Answering Laura: Atheists on Religion, Believers on Religion, Part 3

Laura, thank you.

I think I need to clarify my point about faith. I thought I'd made it clearly in my original post, Well, There's Your Problem; but if Laura -- who does, in fact, try hard to understand what I'm saying and give me the benefit of the doubt -- didn't understand it, than I obviously said it wrong. For which I apologize. I do treat this blog as my "thinking out loud" place, and I'm basically okay with that -- but I'm a writer, and I hate it when I'm not clear, especially about important and sensitive subjects. So I want to clarify. (And I want to do it as a blog post instead of a comment/reply, since it's a little too big for that.)

Here's what I'm trying to say.

I really and truly don't have a problem with people who hold beliefs that aren't supported by evidence. We all do that to some extent -- if not about religion, then about other things -- and it's part of what makes us human, part of what we all have in common. I make a big distinction between people with religious beliefs that they don't have evidence for (what I'll call "unsupported faith") and people with religious beliefs that actually run counter to the evidence, and who deliberately reject the evidence in favor of their beliefs (what I'll call "counter-factual faith"). And while I think atheism is a radically different outlook from the latter, I don't agree at all that it's radically different from the former. I don't personally get it about the God hypothesis, and I happen to think it's mistaken... but I do get it about acting on hunches and gut feelings. (I go into more detail about this in Oh, The Believer and the Skeptic Should Be Friends.)

And as long as someone's particular version of the God hypothesis doesn't flatly contradict mountains of evidence -- and as long as they aren't treating their hypothesis as fact and trying to shove it down other people's throats -- it's not a big deal to me. I don't think unsupported faith -- or to secularize it, acting on hunches -- is a sin.

But I don't think it's a virtue, either.

I think it's common. I think it's human. I think it sometimes results in brilliant inspiration, and sometimes in disastrous mistakes. (Let me tell you about my first several boyfriends sometime...) But I don't think that -- in and of itself and regardless of the actual beliefs being held -- believing things for which you have no evidence is an admirable trait that makes you a good person.

And treating unsupported faith/hunches as if it were a virtue... that's what I think is a problem. That's what I think causes harm. And that's the point I was trying to get at in my original post.

Here's why.

1) Treating unsupported faith as a positive virtue makes people susceptible to other unsupported ideas -- many of which are nonsense, and some of which are dangerous nonsense.

This is a point Ingrid keeps making when we talk about this. When people believe that acting on an unsupported hunch makes them admirable and good, they're more likely to act on unsupported hunches in other areas. They're more likely to, say, believe that magnets in their shoes will cure their arthritis; or that $200 an acre for that Florida beachfront property seems like a great bargain; or that Mr. Amir down the street just seems shady, if you know what I mean; or that capitalism will collapse of its own
contradictions in a glorious workers' revolution, after which we will all eat strawberries and cream; or that the Iraqi people will shower us with flowers and greet us as liberators.

It's one thing to say "Hunches are a part of life and we all have to make them sometimes." It's one thing to honor your hunches and respect the place they have in your life. But when people say "The fact that I act on my hunches makes me a really great person," I think they're more likely to do it more often -- and less carefully.

Which leads me to Number 2:

2) Treating unsupported faith as a positive virtue makes people more likely to devalue evidence, intelligence, and reason.

In this country, we have a culture that devalues intelligence, education, and thoughtfulness, to the point of outright deriding it. From Presidential candidates getting mocked for speaking French, to smart kids
getting beaten up at school, we are often not a culture that values thinking and learning.

I think a lot of factors go into this, including complicated class stuff. But I think a big part of it comes from the "hunch as virtue" idea. When people pat themselves on the back for thinking with their gut and their
heart instead of their brain, I think they're more likely to dismiss the kind of thinking that is done with the brain.

(Slight tangent: Which is a shame. Because in my own experience, the weird paradox of hunches is that, the more willing you are to pay attention to the outcome of your hunches and admit that they're sometimes way off, the clearer and better they get. My hunches are WAY better now that I'm 45 than they were when I was 20.)

3) Treating unsupported faith as a positive virtue gives religion a free ride.

There's a strong tendency in our society to treat religion as a subject that can never be argued with or questioned. If someone says they never ride the bus on Tuesday because they think it's unethical, or they think it's dangerous, or they say their doctor forbids it, we think it's reasonable to argue with their opinion, or at least to ask some questions about it. But if someone says they never ride the bus on Tuesday because their religion forbids it... we're not supposed to question it. It's the conversation-stopper. It's the trump card.

