Do people ACTUALLY believe in God?

[Singularity]

http://www.spreadrationality.com/blogs/kemal-eren/2008/do-people-actually-believe-god

Do people ACTUALLY believe in God?
Submitted by Kemal Eren on Thu, 03/13/2008 - 7:49pm

Do people actually believe in religion, despite everything their common sense tells them? They would tell you "yes," but as any psychologist would tell you, do not trust verbal responses. Even if they themselves think they believe, their answers are suspect. It is much more informative to infer someone's beliefs by observing their behavior. When people hold contradictory beliefs, such as "life is precious" and "there is a better life after this one," this contradiction can lead to some very strange behaviors.

I would like to share an anecdote that illustrates this phenomena. My aunt Sharon*'s in-laws are both in poor health, so she often takes care of them. Recently at a family gathering, Sharon remarked about this sickly couple,

Sometimes I wish they would just hurry up and die. It would save everyone so much hassle.

Many relatives exploded in indignation that Sharon would speak so callously about family members. However, she defended herself, saying,

Why can't I say that? I believe in an afterlife, after all. Really, dying and going to heaven would be better than living anyways.

Few believers have actually achieved this level of blind faith, as evidenced by the outrage her remarks incited. In theory, everyone at the gathering (except for myself) should have agreed with her. Instead, everyone acted as though they did not believe in an afterlife -- in other words, they behaved like atheists.

Even believers seem to value this life as though it were their only one, which is a very good thing, because it is their only life. These peoples' beliefs have not completely overridden common sense.

This same phenomena occurs at funerals. I hate funerals, because of all the cognitive dissonance floating around. The preacher or priest tries to remind everyone of their faith in the afterlife. He or she makes a valiant effort to focus on the "celebration" of death, but of course no one buys it. Everyone cries, acts somber and downcast, comforts one another. They behave as though their loved ones are gone forever -- which of course, they are. Even though they are supposed to believe that Uncle Freddy is really in heaven, their behavior betrays them.

Furthermore, even if people do actually believe in the afterlife, no one seriously considers that their loved ones could be in Hell. This is actually a well-known flaw of human reasoning: they irrationally believe themselves exempt from the law of averages. Many think of themselves as smarter than average, for example, although the odds strongly suggest that they are actually average. Similarly, if you believe what you claim to believe, the odds are very good that Uncle Freddy is not floating in a white light taking harp lessons.

Upon noticing these inconsistencies in their thinking, some people follow the logical chain of reasoning to arrive at atheism. Unfortunately, others use the exact opposite strategy: they discard all logic in favor of blind faith. Take the extreme example of Kurt Wise, the young-earth creationist who also happens to hold a PhD from Harvard. Wise should know better, but he chooses to discard reason instead of his idiotic beliefs. In the book In Six Days: Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation, Wise states:

Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand.

How utterly pathetic that anyone could allow themselves to think this way. If you notice any inconsistencies in your thinking, will you do better?

*Names changed

I think this raises some valid points.

[Darkfire]

I'm thinking that the article is extremely biased ;)

I'll throw my hat in from the islamic corner of the ring though.

Some background first.
1) Islam does believe in a nice fluffy afterlife
2) You only get in there if your account balances in the positive (this applies to muslims and non-muslims alike)
3) If your account is in the negative you get to spend eternity wailing and gnashing your teeth
4) A person's death is set by Allah

There is a hadith (a story of an event in the life of the Prophet (pbuh)) that I'm going to paraphrase that applies to this. The Prophet had just lost a family member and was seen to be weeping by his followers and they asked of him why did he weep if they had gone onto Paradise? To which he answered that it was acceptable to weep for one who you'll miss so long as the sorrow was the loss of their company on this world.

So from my side of the fence. Muslims are by no means exempt from the law of averages quoted in the article, but I've found them to be more aware of the very real chance of a one way trip to hell (maybe because there is no way to assure a trip to paradise). So our outlook tends to be one of wanting to live life as long as possible to ensure we can wrack up a decent positive score, but once death has occured to accept that person's life is complete.

Islam recognises the emotional impact of losing someone though and we're by no means expected to be happy we've lost a loved one (especially when there is absolutely no gurrentee that we'll see them again).

[Name Lips]

How about the perspective of a Unitarian Universalist Pagan? :D

I know my religious and spiritual beliefs are internally inconsistant and laregly nonsensical. I revel in it. Having a belief system where things were understandable and sensible, and everything flowed logicaly from one truth to the next with no possiblity for error or misinterpretation would be, to me, dull and pointless.

The mundane, physical world already has that. It's called science and logic. Religion and spirituality are, for me, a way of escaping that for a time. When I'm in ritual, I get to stop thinking (yes, I think one of the purposes of religion is to inhibit thought, so I might be on the same page as Atheists there) about all that stuff for a while, and just have a powerful and moving experience and not give a shit about whether it makes sense or whether or not anything is "really happening."

