The problem with this argument is that the label of religion still servers a useful purpose. It lets us know right away when an idea is wrong. Religion is not just wrong, but uniquely wrong. It is always wrong. It’s the true north for your mental compass, the absolute zero of your belief barometer, the nobel gas in your idea-chemistry set.
Example: I am not a world renowned physicist. I’m somewhat familiar with it as an interested layman. If a new quantum model were to show up on the news explaining how neutrinos are still going faster than light, I wouldn’t be able to personally vet the theory. If I wanted to find the truth, I could ask people on LessWrong what they thought or seek out expert opinion elsewhere. However, if this new quantum model was based on divine revelation (or hey, lets go with angels), I would immediately know it was incorrect. This same heuristic holds true whether I’m looking at cancer treatement options for my parents, choosing what of physical therapy message to get or not get, trying to find a nice personality test to take, or learning my girlfriend became pregnant via immaculate conception.
So, why treat religion separately? Because it is useful having a unique category for ‘always wrong theories’ . It saves me time mentally filing newly encountered information. As for special protections for religion, I think it works out quite well for us. Considering we’re considered worse than rapists, I shudder to think how we would be treated if there weren’t a precedent for religious tolerance.
It lets us know right away when an idea is wrong. Religion is not just wrong, but uniquely wrong. It is always wrong.
How seriously do you want to support this claim?
I mean, among the most famous claims of several popular American religions is that “Don’t murder” and “Don’t steal” are important moral principles. I will admit to being more than a little partial to those principles myself. If I take your claim literally it follows that I should reject those principles.
If you’re just engaging in hyperbole and don’t really mean what you wrote, that’s fine; please don’t feel obligated to defend it just for consistency’s sake. But if you do mean it, I’m interested in your more detailed reasoning.
The basis for the idea of “Thou Shalt Not Murder” is not religious. Before the commands, there was Hammurabi’s Code, and before that Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu, and before that it was custom. The earliest laws were a codification of what people were already doing. In other words, if Scientology claims they had invented calculus, that doesn’t mean I suddenly distrust my ability to do derivatives.
A cleaner definition would be that ‘supernatural explanations are always wrong’, of which religious explanations are a subset. If I were to go into full pedant mode, I suppose this would be cleaner: “Explanations which require ontologically basic mental things provide zero bits of evidence. A theory which has only those such explanations as proof does not deserve to be privileged above random chance.”
In real world terms, we only usually only encounter things which trigger the above in the case of religion, folk medicine, and superstition. Though I admit my original wording was sloppy.
For my part, I agree that there’s something here that is a marker for unreliable explanations, though I’m more inclined to unpack it as “explanations which require entities for which no strong evidence exists” rather than “explanations which require ontologically basic mental entities,” and it seems to me that in the real world we encounter such explanations in all sorts of secular situations as well—for example, many explanations of economic and political events seem to fall in this category. But I suppose a sufficiently broad understanding of “superstition” can be made to cover these situations as well.
For my part, I agree that there’s something here that is a marker for unreliable explanations, though I’m more inclined to unpack it as “explanations which require entities for which no strong evidence exists” rather than “explanations which require ontologically basic mental entities,” and it seems to me that in the real world we encounter such explanations in all sorts of secular situations as well—for example, many explanations of economic and political events seem to fall in this category.
Do you mean that we often encounter social/political explanations involving entities for which no strong evidence exists, or the less trivial one that social/political explanations often involve (not explicitly supernatural) ontologically basic mental entities? It’s hard for me to think of mental entities employed in social explanations—“investor confidence,” “blowback,” “will of the indomitable German people,” whatever—that aren’t charitably reducible to more basic mental and non-mental entities, or explicitly mystical anyway, like say Alfred Rosenberg’s conception of the will of the indomitable German people.
Do you mean that we often encounter social/political explanations involving entities for which no strong evidence exists, or the less trivial one that social/political explanations often involve (not explicitly supernatural) ontologically basic mental entities?
But why should the mental quality of the postulated entities be such a big deal?
Note that in the context of ideology and politics, the critical question is not so much about positive explanations of phenomena, but about normative justifications. And in this context, I really don’t see why one should privilege justifications whose metaphysical element happens not to include any antropomorphic (or as you say “mental”) entities.
