They all contain interpretive traditions
Jonathan Sacks is all wrong part 2.
He goes on from his wrong assertion that religion can provide meaning to say that religion (being so good at providing meaning) has returned.
The religion that has returned is not the gentle, quietist and ecumenical form that we in the West have increasingly come to expect. Instead it is religion at its most adversarial and aggressive. It is the greatest threat to freedom in the postmodern world. It is the face of what I call “altruistic evil” in our time: evil committed in a sacred cause, in the name of high ideals.
Well isn’t that just like him. It’s not remotely altruistic; that’s entirely the wrong word. Altruism is concern for others; as a technical word it means concern for others at one’s own expense. It’s concern for other human beings, and if extended, for other animals and the planet. It’s not “high ideals” and it’s not about “a sacred cause.” The evil done by adversarial and aggressive religion is not altruistic, it’s goddy. The two are not the same. Religion is about doing what god wants, not what fellow humans need. It’s misdirection, it’s displacement behavior; it’s not altruism. It’s so annoying the way religions try to corral all the virtues for themselves when in fact they have no truck with most of the important ones.
Yes, there are passages in the sacred scriptures of each of the Abrahamic monotheisms that, interpreted literally, can lead to hatred, cruelty and war. But Judaism, Christianity and Islam all contain interpretive traditions that in the past have read them in the larger context of coexistence, respect for difference and the pursuit of peace, and can do so today. Fundamentalism—text without context, and application without interpretation—is not faith but an aberration of faith.
That’s such an easy out. Yes, all the monotheisms are cruel and bloodthirsty, but hey, just ignore the actual words, and interpret them to mean something completely different. Obey god, follow the good old religion, and pretend that all that murderous violence is just a mistake of interpretation.
Not credible.
He’s almost on to something. “Idealistic evil” might work better.
Here’s a bit from the piece that annoys me:
(Emphasis added.)
I read all four of the “Four Horsemen’s” bestsellers, and I don’t recall any of them saying that. I don’t think even Sam Harris believes religion is “the” major source of violence. It’s a source, and possibly more resistant to rational appeal than some of the others, but hardly the only or biggest one.
If you have concern for God at ones own expense, that would qualify as ‘altruistic’ by the technical definition you gave. An imaginary other is still an other.
@Jim Baerg
True, but haven’t you noticed how often what god wants seems to dovetail with what his followers (or at least their leaders) want?
The fact that it is adversarial makes it definitionally not altruism; if it is damage / destruction committed against an out-group to preserve the in-group, it is selfishness. The fucking opposite of altruism.
In which he breezes past the fact that there are traditions of contextual interpretation… and traditions of literalism.
Religion does in fact provide meaning, in some form, to probably the majority of people on Earth. The obvious fact that religions are ideologically inconsistent and their sacred texts are incoherent and internally contradictory is irrelevant. Religious belief is most probably a result of those psychological characteristics that gave our ancestors an evolutionary advantage, it’s not useful to treat it as an intellectual position.
Some of us who ‘don’t have the gene for religion’, or however we choose to describe people who just can’t believe, will always find belief in the numinous incomprehensible.
Of course Sacks’ pontifications on religion are banal, however so are the ‘explanations’ presented by theology professors, mullahs and priests.
RJW:
In some spurious form, but putative meaning is not actual meaning. So, not really.
(You might as well claim Christianity provides Salvation with no loss in accuracy or truthfulness)
Nah.
(Also, the numinous is a subjective experience — I think you mean to refer to the supernatural)
—
But yeah, I too find the notion that religion is a good thing merely being done badly rather silly.
PS RJW, it’s a shame entheogens are typically illicit drugs, because they can provide a similar experience to pretty much anyone who is curious.
Holms,
Not outside the group’s belief system, no. Within it, if practiced as preached, it’s a prescription for reciprocal altruism.
Hinduism is one example of a religion becoming more… um, militant — but it doesn’t seek to expand.
The particular problem of the Abrahamic faiths is that the rules were originally for the tribes that worshipped a particular deity — I do find it odd how anyone who has read the Old Testament can’t get that.
— but versions 2 and 3 believe they apply to everyone.
(It is version 2 which introduced the need for universal Salvation via conversion by means of proselytism, and version 3 which took that concept to its ultimate form. So far.)
RJW,
It’s the placebo effect, nothing more.
As John Morales correctly observed, this is so only from the external perspective. A believer would just shrug at such words: “obviously, fellow humans need what God wants and there is no difference between the two!” Right … obviously.
“Idealistic evil” (Lady Mondegreen #1) sounds more appropriate than “goddy”. Indeed, there is not that much difference between mindless cruelty motivated by ‘what is required by God (for our common good)’ and the one prompted by ‘our noble social ideas (for the good of future generations)’. In both cases we end up with a parody of altruism. In both cases real, concrete people are treated as tools, as a fodder for your magnificent ‘altruistic’ cause.
