OK. These are the reasons why I don’t think religion is a horrible thing. (I don’t necessarily think we should always have religion, just that for the moment I don’t find it to be enormously bad.)
Yeah, some people have done bad things in the name of religion (i.e. Crusades). People have done bad things in the name of pretty much everything. Some people don’t need a reason to do bad things. Yeah, there are other people who might not have done bad things otherwise, who just followed along because they were a member of the community. That’s not common to religion, either. People in the Stanford Prison experiment and the Milgram experiment went along with doing bad things because they thought they were expected to, no religion needed. If we took religion out of the world, it wouldn’t do much to solve those flaws in human nature.
Religion often advocates a weird morality, i.e. by spending more time talking about abortion than starving kids...but at least it advocates morality at all. This is mostly based on people I actually know, but most of my religious friends have thought quite deeply about what they think of as right versus wrong, and most of my non-religious friends haven’t thought it about it at all. Involvement in many religious groups encourages people to become more empathetic, more generous, and more open and welcoming to community members in need. I was a better person, in those ways, when I hung out with Christians.
Religion genuinely makes a lot of people happier, including people I’ve known who had very screwed-up lives previously. Yeah, maybe they could have become happier by studying happiness like Lukeprog, but it happens no one was around to guide them through that process, and there were people in local churches lining up to have a chance to be helpful and kind and teach them to pray and reflect, and invite them into close-knit communities. Yeah, I would cheer if something replaced religion in this role. I’m pretty foggy on how to design a replacement, and I have nothing near the leadership skills required to actually run one. I didn’t get nearly the same pleasure out of LW meetups as I did out of going to church. (No offense.)
I would’ve had a lot more problems with religion back when it controlled everything, including intellectual thought. I like being able to study whatever I want and fulfill my curiosity with knowledge that wouldn’t have been discovered if religion had been allowed to keep its iron hold. I’m glad religious groups don’t have as much political power now. But as it stands, I don’t think religion slows the rate of scientific progress enough to blot out all the good things it does do.
Religion cements people together into groups that stay motivated and get stuff done, including some stuff I think is misguided (like convincing people Jesus is the solution to everything), but also some stuff I want to help them with, like building schools in the Canadian North. Like I said, I’m a follower, not a leader. I would be incredibly excited about a LW “mission” to somewhere to build a school and buy kids books, but I doubt my ability to organize it.
People have done bad things in the name of pretty much everything. Some people don’t need a reason to do bad things.
That’s true, but IMO religion makes it a lot easier for people to do bad things, and a lot harder for other people to stop them. It does this by emphasizing faith over critical thinking, and by inventing all kinds of new reasons for doing bad things. Thus, for example, the statement “we should go and wipe out our neighbours because they believe in different gods than we do, and we know that our gods are the only true gods because we have faith in them, amen” is a uniquely religious statement. It combines an in-group/out-group mentality, an unfalsifiable worldview, and a harmful moral imperative, all in one tidy package.
Yes, there are harmful secular statements that follow the same pattern (and plenty of them), but IMO the faith-based nature of religion makes harmful religious memes a lot more virulent.
Speaking of which:
Religion often advocates a weird morality, i.e. by spending more time talking about abortion than starving kids...but at least it advocates morality at all.
Firstly, I’d rather have no morality at all than a harmful one.Secondly, one big problem with religious morality is that it’s unfalsifiable. For example, why is homosexuality immoral ? Because God (or gods) said so. That’s it. You could spend all the time in the world pointing out that homosexuality hurts no one and that prohibiting it harms everyone in the long run, but none of that matters, because evidence can never trump faith. By contrast, secular moral systems, such as Consequentialism, for all their flaws, do have error-correction methods built in.
Involvement in many religious groups encourages people to become more empathetic...
I think this depends on the group. Some groups, such as Scientology or many radical Christian sects, have the opposite effect.
Religion genuinely makes a lot of people happier, including people I’ve known who had very screwed-up lives previously.
Of all the arguments you offer, this is probably the strongest. Is the tradeoff of becoming happier worth the sacrifice of believing things that are actually true ? For some people, and perhaps even many people, this could very well be the case… but, if everyone thought like that, we’d never have invented fire, spaceflight, or representative democracy. I am definitely biased on this topic, though, since believing true (plus or minus epsilon) things makes me personally very happy, and thus for me there’s no conflict.
But as it stands, I don’t think religion slows the rate of scientific progress enough to blot out all the good things it does do.
