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Religion is often seen as a negative force by intelligent people today. It is easy to prove this is wrong.
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[edit] Human behavior is not rational
Atheism is based on the supposition that people should reject any belief without a basis in pure reason, as it is equivalent to a delusion which impedes our decision making. But this belief itself is a delusion. People are not computers and we do not make decisions based on a coherent and explainable desire. Our decisions are often based in goals like these:
- We want to enjoy ourselves, even though we will die someday.
- We want to gain power and control people, even though we will die someday.
- We want to make the world a better place, even though the world is full of terrible things that nobody can get rid of.
These forces power our decision-making. But they are not based in rational thought. They are based in pleasing our minds. There's nothing wrong with that-- it's what we do. But it's not rational, in the way that physics and evolution are rational.
[edit] The total atheist: an unhappy confrontation
Imagine you meet a psychopath. This person goes through the motions of altruism and kindness but only so other people will think he is normal, but he doesn't believe in any of it. So, you confront him. Belief is absolutely essential to being human, you say. What sort of response would he make?
"Just look at all the gods you don't believe in-- Allah, Vishnu, Brahman, Buddha, Ahura Mazda-- and add Kindness. I don't believe in that either."
This person is an atheist with regard to kindness. Maybe he will openly reject kindness and start an organization devoted to fighting kindness in our schools.
For all the civilized world before the 20th century, religion was considered so essential to human nature that to reject it was to reject an essential part of being human, and to declare oneself an atheist was to risk being killed as a threat to the natural order of society.
[edit] The atheist believer: a Socratic dialogue
Now imagine you give up on this hopeless fellow, possibly burn him at the stake, and move on to a more typical atheist with regard to Christianity.
[edit] The atheist an irrational believer
"Do you reject Kindness?" you ask the atheist.
He doesn't hear your capital K. "Of course not," said the atheist. "I don't need delusion to be nice to my fellow man. It's in my self-interest, even."
"What about a stranded kitten?" you ask. "Something that would never be able to pay you back for kindness. Might you show kindness to a lonely kitten?"
"I don't think I could live with myself otherwise!"
"Why is that?" you ask. "The world is full of cruelty and suffering. In the long run it doesn't matter whether you help a kitten or not."
"Well, I feel if I can do something to make the world a little better, that's a good deed."
"Would you call it holy?"
"Pssh! Let's not make sacred cows!"
"But for you, Kindness is a sacred cow. You wouldn't want a world without it."
"Well, of course not. Without kindness you couldn't be human."
"Now you've got it! I hope to see you in church next Sunday."
"Hey, hold on just a minute there. Just because I believe in basic values that make me human without any evidence doesn't mean I accept superstitious hogwash."
[edit] The atheist a religious believer
"Okay then, let's try another god. Do you believe in Cleanliness?"
"Hold on! Cleanliness isn't a god!"
"Yes it is. The Greek word for cleanliness is hygeia. But they made statues in a female form and called those statues hygeia. A lot of their gods were personifications of those concepts that they felt made them human."
"That must have just been a turn of speech."
"Why do you think the Greeks were so hard on atheists? To be an atheist in Greece was to deny basic human ideals such as kindness, wisdom, love..."
"What does it matter? That's not what I mean by religion! Those ideals exist whether in human minds whether you like it or not."
"So does God."
"God is an unnecessary addition to all these unfounded beliefs. If nobody believed in God the world would keep on turning."
"True. But we would still have religion. Religion is inherent to human nature."
Now our atheist may become impatient. "We don't need religion! We're smart enough to understand the truth now. We can reject all our mistaken interpretations and see the world for what it really is."
"No we can't. You don't want to see the world for what it really is. The world is morally neutral. You're as likely to lose as you are to win. Within your mind, dissatisfaction is inevitable, and suffering is probable. Outside your mind, families break apart, friends turn against you, heroes die, cities and countries go to ruin."
"I can take all of that."
"You can only take it if you have a religious belief. A religious belief, as people commonly define it, is anything you believe in that's totally divorced from reason. It can be very small. A belief that you are right, for example."
