religion and charity

[miriam_e]

Why is it that even religious moderates are so often convinced that you need religion or faith to be a good person or to find purpose in life? It is incredibly arrogant. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It is really no more arrogant than believing that out of thousands of irrational beliefs, theirs is the only one that is right.

I listened to The Spirit of Things tonight. Big mistake. The guy being interviewed was amazing, but tripped and fell headfirst into the metaphoric mud when he said that faith is necessary for purpose. And Rachael Kohn clearly showed her limitations when she implied that religion gives us charity. Of course she ignored all the charitable atheists and agnostics (oh, but they don't count -- how could atheists possibly be charitable?). Ignore the fact that the least religious countries regularly live up to their international aid promises, whereas the most religious countries have never done so. The least religious countries have the most peaceful and healthy populations, whereas the most religious countries are split by fear and hatred and obscene wealth contrasted with appalling poverty.

Are people so willingly blind?

Sure, some religious people can be good and charitable, but on balance religion's harm far, far outweighs any good it has ever done. While atheists and agnostics quietly get on with the job of doing good without constantly trumpeting how great they are.

Comments

[amberite2112.livejournal.com]

"While atheists and agnostics quietly get on with the job of doing good without constantly trumpeting how great they are."

these, i think, are the 'meek' who shall inherit the earth.


i have this theory that the religious folks have got it all upside down, and they're so afraid of letting themselves know this, that they're doing the equivalent of stuffing their fingers in their ears and yelling so they can't/don't hear when other folks tell them they're wrong. but its just a theory.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

:) Interesting theory. I kinda like it.

Interesting observation about the meek, too. Have you noticed that atheists who are not meek about the ills of religion come in for so much criticism? Richard is widely condemned by even moderate religious people, yet when you listen to what he says it is not really very strong stuff. He is always polite and reasonable about what he says. Yet, hearing the responses of so many who have spiritual beliefs you could be forgiven for thinking he fairly foams at the mouth. How strange when you think of the kind of sermons I've heard good christian preachers deliver.

Faith

[(Anonymous)]

Why do people always associate "faith" with religious belief?

You can have "faith" in historical processes, or environmental ones. You can have "faith" in the decency of the majority of human beings - that when the lies are swept aside and they can see what is really happening they will protest in whatever ways they can.

You can have "faith" that with truth and effort a better world can be brought into being.

"Faith" can be secular - and a secular faith can give you a purpose in life.

Cheers. MFG.

Re: Faith

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Interesting point.

I like to say I don't have any faith or beliefs, but I guess in a way I do begin from the idea that almost all people mean to do good, even those who perpetrate great evil. Could it be said that I have faith in human nature? I don't know. It might be more that I see altruism as a built in urge evolution has equipped us with to enhance our survival.

[idealistagain.livejournal.com]

Sure, some religious people can be good and charitable, but on balance religion's harm far, far outweighs any good it has ever done.

I notice that in these religious posts, you never mention any of the fundamentalist atheistic ideologies, especially Soviet and German fascism that together were responsible for the deaths of countless millions.

[superchikka.livejournal.com]

German fascism wasn't atheistic. They were trying to resurrect the old Nordic deities to use as a foundation for their society.

[idealistagain.livejournal.com]

And you still ignore the example of Soviet fascism which killed even more people than the Nazis. Or are you saying that the Soviets weren't atheist either, even though they specifically stated that they were?

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't reply to the Soviet point because I conceded it. I merely pointed out the fallacy that Nazis were atheists.

However, I will respond, since you seem to want it. Atheists aren't required to do good works and therefore it isn't ironic that those who trumpet their good works do some of the most evil in the name of their god. The burden of proof does not fall on atheists. In fact, since atheists are only required by the law of natural selection to survive, the greater wonder should be why there are so many examples of people killing in the name of god and so few examples of atheists killing since there is no deity saying "thou shalt not kill"

[idealistagain.livejournal.com]

I merely pointed out the fallacy that Nazis were atheists.

