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22 March 2004
... and by the magistrate as equally useful
Over at the Spectator (registration required), atheist Andrew Kenny is taking the likes of Richard Dawkins to task for their 'ignorance and dogma' in painting 'a false and damaging picture of religion in civilisation'. As a believer, I find this troubling.
Like Allen Orr, Kenny thinks that people attacking religion for its historical crimes should take the trouble to learn a bit of history first. That's not what bothers me about Kenny's piece; he's surely right about this. Anybody not blinded by bigotry must certainly appreciate that religion has motivated much good; just as any believer not blinded by triumphalism must concede that religion has motivated much unspeakable evil. So far, Kenny is not saying anything with which 99.9% of reasonable and reasonably well-educated people, be they theist, atheist or agnostic, would disagree.
Kenny also spends some time recounting why evolution is right and creationism wrong. Obviously, that bit doesn't bother me either. (He doesn't really have anything new to say on this. He does, though, seem to have an inkling of a perception that creationism is objectionable on religious as well as scientific grounds; it's refreshing to see an atheist pick up on this point.)
No; what bothers me about Kenny's piece is this: he rather likes religion. He writes:
... I believe that the great religions have played a fundamental, perhaps essential, part in the development of all that is good in civilisation, including science, justice and decency. Long may they flourish.I only know the religion I was born into, Christianity. I do not believe, but I accept Jesus as the supreme moral leader. If I had children, I should want them brought up as Christians. Throughout the centuries since His crucifixion, the greatest genius of Europe has built up a sublime edifice of art, literature and music to His name, expressing the most transcendental longings of the human spirit and the highest virtues of the human capacity. No atheist can stand against this majesty — nor should he want to.
Cathedrals and cantatas are all very well, of course. And, on a more important level, religion has certainly played an important role in the development of concepts of justice and so on. But Kenny does much more than recognise the undoubted part that religion has played in the growth of culture and civilisation. He wants religion (specifically, what he calls the 'great religions'; he's not as keen on the more recent sects) to go on playing that part, even though he believes religion is false. And here is where he goes wrong. If you think religious belief is false, you should not be encouraging it in others.
You needn't be a believer to appreciate religious culture (consider Stephen Jay Gould, a Jewish atheist whose passionate love for Christian art, music and architecture glows warmly in his prolific writing). But it's an odd sort of atheist who would want other people to believe a falsehood for the sake of his own viewing and listening pleasure.
Nor is Kenny's recognition of religious contributions in the ethical sphere a persuasive reason for wishing religion upon anybody. Do you hunger and thirst for justice? Well, you may be satiated without religion. Religion, it is true, might give you a reason for wanting justice that would be in addition to an atheist's reasons, and that can be a very noble thing. (It might also simply scare you out of cheating and stealing because you think you'll burn in hell forever if you do; a rather less noble motivation.) Justice should be very important to the believer. But it should also be very important to the non-believer; and I hope Kenny isn't saying that people can only be brought to a concern for justice and ethical behaviour with the help of beliefs that Kenny thinks wrong.
If you are persuaded that a religious teaching is true, you should embrace it. If you are convinced it is false, you should reject it; and if you are an atheist who loves his neighbour, you should not wish an untruth upon him because it inspires pleasant art and makes him likelier to be a good citizen. As that itinerant rabbi whom Kenny so admires once said, 'ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'
Posted by Mrs Tilton at 03:06 PM | Permalink
Comments
Excellent post, but I hope you don't mind me indulging in a little advocacy for the devil for a minute. Couldn't one justify Andrew Kenny's position by resorting to the rationale of the "Noble Lie?"
Here goes the reasoning: most people really are too weak and lacking in insight to handle the truth of a world in which all religion is a lie and no higher being exists to hand down ethical rules for living. Furthermore, most of us are by nature happiest when we have a comprehensive and settled creed to abide by, a complete philosophy of living that removes from our shoulders the Nietzschean burden of creating our own ethics. Religion also gives us comfort in the face of a terrible reality that is an outgrowth of our ability to reflect upon the past and the future - unlike all other animals that live only in the moment, we know that we are fated to die in the end, and this knowledge can easily paralyze us. In light of all these facts, is it such a terrible thing to allow our fellow men human beings the comfort of their religious beliefs, however false we believe them to be?
