h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Jowot, I would argue that some religious beliefs have some pragmatic value, but that they also cause some problems. In total, I think religion has a net effect of approximately zero, the bad stuff roughly cancels out the good stuff.

As an example of the pragmatic value of religion, it occasionally inspires people to create great works (of music, art, architecture, etc.).

No-one has mentioned one of the 'traditional' roles of religion: to aid its followers in deciding whether something, or some course of action, is good or bad (i.e. whether we should do it or not). Too often these days, people have no such guidance, and decide on purely selfish principles. [I submit that the latter is not always the optimal course of action.]

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

"No-one has mentioned one of the 'traditional' roles of religion: to aid its followers in deciding whether something, or some course of action, is good or bad (i.e. whether we should do it or not). Too often these days, people have no such guidance, and decide on purely selfish principles."

I suspect this is as much myth as reality.

In any case selfishness is by definition optimal from the selfish perspective.

How many people do you know personally, who have no ethics?

If you mean that behaviour normally described as selfish produces results that are optimal for the person responsible for it, I would think that was highly questionable.

Noggin

Like Jowot, I'm rather dubious about the moral argument for religion. There are some good religious morals, and some bad. "Love thy neighbour" is good, "Hate the homosexuals" is bad. I'm sure I could think of many examples on both sides. You could say that you can just choose the good ones and ignore the bad ones, but then you're doing the same thing as someone is deciding on their morality without a religious framework. Again, I would say that religion is morally and ethically neutral on average.

Hi there !



Er, could you refresh my memory: I can't quite call to mind the religion that teaches hatred of homosexuals.... Sadly, it is the case that a number of religions are disapproving of homosexual behaviour, but there's quite a gulf between that and hatred, isn't there?



And I wonder why you would say that? Of course, if you judge a religion by the conduct of its members rather than what it teaches, then I can see what you mean, But that isn't quite what you wrote. If human weaknesses (call it/them whatever you want! ) are what you disapprove of, why don't you say so?

I'm not entirely comfortable in the role I seem to have drifted into recently: 'defender' of religion. I consider myself religious, but what I believe has little in common with most mainstream religions, except for the basic philosophy, summed up as well by our 'house rule' as any religion: "be excellent to each other".

I think many religions are less than perfect. And yet I feel obliged to respond when they're falsely accused (as I see it ). So here I am again....

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

J:

What, that people make their life-decisions on selfish principles?

J:

Like Noggin, I'm not certain I'm happy with that.



Of the Thatcher/Reagan generation? Too many; far too many. For example, I find it quite common to encounter people who will stop at nothing to get their own way, or to repay a slight, real or imagined. Is that the sort of thing you mean?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

P-c: yay! we get to disagree about something. That hasn't happened in a while.

Re religion and homosexuality. There are bits in the bible, for example, which say something about homosexuality being bad. I'm not sure of the exact wording. I suppose that this doesn't logically lead to hating homosexuals, but it is in a bit of the bible which has a lot of stoning of people who don't strictly follow the rules, which suggests hatred to me. I'm unaware of the words used about homosexuals in other religions, I suspect there is similar stuff.

What I mean by religion being morally and ethically neutral is exactly that it contains good and bad bits, and at least in the case of christianity enough self-contradictory messages that one is forced to choose which bits to believe.

As an alternative: suppose you genuinely believed that people who hadn't been baptised would go to wherever it is they go to (limbo?) - anyway, some bad place. Then, as a believer of that, you'd be duty bound to try your hardest to convert people to your religion, despite that sort of behaviour being, to my mind, irritating, dubious, unethical, etc.

"I'm not entirely comfortable in the role I seem to have drifted into recently: 'defender' of religion."

I quite often find myself drifting into this role, despite considering myself about as atheistic as it is possible to be. (I would argue that the concept of god is not wrong but actually totally incoherent gibberish, an artifact of implausible analogy and misuse of language.) In particular, I often find myself arguing with the religious folk against the science evangelicals.

"be excellent to each other"

Bill and Ted rule!

Some other issues that occur to me about judging belief systems include the question of to what extent we're judging by what people do that "shows" us what they believe, and to what extent by what they "say" they believe, which may or not be the same thing. I recognise, of course, that what people say is a part of what people do, and that a mismatch may be regarded as an inconsistency in the framework (cognitively bad, of course, but presumably subserving some function for the individual).

There's also the issue of the heirarchical organisation of the framework, and the usefulness of particular modules, as well as the usefulness of the whole.

On the issue of optimality is there some analogy with the concept of evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS), someone on another thread having mentioned the idea that stability is likely to be the principle attractor for the belief system?

Noggin

"stability is likely to be the principle attractor for the belief system?"

I'm not sure I understand this. Could you expand?

To be honest I'm not sure I understand it either (which is why I phrased it as a question , but I was thinking along the lines of a belief system viewed as a complex nonlinear dynamic system maintained away from equilibrium by a continuing throughput of energy/information. Like an ESS the system would always be heading for a stable state, but that stability is not always optimal (for some ESS the stable state is extinction).

