Paul Troop has a short essay at the University of Oxford’s Practical Ethics site: “What do do with the redundant churches after the demise of religion?” Troop starting thinking about stuff after he heard Dan Dennett lecture at Oxford, where he said that after atheism’s triumph the abandoned places of worship could be used as secular gathering places. (He didn’t go so far as Alain de Botton and suggest they be turned in to secular churches. But then Troop takes up a question we’ve all considered: how bad is religion if it makes people feel good, or gives them hope or consolation? After all, they’ll never know that they were wrong since death brings (to the atheist mind) total extinction of consciousness. Here’s Troop’s musings:
I started me thinking as I wondered whether a belief in religion might be better than atheism for attaining this, or any other, goal. Some, such as Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind (2012)) have suggested that religion is a particularly effective force for bringing people together.
I would like to ask a broader question, which is whether religion is better than atheism for attaining any particular normative goal. The reason for this is that confining the question to which is best for promoting cohesion begs the question as to why cohesion is important. To attempt to avoid this problem, one could pose the question more broadly: given any chosen normative goal, is religion or atheism more condusive to attaining it?
I should probably add that I am an atheist myself, a great fan of Dennett, and very sceptical of religion. As such, I would suggest that I do not have an axe to grind, or at least the type of axe that Dennett worries about (Breaking the Spell (2006) p 32). Nonetheless, I struggle with the reasons behind the proposition that atheism is better than religion for attaining normative goals.
One consideration could be that religion causes people to believe things that are not true. Richard Dawkins, another of the ‘Four Atheists of the Apocalypse’, points out that the ‘beneficial effects in no way boost the truth value of religion’s claims.’ (The God Delusion (2007) p 194). Dawkins then quotes George Bernard Shaw: ‘The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is not more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.’ But I’m not convinced: it seems possible that a believer could be more likely to attain [insert your chosen normative goal here] than a sceptic, even if he believed things that were not true.
Believing things that are true rather than things that are not true could have some value. But the topics on which beliefs diverge seem quite peripheral: how much difference does it actually make to a person’s behaviour whether they believe that the life was created by a god rather than by a process of evolution by natural selection? Equally a belief in tenets of religion that cannot be true (talking snakes, virgin births, resurrection, etc) may have little actual impact on how people live their lives.
My normal response is that most religions can’t keep their beliefs to themselves, and they either proselytize their kids (all of them) or inject themselves into politics (some of them). And since faith-based reasoning is flawed and irrational compared to secular reasoning, and more likely to harm society, we must oppose it. But I keep coming back to Shaw’s statement. If happiness is a primary goal of life, and religion helps bring it, what’s the harm? I’ve outlined some of the harms above, and add to those the notion that faith-based reasoning is likely to overlap into other areas that aren’t religious (i.e., global warming). But if every faith were like the Quakers, or the Jains, would it really be so harmful for the world?
h/t: Barry
Ya think?
All faiths, even the not-so-obnoxious ones, train followers to accept as true things for which there is no evidence. This is bad because once such training is entrenched, there is no end to the potentially nasty consequences. This is the problem with the idea that we only need to confront the “bad” religions. The “nice” ones have no more reason to be correct than the “mean” ones. They just happen to be less immediately dangerous.
It’s an interesting question. Some people think that having true beliefs is intrinsically valuable. I’m not sure that’s the case, but it would at least have to enter into our calculation.
I think the harm of having irrational beliefs is primarily something like what you state: it might bleed into other areas of life, and cause people to think that rationality just isn’t really that important.
//
Two quick responses to a thought-provoking piece. First, for both prudential and ethical reason, truth should be the highest value in society (if not always in private life). Among the many reasons why that is so, false hopes induced by religion may stifle the response we must make to survive, for example, climate change. As I’ve written elsewhere, religious fatalism is a greater threat to civilization than religious terrorism.
Second, while it is glaringly true that in traditional religions (and most recently invented ones) “faith-based reasoning is flawed and irrational compared to secular reasoning” it is not necessarily so. (Some on this list may remember mocking my 2011 Sci Am blogs essay on a secular case for creation — thereby putting on a fine demonstration of secularists’ occasional ability to miss the point, leap to conclusions, and reason incompetently.)
In any event, it may be that our best course is not to press for the abolition of but rather for the radical modification of religious ideologies.
Regards,
Clay Farris Naff
Atheist (Really, cross my heart, am on record saying so in a church.)
” As I’ve written elsewhere”
“Some on this list may remember mocking my 2011 Sci Am blogs essay”
Well, you are either a famous person whom I’ve never heard of, or a legend in your own mind. 🙂
(BTW, a religious person doesn’t care if he doesn’t survive because he’s going to heaven afterwards ;))
OK, let’s insert “global population reduction” as the normative goal of choice. Do you think Catholics are more likely than atheists to achieve that goal?
Or how about “halting the spread of AIDS in Africa” or “reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies” or “improving human health and longevity through stem-cell research” or “preventing war in the Middle East”?
I think his contention here is not that you can insert any given normative goal there, but that he thinks it is possible that there might exist some normative goal that could be inserted in the statement while still keeping it true.
The text doesn’t seem to read that way though. I’ve emphasized the relevant part:
Of course there’s some< goal that could be inserted while keeping the statement true. “Maintaining a state of blissful ignorance” comes to mind.
But so what? If there’s even one important goal that cannot be attained without clear-headed acknowledgment of facts, then that undermines Troop’s claim that it’s harmless to let believers keep their false beliefs.
Arg. Italics fail.
To answer the question in his title: Turn the redundant churches into apartment conversions. These are popular, and keep the pretty building preserved. A lot of very nice architecture is decaying away in countries that have secularised, and it’s a shame.
Turn the smaller ones into pubs, then both religious and secular people can enter and end up on their knees.
A couple of decades ago we stayed at a backpackers’ south of Dunedin (South Island, NZ). And it had a bar which was in a very small chapel building, complete with all the lovely old woodwork. A very nice snug bar it made, too.
In Manchester (UK) an old Victorian church was turned into a Climbing Gym – The Manchester Climbing Centre http://www.manchesterclimbingcentre.com/ I used to climb there and it was wonderful! The church still had the stained glass windows and all the wooden paneling and plaques for dead people etc. The high ceilings allowed for awesome climbing walls and the mezzanine level where the organ might once have been (or the choir) made a great cafe and ‘Cotswold’ shop, where you could eat and watch the climbers on the upper walls. see photo here http://www.manchesterclimbingcentre.com/facilities/ I really miss that place now that I no longer live in Manchester!
The problem is not with specific religious claims. We can debate the beneficial or harmful nature of each religious belief and we can likely find a selection that would be beneficial for its holders, and indeed the world as a whole.
The problem comes from the way religious beliefs are formed, how they spread and how they establish themselves. Even if we could hypothetically establish such a benevolent religion, there is no way of ensuring that a more harmful version will not emerge from it, since there is no reality check.
Sbscrb
Once you accept things without evidence, you have walked off the the plank of reason and every bit of nonsense can be accepted.
Seems dangerous to me.
Perhaps more dangerous is believing that we are always using reason when we think. We don’t. And it’s often evolutionarily advantageous not to. If you “believe” in atheism, you have already lost the argument. Who – when arguing a belief – does NOT think he/she is right?
To me, atheism is not a belief. It is simply what I have left after I eliminate everything else. Let the religious have their beliefs. The challenge to the rest of us is not to “win out” in a religion vs. atheism battle. Rather, through social conversations and via social change, we help religions to evolve and their belief systems to change. Indeed, it has always been so. We will always have religions. They simply have to become more believable. And slowly but surely – they do.
That may not make sense to everybody.
But it does to me…
This might appear tangential to the topic, but I sometimes ask the question of theists: “If you were the only person who believed what you do [about God, etc.], would you still believe it?” I can understand why an individual might have all sorts of weird beliefs, but why does one have the need to convince others to believe like him or her? Certainly advocates of science would like everyone to understand the methods and findings of science as much as they can, but are evangelistic believers spreading their beliefs around motivated by the same assumptions? I wonder.
