First Things
There are many ways one can divide up religion and arguments for religion in order to discuss or analyze them, many ways one can draw a line down the middle of the room and put all the Xs on one side and all the Ys on the other. (And then draw another line and sort the Ys, and then draw another line and sort their progeny, and so on, until everyone goes mad and the game is over.) One way is to separate questions about veracity from questions that leave veracity aside. To separate the epistemic issues from the moral and aesthetic and emotional, one might say. So on this side of the tavern we argue about whether there is any reason to think religion tells the truth or not, and on that side we argue about what social purpose religion serves, or whether religion is necessary for a sense of wonder or a sense of meaning, or whether without religion everything is permitted.
That sort of argument has been going on in the comments lately. But there’s a problem with it, it seems to me. This is the problem: if religion is lacking in the veracity department, then what’s the point of saying ‘yes but it’s good for social cohesion’? Or at least – if religion is lacking in the veracity department, there is a serious problem with saying ‘yes but it’s good for social cohesion.’ There is grave danger of intellectual dishonesty and sloppiness in saying that. There is a risk of getting everything wrong and confused. We can see why via analogies, I should think. It would be good for social cohesion if every human on the planet had a magic bowl that would fill with whatever food we wanted whenever we asked it. Yes. But that is not the case, so is the fact that if it were the case, that would lead to social cohesion, some sort of argument that one should respect the idea that it is the case? It doesn’t seem to be, does it. The idea seems silly. So why is it otherwise with religion?
In other words, why do we talk about whether or not religion is useful for social cohesion, or provides a sense of meaning, or is necessary for a sense of wonder, before we ask whether or not there’s a shred of truth in it? Isn’t that slightly back to front? It is, you know. Because if it’s just a load of nonsense, then what good is it to say it’s good for social cohesion? Lots of things would be good for social cohesion if they were true, but they’re not, so what good does that do? Next time social cohesion breaks down in your neighbourhood, tell everyone ‘We wouldn’t be having this quarrel if Bugs Bunny were here, we’d be too busy asking him how Elmer Fudd is doing.’ See if that helps.
No. The first question to ask about religion is, surely, whether or not its truth claims are true, whether there is any evidence for them or not, whether they are anything more than a human invention. If the answers are all No – then asking all those questions on the other side of the line is a little dishonest, isn’t it?
Thank you. You stated what I’ve been thinking lately perfectly. So many debates about God seem to center around morality or whether life has purpose without God, etc. I’m always left thinking, Those are valid questions, but completely irrelevent to whether God does or does not really exist. I was starting to worry I was the only one who noticed this.
You’re absolutely not the only one to notice it. This is one of the things that struck me most in the aftermath of the tsunami. So many people seemed concerned about the theological and moral implications for god’s existence and nature, as if they somehow carried more weight than the very simple fact that there’s never been any evidence of the existence of such a being in the first place, making all those questions pointless.
“Because if it’s just a load of nonsense, then what good is it to say it’s good for social cohesion?”
A quick answer, because for once I am busy. What Orwell is saying in the As-I-Please column I cited is roughly this: Yes, it’s nonsense, but it is a pillar of our society, so the fact that it is crumbling means that we have a serious problem. Admittedly he doesn’t offer a solution. But I can’t see that flagging an unsolved problem is pointless.
Jonathan Miller wrestled with this problem quite a lot in his recent TV series on atheism. One question he raised but didn’t really get answers to related to the huge amount of superb art that has been generated out of religious conviction and on religious topics and whether, if we had all realised centuries ago it was complete nonsense, we would have been deprived of all this beauty and, second question, whether the one justified the other.
Only don’t wait for an answer from me…
Good for social cohesion my eye. All ‘faith’ really establishes in people is a mental state of unconditionality, which itself is neutral, like electricity, intrinsically, neither bad nor good, but dependent on circumstances.
Unconditional love and respect for fellow man in one corner, unconditional loathing for differences in the opposite corner. Unconditional love for a new-born baby is pretty much how a mother behaves anywhere in the world. Splendid. Lots of bad human beings around without it. Unconditional motivation to paint is what drives most artists, period. Would Leornardo / Beethoven etc really have not bothered if the Church didn’t commission (hey – that means pay them!!) their stuff ? “Oh, the church doesn’t wanna pay, I well, may as well decorate the barn instead…”.
Not to say they didn’t personally have the religious faith bit, they most probably did, but just as important – or more important – they had absolutely no control over being genius artists, driven to create great works. I find the spectrum of arguments used against atheists to be dressed up in woolly, often sophistic theological, theoretical, and epistemological language, which obscures and commodifies the issue at hand. (This also fits right in with the Pomo / Theory gang then; the approach is nothing new even if their language is.) If there isn’t a God, why did they do it ? Because they were born to !
