I’m often asked, “Christianity doesn’t really hurt anyone. Why is it so important? Just let people believe what they want. At least in religion. Why should we bother critiquing and opposing belief?”
In some cases the question is terribly naive. In others, it’s meant to refer not to conservative and fundamentalist religion—whose dangers to society and to every individual, both within and without the faith, are countless and well documented—but to liberal theologies, so-called “safe” religions, that don’t appear to cause any overt harm. So here is how you can reply to this question, depending on which group you are getting it from—those so naive they don’t even know the dangers that conservative theologies pose, and those savvy enough to get that much, but who still don’t see what the harm is (for instance) in just believing you’re immortal and have an imaginary friend.
Why Conservative Theologies Are Dangerous
False beliefs lead to bad decisions. And that can be dangerous on a mass scale. Paradigmatic examples: the Catholic Church is an international rape factory; a majority of Evangelicals are perpetually pushing for war, the expansion of poverty, and the suppression of women’s autonomy; and Donald Trump is President. But just in case a few examples aren’t enough to make the point clear, let me give you a slightly expanded tour of the horrors of religious belief.
The What’s the Harm website catalogs examples of the often lethal but also economic dangers of all manner of woo and false beliefs that people might ask the same question about, including a section on the dangers of fundamentalism—and they don’t even include religious violence, like war, terrorism, and hate crimes. Nor do they count harms resulting from trauma, abuse, political suppression, and damaging and dysfunctional teachings about self and society. Conservative religion causes misery to countless people infected with it who don’t conform to its false worldview, from producing self-hating homosexuals to little girls terrorized by the idea they might burn eternally in hell for merely asking questions. And countless other examples we could name.
Conservative religion also inevitably corrupts us into ignoring or even supporting evil. Lawrence Krauss wasn’t wrong when he wrote in Scientific American that (my emphasis):
Religious leaders need to be held accountable for their ideas. In my state of Arizona, Sister Margaret McBride, a senior administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, recently authorized a legal abortion to save the life of a 27-year-old mother of four who was 11 weeks pregnant and suffering from severe complications of pulmonary hypertension … Yet the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmsted, immediately excommunicated Sister Margaret, saying, “The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s.” Ordinarily, a man who would callously let a woman die and orphan her children would be called a monster; this should not change just because he is a cleric.
Even just the idea of giving enemies of the people a “pass” merely because they profess to be pious or clerical, is a threat to society that must end. But worse is the very production of such vile beliefs. Kill moms? Really? And that’s but one example.
In actual fact the Catholic Church is an international rape factory. And has been for decades; possibly untold centuries. Religious belief not only allowed that to happen, it is still allowing it to happen, as believers refuse to leave the church, refusing to effect any substantive reform that would prevent it, refusing to find a less deadly and destructive religion to believe in and support. And that’s not the only horror that Church has unleashed on the world. Even now that same Church also teaches false and dangerous, even lethal, things about a great deal else, from condoms and AIDS in Africa, to mental health and marital and parental and sexual relationships. The Church even denies charity to aid groups that so much as associate with gay people. And likewise enforces other positions it irrationally and harmfully endorses. Add it all up, and the harm Catholicism does well exceeds any good. Just see the Intelligence Squared Debate on whether the Church has been a force for good in the world—the affirmative is thoroughly annihilated by Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry.
And it’s not just Catholic evil that is spread and enabled throughout the world. Do you think mass child rape only happens in the Vatican’s corporate properties? Look over the nightmarishly vast collection of reported “black collar crime” that Freethought Today has published at least two whole newspaper pages worth nearly every month for decades now (you can find the latest issue online for an example). And the crimes they document aren’t just rampant child molestation, but range from fraud to manslaughter. Faith, trust in religion, support of religious institutions, makes this possible. Churches should be treated just like any other corporation: just as self-interested, and just as much in need of suspicion, criticism, oversight, and regulation.
And it doesn’t end there.
American Evangelicals lobbied for the mass murder of gay people in Uganda. Hundreds of thousands of American voters have in recent years supported “kill-the-gays” candidates even in the U.S. See my section on “Equivalence” in my article on Islamophobia for that and more. And again, that’s just one example. Homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, prejudices galore, all get rationalized, defended, and spread by conservative Protestant sects (and Orthodox sects and every other kind). On every political issue I’ve ever tried lobbying for, from environmentalism to peacekeeping to fighting poverty to women’s rights to stem cell research to abolishing vice laws to death-with-dignity legislation to improvements in tax and social welfare policy—literally everything—one group was always in my way: conservative Christians. Always. Their opposition to human betterment and social progress is extensive, multi-faceted, well-documented, and shameless. Faith. Belief. They create and feed that monster. And that’s why they must go.
But this has already been thoroughly demonstrated, on countless different dimensions. Marlene Winell’s advocacy for “Religious Trauma Syndrome” is but one example. For many, many more, see John Loftus’s Christianity Is Not Great, Hector Avalos’s Fighting Words, Valerie Tarico’s The Dark Side, Janet Heimlich’s Breaking Their Will, Billy Wheaton’s Hooks and Ladders, Darrel Ray’s Sex and God, Jerry Coyne’s Faith Verses Fact. You know. Just for starters. (And as I’ll show below, liberal Christian critics have also documented even more evils of conservative belief.)
Conservative religion not only damages the individual believer with false, harmful, even hateful beliefs about themselves and the world, it is “also highly correlated with violence and physical and emotional abuse, and the suppression of the liberties and well-being of others” (Problems with the Mental Illness Model of Religion). It therefore must be opposed.
That should have been obvious. But what about “nice” religions?
Why All Theologies Are Dangerous
First, all religions are systems of lies, designed to keep us trapped and controlled by fear. Liberal, conservative. Doesn’t matter. They can only survive at all, because so many are willing to keep telling and selling the same lies, because so many are so terrified of the truth they’d rather deny it than grow out of it. Even Bart Ehrman points out in Jesus, Interrupted how much the pulpit deliberately keeps from the public out of fear “it will lead to a crisis of faith, or even the loss of faith.” It’s doubtful that can ever be good. But certainly if we believe the truth matters, if we believe growing up and being an adult matters, then we cannot support believing in lies even if they are comforting, and even if the truth must necessarily be disturbing. There is no virtue in willful naivety. There is only danger.
People on their deathbeds, the mentally ill, those certain to flame out into conflict the moment anyone pushes back, those who are beyond all sense or time remaining to struggle with the truth—with some people, maybe we have to continue their delusions, not being able to rescue their minds, or not having ourselves the time, emotional labor, and other resources to put into the project. But most people are fully capable of taking the time to learn and cope with the truth. Including anyone who is reading our books and articles. For most people, therefore, the following is simply the truth…
If we do not confront the fact of our mortality, if we hide from it and evade it by fabricating fantasies that we are immortal, we do not really grow up. We remain emotionally stunted, never having come to terms with the truth about ourselves and our lives. Worse, we also fail to make the decisions we would have made had we known this, admitted it, and done what we needed to make peace with it. We are cutting off a lot of happiness and accomplishment and knowledge and experience that even we would agree mattered once correctly aware of the truth, on the false belief that we get to defer it to an eternal future. An eternal future never to come. Confronting our mortality, inevitably leads to enjoying more of the life we have. You appreciate more, what you only get to have for a short while.
Likewise, if we do not confront the fact that there is no one coming to save us, no justice assured, no future where we meet our maker or our lost loved ones, that salvation and justice only comes from flawed human beings organizing imperfectly to manifest it, we also, again, remain emotionally stunted, never having come to terms with the truth about the world and its realities and limitations. Being fired up by that harsh reality, to really start supporting the production of more justice in the world, is better. It’s more urgent, more important, that we really do this, if there is no superhero already on it.
Likewise, if we do not confront the fact that those lost survive only in our memories and the effects of their lives on the world they left behind, we also, again, remain emotionally stunted, never having come to terms with the truth about the world and its realities and limitations. We should be appreciating those we love while they still exist, enjoying our loved ones’ company more now, knowing full well it will end, rather than deferring it to a fictional future; we should be dealing with our grief and loss so we can move beyond it, rather than bottling it up in fear and false hope. Consequently the way of living that admits everyone’s mortality is better. Same, too, if we never learn to let go the imaginary friends of our childhood. Real friends are better. Admitting you are really only talking to yourself is better.
Second, even if we believed the truth is irrelevant and that we should believe false things merely because they comfort us, then we should instead believe we should construct any religion we want—indeed, we should construct, and only ever believe in, a religion that contains only comforting beliefs, none dangerous or alarming. We should, in other words, build a better religion. Better than literally any other popular religion on offer. A religion weighed down by no false beliefs that would cause us to lose resources or make bad decisions for ourselves or others, that support no prejudices, and that only contained imaginary friends (that can never save us or assure us of anything) and a magical immortality that we should act like we’ll never get (so as to not shortchange ourselves in the only life we’ll really have). Which really just amounts to doing nothing different than simply not believing at all. So why bother?