They see it as their duty – because their religion tells them so – to convert non-believers so as to save them from Hell.
“if every faith were like the Quakers, or the Jains, would it really be so harmful for the world?” Not harmful at all; ‘twould be good!
“Like” in what way? As in “capable of producing Richard M. Nixon”?
The Quakers Jerry’s talking about hated the comparison to Nixon because they were his ideological enemy in nearly every way, and didn’t even come from the same religion. He grew up in a younger and more traditional Christian church calling themselves the “Quaker Church” though they had barely any connection to the larger and better-known group Jerry’s talking about.
The only actual Quaker president we’ve had was Herbert Hoover.
The “No True Quaker” argument.
Which illustrates another problem with the fanciful “If everyone was a….” idea. Completely and utterly fanciful.
But I agree. If everyone was like the most liberal Unitarian, life on this rock would be a bit better overall. And everyone would have a pony.
…and She would be pink. And a unicorn. And invisible.
b&
The No True Scotsman fallacy is about actual Scotsmen in Scotland who just don’t act “Scottish” enough for the arguer, not about Germans who don’t even eat haggis but call themselves the Scotty Club. The “Quaker Church” Nixon grew up in has about as little in common with mainstream quakers as the Church of Christ, Scientist has to scientists. It’s really just a name with no central authority to tell them they can’t use it.
In any case, Jerry wasn’t referring to that church in his blog.
It doesn’t really matter which particular religions were referenced. The common problem with religion is that there is no external method of verification for its claims. Which means that it is inherently fragile and prone to fragmentation. And each fragment claims to be the one true faith.
Hmmm…see my comment at 17.
“Religion is a particularly effective force for bringing people together.”
Religion is also a particularly effective force for blowing people up.
Harmless bullshit can spawn harmful bullshit. And did so many times.
‘But if every faith were like the Quakers, or the Jains, would it really be so harmful for the world?’
But of course ‘every faith’ isn’t like the Friends, nor are the other religions (I’m thinking of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Catholic/Protestant Christianity) likely to come around to lives of quiet worship and general compassion.
And, anyway, faith in what? If in an afterlife of eternal bliss, then insufficient attention to the needs of this world would tend to follow. If in terms of earthly happiness, then why is it not manifest among the millions of slum-dwellers who crowd in to kiss the pope’s ring? Most of the world’s population ‘can’t afford’ happiness, and whether we well-off folks ever achieve it, religion or no, is mighty doubtful.
Perhaps the best reason to abandon the lotus-eating of religion is simple human survival. The earth doesn’t ‘care’ whether Homo sapiens makes it any further along the evolutionary road to somewhere/nowhere. Nor does the cosmos. The question is, do we? Concerted action alone cab curtail humankind’s ecological destruction of so-called nature before it’s to late (for us, not for nature, which in its real condition isn’t a social construction with a capital N
but just what is, was and will be).
Concerted action, I say again. It must be scientific/secular, it must be prompt and it must be socially mandatory. Sorry about that, libertarians.
You might get a certain measure of happiness out of believing that the nice man in the plaid jacket would never think to sell you a lemon instead of a cherry. But the harm that comes out of such wishful thinking should be obvious.
That, and it’s just another one of those “the masses are too stupid to do what I want them to unless I trick them” power fantasies to think that there’s utility in religion / false beliefs. If you think you can control what happens to such a set of false beliefs once you’ve got it up and off the ground and running, you’re even more deluded than those you’re trying to scam.
Cheers,
b&
I wonder if Troop fully appreciates that religious belief has to be enforced. When kids grow up, they have to be made to feel guilty about any doubts their rationality has provoked. Otherwise, they will lose their faith and become like Troop.
Any atheist who wants to make the case that religion should be left to flourish should have to answer the question, What about the children?
Honesty is the best policy.
Would you be happier ignoring reality and being Amish? After all, Amish people aren’t violent, they don’t lobby for oppressive legislation, etc. What if everybody was Amish? Kiss life-saving, life-extending, life-improving technology goodbye.
Not so happy, now, huh?
And what kind of goals are you likely to accomplish without modern technology?
You can do this for any religion.
Honesty, that is, acknowledging reality, is the best policy.
The Amish have plenty of violence, they just tend to direct it at people society in general does not care about, namely women, children and other Amish in general.
I certainly lack expertise in most things Amish.
But the point remains. A delusion might make a few people happy for a while, but expanding the sample to include everybody, and across generations, would be disastrous.
Nobody will be very happy in a society where bullshit is never called and faith is allowed, really, really allowed out of its playpen.
But the Amish aren’t using that technology now, are they? Saying that you couldn’t accomplish e.g. technocratic goals with a pastoral , religious mindset is missing the point. It may be that a life living in a rural setting, having 8 kids and dying at 29 is a more happy existence overall. I don’t believe this is the case but that’s not the problem.
Imagine if we were having a debate about what good nutrition from square one, as if we knew nothing about it: Some people are pushing for a rational approach, seeing what things are edible and what not and building a list of things we can eat, which are good for you, which are mediocre and which are poisonous.
Another group of people propose to just eat what we find in front of us. These people are separated into sub-groups, through habit and happenstance: Some will only pick up berries, some will only pick stuff hanging from trees, some will put anything in their mouth.
In this analogy the alternative Paul Troop might come along and say: “Well, those berry-eating people may have the right idea. We can tell that berries are good for you. Specifically, those Strawberrists, who are currently feeding in the strawberry patch seem to be doing alright!”
The problem is that the good bits (the strawberries) are incidental, while the problematic bits (picking up random stuff to eat uncritically) is not.
With dogmatic religion, the individual creeds may be better or worse, but they are (to a degree) incidental. The underlying layer of uncritical thinking, superstition and appeals to authority are not, so the latter is always capable of superseding the former. A peaceful, highly-religious community is one false-prophet grifter away from being a cult.
Do the Amish not reap any benefits made possible by the technological advances that occur around them?
I suppose you could say we can live a happy delusion, until we succumb to some easily curable disease at 25, if we didn’t know better. I don’t think that’s the spirit of the question, however.
Challenges are better met with reason and skepticism than with faith.
If the Amish are like Mennonites, it depends on the Order. There are many that consider it “god’s will” & suffer then die without seeking medical help.
What is surprising is that other believers in a paradise after death don’t welcome the death that will carry them to that paradise.
I live in a small town in northeast indiana’s Amish country. There are indeed many different groups of Amish, and each local bishop has the responsibility to keep “worldly aspects of life” to a minimum.
That being said, many of the Amish around here use natural gas powered appliances and most Amish families I’ve had contact with have cell phones. They also are very willing to go to the doctor and use all the usual methods of health care available in our larger, and more urban community.
As a disclaimer I would have to add that I am a retired public school teacher, and my contact with the Amish of the community is almost exclusively with those who were my students and their families. The more “conservative” Amish around here send their children to Amish schools.
Are the Amish less happy than Americans in general? Is there any definitive research on this? Obviously, we can point to lots of things we have that we value highly and that the Amish lack. And we can point to Amish social conventions that we find oppressive. But I don’t think this means you can simply assume Amish are generally less happy. I think they probably ARE less happy, but it’s an empirical question that cannot be resolved by guessing or assuming.
I’ve seen research suggesting that high-income Americans aren’t any happier in general than middle-income Americans, even though a high income provides access to more and better goods and services, and arguably more freedom from legal and social constraints.
What do do with the redundant churches after the demise of religion?
Turn them into carpet stores.
I used to pass that building on my way into work every day…sadly I believe Mike’s World-Famous Carpets is in the process of closing down.I had a feeling it’d be that building in the picture before I even clicked your link.
If no harm was done ( that’s a big if, I know ) then I honestly wouldn’t mind.
It reminds me of a Bertrand Russell quote:
Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.