I get that this comes, at least partly, from a good place of seeing the terrible results of religious intolerance and not wanting any part of that. But I think it gets taken much too far -- or rather, that it gets taken too far in the wrong direction.

See, while part of religion is about personal, largely subjective matters such as ethics and personal philosophy, another very big part of it for many people is about external objective questions about how the world works. The universe was created by an unmoved mover; human evolution was guided by the hand of God; homosexual sex will get you sent to Hell; God cares whether you eat fish on Friday or push an elevator button on Saturday or face the right direction when you pray; Yahweh wants us to live in the Holy Land; no, Allah wants us to live in the Holy Land -- these are statements about the real, external world, and it should be okay to question them. It should be okay to ask people to explain their beliefs, and to question whether their beliefs are supported by evidence, and to point out inconsistencies and holes in their reasoning.

Especially when people try to get those beliefs set into law and public policy.

But it's not. We're supposed to just shut up and nod politely. It's gotten to the point where any questioning of a religious belief, no matter how moderate or polite, is seen as an intolerant attack.

And I think a big part of this attitude comes from the idea that having unsupported faith is an admirable, virtuous quality, and that it's churlish to question it.

*****

And you know what? If you think I'm wrong, then tell me. All of you. Please. Again, this blog is my "thinking out loud" place, and one of the reasons I do it is to run my ideas past the gauntlet and see if they hold up. I've changed my mind on this blog more than once, on subjects from US military intervention in North Korea to the merits of "Lord of the Rings." If I'm wrong about this, I want to know.

But if any of you think I'm wrong and want to tell me so, then please, I beg all of you, do not do any of the following:

1) Please do not accuse me of holding opinions that I haven't expressed and don't agree with.

2) When I reply that I don't, in fact, hold those opinions and don't agree with them, please don't continue to insist that I hold those opinions, and continue to get angry at me over them.

3) Please do not berate me for making sweeping statements that I've only supported by a couple of pieces of anecdotal evidence, and then -- when I point out that I have offered non-anecdotal evidence, clarify that evidence, offer to supply more evidence, and ask you to supply non-anecdotal evidence for your own sweeping statements -- turn around and say, "Never mind, I'm not going to debate this."

4) And if you're going to do any of the above, please, for the love of all that is beautiful in this world, do not then get angry and sad about how atheists aren't trying hard enough to understand believers.

That's just gonna tick me off.

And not just because it's personally annoying and unfair. See, this is the kind of thing atheists deal with all the time. There's a depressingly common set of myths about what atheists believe and say and feel and act like, and when somebody holds those myths, they tend to apply them to all atheists... regardless of what the atheist in front of them is actually believing and saying and feeling and acting like.

And yes, that does make me angry. I think a lot of what gets interpreted as "fundamentalism," or intolerance, or abrasiveness on the part of atheists, is actually anger.

Anger that, while it doesn't always make people behave their best, is pretty damned justifiable.

But that's a different post.

Comments

[Chris S]

"But if someone says they never ride the bus on Tuesday because their religion forbids it... we're not supposed to question it. It's the conversation-stopper. It's the trump card."

I would disagree to some extent. It's a conversation stopper only if you are a different religion from that someone and either it would take days of studies in that religion to understand, or it is simply a tradition within that faith. It's my religion is similar to saying "It's a black thing".
Which doesn't mean it shouldn't be questioned, but rather that, on the flip side, it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, simply because, it's not something you participate in.

While religious belief is presented as a solid front in the media, there are controversies and differences in every major religion. Religious scholars fight it out and no one gets the "my religion" excuse. US Episcopalian ordain gay ministers, Episcopalians outside are vehemently against this. Some Muslims do not believe in women needing to be veiled. Others do,
Protestant religions were created as a result of someone protesting practices in and beliefs in the Catholic church, including the right for ordinary people to interpet the bible for themselves. (and in an ironic circle, some faiths with protestant roots are now ones that say, 'if you don't believe X like we do, you're a sinner')

"It's my religion" is only a stopper for the comment, "I don't care about your arbitrary beliefs, you should drop them because they aren't mine".

While some cases are made for religious tolerance. Such as allowing Jews to not have to take tests on the Sabbath,There are plenty of legal cases in which 'religion' was judged as insufficient a reason for breaking a law or doing something opposed to the public good. (Polygamy, forced marriage, ritual drug use to name a few).

[Greta Christina]

"'It's my religion' is only a stopper for the comment, 'I don't care about your arbitrary beliefs, you should drop them because they aren't mine'."