"How vague! If you prove to me how I'm wrong in any instance then I'll change my mind. My beliefs are based on reason."
"Fine. Why do you eat meat?"
"Oh, I've heard that one before. I'm a speciesist, okay? I admit it, I think animals are less important than people."
"Is it reasonable to be a speciesist?"
"Well, no. But it's convenient."
"Even if you realize your belief is irrational, it's convenient to continue holding it. And even if you are a vegetarian, you wouldn't go vegan, despite the fact that it would get you closer to perfect Kindness, because it is far more convenient to drink milk products. And even if you are vegan, you wouldn't save animals from accidental death-by-tractor by growing all your own food, despite the fact that it would get you closer to perfect Kindness, because it is far more convenient to buy from the grocery store."
"It's true, I compromise my ideals. Nobody's perfect."
"You're a wise person. I've had friends go vegetarian because they're worried they weren't moral enough."
The atheist returns the compliment. "Well, I can understand that. But you're quite wise, too. Nobody can be perfectly moral. You can't understand all the consequences your decisions will have, and you can't even factor in everything you do know. At some point you just have to assume that you have the right intentions and are taking the right steps."
"And that's a religious belief!"
[edit] The atheist defined by his religion
"True, but it's a very small one."
"Doesn't matter! Your decisions are determined by a whole host of ideas, coming from yourself, the people you respect, and most importantly your culture at large. None of those provide rational information. Most of it is junk. You act on what you know. For you, you know you have to take a scientific approach to get the best possible answer for something. For other people, they know they have to consult God."
"But they're wrong. If they consult God instead of looking at the facts, they'll make mistakes."
"Yet for the most part those people live like you."
"Pssh! They live in darkness. They kill each other. Their theistic ideology leads to hatred and wars."
"And your enlightened 'less-religious' ideology does not cause hatred or wars?"
"Of course not. Once we get rid of theism we'll be home free. Remember the Crusades? The Inquisition?"
"Why are you stuck in the Dark Ages? I'm going to name some wars for you that happened in the 20th century: World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Communist Revolutions in China and Russia, Iran-Iraq, the Mexican revolution, the Spanish Civil War, wars for independence in French Algeria and French Indochina, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Together over 35 million people died in those wars. How many of them were about theism?"
"What was Iran-Iraq about again?"
"Oil."
"Okay, you've got me cornered. None of those wars were about theism. But they happened because of short-sighted decisions which wouldn't have existed without theism. My tiny little faith in my righteousness is nothing compared to the chutzpah of those folks."
"Vietnam was Buddhists and Americans versus Communists. How do you think God figured into it?"
"..."
"None of those wars were about any one ideology. And that goes for the Crusades and Inquisition too. You can't find a single line of cleavage that splits every war in history. But all those wars were about ideology in general. Those people believed religiously that they were right. It doesn't matter whether they drummed up support in a church, a castle, a communist meetinghouse, an anarchist syndicate, or a fascist hall. As long as people can be made to believe in the righteousness of a cause, their leaders are granted the power to cause much suffering."
"Well, you said it yourself: you have to believe something. Rational people won't make decisions that cause others suffering."
"You just proved yourself that you're not perfectly rational, and no one can be. And your little religious belief can lead to big mistakes. Why did George Bush authorize torture at Guantanamo?"
"I bet his God told him to do it, ha ha."
"One part of having an irrational belief is that you will read everything in terms of that belief. You just demonstrated that your belief in the righteousness of atheism is irrational. Bush never said he was guided to torture by God. You only assume that because you think religion leads to bad things."
"Oh, get over yourself."
"No, really. What reasons did Bush give?"
"He said there could be a ticking time-bomb scenario."
"Do you believe that?"
"Well, it's unlikely."
"But a lot of people do believe it. And it has nothing to do with God."
"It's only because they think they're in the right, and the terrorists are wrong."
"Exactly. And that religious behavior leads to a justification of horrible things."
"Good! So we should eliminate religious behavior."