‘What do do with the redundant churches after the demise of religion?’
Well, I know religion is full of crap, but… 😉
Just read somewhere,someone said that ‘life without God is like an unsharpened pencil it has no point. I’ll bet there are thousands of believers who would say that’s right.So what can you do.
that may go well for people living in this country until they’re lives start going south and the god they pray too does nothing to help them. “well its gods will” doesn’t help
I’m such a hardcore atheist that I use a mechanical pencil.
As others have already noted, there are a lot of pernicious beliefs that come out of religion that are counterintuitive both to individual and group happiness (birth control is seen as bad which results in too many people, condoms are seen as bad resulting in disease, sex is seen as bad resulting in crazy guilt and bizarre laws etc, etc.).
Even if manage to have a society built around you a benign religion like the Jains (and I even wonder about the Jains because some wear masks as to not harm micro-organisms they breath & that level of OCD has to be uncomfortable), by nature religion doesn’t change. Society would stagnate forever: no new ideas, no inventions – no fun! That can’t be good!
It looks like I had a mild stroke when I wrote the first sentence of the second paragraph. It should read, “Even if you manage to have a society built around a benign religion….”
Making this point was my aim, upthread, in selecting what I thought was a suitably benign religion.
The test has to be “what would happen if everybody held this delusion?” Even in the case of benign religions you’d have disaster. How would we ever accomplish anything if we all, as Jains, were, as you wrote, obsessive-compulsively preoccupied with preserving ALL life? We’d be absolutely crippled.
One might say that the test is actually currently running: most people do opt for delusion thinking it will result in greater happiness. But I think one would be wrong to call what is actually happening with people and religion a valid test. I think the variety of delusions, and the contradictory nature of many of them serve as a sort of “checks and balances” system. The American Protestant has his delusions, but will denounce the delusions of Muslims. A Catholic who’s pro-life because of a delusion about ensoulment may decry the delusions of a homeopath.
We can (just barely) keep the lid on total failure because not everybody has the same set of delusions.
Yes and education or political affiliation have little bearing on which woo they woo.
Interesting how people can turn the scienceyness off when religiwoo is mentioned.
I should’ve continued:
“…but that doesn’t mean those delusions aren’t harmful.”
What’s the harm?
1. Faith undermines critical thinking elsewhere in life. (As noted a few times above.)
2. Wasted time.
3. Wasted opportunity (working for a spiritual reward in the afterlife when you could’ve been working for a temporal reward).
4. Wasted money (tithing). (Take control of your own charitable donations!)
5. Risking health by praying &c. rather than seeking proper healthcare.
&c.
All of these can harm the believer’s dependants, too, which is the worse thing, I think.
Quite apart from any deleterious influence on public policy…
/@
This sounds like an excellent thought experiment for an XKCD “What If?” scenario. What if all the Christians in the US converted to Jainism overnight?
Well, the first thing that would happen is a massive shortage of fresh produce followed quickly by the collapse of the livestock industry as millions of people switch to vegetarianism. Government would have to step in to care for abandoned cattle, pig, sheep, turkeys, etc. for the rest of their natural lives.
Meat-eaters would become a despised minority with little political power. Bacon and pastrami, while not actually illegal (at least in the short term), would be virtually unobtainable except by the very rich.
I imagine there’d be repercussions for university biology labs as well, with little grant money available for studying (say) fruit-fly genetics. Medical research would virtually come to a halt.
A world in which all the power is in the hands of committed vegetarians and pacifists might not in the long run be worse than the world we live in, but it would certainly be very different.
Are you telling me (under your scenario) I’d have to give up my pepperoni pizza? Never!
Well yes, if it were just some harmless belief about a creative intelligence being behind the universe and all going to somehow turn out well in the end then there would not be anything to worry about. (And indeed a lot of people who call themselves Christian don’t actually believe anything more specific than this, at least judging from my youthful experiences in Germany.)
But there are two main problems with religion. The first is that this harmless belief is still irrational and thus not sustainable if rationality is considered a virtue. In other words, the believer must turn an irrational faith in implausible beliefs into a virtue to continue believing, and that is where the trouble starts, because that stance has the tendency to seep out onto other, more relevant issues.
Sadly, it is a small step from “why are you so intolerant, can’t we all believe what we want about souls?” to “why are you so intolerant, can’t we all believe what we want about treating our sick children with prayer?” Or from another perspective, allowing blind faith to enter the discussion constitutes an abdication of intellectual responsibility and quite simply makes the resolution of any controversy impossible because there is no common base from which to argue.
The second is that religions even in their most harmless forms tend to come with holy books, and as Eric MacDonald likes to point out, even after four generations of teaching children that (1) this book is holy, (2) the nasty bits need to be seen as metaphorical or something, and (3) religion is all about love really, there may suddenly be some guys in the fifth generation who say, wait, you told me that this is gods word, but you hypocritically ignore most of it? To demonstrate that I am a better believer than you, I’m now gonna stone me some homosexuals!
“religion is a particularly effective force for bringing people together” too often in order for them to attack people another religion brings together.
“religion is a particularly effective force for bringing people together” too often in order for them to attack people another religion brings together.
QFT. Religion is one of those things that feed off the human tendency to split into tribes, groups of people that feel they share common traits that set them apart from others. It reduces our capacity for empathy with people outside of the in-group, leading to a host of other problems that have been referred to by other commenters.
Sadly, this tribal urge seems to be innate to us humans. Finding a solution to that would seem to me to have the highest priority, with the demise of religion as a nice side effect.
There’s a basic problem with this debate – people have different temperaments.
Although I’m reluctant to sort people into categories, the David Keirsey Temperament Sorter suggests that there are 4 main personality types:
Guardians (40% to 45% of the population) – dependable, hard working and loyal
Idealists (15% – 20%) – focused on human potential and building relationships
Artisans (30% – 35%) – highly creative, fun loving and spontaneous
Rationals (5% – 10%) – skeptical, self-contained and focused on problem solving.
Perhaps religious belief is of benefit to particular temperaments, but not others? Perhaps reality is more important? One size does probably not fit all – how do we find out?
I’d call that Keirsey stuff nonsense at the same level as astrology.
I have a salary and time of service (and paid-off mortgage, etc., etc., etc.) that says I’m hard-working and dependable. I’m as much of an idealist as it gets — a card-carrying member of the Green Party, the ACLU, the FFRF, and a frequent donor to MSF. I’m an artisan; I’m a (part-time) professional trumpeter; I pay the bills crafting computer code; and I’m starting up a photography / fine art reproduction business. And if all y’all don’t recognize me as about the most radical rational skeptic as there are, then I’m not as good a writer as I like to think I am.
So if I’m the very archetype of each of the four main personality types, then it should be instantly obvious that, just like your newspaper’s daily astrological forecasts, they’ve been each carefully crafted to be universally applicable.
I hope nobody pays Kiersey to be evaluated (or whatever). Except, of course, I’d be astounded if he didn’t have a loyal and devoted following…all the charlatans do….
Cheers,
b&
Once you have convinced a person that they do not need, nor should they ask for proof of what you are trying to sell them, you have created a monster with no mind of its own, a zombie that will do and say whatever you command it to, this cannot be a good thing. And this is what all religion is, it creates zombies who have been taught that thinking and reasoning are sins, and that they should just do as they are told by the religious hierarchy. Very, very scary.
the answer to your question is …it makes you epistemologically lazy …religion and the like ARRESTS intelligent analysis !!
…and in it’s dogma societal progress. Stifling, stifling, stifling.
*its*
Jamy Ian Swiss told an Isaac Asimov quote in his TAM 2012 speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIiznLE5Xno at 35:14 mark
Something to the effect of “What’s the harm in believing something that is not real? It is a loss of opportunity to humanity. We all have limited finite resources in this life and time, energy, money. Every dollar and hour that is wasted on something that does not exist will never be recovered. Every dollar and hour that is wasted on something that does not exist, is false, misleading, etc. every dollar and hour and a quantity of human energy and effort that could have been contributed to something real and in turn, making the world a better place for all.”
