January 14th, 2009
Puck wrote a post on his blog in response to my last post on the evolutionary nature of religion. I considered reposting it here to make things all together in one place all tidy-like, but then I realized that would create one huge mother of a post, so instead I will provide a link to the relevant places and you can check them out yourself if you feel so inclined.
Here is what I said originally, earlier today.
Here is what Puck said in response, on his snowy blog.
“Your piece stands on its own as a decent piece of writing.I’m not sure if it’s a reply, extension or rebuttal of BV though, because it doesn’t seem to address BV’s central points and isn’t even mutually exclusive of them.
I take BV’s argument to be something like this:
1) Religion is an evolutionary product, yet is not obviously adaptive, so why does it exist and persist? There must be more to the story than naivete.
Nothing you’ve said above addresses the astonishing fact that religion exists. A very biased analogy would be cancer. Cancer exists, across not just humans but all animal species, and yet it has no adaptive function and is a huge detriment. A good question then would be, “Holy crap! Why does cancer exist?” To come up with a facile explanation for cancer is about as helpful as a facile explanation for religion.
2) Mocking the religious is most often counterproductive (and doesn’t seem to make religion go away)
You mention shouting in the wind. That’s not quite the same as directly mocking and shaming someone, so people may feel safer reading and reflecting on your viewpoints from the privacy of their home computers. You mention that some change their minds as a result of your persuasion. I suspect that would be less likely in a belligerent setting.
3) Maintaining a sense of superiority is probably also counterproductive (and also doesn’t seem to make religion go away)
Ok, now here there’s a real disagreement between you and BV. I’m pretty wary of superiority as a helpful attitude. It closes down curiosity, closes down nuance, closes down complexity and is the first step on the path to in-group vs out-group distinctions that plague us as a species. You mention that it’s ok to feel superior. I’d certainly say it seems to be a natural phenomenon that some humans feel superior to others, for all kinds of reasons, but I’m not sure that makes it ok. I think your analogy of rape is a great example of natural but not OK sorts of things. I think rational persons are aware of the tendency to feel superior and work hard to resist it: “Maybe my kid *isn’t* the best looking, smartest, most talented kid in the known universe.”
4) Religion is a complex phenomenon, not a simple phenomenon (e.g. calling it a “fairy tale” seems to miss the definition of both religions and fairy tales)
Religion may be factually incorrect. So what? That makes its existence and persistence mysterious. Calling it a fairy tale is about as scientifically useful as calling thunder “the gods bowling.”
5) If we accept that religion is evolutionary, it’s reasonable to think it isn’t going away.
Now here I think you are more activist than BV. You advocate active resistance of religion, religiosity, and religious belief. I think I’m more along these lines, though I’m not sure what the best approach is. What’s interesting is that in societies where religion has gone away, it has almost always been in the context of a rising standard of living, democratization, and increased technology – all factors which have nothing to do with religion per se. Western Europe is the most obvious example. The USA is, however, the most obvious counter-example, where religious belief and adherence appears to have been on the rise over the past 100 years. So, if we agree religion is undesirable, how do we stamp it out? Not sure I have an answer, but I suspect that like religion, the answer is complex.
Anyway, like I said, good piece of writing, but I don’t see it as a rebuttal. Was that its intent?”
And here is my response (consider also that I endorse Husband’s comment):
Puck writes this in quotation marks: “1. Theists aren’t and can’t be logical.” Note that is not actually a quotation (I didn’t write that) and it is also not an accurate summary of my argument.
This also appears in quotation marks: “2. Atheists feel superior to believers.” Again, please note that this is not what I wrote. You can read what I did write on this blog, one post down. It differs in important ways from these quotations or summaries.
Puck writes: “Tell me, Blogo, did you feel superior to your woo-spouting instructor? I’ll bet you did, and don’t really regret it. Why should religion be protected from mockery and her “chakra” bullshit not be?”
This is an ad hominem attack and as such I won’t address it, beyond drawing the reader’s attention to what I actually wrote, which is that mocking is mean spirited and counterproductive. I did not say religion should be protected from mockery, merely attempted to draw the reader’s attention to what I believe the probable outcome of mockery is. Puck has not addressed this at all.