Indeed, people defending religion this way, are being hypocritical and disingenuous. If you really think religion’s only utility is in comfort, then you should condemn all religions that carry any dangers and discomforts, and fully support everyone fabricating any belief system that makes them happy. Lovable faerie worlds. Benevolent polytheism. Post-mortem solipsism. We get to live forever in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Anything. It’s all the best thing ever. All other religions, a curse. That should be your position. If it’s not, then you don’t really believe we should believe false things merely because of the comfort they bring us.
Liberal Theologies Entail Broken Epistemologies
And as even that thought experiment just illustrated, all religions require suppressing critical thought. Because you can’t maintain even a liberal religious belief, without a willully broken epistemology. And no net good comes of doing that.
As I wrote in Atheism Doesn’t Suck:
[B]ad epistemologies are always a net bad for you (and society), but you can only believe comfortable lies if you commit to a bad epistemology, the side effects of which will never be good for you or society overall—because bad epistemologies cannot protect you from harmful false beliefs (and even entail an increasing resort to harmful false beliefs in order to protect the harmless ones from being exposed).
In short, faith-based epistemologies always bear a cost, a cost always greater and more dangerous than of abandoning false comforts. It is literally impossible to build a method that will only ever lead you to a false belief that is literally harmless. Because to do that, you’d have to know the belief was false. It’s a Catch 22. Since the only way to really, reliably know a belief is harmless, is a method that can assuredly discover the belief would have no negative effect on you if it is false, nor even if it is true. But any method that could discern that, will unavoidably always discover the belief is false. Or at least, not likely true.
Any epistemology that sticks you with false beliefs, in other words, will invariably stick you with some false beliefs that are bad for you as well, or bad for others if you embrace them. Because it will have a blindspot, and that blindspot can’t police what gets in it. Hence you will never know which false beliefs are bad for you, or how to detect them. Because the broken epistemology you’ve chosen will also have to shield you from such discoveries. Indeed, to protect you from discovering your false beliefs, it will have to cause you to build ever more elaborate systems of false beliefs. Accelerating the likelihood and frequency of harmful false beliefs slipping in among them.
You will always be far safer with a critical epistemology optimally built to just always catch false beliefs, or as often as possible. And you won’t be able to “tool” it to do that better for harmless beliefs than harmful ones. That’s why only a globally good critical reason can protect you from harmful false beliefs. That it therefore must also quash harmless false beliefs that you find comforting is an inevitable price. But it’s a price far lower than the cost of the alternative. Because abandoning false comforts is what it means to grow into a mature adult and to take charge of yourself as you really are and life as it really is, and to get started on building true comforts in their place. Becoming a better, more honest, more realized person. Becoming less delusional, and therefore more enlightened.
Citing the rare few believers who engage with passion moral issues that actually matter because of their false beliefs, is a red herring. Because the vast majority of believers actually use belief to rationalize their complacency and indifference. And plenty of people engage those moral issues just as passionately without false beliefs. We don’t need a world where we trick people into sacrificing themselves for us with lies. We can come to much more honest ways of motivating them, compensating them, and solving our problems. We ought to do so. As only that would be a genuinely better world.
In short, faith is simply an unreliable path to knowledge. And as such, it is an inherently dangerous epistemology to adopt—much more promote. As it can lead you, and others, into real folly. Even if it hasn’t done yet, it will do. If not to you, then those who come after you. Statistically, it’s inevitable. Just a matter of time. So taking that into account, and the fact that we live in a shared community with others, even liberal religiosity is damaging, because people can’t help but let the epistemology they need to sustain their religion then go on to influence yet other decisions they make, other beliefs they form, that will impact others. And by endorsing that bad epistemology, and teaching it and passing it on to the next generation, you hobble yet another population with a dangerous epistemology doomed eventually to lead them into yet more harm.
And that’s just the truth of it. The only way to hold on to “harmless” false beliefs, is if we embrace and defend some faulty epistemology that allows us to maintain a false belief even in the face of evidence, even in the face of objective reason. But if you will believe things without evidence or reason, even against evidence and reason, what other false beliefs will you be vulnerable to, on account of that same fault in your epistemology? Even beyond the domain of specifically religious beliefs, with that epistemological software installed, you will be in danger of false social beliefs, false political beliefs, false beliefs about yourself and others, false beliefs about the world (see The Scary Truth about Critical Thinking and A Vital Primer on Media Literacy).
The epistemology itself, wholly apart from the religion it is being used to sustain, is harmful. And saving the world from that dangerous epistemology, simply has the inevitable side-effect of also removing liberal theologies from the world as well. Trivial price, for more reliable knowledge of just every single thing there is.
So one might instead want to ask…
Why are they still clinging to remnants of supernaturalism? What are they in fear of? Why does it matter to them? The answer, the real answer, is not likely to be any more commendable than the defenses people give to spirit mediums and other hucksters duping the public with false hopes.
Wouldn’t they and the world be better off if they admitted and faced those fears and coped and made peace with them and built ways to work around them, rather than constructing an elaborate, untouchable delusion to avoid all that? And if they aren’t in fear of anything, why do they need to keep believing things they don’t need to? And why teach this faulty epistemology to others, by endorsing and exemplifying it? Why not denounce it as untrustworthy? Why invent excuses not to denounce it?
It’s all the worse that faulty epistemologies also leave us vulnerable to exploitation. If you don’t have a filter that protects you from false beliefs, your vulnerability to false beliefs (including excess reverence for the “pious” and “clergy”) can easily be used to exploit and manipulate you, by churches, church leaders, politicians, corporations, your communities, everyone. There is no good in this. Better armed against this fate, than a puppet of it.
Yet Further Dangers of Moderate Religion
In “The Top One Reason Religion Is Harmful,” Greta Christina aptly wrote:
[Even] moderate religion still does harm. It still encourages people to believe in invisible beings, inaudible voices, intangible entities, undetectable forces, and events and judgments that happen after we die. And therefore, it still disables reality checks… making people more vulnerable to oppression, fraud, and abuse.
What’s more, moderate religion is in the minority. The oppressive, intolerant, reality-denying forms of religion are far more common, and far better at perpetuating themselves.
And moderate religion gives these ugly forms credibility. It gives credibility to the idea that believing in things there’s no reason to believe is valid, and actually virtuous. It gives credibility to the idea that invisible worlds are real, more real and important than the visible one. It gives credibility to the idea that our seriously biased personal intuition is more trustworthy than logic or verifiable evidence. It gives credibility to the idea that religious beliefs, alone among all other ideas, should be beyond criticism; that the very act of questioning religion is inherently intolerant. (It also, I’ve found, has a distinct tendency to get hostile and decidedly un-moderate towards non-believers when questioned even a little.)
Indeed, I think a common problem pervading liberal sects is a more subtle conservatism, pressuring, and exploitation. They may be on the right side of most things, unlike conservatives; but they often still stand in the way of future advances in social wisdom, with their own peer pressuring and passive-aggressive judgmentalism—such as punishing anyone who becomes ethically nonmonogamous, or reinforcing mainstream everyday “benevolent” sexism. And as I already noted, they don’t really teach (and in some ways even counter-teach) effective critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning. That they still require the shibboleth of publicly expressed belief already entails there is something they are attempting to defend against too much questioning, against too effective thinking. And anything like that is usually not something that should be defended.
Liberals are also less able to really debate conservatives, which is why they almost never do. Because the liberals “have no text.” That is, they do not use the Bible as written (unlike the conservatives claim to). They use human interpretations—which means any interpretation can replace it. In truth, the conservatives always do this too; but they pretend they aren’t, giving them an often impenetrable self-righteous edge. The liberals can’t get away with that pretense; that they are “reinterpreting” everything is what overtly defines their sectarian stance. And in debate, this becomes indefensible. What the liberal theologian insists is true, is no longer anchored to any evidence, any proof, anything that could persuade. This is well argued in Hector Avalos’s book The End of Biblical Studies, which has a whole section on liberal Christianity that is the best I’ve read, explaining in detail why it has no salutory or effective method of coping with or arguing from the Bible. In its practical effectiveness, it’s worse than atheism.
Even more broadly that’s the case. When (in Does Christianity Harm Children?) Phil Zuckerman tried explaining the basic Christian doctrine, which even liberal Christianity endorses and graphically depicts in its own ways, to his young daughter, a child, he had to confess, “The whole thing is so totally, horrible, absurdly sadistic and counter-intuitive and wicked. Not to mention baldly untrue.” Liberal Christianities might try to de-emphasize or whitewash all that, but the fact is, they teach the same horrible shit. To children.
Some of what Zuckerman lists is only in conservative dogmas—hells, devils, salvation irrespective of merit; damnation for non-Christians, even Christians of other sects; that masturbation is evil. But some is shared even by liberal sects. Pretty much every version of “Christianity teaches children that they are intrinsically evil…just by being born” and “that God killed his own child to make up for their” being evil. And that that’s okay. Indeed, the best thing ever! Horrifying.
Indeed, although liberal Christianities tend to try and ditch the crazy, abusive teachings of devils and hells and unearned salvation, they can only replace them with something almost as bad: that God, even Jesus, is the example we should look up to, of the most loving and just person possible—yet allows all the horrible, evil things in the world and does nothing about them, because this is somehow all for the best. Disease. Cancer. War. The Holocaust. Mass starvation. Mass drownings from floods, tsunamis, storms, sinking ships. It maximally exemplifies being loving and just…to do zip all about any of it? How is that not a messed up thing to teach anyone? Especially children? It’s hard to imagine it’s doing society any favors to build a human being who thinks these things.