Really ? What about climate change, or stem-cell research, or evolutionary biology (which is to say, biology) ? Religion has a pretty strong chilling effect on these areas and many others, at least here in the US. In general, though, religion discourages inquiry simply by making faith a virtue, and doubt a sin. This chilling effect is much milder than religious prohibitions against specific topics, but it is more pervasive.
Religion cements people together into groups that stay motivated and get stuff done, including some stuff I think is misguided (like convincing people Jesus is the solution to everything), but also some stuff I want to help them with, like building schools in the Canadian North.
And sometimes, religion spends a lot of time getting harmful things done, like discouraging condom use in Africa, or promoting abstinence-only sex education right here in the US. The problem, once again, is that there’s no error correction mechanism. If you believe that your god wants people to have unprotected sex (or possibly no sex at all), then any negative effects of acting on this belief are irrelevant. As with morality, I’d rather have no motivation than motivation to accomplish bad things—especially since there are plenty of secular organizations that seem to be doing ok (such as Doctors Without Borders, AFAIK).
And sometimes, religion spends a lot of time getting harmful things done, like discouraging condom use in Africa, or promoting abstinence-only sex education right here in the US.
This is a completely valid point. There is a right answer to whether it, and all the other bad things that get accomplished as a direct effect of religion existing, outweigh all the good things that get accomplished also as a direct effect of religion existing. I don’t know.
Right now my estimate leans more towards religion having a net positive effect, for now, at our society’s current level of rationality and general sanity. I don’t think getting rid of churches would get rid of superstition, something would spring up in its place...but slowly getting rid of superstition might naturally lead to churches becoming more and more similar to secular organizations in their scope and goals. (This seems to be what’s happening to the Anglican Church of Canada...socially, they are just as liberal as the Canadian government.)
There are almost certainly things I don’t know about how churches affect the world, and if I did know them, maybe it would sway my opinion more towards the cons and away from the pros. If someone could do an in-depth study, comparing a world identical to ours only without religion and showing that it would be better, I would willingly change my mind.
However, I’m not sure it would change my behavior, at least not right now. I don’t have the power to single-handedly eradicate organized religion. Unlike Richard Dawkins, I’m not famous or well-known or respected, so my mere disapproval of religion would do nothing at all, aside from possibly alienating me from some of my friends. (They already know I’m an atheist, and that I’m ok with their being religious, but if I wasn’t ok with it, I’m not sure how our friendships would fare. And I value those friendships.) Also, if I see a church organization working towards a goal I also want accomplished, and they’re more convenient or more fun to work with than any secular organizations with the same goals, I want to be able to ally with them. I don’t want to be turned off any kind of cooperation because it annoys me that they’re wrong...therefore, that annoyance is an irrational emotion for me to have. It’s not like my not working with them is going to make them convert to atheism to get me on their side… I’m not that important.
Right now my estimate leans more towards religion having a net positive effect, for now, at our society’s current level of rationality and general sanity.
My own estimate leans the opposite way, primarily because I see the overall chilling effect that religion has on critical thought (as we discussed elsewhere on this thread) as having a massively negative utility. Yes, the effect is relatively mild compared to some of the other things religion does, but it’s everywhere.
I don’t think getting rid of churches would get rid of superstition, something would spring up in its place...but slowly getting rid of superstition might naturally lead to churches becoming more and more similar to secular organizations in their scope and goals.
Agreed; plus, I should probably mention that no one in their right mind would advocate “getting rid of churches” by force (even by force of law). Coercive tactics like that have a very poor track record, and besides, they’re pretty evil.
That said, one thing I’d like to see is a diminished respect for religion in general. In our current world, if you said something like, “Bugmaster advocates banning consumption of meat”, most people would probably just shrug. But if you said “Reverend Bugmaster advocates banning consumption of meat”, people would sit up and take notice. But why ? There’s nothing about being a “Reverend” that makes me somehow more competent at making decisions—no more than being a 10-th level Conjuration-specced Wizard, or president of my local Twilight fanclub, or whatever.
I don’t have the power to single-handedly eradicate organized religion.
If you had that kind of power, you’d be a god, and then you’d have to eradicate yourself :-)
They already know I’m an atheist, and that I’m ok with their being religious, but if I wasn’t ok with it, I’m not sure how our friendships would fare. And I value those friendships.
That’s fair enough; no one is expecting you to become some sort of a righteous anti-paladin of atheism (well, I can’t speak for Richard Dawkins, but I know I’m not). Still, I think it’s possible to disagree with a person, even on a fundamental level, while still respecting that person. That all depends on the person in question, of course.
“Bugmaster advocates banning consumption of meat”, most people would probably just shrug. But if you said “Reverend Bugmaster advocates banning consumption of meat”, people would sit up and take notice.