The reader should note that this is not the only point in Puck’s post where he resorts to tactics that amount to attacks on me, rather than attacks on my arguments. Of course this is nothing more than dirty fighting and the critical reader should not find that sort of comment persuasive. Puck, I will refrain from speculating on your internal states and motives and would appreciate it if you do the same for me.
Puck writes: “There are no facts to support religion, so of course [people don’t become religious after careful consideration of the facts]. However, a great many people become non-religious after careful consideration of the facts.” This is true and I did not say otherwise.
Puck writes: “The “it’s natural” argument fails completely in the modern world.” I didn’t make an “it’s natural” argument – merely observed that religion is probably a natural human phenomenon, noted it will therefore probably never go away, and called for avoiding treating religious people as lesser people (than athiests). Whether that means we should nonetheless work to end religion – or embrace it – was something I didn’t address at all.
Puck writes: “The usual way one deals with complex issues with both positives and negatives is to reason them out and try to keep the helpful while getting rid of the harmful. But then we’re simply insisting religion be subject to logic and reason, which you cannot do because it is inherently illogical and unreasonable!” Puck is attributing things to me which I did not say or mean.
I did not say religion is illogical and unreasonable. I also did not say religious people cannot be subject to logic, (of the sort that might lead to abandonment of their religion).
To clarify: the propensity towards religiosity is probably an evolved capacity, relying on elements of various cognitive but nonlogical modules, and in this limited sense only it is indeed “illogical;” it’s illogical the way our preference for sweets and fats is illogical. We struggle with our weights because, though we know better (logic), we have a damn hard time resisting fattening eating patterns (evolved propensity). Some people are athiests, and of that set, a subset will have come to athiesm through a logical process, but this almost certainly represents a struggle against what is natural for humans. I made no value judgment about this. I also did not say that religion cannot be subject to logic and reason – again, this is a topic I did not address at all.
Correcting Puck’s syllogism to more accurately reflect what I actually said (bold) and what I believe Puck meant (italics), we could rewrite it as: “religiosity has a nonlogical origin within the mind” and therefore “religious people cannot be subject to reason.” I did not say anything like this in my post and it is not something I would endorse.
Puck writes: “Do you say “You can *believe* in killing non-believers and being rewarded with 72 virgins in the afterlife, but don’t go *doing* anything about it!”? or “You can *believe* God created all species in a puff of magic on one day, but don’t go influencing the schools with that belief!”?”
I would never say what someone can or cannot believe. It’s absurd to think that my directive would change anyone’s belief anyway! Beliefs don’t work that way. But I think Puck is trying to say something about how tolerating religious beliefs leads to an endorsement of the religion’s directives. This is an interesting topic deserving of discussion but, again, not one I addressed in my post, which was silent on the issue of whether we should as a society tolerate religion, whether religion is good or bad. My only comments were that it is natural, will recur with each new generation, and therefore we must find a way to work with it that takes these probable facts into account.
Puck seems to be working very hard to attribute intentions to me which are not supported by the text and as such are irrelevant to a comment about my post. If he wants to open new areas of discussion, why not write his own post? Or invite me to debate a new topic? Framing his points as a rebuttal to my post is at best misleading and at worst demonstrates a failure to understand my arguments.
I welcome comments and debate but find it frustrating when comments misrepresent or misunderstand my writing. I work hard to write in a tidy manner and make my points clear – I feel it is reasonable to expect that, if they are going to make a critical challenge to my work, respondents read it carefully and address my actual points as I have made them, without going beyond the text (unless they identify it as such), and without making personal attacks. My chief response to Puck can therefore be summed up as follows: Please play fair, and if you’re going to criticise my arguments, make sure they’re arguments I actually made.
I’ve fixed my badly summarized quotations. Sorry for that, it was a total mixup of an attempt at a summary rather than a quotation, a switch to quotations and not fixing a bad summary or two.