Valerie Tarico has provided another astute catalog of dangers, in “6 Reasons Religion May Do More Harm Than Good.” Reasons that apply not just to conservative and liberal religions, but some even to ideologies outside the usual definition of religion:
- Religion promotes tribalism. [Believers vs. unbelievers, saved vs. unsaved.]
- Religion anchors believers to the Iron Age. [Through still-revered scriptures.]
- Religion makes a virtue out of faith [Promoting faith-based epistemologies and over-trusting the clerical and the pious.]
- Religion diverts generous impulses and good intentions. [Enabling exploitative enterprises and institutions; draining resources from where they’d be better spent.]
- Religion teaches helplessness. [“Jesus take the wheel”; “Let go and let God”; “God will sort it out”; “God has his reasons”.]
- Religions seek power. [Churches are literally just untaxed corporations. With less oversight. Think about it.]
On top of all that, even liberal theologies plague us with one over-arching danger:
Teaching everyone they have a reliable guide to what the right thing to do is (or what the right thing to think is) either (A) in some distorted construct of primitive superstitious writings or (B) in a magical God-blessed intuition. Neither is true. Both are really bad ideas, ripe with danger.
No, the character of Jesus in the Gospels was not the wisest and kindest of beings—he is actually quite loathsome and rarely gives anything but really bad advice (just see the first paragraphs of The Real War on Christmas). No, the rest of the New Testament isn’t all that great—it’s full of support for slavery and the subordination of women and superstitious woo nonsense; and never endorses democracy, human rights, or positive sexuality. Just for example. And no, the Old Testament is not a Good Book—it’s actually full of racist, sexist, genocidal, tyrannical, and horrific teachings (see my collection of examples in The Will of God, just for starters).
Revering these books sends the wrong message to everyone; teaches the wrong things; ingrains bad standards and practices. And it prevents us from doing instead what we ought to do, which is question why anything we think is correct, and come up with verifiable reasons before committing to it—whether whatever we are thinking “is best” comes from some antiquated book written by ignorant superstitious bigots, or not.
The alternative, that “God imbued in me a reliable sense of right and wrong,” is precisely how every wrong person on earth justifies screwing themselves up and screwing the world over. It’s exactly the worst thing to believe, totally hostile to any effective methods of rooting out error and discovering the real truth about anything. It’s the most magical of Dunning-Kruger effects. Philosophy is better: tentative, revisable, critical, testable, rational, and evidence-based. Just to start you out with an example, try my book Sense and Goodness without God. Compare its methods, and its content, with any holy book on earth, with anyone’s untested and untestable “intuition.” And ask yourself: Can any “scripture” or “intuition” replace the critical thinking and research a worldview like that requires to arrive at? Or even that would be needed to fix or improve on it?
Shouldn’t we instead be encouraging critical thinking and research and self-examination and questioning and testing, and not reliance on scriptures or intuitions? And if we abandon scriptures and intuitions, if we test them all against evidence and reason, what religion survives? None. Honestly. Other than purely social enterprises devoid of supernatural beliefs or dogmas.
Giving Liberals Their Due
To be fair, the devotees of liberal theologies are much less dangerous than their conservative peers, much less psychologically messed-up, much-less callous and hate-filled, and much less a burden on society. They are allies on so many missions of progress in the world. Though only so long as you don’t ask too many questions or start exposing too many things they’d rather their congregations not know. We can work with them. But we cannot submit to them. They will not be allowed to silence us.
It’s also not quite true, as Richard Dawkins once alleged, that liberal theism gives conservative theism cover; or as Sam Harris once alleged, that the respectability of liberal theism makes it harder to critique and oppose conservative theism. Because liberal theism also gives religious liberty and secularism cover, too. And in fact its availability as an option has proven to be a necessary escape valve for believers to leave conservative theism. So in fact liberal theism does not make it harder to combat conservative theism, but easier. In fact these liberal sects exist precisely because of that combat; and their size and growth is evidence of success at it.
This should be one of the most obvious lessons of the last three hundred years: the secularization of governments and human rights has created a context in which religion could be moderated by dissent over time. Which is precisely why Christians aren’t waging crusades and inquisitions anymore, and though hundreds of thousands of Americans still want gays executed, they are now but a tiny and shrinking fraction of Christians in America, most of whom find these murderous peers repulsive and would never support their passing of laws. How many converts to atheism do we know, who first escaped their conservative theology by going through a liberal theological phase, before finding deism palatable, than agnosticism…then finally atheism? That’s how it often works.
We sometimes forget how enormous a shift this is from the Middle Ages. If it can happen to Christianity, it can happen to Islam, and anything else. And really, that’s the only way it’s going to happen. You aren’t going to convert a billion Muslims to atheism. But you can create a context in which they will gradually liberalize themselves over the next two hundred years. Like we did. Because that’s the only way we did it. That then opened the way, gradually to be sure, for atheism to have breathing room, and eventually itself grow. This all simply requires the secularization of governments and human rights—such as accepting freedom of religion and freedom of speech as fundamental rights.
And likewise, though liberal theologians almost never debate or really challenge conservatives anywhere near as frequently and head on as atheists do, some do speak out; the media just never reports on it. In the last ten years I’ve come more than ever to realize how distorted reality is by media’s selection bias on what it tells us. We have by now of course become aware that what the media does report should be treated skeptically; but we often forget that far greater distortion is caused by what the media doesn’t report. Because it’s thus invisible, we don’t know that it’s not being reported!
Indeed, the media distorts even our perception of conservatives. And I don’t mean just liberal media, but all media—FOX News included. As for example I discovered with the media coverage of the recent immigration issue: see Giving Christians Their Due–Which Even Christians Won’t Do. In actual fact even a lot of prominent conservative religious leaders do not at all share the perspective of the Trump Evangelicals, but actually openly chastise their peers for being so un-Christian. The media hardly reports on it (it will get, here and there, a tiny story at best, barely circulated, and hardly noticed). Similarly, the leading organization in the U.S. that fights for church-state separation is a liberal Christian enterprise, not run by atheists. And it rakes in millions a year in donations, far more than any explicitly atheist organization on earth. How often do you hear about that in the media? Or even that it exists?
Rarely do liberal leaders get heard in the media, either. Jimmy Carter only gets press because he was frickin President of the United States once (a scale of media-access privilege even the media can’t ignore). And even then, I still meet tons of people who have never heard of his attacks on conservative Christianity. And yet his latest and most viral one, isn’t even the only one.
Other major leaders speaking out are largely ignored. Yet there are many (some even conservatives): see Ronald Sider, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (Baker 2005); Garry Wills, What Jesus Meant (Viking 2006); Gregory Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation (Zondervan 2007) and The Myth of a Christian Religion (2009); Robin Meyers, Why the Christian Right Is Wrong (Jossey-Bass 2008). Just for starters. (Which books, BTW, catalog yet more evils and harms of conservative religious belief.)
Some will re-pose the Dawkins-Harris complaint in a more formal way, by stating that liberal theologies move the Overton Window, thus increasing the credibility of conservative theologies. Fundamentalism thereby looking more respectable and a viable option, because liberal theism does. It moves the window, to overlap the respectable with the crazy. But this works both ways. Liberal theism keeps the Overton Window on the other side overlapping atheism, so that the existence of liberal theism also gives cover and respectability to atheism.
Just look at hard-line Islamic nations for a demonstration of this fact: the less liberal theology there is, the more fundamentalism there is, not the other way around. Atheism is then all but crushed into hiding and certainly not even respectable enough to admit, much less evangelize. Whereas as liberal theism grows, so does atheism, while fundamentalism shrinks. The history of Europe, Canada, Australia, even the US, for example, also exhibit this trend. Liberal theology did indeed move the Overton Window…for atheism. Not for conservative theology. We do not find a correlation “more liberal theology, entails more fundamentalism.” We see the opposite. Not only less fundamentalism, but more (and more open and accepted) atheism.
Conclusion
But for all that, even liberal theologies pose their own dangers we must still continually oppose. We should not want these faith-based systems of false-beliefs to continue. They are handy as a gateway. But that bridge ultimately also needs to go. Because liberal theologies saddle us with dangerous epistemologies, they hold back our growth as human beings, they leave us more vulnerable to oppression, fraud, and abuse; indeed more vulnerable to causing and spreading abuse ourselves. They distract us from what we really ought to be doing, which is building evidence-based, testable, revisable worldviews. Meanwhile, conservative theologies pose far greater and even more obvious dangers we must oppose in every civil way possible.
So when someone asks, “What’s the harm?” The answer is that. All that.
-:-
Add your own reasons religion is harmful in comments; but any reason you give, please back it up with specific examples. It’s okay to accumulate yet more reasons for the harm of fundamentalist religious belief, although that seems a bit like beating a dead horse. But I am especially interested in hearing out reasons I may have not mentioned that even liberal religious beliefs harm us or entail risks we’d be better off without.
Perhaps the post that I wrote Religion Is Social Reprehensible Behavior could also serve as a handy compendium.