For example, what is supposed to be so much more irrational about semantic stop signs that say “X must be done because otherwise we’d violate God’s commandments” versus those that say “X must be done because otherwise we’d violate human rights”? (Of course, it may be that you mostly prefer those concrete Xs that happen to be justified the latter way in the present public discourse, but surely it’s not difficult to imagine an opposite hypothetical situation, i.e. one where people justify something you otherwise favor by invoking God’s commands while others justify something you oppose by invoking human rights.)
I had assumed that the explanations we’re talking about were positive or causal.
When it does come to normative explanations in everyday life I don’t think the implied metaethical framework is particularly interesting or important, given how humans actually make decisions and employ concepts. Obviously, read literally any reference to external, not-merely-intersubjective entities like “human rights” are as silly as references to God’s commands, and if we’re having a discussion about philosophy they can be dismissed with exactly the same anti-supernaturalism heuristic, but we all know that God or human rights forbidding something, nine times out of ten, just means the speaker dislikes it and is appealing to the shared values generally connected to that metaphysical shibboleth, etc. Like, if I’m on the phone with my father and mention that something’s been stressful lately, and he says he’ll keep me in his prayers, I have no reason to be concerned that he literally believes in—that his anticipations of experience are controlled by—the power to telepathically communicate with the creator of the universe and request it to supernaturally alter the physical world on my behalf; I just note that he’s signalling that he cares for me and get a few fuzzies from that.
(And sure, it’s not even hard for me to think of concretely existing situations of the sort you mention.)
I mean that we often encounter both religious and sociopolitical explanations involving entities for which no strong evidence exists, and that I see no benefit to differentially focusing my attention on the subset of that set of explanations that involves ontologically basic mental entities.
I don’t believe that sociopolitical explanations often involve ontologically basic mental entities, whether supernatural or not.
This isn’t the only example of this I have, only the most blatant. The Bible has rules about covering up feces. The Talmud has one wash hands before eating. And it also says not to use sharp sticks or rocks when wiping. If you want I can give similar examples from Islamic texts.
Your claim that ” Religion is not just wrong, but uniquely wrong. It is always wrong.” seems to not work.
I don’t agree with your interpretation of the article. It seems clear to me that an outsider that doesn’t share the community beliefs would be considered most likely to break with community norms and steal money, even if this belief is wrong. It has nothing to do with being considered ‘worse’ than a rapist. Even though an outsider might also be considered the more likely rapist … these biased probability assignments are completely different than believing an innocent-so-far atheist is worse than a convicted rapist.
The problem with this argument is that the label of religion still servers a useful purpose. It lets us know right away when an idea is wrong. Religion is not just wrong, but uniquely wrong. It is always wrong. It’s the true north for your mental compass, the absolute zero of your belief barometer, the nobel gas in your idea-chemistry set.
Example: I am not a world renowned physicist. I’m somewhat familiar with it as an interested layman. If a new quantum model were to show up on the news explaining how neutrinos are still going faster than light, I wouldn’t be able to personally vet the theory. If I wanted to find the truth, I could ask people on LessWrong what they thought or seek out expert opinion elsewhere. However, if this new quantum model was based on divine revelation (or hey, lets go with angels), I would immediately know it was incorrect. This same heuristic holds true whether I’m looking at cancer treatement options for my parents, choosing what of physical therapy message to get or not get, trying to find a nice personality test to take, or learning my girlfriend became pregnant via immaculate conception.
So, why treat religion separately? Because it is useful having a unique category for ‘always wrong theories’ . It saves me time mentally filing newly encountered information. As for special protections for religion, I think it works out quite well for us. Considering we’re considered worse than rapists, I shudder to think how we would be treated if there weren’t a precedent for religious tolerance.
How seriously do you want to support this claim?
I mean, among the most famous claims of several popular American religions is that “Don’t murder” and “Don’t steal” are important moral principles. I will admit to being more than a little partial to those principles myself. If I take your claim literally it follows that I should reject those principles.
If you’re just engaging in hyperbole and don’t really mean what you wrote, that’s fine; please don’t feel obligated to defend it just for consistency’s sake. But if you do mean it, I’m interested in your more detailed reasoning.
The basis for the idea of “Thou Shalt Not Murder” is not religious. Before the commands, there was Hammurabi’s Code, and before that Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu, and before that it was custom. The earliest laws were a codification of what people were already doing. In other words, if Scientology claims they had invented calculus, that doesn’t mean I suddenly distrust my ability to do derivatives.
