we think they are stupid or retarded. Perhaps they are, but it’s arrogant to assume so unless we find strong evidence of this. Perhaps they have good reasons for believing as they do, and we can and should argue about those reasons.
Exactly. It is the accommodationists who are disrespectful of religious beliefs, because they don’t actually treat them as real beliefs with real intellectual implications and practical consequences. The “New Atheists” are the ones who say, “OK, if those are your actual beliefs, let’s look at the evidence for them, and the consequences they have.” To me that is the mark of respecting someone’s beliefs, if you taken them seriously enough to be worthy of engaging in refutation. Just patting the faithful on the head and saying, “There, there, we can all get along” is patronizing.
That’s a good point. The full accommodationist view pretty much means that one cannot actually address the ideas or beliefs involved – one can’t consider them on the merits. The idea is basically that we’re not allowed to weigh them, think about them, analyze them, dispute them, make up our own minds about them – we’re supposed to just say ‘Yes yes, yes yes’ and move on. That is highly anomalous, and fundamentally insulting.
I wonder if believers have considered this properly…
“…or cats…”?!?
I’ve been condescended to by cats, but I don’t know of any cat that accepts condescension. Attention and servility, but not condescension.
I like the tone of the article and most of his points. I especially liked his opening:
Why should the Vatican be allowed these despicable practices when corporations would be fined or taken over for the same?
He also finished strong by pointing out that the mainstream media blew this one but the internet blogs and religious press covered it well.
“taking such ideas seriously.”
My take on this point is that believers, and in particular educated Christian believers, don’t take the implications of their religious claims seriously.
According to them Jesus was the greatest human who ever lived, who brought the most important message ever told of how we, as human beings, should live our lives. However the words Jesus used for this message were not written down at the time. In fact they weren’t written down until thirty to 50 years after he died and are only available in contradictory versions with obvious signs of insertions of later stories.
To me, if I believed this there is a fairly obvious thing to do, which is to strip the Gospels of all but the sections that can be really connected to Jesus and try to get at the real message within what remains rather than use some later incorrect and biased version of events. I think the ‘Jesus Project’ group have been trying to do this for years – resulting in a version of the Gospels with almost all the well known Jesus stories being discarded as inaccurate or traceable to other religions.
Instead of this ‘serious’ study of religion what we get from educated believers is the attitude that this sort of analysis is unimportant!
We should use the texts as they are, contradictory and full of later insertions as if this will really allow us to get to the true message supposedly taught by Jesus.
Imagine a non supernatural scenario of similar importance – say an alien visited Earth two thousand years ago and told a message about what will happen thousand of years in the future. If you really believed that this happened wouldn’t it be wise to try to find out as much accurate information about what he said rather than simply going along with historical versions of the visit that are full of obvious error and political shenanigans?
I don’t think most educated Christians think this at all. Most theologians probably think this, but not most educated lay Christians. Most educated Christians seem to accept the basic tenets of Christianity at face value. Probably not the whole Bible, but certainly the divinity of Jesus, the power of prayer, and such.
As for the Bible you are talking about, Jefferson already did that.
Randy Cohen makes some valid points, unfortunately he had to resort to blatant bigotry when criticized observant Aztecs. We don’t hate women! We love virgins, which is why we use them as sacrifices. Nor are we homophobic. We simply believe that allowing them to live results in crop failures. Sure, he points out the evil done in the name of the Aztec gods, like the human sacrifice and blood rituals. But but what about all of the good that was accomplished, like ensuring that the sun rose every day or keeping the Earth from being swallowed by a giant turtle? Cohen should learn more theology before trashing an entire faith.
HH wins the internets!
When I read statements like the one below (from the Catholic Register), I find it very difficult to be either civil or polite:
The bishop and metropolitan of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, which is part of the worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), said he was overjoyed by the news.
“Pope Benedict continually amazes me,” said Bishop Peter Wilkinson. “Not only is he a genius and a holy man, but he can do something new, something that has not been done before.”
catholicregister.org/content/view/3534/849/
Apparently the scientologists think that the French Government is being impolite and not respecting their “religious freedom” because they were convicted of fraud. Check it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8327569.stm
That is a wonderful article, but I’m feeling a little dry humped.
he says that “Criticism is not contempt.” my problem is that I really do feel contempt, I feel moral contempt over people who hold up religion as their reasoning for their views.
How can you not? We are not talking about whether a person enjoys some kind of wine or theater, we are talking about how people treat other people and the reasons they have for their views.
Sorry but I do feel contempt. The more I have thought about this the greater my contempt grows. I have nothing but contempt for people who hold a bible up and say “because god wants me to do _______”. Any statement that begins with “God wants ___________________” is to me a contemptible statement.
So I don’t know what he is really saying? Criticize but act civil? This is exactly how we ended up at the current compromise … religion is a special and protected sphere of thought and organization, it is legally and socially exempted from that which is called “civil” – civil law and civil codes of conduct. He discusses the boundaries, polygamy, human ritual sacrifice, stryper), but isn’t he suggesting that the boundaries move a bit more? Where?