The thing is, Chris, that really hasn't been my experience, and it hasn't been what I've seen in the world. I have seen and experienced, many many times, the idea that questioning or disagreeing with a religious belief is the same thing as being intolerant, insulting, or out-of-hand dismissive of it. I'm not saying all religious people do this -- but an awful lot of them do.

The example that's leaping to mind right off the top of my head is the so-called "war on Christmas." The religious right has been having cows over the fact that, in the month of December, many store clerks say "happy holidays" to their customers instead of "merry Christmas." The Christian Right -- and their pals at Fox News -- go on at great length about how this is an unacceptable, insulting "attack" (their words) on Christmas and the Christian faith.

It's important to note that these store clerks are not saying "Fuck Christmas," or "I spit on your Christian faith," or even "I don't agree with Christianity." They're saying, in essence, "We recognize that there are many different religious faiths, that not everyone who comes into this store is a Christian, and that people other than Christians celebrate holidays in December -- and we accept this as an okay state of affairs." This, apparently, is sufficiently insulting to the Christian Right for them to wage a well-organized campaign against it. The mere acknowledgment and acceptance of other faiths is seen as an insulting attack.

And please don't say that this is just a vocal minority or a few bad apples. Fundamentalists are, if I'm not mistaken, the single largest religious group in this country, and the Christian Right is a hugely powerful political force. (Remember: 47% of all Americans believe that people were created by God in about their current form about 10,000 years ago.)

[Greta Christina]

Oh, another example of the "anything that could possibly be interpreted as disagreement or questioning is insulting to our faith" concept has just crossed my path, and it's such a classic example that I can't help but mention it heree. A high school teacher is in trouble for discussing comparative religion in an elective literature class, and asking students to compare and contrast the Iroquois creation story with Genesis. (The teacher also asked the students to consider the problem of evil -- and acknowledged that he was an atheist.)

A Christian student complained, saying that the lesson was offensive to her Christian beliefs. "You can learn about religion," she said, "but not in that way, by putting it down." Her parents support her, saying that they don't expect public schools to teach or cater to one religion over another.

I'm not making this up, people. Pointing out to high school students that there are other creation stories other than the Christian one -- and asking them to consider one of the most important and central questions in philosophical and theological history -- is offensive to some people's Christian beliefs, and is catering to one religion over another.

The full story is at Pharyngula, at:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/03/why_comparative_religion_class.php#more

Oy.

[Chris S]

Haven't been able to repond to your comment, but I found this tangentially related article in the NYTimes that might be interesting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?em&ex=1173243600&en=166dbd9e75680e73&ei=5087%0A

[Raging Bee]

Treating unsupported faith as a positive virtue makes people susceptible to other unsupported ideas -- many of which are nonsense, and some of which are dangerous nonsense.

I think this statement is extremely over-generalized, and, together with your subsequent examples, strongly implies that you think persons of faith are incapable of thinking rationally or taking care of themselves. (I don't believe this IS what you think, but you make it wound like it is.) Intentionally or not, it really sounds like what the believers say: "If you don't understand and follow The One True Path, there's no telling what sort of mischief your errors will get you into!"

I also think that the statement is simply not supported by the evidence I've seen so far: yes, there's plenty of dumb Christians who will buy the Brooklyn Bridge if their minister told them to, but there's plenty of other Christians who won't, and who are -- at the very least -- no less capable of separating good sense from nonsense than most atheists.

One irrational thought or belief does not make a person "irrational." Nor does having one "unsupported" belief lead, inevitably and like clockwork, to a propensity to unfounded faith in other things.

[Raging Bee]

Crap, HTML doesn't work here. The first paragraph of my post should have been italicized.

[Greta Christina]

"One irrational thought or belief does not make a person "irrational." Nor does having one "unsupported" belief lead, inevitably and like clockwork, to a propensity to unfounded faith in other things."

Didn't say it did, R.B.

To reiterate:

I didn't say that having unsupported faith makes people more susceptible to other unsupported ideas.

I said that *treating unsupported faith as if it were a virtue* -- as if by itself faith made one a good and admirable person, regardless of the belief being held -- makes people more susceptible to other unsupported ideas.

Forgive me if I have a slightly cranky tone. But apart from having had an unbelievably shitty day yesterday and just generally being cranky right now, that was the entire point of this post -- to distinguish between (a) having faith, and (b) believing faith to be in and of itself a virtue. I think if you'll go back and read the post again, you'll find that I spent several paragraphs carefully drawing exactly that distinction. Thanks.