And Chris – surely many of the ideas and beliefs currently driving our great cultural architects – these will look pretty arcane and daft in 200-2000 years time. Inevitably they will. What we firmly believe now due to the relative narrowness and feebleness of our various strands of enquiry into existence so far, will inevitably one day look as as daft as the pre Newton, Einstein tosh which informed otherwise admirable creative types in history. So let’s not presume we’ve reached some kind of apex in human develpoment and knowledge then, which is where these sophistic pro-religion arguments sneakilly place us…
I dashed off that first comment in a bit of a hurry and immediately afterwards realised what I could have phrased better. It’s not just that these questions of the possible good religion might be doing are discussed separately from whether or not there’s anything true in it, it seems to be often assumed that the answers to those questions have an influence on whether or not there is. A bit like the opposite of what OB said about Sandra Harding on that broadcast a few weeks back: “… her basic stance is that
if an idea is unpleasant, that’s sufficient grounds to think it’s factually untrue, which is a considerable logical leap.” So it often seems that people for whom a god is necessary and who have found a way of living with the contradictions and further questions its existence would necessarily entail, along with somehow fitting its apparently cruel and capricious behaviour into a moral scheme of sorts, think that their personal resolution of these issues constitutes evidence affecting the likelihood of there being a god (obviously, I’m here referring to believers who do at least some token thinking, not the ones who just bang on pulpits or whatever else may be at hand and flatly assert the absolute truth of whatever scripture they happen to be enslaved to).
This actually does tie in with something else that pissed me off yesterday while listening to BBC World Service. On “The Ticket” (I think it was), they were discussing the scandalous “What the bleep…” movie (which I haven’t yet seen but have read plenty about) and sounded like they were nodding their heads all too sympathetically as one of the filmmakers was trying to explain, without sounding too radical, the film’s idea of our being able to influence physical reality through our feelings alone. Why wasn’t she even put on the spot to the extent of having to defend the claim that the film is underpinned by the wisdom of a channeled 35,000-year-old warrior spirit from Atlantis? Or maybe the fact that no one’s yet come up with real evidence of Atlantis makes it less, rather than more, easy to challenge.
As to the Miller question about religion having inspired art, even assuming Nick is wrong in his answer (which I’m not at all saying he is), it still doesn’t affect the truth claim business. Unlike the religion that inspired it, it is a fact that much great art was inspired by religion. That statement shouldn’t bother anyone who doesn’t have any religious beliefs. It doesn’t make religion truer and it doesn’t make the art less great. And if one could establish that we would have had a lesser heritage of great art without religion, that still wouldn’t justify believing (or pretending to) in order to inspire creativity. Let’s not forget that when religion was inspiring (commissioning) so much of that art, our lives would have been in danger for expressing ourselves as openly as we do here. I, for one, would not be willing to trade my right to free speech for a few more Old Masters.
Oh yes, and please, let’s also not forget that the link between religion and art is a constant and immutable one. Meaning, surely no one would accuse the Taliban of a deficiency in the devoutness department and look what they did for the arts, sculpture in particular.
“It’s not just that these questions of the possible good religion might be doing are discussed separately from whether or not there’s anything true in it, it seems to be often assumed that the answers to those questions have an influence on whether or not there is.”
Yes – that’s pretty much what I’m getting at. That was the point of the line-drawing, the sending the questions to different parts of the room. So often the issue gets discussed without that separation, which seems to make it easier for people to assume – however vaguely – that in fact wishes, needs, social utility and the like do have an influence on the veracity of the truth claims. Even grown-up people who ought to know better. I mean, what else was Philip Dodd doing with that torrent of nonsense he flung at Hitchens? Especially that silly little rhetorical fillip he gave to the phrase ‘and certainly your heart’ at the end.
It’s all the most basic is-ought stuff, but it just flourishes away unchecked. Very odd.
As odd as all that? No. The Pythagorean Brotherhood executed some poor sod for spilling the beans about irrational numbers. The is-ought stuff isn’t as neat as you want it to be – especially when it comes to the matter of disclosure. (Ask an accountant whether the truth of a company’s financial condition ought always to be proclaimed.) Suppose I believed that a decline in religious belief would rot the fabric of our civilization. (Actually I don’t believe anything of the sort, but you should never let that get in the way of a good philosophical argument.) Am I supposed to speak the truth and let the heavens fall? Well I wouldn’t. In fact I reckon that, with a bit of help from Alan Dershowitz, I could make a good case for burning atheists at the stake. Knowing the truth is one thing (by the way, you don’t); putting it into circulation is another. It’s a moral decision. Sure, God is dead but so is GEM Anscombe.