Many Christians are taught to exercise faith in their everyday living, the “ask your Heavenly Father observe the lilies and sparrows” faith method. So that just as they believe that they already have attained eternal life by faith, they are taught to believe that their goals are already attained by faith: by asking God, believing God is delivering and watching and waiting to receive them. I would suggest that the degree to which Christians believe this and attempt to actualize it varies in many ways. One can imagine at least this division among many: the very poor, very unskilled and very uneducated Christian might use this faith method to access just about every normative goal, whereas the wealthy, highly skilled and educated Christian might opt for this method for few goals. However, I imagine that no matter where a Christian resides on this scale, the individual normative goals diligently sought in this manner should have the same success results as chance. Atheists residing anywhere on the scale would have to do some kind of cost benefit analysis of resources to expend for each normative goal; and they would have results related to their abilities, efforts and environment. A “go” decision for an atheist on any goal would mean expending effort. While the Christian “go” would mean vesting the ask, believe receive method of faith.
If one measures goal success, it’s a clear win for the atheist.
I think what’s more interesting is assessing consequent happiness. The atheist will be happy if his normative goal is met. The Christian will be happy that he followed God’s word and will whether the normative goal is met or not. The sincere believing Christian will always be happier. In the same way the sincere Buddhist will always be happier but she so by denying her normative goals altogether as desires along with ignorance lie at the root of suffering. Religion wins happy. Try it! sweep some bugs on your next walk.
Getting back to Shaw’s statement, who can say whether believing stupid things is a better or worse path to happiness than drinking.
Both have the effect of distorting reality and both have detrimental effects on the people partaking in the reality distorting behaviour and those who interact with them.
Just as I would not trust a person who chose to drive a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol in other areas of endeavour, so I would not trust a person who deliberately choose to believe lies to act as a responsible, adult member of a secular democracy.
I think rational people can go one step further than just pointing out how beliefs held on faith can leak their influences into other decisions.
AronRa has made this point I think most forcefully in numerous of his talks (see his youtube channel, the talk “Religion Reverses Everything” & “Faith is not a virtue” for instance).
Religion does not obtain normative goals, at least any goals worth respecting. Religion puts child molesters ahead of children, makes reason irrational and faith reasonable, oppression a freedom and freedom from oppression into an oppression, hate is love, the mafia boss in the sky has the right to break our kneecaps in everlasting fire for us not complying with his threats, we deserve every insult we get, everyone else is worthless; gays, women, children, unbelievers, everyone else is lowly and at times deserving of pity, often expendable. Even “nice” moderate believers side with the worst when blasphemy and critical thinking is directed at any religion, moderates turning a blind eye to the monstrosities made against infidels because their faith is at stake.
Religion messes with the moral compass of naturally decent individuals, perverts their values and blinds them to things that actually matter.
I’ll go with AronRa, Matt Dillahunty, Steven Pinker, Christopher Hitchens & Richard Dawkins; Religion is not a source of morality, not even a good guide, it gets in the way, it distorts our perceptions and make good people do evil things when without religion they’d just do good things.
So Paul Troop has bought into the worldwide myth, nay, outright lie (maybe just unintentionally) that claims that religion has any proper and valid role in advising our ethical discussions.
We live according to what’s in our heads. A false idea can lead to failure, and, at worse, death. A head full of false ideas will, necessarily, lead to a lesser form of life than is possible to us.
The intellectual dishonesty which forms the bedrock of religion in any other realm would be called intellectual dishonesty.
So our culture allows for a reason/evidence free zone, a haven where intellectual dishonesty can be cultivated, refined and perpetuated largely through relentless brainwashing of the young in their formative years.
Mr. Troop assures us that he is not just skeptical but very skeptical of religion; for himself but it’s OK for others.
Mr. Troop’s moral relativism has a certain postmodernist flair to it.
Troop may be an atheist but he is obviously not a scientist. His claim that the alternative to creationism is that life was “created” … “by a process of evolution by natural selection” bears this out.
For a non religious example of a positive false belief, we could take a person being told of a loved one dying in a car accident. The investigative team learns that the person suffered horribly, dying a slow and agonizing death, all alone.
Wanting to spare the individual that knowledge, they tell their next of kin that the accident was quick, that she barely knew what hit her.
It is certainly going to result in more well being for the survivor. That a loved one is dead is tragic, but a quick death, compared to a long and agonizing one can ameliorate the pain.
Ultimately, no harm can come of this lie. The persons actions are not affected at all, except that he would be less susceptible to depression. It would be a general improvement over the person who was told the hard truth.
The problem with religion, however, is that you cannot divorce the good feelings from the negative consequences. Religion has far too much baggage, you cannot purposefully prune the good from the bad and take that. Some religions have done a good job in that direction though. The “God is Love” variants of liberal christianity, for example, are pretty much harmless and benefit their believers.
However, you cannot make a meaningful attempt to edge people towards those harmless feel-good religions. You can merely expose the flaws in their own beliefs, and then they may move to atheism, spirituality, or the harmless christian sects. Where they go once they abandon their previous beliefs is not completely out of our control, but it is not meaningfully in our control. Even if harmless brands of religion are demonstrably better than atheism, you can’t direct someone there on purpose.
As such, this discussion could be interesting, but has little practical application for debate. Besides, any direction you go from “God tortures us because he loves us” is an improvement, so I’m not going to be too picky.
Sam Harris would disagree with you. If the person finds out they’ve been lied to, that could lead to a loss of trust that causes more long-term harm than temporary grief, however painful. Once people know you’re willing to lie about stuff like that, they start to wonder what else you might be lying about.
Ironically, there’s a Jeff Bridges film called Fearless that poses exactly the opposite problem. Bridges is the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed his best friend. The friend’s wife’s lawyer wants him to say that the friend died a horrible, painful death, because they can get a bigger insurance settlement that way. But Bridges refuses to lie and tells them it was over in an instant; the guy never what hit him. And they resent him for it.
“‘Ultimately, no harm can come of this lie.’
Sam Harris would disagree with you. If the person finds out they’ve been lied to, that could lead to a loss of trust that causes more long-term harm than temporary grief, however painful.”
Better just make sure you’re not found out, then.
Seriously, who’s to say the discovery, much later when the pain has faded, *would* cause more harm? And if the chance of them finding out is negligible, then I’d say the lie is well justified, on the odds.
We tell lies (or sins of omission) all the time. It’s what makes life tolerable. “Yes darling, you look great in that dress”. So if it’s permissible for little things like that, surely far more so when (as in Sines’ example) it really matters and the cruel truth will do the recipient harm.
The question wasn’t whether it would cause harm, but whether it could cause harm. Sines stated unequivocally that it could not. I think that claim is wrong.
Moreover, it’s not at all obvious that “the cruel truth will do the recipient harm”. Should doctors lie to their patients about terminal diagnoses in an effort to save them from emotional harm? No, they should not, because that’s not the doctor’s choice to make. Shielding people from the truth, however well-meant, usurps their autonomy and impairs their ability to make fully-informed decisions on their own.
So when it really matters is precisely when you should be most committed to honesty.
“Shielding people from the truth, however well-meant, usurps their autonomy and impairs their ability to make fully-informed decisions on their own.”
Well, yes. But don’t expect religious types to rush to agree…
/@
That sounds all very good – great slogan! – but is it really valid? Would the grieving relative really feel their autonomy or even dignity is being respected if we insist on telling them all the ghastly details of their loved ones slow death? In this example, of course, there is no decision to be made so that factor is absent.
Obviously if a decision – which they have to make – depends on the facts, then they need to know them. There may still be grounds for thinking carefully about how much we need to tell them. As in, ‘an open coffin would be extremely inadvisable’ (and they may not want to know more).
And what is this ‘autonomy’ of which you speak? Last time I checked, we were all dependent on dozens of other people to do everything from prescribing aspirin to fixing the brakes on the car.