The point about your attitude toward your woo-spouting teacher wasn’t ad-hominem. It was meant to point out that you had no problem mocking her here yet make the claim we shouldn’t be mocking religion.
I think her claims were just as ridiculous as religion’s and I see no reason to give one protection from a verbal attack simply because it involves a “god”.
I never claimed you did. *I* said they’re illogical and unreasonable and I don’t know why you think I’m claiming that’s what you said.
You completely misunderstood where I was going with that too, possibly because you took it so personally.
I’ll try to reiterate/sum it up: Recognizing that religious belief has a naturally evolved tendency does not mean we must accept it. Faith, along with other natural tendencies, must be analyzed rationally. Once one does so, it ceases to be faith and simply becomes reason. “Thou shalt not kill” is accepted not because it is a commandment from “The Creator” but because we recognize our society doesn’t function properly if we kill each other willy-nilly.
When I say “Do you” I’m simply saying “Does one” but being less formal. Not you specifically, but how do we as a society deal with unacceptable religious beliefs, if we must accept religion itself?
I say bollocks to accepting it at all, and I disagree completely with your “it will reoccur with every generation”. The world, aside from the USA, is growing more and more secular as time goes on. I and your husband had religion in our youth –my mother taught Sunday School!
We threw that away, and others can too. There’s nothing special about us except that we didn’t get too ingrained early, and we were finally given the chance to see religion rationally and discard it completely.
Arguing that the rest of the population — especially future population — is actually incapable of eschewing religion is, as I certainly did say in my post, and is the one thing you may take as an attack if you truly believe it, arrogant.
Vex et al,
Puck seems to have a non-standard understanding of logic, vis a vis religious beliefs. Puck’s comment “religious beliefs… aren’t logical” leaves me wondering if he really knows what he’s suggesting. I mean, just looking at a sample syllogism, should showcase the absurdity of this statement.
Sample Religious Ideal #1
God wants us to feed the hungry.
One should do want God wants.
One should feed the hungry.
There are no logical errors here.
I’ll give Puck a charitable reading, and assume he doesn’t believe something as obviously false as “religious beliefs aren’t logical” and means something closer to ‘some religious beliefs are illogical’ or perhaps more specifically, ‘Belief in God’s existence is illogical’
God’s existence is most probably the most fundamentally important question, as his non-existence would be a big problem for most religions. Of course, if an all powerful God does exist, comparatively smaller issues such as ressurection, transubstantiation and the like aren’t really problematic.
Here’s the rub though, God’s existence isn’t (usually) a deductive argument. It’s inductive, so it falls into the stronger/weaker categories. We end up talking about evidence to support the existence or non-existence of God. Anna may say that she and her 500 friends heard God speak. Billy will counter that they were hallucinating, or lying, and so it goes.
Of course, the existence or non-existence of God will never be proven, unless the theists are right, and history comes to an end, and all are present on judgment day. Even then, some might argue. As many others have said, both sides of the argument are unverifiable. Which is why each side has their apologists, trying to convince us. If it was patently illogical like “Corn is not Corn” religions would have very few followers.
Puck is, either knowlingly or unknowingly, simply part of the the long tradition of atheists who ridicule Christianity, and other religions because they’d rather live by other rules. Puck’s come to his beliefs through whatever experiences he’s had, and now that he finds his values largely at odds with the religious (most likely Judeo-Christian) values, he attacks, mocks and ridicules. I’m sure Vex could put a name to this evolved behavior to attack that which threatens your lifestyle.
But let’s not get too down on Puck and his ilk, because *gasp* the religious people do the same thing. They lobby, and castigate and demonize because Puck’s side is threatening their way of life; traditional marriage, and things of that nature.
People know this argument can’t be won with logical argumentation. What we can use though, is popular argumentation.
Ha Ha, Zombie Jesus!
Look at the new Pope, he looks evil!
Christianity is a bunch of fairy tales!
These aren’t thoughtful arguments, they are shabby thinking. They are cunning bits of propaganda in a war between cultures.
But again, the religious people have used the same playbook. They’ve used appeals to emotion in other ways, but both sides have largely abandoned argumentation in favor of what works, appeal to emotion, or attempts to make the other guy look ridiculous, which is largely the same thing.