Its also a fallacy to think of Nazis as religious. If anything, Nazis believed in an ideal of the "noble savage" and considered most of the tenets taught by virtually every major world religion to be contradictory to the kind of society they wanted. For Naziism, there was nothing above blind obedience to the state and its leader. Whatever references Nazis made to Nordic or Catholic or any other deities was only done in the context of political ploys in pursuit of their true aims, which was a society based solely on the state and where everything else--family, friendship, love, religion, whatever--was irrelevant and/or entirely subservient to the will of the state and its leader who considered himself (in a corruption of many of Nietzsche's teachings) to be a superman.

and so few examples of atheists killing

You're joking right?

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

The nazis regularly worked with the catholic church and the catholic church had a snug relationship with the nazis. The two were hand in glove. The Pope of the time implored catholics to follow Hitler. Even after the war the catholic church helped spirit the top nazis away to neutral countries.

If you think superchikka's point of so few atheists killing is a joke then perhaps you could help us out with a few examples of atheists using atheism as a motivation for killing. :) I think you'll be hard pressed.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

As "anonymous" said, the point is not whether some atheists are evil. Here is an illustration to clarify it:

Alice and Betty are talking about ants.

Religion starts from the position that it is inspired by good and is the path to being a better person. In actual fact far more killing and other evil deeds are done by religious people than atheists. Yes, there are good and moral religious people, just as there are good and charitable atheists, and there are truly horrible religious people just as there are similar atheists, but this is a distraction from the central point: that religion promotes itself as the guide to good and moral behaviour, when it is actually the opposite.

[idealistagain.livejournal.com]

In actual fact far more killing and other evil deeds are done by religious people than atheists.

I'm still waiting for some documentation of this. Not only is there no documentation, but you don't even lay out any standard by which we can determine if its true. You say its "actual fact" but its not fact at all, its just a statement waiting for facts to back it up. Since there are no facts presented to back it up, it only falls into the realm of opinion.

the central point: that religion promotes itself as the guide to good and moral behaviour, when it is actually the opposite.

I think this is very oversimplified; there's a lot more issues involved here. Most religious people do not claim to have a monopoly on perfection. The exceptions to that are the ones who are so blinded by an ideology that they lose the ability to think rationally--and that can be caused by any number of factors other than religion. I also think you can't really make the claim that its "the opposite". The opposite, as near as I can infer, would be that religion is somehow a guide to evil and although I think you can make a good case that many people have corrupted religious doctrine for evil ends, that's a far different thing than proving that religion itself is evil.


Keep in mind, that for the most part I agree with your posts and I don't consider myself particularly religious. Its simply that in this case, I feel you are going too far and presenting unjustified conclusions that aren't really supported by hard fact and that concerns me.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. :) The statistics published in The Journal of Religion and Society at http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html show that homicide and other social ills correlate directly with religion.
The original article uses a tricky, but annoying technique of swapping graphs into and out of the document. I've uploaded a more readable version to my site at
http://miriam-english.org/files/religion_ill.html

You are right that I've assumed that this holds true for big, dramatic confrontations like wars. I'd be surprised if it doesn't, considering the ease with which religion can be used to dupe people into doing irrational things, but I will see if I can find reliable info to validate or falsify my assumption. Thanks. I honestly appreciate being called on a possible mistake.

I didn't say that most religious people claim to have a monopoly on perfection. I said religion promotes itself as a guide to good and moral behavior. I think that is a fair enough statement, and I think most religious people would agree with it. When I say that it is the opposite I don't mean that religion is evil (though I do think a pretty good case could be made for that). What I mean is that religion is a guide to behavior that bad and immoral (the opposite of good and moral). There is very little in the bible that exhorts people to do good or be a truly moral person, and virtually nothing in that disgusting document the koran. Most other religious literature that I've read is similarly lacking in the simple niceties of being good human beings. They all tend to pander to xenophobia and maintaining the status quo, generally having more to do with hate than love. So, yes, I'd say I'm justified in saying they promote the opposite of good and moral behavior.

