That Dream Again
I just wanted to call your attention to this post on Normblog. It’s his reaction to yet another of those helpful lectures on how impoverished and pathetic secularism is and how we have to give up and admit that we ‘need’ religion. Of course, as always, the writer makes the case by 1) pretending that religion is the only possible source of things like meaning and solidarity, and 2) by redefining religion. Okay. At that rate – if there’s enough taking away combined with enough redefinition – I could be brought to agree with that idea too. But what of it? Of what use is it to assume that secularism is something it isn’t and that religion isn’t what most people take it to be? Of what use is an argument that depends on a bunch of fictions?
Enabling dreams of Paradise, a world where swords will be beaten into ploughshares, a counter-reality which glimpses an alternative republic of heaven on earth, where peace is built on justice rather than conquest… this, not virgin births, second comings, holy wars and infallible books, is the real stuff: hard-core religion in action. And we have a basic need for that, even if we know the need can never be wholly satisfied, the itch never healed.
No it isn’t. That is not the real stuff of religion. Religion has no monopoly on dreams of peace and justice, and plenty of religion has nothing whatever to do with peace and justice. I do wish if people are going to try to make a case for religion they could manage to do it honestly.
“I do wish if people are going to try to make a case for religion they could manage to do it honestly.”
Ah, but how would anyone go about doing that? If they were being honest, they would have no case.
Well that’s a point. But I suppose they could do some sort of Pascal’s wager thing. ‘Believe just to be on the safe side because no punitive god is going to be pissed if you do.’ Or some sort of ‘believe because it’s consoling’ number. Or a ‘believe because it’s socially acceptable’ routine. Or a ‘you have to believe because you’re a Republican/Tory and it’s required.’ Sort of honest. Or not quite so brazenly lying anyway.
Being honest with others first requires being honest with yourself.
It’s sort of sad, really, that I don’t need to say anything beyond one sentence about self-deception to sum up all religious sentiment and argument. Has anyone else noticed that our species is, on the whole, rather pathetic? Or am I just feeling especially cynical from teaching introductory philosophy courses to American undergraduates?
‘Blinkered, anorexic humanism’… hmm, presumably implies a self-inflicted pathology of self-denial of the requisite sustenance for a thriving existence and a healthy outlook towards our fellow humans. What could that sustenance be? Oh, here it is… “Enabling dreams of Paradise, a world where swords will be beaten into ploughshares, a counter-reality which glimpses an alternative republic of heaven on earth, where peace is built on justice rather than conquest… this, not virgin births, second comings, holy wars and infallible books, is the real stuff: hard-core religion in action.” See? That’s what humanism can’t do – enable any of those things! Nor apparently, even aspire to them. How subterraneanly doltish we are. A clan of dark-age Gollums no less. Face it, we’re over. I imagine it to be the acme of stupidity to ask if there’s one single jot of arsing evidence to support this patronising filth ? Of course not…. Oh well back to the strong cider and internet porn then… and perhaps there’ll be a video clip of a far-off street stoning to download to help me through the night… better make sure it’s a secular one though…
He forget to mention that we eat babies for breakfast.
Terry Gilliam would be lost without us…
Dear G,
You write: “It’s sort of sad, really, that I don’t need to say anything beyond one sentence about self-deception to sum up all religious sentiment and argument.”
The notion that religious belief is based on self deception is not a self proving idea. Or maybe I’m underestimating the cogency of your one sentence formulation. Why hide your light under a bushel? Are only your undergraduates favored with your devastatingly quick and dirty criticism of religious belief? You may have inadvertently found the solution to Kant’s bete noir, the possibility of synthetic apriori knowledge. Feel free to share it with us.
Since you teach undergraduate philosophy courses, I presume you’re capable of recognizing a petitio principii when you see one. You probably see lots of them. I know I did when I taught undergraduate philosophy.
Sorry, you’ll have to say more than one sentence before you conclude that religious belief is nothing more than self deception. Unless of course it’s a very long sentence, and you use lots of semicolons.
I think one has to be very careful when pursuing this argument about religious believers all being deluded, for several reasons:
1. Sometimes smart people believe strange things. Religious people (the Jesuits, say) have also been in the forefront of science and technology.
2. There are religious allies out there for secular people on lots of issues – it’s not just the secularists who oppose Creationism-in-schools (for instance), the Catholic Church is also against it. Reflexive hatred isn’t going to win friends and influence people.