That’s a good summary of four general ways religion is bad. A lot of overlap with my summary but some additional examples worth looking at too.
Thank you for your positive remarks. That my text is overlapping yours is no wonder because it is independently written. The focus in my post however is an appeal to all media, the mainstream in particular, to treat religious belief as social reprehensible behavior, just as smoking is. That means that religion or religious feelings should be banned from movies, tv–shows, etc. And in a discussion about religious matters, e.g. what happened today 9/11 17 years ago, there should always be an atheist present, like yourself, to mock the ridiculous ideas about the invisible man in the sky.
I agree atheists should not be excluded from so-called interfaith displays. That in itself is a form of bigotry. But it can’t be forced. And I don’t think those kinds of things you list should be banned. Progress requires civil society and civil society requires freedom of speech and religion. Our goal is to make these bad ideas obsolete through education, illumination, and persuasion, not oppress their victims or tender excess power to any authority. And even when we succeed, and religions fade away, they and their ideas will and should always exist in historical study, e.g. documentaries and textbooks, and in art, e.g. in historically-set fiction.
I just found this article and it’s very good, I completely agree with all the points, very logical!
I wonder if you realize you are clashing quite a bit with Anthropology, and perhaps to a lesser extent Sociology? Those would be the fields where one would find the most developed literature on the subjects you bring up, but I get the sense you haven’t spent much time with the relevant literature in either discipline since I see nothing referenced. In fact your whole argument seems deeply impressionistic as skewed through a singularly Christian lens. It’s interesting, but overdrawn.
Your entire article is literally logically incoherent.
“Perhaps the creationist would insist AIS is a “disorder,” and no one should want to emulate a “disorder,” but in fact it’s not a disorder. It’s just a natural genetic outcome, which presents few to no problems. ”
LOL So, in your mind it’s not a “disorder”, just a “natural genetic outcome”, as though the two are mutually exclusive? Lame.
Literally, every argument you use to support transgenderism, from “hormone thereapy”, what a culture believed at a given time, to grafting different organs, fur, hair, “whigs”, tails, could all be applied to animals.
Many cultures believed in “Werewolves in Europe, ‘skincrawkers in native cultures etc etc”.
You have argued absolutely nothing here that debunked the argument from the infidel or the creationist you cite in your argument, you literally proved everything they said was accurate, as all of your arguments could be applied to to lycanthropy.
We share DNA (97% in some cases), there’s the cultural norms, the belief.
You are a very delusional human being, so is your entire ideology. And yes, I’ve read and seen you say the same thing about Christians multiple times, so it doesn’t bother me to point it out to you. And yes, you equally sound like a “child”.
I fail to see any reference to anything I said here that is logical incoherent. You do not seem to know what “logically coherent” means.
The science is the science. You can accept it or ignore it. All I can do is tell you what it is.
Meanwhile, animals don’t have culture. Thus they don’t have genders. So what we “could” do with animals is irrelevant to this conversation.
Science establishes gender is not the same as sex; that you almost never know someone’s sex, only their gender (you aren’t allowed to peak at their genitals or read their DNA or lab their blood); and that there are more than two sexes; and that chromosomes do not reliably correlate to body chemistry and body chemistry does not reliably correlate with genital or womb construction or body shape or vocal formation, so there is no definition of sex that can correlate all three in any consistent fashion. And we (as in, all human beings) share 99.9% of the same DNA, not a mere 97%. These are the scientific facts. And you have presented no evidence against any of them, or anything I actually said about them.
Thus, it would appear the only delusional person here is you.
Hi Dr Carrier!
Isn’t it only Humanity the problem at all? For a long time now I do think we do live in a world of predation. Not only in the animals we do have predators, but we can find monters with human face everywhere.
Sure religion and fundamentalism are not helping in keeping archaic traditions that have harm social and human rights.
But can we not say same for drug war related manslauther like what we see in Mexico with drug lords fightning one another or authorities. There is no religion involved here.
We can say same from North Korea atheist dictature or any other dictature on the World…
It’s funny that fundamentalist Christians don’t realize they look like the Pharisees that Jesus was criticizing openly like in Matthew 16:6 and in many other place.
I’ve been thinking for a long time also that Jesus’ figure in the Gospels was more liberal in some ways, than any people from his time.
Fake Righteousness is also the issue behind all those fundamentalism sects. People that make projection of their owns weakness or darkside into other people like racism does mainly.
No God needed here for that Man (we still say man instead of Humanity) made tragedy…
I’m not sure what your point here is.
This is an article only about religion. Not other causes of problems in the world. It’s a fallacy to think “if all religion is bad, then nothing else is bad” and a double fallacy to then reason “but other things are bad, therefore religion isn’t bad.”
I see no sense in either argument. So what point were you trying to make?
My argument is and will always be, people will always use external cause to explain or rationalize their behaviors, either good or bad.
So to claim it’s religion or any god or any given cause like the drug dealers, that doesn’t change that these people will rationalize anything in using any external figure of authority to get their way.
Because I agree more with atheists that there is no God or gods that does anything to stop what you said in your text (that’s why I do support a deist position and not a theist one):
“Indeed, although liberal Christianities tend to try and ditch the crazy, abusive teachings of devils and hells and unearned salvation, they can only replace them with something almost as bad: that God, even Jesus, is the example we should look up to, of the most loving and just person possible—yet allows all the horrible, evil things in the world and does nothing about them, because this is somehow all for the best. Disease. Cancer. War. The Holocaust. Mass starvation. Mass drownings from floods, tsunamis, storms, sinking ships. It maximally exemplifies being loving and just…to do zip all about any of it? How is that not a messed up thing to teach anyone? Especially children? It’s hard to imagine it’s doing society any favors to build a human being who thinks these things.”
I draw the same conclusion than you, especially for the Holocaust and all what you describe in that paragraph… Where is any loving God or gods, if there is any? Why do they allow these terrible events…
And if we agree that there is no god at work, who is it then but the perpetrator to blame but not the religion or any god which is only an external objet of so called authority . Sure any fundamentalist will do more harm like the Pharisees depicted in the Gospels, he or she will use the authority of God, religion, sacred books, whatever to get their way over other people.
In psychology there is so many ways that people can use to rationalize their behavior… Very narcissitic Ego is more the god and religion that guides or drives these people to behave in bad manners than any external cause.
Serial killers need no god in order to kill, because most of them believe they possess the power of god over their victims and they can do whatever it please them with their victims.
I know it as I was myself victim of a man who was sitting in a church, not a priest but a twistted ass, that he knew that there were like kids like me as altar boys in the Catholic Church, to pray easily on…
Even if I do respect some parts of the Gospels as liberals Christians do, I can stand with and for atheist views as well. But I cannot blame all on religion / god either.
Also I do think I can be a better, let say some sort of believer into jesuism, if I can accept atheist concepts, rather than not at all.
(Either Jesus did exist or not, because the 4 Gospels can be seen as a moral code with or without any god).
I think like you greatly said, we have to coexist in tolerance of one another, to welcome those who get rids of these rigid fundamentalist behaviors. But also to get away from any radical fundamentalist that will force us into any form of mental and physical enslavement.
I don’t know if I have made my point clearer or not. I have to admit that I use a lot of psychological concepts to face people in my life as I have to struggle into psychotherapy for these sad events.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuism
I still don’t get your point. You seem to just be repeating everything I already said.
Other than your obscure advocacy for some other religion that is just as false as every other, displaying that you have become dependent on an unreliable epistemology. And your embrace of that epistemology is bad. Though maybe only very mildly bad.
In contrast with Dr. Carrier (which doesn’t happen a lot) I DO see your point: man doesn’t need God to do evil, i.e. be immoral. But that’s exactly the point: why take the religious crimes on top? If we could abolish religion, and thus its crimes, we have even more time and resources to deal with REAL humanistic problems, e.g. drug abuse etc.
Yeah that’s it !
The core problem with fundamentalists is they want to force us into their belief system as Nazi almost…
For me if there is any god or deity or energy that rules over the Universe, I will see it as a deity of Diversity as Nature is (sure I cannot prove it) toward people (or a god / religion) that want to force everyone into One Size fits All system…
Which is pure Dictature to that point.
To play the devil’s advocate, you have a better chance proving there is a Force of Life, just like gravity, more than there is a god. Evidence : 1. whenever Life is possible, Life will occur, even in the most harsh conditions (e.g. scorching hot geothermal pools or deep sea hydrothermal vents) 2. every living creature – without being told or instructed – will do anything to not die (flight, fight, etc.). Both phenomena could be seen as manifestation of a Force of Life in nature. The difference of that force and a god is of course is that this force, like gravity, is unpersonal, dumb, blind and can’t do and won’t do anything for you as a human, no matter if, how and when you pray to it.
Maybe Dr. Carrier has written about this subject in his book “Sense And Goodness Without God”, but to be honest, I’m only at chapter 2 now…
Of course, though, “whenever Life is possible, Life will occur” is either false or a tautology. If it means life has appeared where life has appeared, it is true in every possible universe (it would be logically impossible for it to ever be false). If it means life has appeared in every possible place it could have appeared, it is demonstrably false: life could survive on Mars for instance, but isn’t there. In fact, we have no evidence of life anywhere except earth. And all life we know appears descended from the same single instance of its appearance. And its ability to do so (including its extreme rarity, as so far observed in the galaxy) is fully explained without remainder by physics. No additional forces are required, any more than we need posit additional angels pushing to explain why the planets move in their courses.