Now, speaking for my own thoughts, it isn't at all clear to me that introducing others to the truth as I know it is always to the good. I do happen to think all religion is false, and I do think it ought to be deprived of any official role in the political arena, but I'm not sure that I really ought to be going about trying to smash the religious beliefs of others, in so far as those beliefs have no effects outside the strictly personal sphere. To put this in a slightly different context, if I had a friend who thought himself far better looking or intelligent than the facts warranted, I wouldn't try to disabuse him of this notion, unless he made a point of being obnoxious about it, and it could well be that this little point of vanity was the key to that extra something that made that friend such a compelling personality.
Posted by: Abiola Lapite at 22 Mar 2004 22:12:21
It's actually a very powerful idea. We can enslave the masses with the opiate of religion, keeping the empowering truth out of their hands, while simultaneously patting ourselves on the back for being so liberal and open-minded in allowing them to continue to believe in their harmless little superstitions. What's not to like about it?
So are you suggesting that good atheists, if they really loved our fellow man, ought to be more evangelical? (Note that I excuse myself from the duty, since as a properly cynical curmudgeon I fail to meet the requirements of that conditional clause.)
Posted by: PZ Myers at 23 Mar 2004 00:45:52
"So are you suggesting that good atheists, if they really loved our fellow man, ought to be more evangelical?"
Not at all. I was just playing with the idea to see how well it could be defended. Most utilitarian justifications of religion that I've come across have been of this "Noble Lie" variety.
My own attitude is "do no harm": neither stir others from their dogmatic slumbers (if said slumbers are pleasing to them and harmful to no one else), nor attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of those who do have a sense that something is amiss with the religious worldview, and are genuinely looking for the truth (even if it means learning that there's no GodMan⢠in the sky to look after them). I just don't see the point of forcing such knowledge onto those who aren't ready for it.
Posted by: Abiola Lapite at 23 Mar 2004 02:52:01
By the way, I'd say that the following seems to be quite a decent description of the Straussian worldview, though it doesn't match my own.
"We can enslave the masses with the opiate of religion, keeping the empowering truth out of their hands, while simultaneously patting ourselves on the back for being so liberal and open-minded in allowing them to continue to believe in their harmless little superstitions. What's not to like about it?"
I'm not for the active propagation of religious beliefs or any other superstitions, just not against allowing people the freedom to engage in their own little irrationalities, as long as they aren't harming anyone else. If praying to Allah or אלהימ or Jesus gives people in dire straits the strength to make it through the day, who am I to try to rob them of such consolation?
Posted by: Abiola Lapite at 23 Mar 2004 03:00:14
Thanks Abiola, I'd been looking for those letters for a while. As you can imagine, they're seldom written.
Posted by: Albert Law at 23 Mar 2004 03:20:48
Actually, I think I mispelled that. The correct spelling is אלהים.
Posted by: Abiola Lapite at 23 Mar 2004 04:00:29
Abiola,
you didn't misspell it, strictly speaking; yours was an error of typography, not orthography. Mem sofit is simply a special form of the letter for use in the terminal position in place of the plain old mem you'd first used, just as the Greeks used the variant of sigma that looks like a topheavy s rather than a drunken 6.
Abiola and Paul,
I'm not suggesting that atheists 'evangelise' (though of course they are welcome to do so if so inclined). I'm not even suggesting that an atheist, for all that he disagrees with his theist neighbours, regret the fact of their belief (so long as they do not attempt to impose those beliefs on the state).
I think I can put myself pretty accurately into an atheist's frame of mind on the issue, having been one myself for so many years and not seldom having thought during those years about this very issue.
First, we can say that there's something to not begrudging our neighbours what comfort they may find in this vale of tears. Marx famously called religion 'the opiate of the people'. As the two of you and Albert very likely know, Marx's judgement was much more nuanced than it perhaps appears to the contemporary reader. Even if they hadn't seen the sentence that precedes this quotation, readers in Marx's own day would have understood 'opiate' as referring not to heroin but to the considerably more benign laudanum; in modern terms we might say 'religion is the Prozac of the people'.