Yep, :) I realise you are trying to keep my comments honest, and I am grateful for that. I hate it when I use shaky assumptions and I'm always relieved to be pulled up on it. There is nothing more embarrassing for me than looking over something much, much later, after an exchange has died down, and realising I made a major mistake. Much better is to be able to correct it while to conversation is still active. I'll see what I can find out about religious involvement in the major conflagrations.

[idealistagain.livejournal.com]

Religion starts from the position that it is inspired by good and is the path to being a better person. In actual fact far more killing and other evil deeds are done by religious people than atheists.

Yes, religion starts out from the premise that its a guide to a better path. Again, that is a guide. Religion makes no claim to perfection in how its followers choose to apply it. Perfection is an unrealistic standard by which to judge anything, especially people. I'm sure everyone, if they are honest with themselves, can think of numerous examples in their lives where they've fallen far short of living up to the values they hold. I think its further unrealistic to expect perfection in another belief system when you do not apply the same standard to your own belief system, ie, glossing over the atrocities committed by the Soviet Union in the name of its decidedly atheistic ideology.

Is a person who makes pronouncements of believing in humanity and tolerance living up to her values when she makes grossly overgeneralized and discriminatory statements to attack a belief system that just happens to be different from her own?

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

The problem is that although religion claims to be a guide to being a better person, when you look at what this guide really is, it is the opposite. All the major religions inculcate intolerance, hate, fear, and subservience through giving up the ability to think objectively. Anybody who follows those teachings to perfection becomes an extremely evil person. The best, most moral religious people that I know hardly follow their religious book at all. They pick and choose what what they want out of their book -- so little in fact, that it becomes absurd to claim being christian or muslim or jewish.

I don't know why you keep thinking I gloss over the point about the Soviet Union. I've never disagreed that there are bad atheists. That said, the fact that the soviet leaders were atheist is almost irrelevant. Most of those murders weren't committed in the name of atheism any more than Hitler's were because he was vegetarian. (Some were -- religious soviets were persecuted when they refused to give up their religion.)

:) I'm not attacking a belief system just because it is different from my own -- I don't have a belief system. It always seems odd to me how many people think atheism is a belief, when it is actually the lack of a belief (I don't believe there is a god, though I'm perfectly willing to concede its existence if such evidence became available.) What I don't like about religion is how it damages people and society. That's why I attack religion. We have spent centuries letting the elephant in the room walk all over people, yet politely ignoring its damage. It hasn't helped. Religion is currently trying to pervert science teaching in school, stop research into stem cells, characterise gays and lesbians as abominations, block safe sex practices, and bring on a jihad and armageddon. In the past it was the rationale for countless slaughters (crusades, Ireland, Kosovo, witch burnings, etc) It is about time good people stood up and pointed out what a horror religion is. Religion doesn't stand for good and love. The koran has hate on almost every page. The bible does too. To get a message of love out of the bible you have to get disbelieve about 90% of the book. Much better to drop it altogether, understand that love and tolerance for your fellow humans is the most logical way to be, and avoid giving the fundamentalists their foothold to power.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Hitler definitely was not atheist. This is a Big Lie propagated by embarrassed catholic churches. He considered himself a good catholic and used catholic hatred of Jews as one of his emotional levers. As superchikka mentions, he also used a hefty helping of Nordic mythologies too.

Certainly there are evil people who are atheist. I would never think otherwise. The point of my posts is that religion considers itself an unquestioned force for good, but is actually responsible for most of the evil around us. This is, I guess, the thing that bugs me so much.

I don't know how many times I've been asked by an astounded religious person how it can be that I am so optimistic and spend so much effort trying to help others, yet I'm not religious! I never react to the implied insult (like expressing surprise that a black person knows how to wear clothes), but patiently and good naturedly explain that doing good things has absolutely nothing to do with religion.

[idealistagain.livejournal.com]

He considered himself a good catholic and used catholic hatred of Jews as one of his emotional levers. As superchikka mentions, he also used a hefty helping of Nordic mythologies too.

This seems to me to be an example of the same sort of thing that I've seen you criticize about religious people on numerous occasions: making a statement that is clearly contradictory and yet being so attached to your own position that you don't even recognize it as such.