Likewise “every living creature – without being told or instructed – will do anything to not die (flight, fight, etc.)” is either false on the first point (most life lacks neurology, e.g. bacteria, algae, plants, and thus has no such thing as a fight or flight reflex), or false on the last point (many organisms are programmed in certain circumstances to suicide themselves, e.g. ants, spiders, even birds and mammals; a lot of life deliberately suicides itself to reproduce, e.g. certain coniferous trees can only reproduce by being burned to death; and of course plenty of animals will interpose themselves to fight predators off their young, even in a doomed match, when fleeing would have saved them), or false on the middle point (they are told/instructed: by the software in their core that runs their behavioral program or builds their behavioral program, called DNA: whose construction and activation is fully explained without remainder by physics, so no further force is needed to explain DNA’s behavior either). Of course we well know that any system that has reproduction with variation logically entails evolved survival mechanisms, and the more of them the more time goes on to accumulate them by random variation with selection, and the more of them the more structure the organism acquires to build and carry such mechanisms around. No further force needed.
… and then Dr. Carrier totally crushes that idea ! 🙂
In answer to both of you Dr Carrier and Art 25, I will try to resume best my point. Perhaps my French-Canadian background doesn’t help in expressing my views properly in English, as French-Canadian is my mother tongue.
Well if I keep on with only the human behaviors, I don’t think with can use Logic to say if a behavior is false or an argument is false to described these behaviors. Human beings are nothing close to logical people. Emotions drive us, even the so called non-emotional psychopaths. They have emotions that triggers them into their psychopathic behavior for sure, they are not robots.
I had a friend of mine who studied psychology in order to become a psycho-social agent with men that were convicts of numerous minor crimes or even gang related crimes. Even myself was interested into that field and made some study myself.
Take the American gangsters era from the 20′-30′ with either Al Capone or Bonny and Clyde, etc. We also had in the Province of Quebec a Golden Age of the gangster era during the 50′ – 60′ and the 70′ in Montreal especially with bank robbery with a woman named Machine Gun Molly: https://www.mtlblog.com/lifestyle/the-legend-of-montreals-machine-gun-molly
And even the notorious French con man Jacques Mesrine came in our Province back then, as portrayed by Vincent Cassel in the movie about is life and criminal carrer : L’instinct de mort and it’s sequel: L’ennemi public No 1.
All these people had antisocial and sociopathic behaviors and no whatsover beliefs in a god or any consideration for religious behaviors (probably not giving a damn about it) even if religious beliefs were very stong amongst the population in both countries during these time.
Communist – atheist dictatorship from 20th century also have proven that Atheism as the main power in a country is not a garantee for liberal values and freedom for diversity of his citizens. Russian communism has also tortured with KGB and it’s allies people within Russia and Eastern european countries, even to death, believers from Orthodox and Catholic Faith within these countries.
So as an agnostic I don’t believe in any type of utopian Atheist world paradise, in respect of your position. I might wonder if we wouldn’t have an Atheist Inquisition that will try to eliminate all other kind of people beliefs from the whole world…
I belive more into a world who accept and embrace is diversity of culture, beliefs and else, is maybe the best way to ensure and protect everyone from cultural, social and ethnical genocide.
Certainly merely being an atheist ensures nothing as to values or beliefs beyond that. That’s why having a sound epistemology is even more important (it just happens to have the side effect of atheism: which is one test signal for whether its working, but not in itself sufficient). And why advocating for not just atheism but also secular humanism is as important.
Denis, I’m a computer program developer. In the old days, before Internet came around, if you had a problem, you had to figure it out all by yourself. Nowadays, if you have a problem writing a particular piece of code, you automatically think : “I can’t possibly be the only one who struggles with this”, and you google it, and lo and behold : in 90% of the cases, you find the answer !
Why are religious people so unwilling to follow suit? Just look up the answers to your questions, they have already probably been answered a thousand times (or PRATT).
You should be able to find that atheism is not a ideology, that morality without a god is possible – and even preferable, that personal glorifying dictatorships (Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong-Un, etc) have more in common with a theocracy than with a secular democracy, and much more religious BS that is totally debunked.
Thanks again to both of you Dr Carrier and Art 25 for your time and your respectful answers.
Sure Dr Carrier I will rather have a Atheist world under a secular humanism than what we do live today. But still I would hold my ground to my views for a possible Deist or Causal agent to everything. Like Michio Kaku or Einstein.
Art 25 I agree with you that Catholicism as Nazism or Fascism or Communism is all the same BS Dictatureship at the end of the day. Himmler even used Jesuits as a model to implement for his demonic SS.
Himmler hatred toward Chistianity was such that he had an occultic vision for his minions, which shows a lot about his mental state…: https://www.scrapbookpages.com/WewelsburgCastle/SSGeneralsHall.html
That’s maybe why I still believe in some sort of a god or energy, because of that human Evil. If there’s Evil, there’s might be something that we may refer as good, or maybe benevolent might be a proper way to describes it.
Yeah I know I was born from Catholic background, and I still need a something to explain everything !
I won’t stir up more debates as I do respect Dr Carrier’s position and page. Again merci !
Denis, il te faut probablement encore quelques années avant que tu te réalises que tu n’as plus besoin d’un dieu ou d’une “énergie”… C’est plus logique, plus réelle, plus profond… Cette vie, c’est la seule que tu as, et c’est toi seulement qui est y responsable !!!
That’s exactly the right way to put it. I concur with what Art. 25 just said entirely.
To make things perfectly clear, dr. Carrier concurred with what I said in my reply that begins with the words “In contrast of… “, not with “To play the devil’s advocate…”.
Just saying.
Thanks Richard!
Just after “Liberal Theologies Entail Broken Epistemologies,” the paragraph starting “In short, faith-based epistemologies always bear a cost…” is the most difficult. I’m unsure why “any method that could discern [that a belief is harmless irrespective of its truth], will unavoidably always discover the belief is false.”
Hidden
Dumbfounded, horrified, out-raged and leery,
expecting the stamp of a pimp or a thief,
the people of Allentown, Pittsburgh and Erie,
have learnt of such crimes that would beggar belief.
300 hundred felons, who hid in priest’s clothing,
raped 1000 children and felt no regret.
Young lives were broken by fear and self-loathing;
church leaders hid it and prayed they’d forget.
Tears have been shed and remorse has been muttered.
I have wept too with believers who care.
A quite other narrative begs to be uttered:
these three hundred men swam in ritual and prayer.
Their total immersion brought no intervention.
Bibles and hymnals were no earthly use.
Their lives, in the priesthood, did not find ascension;
they wallowed, instead, in the vilest abuse.
Alan Wagstaff
You have written a well researched and comprehensive analysis of the problem with as many angles as possible affecting different people at different times in particular and all of them in general.
What’s the harm?
My answer is – “Its bad business.”
You are a consumer of some product which doesn’t give you any value for the price you pay.
You are an advertiser and salesmen of someone’s else business without getting any remuneration in return.
You are a supporter of a business group which on the posters and banners speak of doing your good but the hidden agenda as invented in the first place and maintained today is simply to exploit you.
So its bad business.
As with every problem of good and bad comes the question of solution.
What’s the solution?
Everything which is collective and comprehensive in nature, which is forced upon one and many through the so called offices of Traditions or Governments institutions formed centuries ago grown into dinosaurs and Monsters of today requires a level of resources and position of power over agencies that control the people in the first place like the Indoctrination factory called Schools, then over legislation, public funds to encourage development of public opinion based on rational or creative principles over centuries old irrational and outdated business tactics of religion.
The problem of harm and its problem solving depends upon the situation of person in that particular group. Whether he finds himself in a situation where he has some control over the channels which control the behavior of people and has power to confront that problem , or he is in situation where the maximum control he has exercise relating to change in behavior in limited to himself and the people immediately around him, like his or her family members.
For Ex, in your position as a writer or publisher where you have some people who listen or read you, the maximum you can do is:
As you write,
“Shouldn’t we instead be encouraging critical thinking and research and self-examination and questioning and testing, and not reliance on scriptures or intuitions?”
OR
“You aren’t going to convert a billion Muslims to atheism. But you can create a context in which they will gradually liberalize themselves over the next two hundred years.”
But these are questions properly to be addressed to those people in the form of forces that presently maintain the channels which control the flow of information in any group. And their % is always low as compared to the majority who are just at the receiving end. What is the question for them?
A practical question for which they can find practical answers within the territory of factors under their control.
Again as a person with control only over my body, I can’t direct the way problem solving is addressed by the groups who find delight in spreading the concept of Rationality over Religion.
All I can hope is People who at least have the power to spread a Cause, Should state a problem in a form which can at least be attempted for problem solving on a level where most sufferers of the problem operate.
I’m sorry. What is your point? I can’t discern what it is you are trying to say.
Its my pleasure that you have written to me. I am a great admirer of your work.