More importantly, from the liberal perspective (in which I stood while an atheist and stand now), if I were still an atheist I should think of a theist's beliefs that:
1. it is for every individual to decide these matters according to his own best lights;
2. his decision is none of my business;
3. we ought to tolerate and respect the views of others with which we disagree, judging others by their actions, not their particular set of beliefs; and
4. who knows, maybe they're right and I'm wrong.
I certainly don't espouse the noble lie, but nor do I think Kenny is going quite so far as that (though he's on the road to it). If he were really all Straussian about this, he'd never have written what he wrote; at least not in a way readily comprehensible to the canaille.
But I think he does view religion as useful as a sort of scaffolding on which culture and civilisation have been constructed and may continue usuefully to be constructed. With respect to the past, his statement is a truism. It's with respect to the future that I have a problem with it. And this is essentially a theist's problem. An atheist who thinks religious belief incorrect may readily think it nonetheless a comfort to the masses; or a superb cultural scaffolding; or a lie usueful to the magistrate. But if his concern is for the truth as he can work it out, he should not wish for the spread of religion on merely pragmatic grounds (though, as I've said, he might well be prepared to tolerate and respect others who have come to a different conclusion as to the existence of a God). And a theist, I should think, we would be even more unhappy to see religion used as a convenience to the state (this theist is, at any rate). Indeed I'd say that religion has generally achieved the most good when it is an inconveninece to the state; and no Straussian could be very happy about that.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton at 23 Mar 2004 11:09:01
It's actually a very powerful idea. We can enslave the masses with the opiate of religion, keeping the empowering truth out of their hands, while simultaneously patting ourselves on the back for being so liberal and open-minded in allowing them to continue to believe in their harmless little superstitions. What's not to like about it?
Surely this powerful idea has already occurred to a good portion of the conservative movement in America.
There are many things I don't like about George Bush, but his personal religious belief isn't one of them. I don't think much of the details of that belief, insofar as I can make them out, but his belief seems genuine and sincere nonetheless. He really believes, for instance, that religious faith is what empowered him to stop drinking. (And may I say as an aside that I dislike the digs some Bush opponents make at his earlier overindulgences. That Bush is a successfully reformed drunkard is one of the very few things - perhaps the only thing - that I really admire about him.)
But I have the impression that, for all their lip-service to the virtues of religion, not all movement conservatives share Bush's faith (by which I mean, genuine personal religious belief in general, not specifically Bush's own evangelically-tinged methodist Christian version of belief). There's a lot of playing to various bases going on. Right-wing wobbliness on creationism, to cite a specific example, may in some cases reflect genuine personal conviction. But I suspect in may other cases, conservative politicians either privately think creationism ludicrous or simply aren't interested in the issue. They know, however, that there are a lot of voters out there for whom creationist beliefs are important, and an earnest frown and mealy-mouthed mumblings that 'the jury is still out' or 'both sides of the issue should be taught' go a long way towards bringing these voters on board and keeping them there.
I have a lot more contempt for conservatives of this sort than I do for a Bush. Bush thinks his religion true. They think it's false, but useful. And as a believer, I find their attitude deeply wrong and offensive.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton at 23 Mar 2004 13:45:57
On your four-point list of what an atheist might think of theists, I concur with 1-3. But 4? Nah. Show me some thin fragment of evidence, then I'll consider it.
I also disagree with the sentiment that sincerity and genuine religious belief somehow enhance the virtue of the individual. One thing we know about religion is that it can be very good at inspiring conviction and a sense of moral rectitude. Give me a doubter, a seeker, a person of faith who questions his beliefs every day, over any of these shallow simpletons who never think. I can respect someone who wrestles with their conscience and their faith and comes to the conclusion that they will believe, but I simply don't see that in many of the politicians who wear their religion as a badge of their absolute righteousness.
