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

[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.