So while I agree with Cohen, he doesn’t suggest anything different, only that people “are critical” … he doesn’t want to translate that criticism into any action except the very action that he accuses the faithful of in the first place (ie not doing business with a bigot by tearing up a contract because the bigot acted in line with his bigotry), Fine, but that is the same thing the religious want to do.
They want to treat women differently for ethical reasons found in scripture.
What Cohen could have said, from his platform as “The Ethicist”, but didn’t, is that God carries no ethical weight – that reasoning to ethics though appeal to authority, tradition, or revelation is a morally bankrupt practice which civilization must transcend … that is what I’d have liked to hear him say. That is what we need to understand to move forward. That this whole practice of justifying ideas and behaviors endorsed by iron age texts and calling them sacred, is itself profane.
Instead all he urges is “be critical”. Well thanks for that permission Randy … nothing like being assured it is OK to actually use my inalienable rights.
Permission to “be critical” is better than nothing, but it isn’t much.
Religious institutions encourage the belief that they are beyond criticism, beyond reproach, even beyond human laws. Such an attitude deserves no less than the highest order of contempt and ridicule.
“Yet despite the risk of provoking the ire of believers, we should discuss the actions of religious institutions as we would those of all others”
I think there’s an important distinction made here, one that MadScientist and some others pick up on – between religious institutions and religious individuals.
Yes, this is an important moral distinction, just as with the institution of slavery, the institution was the problem, the slave owners themselves have no culpability.
Do they?
No, but for many religious believers it would be more accurate to compare them to the slaves, not the slave owners. And I don’t think the slaves had any fault in it.
Kind of hard to compare the two, since believers are in it of their own free will, whereas slaves, not so much.
For certain sorts of believers, “toleration” entails letting them impose their practices on the rest of us. Insistence upon secularism in government and education is “intolerance” and criticism of religion is “fundamentalism”.
It is only natural that people trying to follow L. Ron Hubbard’s example would view fraud as a sacred duty.
I really don’t buy that we ought to be “tolerant” of things which are intolerable. If someone came up to you on the street and started describing how they rape children, would you be polite? I know I wouldn’t. In fact, I’d be downright nasty and probably beat the moron within an inch of his life. He and his position have never earned better from me.
I also won’t accept ridiculous ideas as credible, no matter how strongly the adherent might wish I would. I’m sorry, your silly “god” beliefs are silly no matter how much faith you might have. Expecting me to pat you on the head and make you feel better for holding them is probably a pointless idea. I don’t care how bad I make a flat-earther feel for demolishing their flat-earth ideas. Wrong beliefs are simply wrong. The idea that I ought to accommodate abject stupidity to spare their precious little feelings is absurd.
It’s just not going to happen.
I guess that Randy Cohen hadn’t read Professor Dawkins’, or Paula Kirby’s thoughts on this subject in the Washington Post recently. I don’t believe they minced many words on the issue.
I meant to say “fixed that for him,” but failed.
When religion is used as justification for batshit insane behavior, I say politeness is a minor concern. The following story justifies my atheism:
“This is how staggeringly pointless the killing in Iraq is getting: shepherds in the rural western Baghdad neighborhood of Gazalea have recently been murdered, according to locals, for failing to diaper their goats. Apparently the sexual tension is so high in regions where Sheikhs take a draconian view of Shariah law, that they feel the sight of naked goats poses an unacceptable temptation. They blame the goats.
I’ve spent nearly a year here, on more than a dozen visits since the early days of the war, and that seemed about as preposterous as Iraq could get until I heard about the grocery store in east Baghdad. The grocer and three others were shot to death and the store was firebombed because he suggestively arranged his vegetables. ”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5622900
Dawkins news feed ran a story on Richard Holloway, a Scot, who wrote, “Godless Morality” – which is a thin book that I can’t recommend enough – which makes the point that Randy Cohen didn’t have the cojones to make and that my own secular scientific education did not feel proper to make … but one that I think is vital, here is a quote from the book:
We could also argue that issues of truth are themselves moral issues. if we become persuaded that a particular claim is not true or is one that we can no longer hold with a clear conscience, then we are making a moral judgement; we are saying that it is important to act on what we believe to be true and not cling to falsehoods because they comfort us or have secondary effects. It is in this area that we come close to the exasperation that many people who aspire to live moral lives feel toward religion. They understand the historical connection between religion and ethics, though that connection, for them is no longer vital or logical. They would tell us that it is important for them to have a proper sense of responsibility towards others, which, if it is no longer anchored to religion, must find an anchor somewhere else …
You are almost there Randy, you just have to have the guts to say it out loud in the paper of record, who knows, you just might become a great ethicist, rather than a latter day Mrs. Manners.
I advocate treating religionists identical to the manner in which they treat others who have supernatural beliefs that said religionists find harmful or ridiculous.
If Christians don’t want the Scientologists recruiting their kids, they ought not proselytize to others. They should not ask for privileges they wouldn’t want to extend to Wiccans nor should they expect deference for whatever supernatural tale they’ve come to “believe in”.
If religionists want more respect than they’d give a rain dancer, then they need to present evidence as to why they deserve respect they’d not extend to other superstitious folks.