Posted by: PZ Myers at 23 Mar 2004 16:19:55
On your four-point list of what an atheist might think of theists, I concur with 1-3. But 4? Nah. Show me some thin fragment of evidence, then I'll consider it.
... Give me a doubter, a seeker, a person of faith who questions his beliefs every day, over any of these shallow simpletons who never think.
Those four points summarise not an atheist but a liberal viewpoint (not that the two are mutually exclusive). It goes without saying that these points (including the fourth) can, and should, be held by theists as regards atheists as well. That fourth point (and it is one that you echo in the second half of what I have quoted from you above) does not mean that one should think oneself incapable of making a judgement. Rather, it counsels caution before absolute certainties, which caution some have described as the very foundation stone of liberalism.
The great American judge (and great liberal) Learned Hand was thinking along these lines when he wrote, quoting an important historical figure,
"I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken." I should like to have that written over the portals of every church, every school, and every court house, and may I say, of every legislative body in the nation.The historical figure Hand was quoting, BTW, was Oliver Cromwell; whether Hand enjoyed the irony, I cannot say.
If a vicious individual is sincere in his religious belief, his sincerity does not render him virtuous. It simply means that there is one particular vice that he does not have. I think George Bush pretty vicious. But I don't think him (as opposed to some of his capos and cheerleaders) guilty of the vice of cynically exploiting religious belief. He exploits it all right; but I don't think he's being cynical about it. He is cynical enough about so many other things that I have plenty of reason to dislike him all the same.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton at 23 Mar 2004 17:12:09
I think that's what I'm saying, too: I think Bush is entirely sincere in his beliefs. I just don't think that makes him less guilty or less vice ridden than someone who pretends to have faith.
Posted by: PZ Myers at 23 Mar 2004 21:08:35
Thanks for the correction on the Name.
Tilton,
"we ought to tolerate and respect the views of others with which we disagree, judging others by their actions, not their particular set of beliefs;"
Yet you view Bush more kindly than others because he really believes his religion.
I don't understand. If it's actions ( consequences ) that matter, what motivated them, a sincere belief or an insincere one, is irrelevant when it comes to judging them.
According to what you said ( judging people based on actions, not beliefs ), GOP decision-maker A, who doesn't believe in creationism and introduces creationism in the school curriculum, is not any worse than GOP decision-maker B, who does believe in creationism and introduces creationism in the school curriculum.
What matters is the introduction of creationism in the school curriculum because that is the actual action. That is, if I understand point 3.
If you accept that as a premisse, Bush isn't any less worse than GOP decision-maker A. He would be just as bad as a Straussian.
Posted by: Albert Law at 23 Mar 2004 21:51:56
Albert,
see my exchange with PZ Myers above. I don't view Bush more kindly because of his religion (indeed, in a certain sense I might be tempted to judge him more harshly because of it).
However, what I am ranting about in this thread is the promotion of religion by those who don't believe it themselves but find it a useful tool. Bush isn't guilty of that; he does believe it.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton at 23 Mar 2004 22:39:24
The theory is less interesting than the practice. There was a clean, cheap, pleasant cafe open on market days in a nearby town. Christian books were sold in a small anteroom. Apart from there being a leaflet on the table next to the menu, religion would not be mentioned.
Shortly after the most famous date of the new century I pushed the doors open (always having better things to do than look at signs) and found the tables gone -- and the crowd. There were upright young women who said I could have a coffee, but that they no longer "do" food. In fact they no longer did the soft sell either.
I should say that I don't know what attracted me. I'm the atheist who won the school religious knowledge prize. I also had paternal grandparents who emigrated to the US, coming back to Liverpool after some right wild west goings-on: swindling, bullets through the window, I'm-not-bringing-a-child-up-in-a-place-like-this. And while my grandad had owned the mine, my grandmother was religious. So there's always been a bit of me that's more curious than seems proper about American religion.
It was October 2001 and George was gearing everything up. Instead of being quietly English the new proprietors of my little cafe seemed linked to the US right.
I didn't lie. I just said I didn't have much faith (and I did, after all, find it relatively easy to talk about something I'd learned all those years before, albeit only to gather myself an extra exam pass). My motives weren't cynical: I actually wanted to know why the government of the most powerful nation had apparently taken to The Good Book, at such a critical time.