I’m pretty sure these two statements would have exactly the same effect on me...i.e. proportional to how much other information I know about you and how many reasons I already have to respect your expert opinion. I do have a lot of reasons to respect Dawkins’ statements on a lot of things. He knows more about biology than I do, and so if he says something about biology or evolution, I’m prepared to take it at face value. I don’t think he’s studied religion in depth, though, or really undergone a non-biased process of weighing its pros and cons. I have no reason to conclude that his religion arguments are more valid just because he’s a good biologist.
I’m pretty sure these two statements would have exactly the same effect on me...
Right, but as far as I can tell, this isn’t true of the population in general, where religious figures command a certain level of trust and respect simply due to being religious. You and I are probably outliers.
OK. These are the reasons why I don’t think religion is a horrible thing. (I don’t necessarily think we should always have religion, just that for the moment I don’t find it to be enormously bad.)
Yeah, some people have done bad things in the name of religion (i.e. Crusades). People have done bad things in the name of pretty much everything. Some people don’t need a reason to do bad things. Yeah, there are other people who might not have done bad things otherwise, who just followed along because they were a member of the community. That’s not common to religion, either. People in the Stanford Prison experiment and the Milgram experiment went along with doing bad things because they thought they were expected to, no religion needed. If we took religion out of the world, it wouldn’t do much to solve those flaws in human nature.
Religion often advocates a weird morality, i.e. by spending more time talking about abortion than starving kids...but at least it advocates morality at all. This is mostly based on people I actually know, but most of my religious friends have thought quite deeply about what they think of as right versus wrong, and most of my non-religious friends haven’t thought it about it at all. Involvement in many religious groups encourages people to become more empathetic, more generous, and more open and welcoming to community members in need. I was a better person, in those ways, when I hung out with Christians.
Religion genuinely makes a lot of people happier, including people I’ve known who had very screwed-up lives previously. Yeah, maybe they could have become happier by studying happiness like Lukeprog, but it happens no one was around to guide them through that process, and there were people in local churches lining up to have a chance to be helpful and kind and teach them to pray and reflect, and invite them into close-knit communities. Yeah, I would cheer if something replaced religion in this role. I’m pretty foggy on how to design a replacement, and I have nothing near the leadership skills required to actually run one. I didn’t get nearly the same pleasure out of LW meetups as I did out of going to church. (No offense.)
I would’ve had a lot more problems with religion back when it controlled everything, including intellectual thought. I like being able to study whatever I want and fulfill my curiosity with knowledge that wouldn’t have been discovered if religion had been allowed to keep its iron hold. I’m glad religious groups don’t have as much political power now. But as it stands, I don’t think religion slows the rate of scientific progress enough to blot out all the good things it does do.
Religion cements people together into groups that stay motivated and get stuff done, including some stuff I think is misguided (like convincing people Jesus is the solution to everything), but also some stuff I want to help them with, like building schools in the Canadian North. Like I said, I’m a follower, not a leader. I would be incredibly excited about a LW “mission” to somewhere to build a school and buy kids books, but I doubt my ability to organize it.
That’s true, but IMO religion makes it a lot easier for people to do bad things, and a lot harder for other people to stop them. It does this by emphasizing faith over critical thinking, and by inventing all kinds of new reasons for doing bad things. Thus, for example, the statement “we should go and wipe out our neighbours because they believe in different gods than we do, and we know that our gods are the only true gods because we have faith in them, amen” is a uniquely religious statement. It combines an in-group/out-group mentality, an unfalsifiable worldview, and a harmful moral imperative, all in one tidy package.
Yes, there are harmful secular statements that follow the same pattern (and plenty of them), but IMO the faith-based nature of religion makes harmful religious memes a lot more virulent.
Speaking of which:
Firstly, I’d rather have no morality at all than a harmful one.Secondly, one big problem with religious morality is that it’s unfalsifiable. For example, why is homosexuality immoral ? Because God (or gods) said so. That’s it. You could spend all the time in the world pointing out that homosexuality hurts no one and that prohibiting it harms everyone in the long run, but none of that matters, because evidence can never trump faith. By contrast, secular moral systems, such as Consequentialism, for all their flaws, do have error-correction methods built in.
I think this depends on the group. Some groups, such as Scientology or many radical Christian sects, have the opposite effect.
Of all the arguments you offer, this is probably the strongest. Is the tradeoff of becoming happier worth the sacrifice of believing things that are actually true ? For some people, and perhaps even many people, this could very well be the case… but, if everyone thought like that, we’d never have invented fire, spaceflight, or representative democracy. I am definitely biased on this topic, though, since believing true (plus or minus epsilon) things makes me personally very happy, and thus for me there’s no conflict.
