Religion and reason

[pat]

This my reply to this thread in this post by joedecker. I told him I would move the discussion over to my journal. I am posting it mainly because I didn't want to lose my thoughts on this subject.



Scripture teaches us to kill gays, to kill people who mix certain fibers in their clothes. Tradition concurs with the former, but not the latter. I choose reason instead, not as one of three pillars, but as the pillar.

And reason tells us that the reasons for the existence of the Levitical code have a lot to do with living in the 2nd century B.C.E. Judean desert, and most are irrelevant or harmful to life in the 21st century, and where that is the case we do not follow them. (We also look to Christ's actions and words instructing us to love our neighbors -- which means everbody.) Reason tells us that our tradition restricting the priesthood to men is harmful to people of faith of both sexes, so we have women priests. And that the tradition restricting the priesthood to heterosexuals deprives all of the church community of the gifts of those who would otherwise be great pastors and leaders, and so we have gay and lesbian priests. (I am speaking here of the Episcopalian diocese of which I am a member.)

But Scripture also tells us to care for our fellow human beings: which is why my church has people who are heavily involved in things such as Habitat for Humanity, and our diocese has a social services organization in San Jose, and why Catholic charities in the U.S. have provided a lot of help for a lot of people -- not just Catholics. Which is *not* to say that good things are not accomplished by people with no religious orientation at all, by agnostics and atheists. It's just that, for many people, altruism is not a "reasonable" position in and of itself. Left to my own devices, without some sort of moral guidelines, I'm not sure I wouldn't be a much different person, a much less caring person, in terms of how I view the world. Which may indicate a character flaw in me, I'm quite ready to concede.

A blind reliance on "reason" is as much a faith position as a blind reliance on "religion." Most of the issues that people come to blows over in this society really revolve around "reason." An argument over when life begins is not, even though anti-abortion people toss around God's name a lot, essentially a religious argument: the Bible does not tell us when a fetus is old enough to be considered a human being. It comes from people using their reason to come to different understandings of what "life" (or the potential for life) means. It *becomes* a religious argument when people buttress their positions by calling on a higher authority.

Reason will never be, can never be, objective, being limited as it is by our personal experiences. Neither is spirituality objective -- but at least most people recognize that.

You're right, that organized religion has done a lot of evil in the world. My hunch, and maybe I'm just fatalistic about this, is that a lot of that evil would have been done regardless: people who are intent on power and subjugating others will find some other organizing principle. And they will have followers who aren't bright enough not to follow.

Yes, organized religion has given us Crusades, witch-burnings, terrorists (not just Islamic ones, either) and the mess in Israel and a president who misguidedly believes he's on a mission from God.

But organized religion has also given us the Quakers, Mother Teresa's work in the slums of Calcutta, Martin Luther King and Martin Neimoller and Deitrich Bonhoffer. Many of the early abolitionists were religiously-minded folk -- a number of them preachers. And while the white churches in the South in the first half of the 20th century were, for the most part, bastions of racism, the black churches nourished the civil rights movement and gave hope to their members. On a daily basis, religious organizations give many people around the world hope and comfort.

So the answer is not to do away with organized religion -- people will just organize around something else anyway -- but for religions to recognize and cherish those who call them to account for their actions and to be willing to admit wrongdoing, ask forgiveness, and change. Which may not happen anytime soon, I recognize.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

[Alt.Poly]
Marry me?
[/Alt.Poly]

Seriously, this is a very good post. I agree with most of what you've said in detail, and all of it in principle.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

[Alt.Poly]
Marry me?
[/Alt.Poly]

Hmmm .... maybe. You're not a Yankees fan, are you? Or a Forty-Niners fan? : >

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Nah. I've never cared much for the Yankees, and while the 49'ers were something worth watching a while back, I never developed the fascination for them that some others have.

[kiya]

The way I tend to look at this:

Science, reason, these things are ways of evaluating the part of the universe that is judged by matters of fact.

Fact is not all that there is in my universe; there is beauty, there is pain, there is all of this. Religion is, as I see it, a way of evaluating things other than fact, things like beauty.

I wouldn't want to live without either.

I see a lot of people who seem to have as a matter of faith that religion does more harm than it helps; the problem I see with that is that it does not consider scale. Without my religion, I would be a crippled wreck, less equipped to deal with the world, less functional for myself or my family. I know I am not alone in this.

