What role does religion play in our society? Is it not merely a substitute for rational conceptions of the world? I was watching C-Span the other day and came across a stanford scholar with the name of Sam Harris. His view is that religion is based upon a false conception “belief” of the world, lacking sufficient evidence and if taking literally is morally bankrupt. His argument is against the fundamental “literal” believers and also the moderates. I have found a video where he shares his thoughts on the issue. Tell me what you think.
I think Sam Harris isn’t clarifying the distinction between faith as it applies to an individual’s choices, and faith as it applies to an individual’s expectations of society. There’s a difference between refusing to support abortion in your own life, and demanding that abortion be outlawed. It makes sense to look at each critically, but there is little basis to strongly oppose the former. There’s also a level of religious thinking that concerns entirely abstract justifications of existence, and one that applies to literal truths. When he talked about religious moderation, he should have distinguished between not questioning abstract ideas and not questioning literal ideas of reality.
So to answer your questions, religion should be accepted (tolerated) in terms of deeper ideas, but strongly questioned when it leads to assumptions of temporal truth or justifications of actions that effect others. Not all religion is a substitute for a rational conception of the world, but rather religion can serve as a supplement to a rational perspective.
It might be useful for those interested to find a copy of Harris’s book The End Of Faith" The concepts he puts forth are explained in much greater detail and his explanations carry better weight.
Firstly, How do you define religion? Secondly, What do you mean by tolerating deeper ideas? Define deeper ideas. Also, can you explain this difference between making a decision in your own life and the decision to propagate the idea to others?
My advisor (Carl Raschke) wrote a book on this subject in 79/80 entitled (originally) The Alchemy of the Word which was recently (1999) republished under the title The End of Theology. Just a neato point of reference, but it is the first published American quotation/reference to Derrida.
Hello VivaldiandBach:
Thank you very much for the link. I watched the two conversations they showed with Bill O’Reilly. I think that Bill got the best of the conversations, exposing Sam as having a zealous agenda that belies the quest for “reason”.
It could be that his book is better argumented, but ultimately, his points are sometimes bizarre and divorced from sober reasoning, which is what Bill key on.
A summarized critique of Islam, even if Islam merits it or is vulnerable to it, does nothing but worsen our world. And even if Islam is problematic, so too is the fundamentalism found in America. I do not see Christianity being better able to withstand the acid of reason much better than Islam. The golden rule is found in both, but that rule too fails a materialist test. And in a world that has seen the disasters of fascism and communist Russia, the pogroms, the holocaust, China’s cultural Revolution, acts that were “reasoned” with frightening results, we should maybe give religion a break and see that it is not that the atheist alone is saintly, to pardon the pun, but that there might me in our nature elements that corrupt the atheist and theist alike; In-group, out-group politics of the social animal; That it is not about even the particular God, gods, or scripture, because in all honesty, most of them repeat and echo one another.
Sam is no better at using his views practically. Because he has taken a “very provocative” stance, he has left for himself little room to answer simple questions such as whether a man suffering depression ought to be able to get a “hot shot” from a doctor. In his defense of the individuals ultimate right to choose his own fate, he forgot all about the matter of reason and whether such actions are in the end reasonable. Albert Camus he is not.
I might still pick up his book, but probably not because I like moderate stances rather than provocative ones, which are suspect because it might be that they are provocative only to be in the popular mind, only to sell better, or worse, out of a dogmatic approach that contradicts it’s declared purpose.
Thanks again.
Like a lot of questions about religion, they are all dependant on your assumptions about the truth of the matters. If your assumption is that all religions are false, then of course your conclusions about what religion is ‘for’ will be very cynical- even if you believe that religion serves some useful purpose for ‘some people’, you’d never believe that it serves a purpose for you, you are one of the lucky (blessed?) who has seen through it.
If, on the other hand, you believe that a set of religious claims is true, then the question ‘what is the purpose of religion’ is so obvious that it’s not worth asking.
So really, they are two different questions altogether. Who is this one for? Is this one for atheists who know better, ruminating over whether or not religion should be tolerated in the ignorant, or stamped out altogether? Or is this question for the religious, who will simply point at whatever their creed says as the obvious answer to what their system is ‘for’? Either way, nothing earthshattering can occur.
Religion, that is any Judea inspired religion, is so the weak can give their own life some meaning. They are not strong enough to posit a goal and purpose for themselves, so they cling onto some imaginary thing to justify their own existence.
And also, a rational conception of the world is a substitute for religion, not the other way around as you stated. Religion was first, then came rationalized thinking. Rational methods of explaining the world only arose to continue the “faith” that the world can be rendered sensible.