And beneath all the claptrap, you'll find that religions have one thing in common - and it's something many Atheists manage to accomplish without the trappings - and that is they allow a systemized way of focusing an individual's will on a goal. Most people have a hard time accomplishing anything in life unless they manage to focus their will on it in a determined fashion, and then go out and do what needs to be done to accomplish their goal. Whatever your religion, it provides a way of doing this - some formalized and ritualistic, some in other ways. This is why, I think, people find religion to be a fulfilling part of their lives and why they percieve their religion as being the impetus for "good stuff" happening to them. The power and will to accomplish their goals was inside them all along, and just needed a way to manifest. Of course some religious people will take odds with this power being internalized - they think it stems directly from God.


So based on all of this, do I "really believe" all that nonsense about the Rule of Three, the mythological archetypes of the collective unconscoius, the dual male-female nature of divinity, the power of ritual and meditation, inherent magical properties of herbs and stones, and so forth? I will go out on a limb and agree with you. Probably not. But I like ritual and practicing all this stuff feels meaningful and fulfilling to me, and provides a ritualistic and communal forum for stating my will and focusing my mind on achieving my goals.

[Sobek]

Do people actually believe in religion, despite everything their common sense tells them? They would tell you "yes," but as any psychologist would tell you, do not trust verbal responses. Even if they themselves think they believe, their answers are suspect. It is much more informative to infer someone's beliefs by observing their behavior. When people hold contradictory beliefs, such as "life is precious" and "there is a better life after this one," this contradiction can lead to some very strange behaviors.
What a load of crap. It pretty much boils down to "I'm right and you know it, even if you don't know it."

I'll agree that there are more than a few nominal Christians who I doubt actually do believe in an afterlife, etc. and are mainly going through the motions. I've known more than a few professed atheists who don't seem to disbelieve in God so much as they are intent on giving Him the finger. And the significant majority of pagans I've known, personally*, are more like watching an alchoholic in denial than someone of a different faith (compared to Hindus, Jews, Buddhist, etc.). Are some Christians mainly trying to convince themselves? Yes. So are some members of other faiths (I'm including atheism as a faith, rightly or not).

As far as funerals go, I cried some when I went off to college. I knew that many of my friends and I weren't going to see each other for quite some time (no one I knew well in HS went to the same university) and that made me sad. At the minimum, a funeral is the same deal. But, a funeral is also the time that is most likely to make a person examine their faith and, thus, be a state that is most uncertain.

I've lost peers and elder family members. Those who I've been confident have been genuine Christians have always been less sad than those of whom I was less sure.

* I'm not disparaging NameLips or others here. By "personally", I mean that I was able to look in their eyes when they went on some tirade about "the Christian God."

[Name Lips]

Oh believe me, I know the "giving God the finger" crowd quite intimately. Most pagans are surprised to find out I wasn't raised in a Christian household and somehow mentally traumatized by the experience.

edit: now that I think about it, the Unitarians are largely the same way. Our minister has occasionally lamented the fact that UUs seem interested in learning about just about every religion except Christianity - even though that's the religion from which UUism evolved.

[there_is_no_bob]

What a load of crap. It pretty much boils down to "I'm right and you know it, even if you don't know it."
It may be a load of crap in this case (I don't actually know, though it probably is in this case), but it isn't crap in general.

Hypocrisy, mutually contradictory beliefs, fear of group rejection and lack of self-reflection abound; I'm enjoying some right now and not even really aware of it.

I think the more interesting question would be "What parts of the behavioural consequences* of their religion does each person reject, while still claiming membership? How often?". *Incredibly unwieldy term, meaning something like, how many atheists pray to <something> when they really want to avoid something unpleasant? Be an interesting and impossible study. Quantifying the level of intent and frequency would be pretty hard. Though, given that sub-vocal thing, it may become possible. I would so love to do this. Hem. Don't mind me. I've got metrics on the brain.

As to the rest of the article, meh. Funerals are utterly irrelevant to the point being made. And I think Christians should be horrified if someone says "I wish those people would just die and stop being a hassle". Pretty sure saying that sort of crap is sending the person a wee little ways out of the direction Jesus was preaching.

[Sobek]

Hypocrisy, mutually contradictory beliefs, fear of group rejection and lack of self-reflection abound;
This I can agree with. Many (most?) people violate their supposed belief systems with some regularity, even if in only minor ways.

I think the more interesting question would be "What parts of the behavioural consequences* of their religion does each person reject, while still claiming membership? How often?".
Again, this I can agree with. I'm not opposed to the idea that lots of people (including me) walk out of step with what they claim they believe. Sometimes, they do so knowingly. Other times, not so much.

What I took exception to, and specifically called a load of crap, was the author's assertion/implication that even a Christian who thought they believed in God really didn't.

[there_is_no_bob]

What I took exception to, and specifically called a load of crap, was the authorThis I can agree with:tongue:

Guy's a choad.

