Huh. Do you need me to post a few dozen links to articles detailing incidents where Mormons did evil acts because of their religious beliefs? I mean, Mormonism isn’t as inherently destructive as Islam, but it’s not Buddhism either.
Do you have empirical evidence that Mormons are more likely to cause harm than atheists? (Let’s say in the clear-cut sense of stabbing people instead of in the sense of spreading irrationality.) Mormons might do more bad things because their god requires it, but atheists might do more bad things because they don’t have a god to require otherwise. They might be more likely to become nihilists or solipsists and not care about other people, say, acting purely selfishly. A priori, I have no idea which one is correct.
It seems that as a rationalist, you should be wary of assigning high probabilities here without direct empirical evidence. Especially since you presumably suffer from in-group bias. But perhaps you’re aware of studies that support your view that religion is harmful in a simple sense?
(If you consider spreading religion inherently evil, then you have more reason to presume that Mormonism is harmful. You would still have to argue that the harm outweighs any possible benefit, but you’d have a stronger case for assuming that. However, by your comparisons to Islam and Buddhism you seem to mean plain old violence and so forth.)
Do you have empirical evidence that Mormons are more likely to cause harm than atheists? (Let’s say in the clear-cut sense of stabbing people instead of in the sense of spreading irrationality.)
I’ll claim that, yes, I do have such evidence. The Mormon Church funded many advertisements in favor of California Proposition 8 which denies civil rights to homosexuals.
Even accepting the premise that voting for the proposition was clearly wrong, that’s a single anecdote. It does nothing to demonstrate that Mormons are overall worse people than atheists. It is only a single point in the atheists’ favor. I could respond with examples of atheists doing terrible things, e.g., the amount of suffering caused by communists.
Anecdotes are not reliable evidence; you need a careful, thorough, and systematic analysis to be able to make confident statements. It’s really surprised me how commonly people supply purely anecdotal evidence here and expect it to be accepted (and how often it is accepted!). This is a site all about promoting rationalism, and part of that is reserving judgment unless you have good evidence.
I really don’t think a systematic analysis of the morality of Mormons vs. atheists exists, for any given utility function. That kind of analysis is probably close to impossible, in fact, even if you can precisely specify a utility function that a lot of people will agree on. To begin with, it would absolutely have to be controlled to be meaningful ― the cultural, etc. backgrounds of atheists are surely not comparable on average to those of Mormons.
I think this is an issue that rationalists just need to admit uncertainty about. That’s life, when you’re rational. Only religious people get to be certain most of the time about moral issues. A Mormon asked the same question would be able to say with confidence that the atheists caused more evil, since not following Mormonism is so evil that it would clearly outweigh any minor statistical differences between the two groups in terms of things like violent crime. If you believe in utility functions that depend on all sorts of complex empirical questions, you really can’t answer most moral questions very confidently.
It does nothing to demonstrate that Mormons are overall worse people than atheists. It is only a single point in the atheists’ favor.
I think these two sentences are contradictory. If it is a point in favor of the proposition that atheists are better in some regard than Mormons, then it does something to demonstrate the general case, if only weakly.
Rationality is not about reserving judgment until ideal evidence is available. Rationality is incorporating all the evidence at your disposal. I agree that most of the evidence available is mixed and weak, so it shouldn’t be overweighted, but it is still relevant.
Do you have empirical evidence that Mormons are more likely to cause harm than atheists? (Let’s say in the clear-cut sense of stabbing people instead of in the sense of spreading irrationality.) Mormons might do more bad things because their god requires it, but atheists might do more bad things because they don’t have a god to require otherwise. They might be more likely to become nihilists or solipsists and not care about other people, say, acting purely selfishly. A priori, I have no idea which one is correct.
It seems that as a rationalist, you should be wary of assigning high probabilities here without direct empirical evidence. Especially since you presumably suffer from in-group bias. But perhaps you’re aware of studies that support your view that religion is harmful in a simple sense?
(If you consider spreading religion inherently evil, then you have more reason to presume that Mormonism is harmful. You would still have to argue that the harm outweighs any possible benefit, but you’d have a stronger case for assuming that. However, by your comparisons to Islam and Buddhism you seem to mean plain old violence and so forth.)
Do you have empirical evidence that Mormons are more likely to cause harm than atheists? (Let’s say in the clear-cut sense of stabbing people instead of in the sense of spreading irrationality.)
I’ll claim that, yes, I do have such evidence. The Mormon Church funded many advertisements in favor of California Proposition 8 which denies civil rights to homosexuals.
Even accepting the premise that voting for the proposition was clearly wrong, that’s a single anecdote. It does nothing to demonstrate that Mormons are overall worse people than atheists. It is only a single point in the atheists’ favor. I could respond with examples of atheists doing terrible things, e.g., the amount of suffering caused by communists.
Anecdotes are not reliable evidence; you need a careful, thorough, and systematic analysis to be able to make confident statements. It’s really surprised me how commonly people supply purely anecdotal evidence here and expect it to be accepted (and how often it is accepted!). This is a site all about promoting rationalism, and part of that is reserving judgment unless you have good evidence.
I really don’t think a systematic analysis of the morality of Mormons vs. atheists exists, for any given utility function. That kind of analysis is probably close to impossible, in fact, even if you can precisely specify a utility function that a lot of people will agree on. To begin with, it would absolutely have to be controlled to be meaningful ― the cultural, etc. backgrounds of atheists are surely not comparable on average to those of Mormons.
I think this is an issue that rationalists just need to admit uncertainty about. That’s life, when you’re rational. Only religious people get to be certain most of the time about moral issues. A Mormon asked the same question would be able to say with confidence that the atheists caused more evil, since not following Mormonism is so evil that it would clearly outweigh any minor statistical differences between the two groups in terms of things like violent crime. If you believe in utility functions that depend on all sorts of complex empirical questions, you really can’t answer most moral questions very confidently.
I think these two sentences are contradictory. If it is a point in favor of the proposition that atheists are better in some regard than Mormons, then it does something to demonstrate the general case, if only weakly.
Rationality is not about reserving judgment until ideal evidence is available. Rationality is incorporating all the evidence at your disposal. I agree that most of the evidence available is mixed and weak, so it shouldn’t be overweighted, but it is still relevant.
I agree that this was not a good thing for them to do, but I don’t think it falls into the “clear-cut sense of stabbing people”.