"Not so fast! It leads to good things, too. We already proved that basic human virtues are irrational ideas we believe in because they make our lives better. Belief in kindness and love is irrational, but you accept those things, right?"
"Yeah."
"So you are in fact defined by your religion. It's not a little hiccup in a basically rational process. Rather, it's how you know that you are right and those who torture or kill are wrong."
[edit] The atheist lost at sea
"That's terrible! I knew it, this is all some sort of relativist plot! You can't fool me! Just because it's another culture doesn't mean I can't say whether it's right or wrong!"
"Relativism isn't a command to abandon your principles. It's simply another way to understand human nature. Your decision making process and the way you judge yourself and others: these are religious things. That doesn't mean they're bad. That means these are the things you hold holy."
"But I was told to slaughter all those sacred cows."
"A form of atheist indoctrination. You got that message from those you respect, and it was ground into your head by everything you read, saw, and heard. You were told to slaughter other people's sacred cows so that you could preserve your own."
"Indoctrination... with a good cause! Secularist humanism, no matter how irrational, is how we created this wonderful, technological society! Now you're telling me my beliefs are just as irrational as a shepherd in Kurdistan. Do you seriously think I'm no better than anyone else?"
"There's a fine admission!"
"No, I'm serious! Don't demean my intelligence. I know a lot about the way the world works. I could even tell you a fair amount about the way this computer works. Wouldn't you say I have a deeper understanding than that hypothetical Kurd?"
"I don't know. Do you know how to herd sheep?"
"I don't need to! I could look it up if I did."
"You have basic computer knowledge and office skills that are required to function in our culture, and you know how to access imperfectly encoded information to learn about other ways of life. But information is not knowledge. Mixing up the two is the worst problem of our culture. Information comes to us through a medium that necessarily distorts and biases. Even face-to-face communication about something you want to know is not the same thing as going out and doing it yourself. Language is an unbreakable barrier."
"What's your point?"
"You are a very smart person. But that Kurdish shepherd might be just as wise as you, and you are both as equipped as you possibly can to survive in your respective cultures. Depending on the situation, his knowledge might come in handy more than your knowledge."
"Such as?"
"Oh, I don't know. Hiding from Iraqi police."
"Yeah, we all have something to teach each other. He can teach me how to herd sheep, and I can teach him that his God is a lie."
"But you don't need to do that. My work here is basically done. I've already proven to you that belief in God does not make a world view any more or less valid."
"Okay, maybe there is no consequences whether you believe in God or not. And maybe it leads to good decisions just as often as bad ones. But in that case you can discard it, because it's an illusion."
"Would that we could all discard our illusions so easily. I assume you'll be taking up vegetarianism soon."
"No, it's easy to get rid of belief in God. It's a crutch that only limits us. Once upon a time people accepted any explanation of the world that put it in order, but now we've defined our own explanation which works a lot better. Our modern beliefs spread accurate information, but belief in God only spreads..."
"Wisdom?"
"Don't be naive!"
"There's a reason the Gospels are full of parables and tough lessons."
"You can get those anywhere! I prefer Douglas Adams, myself."
"What's so bad about the Gospels?"
"They're old! They aren't about our modern life at all. Why should people draw on such old and different stuff to make decisions about modern things? And the passages on slaves, women, sexuality... ugh!"
"You dislike conservatism--or more generally stubbornness. That's understandable. Our culture is littered with examples of stubborn conservatives making life worse for everyone. But over in Kurdistan they see those people as upholders of the truth."
"Upholders of lies!"
"Lies for you. Truth for them."
"It'll be easy to show them how they're wrong!"
"Really? What will you do? Translate Richard Dawkins into Arabic? It doesn't seem to have relieved us of Christianity over here."
"Well, there's nothing I can do about conscious ignorance, but you must admit if you discount opinions based on God we'll start moving in the right direction."
"Which way is right? You can't surpass human nature. People are bound to screw things up. You can attribute it to ignorance, zealotry, greed, or anger. The fact is that it happens and usually those people have intentions as good as yours."
I haven't written all the sections on this page yet. I intend to finish it later.