A cleaner definition would be that ‘supernatural explanations are always wrong’, of which religious explanations are a subset. If I were to go into full pedant mode, I suppose this would be cleaner: “Explanations which require ontologically basic mental things provide zero bits of evidence. A theory which has only those such explanations as proof does not deserve to be privileged above random chance.”
In real world terms, we only usually only encounter things which trigger the above in the case of religion, folk medicine, and superstition. Though I admit my original wording was sloppy.
Thanks for clarifying.
For my part, I agree that there’s something here that is a marker for unreliable explanations, though I’m more inclined to unpack it as “explanations which require entities for which no strong evidence exists” rather than “explanations which require ontologically basic mental entities,” and it seems to me that in the real world we encounter such explanations in all sorts of secular situations as well—for example, many explanations of economic and political events seem to fall in this category. But I suppose a sufficiently broad understanding of “superstition” can be made to cover these situations as well.
Do you mean that we often encounter social/political explanations involving entities for which no strong evidence exists, or the less trivial one that social/political explanations often involve (not explicitly supernatural) ontologically basic mental entities? It’s hard for me to think of mental entities employed in social explanations—“investor confidence,” “blowback,” “will of the indomitable German people,” whatever—that aren’t charitably reducible to more basic mental and non-mental entities, or explicitly mystical anyway, like say Alfred Rosenberg’s conception of the will of the indomitable German people.
But why should the mental quality of the postulated entities be such a big deal?
Note that in the context of ideology and politics, the critical question is not so much about positive explanations of phenomena, but about normative justifications. And in this context, I really don’t see why one should privilege justifications whose metaphysical element happens not to include any antropomorphic (or as you say “mental”) entities.
For example, what is supposed to be so much more irrational about semantic stop signs that say “X must be done because otherwise we’d violate God’s commandments” versus those that say “X must be done because otherwise we’d violate human rights”? (Of course, it may be that you mostly prefer those concrete Xs that happen to be justified the latter way in the present public discourse, but surely it’s not difficult to imagine an opposite hypothetical situation, i.e. one where people justify something you otherwise favor by invoking God’s commands while others justify something you oppose by invoking human rights.)
I had assumed that the explanations we’re talking about were positive or causal.
When it does come to normative explanations in everyday life I don’t think the implied metaethical framework is particularly interesting or important, given how humans actually make decisions and employ concepts. Obviously, read literally any reference to external, not-merely-intersubjective entities like “human rights” are as silly as references to God’s commands, and if we’re having a discussion about philosophy they can be dismissed with exactly the same anti-supernaturalism heuristic, but we all know that God or human rights forbidding something, nine times out of ten, just means the speaker dislikes it and is appealing to the shared values generally connected to that metaphysical shibboleth, etc. Like, if I’m on the phone with my father and mention that something’s been stressful lately, and he says he’ll keep me in his prayers, I have no reason to be concerned that he literally believes in—that his anticipations of experience are controlled by—the power to telepathically communicate with the creator of the universe and request it to supernaturally alter the physical world on my behalf; I just note that he’s signalling that he cares for me and get a few fuzzies from that.
(And sure, it’s not even hard for me to think of concretely existing situations of the sort you mention.)
I mean that we often encounter both religious and sociopolitical explanations involving entities for which no strong evidence exists, and that I see no benefit to differentially focusing my attention on the subset of that set of explanations that involves ontologically basic mental entities.
I don’t believe that sociopolitical explanations often involve ontologically basic mental entities, whether supernatural or not.
Ramanujan claimed to get mathematical revelations from the Hindu goddess Namagiri. Some Hindus today actually believe that Ramanujan really did get math from deities.
This isn’t the only example of this I have, only the most blatant. The Bible has rules about covering up feces. The Talmud has one wash hands before eating. And it also says not to use sharp sticks or rocks when wiping. If you want I can give similar examples from Islamic texts.
Your claim that ” Religion is not just wrong, but uniquely wrong. It is always wrong.” seems to not work.
I don’t agree with your interpretation of the article. It seems clear to me that an outsider that doesn’t share the community beliefs would be considered most likely to break with community norms and steal money, even if this belief is wrong. It has nothing to do with being considered ‘worse’ than a rapist. Even though an outsider might also be considered the more likely rapist … these biased probability assignments are completely different than believing an innocent-so-far atheist is worse than a convicted rapist.