(Oops, there are no ‘both cases’ here. It’s one and the same old story over and over again.)
God will torture you forever if I, Torquemada, don’t torture you now to get you to recant your heresy. I’m sorry. I truly am. I don’t want to torture you. I have nightmares about this. But a few days, perhaps only a few hours, can spare you an eternity of worse. I must do it, for your own good.
Or instead, the person who informed on their heresy but would never raise a hand in violence themselves.
Maybe they all lied. Maybe they didn’t actually believe it and were acting out of malice. But as prone to delusion as people are, and as varied as they can be, I think a lot of them did believe.
When religion tells you salvation is the most important thing and the only way to avoid eternal suffering, then I think some people did believe that they were helping the civilizations they invaded, the heretics they questioned, and the forced converts. In the 1800s, when Italian Catholics adopted kidnapped Jewish kids, they probably thought they were helping. One of the horrors of what religion can do is make evil look like good, because the imaginary good of salvation is more important than any material harm.
This (the ‘religious fanaticism as altruism’ part) is the exact same argument made by Objectivists. I made the mistake of trying to talk sense into them, something I wouldn’t try again with Sacks.
If you can interpret what God wants and ignore what he actually says he wants… what do you need God for in the first place?
^^ Hahahaha exactly.
(Plato made the same basic point in the Euthyphro. It’s a killer point.)
That’s not what it is though. The big brutalities of religion aren’t about using people for an altruistic cause. The goal isn’t “the greatest good for the greatest number” or the most good for the most people, or people & other animals & the planet, as possible. The goal is not any general good for humans – the goal is punishment, destruction, subordination. Cruelty isn’t a sad accident or by-product, it’s the goal. Hatred and revenge are core principles.
It isn’t misdirected idealism. What idealism could be in play when a group of men stones a woman to death? It’s not any kind of idealism to work to terrorize women into being slavishly obedient to the man who owns them. That’s not idealism any more than the whippings by slaveowners and their administrators were.
God wants us (especially the womenfolk) to be pure. Living in accordance with God’s will is the way to achieve the very best possible communities.
Sexual or theological impurity keeps our community from living in perfect accordance with our ideals; (God tells us) we must not tolerate it. Impurity must be ruthlessly stamped out from among us, for the good of all.
As Ariel points out, you can see a similar sort of thinking in totalitarian political philosophies.
Like I could really resist one as juicy as that…
https://www.facebook.com/144310995587370/photos/a.271728576178944.71555.144310995587370/1066912993327161/?l=55023e4804
Still, I understand (perhaps) what Ophelia is trying to say.
There are three elements here: the doctrine, the motives of the people who do this to others, and how all of this really functions.
The doctrine assures you (invariably!) that the goal is just and noble. Yes, even when a group of men stones a woman to death. Have you never heard the justifications? (See Lady Mondegreen above… but the question is rhetorical: of course you’ve heard them.)
Leaving the doctrine alone and looking into the motives of the perpetrators – who knows what we will find. Perhaps they are not motivated by anything else than “hatred and revenge”; on the other hand, perhaps they are – maybe it’s the ideological, doctrinal fervor that is their main motivation.
Personally I don’t care – and I guess we are not that far apart in this, aren’t we? It doesn’t matter much whether it’s the doctrine with its noble (stated) goals or hatred and revenge that is moving them to action. At some point I just stop being interested in the doctrine. Fuck the doctrine. Fuck their motivation as well. It’s about how it really functions, isn’t it?
Coming back to the start:
In other words, that’s not how they really function and that is all that’s important, right? It’s exactly the same with other ideologies (nothing specifically “goddist” here). The murderers of Pilecki might have been ideologically motivated… or not. It’s just that at some point I stop being interested both in their doctrine and in their motivation. What matters are only these last words: “Auschwitz compared with them was just a trifle.” It’s all about the outcomes, isn’t it? It’s about how it functions.
Or, rather, God says women are whores and men have to keep them from fucking everything in sight by the use of threats and violence.
I don’t consider it idealistic. Yes it’s possible to re-write it so that it has a veneer of idealism, but there’s precious little idealism in the thing itself. The people who do the stoning talk about it the way I did, not the way you did. Check out what Mohammed Shafia said about his daughters after he murdered them, for instance.
@Ariel
Agreed.
I realize Sacks is a member of the House of Lords, and I’m glad he’s found a way to cherry-pick and “reinterpret” the texts such that he doesn’t feel obliged to kill anyone. But he admits that a literal reading of the sacred scriptures supports the fundamentalists’ interpretation of God’s will rather than his own, so wouldn’t they be justified in judging his faith an aberration?
The truth is that Sacks is committing the same fundamental error as the fundamentalists: speaking in God’s name, identifying life’s meaning with obedience to God’s commandments, and glorifying faith. That is the real cause of religious violence.
I’ve written more about this here.