Suppose a philosopher of eminence who holds the opinion that he can show to his satisfaction that belief in God is reasonable either applies to occupy or is discovered to occupy a chair in philosophy at a university in this country.Such is the unanimity behind all the previous posts concerning the impossibility of showing that such belief is reasonable that any would-be professor who lacked the philosophical ability to see how deficient such reasoning is ought by this very public fact itself to be disbarred from occupying that position.And anyone who is a professor and holds such belief should be acknowledged as an intellectual inferior as well.
Tony, in fairness, lots of philosophers hold that belief in God is reasonable. If I understand OB correctly, what she is banging on about is that such belief is unsupported by empirical evidence. Also, wishful thinking isn’t proof. Which is quite true. The outstanding question is, so what?
How many is ‘lots’? And what does ‘reasonable’ mean?
No, that’s not really what I’m banging on about – or it’s more like the first step (except for the word ‘proof’ which is absurd in this context and not one I use). Such belief is unsupported by evidence; wishful thinking doesn’t close the gap; so why believe it? That’s so what. Why believe things for which there is no evidence? And much more, why chastise and rebuke other people for not believing such things?
And what does “what does reasonable mean” mean? For the materialist like C Hitchens presumably ideas are merely patterns of nerve impulses(including the idea of mmaterialism itself).How then can one idea be superior to, or more reasonable than, another? One pattern of nerve impulses cannot be truer or less true than another any more than one toothache can be truer or less true than another.In other words human judgement and evaluation which is necessary to determine what is true or false, reasonable or unreasonable ( including the truth or error of Hitchens belief in materialism) presupposes a world of moral meaning that transcends the merely material.Is that wishful thinking in a Darwinian cosmos or perhaps a sign of transcendence?
Eh? How does that follow? An idea, or a truth claim, can be ‘patterns of nerve impulses’ and still be more or less accurate. Why would that not be the case? You think it has to be magical in some way to be more or less accurate?
Tony
I’m not a neurologist, but I’m prepared to bet that the nerve impulses generating the proposition 2+2=4 are not obviously different from those producing 2+2=5.
I think Ophelia is right to say that the question “is it true?” should come
before questions like “is it useful?”, but the parallels she draws seem to me
to be a little wide of the mark.
If someone says “Christianity is good for social cohesion” they don’t mean
“society will hold together better if Christianity is right”, they mean
“society will hold together better if Christianity is widely believed
and practised”, and *that* isn’t obviously simply an irrelevance if in fact
Christianity is wrong. Whereas “society would hold together better if
Elmer Fudd were here” *is* simply irrelevant if he isn’t.
True. Not simply an irrelevance. Fair point. But – the trouble is, what people mean when they say ‘society will hold together better if Christianity is widely believed
and practised’ is ‘society will hold together better if Christianity is widely believed and practised, even if Christianity is untrue from beginning to end’ – and that surely at least raises problems. Large and troubling problems.
It certainly does.
In any case, it seems to me that (1) in the long run society will be
better held together by true beliefs than by false ones, and (2) in
the short run it’s far from clear that the net effect of Christianity
(or any other particular religion; incidentally, reference to “religion”
simpliciter in discussions like this always seems to me a bad sign)
is one of increased rather than decreased cohesion, since in practice
there will always be people of other religions or none and disagreements
among followers of the majority religion; so the Right Thing is to
attend to the question “is it true?” and let the social cohesion stand
or fall as it may.
Especially as what will actually determine the outcome is the
decisions of millions of individuals, and surely very few people
are going to decide “I’ll believe this even though it’s false,
for the sake of social cohesion” or indeed “I won’t believe this
even though it’s true, for the sake of social cohesion”. So the
question of social cohesion is something of a side issue anyway;
it may affect abstract opinions about what future would be best,
but it can’t do much to change what future we end up having.
Likewise (more or less), mutatis mutandis, for the other putative
benefits and disbenefits of widespread religious belief such as the
effects on art, tolerance of minorities, and so on.
I think it would be interesting to know if people do believe for the sake of social cohesion, whether they realize it or not, because they distrust other people.
By this I mean, do they believe in certain moral characteristics primarily, and the supernatural elements of a particular religion because they share the same moral philosophy? Or do they accept the morals of a faith because of the supernatural consequences? I would bet that they sincerely believe in the morals, but they need the structure of the religion to ensure for them that society shares those beliefs.
