When faced with morally bankrupt yet powerful forces of evil, angry invective is sometimes warranted. Christopher Hitchens is right about the vast majority of organized religion - it poisons everything - as he jeers that the Catholic motto should be "no child's behind left." Those who bid moral actions and cloak it in religious language are fooling themselves, and others, in ways that have repeatedly shown to be dangerous, because of the credulity and irrationality of the mass of humanity. Rational religion turns out to be an oxymoron, and the Brights realize this. But their influence, while growing, remains minuscule, and the danger increases far more rapidly.
So, I am exceedingly pessimistic about our future, because that credulity and irrationality - that faith - is increasingly tied to more and more potent weaponry, and ere long will be tied to Doomsday weaponry - most likely nanotechnology or bioweapons, I fear. Like the religious, I imagine Armageddon will happen soon (within 40-80 years), but without trumpets of Christ or Heaven - just death, for us all. And I expect that our collective demise will likely be brought about by those who think that Death brings us to a better place, as long as we believe their fantasies - and if we don't believe their fantasies, then they will make our lives a living Hell, for eternity - starting now. Even the most rational of the religions, Unitarian Universalism, refuses to abjure such fantasies entirely.
Religion indeed has similarities to an opiate, but its effect is far more insidious and harder to crack, because the addict will sober up periodically and realize their plight; whereas religion systematically disables the critical mentality needed to subvert it. It tells us faith is the key to morality, not the enemy of morality; that murder, torture, rape and pillage are fine if one's god so demands; and so on. The true enemy of religion is philosophy, in the broadest sense - the search for truth. Once that becomes your goal, you realize there is no need - indeed, no room - for faith; because faith, by its very nature, is inimical to a search for truth. Faith is belief without justification, without argument, without knowledge - faith is belief unsupported by the evidence. Only when one renounces such blandishments and seeks the truth and nothing but the truth, can one finally become free of the evil that is organized religion. So I must say I'm sorry to tell my friend Dan the apparently unwelcome news - for Dan blogs:
"Maybe my blogging friends will explore more deeply the psychological and philosophical implications of all of these matters (yes, SI and KA, if you’re reading this, that’s an invitation). For my part, I’ll just challenge you to go out and prove that the best antidote to bad religion is not no religion, but is in fact good religion."
I'm afraid I have to disagree that there is, in fact, any good religion. If our world can get to a place in which we can accept that ethics has no need of God, as contemporary philosophers like Derek Parfit and Kai Nelson argue, we will all be much better off. Hamas and Orthodox Jews cannot claim divine sanction for their mutual land grabs and murder - or Shia and Sunni in Iraq, or Protestant and Catholic in N. Ireland, or... the list never ends. But you cannot persuasively argue their wrongness by substituting their fantasy with some other one. You can only win that argument by rejecting fantasy for reality completely - by giving up every single jot and tittle, every minute iota of faith.
So, rejecting faith as a legitimate answer to any moral questions is one key to the human species having a long future. Again, sadly, I don't believe it will happen in time....
More to come. Civil comments welcome.
4 comments:
Excellent post - however, I must take brief issue with your quotation from my blog. The full quote is, "I’ll just challenge you [my readers] to go out and prove that the best antidote to bad religion is not no religion, but is in fact good religion." You have taken up the challenge to prove the counterfactual, and have made some pretty damn good arguments toward that end. So far I have yet to hear from the pro-religious side, but if I do I'll be sure to update my readers and yours.
Post edited to reflect your full quotation, Dan.
I absolutely agree that "ethics has no need of God." My best atheist friend is an extremely moral fellow. (He is what I call a "true atheist." He who absolutely knows there is nothing beyond bald, empirical reality... he doesn't just reject the there's-an- old-man-with-a-beard-running-things -from-the-sky theory.)
Also "religion" as far as it generates large, political, social institutions, will be just as apt to oppress and repress as any other political, social institutions. People - well, to be honest, mostly men - will rise to power and govern out of power, for the sake of power... with all the misalliances that entails.
Yet my experience mirrors that of many thoughtful people. I know that there is much to this universe not contained in any purely empirical philosophy. My own particular experiences cannot be parsimoniously described without reference to some spiritual (e.g., extra-empirical) theory, in other words “religion.”
You can say that my experience of non-ordinary reality must be an illusion, and must be reducible to bald, empirical phenomena - but only if you are already (religiously and irrationally - grin) committed to finding that result – no matter the tangle of unsupported assumptions it requires. Because that conclusion means making many more assumptions than the minimum needed to explain the phenomena, e.g., it is not parsimonious. For that reason alone, my certified, Ph.D. science-training demands that I not automatically reject all religion.
We humans tend to use for devastation many (all?) of the institutions we build based on religion. They are very easily bent to that purpose. But that does not make all spiritual theory false.
You can still say all religion is “bad.” However, I’d say it has been very good for me, and in fact leads me to do the work on myself that increases my ability to live in compassion and humility.
- grin again -
Elena
Elena,
You wrote: "You can say that my experience of non-ordinary reality must be an illusion, and must be reducible to bald, empirical phenomena - but only if you are already (religiously and irrationally - grin) committed to finding that result – no matter the tangle of unsupported assumptions it requires."
But I didn't say any such thing. (I can't speak for your friend). The attack was on faith, and on religious faith in particular. There are many who attempt 'rational religion' - fine insofar as it goes, but historically it always lapses back into faith. (I mention the UUs as an example). Empiricism is a demonstrably false epistemology, and science itself has conclusively demonstrated there is more to reality than we can see or taste or touch. But science seeks causal and repeatable explanations for those invisible things, like electrons and the curvature of space-time and genes and soon.
I am very glad religion has been a positive force in your life. But I daresay, insofar as it has, it has nothing to do with faith, and everything to do with thinking that your life has purpose and meaning. I'll blog more about that soon.
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