I won’t even start on what degree of detail is necessary to constitute ‘the truth’. Or a ‘fully-informed decision’.
By the way I’m 100% atheist. I just don’t think ‘the truth’ is ever sufficiently well-defined to trump every other consideration.
Deprecating a comforting lie doesn’t imply advocating full disclosure of the truth (as far as we know it)!
/@
@infiniteimprobabilit, It seems that you conflate being truthful with being provocative and thinking that truth doesn’t “trump” every other consideration suggests to me that you haven’t considered those other considerations very well. Because those, too, are potentially truthful or dishonest. If one doesn’t tell of ghastly details in regard for the emotions of the grieving, one simply adds a bit additional truth into the decision. (Assuming that the fragile emotional state really exists.)
FWIW, I prescribe my own aspirin.
@gbjames
“@infiniteimprobabilit, It seems that you conflate being truthful with being provocative”
I’d say that *sometimes* the truth can be provocative. In some circumstances. Absolutely not ‘always’, in fact I said usually the truth is preferable.
“If one doesn’t tell of ghastly details in regard for the emotions of the grieving, one simply adds a bit additional truth into the decision.”
That sounds like a different category of ‘truth’ from what we were talking about. We were considering the truth as being solely how the victim died / what he said, and whether to relate those facts accurately (‘truth’) or not (‘lie’). Taking the circumstances of the grieving into account is what I classified as ‘judgement’ or ‘tact’ and if you do that, we’re not that far apart.
What you call “judgement” and “tact” is, in fact, plain old garden variety dishonesty.
When I ask questions I don’t want the other person to use their “judgement” to conceal relevant information. If I wanted to make believe then I wouldn’t ask the question in the first place. It is my job to ask questions I want answers to. It is not someone else’s job to decide whether or not I meant it.
Well all I can do is congratulate you on your 100% grasp of the truth and your fearless determination to tell it in all circumstances. I think I’d rather hang around people who are a little bit easier to get on with, thanks.
You’ve changed the circumstances. Assuming the terminal diagnosis is accurate, they *are going to die* soon whatever you tell them. So they’re certainly going to find out. The relative in Sines example, on the other hand, will probably never find out their loved one died in agony.
Suppose the grieving relative is currently depressed and borderline suicidal. You still think it’s important to tell them the worst right now?
And ‘would’ cause harm / ‘could’ cause harm is another red herring. Almost anything conceivably *could* cause harm. Should I refuse to allow my wife to step outside the front door because she *could* be in a traffic accident? You have to take the probability into account in judging the right course of action. I think it’s known as ‘tact’ or ‘judgement’.
Gods preserve us from busybodies who think they have a monopoly on the truth and an obligation to blurt it out to all and sundry.
To take this to the absurd extreme – I’ve done things in my life I’m embarrassed about. Surely anybody with a regard for the truth would be obligated to ferret those out and tell everybody at my work. If not, why not? It’s the truth, after all. It might do me more harm if it came out later. Or probably not. Substitute yourself for ‘me’ and you may get the point…
I said nothing about ferreting out unpleasant truths and blurting them to all and sundry, and I certainly don’t endorse that plan.
My point is that in a situation where someone expects truth from you, you should do them the courtesy of answering honestly, rather than concocting a false version of events based on what you think they’re able to accept. If you think there are gruesome details they might rather not know, there are ways of saying that without being dishonest or patronizing. “An open coffin would be extremely inadvisable” is in fact a perfectly reasonable and truthful thing to say, and much better than a lie in my opinion.
If they don’t want to know the details, you’re under no obligation to inform them. But if they do want to know (and you can’t talk them out of it), then you owe them the truth and not some comforting fiction.
I agree my example of ‘exposing my past’ was carrying the argument to its extreme.
I’d also note that the ‘truth’ (or whatever subset of it is appropriate to the occasion) is usually easier to tell and has less potential for kickbacks. Usually.
But… if we’re hypothesising, suppose that the deceased’s last thoughts were for his mistress (who his wife knows nothing about). And his wife asks ‘did he say anything about me?’. I think I’d lie. I might feel guilty about it but I’d feel worse at telling her the truth.
So to your contention that the truth is better, I’d just say ‘not always’. I think that’s probably as far as I want to carry this debate. (To tell the truth, it’s time I went to bed).
If the question was “Did he say anything about me?” could you not answer “No”?
If someone asks you a direct question like this it is terrible, IMO, for you to lie in response. It shows a profound disrespect for the person asking the question. She asked because she wanted to know the truth. She expected an honest answer. And you’ve made it your business to deny her honesty because you place your own judgement over hers.
I don’t want friends like that.
@gbjames
“If the question was “Did he say anything about me?” could you not answer “No”?”
That would hardly be a comforting answer, would it?
“If someone asks you a direct question like this it is terrible, IMO, for you to lie in response. It shows a profound disrespect for the person asking the question. She asked because she wanted to know the truth. She expected an honest answer.”
And you know this how? Not everybody is exactly alike. She may just as likely have wanted reassurance. I agree, if she really wanted the truth, it would be bad to lie to her. But if she desperately wanted reassurance, IMO it would be equally bad and totally insensitive to tell her the truth.
I’d suggest anyone with tact and judgement could often (not always) tell which sort of answer was required and reply accordingly. I just don’t see things in black and white like you do.
Here’s the difference between you and me. I’m assuming that a person asking a question is expecting an honest answer. You seem to assume that this person is asking for you to tell a comforting lie.
You asked me “And you know this how?” which I might just as legitimately ask you. What gives you the right to determine when someone’s question is to be answered honestly and when you are going to lie?
Perhaps you are in the habit of asking faux questions to people. I don’t know. It seems an odd way to relate to others.
Perhaps you are happy thinking that people may be lying in response to your questions. I know that I prefer not to live that way. I don’t really want to deal with people who won’t answer my questions honestly. I don’t want to be treated by doctors who tell me everything will be just fine while knowing full well I have terminal cancer.
It’s not about seeing things in black and white; it’s about being mindful of your own ignorance.
You don’t know that the wife is unaware of her husband’s infidelity; you assume it.
You don’t know that she would find the truth horrifying and a lie comforting; you’re assuming that too. For all you know, she’d welcome the news that her husband really loved his mistress and wasn’t just selfishly fooling around with some bimbo who meant nothing to him.
The reality is that no living person understands the nuances of her marriage better than she does. You think you’re in a position to decide what she ought to hear, but you’re not, because you don’t have all the facts. All you have is some made-up narrative that you’re projecting onto her situation. And that’s not a sufficient justification (in my view) for dealing dishonestly with her.
@ gregory:
“You don’t know that the wife is unaware of her husband’s infidelity; you assume it.”
I think for the purposes of the example, I did know. But assuming I don’t know either way, it’s safer to assume she doesn’t – unless her questions indicate otherwise.
“For all you know, she’d welcome the news that her husband really loved his mistress and wasn’t just selfishly fooling around with some bimbo who meant nothing to him.”
Not very likely, though, is it?
“The reality is that no living person understands the nuances of her marriage better than she does.”
IF her husband had a mistress unknown to his wife, then probably not.
Not at all safe for maintaining one’s reputation as an honest person. And if I were the recipient of one of your safe assumptions and consequent lies, and came to learn the truth, I would know you ever-after as an untrustworthy reporter. So much for your safety.
And I would know you, sir, as someone who couldn’t leave well alone, and who I certainly wouldn’t trust with anything unless I wanted it broadcast to the world. I think I’ll stop right here before this gets acrimonious.
Your surety of that outcome is completely unwarranted.
In a society in which telling the lies you advocate is acceptable and not uncommon, the relative will naturally suspect that she’s being told a pleasant fiction. If she really wants to know the truth, she’ll investigate…and the shit will really hit the fan when she discovers it.