To sit beside one of the leaders, in his expensive home, and agree (I think) that the display of belief was all there really could be -- built a bridge between this arch-atheist and a wealthy-pillar-of-the-community. He uses his ingenuity to repair people's bodies, and in his spare hours cares for their spirit: I don't find that inconsistent.
Posted by: Peter at 23 Mar 2004 23:35:12
I'm an athiest/indifferentist, which is to say that: 1) I don't believe in a transcendent G-d, who in some sense or other exists beyond this world, nor in any world beyond this world, nor in any life after death; and 2) I believe it is the same world and the same human existence for believers and unbelievers alike, the only difference being in interpretations of that existence and in equally allowable commitments. If one were to ask me why I believe what I do, I suppose the biographical answer would be that philosophically I had caught the historicist bug and the corresponding anthropological turn, though I would readily admit that the anthropological turn is not absolutely dispositive and that no one believes anymore in History as progress- the evidence against that is just too great- as opposed to historical consciousness as an unretractable and irremissible consciousness of human temporality and finitude. But I would have no particular desire to disabuse anyone of their religious faith or belief, but would simply judge the matter in terms of the quality and authenticity of their belief, as with any other sort of fundamental belief and its commitments. And if someone were to want to discuss their religious beliefs with me, I would have no objection to their consideration, provided the ground rules were understood, especially that, if, as Dante had it, damnation is due to "perverse desire", defined as desiring what one fears, and insofar as human desire is voluntary, the damned commit themselves to their own damnation voluntarily, in cutting themselves of from G-d, then religious believers are no more immune from such "perverse desire" than anyone else, nor does their faith afford them some sort of privileged access to G-d,- ( which latter claim I would take to count against the quality and maturity of their belief). But soon enough I would be more interested in what other sorts of belief they had and whether there was any common ground between our apparently incommensurable beliefs. And certainly I think one should stand against any instrumentalization of religious belief, whether one is religious or not, as that famous and wonderful Marx quote you linked to should make clear,- (although "Prozac" would not be such a good "translation", as it reeks of the technological instrumentalization of human existence and the suspicion cast upon any untoward indulgence in human bliss.) But I think the issue for us unbelievers, as I have expatiated on at tedious length elsewhere, is the extent to which we unbelievers actually draw on a cultural heritage of defunct religious beliefs, both pro and con, in intuiting and formulating our own fundamental normative commitments. And here the bothersome issue for us is the function of religion in its etymological sense, from the Latin religare, "to tie together", as in the binding together of a community. Too often, the alternative to religion is seen as an unbounded (and impossible) assertion of human freedom and the question is left dangling as to what is to make for the maintenance of bonds of recognition between human beings in community that is necessary for any human flourishing, in the absence of religion. The alternatives are reduced to the most dogmatic self-enclosure or the most hopeless freedom. This is where the desire of political and corporatist conservatives to instrumentalize religion for the purposes of maintaining the authority of the sheerly pregiven social order comes from and this is also the source, it seems to me, of the conventionalist nostalgia of Andrew Kenny above,- (though I find his insistence on raising his putative children as Christians, rather than educating them in the contents and doctrines of the relevant religious tradition, odd, as if religion were necessarily a childish thing that will in time be left behind and as if such parental bad faith were a salutary example.) But I obviously don't think that such attitudes will do. It is perhaps better to acknowledge the believers and unbelievers are just oddly dependent on one another to sustain their respective beliefs and, whatever the fate of religion in the future course of this world, we will have to suffer that world together. I thought Mr. Kenny's observation that Jesus should be acknowledged as a a supreme moral leader, an old saw, especially trite, as surely the point of the Christian religion is that the imitation of Christ is an impossible injunction, which recognition should lead to the consciousness of sin, a recognition in which believers and unbelievers are alike.
Posted by: john c. halasz at 24 Mar 2004 07:14:16
Halasz,
I enjoy reading you, but please, use paragraphs.
Posted by: Albert Law at 25 Mar 2004 01:12:47