The vast majority of people don’t buy a product because it is the best value for the most reasonable price, they buy it because it’s well marketed. Both sides market their worldview, hoping you’ll buy in, and give them political currency to remake the culture in their image.
In closing;
Does ridicule work?
If by work, we mean, convince others… then yes, very often it does.
Is it intellectually shabby?
Certainly.
Are most people intellectually Shabby?
Certainly.
McDonald’s doesn’t sell billions of hamburgers because they have the tastiest, highest quality food around.
I suppose one needs to decide if it’s more noble to get slow nods from the Delta minus crowd, or to converse with folks a modest few steps above.
Regards,
~I.
Puck writes: “It was meant to point out that you had no problem mocking her here yet make the claim we shouldn’t be mocking religion. I think her claims were just as ridiculous as religion’s and I see no reason to give one protection from a verbal attack simply because it involves a “god”.”
I’ll just quote myself to respond: “I did not say religion should be protected from mockery, merely attempted to draw the reader’s attention to what I believe the probable outcome of mockery is.”
Puck writes: ” I did not say religion is illogical and unreasonable. I never claimed you did. *I* said they’re illogical and unreasonable and I don’t know why you think I’m claiming that’s what you said”
Sorry, the quotation marks threw me off.
Puck writes: “Recognizing that religious belief has a naturally evolved tendency does not mean we must accept it.”
I’ll quote me again since I also already addressed this: “religion is probably a natural human phenomenon… it will therefore probably never go away… Whether that means we should nonetheless work to end religion – or embrace it – was something I didn’t address at all.” In short, I agree with you – we don’t need to accept it – this just wasn’t something I’d even gotten in to. Whole other topic!
Puck writes: “I disagree completely with your “it will reoccur with every generation”. The world, aside from the USA, is growing more and more secular as time goes on”
Where are you getting your info? I’d be interested to see data on rates or prevalance or whatever is out there – haven’t seen anything much myself beyond the usual USA is going more religious and W Europe is going more secular. If you have seen some research here I’d be keen to check it out! My instinct, based perhaps on our southern neighbour, is that it’s not reducing at all. What might be reducing is involvement with organized religion, but even if this is so, I wonder if people are still privately believers, or, like my dad, people who say they figure there’s something out there but aren’t sure what it is, and don’t go to church. So this is still technically religious. Honestly I just don’t know much about this data though.
What is interesting is the way religiosity is changing, if indeed it is (changing as in less people become religious) – how are we moving away from it, is it a healthy way, and can we expand this program or process or whatever it is? I say it will recur because I have found very persuasive the arguments about the evo origin of religion, in particular how it is tightly bound to modules for survival, and therefore accept the idea that the natural propensity will always be present. It is very easily activated and maintained. Whereas avoiding or becoming nonreligious requires a sort of mental work that goes against what is easiest for us (which doesn’t make it right, this is just reflecting reality).
Of course time will tell which one of us is right. (Five bucks on me!)
Puck writes: “Arguing that the rest of the population — especially future population — is actually incapable of eschewing religion is, as I certainly did say in my post, and is the one thing you may take as an attack if you truly believe it, arrogant.”
I’ll quote me again: “I also did not say that religion cannot be subject to logic and reason – again, this is a topic I did not address at all.” So your statement that I have argued that the future population is incapable of aschewing religion once again attributes an argument to me which I didn’t make.
What I said was this: religion will probably always be with us. We need to work with this fact. Maybe the “work” is an education system that allows us to draw people away from the natural tendency to religiosity! But the point is we will always be drawn towards faiths. What we do about that is, again, not something I addressed.
As to whether this assessment (mine, not your version of mine) is arrogant, it’s just a prediction based on my understanding of the facts. I don’t see how that’s arrogant.
I emailed you – check confessor email.
Puck writes: “The point about your attitude toward your woo-spouting teacher wasn’t ad-hominem. It was meant to point out that you had no problem mocking her here yet make the claim we shouldn’t be mocking religion.”