How can Hitler be both a pagan and a "good Catholic"? The position of the Catholic church is that they do not recognize pagan religions, nor the existence of other deities. So if Hitler was making claims to believe in such things, then by definition, he was not a good Catholic, regardless of what he called himself.

I think you run into all sorts of problems when you allow people to self-identify without examining that identification closely. Someone can claim to be anything they want; that does not make it so.

religion considers itself an unquestioned force for good, but is actually responsible for most of the evil around us.

While I think its certainly valid and legitimate to point out the amazing amount of pure hypocrisy within religious people, this statement goes a bit too far, I think. Since evil is itself a concept that cannot be quantified in any way, by what measure are you making the claim that religion is responsible for "most" of it? Or even if this claim were proven true, how are you going about isolating the influence of religion specifically when most forms of evil have any number of complex interacting factors that cause them?

Saying that religion is responsible for most evil is not a fact, but a hypothesis. And even worse, its a hypothesis with no way of being tested, and so its also bad science.

[idealistagain.livejournal.com]

religion considers itself an unquestioned force for good, but is actually responsible for most of the evil around us.

It just occurred to me after I posted my last comment that this statement is also a good example of the logical fallacy of confusing correlation with causation.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I'll go into this more later, but I have actually considered this before, but no, religion is not just coincident with, but truly causative of large amounts of evil.

I'll discuss the Journal of Religion and Society article more in this light later, but a few quickies on religion causing evil:
- the witch burnings,
- the mass murder of muslims by christians in the former Yugoslavia,
- the jihadists who did the bombings recently in London,
- the christian crusades
- homophobia

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I won't answer this fully just now. I'm running out of time and should try and do some actual work.

It is very easy for someone to have a blend of religions many of the religious people around the world do exactly this. It is especially easy with the catholic church. It has an enormous range of dieties and sub-dieties. How they manage that with the holy trinity involved such an incredible amount of twisted double-speak that it took up the attention of large numbers of theologians for centuries. Added to that you have Mary who is essentially a diety and a whole pantheon of lesser gods in the saints. The catholic church has historically invaded other cultures by surreptitiously merging with existing religions. It is why we have Easter (Estrus=fertility) for the pagan spring festivals, and the birth of Jesus during the winter solstice festivals, and all the weird admixtures of catholicism in South America and Africa.

The only way to recognise religion is by people's own self-identification. There can be no other way. How can you externally judge whether someone is muslim? Can you decide based on whether they follow the teachings of their holy book? In that case only the worst, most fundamentalist christians, muslims, mormons, hindus, etc are genuinely religious. In that case you have an even stronger argument against religion.

I take your point about my claim for use of the word "most". But even if I reduce it to the word "much" (religion is responsible for much of the evil around us) my point still stands. In any case I'll see if I can't quantify it better.

[superchikka.livejournal.com]

I think that a lot of confusion lies in the ideologies of atheism versus religion. Religion requires its adherents to be "good" (defined by whatever standard their god uses) whereas atheism and natural selection only require survival. It isn't within the interest of atheists to trumpet their good deeds because they aren't fulfilling any commands of any deities. Religious adherents, however, must make it known that they perform good works in order to set an example for their followers. It is necessary for them to link goodness with their religion, otherwise, belief would be dependent on unbelievable and unprovable criteria. To claim that a magic Jew nailed himself to a cross in order to die for sins that I didn't know I had committed seems ridiculous without adding the stipulation that belief in him will change me into a good person. The good works, then, are proof to other adherents that I belong to the club, rather than any sort of altruistic sense of the betterment of us all.

(written by superchikka's gf)

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I had never thought of it this way. Very interesting point.

that a magic Jew nailed himself to a cross in order to die for sins that I didn't know I had committed

This is something that always had me puzzled. Sins are not clearly not transferrable. I'd never been able to understand how anybody could accept such gibberish. It is like elevating to a transcendant spiritual level the nonsense old surrealist joke "Q: What is the difference between a duck? A: Because one leg is both the same as the other." It seemed to me that people find it easier to believe in something that is startlingly inane than something that is obvious, but ordinary. (Like the nutty people who believe that crop circles are evidence of a superior culture are trying to communicate with us, instead of accepting the two guys who owned up to doing it as a practical joke.)