I think it’s more important to ensure that she gets proper medical treatment for her suicidal depression. What sort of schedule to tell her about current events is something I’d leave up to whoever is in charge of her care. If she’s as sick as you describe, she should be institutionalized and therefore her access to information can be reasonably controlled.
I’d rather the gods preserve us from those busybodies who think they know us better than we know ourselves and who have no compunctions about lying to us, and therefor manipulating us into believing whatever fantasies benefit their own desires and preventing us from controlling our own destinies.
b&
Ben, I’m disappointed. I usually find a lot of commonsense in your posts. Where in my post did I ever suggest ‘manipulating us into believing whatever fantasies benefit their own desires’ might be acceptable. If I knew a deeply disturbing fact that would grievously upset someone my own desire would be to walk away. I don’t think I’d want to avoid the issue by having them institutionalized, though.
Erm…that’s exactly the subject at hand: husband dies asking about mistress, tell the wife his last words were of her.
Your scenario had the person as suicidally depressed. End-of-life physician-assisted suicide aside, you most emphatically do want the suicidally depressed to be institutionalized, at least until they’re out of danger. That’s an immediate life-or-death crisis every bit as urgent as chest pains or sudden vision problems.
b&
The interesting thing about the Haidt book is that Haidt also stated that in-group bonding came at a cost – there was extra hostility towards the out-group.
I’m generally sympathetic to this line of thought. If religious belief serves practical benefits on the believers and doesn’t cause harm in the wider community, I really can’t see any real reason to oppose it. In most cases, the problems rarely come from individuals but from power structures and collective will – neither of which are intrinsically bad things. Specific complaints aren’t reasons to abandon all related phenomena, and I’d wager many believers share those same specific concerns.
It’s not too say we should be silent, or to give up on arguing on epistemological grounds, but that arguments concerning politics and society are separate to that.
“The interesting thing about the Haidt book is that Haidt also stated that in-group bonding came at a cost – there was extra hostility towards the out-group.”
Wow, thats huge!
What’s all this talk about religion making a person happy? When I was a young Catholic lad learning my Catechism religion certainly didn’t make me happy. On the contrary, it made me terrified and miserable. It was only when I started rejecting Catholicism and all other forms of religion that I came anywhere near being happy. And this occurred much later in life.
I don’t know why we atheists can’t get the following point across, even to other atheists:
Atheism is not a means of getting something done. It is not a philosophy. It is not a lifestyle. It is not a way of life. It is not a moral system, nor a knowledge system.
It is a lack of belief in gods. Nothing. Else.
How can I get this across to people? Say it while wearing a porcupine costume?
I don’t know if that will work but I’d like to see it.
Yeah, give it a go and tell us how it pans out.
dressing as a panda would be cuddly compared to a porcupine or your moniker
I usually tell people it means they believe in one more deity than I do
A belief without a compelling reason on whose factual truth anyone can agree (and I mean any reasonable person of average intelligence) is a belief that does not have much to recommend it for, specially when people build structures of power and privilege around it.
Even if it makes you “feel better”, it’s still a delusion. And what’s a good-enough rationale for saying that we all would profit from deluding ourselves? Should we be content with acting and living like dumb children? (No offense to the children, many of whom, luckily, are NOT dumb.)
Also, what is so depressing or saddening about the endless realities that surround us, and that we keep discovering every day? What narrow mind would NOT be endlessly fascinated with THAT, and would rather replace it with something coming out of our own imagination (necessarily very limited compared to what’s out there, and within), and obviously (to me) far less fascinating?
Amen, brother.
No, it’s not okay because you vote and might serve on a jury. Plus, ignorant people are a drag.
“What’s the harm in believing something false?” You’re living a lie. Which leads to the question, “How much of what we comprehend is true?” We speak of true and false as absolutes, but there is uncertainty in virtually all I understand.
As for what happens to churches when members cast off what they come to see as false, members leave. Some move to churches that are non-theist or theist optional.
In his latest work, The Righteous Mind, Jon Haidt says the value of religion is a sense of belonging.
Most of those I know who hang on to their God belief do so because they are convinced that their earthly life is only a part of something greater and they don’t want to blow it.
Happiness is overrated.
Given that we are psychological creatures, it seems obvious to me that there are goals that religion helps people achieve. Surely a belief in a loving god, an afterlife, etc serves as a calming stress reducer and thus helps the performance of people in stressful situations; everyone from ER doctor to professional athlete to combat soldier.
Sorry, but I’ll take the ER doc who believes this life is all I’m going to get over one who thinks I’ll be happy in the hereafter.
Why would you assume the ER doc thinks youre going to heaven?
At any rate, I dont think you can argue that there are no cases where religion – a coping mechanism, after all – doesnt help people cope and thus make them better performers. Acute stress and fear cause people to freeze up, choke, perform worse. Easier to avoid that with “god on your side” and a belief that this life is just a prelude to something that matters much more.
The question isn’t whether religion gives people a warm feeling that they might find pleasing.
The question is whether or not it’s the same sort of warm feeling that you get from peeing your bed, and how bad the cleanup is.
In reality, religion is actually a lot worse than peeing your bed, even if it feels better.
b&
Again, I prefer not to have a doctor who thinks that whatever he imagines will happen to me after I die matters much more than keeping me alive.
I’m with you, Gregory. But I would note that many of the religious, generally including these sorts of top-notch surgeons, are superbly practiced at doublethink. In practice, I don’t think your statistical odds are negatively impacted by their religious delusions.
But, yes. All else equal, and I’ll take the rationalist every time.
…not that one always or even often has much of a choice in the matter….
b&
Yeah but so does serotonin.
But thats not relevant. The question is not “Is religion the only thing that can help one achieve a goal”.
Yes it’s relevant because I wasn’t saying that there were other things that can help you, my point was it’s not worth believing in lies in an ends justify the means way just to help the “performance of people in stressful situations”.
Indeed, I think believing in lies is ultimately harmful as I’ve indicated elsewhere.
The issue with religion is that the cohesion you imply is misleading. In the process of a religion bringing people together, it also manages to segregate people both consciously and subconsciously. They consciously decide between the logic of one religious sect and another, and subconsciously exclude people of another sect or another religion. And to the second part of my issue; the negative effect of believing in something illogical. This issue is the crux of my argument against religion in that it forces the End Times mindset into the societal zeitgeist. There is a collective opinion that an apocalypse is inevitable and that a sky daddy will come down and relieve us of responsibility. This logic can only be conducive as long as there are no societal revolutions necessary for the survival of our civilization. It is rather hard to tell Believers that the sacrifice of their consumerist economy is necessary for civilizational sustainability. It is rather difficult to instill in youth the values necessary for civility when the zeitgeist tells them the good days are all behind us and that the end is near. I find it ironic when the Believers tell us that their beliefs are necessary for the maintenance of civilization.
To add to my earlier post, have you noticed that Troop spells “condusive” and “adherants”?
I’ll understand if you call me a snob, but for me such a cavalier attitude towards accurate spelling acts as a flag, telling me to beware of the writer’s overall intellectual rigor. (Or perhaps he is mildly dyslexic. Perhaps.)
Meaning: it is possible, and likely, that (barring dyslexia) the author has an equally cavalier attitude towards other aspects of ideas, facts, evidence, logic, etc.
Interesting, also, that he keeps talking about “normative goals” without even once defining what he means with a practical example. I think it’s fair to wonder if he knows the meaning of “normative”…
After seeing Frontline: “Two American Families” I’m not sure I want to “enlighten” all re: my personal conclusion that there is no all caring, all seeing God.
When that strong, wonderful woman says: “what else is there?” – I’m not going to argue.
What ever gets us by is alright with me.
To add to your comment above, 50 years ago saw the civil rights march on Washington, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, a charismatic preacher. While I’m not a religious believer and do abhor religious tyranny I can’t fault the role of religion in the fight for equality and social justice.