I not only don't think that it's appropriate to weigh however many people like me find their lives balanced and enhanced by their faith against the Inquisition, terrorists, and all of that, I don't think it's possible.

But only considering one scale strikes me as being fallacious.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

You're right, I think, that it may not be possible to balance how many people are nurtured by their religion against the evil things done by some organized religions. For one thing, the evil tends to be more easily seen that the good.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I read the original post and your reply to it. I am too tired to participate in this debate in any articulate way, but I did want to say that I admire the tone of your post - I think you might be what I call a Real Christian, and that is a high honor from me.

Disclaimer: I'm of no religious faith, and am wary of organized religion in general, those that rely too heavily on tradition or scripture in particular. Having said this, I do think that many people find solace and guidance in organized religion, and it can be beneficial to those people who embrace it with an open mind.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I read the original post and your reply to it. I am too tired to participate in this debate in any articulate way, but I did want to say that I admire the tone of your post - I think you might be what I call a Real Christian, and that is a high honor from me.


Thank you. I greatly appreciate the compliment.

[calebbullen.livejournal.com]

I think most of us would be pretty much the same with or without religion. I think that experience and empathy teaches much more about morality than any external force but parents.

Because in religion, all morals eventually come down to, "because I said said so." And that kind of thinking is much more easily perverted than empathy without punishment, dogma or reward. It's true that religion can lead someone to empathy and thinking for oneself but it's that, "Because I said so" part that scares me.

You can't blame religion for the crusades or praise it for giving people hope anymore than you can blame the guns for the valentines day massacre or praise bombs for ending WWII. Ultimately it's all our doing. Religion is a hammer is a gun is a bass guitar. They're all just tools.

However, I do think that if you did away with organized religions you could either replace the pack animal mentality of humans with something a bit more original or at the very least replace religion with a system that discourages the concept of 'other' and encourages thinking for oneself.

All of us thinking for our selves is maybe not "the answer" but a better one than reliance on others to make our moral judgements for us.

[kiya]

Because in religion, all morals eventually come down to, "because I said said so."

This is not only a demonstrably false statement, but trivially so; there exist religions that have no hierarchy nor received wisdom in the first place, and thus neither an "I" nor a "said".

It's false about a whole bunch of others, too. (Such as any form of Christianity that adheres to the principles upon which hang the Law and the Prophets.)

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

It would be nice to have a few examples here. I suspect that many of the religions that ostensibly have no hierarchy or received wisdom effectively have it once you scratch the surface.

As to the whole bunch of others, aren't the principles behind the Law of the Prophets, and its equivalents elsewhere, just a smaller set of received wisdom?

[kiya]

Consider Wicca. The only thing remotely approaching existence as Wiccan "scripture" is the Rede -- and there are Wiccans who don't consider the Rede to be effectual or particularly useful or relevant to their faith. Consider that there are particular traditions of Wicca that have traditions of initiation, and that a large number of Wiccans don't belong to those traditions, and instead participate in the part of it which is the priesthood of all believers.

Or try again, with various of the reconstructionist paganisms, the ones that are very heavy on the "Do the research, learn what the old ways were, and see if it works for you in the modern day". Again, some people form groups, and groups often have hierarchy, but that isn't inherent to the nature of the religion either. (It may be inherent to the nature of groups.)

Go and look at the teachings of the Buddha, many of which come down to, "This is a way that has been demonstrated to lead to enlightenment. You still have to do it yourself." The discipline requires contemplation and processing of the heritage and the commentary, not some sort of blind blundering along in the Buddha's shadow.

Judaism, likewise, contains a great deal of discipline and discussion about what the Law means, what is relevant about it, and how to apply it.

Christianity, at root, boils down to, "Love God. Love everyone", if you look at the Great Commandments or whatever the term for them is. The implementation is left very much to the individual believer; various sects have come up with particular interpretations and paths that they believe manifest those two principles, but people disagree with those, and with whoever promotes them, all the damn time.


This is not to say that it's impossible to be a sheep in any religious tradition; of course, it is. It's possible to be a sheep in any thought pattern, even if there's no actual dogma there to blindly follow except for the one they create out of a couple of guys saying, "We've found that this is usually a good idea."