[Singularity]

Furthermore, even if people do actually believe in the afterlife, no one seriously considers that their loved ones could be in Hell. This is actually a well-known flaw of human reasoning: they irrationally believe themselves exempt from the law of averages. Many think of themselves as smarter than average, for example, although the odds strongly suggest that they are actually average. Similarly, if you believe what you claim to believe, the odds are very good that Uncle Freddy is not floating in a white light taking harp lessons.

I think this is an interesting point, inside or outside of the religious/not religious debate. People seem to really dislike speaking ill of the dead. I remember when one of my grandfather's brother's died, and the eulogized him as a wonderful family man who was the spiritual rock of his family, etc. and my aunt, in classic form, asked if we were talking about the same person. The guy was a drunk who refused to work for most of his life and left his family when they were still fairly young. By most realistic accounts, he was a loser and an asshole. But once he was dead, everyone treated it like it was the greatest loss in the world.

Upon noticing these inconsistencies in their thinking, some people follow the logical chain of reasoning to arrive at atheism. Unfortunately, others use the exact opposite strategy: they discard all logic in favor of blind faith. Take the extreme example of Kurt Wise, the young-earth creationist who also happens to hold a PhD from Harvard. Wise should know better, but he chooses to discard reason instead of his idiotic beliefs. In the book In Six Days: Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation, Wise states:

Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand.

I do find the abandonment of logic confounding, especially when it comes from so-called scientists. Even if I were a true believer, I would probably just shrug and say that the book is thousands of years old and the science of the book doesn't affect its message. The fact that people get hung up on this, and even worse, want to change science to fit their beliefs, is incomprehensible. If I went to bed every day when the sun was still up and I therefore never experienced a period of darkness in the evening, I might believe that it was never dark outside. Just because I believe that does not make it fact. Someone could show me evidence that it does indeed get dark at night, but it is my right to ignore such evidence. Should I then take my case that it never gets dark to the courts and try to get that instated as fact, even when the truth of the matter is that I am wrong?

[Scarbonac]

What a smug, shit-fucking sonofawhore.

[Bagpuss]

A person's death is set by Allah


This one always confuses and annoys me as I've seen it used to justify murder and suicide bombings.

You strap a bomb to yourself and walk into a busy market, you've checked the fuses and the bomb is well made, you press the button.

If Allah didn't want me to blow up then the bomb wouldn't detonate.

If Allah didn't want the mother and baby to die he wouldn't let them be in the market, etc.

It seems to remove all personal responsibility for such a barbaric act. It seems to remove it from other acts that cause death, suicide, negligence, etc.

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but could you expand on this issue.

[Eliezer]

I basically find this person's analysis pretty spotty and kind of reaching the level of "wow duh".

Now on the issue of funerals - At my grandmother's funeral it was like a party. We were going to miss her, but our sorrow at her loss was over-ridden by the fun and friendship of getting together with cousins and family. Darkfire has the right of sorrow for not being able to visit with or talk to a beloved family member/friend who dies.

As far as the wishing someone would die. That analysis is pretty sketchy at best. Most Christian groups teach pretty hard against euthanasia. The reasons behind that belief lie in believing as Christians we should respect the life God has given us and that it is important to try to preserve this life until such time as we must pass on to the next. So wishing someone would die is tantamount to wishing God would get on with it and take them already.

Now consistency and lack of faith that the author provides probably has some basis in fact because different people often have feelings at odds with their religious teachings.

[Darkfire]

This one always confuses and annoys me as I've seen it used to justify murder and suicide bombings.

You strap a bomb to yourself and walk into a busy market, you've checked the fuses and the bomb is well made, you press the button.

If Allah didn't want me to blow up then the bomb wouldn't detonate.

If Allah didn't want the mother and baby to die he wouldn't let them be in the market, etc.

It seems to remove all personal responsibility for such a barbaric act. It seems to remove it from other acts that cause death, suicide, negligence, etc.

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but could you expand on this issue.

Fair point.

The point comes from the concept of having an all powerful god and that if god is indeed all powerful then way does he/she/it let X happen (where X is generally a bad thing) and as you say this can allow the 'well if god didn't want me to murder those people he/she/it would've stopped me'.

Seems to me like you can take two lines of reasoning.
1) None of us know the entire picture and even horrible actions can lead to positive outcomes. However how you reconcile this reason with the concept of freewill is beyond me

2) God is indeed all powerful, but to allow us freewill doesn't always choose to exercise this power and instead sets points of consequence (good and bad) on our path and it is through these actions our free will is exercised.

So to use your suicide bomber example. For case one it would be presumed that god judged such an action necassary despite its horrific nature and its not for us to understand all the outcomes of the act

For case two the circumstances would for the person would still lead them up to dying in an attack, but whether it would be on military personal or civilions, by gun or bomb would be up to them and they will then answer for the appropriateness of their actions.

I'm in the case 2 camp (which is probably evident by how I argued this ;) ) so while I believe God sets the time frame for our lives and eventually our death how we go about approaching it is up to us.