Sorry but you are wrong. Rather than address my point (mocking is counterproductive), you instead level a charge of hypocrisy. This is the very essense of the ad hominem attack.
Oh so many things to talk about.
It wasn’t an ad-hominem, it was an analogy. The woo-spouting professor is worthy of mockery, and her beliefs are little different from Religion.
By claiming “religion will probably always be with us” you’re saying that there are some people incapable of throwing off religion.
If everyone is capable, then a religion-free future is possible. If they’re not, then we (your husband and I) are somehow superior, or they are somehow “damaged”. Either one is arrogant.
I will amend this to say that there are certainly people that cannot be changed now. They’re just far too indoctrinated and too far gone. But future populations aren’t, and by not being silent and even actively spreading the word we can circumvent that religious education.
I already talked about how we’re downplaying several “modules for survival” in our society because while they were helpful in a “red of tooth and claw” world they are not in our modern world. Rape and male dominance are two easy (and uncomfortable) examples, though there are many more.
Also, the predisposition to “faith” doesn’t mean you’ll have it. Both your husband and I overcame it eventually, and many more have.
Fred from “Vancouver Skeptics in the Pub” was a church-goer up until three years ago! Then the great “homosexual marriage” debate occurred and he couldn’t understand how there were arguments for and against from people claiming to be Christian, so he started studying the Bible to find the “right” answer. When he didn’t he started looking elsewhere and eventually realized it was all a sham.
Now he’s one of the most active atheists in BC! You’ll meet him at Randi. Great guy.
Secular Population Growth
Here are a few links. This page has a graph showing the increasing secular trend in college students over the past forty years, and noting that while the more educated tend to be less religious they are more observant.
Here’s another one showing that even in America secularism is on the rise. From 8% in 1990 to 14.3% in 2001! Now that I read that, I do remember seeing another article pointing out America is growing more secular but in response the religious right is getting crazier and that’s why we think they’re getting more religious down there.
There are several.
Firstly, it’s a strawman.
Secondly, you have to prove your premises. How do we know that “God wants us to feed the hungry?” Is it in the Bible? If it is, how do we know the Bible is the word of God? Because someone told you it was?
Here’s a construction just like yours to show you how ridiculous it is.
Cookie Monster wants us to eat cookies.
One should do what Cookie Monster wants.
Therefore, we should eat cookies.
Or to get into a more religious bent.
Odin wants us to die in battle so we may be borne up by Valkyrie to fight for the gods in Ragnarok.
We should do what Odin wants.
Therefore, we should die in battle.
Of course not. God is the Dragon in My Garage where every time you find some way to prove him, he mysteriously doesn’t respond to that proof.
When confronted with something like that, you must fall back on reason. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for “Jehovah”. Studies of even the earth-bound claims of his “son” Jesus Christ show that nobody even spoke about him until fifty years after his death! The first to do so never even talked about him as though he was a real person but that he lived in heaven and performed his miracles THERE!
Believing in God based on no evidence is the same as believing we live in The Matrix, or that we’re somebody else’s dream and will die when he wakes up. And just as likely as those and an infinite number of other wacky propositions.
Puck > It wasn’t an ad-hominem, it was an analogy. The woo-spouting professor is worthy of mockery, and her beliefs are little different from Religion.
BV: You are still wrong! Here is the piece you are missing: I did indeed mock Chi Woman, and I consider it to be a counterproductive manner of challenging religion. Having done it myself in no way counters or cancels out my argument that mocking is counterproductive. You pointing out that I have myself mocked a religious person in no way challenges my argument that mocking is counterproductive. But pointing out that I am a hypocrite rather than addressing the argument itself is an ad hominem attack. Period.
Puck >…your statement that I have argued that the future population is incapable of aschewing religion once again attributes an argument to me which I didn’t make. By claiming “religion will probably always be with us” you’re saying that there are some people incapable of throwing off religion.
BV: No, I say people will always have a predilection for religiosity. I believe everyone is capable of ceasing to be religious – but will they? Will all of them become atheists? I believe not. This has nothing to do with capacity. I have the capacity to eat a steak, but I won’t. I’m a vegetarian, but it’s not because I am incapable of eating meat!