I think that if it was (theoretically) proven that god does not exsist, the believer would not change their morals (at least not significantly), but would fear that society as a whole would change.
“I would bet that they sincerely believe in the morals, but they need the structure of the religion to ensure for them that society shares those beliefs.”
Yes. Very good point. I’ve had it in mind to do another post on the relationship between religion and morality – the perceived relationship as well as the real one (or the lack of one) – and that’s part of what I was going to say, only I wouldn’t have said it so clearly. I think that’s spot-on. Religion serves as a kind of shorthand for morality-confirmation, especially for other people. If we see a young hooded sullen-looking guy approaching us on an empty street – we may well be very relieved to see he’s wearing a T shirt that says ‘Jesus saves’ or some such. Or – to put it less selfishly – if we read of or know someone who’s on drugs and has children who are being neglected and abused, and then that person ‘gets religion’ – we’re likely to be very relieved, and with good reason.
So there is this problem. It just does seem dishonest, patronizing, elitist, all sorts of terrible things, to recommend belief in entities one doesn’t believe in oneself, for social reasons – and yet, if that belief is a way out of a terrible, wasted, harmful-to-others life? And it often is – that’s the reality.
I think the “magic bowl” analogy is flawed. If there is no magic bowl, couldn’t possibly matter how “good” it would be. But the idea of religion could, theoretically, be good for society whether it is true or not. It is a legitimate question completely seperate form a particular religions “truth”. It seems reasonable that religion was societally useful at one point or it would not be so nearly universal.
I don’t see it as particularly useful and certainly not necessary today. There are other, probably better ways to get social cohesion and I think science is a much better universal explanatory engine. I think religion is like my dog walking around in a circle three times to flatten the non-existant grass before he lies down on the rug.
-RR-
Among the religious people I know, I’ve seen no sign at all that “religion serves as a kind of shorthand for morality-confirmation”. Maybe it does and I haven’t noticed. Or maybe it does only in the minds of people who support (a) religion without believing in it themselves.
Yeah – I meant can serve as a kind of shorthand – not that it always does.
And of course that very fact is part of the problem. It shouldn’t be assumed that non-religious people come up short in the morality department. But it’s an uphill battle making that case, these days.
What is the meter by which gauge truth?
Even if you stricly adhere to an empirical stance, you can witness evidence of neurological activity. The most common belief is that every experience is experienced in the brain on a fairly basic level. That’s what I think Tony was getting at, and was somehow misunderstood.
Am I a theist? I sure am. Will I use jargon to try to cloud my view? Nope. Quite simply in laymans terms, there is evidence of a higher power, call it God, a god, gods, Allah, or Jehova. Reguardless, Schrodinger’s wave particle duality theory supports the view that the observer is part of the test. The 2nd law of thermodynamics does not completely disprove the random chance of the universe having no creator, but it places the likelyhood in the neighborhood of infinitesimal. An incalculable ammount of remarkably unlikely events would have to have happened to form what we call our universe. It is a commonly held belief that the universe is expanding. I am no astronomer, but I accept their measurements and calculations as probable. That would prove that the universe at one point was either created that way, or became so remarkably imbalanced that random chance would better permit billions of needles jumping from a point on the earth and stacking themselves end to end creating the tallest tower ever. Granted not 100% impossible, but highly unlikely.
Evidence is merely “Something indicative” and that is what I’ve presented to you. Is the evidence you have the lack of divine intervention? We can only speculate as to what God, a god, or gods created us for. Maybe the creator has more faith in humanity than you think. Maybe our reason for being is to prove the existance or lack therof. Just because I don’t help someone that has never seen me doesn’t mean I don’t exist.
Religions do get twisted, just look at the lords prayer (starts with v.9) and take special note of verse 7. Perversions of a religion can not be blamed on the religion itself. Deuteronomy 5:17 states simply thou shalt not kill. It gives no justification for killing. Would there be war if all people adhered to this one law of the bible? Believe in the bible or not, everyone I’ve met believes killing is wrong. Whether it is prefferable to enslavement at the hands of our enemies is our choice.
My blog I didn’t see a place for it, so there it is.
edit
What is the meter by which *we* gauge truth?
and
My blog
“We can only speculate”
Well sure – we can speculate all day long. But religions do a lot more than just speculate, and it’s that aspect of them that I take issue with. I’ve said before that if it’s all just speculation, I have no quarrel; but it never is, it’s always intruding itself into politics, morality, public rhetoric, and so on.
Deuteronomy. Hmm – but what about the other things Deuteronomy says?