[Eliezer]

This one always confuses and annoys me as I've seen it used to justify murder and suicide bombings.

You strap a bomb to yourself and walk into a busy market, you've checked the fuses and the bomb is well made, you press the button.

If Allah didn't want me to blow up then the bomb wouldn't detonate.

If Allah didn't want the mother and baby to die he wouldn't let them be in the market, etc.

It seems to remove all personal responsibility for such a barbaric act. It seems to remove it from other acts that cause death, suicide, negligence, etc.

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but could you expand on this issue.

This one I've seen as cultural as much as religious. It is a way of saying "such is life" or sometimes we use the French to say it. More commonly in the US we use "Shit Happens" to indicate the same sentiment. It's a way of saying that it sucks that it happened, but not much we can do about it now. Pretty much the same cultural attitude, except in Arab speaking counties they tend to attribute the "shit" to Allah and it assumes that Allah will make it right. We do exactly the same thing in the US with shitty things happening like people dying: "Oh it was their time to go". I know a couple that accidentally got pregnant with twins after having 6 kids already. I don't know how many people told this couple, "Oh God must know what he's doing".

It's not justifying murder or anything else. It's a comfort thing and a way of expressing lack of power or influence to change the outcome. It's said when a speeding driver accidentally hits a child who wandered into the street. Even though the mother could have been more watchful of her child or the speeding driver could not have been speeding, they comfort themselves with "it is the will of Allah" or "It was their destined time" or whatever.

[doc]

There is a God and he doesn't like me

[Bagpuss]

For case two the circumstances would for the person would still lead them up to dying in an attack, but whether it would be on military personal or civilions, by gun or bomb would be up to them and they will then answer for the appropriateness of their actions.

Right but that still doesn't really answer the question of the other killing along with the suicide bomber. I guess they fall into case one? But do you really believe Allah's will is behind every death, he really wants us killing each other?

Also rather than heap everything on the poor Islamic terrorist, what about when an allied plane drops a bomb and happens to kill some Muslim children by mistake.... shouldn't the families and other Muslims just go. "Oh well Allah wills the kids to die, so we can't really blame the pilot or the USA." If Allah wills it and someone dies shouldn't they be blaming Allah when they die, and not the killer who was just the tool of Allah's will?

If they use it to excuse their actions, why doesn't it excuse others?

[Bagpuss]

This one I've seen as cultural as much as religious. It is a way of saying "such is life" or sometimes we use the French to say it. More commonly in the US we use "Shit Happens" to indicate the same sentiment. It's a way of saying that it sucks that it happened, but not much we can do about it now.

In away I agree, but when you start assign shit to a supposed sentient and all powerful deity then surely that are then responsible for that shit. Which then removes responsibility from those actually responsible. For accidental deaths and such it doesn't really matter, but for murder, negligence, and other events where a real person is responsible it gives them an excuse.

It's not justifying murder or anything else. It's a comfort thing and a way of expressing lack of power or influence to change the outcome.

The problem is its also used in cases where people do have power and influence to change the outcome. They didn't need to blow themselves up for example.

[Name Lips]

Right but that still doesn't really answer the question of the other killing along with the suicide bomber. I guess they fall into case one? But do you really believe Allah's will is behind every death, he really wants us killing each other?

Also rather than heap everything on the poor Islamic terrorist, what about when an allied plane drops a bomb and happens to kill some Muslim children by mistake.... shouldn't the families and other Muslims just go. "Oh well Allah wills the kids to die, so we can't really blame the pilot or the USA." If Allah wills it and someone dies shouldn't they be blaming Allah when they die, and not the killer who was just the tool of Allah's will?

If they use it to excuse their actions, why doesn't it excuse others?

Perhaps Allah's will is behind each death, but not behind each killer, or behind the killer's motives...

I don't know, I think I might be stretching semantics, though...

But it ultimately comes down to the Age Old Debate of reconciling free will with an omniscient God. Does God know the result of our free will in advance - and if so, do we really have free will? Or, on the other hand, is God actually surprised at the unexpected things we do with the free will he gave us? If there's something he can't predict, can he really be called omniscient? And if he's not omniscient, what else is he ignorant about?

[Atropine Mama]

How about the perspective of a Unitarian Universalist Pagan? :D

(snip)

Man, that's really... revealing. :shock:

[Eliezer]

For accidental deaths and such it doesn't really matter, but for murder, negligence, and other events where a real person is responsible it gives them an excuse.

The problem is its also used in cases where people do have power and influence to change the outcome. They didn't need to blow themselves up for example.

I happen to agree with you wholeheartedly in that regard. This attitude can be taken too far and used to justify any level of callous disregard for the consequences of actions. I don't know exactly how language and culture influence our willingness to assign responsibility to ourselves for the consequences of our actions.