Case in point, magical stem cells or why mixing science and religion is a bad idea:
http://t.nbcnews.com/health/bioethicist-failed-search-controversial-cells-shows-danger-mixing-science-religion-6C10776643
It isn’t atheism, per se, that is supeerior to religion. It is reason-based thinking and empirical epistemology which is superior to irrational thinking and faith-based epistemology.
It is nearly universally advantageous to deal with reality as it actually is, because it allows us to make more informed (and therefore usually more beneficial) choices. We see the results of irrational choices all the time: people investing money they can barely afford on lottery tickets, antivaxers, and faith healers are some prevalent examples. The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. Antivaxers and faith healers reject evidence-based medicine for different reasons, but in both cases with grave results often for their children.
Atheism is simply the natural conclusion that flows from a reason-based assessment of empirical evidence. If god(s) were empirically attested, then believing in them would be advantageous. As is, it leads to apocalyptic and afterlife-driven assessment of evidence and decision-making, i.e. religious fatalism as noted above.
I suppose in one’s last moments, i.e. when one’s decisions will have little impact on reality, private or public, there is little harm in some rose-colored thinking, except that one would give up on their life of dealing with reality as it actually is, which evokes in me a great sense of pathos. We can, and should, do better.
+1
two points:
1. Normative goal #1: eg, we should reduce numbers of abortion. One side has a Pope says that abortion is murder and women who get abortions are going to hell. But Catholics get abortions at the exact same rate as the rest of the US population, while secular western Europe has lower abortion rates. Conclusion: Religion simply doesn’t work, only universal health care and sex ed work.
2. “Normative” goal #2: we should try to get into heaven. There is no proof that heaven even exists, but this is ostensibly the *only* reason to follow a religion. Every other goal can be better approached by using some rational framework. If a religious person ever tries to convince you that a normative goal (other then entrance into some version of heaven) can be attained by religion, run the other way.
Your argument in 1 doesn’t work. Your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premise. And in both 1 and 2 your claims are so poorly-expressed it’s hard to know what you really mean by them.
Ok, let me try this again. (I am not an academic ethicist so maybe my terminology is inaccurate.) If the normative goal is to reduce the number of abortions, ie, we agree with the statement “we should reduce abortion” , then we can look at empirically at how different groups have attained the goal.
The Catholic method is to simply prohibit abortion under pain of eternal damnation. Other religions, especially Christian sects, have similar methods. Does this work? Do Catholics have fewer abortions? Answer: no.
Which groups are closer to achieving this normative goal? Answer: secular societies that provide universal health care and education.
My second point had “normative” in quotation marks, implying that this really doesn’t fall into the same category. You later discussion about happiness and desire fulfillment answers thus point well. Religionists are happy when fulfilling their desire to get into heaven.
Thanks. And feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
1. I was about ten when a teacher told me about religion. It was about Daniel in the furnace. I tried to tell her that she was confusing that story with the fairy-tales about kings and beanstalks. She put me at the back of the class and tried to leave me out of class discussion. Only afterwards I realised that she tried to sabotage my efforts to pass the British 11+ exams to go to high school. I learnt early that religion is pure, dripping evil.
2. Americans don’t get all the news. Every day ten to a hundred car-bombs go off in the Muslim world, killing untold thousands and maiming hundreds of thousands a year. Almost all are religiously motivated.
3. Lies are never harmless. The History of Ideas is a lamentable account of slow and reversible human progress. The Four Humours Theory (4HT) of malady ran from 500 bc to sixty years before the birth of my father. In that time doctors killed many millions. The medical profession has traditionally used Historic Medical Revisionism to hide the many dead at their hands, by high-lighting the few gains and ignoring the losses. Ignorance and magic are no substitute for knowledge.
4. Question the missionaries and you see the catch. Their assistance is always conditional. They are there to gather souls.
5. American pastor Rick Warren spread such anti-gay poison among African leaders that some rounded up gays to execute them. Rick fled back to California. Head of UN stepped-in to stop the executions. But homophobia is now in African countries I know, where there was never such a thing. Young Africans gather and scream and tremble when they think that they have found a ‘pede’. Lovable Rick came close to starting a genocide in Central Africa every bit as horrible as the Rwanda tribal massacres.
6. Religious people are dedicated to spreading the lies because the presence of just one non-believer threatens their whole religious enterprise. In Bangladesh and Pakistan they are passing laws to execute blasphemers, which now is extending to include atheists.
7. You Americans really have a problem with religion. It’s all finished here in the UK and France with just 20 turning-up for a local cathedral service, and five for a church service! American fads can fade. When I first lived in the USA in 1968, earnest people would accost me to tell me that the USA has been infiltrated by communist cells that will shortly take-over the government. Remember TV presenter Joe Pyne who asked most guests, “Are you a communist?” Ten years later it had all blown away. ‘Spect religion will blow away quite quickly. The remaining US evangelists may join Islam.
Re 5., kudos to Desmond Tutu: “I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place. I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this. I am as passionate about this campaign as I ever was about apartheid. For me, it is at the same level.”
/@
Yes, I’m glad he spoke up about that. Although I have to wish him all the best FINDING a non-homophobic heaven.
“Believing things that are true rather than things that are not true could have some value. But the topics on which beliefs diverge seem quite peripheral”.
I think Paul Troop has a point. Do we all believe the whole truth about – anything? Can we even know the whole truth? If it were all made available to us, are we even capable of knowing all that information? I’m not just being rhetorical here, I think this is the actual situation of all of us, all the time.
I’d suggest that what we know of a given situation is in fact a small selected set of ‘facts’ (some of which may be incorrect). The selection may have been made deliberately, or quite randomly by circumstances.
So it’s not as if truth is binary – true/untrue. And in that circumstance, if someone finds it comforting to believe there’s a purpose somewhere, so long as they don’t try to inflict it forcibly on anyone else, I can’t say they’re wrong.
Not all circumcision or FGM is carried out for primarily religious reasons. But some male children experience sexual dysfunction or death and a rather greater proportion of female children (and female adults) experience death, sexual and other bodily dysfunction. There’s the suffering and pain too.
So there’s one harm caused by religion.
The consequences of religion have never been that great for women, animals, homosexuals… anyone else deemed inferior by the universally male writers of the ‘manuals’. That alone is enough to make a religion-free life happier for more than 50% of us!
This is an interesting question. However, as a scientist, I think that there is a simple answer – to me, it is obvious that striving for the truth is inherently good and does not need to be justified. Although children can be happy believing in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy (and parents should allow them that freedom), kids must ultimately mature and accept the truth.
I have no problem answering “yes” to the hypothetical while answering “no” when it comes to many of the actual religious beliefs being promoted.
Its sort of like mind-altering drug use. Sure, in principle, one can do it in a safe and responsible manner. But there is a big difference in practice between caffine and LSD; if I say its possible in principle, that does not equate to me defending your right to drop acid and then drive.
To me the answer to Jerry’s post and Paul Troops concern becomes clearer once you realize that “happiness theory” – the theory that happiness is the end game that explains what humans strive for – is false (or at least inadequate). Thinking that “happiness” is something like the fundamental axiom driving people’s behavior gets you to the type of puzzles above.
But people do not seek happiness per se; people seek to realize or fulfill their goals/desires. Happiness so often accompanies “getting what we want” that it can seem to be the object of “what we want.”
But happiness theory just doesn’t explain many features of human behavior. People have many times knowingly sacrificed their own well-being, and their own chance of happiness, for the sake of another (many acts of altruism, and many parents know they would sacrifice their life or chance of happiness if it came to ensuring their child’s well-being).
What is always in play, is that someone is seeking to fulfill some of his/her desire(s). Someone knowingly acting to sacrifice her life, well-being or happiness for another is doing so on some desire she has (e.g. desiring the well-being of the person for whom she is making this sacrifice, or desiring to further some cause).
And having a desire actually fulfilled necessarily entails TRUE states of affairs where what you want to happen actually happens.
Take an example of becoming emotionally invested in the well-being of a needy child in Somalia. You want this child to be properly fed and educated, and you send money to a charity on the promise your money will be used to those ends.