However I was reading the brilliant Why won't God heal amputees? (http://whydoesgodhateamputees.com) website a while back and he explained it neatly. It is all about blood sacrifice. Back in old times when a person transgressed they had to sacrifice a goat, or for a big sin they had to sacrifice a bull. The ultimate sacrifice is a human sacrifice. Seen in this way, from the perspective of savages 2,000 years ago it seems almost logical. Of course it still doesn't work from our perspective as modern people. Today we have no reason to believe such silliness. But if people are willing to suspend disbelief sufficiently to accept that a god tortured and killed his son to forgive us sins not yet committed (so long as we believe it -- if not we are tortured forever in obsessive revenge)... if they are able to make that leap, then as you say, adding the sweetener that it somehow makes you a better person makes it much easier to swallow.

[annie-lyne.livejournal.com]

Religious adherents, however, must make it known that they perform good works in order to set an example for their followers.

Depends on the religion, but Jesus explicitly forbade this, implicitly and explicitly. It would be rather arrogant otherwise.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I don't doubt this. Jesus was a pretty advanced thinker. Sorry to press you on this, I know you don't have a lot of time. I'd be interested in where Jesus says this so I can add it to my collection of cool stuff he said. If you don't have time to look it up, but remember a few key words just let me know them if you could. I have an ebook bible that is painless to find things in... so long as I know what to look for.

I've often wondered how much better christianity would have been if Pelagius's work had been taken up rather than Paul of Tarsus'. At his time Pelagius was enormously influential and taught pretty-much the same good morals as Jesus (unlike Paul, who was almost diametrically opposed to Jesus). He promoted the ideas that people should think for themselves, that good deeds are sufficient for redemption, that hoarding personal wealth is a mistake, and we should be less concerned with other people's problems than our own. He felt being humane was overwhelmingly important, that we should help those less fortunate than ourselves, and that the idea of original sin is just simply wrong. He was a very cool guy. What a pity the church utterly demonised him and banished him as a heretic.

[idealistagain.livejournal.com]

I can't really think of the specific keywords to find the verses where Jesus forbids doing good works just for the bragging rights, but I did want to point out one other fact that followers and critics of religion both seem to forget: incidents of Jesus praying in public were extremely rare, because he considered his relationship with God, His Father, to be personal and private. So I wonder why fundamentalists insist on all this nonsense about prayer in public schools and the like. A friend of mine (who actually is a devout Christian) once pointed out to me the silliness of demanding that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public places when they are not even displayed in most churches.

In addition, there are in fact not four gospels, but hundreds, and the ones that made it into the Bible were through a largely political process. So I think that when fundamentalists use only the four gospels in the official version of the Bible to justify things, as if they were the only four gospels that exist, they are missing the mark. Critics of Christianity make the same mistake when they base their criticisms on fallacies perpetuated by fundamentalists rather than recognizing why fundamentalists are in error. Other gospels, such as the Gospel of Thomas, for instance, present quite different views of Jesus and what he taught.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Your point about there being alternative views of the bible is an interesting one. Many religious people advance this as if it strengthens their case when it actually weakens it.

If a religious book doesn't convey the morality of god then what use is it? Religious people generally feel they derive their morality from their holy book, but if they can choose to believe this part yet discard that part then clearly their morality comes from somewhere else. Why bother with the book at all?

This problem is accentuated when you are confronted with the almost 1,000 major religions and countless insignificant ones. How do you choose to believe in one religion and not another when none offers any proof and they all say "just believe"?

It becomes even more uncomfortable when you notice how badly broken religious societies are.

But the cause of religion is dealt a fatal blow when you come to realise how many good and moral atheists are all around. If atheists can be good, moral, optimistic, and forgiving, then of what possible use are a bunch of irrational, hate-based superstitions? It doesn't require all atheists to be good; just a single good atheist is sufficient to break the argument for religion because then it becomes clear that goodness and morality can come from elsewhere and religion is not required.