For example in Spanish an object that falls off the table because we bumped it with our elbow is said to have "dropped itself" (se cayo, grammatically a passive reflexive). In English we tend to eschew passive voice and assign and cause to an action. In English we can say "the glass fell", but usually we're more comfortable with, "Oops, I bumped the glass".

In some cultures there is a strong emphasis on placing blame and it is a marvelous thing when it comes to accident prevention programs and working to reduce unwanted outcomes.

In some cultures blame assignment is a massive cultural taboo. This is true in all the Arabic speaking countries I have visited.

Personal responsibility and a willingness to accept responsibility for our actions even if we did not intend the consequences appears to be part of the culture and probably reinforced strongly by language usage.

[Scarbonac]

If 50 people are killed when a building collapses, did God have it in for them (because they were sinful, or what-have-you), or did they just happen to be in a building when it collapsed?



I kind of think that the "Will of God" argument really refers to the fact that God (if He exists) made us mortal, not that He has us in His sights and His Finger on the trigger. It's God's Will that we live and eventually die, but not that we murder each other.

That's what "free will" is for.

[Eliezer]

If 50 people are killed when a building collapses, did God have it in for them (because they were sinful, or what-have-you), or did they just happen to be in a building when it collapsed?



I kind of think that the "Will of God" argument really refers to the fact that God (if He exists) made us mortal, not that He has us in His sights and His Finger on the trigger. It's God's Will that we live and eventually die, but not that we murder each other.

That's what "free will" is for.

Oh crap you opened a philosophical can of worms. The issues of free will and predestination are things that Christianity on a whole does not have a consensus on.

Nonetheless, they are good questions. :)

[Bregh]

.

[FeatsofClay]

Thay can't find anyone to take $25 for Bin Laden- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23718506/ and that brand of fun damentalism has been a stone wall to all intelligence agencies.

I think that denotes a pretty strong belief.

I used to believe like the article but realized I wasn't going to find true devotion in the checkout at the grocery or at a pizza joint. True belief is out there, just not usually in the burbs or the city.

[Scutisorex Shrewlord]

Yes, I ACTUALLY believe in God.

[Atticus_of_Amber]

I used to think like that. I used to think that educated, intelligent adults didn't *really* believe in god - that it was just ritual and metaphor and make-believe.

But I now realise that's wrong. Many, many educated, intelligent people actually, sincerely do believe the bullshit.

And that really worries me.

[doc]

Do you believe in anything Atticus ?

[Atticus_of_Amber]

Do you believe in anything Atticus ?

What do you mean "believe in"?

I think liberalism and human rights are a great idea and worth defending, in some circumstances worth defending with my life.

I think that reason and empiricism and logic have shown themselves to be the pre-eminant tools for discovering truth and are also pretty damn useful ways of ensuring social harmony (thought not always with teh latter).

Hey, if you want to know what I believe, try this:

New atheism or new anti-dogmatism?

A lot has been written about a group of recent best-selling authors that, back in November 2006, Wired Magazine dubbed "the new atheists". Principally, they are the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), the neuroscientist Sam Harris (The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation), the philosopher Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell) and the journalist Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great and The Portable Atheist).

These authors have not just sold a lot of books (over 1.5 million for the English language edition of The God Delusion alone). Dawkins runs a website with a lot of traffic and has started a charitable foundation in the US and the UK. Harris has smaller, but similar projects. Hitchens takes on all comers in his inimitably confrontational style. Google any of their names or the phrases "new atheist" or "new atheism" and you'll see a torrent of arguments, for and against. The “new atheists” are clearly trying to start and sustain an intellectual movement.

What is strange is that, when one actually reads them, one gets the feeling that the real target of the "new atheists" isn't religion at all.

Indeed, they all explicitly say they have little or no problem with deism, or Spinozian pantheism or what Dawkins calls "Einstein-ian religion". Harris, Dennett and Hitchens (and possibly Dawkins) have indicated that they wouldn't necessarily want to see the synagogues, churches and mosques emptied, though they would want to see them abandon their “metaphysical bullshit” (see this video towards the end).

It seems that the new atheists’ real problem is with dogma, and specifically with the dogma of religious faith - with the belief that it is acceptable, even admirable, to believe propositions without logically sound reasons based on good evidence. They aren't really the “new atheists” at all, but the “new anti-dogmatists”.

So, what's the problem with dogma?

The forms that dogmatically believed propositions can take are potentially infinite. One might dogmatically believe in the historical inevitability of a communist utopia, under which the State will wither away, after a brief but necessary period of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Or one might dogmatically believe in the existence of something called the Aryan race, in its inherent superiority to all other races, and in the inherent inferiority and perfidy of the Jewish race.

Or one might dogmatically believe that the creator of the universe called on one's religion to convert the world, or take it by force through holy war; that death in the defence of (or attempt to reconquer) lands so acquired is the greatest of all actions; and that such martyrs will go to paradise after they die to be attended by 72 virgin brides and joined in due course be all their family and loved-ones.

Or one might dogmatically believe that the creator of the universe condemns condom use as a sin.