Noggin

:

Actually, I don;t think we really disagree. You were, I think, taking an unjustified pop at religion; you were being atheistically self-indulgent, as you might say. As we all know, there are plenty of real problems with religion. But none of them actually recommend hatred toward homosexuals!



Yes, that's all I meant. I guess we'll just have to try harder to disagree!

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

I think common sense leads us to judge people by their actions, but the religion (as an abstract entity, not the human administrative institution) can't act, so we can only judge it by what it teaches. Oh, and we can, of course, judge what I called the "human administrative institution" by *its* actions. But that still doesn't impact back onto the teachings that religion offers.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Noggin, OK I think I see what you mean now, although I have no idea how one would go about answering such a question.

P-c, I stand by what I said about religion and homosexuality to a certain extent. You said: "Sadly, it is the case that a number of religions are disapproving of homosexual behaviour, but there's quite a gulf between that and hatred, isn't there?" I'm not entirely sure, but doesn't the old testament actually have some recommendations regarding homosexuality, of a quite violent nature? It's been a while since I've chuckled my way through that bit of the old testament, I certainly remember there's some stuff about stoning women who have pre-marital sex.

So, your criticism of my original post is fair. I put "Love thy neighbour" and "Hate the homosexuals" on an equal footing. Obviously, one is actually a quote and the other I just made up. Very poor form. A fair cop. I try to be more even handed than this. But the point I was trying to make is what I still stand by. Do you disagree with this reformulation?

"you were being atheistically self-indulgent"

Hehe,

No, not at all!

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

There seems to be a worrying consensus here that the 'true' religion is only the good bits of the apparent religion.

Well I guess that is a useful line to take when you want to civilise the religious people about you.

And yes, it is marvellous that people have largely chosen the 'good' bits of religion to follow and largely ignored the bad bits.

Of course none of this makes the slightest sense. Religion is about God determining what is right and wrong for you. For you to make your own moral choices is heresy.

And why if people are largely freely choosing the good bits of religion to follow, can we not credit them with the moral sense that they are obviously exercising in making that choice? In which case who needs the flat earth and the tooth fairy?

I wonder if the converse is true. Are people who choose the bad bits of religion to follow and do evil the sort of people who would do evil anyway? Probably. Does this apply to their brainwashed followers also? Probably not.

Noggin and P-C:

"

If you mean that behaviour normally described as selfish produces results that are optimal for the person responsible for it, I would think that was highly questionable. "

And of course I didn't say or mean that.

I'm glad you guys or gals didn't like my statement. It is tautologically true, but in practise I think the statement prompts the reaction it does because it elides the difference between "selfishness" and "enlightened self-interest". Or to put it another way, that co-operation and ethical behaviour is better for you in the long run.

Well that is marvellous. It means that as long as we are sufficiently enlightened, we don't need fairly-tales about a monster-god under the bed ready to send us to hell, to manipulate our behaviour.

Hmm. If I teach that self-respect is paramount, and you are one of my 'followers', but you abuse yourself , are my teachings to blame? Will anyone insist that PC's religion teaches self-abuse?

You're back to your 'gratuitous abuse of religion because I hate it' mode, and it doesn't assist meaningful discussion.



Is there a bulls**t smiley? Some religions, for example the Roman Catholic faith in which I was raised, teach that we decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong, and we bear the responsibility for those decisions. We do not make these decisions in a vacuum, of course. God gives us - via His church - guidelines and hints to help us to decide.



Will you be applying to the Spanish Inquisition for a job, Jowot? Your dedication to the truth surely qualifies you?

Or is it sufficient for you to post abusive stuff about religion? Do you *want* to discuss it sensibly?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

<...we don't need a monster-god under the bed [...] to manipulate our behaviour.>

Those who find the pros and cons of social living difficult to evaluate might be encouraged toward social (i.e. not anti-social) behaviour by your monster-god. This isn't necessarily a Bad Thing, although I concede it's not ideal.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

"

You're back to your 'gratuitous abuse of religion because I hate it' mode, and it doesn't assist meaningful discussion."

P-c this is getting boring. You accuse me of this whenever I question your assumption that religion is by definition only the good stuff. I think you are guilty here of Aristotlean essentialism. Religion, like other things, does not have an 'essence', that it 'really is'. It is a cultural phenomenon that must be judged by what its followers do, which includes what they say. Are they good or bad, do they deceive or enlighten, etc.


"

Is there a bulls**t smiley? Some religions... teach that we decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong,"

OK so is your religion now "be excellent to other people" or is it "decide for yourself whether to be excellent to other people"?


Personally I wouldn't recognise a religion that contained nothing but moral demands as a religion. There's nothing supernatural about moral demands.


If you have the time, I recommend a long, but gripping, story here about one person's escape from religion: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=72552