Its my line of thinking that description of problem should also suggest a process of problem solving especially for blessed people who have audience and stage to suggest solutions like you.
In matter of religious stronghold over people, there are two parties – One who stand to gain, the institutions of Religion and the Governments who benefit by letting the rationality of people never develop due to influence of religion.
The other party being the suffering masses, individuals and families who are not part of government and therefore not in the position to initiate any change.
Its a self defeating work asking the Religious institutions and government to initiate change because they stand to gain by promoting irrationality through religion.
But it is worth of an effort to offer solution to the individual that if he discards religious beliefs and participation in events related to religion, he is at least getting out of a business model in which he gains nothing and become a free advertiser, a free salesmen to religious institutions.
That’s exactly what my article advocates: replacing religious interests and “ways of knowing” with rational, evidence-based philosophy for all.
Once religion is out of the way (and even before that, though then religion will always be fighting against us in this), we can fix education to produce genuine critical thinkers. I already contribute to that cause now, by developing and disseminating tools worldwide to help people dispel falsehoods and reason better about important matters of their personal philosophy of life. And I aim to make it all as accessible as possible while still being able to make a living. We will still have to combat the non-religious threats to reason and truth. But this isn’t an article about those dangers. It’s only an article about the dangers posed by religion specifically. I write separate articles on the other kinds.
Some interesting suggestions to add on Twitter, e.g. this.
Over in the UK we are not quite as bombarded by idiotic Christian fundamentalism. The recently retired Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams (which you might classify as a liberal theologian) had some decent views. He opposed the Iraq war. He’s critical of mindless consumerism. He opposed the teaching of creationism in our schools. He gave a key speech on the child sexual abuse scandal covered up by the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. And even thirty years ago I remember reading an Anglican endorsed pamphlet written by his pre-decessor which was pro-gay.
There is a new book out by philosopher John Gray – 7 Types of Atheism.
The reviewer in the TLS (Times Literary Supplement) described the 7 types as 1/ ‘new’ atheists from the nineteenth century and up to the present who see religion as discredited proto-science. 2/ optimistic secular humanists 3/ atheists who make a religion out of science 4/ various modern political religions 5/ those who loath the idea of god 6/those atheists who have no illusions about humanity 7/ atheists who are sympathetic to mystical and negative theologies.
I guess atheists can straddle several categories.
If I were a modern witchfinder general I would probably take aim at 1,2,& 3.
I’m probably a category 6 atheist as I’m older and beyond secular or divine salvation!
Where would you see yourself within these categories?
I’m a rational, evidence-based synthesis of types 1, 2, and 6.
And I take aim at 3, 4, and 7. They are dangerous for the same reasons the devout are—and in the same range of degrees, e.g. from liberal-mild to conservative-extreme. Type 5 are harmless.
Too bad, the list of @A__Stout on Twitter does mention FGM (Female genital mutilation), but not male circumcision. Here’s the Hitch take a swing at it
Recently came across an amusing anecdote: “Science is when it’s a pitch dark night and you’re trying to find a black cat; Metaphysics is when it’s a pitch dark night and you are trying to find a black cat that isn’t there; Theology is when it’s a pitch dark night and you are trying to find a black cat that isn’t there and you find the cat anyway.”
This anecdote is told by Professor Henk de Berg before he introduces the guest speaker Diarmaid MacCulloch (Feb 2018, available on youtube).
At first, I interpreted this as a sarcastic exposure of the ultimate meaninglessness of religious belief. But the Dutch Professor continues unfazed.
For him this anecdote illustrates that “God is not an empirically falsifiable entity”.
I’d only take issue with the mistaken notion of what metaphysics is and does, which is a typical flub by scientists who keep claiming philosophy is empty or dead, while not realizing they are in that very statement doing philosophy, and bad philosophy at that. See my survey of this folly in Is Philosophy Stupid?
Metaphysics is more like when it’s a pitch dark night and you are trying to find a black cat but you can’t move around or use any tools so you have to rely on what dodgy clues are left by the scientist who failed to find that cat, all in order to guess at what’s most likely there and where and what it’s like (and what most likely isn’t there).
Great Post Dr. Carrier!!! Our Arkansas State Legislature just enacted a bill and has erected, on state Capitol grounds, a “10 Commandments Monument.” The sponsor of the bill, State Senator and “Holy Ghost Ministries founder,” Jason Rapert has declared that the Commandments, “are the canonical foundations of American jurisprudence and will guide the youth of Arkansas to not Kill.”
Russell E. Bearden, Sherwood, Arkansas
M.A. 20th Century History, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
I know you are not his biggest fan, but David Silverman makes your point as it applies to those who most people think are atheists in the first place, Secular Jews. See: https://njjewishnews.timesofisrael.com/a-jewish-atheist-lets-go-of-the-jewish/
Clean breaks are the best.
That’s a good article. Certainly worth thinking over and discussing. It adds a perspective I didn’t go into. So it’s a good selection to post here.
(And BTW, my issues with Silverman are unrelated to his scholarship or advocacy work.)
David Deutsch has an interesting take on this in Beginning of Infinity. He proposes that memes (knowledge, ideas etc) have two main modes of replication, rational and anti-rational memes. Rational memes replicate because they are good explanations. Anti-rational memes replicate by actively suppressing rival memes mainly by disabling criticism in various ways and calling out people carrying insufficiently pure variants.
I am not sure whether there is a lack of insight at the level where researchers have an audience, they are taken seriously and quoted and their findings used as useful data for further research OR they are paid researchers to tell an incomplete truth to fool the people OR they choose Selective Blindness to not engage in confrontation with organizations with power to hurt them.
Whatever David Deutsch is proposing, there is another name, very famous, Richard Dawkins with his theory of Selfish Genes. How these people are taken seriously is beyond my imagination when they either fail to realize OR don’t describe Money as a prime contribution to the spread of ideas.
There are two kinds of products available to the people-the physical and the mental, The Ideas. And both spread and capture the market and the mind through the use of money. By setting up institutions, by advertising, by marketing and by encouragement or restriction though Laws and creation of public opinion.
So a nexus of governments and Big Businesses are involved in the spread of Ideas.
Otherwise how will you will explain the spread of Ideas such as Religion over centuries or recent Ideas such as Global Warning?
Money is just a subset of all the vehicles and vectors of influence and meme transfer. It’s therefore missing the forest for the trees to focus solely on currency exchange.
I would say, though, that while money is certainly a kind of a meme or influence, it’s not only especially important but also representative directly of a kind of underlying physical value in a way that, say, a book or a movie may not be. Money straddles the line between a cultural phenomenon (as a proxy for influence and as a method of controlling conversations) and an economic phenomenon (as a proxy for resources). No other meme has this degree of tie-in between economy and culture. That leads to some of the ways money is different: for example, while someone can spread a meme dishonestly (e.g. spread a meme of charity so that you can rake in the bucks), money itself tends to be far more honest (because you’re putting your own ability to get other resources on the line, instead of talk which is essentially free even though it does in practice consume time and require resources). “Money” is also often a synecdoche for any kind of economic resource or relation, even more intangible ones like those granted by socioeconomic status.
This part of what you have to say is suspect:
‘If we do not confront the fact of our mortality, if we hide from it and evade it by fabricating fantasies that we are immortal, we do not really grow up. We remain emotionally stunted, never having come to terms with the truth about ourselves and our lives. Worse, we also fail to make the decisions we would have made had we known this, admitted it, and done what we needed to make peace with it.’
This is making unverified statements every bit as much as ‘when I die angels are going to carry me up to heaven’ and the like.
You cannot know that there is no continuation of the life essence of human beings, in some form or another, after death. Denial of the possibility is fundamentalist thinking. Acceptance of it — as a possibility — is not going to stunt anyone, emotionally or intellectually.
Yes, we have a lot of evidence that an afterlife is extremely improbable. As improbable as our living in The Matrix. And it is dishonest to act as if that’s not the case. Or ignorant not to know it’s the case. If you need the evidence, as if somehow you haven’t encountered it, see my discussion of it, with bibliography, in Sense and Goodness without God. Mere possibilities are always bad bets. Which fact is widely proved. Extreme improbabilities are worse bets. We should never base our lives on what’s extremely unlikely.
The so-called evidence presupposes an afterlife on conventional religious lines, and from a primitive viewpoint. Approaches based on evidence of the indestructibility of the essence of all things, whereby conversion rather than non-existence becomes apparent, are more sensible. Possibilities are bad bets indeed if an ignored example jumps up and bites one in the backside. That is when the wide proof narrows down a lot! Speculation does not in any way mean lives should be based on the subject thereof.
No. The “evidence” does not presuppose anything about the afterlife. Evidence does not think, much less presuppose. When we arrive at the conclusion that the evidence indicates no afterlife is likely, we make no presuppositions at all about that afterlife. There is no kind of afterlife that is likely on present evidence. (Other than human immortality technology, which hasn’t been invented yet.)
And books do not say anything, but that is how one expresses it. Alright, then, evidence creates presupposition.
What actual evidence indicates no afterlife is likely? That seems an extravagant claim.