What all four of these beliefs have in common is that there is very little or no evidence for them and there is much evidence against them. Yet all four beliefs have at times been passionately believed and acted upon by otherwise rational, sane and civilised people - often resulting in those people performing some of the most irrational, insane and barbaric acts imaginable.

The physicist Steven Weinberg has said that, left alone, “you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” If you change the word “religion” to “dogma” or “faith” you have my view - and the view I suspect people like Weinberg, Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris are really getting at.

Thankfully, Fascist, Nazi and Communist dogmas have been so discredited that almost no one believes them any more. This is a development to be celebrated. But as the events of New York and Washington DC and Bali and Madrid and London demonstrate; and as demonstrated by the genocidally stupid anti-contraceptive policies of the Catholic church in Africa; and the homicidally stupid stem-cell policies of Christian churches in the US, religious dogmas are alive and kicking and at work in the world today.

Reason and evidence and empiricism and science and liberal democracy - in short, the forces of the Enlightenment - have discredited Communist and Fascist dogmas. Now, say Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, it is time for them to do the same to the dogmas of religious faith.

Isn’t atheism just as dogmatic and dangerous?

At this point, a committed theist might point to the history of 20th century Communism and say that there is something about atheism that leads to barbarism, immorality and dictatorship. He or she might even say that there is something about atheism that leads to the very dogmatism that I and the "new anti-dogmatists" decry. But any theist who said that would have to explain the inconvenient fact that some of the most civilised, liberal and prosperous nations in the world are “atheistic”, in the sense that a majority of their populations do not believe in God.

Take Sweden, for example. When polled, more than 80 per cent of Swedes say they don't believe in God and more than 40 per cent explicitly identify themselves as atheists. Yet Sweden has some of the lowest homicide, poverty, teenaged pregnancy and STD rates in the world. It is a functioning liberal democracy with high levels of wealth, very little social unrest and a near 100 per cent literacy rate.

And while Sweden is the extreme, the figures show that liberal democracies with low levels of theistic belief tend to be have high levels of societal health, and vice versa. Even in the heavily religious United States of America, the less religious a State is, the lower its rates of things like homicide, STD infection and teenage pregnancy tend to be. (See P Zuckerman, "Atheism: Contemporary Numbers and Patterns" in M Martin (ed), Cambridge Companion to Atheism (Cambridge University Press, UK, 2006), summarised here and here)

Clearly, a widespread disbelief in God is not incompatible with a healthy, happy, prosperous and civilised society. (Note I do not claim that atheism has caused these wonderful societies to be so wonderful. I cite these facts merely to show that atheism is compatible with social harmony.)

So, what is the difference between the slaughterhouses built by the Godless Communists of Russia and China and the civilised liberal polities built by the Godless progressives of Western Europe and elsewhere? The obvious answer is that Western European countries are liberal democracies committed to science and empiricism and reason, and freedom of speech and debate; whereas Soviet Russia and Red China clearly were not. It was not its atheism per se, but the illiberalism, the undemocratic nature, the dogmatism of Communism that made it the architect of so much 20th century horror.

The two Enlightenments

Another common criticism of atheists (particularly atheist scientists like Dawkins) is that they are robotic philistines, determined to destroy art, culture and community and reduce the world to a place of steel and chromium, spreadsheets and catalogues. But the really interesting thing about these new anti-dogmatists is their spirituality. Dawkins has written with such wonder and poetry about the natural world in books like Unweaving the Rainbow that he's been referred to as a “deeply religious non-believer” (and he is, after all, the man who once wrote an article entitled “Atheists for Jesus”).

Hitchens waxes lyrical about the beauties of religious music and art, but insists we separate the transcendent from the supernatural. Dennett's Breaking the Spell devotes a great many pages to examining and praising the community-building and altruism-sustaining qualities of religious institutions.

Most radical of all, Sam Harris is a former seeker, a man who spent ten years in meditation retreats and with yogis and monks (including a stint as a bodyguard for the Dalai Lama). In the last chapter of The End of Faith, Harris argues that there really is something worthwhile and wonderful about the mystical experiences that lie at the root of most of our religions. These experiences are real and important and increasingly measurable by neuroscientists - but the truth about them is buried beneath mountains of “metaphysical bullshit”. Harris extols the virtues of the contemplative disciplines at the same time as he is withering in his criticism of the ancient theology and modern "New Age" waffle that so often goes with them. What we need, argues Harris, is to take a ruthlessly logical and scientific approach to these ancient disciplines, to separate the wheat from the chaff (see also Harris’ confronting article, “Killing the Buddha” (PDF 534KB)).

The new anti-dogmatists are children of the European Enlightenment. But Sam Harris, at least, is no stranger to that other meaning of the word enlightenment - the meaning that stands at the root of many of our religions. Reconciling these “two enlightenments” is a project where rationalists like Dawkins might join in common cause with ultra-liberal theologians like Bishop John Shelby Spong. But such a project is not a call for misty-eyed live-and-let-live compromise. Far from it. To get at the common core of truth that lies within both the religious and rationalistic meanings of the word “enlightenment” we need to be ruthless with obscurantism - whether it comes from orthodox theology, post-modern nonsense, new age silliness or naïve mechanistic psychology.