But it turns out the “charity” is a drug cartel simply taking your money, buying drugs, guns or whatever, has let the child die, but keeps sending you faked letters from the child assuring you how much difference you are making in the child’s life. The fake letters make you happy for the child.
If you were to find out the truth, we all know this would be infuriating. If the drug cartel said “but we were making you happy, isn’t that the point?” The obvious answer would be “no.’ Why? Because it’s an important feature to fulfilling our desires that they, IN FACT, are being fulfilled. Just being “made happy” isn’t good enough; we want it to BE TRUE that this child was being helped by the money we sent. The truth is vitally important to actually fulfilling our desires. Our goals and desires are only fulfilled by attachment to REAL FACTS about real states of affairs can fulfill our desires.
And that’s why truth is so important over mere deluded happiness. We seek to fulfill our desires and this can only happen insofar as it’s true any desire is being or can be fulfilled.
Our desire to please a Christian God can never be fulfilled because that God does not exist. Our desires to reach an afterlife, or for the happiness of a loved one after death, can never be fulfilled because there’s no true state of affairs that could fulfill them. These are desires that are miss-aimed and we could not be getting what we actually want.
The more we know about reality, the better chance we can have goals and desires that are as we want them, actually being fulfilled. The more propensity a belief-system has, in this case religious beliefs – the more current desires we have will go unfulfilled, and we’ll just be adding more unfulfillable desires.
This, to me, explains that nagging feeling most of us have of why being deluded-yet-happy seems somehow wrong.
Vaal
(One could say that being happy is ONE of the strong desires many of us have, so a delusion that helps with that IS fulfilling that desire and is valuable.
The problem is that it’s like the problem of “believing on faith” – seeking happiness via delusion has such severe liabilities – how would we warrant it without putting in danger all the other desires we want to be satisfied?).
And, having had my say, no need to go further, since to elaborate would just be a re-hash of the previous morality thread.
Sorry, should have been:
“The greater propensity a belief-system has to encourage false beliefs, in this case religious beliefs, the more your desires will be aimed in ways that can not be fulfilled.”
It’s like being tricked by the drug cartel that your efforts are actually achieving the state of affairs you wanted when it’s just not true; likewise, desiring to please a non-existent God is a waste of precious time when we could be calibrating our desires more accurately to reality, so as to actually realize our goals.
Vaal
But people do not seek happiness per se;
Yes they do. Desires arise from ideas people have about what will make them happier or more satisfied. Desires serve happiness, not the other way round. Desire-fulfillment is not an end in itself but merely the means to the end of greater satisfaction or happiness.
Nope.
Happiness is an ambiguous concept for one thing – there is quite a lot of disagreement on what a maximally good or happy life would be.
Second, you just failed to explain examples like I gave of the person being tricked bout where her money was going. If happiness where the most valuable thing, the state we desire, then it shouldn’t matter if the person has been tricked into being happy. But it does; it matters because it’s important to us that our desires be actually fulfilled, not just that we are made “happy.”
Any parent knows we would not choose to be made to feel perfectly happy all the time if it meant our children were not taken care of or were made to suffer. If happiness where the end goal, we’d choose the happiness. What explains this is we seek to actually have our desires fulfilled.
Most people reject the concept of a “happiness machine” deluding them into happiness, or being in drugged out, deluded bliss. Because we want our desires to actually be fulfilled, and also people generally do not see such ideas as representing maximally valuable lives, hence something is clearly missing, “happiness” not explaining this. Desire fulfillment does.
In fact there are plenty of questions and thought experiments you can present to people to keep seeing this is so. Many people, including atheists, would sacrifice their lives if it meant saving the human race from being extinguished. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would say I’d accept being made to feel depressed for a month before being exterminated to save the human race.
Someone (not convinced of a possible afterlife) accepting such a fate could in no way be expecting happiness. This would be a sacrifice of any possible happiness to fulfill a desire to save others.
Your claim makes no sense of suicide, (clearly not everyone committing suicide is convinced of an afterlife). One may be escaping misery, but can not be said to be expecting “happiness” by fulfilling their desire to kill themselves.
And of course there are all sorts of examples of people sacrificing their lives, and hence happiness, to save others.
You wouldn’t disagree, I’m sure, that atheists have been capable of knowing they are undertaking a move that will probably get themselves killed, to help other people. Again, this can not be “looking to be made happy” in any reasonable sense of the word, but it IS always explicable that the person in question is sacrificing his well-being and happiness fulfill some desire he has (e.g. to save someone else).
I believe you are still confusing the fact that happiness, being a psychological state so often associated with “getting what we want” means happiness-seeking explains all we value, or what motivates us. It just doesn’t. But deliberate action CAN be explained on a deeper foundation that people are always seeking to fulfill their desires.
Vaal
Happiness is an ambiguous concept for one thing – there is quite a lot of disagreement on what a maximally good or happy life would be.
The fact that different people have different ideas about what would make them happy or satisfied is completely irrelevant to the point that it is happiness and satisfaction, not desire, that people seek. No one desires desire. What people desire is a happy and fulfilling life.
Second, you just failed to explain examples like I gave of the person being tricked bout where her money was going.
Because it’s irrelevant to what I wrote, like 95% of what you say in your responses to my comments.
Well Gary, your last comment was helpful in reminding me that responses will be time wasted.
Later,
Vaal
Just to be clear:
It’s not that people don’t value various types of happiness. Clearly we do. But positing happiness itself as being of ultimate value or what all our aims are toward just leaves quite a lot of human behavior and attitudes unexplained.
More fundamentally, why WOULD anyone value “happiness?”
In other words, say Sarah has a choice between two actions, one which she thinks will clearly lead to sadness, the other to happiness. Presuming she will choose the latter action toward happiness, what explains this? Why not choose the action toward sadness?
Because she DESIRES to be happy, not sad. And people act to fulfill their desires, which explains why she’d take the action. So desire fulfillment always remains the fundamental lynchpin to making sense of someone’s deliberate actions, or why they value “X” over “Y.” (Because “being happy” would fulfill Sara’s desire).
If no one desired to be happy, if being happy didn’t fulfill any desires, no one would value it. So you still have to appeal to desires to make sense of how anything “is valuable” to us.
Vaal
Vaal, your question, “More fundamental, why WOULD anyone value ‘happiness?'”, reminds me of Aurthur Schopenhauer’s Studies in Pessimism.
Not that I fully understand all that he was saying, I think the gist of his conclusion is that happiness could be more aptly described as the absence of pain/suffering.
Few people will actually chose to suffer and most will try to avoid suffering. As such, if we place suffering and happiness on a continuum, then the natural opposite of the one is the other.
So, if Schopenhauer is correct, then it is not happiness that people value, it is the absence of suffering.
He makes the point that the anticipation of a future happiness is typically more satisfying than the actual realization of whatever it is that was being anticipated.
Steve
Evidence based truth is impartial and democratic, in as much as it can be evidenced. It’s available to everyone.
Believing what is not true is only the gullible receiving side of a lie. The other side is the undemocratic promotion of untruth for one’s own ends. Lies in politics are pretty much agreed to be detrimental, by all but those pushing the lies.
When the lies of religion and politics come together you get the worst of all possible worlds. Islam, currently.
The dangers are so clear I’m surprised any intellectual atheist would consider it.
We’re all susceptible to falling for untruths. But as dumb as many religious ideas are, it’s the height of condescension to think that false religious belief is good enough for the religious simply if it makes them happy.
And anyway, their happiness is often some outsider’s persecution.
Not good enough, Troop. So many things wrong with the idea.
If you could acknowledge that the things you believe in may not be true, and be guided by what we do know when making important decisions, without this causing you to lose your faith, then I can see little harm in it.
However, if your faith distorts your view of reality not to be guided by what we can prove to be true when in contradiction to your faith, then you betray humanity whom depends on the truth for practical and moral progress.