The notion that religion inherently comes down to taking someone else's word for it strikes me as not only denying the possibility of individual religious experience, but supporting some of the religious kooks' dangerous notions of religion. Those being the idea that one can't legitimately be a member of a faith and have one's own interpretations of its meanings or application (popular among those who want to suggest that, say, non-literalist Christians aren't true Scotsmen) and the idea that one can't find and change to a faith that agrees with the axioms that one holds to be true. (There's nothing that insists that those people who think that "Love God" and "Love everyone else too" aren't good ways to live have to be Christian; they're fully free to find a set of axioms more to their liking.)

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

The religions that allow room for manoever by the individual are, in general, the ones I respect the most. However, the fundamental nature of religion still allows for absolute unquestioned authority to come about, and that is the achiles heal that makes it so dangerous. Yes, buddhism today is fairly free of doctrine and authoritarianism, but this hasn't stopped it from being at the centre of major religious wars and persecutions in the past (or at least so I'm told by someone who knows far better than I). We all know many of the problems of christianity, both in the past and today. many of the problems associated with Israel come from the dogmatic and unquestionable belief by some jews and christians that the land of Israel was given to them by god, and that the fact that others have made their homes there for many hundreds of years matters not a jot.

You can argue that these are not really parts of the relevant religions, though I would disagree since they all use religious doctrine as justifications and faith as their major bulwark, but they are emergent phenomena from religious thought and would not be as sustainable without that background. And once religion is part of the picture, argument on the basis of fact and reason becomes impossible, and progress towards peaceful compromise ends. How can there be compromise when both sides know they are right by religious fiat?

This is where religion in general, and especially organised religion which is the predominant aspect of religious thought, fails in so many ways. More personal religious approaches, such as wicca, can do better, but the possibility of intransigent belief against all other evidence is still a weakness.

As has been said - 'you can believe what you want, but the universe doesn't have to keep a straight face'.

[kiya]

The political parties that allow room for manoever by the individual are, in general, the ones I respect the most. However, the fundamental nature of politics still allows for absolute unquestioned authority to come about, and that is the achiles heal that makes it so dangerous. Yes, Libertarianism today is fairly free of doctrine and authoritarianism, but this hasn't stopped it from being at the centre of major and very acrimonious debates in the past or changed the policies that many non-Libertarians find offensive or dangerous. We all know many of the problems of the Democratic Party, both in the past and today. Many of the problems associated with the Republicans come from the dogmatic and unquestionable belief by some that the Office of the Presidency was given to them by the Supreme Court, and that the fact that others have voted differently matters not a jot.

You can argue that these are not really parts of the relevant parties, though I would disagree since they all use political doctrine as justifications and rhetoric as their major bulwark, but they are emergent phenomena from political thought and would not be as sustainable without that background. And once politics is part of the picture, argument on the basis of fact and reason becomes impossible, and progress towards peaceful compromise ends. How can there be compromise when both sides know they are right by party-line fiat?

This is where politics in general, and especially organised political parties, which are the predominant aspect of political thought, fails in so many ways. More personal religious approaches, such as registering Independent, can do better, but the possibility of intransigent belief against all other evidence is still a weakness.

[Sorry for the spammage, correcting error.]

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Note - I am not a USian, so some of the political issues don't work for me, but some of the ones I bring up here won't work for you either.

There is a step you're missing in the parody you're drawing here. Neither belief in a party's rectitude, or a religion's correctness, can save it from the reality of an electoral defeat, a popular uprising, or the universe working in a way that's different from what the religion claims.

Political parties, at least in my experience, have to cope with their doctrines proving unworkable - the failure of Labour's lurch to the left in the early 80s and the fall of the Conservatives in the 90s are both examples of this. Labour recovered from the early 80s, with new, centerist policies. We're not so sure what'll happen to the Conservatives.

It should also be noted that the tight relationship between religion and politics in the US make these sorts of changes more difficult there, and make your reworking of my comments more valid in a rather ironic way.

As to religion, it could be argued that some branches of christanity are manging to adapt - Pat's church's attitude to women and gays might be an example of this. But many more are suffering from an inability to deal with the way the world really works when it comes to evolution, cosmology, AIDS or the limited resources of the planet. And the damage wrought by the latter two will not be confined to those who happen to follow the handicapped religion.

This is one reason why religion unrestrained by the real world is dangerous.