It depends, indeed, where you look for evidence. Of course, if evidence does exist but is going to be dismissed out-of-hand as made-up, lunatic fringe, subject to other interpretations, etc etc and etc, — just as I might argue that some widely accepted scientific theory is invalid due to a technicality regarding approach or the morals of the presenter — then one is hedging the whole thing with game rules.
Admittedly, ‘afterlife’ is perhaps a misnomer viewed with the common interpretation of a refined version of oneself sitting on a cloud and producing music. ‘Continued sentient existence’ is more accurate, with ‘continued individuality’ as a question mark.
Evidence cannot create presupposition. A presupposition is by definition a pre-supposition. It therefore must precede evidence. Not follow. I told you where to find a summary and bibliography of the evidence. It’s clear you are unfamiliar with it. Please correct that. get informed before reaching conclusions and making declarations.
Oh, this is ridiculous! Of course evidence creates presupposition of aspects relating to it. Your semantics don’t hold water or wash. And I have told you what I think of the so-called ‘evidence’.
I think you are confusing what the word “creates” means in causal theory. And you have not even mentioned any of the evidence, so it is not clear you even know what it is. Indeed, you asked what it is. Suggesting you don’t know. Please brief yourself on that evidence.
If you think this is important, surely you can take the time and effort to locate a copy of Sense and Goodness and read the relevant section, and if you doubt anything said there, check the bibliography and read up on what you are uncertain of. That’s how we acquire knowledge and reach sound conclusions, in any matter. If you can’t afford to buy a copy in print or digital, your local public library can get you a copy to lend for free through interlibrary loan.
‘Create’ is used in the more sensible OED form of ‘Cause something to happen or exist’. There it is perfectly apt.
Perhaps you would care to summarize the evidence you refer to. I have neither the time nor inclination to delve into tomes only to discover something I have come across before in any number of forms. If it does appear relevant, I might well make the effort. I suspect, however, that in the context of this discussion it is grasping the bull by the udder.
Evidence doesn’t “cause presuppositions to exist.” That’s the opposite of what the word presupposition means. And I’ve told you where I’ve summarized the evidence and provided a bibliography. If you can’t afford even the kindle edition, you can borrow a copy of Sense and Goodness without God for free through interlibrary loan at your local public library. If you don’t care enough about this to do either, you really don’t care enough about this to argue with.
Presuppositions have to arise out of something. In order for them to form, a basis has to be provided. ‘Are you going again today?’ gives rise to the presupposition that you went previously. Without the statement the presupposition would not arise. Here, the evidence provides that starting point.
If you can’t provide a summary of what you regard as evidence, sufficient to satisfy me that there is something worth going into more fully, then I’m certainly not wasting my time on doing that further in-depth investigation. The crux is whether what you see as evidence in this context will coincide with my own views on what would constitute that. If so, I am prepared to be convinced.
No. Presuppositions are PRE suppositions. They by definition precede everything. That’s what makes them presuppositions. Everything else is a conclusion.
As when you say “are you going again today” you are communicating knowledge of a previous visit. It would only be a presupposition if you had no reason to believe they previously went. But rarely does anyone act like that. If they say “going again” it’s because they have knowledge, not a presupposition.
I have provided a summary of the evidence. I published it precisely so I wouldn’t have to repeat myself a hundred times. I wrote it specifically so you can go read it. And I wouldn’t have to repeat it. Otherwise I’d be repeating myself hundreds of times, every time someone asks me the same question. This is what publishing is for.
If you don’t care enough about this issue to go get the summary I produced for this very purpose, you don’t care enough about this issue for me to care either.
I have a presupposition that you don’t know what you are talking about when it comes to meanings of words, but that has arisen out of your response in relation to the dictionary definition of the word. Otherwise brains would be overloaded with irrelevant presuppositions about everything under the sun and beyond. Put differently, a presupposition has to arise out of something, and then becomes relevant to that something. The something, in fact, will usually provide the clues for it to arise.
If you cannot produce a summary of the direction of that proof in a few words or sentences, then I cannot regard it as worth reading.
Such as, off the top of my head: when everything observable has beginnings and endings, a spontaneous beginning as something non-sentient, progressing to developments of sentience, does not appear valid.
I did not find a single intelligible sentence in that last comment.
At best, I can only guess that you continue to fail to grasp what a presupposition is, as well as the difference between cause and justification, and that you don’t know how logic works, and you bizarrely think large, complex, multi-faceted bodies of scientific evidence regarding human nature can be summarized “in a few words or sentences” (!).
Your last statement is particularly bizarre and irrational. If we can start with a cell and end with a heart and circulatory system, clearly we can start with a cell and end with a brain and nervous system. There is no sense in which that is “invalid.” To the contrary, it is observed to be the only possible way to get any complex outcome, like an organ capable of generating self-awareness (without intelligent engineering, which there is also no evidence of, outside human effort). The evidence that that is indeed the only way we have self-awareness is extensive. Go read my summary of it to see, and follow the bibliography I provided if you don’t believe the summary.
It looks to me like you are grasping for excuses to be lazy and not learn anything or research the truth of any claim you are intent on making. You want conclusions without knowledge. Sorry. I don’t do that. I only do conclusions based on knowledge. And I’ve directed you to where that knowledge is. And it is not so simple as can be summarized in a sentence. That’s precisely why I am directing you to the summary, because it requires many pages, and a full bibliography.
Simple dictionary definitions and pragmatic examples contradict you. Let’s leave that there.
You have confirmed that we are on different wavelengths on the main point, as I suspected. WHY can we start with a cell and end with a brain and nervous system? What has directed that process to be followed? You reveal that your reasoning skims shallowly over the issue, however incredibly better than mine your scientific knowledge may be and however vast is the wealth of examples you may be able to provide. The point is that you and the science you will quote cannot find a reason for the drive behind such things other than ‘that’s how it is’ for the whole incredibly complex set of processes and interrelationships. Challenges to try are buried in the smug self-satisfaction of knowing so much about the processes, rather than having any idea of their ultimate causes or motivation.
We know why we can start with a cell and end with a brain. The entire science of biochemistry has explained every single step. And neuroscience and cognitive science have explained the end results.
What directs the process is a DNA computer program in the cell. What wrote that program was blind evolution by natural selection.
So your claim that we can’t explain these things is false twice over. Not only can we explain them, we already have explained them. This is established science already.
Those explanations ring awfully hollow. Look at those phrases: ‘DNA program in the cell from blind evolution by natural selection.’ That is pretty pathetic by way of an explanation, and offers a ‘how’ rather than a ‘what’ that has initiated the process. Granted, it has a
‘why’ from the natural selection aspect, but that is one personal to the organism itself. It still doesn’t really explain what has instilled the urge and why. To continue competing? Why?
Thus you demonstrate my point: these things can’t be summarized in a sentence. Because you will just act a science denialist and claim there isn’t an enormously vast body of evidence and indeed whole sciences behind that sentence establishing it true. Until you go and learn that evidence, you will wallow in false beliefs based on no knowledge. I do knowledge. You don’t. My way is better.
You also again show you suck at language. There is no “urge.” It’s chemical determinism. Cells don’t divide because of an “urge.” They divide because of chemical reactions that inevitably cause them to. Likewise to differentiate and assemble, processes we thoroughly understand the causes of, as simply a series of entirely comprehensible and inevitable chemical reactions. And chemical reactions are in turn an inevitable consequence of the laws of quantum mechanics. Blind laws, possessed of no intelligence, and no “urges.”
Urges exist at the macro-level, as the causal effect of neural networks in a brain. But urges are a late adaptation. Most life has no brain and thus has no “urges.” Microbes, algae, plants. They don’t have an “urge” to compete. They just either live or die. And by living, out-compete the ones that died. No “urge” involved. It’s an inevitable outcome of a mechanical process governed by no emotion and no intelligence, no desire or drive. It’s just chemistry. All the way down.
Sentient beings acquired a new tool, that of desires, to leverage their assets and compete better. They acquired that ability by blind chance and natural selection, not by design. They didn’t acquire it “to” compete. They simply acquired it, and then it simply that had the effect of out-competing direct competitors. That’s how evolution by natural selection works. Go learn about it. Base your beliefs on knowledge for a change.
No, these arguments have questionable sense. No urges? Completely mechanical processes? That is simplistic rubbish. From a simple virus (a fascinatingly complex organism) alone one can see how urges towards adaptation occur beyond what mere chemistry would suggest. What is the difference between those and the responses from so-called sentient beings? And all this blind chance constantly arriving at conclusions against astronomically improbable odds stretch credibility rather far.
OK, let’s put this another way. If there isn’t an urge to compete, there is a drive to compete. To what end? Survival of the species? To what end?
Viruses don’t have urges. You are confusing chemical reactions with emotions and drives. That’s pseudoscience. Go take your tinfoil hat somewhere else if you’re going to say silly primitive nonsense like this.
You latch onto theories like the cell theory, and swallow the ridiculous conclusion that a virus is non-living? Tell that to an eminent virologist of my ken, whose information about their behaviour makes that seem really ridiculous. Their DNA makes them react in the same way yours makes you react to any challenge to the theory that these are all chemical reactions?
“Has no emotions” is not saying “is not living.” You are startling to resort to verbal con artistry here. Viruses don’t have emotions. They therefore have no desires or drives. They are simply chemical machines that respond to chemical sequences of causation. This is well established science. Anyone saying otherwise is a crank.