3. Religious people have been thinking about ethics for a very long time. Some of this accumulated knowledge is useful and should be retained.
Also, some secular value-structures approximate religions very closely indeed. Congratulating oneself on escaping a (traditional) religion isn’t very useful or honest if the escape consists of joining what is effectively a new religion.
I personally do not see how one can justify universal human rights (for example) without some other principle. Maybe it doesn’t matter what that principle *is*, but on the face of it, I don’t see any good way to say that the child-murderer and the philanthropist are equal in any sense. There’s a leap of faith there.
I’m willing to make that leap – sometimes – but I feel that I have had to make a leap. It’s *not* obvious, and it *doesn’t* follow in an obvious way from the principles I live my daily life by.
LJPK: You’re right, it’s bad tactics to insult ALL believers as dishonest or dim, but to be fair, OB’s remarks were in response to a dishonest and dim article that smeared atheists. Fact is, it’s rare to encounter a critique of atheists that doesn’t portray us as unprincipled or cold, narrow, selfish people. We get rather weary of being told that we have no business talking about ethics unless we also believe in God.
But yeah, we ought to make a distinction between secularism and atheism. It is possible to be religious and still advocate separation of church and state. In fact, secularism is probably beneficial for religion, too.
That’s all hot air, LJPK. First, put forward one honest, non-deceptive argument for religion that stands up to scrutiny. Then we can talk.
“First, put forward one honest, non-deceptive argument for religion that stands up to scrutiny. Then we can talk.”
I don’t agree with all of what wtb said, but in fairness to him/her, they used the term self-deception, whereas you are using the term deceptive. There is a big difference between deception and self-deception. Naturally as ahtheists many of us beleive all religous beleivers are being deceived one way or another. That does not mean they are all being self-deceiving.
Let me start by saying that I don’t believe in anything in particular, and that I have managed to deprogram myself from two versions of fundamentalist-style belief systems (although I would call myself an agnostic rather than an atheist).
I recently took a Business Ethics class, and short of Utilitarian arguments, which in some respects seem problematic, I still can’t figure most ethics systems such as values-based or Kantian ethics without some sort of belief in something, some power, greater than oneself. I’m still struggling with it, and every argument I seem to come up with seems to have contradictions.
From an Ethical viewpoint, where does the atheist stand, except from a purely Utilitarian view. And what dictates why the least harm for the least amount of people is the right thing to do?
These are serious questions, and not just a troll.
I am a very strong anti-religious secularist, but I am having trouble defining a useful, and non-self-contradictory ethics.
Answers on a postcard of 25 words or less ;-)!
I’m a he. You can call me Bill.
My posting has been confused with LJPK. I pointed out that G is begging the question with his one sentence formulation of religious belief. I have to point out that your first posting also begs the question in much the same way: it assumes that if religious believers were honest, presumably with both themselves and others, they’d abandon their belief.
My reply to that is along the lines of LJPK’s post:
“I personally do not see how one can justify universal human rights (for example) without some other principle. Maybe it doesn’t matter what that principle *is*, but on the face of it, I don’t see any good way to say that the child-murderer and the philanthropist are [un]equal in any sense. There’s a leap of faith there.”
I don’t make the radical step of claiming there’s a leap of faith in distinguishing morally between the child-murderer and the philanthropist. However, I think at bottom one can’t provide a demonstrable, rational, distinction between the two. That doesn’t mean that the distinction is obscure, difficult, or in any way mystical. But it’s not a distinction that you can sit down and prove with a syllogism. If you think that’s trivial, consider this: The difficulty of reforming pedophiles and sociopaths. If the distinction were one that relied on solely on reason it seems it would be easy to talk NAMBLA members out to their beliefs, but neither persuasion nor coercion seem to have any effect. I conclude from this that the distinction, or the “principle” involved in the distinction, relies on something other than abstract reasoning.
That’s not to say QED, God exists. However, it does suggest that if every moral agent were “honest” then moral life would be next to impossible. By honest, I mean submitting beliefs and convictions about our moral and spiritual nature to a rational scrutiny that rejects the validity of belief and action based on “non-rational” grounds. Since moral reasoning depends upon a “non rational” ground, such an “honest” agent would indeed have difficulty distinguishing between a child murderer and a philanthropist.