[kiya]

Anything is dangerous without checking reality.

Religion isn't a special case; this is a human thing. There are humans who will glom onto whoever is most persuasive in their direction and humans who won't. They do this in religion, they do this in politics, they do this in the grocery store when trying to decide what breakfast food to buy. This is the principle upon which advertising is wrought, upon which schools of rhetoric are founded.

There are some people who do this. There will always be some people who do this. And there will always be some people who don't. Trying to suggest religion as a special or more egregious case of people who do this strikes me as being . . . well, out of contact with the real world. There are doctrinaire nitwits and people who will follow them blindly anywhere a human has an opinion and expresses it. And there are people everywhere who will say "this group doesn't have what I'm looking for" and change affiliations -- by voting, by converting, by whatever.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

But a key central aspect of many religions (and I think pretty much all until recent times) has been that questioning them isn't right. Luther started the 100 years war by asking a few questions and suggesting that things could be done better.

Yes, there are a lot of followers out there for all sorts of things. But corn flakes are a lot less dangerous thnan something that says you go to heaven if you kill the infidels. By removing the possibility for that sort of argument you'd make the world a safer and, to my mind, better place.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

But again, there is a lot of good done by religion. Some of it is obvious, but most of it is not. Many religions stress the need for people to be good to others, and there are people who follow those precepts without thinking about it, too. In the replies to the post that spawned this post, someone observed that Islam gave comfort to people living under conditions that would cause mass riots if they took place in the U.S. They made the observation that, for every suicide bomber, there were thousands who were comforted by their faith. I think the phrase they used was "Islam has stayed more hands than it has caused to be raised in violence."

You will never "remove the possibility" for that sort of argument. You will always have people who want to "kill the infidels" -- without religion, they will not call them infidels, but traitors, or barbarians, or less-than-human. And maybe they won't promise heaven, but they'll promise glory and honor and "security" and racial purity.

[calebbullen.livejournal.com]

hunh?

What religion does not have someone telling you what is right?

[humanx.livejournal.com]

Which day doesn't have someone telling you what is right? The TV tells you, the radio, the people down the market, the guy on the corner yelling about sperm, gravity, and Revelations tells you. My cat is telling me it'd be right if I fed him again now, even though he just ate and would probably throw up if I did. I love my cat dearly, and caring for him is woven into the fabric of my daily life, but I don't do everything he tells me to do.

For one, I can't read his mind, and while we often seem to understand each other, it would be dreadful to mistake myself for a cat and start assuming I know more than I can.

There are some people who make that mistake in religion, only it's not a cat they've come to imagine themselves to be and thus fully understand. These people are a loud and tiny minority. At best they think you and they are the same, and so must have the same needs; at worst they think they and God are the same, and so must have the same desires.

As with everything else, a person interacting with their religion takes in data from many sources, analyzes them, and arranges them in a fashion which suits their own sense of what is right. Some of them have a sense of right which agrees with that of others in funny hats, but:

No one ever, in the history of humankind, believed anything just because someone told them to. Perhaps a lot of these arguments would go better if more people would get a handle on that.

[calebbullen.livejournal.com]

So if you think that religion does not give one their morals, what good does religion serve? Does that offset it's evils?

In my initial posting, I posited that we essentially get our morality from empathy but are often taught to behave in a moral fashion by religions first. Others believe that their religion is the foundation of their moralilty. So when you talk about one's one "sense of right and wrong" and how religion may or may not agree with it, where do you suppose that sense comes from initially?

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

So if you think that religion does not give one their morals, what good does religion serve? Does that offset it's evils?


First of all, I don't think you can weigh the good religion does against its evils. The equations are simply too complex. And most of the evils tend to be obvious, while often the good is less so.

Religion can give people a sense of meaning to their lives. Religion can provide community and a sense of connection to others. Where I live, it is not uncommon for people to struggle with alienation and loneliness. Churches can help provide an antidote for that.

Churches can help people care for each other. When I had surgery last year, and had complications later, for the most part it was people in my church who brought my family dinners while I was in the hospital. People from church called frequently and came by to see how I was doing.