Really ? What about climate change, or stem-cell research, or evolutionary biology (which is to say, biology) ? Religion has a pretty strong chilling effect on these areas and many others, at least here in the US. In general, though, religion discourages inquiry simply by making faith a virtue, and doubt a sin. This chilling effect is much milder than religious prohibitions against specific topics, but it is more pervasive.
And sometimes, religion spends a lot of time getting harmful things done, like discouraging condom use in Africa, or promoting abstinence-only sex education right here in the US. The problem, once again, is that there’s no error correction mechanism. If you believe that your god wants people to have unprotected sex (or possibly no sex at all), then any negative effects of acting on this belief are irrelevant. As with morality, I’d rather have no motivation than motivation to accomplish bad things—especially since there are plenty of secular organizations that seem to be doing ok (such as Doctors Without Borders, AFAIK).
This is a completely valid point. There is a right answer to whether it, and all the other bad things that get accomplished as a direct effect of religion existing, outweigh all the good things that get accomplished also as a direct effect of religion existing. I don’t know.
Right now my estimate leans more towards religion having a net positive effect, for now, at our society’s current level of rationality and general sanity. I don’t think getting rid of churches would get rid of superstition, something would spring up in its place...but slowly getting rid of superstition might naturally lead to churches becoming more and more similar to secular organizations in their scope and goals. (This seems to be what’s happening to the Anglican Church of Canada...socially, they are just as liberal as the Canadian government.)
There are almost certainly things I don’t know about how churches affect the world, and if I did know them, maybe it would sway my opinion more towards the cons and away from the pros. If someone could do an in-depth study, comparing a world identical to ours only without religion and showing that it would be better, I would willingly change my mind.
However, I’m not sure it would change my behavior, at least not right now. I don’t have the power to single-handedly eradicate organized religion. Unlike Richard Dawkins, I’m not famous or well-known or respected, so my mere disapproval of religion would do nothing at all, aside from possibly alienating me from some of my friends. (They already know I’m an atheist, and that I’m ok with their being religious, but if I wasn’t ok with it, I’m not sure how our friendships would fare. And I value those friendships.) Also, if I see a church organization working towards a goal I also want accomplished, and they’re more convenient or more fun to work with than any secular organizations with the same goals, I want to be able to ally with them. I don’t want to be turned off any kind of cooperation because it annoys me that they’re wrong...therefore, that annoyance is an irrational emotion for me to have. It’s not like my not working with them is going to make them convert to atheism to get me on their side… I’m not that important.
My own estimate leans the opposite way, primarily because I see the overall chilling effect that religion has on critical thought (as we discussed elsewhere on this thread) as having a massively negative utility. Yes, the effect is relatively mild compared to some of the other things religion does, but it’s everywhere.
Agreed; plus, I should probably mention that no one in their right mind would advocate “getting rid of churches” by force (even by force of law). Coercive tactics like that have a very poor track record, and besides, they’re pretty evil.
That said, one thing I’d like to see is a diminished respect for religion in general. In our current world, if you said something like, “Bugmaster advocates banning consumption of meat”, most people would probably just shrug. But if you said “Reverend Bugmaster advocates banning consumption of meat”, people would sit up and take notice. But why ? There’s nothing about being a “Reverend” that makes me somehow more competent at making decisions—no more than being a 10-th level Conjuration-specced Wizard, or president of my local Twilight fanclub, or whatever.
If you had that kind of power, you’d be a god, and then you’d have to eradicate yourself :-)
That’s fair enough; no one is expecting you to become some sort of a righteous anti-paladin of atheism (well, I can’t speak for Richard Dawkins, but I know I’m not). Still, I think it’s possible to disagree with a person, even on a fundamental level, while still respecting that person. That all depends on the person in question, of course.
Now I know what my next D&D character is going to be. Well, right after I get done playing that transhumanist warlock I’ve been thinking of...
I’m pretty sure these two statements would have exactly the same effect on me...i.e. proportional to how much other information I know about you and how many reasons I already have to respect your expert opinion. I do have a lot of reasons to respect Dawkins’ statements on a lot of things. He knows more about biology than I do, and so if he says something about biology or evolution, I’m prepared to take it at face value. I don’t think he’s studied religion in depth, though, or really undergone a non-biased process of weighing its pros and cons. I have no reason to conclude that his religion arguments are more valid just because he’s a good biologist.
Right, but as far as I can tell, this isn’t true of the population in general, where religious figures command a certain level of trust and respect simply due to being religious. You and I are probably outliers.