If what I’m saying stands up, then virtuous atheists and believers are either “dishonest” or there’s got to be “some other principle” involved in moral reasoning that we can’t quite grasp solely by thinking about it.
PS, my previous comment is addressed to ChrisM
Huh, I’m confused now. Easliy done ;-).
Ooops yes, I can see I did mix up wtb (Bill) and LJPK. I used to do that with msg and wmr as well. I am pants with TLAs and ETLAs.
In any event I was agreeing with wtb (Bill) that “Sorry, you’ll have to say more than one sentence before you conclude that religious belief is nothing more than self deception. Unless of course it’s a very long sentence, and you use lots of semicolons.” (I found the final caveat most amusing I might add.) I was agreeing with that on the basis that one could be deceived without being self deceiving.
“I conclude from this that the distinction, or the “principle” involved in the distinction, relies on something other than abstract reasoning.”
Maybe, maybe not. When I catch a ball, I am not aware of making mathematic calculations about its velocity in order that I catch it. Yet part of the brain does just that. I do not intend to argue by anology (especially as I have taken people to task for doing just that). However, I beleive that is an example of where one is not doing abstract reasoning as such (not consciously) but neither is the mechanism shrouded in mystery either.
“I have to point out that your first posting also begs the question in much the same way: it assumes that if religious believers were honest, presumably with both themselves and others, they’d abandon their belief.”
Yes, you are correct, I was being flippant ;-).
What is NAMBLA btw?
Dear ChrisM,
NAMBLA is the acronym of organization that seeks to repeal anti-pedophilia legislation. Sorry to enlighten you; you were probably happier not knowing about them.
I hoped your first post was merely flippant. I hope that OB’s reply was too. All this loose talk about lack of honesty and self-decption being at the heart of religious belief doesn’t help matters. At the very least, if you make that claim you first have to answer the question of dishonest with respect to what?
came across this page whilst looking for some material for …I would not normally respond to one-sided argument and at first I felt REALLY offended but then I felt a bit sad …
I am just sad that anyone feels so unhappy as to write a vitriolic outburst against religion..which in effect is merely attacking the values of a group of people who have done nothing wrong -they have their own faith..that is all.
To say that many religions have nothing to do with peace and justice is perhaps not understanding that most religious people KNOW that any human organisation is not perfect and would willingly conced that power is a major motivator of human beings WHETHER IN A RELIGIOUS ORGANISATION OR ELSEWHERE. If anything power is often the thing that is most addressed by religious writers.
Also, we DO live in the world …justlike everyone else we deal with ‘real stuff’ as well.. I don’t think I have escaped any of the gritty nastiness that comes with life as a result of my faith..I just know that I deal with it better since I had my faith… having faith does not mean rose coloured spectacles,..often religion requires yoU to look more honestly at yourself and question your reactions. So I do understand you don’t want to be patronised by religious people. But nor do we appreciate being patronised either.
If you believe in a world where peace and justice mean something..perhaps you might invite a religious person to talk about their world view to you. I think you will find it is based on more than just escapist rhetoric and myopic self-delusion. Mine is based on a real experience and a rational understanding that positivism is a cultural inheritance of the 19th century ..for we know for sure in 21st century that there is more to heaven and earth than the human mind can conceive…. the only way to explore that..given the limitations of the positivist approach …is to experience it…
S. Mahony: As they say in SoCal, it’s a two-way street. If you read further in this weblog, you will find that it is mainly the constant attacks by certain religious spokespeople on secularism and science that raise our ire. I don’t recall reading any entry here that gratuitously attacked religion. We aren’t motivated by Schadenfreude, merely self-defense and personal dignity.
Connie – as you say, many posts here are only responding to the scads of religious invective published each week in declamation of other beliefs, or even – shriek – non-belief…
S Mahony, notwithstanding all that, I would also say that if something is worth believing in then that belief should also be robust enough to take some serious questioning on a regular basis…
Finally, to say anyone posting here in defence of pro-religious assaults is “merely attacking the values of a group of people who have done nothing wrong” is, well, challenging in its naivity. It’s hard to think of many denominations of any religion whose conduct on this planet don’t currently cause siginificant misery and suffering to others in the name of their faith. I’d be glad to see some examples. Don’t say the Amish, we know that one.