Churches can provide an organizing ground for social action. My church has taken under its wing an orphanage in Tijuana, Mexico -- providing money and other support. We are one of many churches which support a group of homes for the medically needy in Gaza. This Saturday, my church is holding an event to raise money for a social services agency run by our diocese, which helps many people, without regard to religious affilitation. Even the Roman Catholic Church, for all its evil in spreading disinformation about condoms and AIDS, has spoken out in defense of the poor and downtrodden in many countries.

Are churches the only places where such things take place? No. But then again, religion is not the only principle which people use to commit evil, either. Look at Stalin. Look at the death toll under Mao Tse-tung.

[calebbullen.livejournal.com]

You can weigh the good versus the evil though.

It's there in exactly the same quotient as it is in man. It's not intrinsically either.

As far as I can see religion is truly a double edged sword. That's it just two edges. Sure they can look extraordinarily complicated. Especially when some people believe in the stories behind them while others treat them like other works of fiction. But it's just two sides.

The good side, is it gives us a sense of US. All that community jazz, helping your fellow man, being a good sport: it's all about us. There is an us and we're just like me. So I better treat all of us like I would like to be treated.

The other side is THEM. Some would like there to be an us without a them but religion gives you a them. Which is the loophole that allows for man's greatest inhumanities to take place under the flag of religion. We would never do that to one of us but one them, heck they deserve it.

And I don't think it's worth it to define us by not them. Other institutions do it too but Religions did it first and continues to do it most effectively.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Others do not think for me. I am responsible for my own soul, and God gave me a brain to think things out. As I experience faith (and bear with me, I am going to speak of my own faith experience) I am not told "Do this, because I said so." God gave me free will, to think for myself, to reject God completely if I so chose.

I'm not sure empathy alone leads us to treat others better. Empathy is many ways a byproduct of being taught that others are people just like us and deserve respect because of our common humanity. I think empathy naturally occurs, but unless it is nurtured is swamped by other emotions such as greed and fear.

I see the pack animal mentality in tons of other contexts -- from advertising and the success of reality television to politics and the Patriot act. People are communal animals. Sometimes people are sheep.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

We're all speaking here as adults. Much of the groundwork that goes behind our thinking and preception of religion and free will happens when we are children. There's an old, I think, Jesuit saying - Bring me the child and I'll give you the man. What we are taught as children as right and wrong I think defines how we think in later life. The religious impulse may well come from that rather than anything else. Religions are very often hereditary - you end up in the same faith as your parents - which is just what you'd expect if childhood experience, when you are still developing the ability to think, shapes your preconceptions of the world.

[joedecker.livejournal.com]

First, I think that's a fantastic post, I'd be honored if you'd link to it as a comment off of my original post to close the loop between the conversations.

I agree with you about abortion, I do find it very difficult to find a good place to say "here there is murder", "here there is not" and feel comfortable about the decision. I don't know your position, and without stating mine, I think we can both agree that at some point there's no clear edge to that choice to be found in reason. Many moral questions to have this problem, and I agree that it's fair and reasonable in these cases to rely on the other legs of your stool, for there is no perfect line we can draw about where life-as-we-protect-it-by-murder-laws begins with reason.

If you say that reason tells us to ignore the tradition and scripture of the Levitican code, then I agree with you, but find that decision to be in agreement with, not contrary, to my "primacy of reason" position rather than an equal partner. I think here we might be agreeing in principle but differing on the words. I'm cool with that, I'm not into definitional arguments. :)

Please do not assume that I'm not aware of the tremendous good religion has done. To the extent that it has taken me forty years to start feeling that its net balance, summed over religions, might be negative should put some weight on the complexity of the balance. In reality, such statements as the one I made are both unprovable (since there's no good way to do the accounting) and useless (since it's like wishing money to fall from the sky.) Various churches have done enormous work to feed the poor, cure the sick, comfort the dying, teach the young. Trying to work out the balance is just pointless, moot.

Perhaps what generates my ire on this is the way that we, as a society, tend to forgive religions ills. I see people argue every day about a war that killed tens of thousands of people, and perhaps rightfully so. But when I see millions of people who will die from this particular example of misinformation,
an organization that I subsidize through preferential tax treatement, and I don't see other people responding with a proportionate amount of outrage, well, somethings wrong, and
what I see, right or wrong, is that we cut religious organizations
too much leeway in doing wrong. We forgive them for acts we'd
string them up for were they an individual, business, or government.
I find that horribly disturbing.

Thank you again for your calm and thoughtful responses to my ranting.