Also, viruses have no DNA. Viruses are RNA molecules. They replicate solely by mindless atomic-chemical causation. This is well established science. Anyone saying otherwise is a crank.
A virus is composed of either DNA or RNA genome.
‘Mindless atomic-chemical causation’ is bunch of scientific mumbo-jumbo signifying nothing, and those who espouse it are the same cranks who refer to ‘spontaneous’ events where there are holes in their understanding.
‘Chemistry occupies an intermediate position between physics and biology’ and frequently leans towards one or the other.
There is no such thing as a DNA virus.
Science is not mumble jumbo.
Calling scientists cranks is what cranks do.
And chemistry has been 100% reduced to atomic and quantum physics.
And biology has been 100% reduced to chemistry.
And there is no evidence of anything else involved; and all the evidence so far accumulated is against anything else going on.
That’s the status of the science.
Denying science, makes you a crank.
Invalid — as is, I must assume, your proof incapable of being expressed in overview.
You are making no sense. Noting that the evidence is vast and complex and therefore incapable of being summarized in a sentence is in no intelligible sense “invalid.” It is a literally true description of an actual fact of the matter. The exact opposite of what the word “invalid” means.
Nothing cannot be summarized in some form in a sentence or two. Such as: ‘No trace of x has been found in exhaustive studies, and invariably turns out to be y or z: therefore x does not exist.’
You are hiding all the complexity under x, y, and z. Those are letters that have no information content. When you put the information content in, it’s several pages with bibliography. Just as I explained to you. So go read the evidence. You know where it is. You have no excuse. I’ve told you this repeatedly. The evidence consists of multiple converging lines of evidence from multiple sciences. It is more than the absence of something. It’s the presence of positive evidence against the conclusion you want to reach. It’s extensive. And not simple. Learn what it is. Or stop pretending you base your beliefs on knowledge.
Now we are getting somewhere.
‘The evidence consists of multiple converging lines (of evidence) from multiple sciences.’ Finish the sentence: ‘and it establishes beyond reasonable doubt that . . .’?
I already finished that sentence. Multiple times now. Now go learn what the evidence is that entails the conclusion I stated beyond a reasonable doubt.
Oh, stop playing games, man, and state or re-state the conclusion if indeed you have already done so. If the conclusion is relevant, it is worth me looking at how you arrived at it. If not, not.
Are you daft? The conclusion is “the evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that there is no afterlife.” The fucking thing we’ve been talking about this whole damned thread. What’s the matter with you?
There you are – was that so difficult? No, you waffle around claiming you can’t summarise, and then, finally, you suddenly state categorically what your evidence proves. It is still irrelevant to what I have been saying, but of sufficient interest for me to explore when I get a chance. By the way, afterlife is not what I had been touching on. These things are not necessarily synonymous.
A summary of a conclusion is not a summary of the evidence. The summary of the evidence requires several pages and a bibliography. You’ve been told where it is. Go read it.
Now you are talking absolute guff. A summary of evidence provides the conclusion. I will have a look at yours when time permits, but the likelihood seems that it won’t be at all convincing judging from your communication so far.
Yes. A summary of evidence several pages long provides the conclusion.
Richard, you forgot the most pernicious religion of all time, fundamaterialism.
There’s no such religion.
Religions promote the notion that holy texts (and interpretations of those texts by religious laity or clergy) provide the basis for credos by which to live, without regard for the efficacy of such ideas or the damage they might inflict on children. You point out the harm this does with regard to the epistemology of magical-thinking and the explicit abuse of scaring children with hell and the like. But the idea that ancient texts can fill this role (which should be filled by studies done on psychology, sociology, child development, etc) also allows for the perpetuation of other abuses, not directly related to religious dogma.
These are traits of toxic people and when these are inflicted on children, tend to constitute abuse: derision and judgment, passive-aggression, blaming and not taking responsibility, gaslighting, lack of empathy, boundarilessness, manipulation, negativity, refusal to apologize and ingratitude, emotional blackmail, rudeness, needing to have the last word, to name a number of them. These are emotional, verbal, and mental abuses which (like religious dogma) and impressed and imprinted upon children so that the cycle continues with each generation.
Leaving religion and changing magical-thinking are the first steps to even knowing that these abuses are abuses. (There is much to do, by way of therapy, self-reflection, & study, to further rid oneself of these abusive behaviors and heal one’s scars from suffering such abuse—but ditching belief in a supernatural world is the first big step in a healthy direction.) Leaving religion behind disabuses [pun intended] one of the notion that these sorts of abusive behaviors are normal, tolerable, healthy, and commonplace.
As a gay man, I suffered all of these abuses, and I know many more gay men who suffered these, emotional abuses like these, and more, all at the hands (mouths and minds) of religious parents. In the gay community alone, this maltreatment leads to high levels of alcohol abuse, drug addiction, self-harm, and lifetimes of mental and emotional trauma.
You touched on suicide among LGBT people and a study linked to by the Trevor Project shows that the number one indicator of whether or not a gay teen will attempt suicide is the acceptance or rejection of that teen’s family when they come out. Religion, overwhelmingly more than any other reason, provides parents with justification for their homophobic rejection of their children.
I thought your post came close to these things, yet I felt I could add to your list of religious harms and expound on a couple topics you only grazed.
Dr. Carrier says: “Our goal is to make these bad ideas obsolete through education, illumination, and persuasion, not oppress their victims or tender excess power to any authority. ”
Could you define what you meant by “oppress” and “excess power”?
Some solutions are by necessity time sensitive — especially in a era where one can in milliseconds transmit a thought worldwide or move themselves/materials across borders in minutes.
I can see how I’d apply agreement of your statement to a category of the religiously indoctrinated that I’d describe as benign participants — those who will only go so far; not blindly off the cliff. But, there is a more sinister category that poses an immediate danger to you, me, indeed all others, and that group cannot/will not be reasoned with. What does one hope to gain by petting that rabid dog? How many lives do we sacrifice before we say “enough is enough”?
So, I’m curious to hear your thoughts as to what scenario would it take before you’d find it morally acceptable to use oppression and/or “excess power”?
We see the world differently in one small way which informs my motivation — in addition to my own life, I have a wife and children that I want to protect.
“Oppression” in this context means physically depriving people of liberty through force (e.g. jailing Christians for the sole crime of being Christians or advocating Christianity).
“Excess power” in this context means actually mandating that political office holders or even voters renounce or oppose all religions (or vice versa, e.g. that they be Christians; or whatever), or formally granting actual political power to specifically atheism-promoting (or vice versa, religion-promoting) organizations, or that the state officially favor one over the other (e.g. the state allowing or funding private Christian schools but not explicitly atheist ones, or vice versa; while neutral or evidence-based schools are neither).
If your concern is with regard to dangerous information, you don’t need any religion-based criterion. “Is it demonstrably true or false, or only arguably one or the other” for example is a question that can be asked of speech that has no inherent connection to whether it connects with a religious position or not.
It thus is not “oppressing religion” to outlaw exposing unvaccinated kids to the community; it is provable in court, with evidence, that that is dangerous, and thus within the community’s right to stop—but this is still not the same thing as legally mandating that parents vaccinate their kids (that’s more debatable).
Likewise it is not “oppressing religion” to mandate evolution theory and not creationism be taught in school science classes (whereas creationism can be taught in world religions or mythology courses), because it is provable in court, with evidence, that evolution theory is true and creationism is not (in the US the actual legal theory currently used to prevent creationism in science classes is slightly different, but comparable: that it is not factual that creationism is the principal position in biological science, whereas it is provable in court, with evidence, that evolution theory is; teaching creationism along with other religions or myths in publicly funded schools is, meanwhile, legal, because it is factually true that it is a religious belief or myth, not a current fact of science, so as as long as no one religion is being favored over others, it’s fine).
But this is not what we are talking about when discussing what people privately are allowed to believe or talk about or publish with respect to their beliefs, or whose religious beliefs we formally privilege under the law.
I don’t know what you are referring to. Or what your proposal is to deal with it.
Whatever you are talking about, though, I suspect my previous answer covers it: anything you intend to engage the levers of political power to suppress, to be justified doing so, you need to be able to prove in court, with evidence meeting the legal standards of evidence, that the thing opposed is both false and actually a danger to the community. And in practical terms, you also need to prove that your proposed means of suppression won’t make things even worse than its unsuppressed target would. And that it would even work (e.g. there is no known means of controlling individual belief that actually works; hence we limit our policies to limiting behavior, and even with respect to speech—which is still not the same thing as belief—we limit it only when it causes measurable harm and is provably false, e.g. defamation, fraud, perjury, incitement to violence, etc.).
I don’t know how much it reflects religion per se, but as far as mythology impacting the real world there is the case of Slenderman. What started as a contest to create a fictional modern myth ended up becoming the motivation of a real-life stabbing by teenagers who claimed they did it for Slenderman despite its obvious artificiality.
I don’t know if I have a good point with this, but it did make me think of how issues that plague religion will simply find new ways to exist thanks to the transfer of information that is quickly distorted and disseminated throughout the world rapidly.