The baby and the bathwater

And here I return to my terminological criticism. This "spiritual" side to the new anti-dogmatism is not helped by the conflation of the terms "religion" and "faith". Dennett, as one would expect from a professional philosopher, has been by far the least sloppy in his use of the terms; but he is also the most subtle and least read of four.

Harris can slide between the terms "faith" and "religion", but his sophisticated treatment of spirituality makes it clear that his real target is the dogma of faith.

Dawkins and Hitchens are the two who most often conflate religion and faith in their use of language - and they are also the two most well known. In my view, this is unfortunate. As Dennett points out at length in Breaking the Spell, religions are social institutions that are very effective at providing community, solidarity and mutual support. But they needn't be based around dogma. By being sloppy in their language, I fear the new anti-dogmatists are driving away potential allies.

Or this:

Morality and the "new atheism"

A common criticism of the so-called “new atheists” (who I prefer to call the "new anti-dogmatists") is the "problem of morality": how, many religious critics ask, can we be good without God? Isn’t the fact that people are good, that people can tell good from evil, evidence for the existence of God? Even if God is a myth, isn’t He necessary to inspire people to acts of goodness and to keep them from falling into immorality? And in any case, don’t we get our morals from our religious traditions?

A key problem here is that this “good without God” criticism is really at least five different arguments jumbled together.

The argument from scripture

First comes the argument from scripture: “how can we know what's good without a book of rules, like the Bible?” This is the one that Richard Dawkins so ably rebuts with his "cherry picking" point in his recent best-seller, The God Delusion. The Bible is full of horrible acts and recommendations. It also contains some very kind and good acts and rules. Most Christians don't follow the former any more, but continue to follow the latter. How do they chose? What do they use to “cherry pick” the Bible in this way? It's not something in the Bible, it's something in the reader. If this moral sense exists in us and allows us to pick the good bits of the Bible from the bad, what do we need the Bible for, except as one among many anthologies of moral propositions on which to practice our moral sense?

The platonic argument

Second, there's the Platonic “by what standard” argument: “granted we have an innate moral sense, but how can we know what's right and wrong if there is no absolute standard of right in the universe?”, says the theist. “Doesn't our ability to recognise that some acts are good and others evil imply that there must somewhere exist a perfect thing of goodness to be the standard? Doesn't our moral sense itself act as evidence of the existence of God?”

Here the error is epistemological: of course we can judge degrees of something even though a perfect sample of that something does not really exist. Nowhere in reality is there such a thing as a perfectly straight line. Yet we are easily able to judge and even rank the straightness of connections between two points in the real world with relative ease - this hand-drawn line on this piece of paper is straighter than that one; this rooftop is straighter than that one; the path of this meteor is straighter than that one, and so on.

The argument from the mysterious origin of morality

The third argument is related to the second, the “origins of morality” point: “Granted we have a moral sense, but where did that come from?” say the critics. “It can’t have evolved, because it often gets us to do things that aren't selfish, even in the sense of enlightened selfishness.”

This argument misunderstands the neo-Darwinian insight popularised in Professor Dawkins’ 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. We are genuinely altruistic because our genes are “selfish”. A gene that causes its carriers to be genuinely altruistic will have a reproductive advantage if its carriers live in groups of largely related individuals. By risking its life for the group because of the genuine altruism given to it by the gene, one carrier of that gene will increase the reproductive chances of other carriers of the same gene. (The selfish gene explanation also works for groups where the same non-relatives regularly interact and can engage in “reciprocal altruism”.)

Evolution has given us what Dawkins calls a “lust to be good”, much in the way it has given us a lust to have sex (we’re “horny to do good”, as one interviewer put it recently). Does this mean that altruism only makes sense if it’s for relatives? Only in the sense that sex only “make sense” when it’s done for procreation - or that love only “make sense” if it’s being used to solidify a pair-bond for the 20 or so years needed to help the survival of offspring. The evolutionary explanation for an urge is not the same thing as a justification for why we should, as rational creatures, promote or fight that urge today.

Mirror neurons and moral progress

Recent research by neuroscientist such as VS Ramachandran and Marco Iacoboni have discovered what are being called “mirror neurons”. When a monkey experiences pain from, say, being kicked in the testicles, several neurons can be observed to fire in his brain. But if the monkey observes another monkey being kicked in the testicles, a few (not all) of those same neurons fire in the observing monkey’s brain. (I’ve chosen the example for dramatic effect. I doubt this was the actual experiment conducted.)

It seems mirror neurons evolved as the means by which primates learn skills from each other: observe the other primate doing the skill, feel which mirror neurons fire, then try to make the same mirror neurons fire by doing the action - repeat, refine, learn skill. One side effect was empathy, the ability to feel the pain and pleasure of others (another side effect, according to some researchers, may have been the development of consciousness itself).