Puck > If everyone is capable, then a religion-free future is possible. If they’re not, then we (your husband and I) are somehow superior, or they are somehow “damaged”. Either one is arrogant.
BV: Okay, it is possible in a technical sense. I believe it is so unlikely that it might as well be impossible, but you are right – we can’t absolutely rule it out. I don’t believe religious people are damaged in any way – quiet the contrary! I’ve been saying all along it’s a natural cognitive state! You’re making assumptions that are not correct. I don’t see where the arrogance piece comes from.
Puck> I will amend this to say that there are certainly people that cannot be changed now. They’re just far too indoctrinated and too far gone. But future populations aren’t, and by not being silent and even actively spreading the word we can circumvent that religious education.
BV: Sure, that may be the case. I’m all about trying to change things – I’m no fan of organized religion. But where we differ is in methods. I don’t think shaming and mocking religious people will help them abandon their beliefs and become atheists, whereas it seems you do.
Puck> Also, the predisposition to “faith” doesn’t mean you’ll have it. Both your husband and I overcame it eventually, and many more have.
BV: Sure, I agree with this. But of course we are in the minority. By an enormous margin.
Puck > Fred from “Vancouver Skeptics in the Pub” was a church-goer up until three years ago! …. When he didn’t he started looking elsewhere and eventually realized it was all a sham.
BV: Education is a great place to start, as your example shows. It’s how Husband came to atheism also. I have no issue with this.
You seem to have somehow gotten the idea that I think nothing can be done about religion and we shouldn’t bother trying. I have never said this! In fact I have never even addressed this issue whatsoever. We’ll have to start a new conversation to talk about how we think we can effect positive change. You’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent.
Sigh,
I didn’t really want this to turn into an elementary logic lesson, but it seems there is a need for it.
1. Puck’s contention was that religious belief is illogical. I used a simple bit of deductive logic to prove that in fact, Puck was wrong, religious belief isn’t necessarily illogical.
Puck seems to have misunderstood, and provides a few other syllogisms in an effort to prove me wrong.
To the point. Deductive logic doesn’t need to be true, to be logical. it just needs to follow logic. The premises must be true for the conclusion to be true however. Although we aren’t talking truth, we’re talking validity in logic.
So once again, an example.
Dragons should be worshipped.
Puff is a dragon.
Puff should be worshipped.
Perfectly logical, although not necessarily true.
Illogical would be something like this.
Puff is a dragon.
All dragons are red.
Puff likes bananas.
No logical progression here.
In fact, Puck’s syllogisms are quite logical, and if the premises are true, we should indeed die in battle, and eat cookies.
As far as the “strawman” accusation, once again, we must return to a Phil 101 text. Strawman arguments are based on misrepresenting the case of the opposition. I was giving an example of theistic belief, which was indeed a fair presentation. Thus it cannot be a strawman.
A strawman argument might be suggesting that Christians worshipped a zombie Jesus, which would be a gross mispresentation of the doctrine of the ressurection.
I’d recommend Copi and Cohen’s latest edition of Intro to Logic for even more clarity.
In regards to the ‘Dragon in the Garage’ idea, it limps along more than many analogies, because it presumes an almost random mutability in Theistic doctrine.
This is not an accurate portrayal however… perhaps even one of Puck’s much maligned straw men making an appearance. The foundational beliefs about the nature of God (the Omni’s and such) were pretty much set out in the first few centuries following the beginnings of Christianity. We aren’t changing them to foil your clever methods of detection, science just simply doesn’t have the means to test the ‘God hypothesis’.
Regards,
~I.
1. Deductive logic needs true premises. I’m aware that the construct itself is logical, which means it’s true if the premises are. The problem with religious belief and its not-being-logical is it begins with an illogical, unprovable premise.
I’m fully aware of what a strawman is, and it’s exactly what you did. My argument isn’t what you posted that “doing what God says is illogical” but that believing in God without any evidence whatsoever is illogical.