A Cult of Reason is no escape from the practice of religion. Also religion is not merely doing science badly, as some people tend to conceive it. If science and religion had the same goals then one could supersede the other. This is not the case. Religion could only be successfully supplanted by something that is more useful at doing the things that religion does.
One of the things that a religion does it put a person into the proper relationship with the divine. Now you can answer that no such relationship is necessary because nothing is divine. That answer works but only for a small portion of people.
One could become missionary-atheist tying to convince people that they ought to accept that there is nothing divine. They might even do this in the name of Truth. So then what is Truth except another name for something divine?
The thrust of Harris’ book says nothing about personal observation of faith and focuses on public discourse and policy. His argument is that there are too many complex and urgent problems to be dealt with to allow ANY religion’s irrational beliefs to dictate either policy of discourse. I found it interesting to see the the ‘moderates’ create much of the problem by not confronting the extremists, and in effect, legitimizing the extremist point of view by remaining silent.
A religion is a set or system of beliefs that is believed strongly. “Strongly” is based on the perspective of the believer, and usually is connected to universal or foundational truths.
Ideas that are deep enough not to apply to physical action; spiritual ideas, a general mentality, or a type of perspective. When religions start to have physical ramifications, like the Catholic refusal to end a pregnancy after conception or the Muslim ban on depictions of the prophet Mohammed, they are no longer dealing solely in what I referred to as “deeper ideas.”
When you expect others to do as you do according to your beliefs, questioning those beliefs is more justified, because you aren’t operating solely within your right to make your own choices.
When religion starts to have real effects–terrorism, political agendas etc.–with which not everyone is comfortable, I think opening up more discussion about it is merited, even if religious discussion can be offensive and heated. However, Sam Harris seems to be quite blatantly attacking the basis of faith itself, and he doesn’t recognize the fact that faith is more than ritual, history, and a set of rules. Purely philosophical religious ideas belong in a very different kind of dialogue.
In his preface to the first edition of The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argued that our* century is the true century of critique, to whom everything must be subsumed. Religion through its sanctity and legislation by its majesty, usually want to eschew it which provokes valid doubts as concerning them. Religion and legislation do not have the right to claim honest consideration, which reason grants only to the object that has made it through its public trial.
Kant’s killer logic and extraordinary sense of anicipation smile to us from behind the lines. It seems that, following the rational examination, all that religion can truly accomplish, something which is somehow its concealed purpose, dare I say its raison d’etre, is that of arousing suspicion. Any religion that respects itself will seem ilogical and make you sweat. Because religion confirms its dominance on pretexts that float around above metaphysical concepts, it becomes inevitable that reason will reach a point when it will feel complied to oppose. Religion, “through its sanctity”, doesn’t instantly declare itself outside any critical demarche, but it affirms its independence in relation to any result that might prejudice it. As derived, in a reasonable measure, from religious clauses, legislation tends to follow the same direction.
Religion doesn’t really need Kant, but it takes a Kant to point that out, although not explicitly. A true religion is the based on scandals and contradictions. Any respectable form of adoration will invoke miracles and carve their memory into the common heritage. If religious dogma is going to be ‘viable’, than it has to strike you with its scandalous claims - a true religion tells you that dead will walk again and asks you to tend for that day, although no one knows the day, nor the hour. Religion is not a book, not a word, but someone reading the book and thinking about the word, hurrying across its lines and functioning within its boundaries.
Religion is poise. Religion is man washing his hands when filth disgusts him. Believing is being part of a great citadel with foundations rooted in the ground and towers soaring towards the heavens. Plato wrote that the greatest service that a man can do to his country and fellow countrymen is not to distinguish himself at the Olympic Games or in other war-like activities, but to abide by the laws and prove himself their most faithful servant. Try linking religion the same way…
Yes, it aught to be and here is a rather neat argument in its favour.
The vast majority of religions believe that we survive the death of the body. (If we don’t what is the purpose of religion anyway?) They also believe that following that death we will find out the truth. That being the case it doesn’t matter what we believe.
So stop sitting around contemplating some unknowable god and get out there helping your fellow man because that might just have an effect upon your future and it will make you feel good anyway.
All religious evil is not the fault of the religion itself,
but is actually the fault of that religion’s supporters.
Illegal drugs have evolved allot, because they have been fed allot.
We feed faith and money to giant beasts that tuck us in at night so that we can wank in a cacoon antil we die and then call it “liberation”, “progress” and “eternal life”.
False religion will only be gone once it’s believers stop feeding it and impowering it.