It appears that this new capacity for empathy allowed altruism to develop, and that mutation propagated because of the reproduction-enhancing properties of altruism discussed by Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. But from the gene's perspective, altruism is a two-edged sword: it’s great if your carriers sacrifice themselves for other carriers, but it’s horrible if your carriers start sacrificing themselves for non-carriers.

The solution seems to have been the “taming” of the empathy/altruism characteristic by the evolution of in-group v out-group thinking. What evolved (one suspects both genetically and culturally) was a distinction between the in-group, where empathy was appropriate (and whose members were likely to carry many of the same genes) and out-groups, where empathy was blocked or even turned into its dark twin antipathy - the tendency of animals to feel the pain of others and enjoy it.

The story of moral progress seems to me to be the story of the marriage between our evolved capacity for empathy and our evolved capacity for reason. As we apply our reason to our urge to be altruistic, and as we become more interconnected with strangers, we see fewer reasons to put people into the “out group”. Our psychological “in group” expands until in some people it covers not just the whole human race, but sentient non-human animals too.

Of course there are gradations. Seeing my wife happy gives me more pleasure (and seeing her in pain causes me more suffering) than seeing a stranger I admire happy (or in pain). And an admired stranger’s happiness matters more to me that that of a stranger I’ve never even heard of (though I still feel bad when I witness or hear of such a stranger suffering). But most of us in the liberal democratic West have very few people in our “out-group” - and we tend to feel ashamed about feeling that way even about them.

The role of religion in moral progress

"But," asks the fourth version of the good without God criticism, "hasn't religion in general, and Christianity in particular, been the context in which this moral development has occurred?"

And the fair answer is yes, religion in general (and Christianity in particular) has helped enormously. Just as alchemy made many discoveries that were built on by chemistry, and astrology made some discoveries that were built on by astronomy (mostly in the field of cataloguing astral bodies, but still useful discoveries), Christianity made or widely propagated several moral innovations that modern secular moral philosophy has built upon. (Similar claims can be made for several other religions.) Not for nothing did Richard Dawkins once write an article entitled “Atheists for Jesus”.

But religion has also contaminated the stream with some very strange and unfounded ideas. Just as there is no evidence that one can turn lead into gold and there is no evidence that the movements of the planet Venus affect my destiny; there is no evidence that there is a “soul” that enters the human zygote at conception, or that there is an afterlife in which kindness is rewarded and cruelty is punished. And it is religions’ reliance on the dogma of faith that makes it so hard to use reason to sort the good ideas from the bad.

The sanction argument

This, of course, leads us to the fifth argument of the theistic "problem of morality" critic, the sanction argument: “why be good if there's no comeuppance in the afterlife?”

This argument seems to say that people would be evil if they did not fear punishment in hell or that they would not help their fellow humans without the hope of a pay-off in heaven. Aside from being questionable theology even in its own terms, the sanction argument reveals a very dim view of human nature. Many humanists simply believe human beings are better than that and are, on average, getting better all the time - that we are, as someone once said, “rising apes rather than fallen angels”.

Moreover, the argument that people would be horrible without belief in God seems to have been falsified by the experience of organically atheist societies such as Sweden, as I argued in a previous post. Of course, the fact that widespread atheism doesn't lead to social chaos still leaves open the question of why it doesn't. But the neuroscience and evolutionary arguments put above do suggest that humans are more innately good than many religious people would credit.

For my part, I think an important answer was provided by the ancients - virtue or self-respect. (And isn’t it interesting that "virtue ethics" is making a comeback in academic philosophy?)

We judge the acts of others, and think well or ill of them as a result. But we also do the same of ourselves. Self-hatred is actually a rather nasty psychological torture and an important part of mental health is having a good reputation with oneself. We can gain a good reputation with others either by actually being good, or by tricking others into believing we are good. But with our reputations with ourselves, the latter course involves a level of self-deception that is itself mentally unhealthy. Good deeds, it seems to me, really are their own reward.

[Name Lips]

Those are good articles, Atticus. :)

The problem is that many religious people simply won't understand the arguments. They so firmly believe that divinity is the source of morality that the logic centers of their brains will simply flip off and they'll say something like "Well, somewhere you must believe in a higher power of good, but you've repressed it and come up with random arguments to support the way you feel." They honestly think they're applying an Occam's Razor-type solution - it's easier for them to believe that God created morality than to believe we came up with it on our own. It seems to them the simplist, neatest explanation, and it covers all the bases. At least, all the ones they consider important.

[Mistwell]

What a load of crap. It pretty much boils down to "I'm right and you know it, even if you don't know it."

I agree. The author was being pretty arrogant,

[Atticus_of_Amber]

I agree. The author was being pretty arrogant,

Nothing wrong with being arrogant if you don't care who you piss off.

...

What?