I am not saying that religious people are universally stupid. I’m saying that religion is factually incorrect.
I am not saying that atheists are universally smart. I’m saying that religion is factually incorrect.
I am not saying that religion doesn’t provide comfort to and enrich the lives of billions of people. I’m saying that religion is factually incorrect.
I am not saying that everything in the modern scientific consensus is true. I’m saying that religion is factually incorrect.
I am not saying that everything that some asshole passes off as science is true. I’m saying that religion is factually incorrect.
I am not saying that there are no people who attempt to reconcile science and religion. I’m saying that religion is factually incorrect.
I am not saying that nothing good has been done in the name of religion. I’m saying that religion is factually incorrect.
I am not saying that nothing evil has been done in the name of science. I’m saying that religion is factually incorrect.
I am not saying that the tradition and community people get from their religions isn’t valuable. I’m saying that religion is factually incorrect.
I am not saying that religion is inherently tyrannical and oppressive. I’m saying that religion is factually incorrect.
There are atheists that say some of those things that I’m not saying. Which is bad, because all of those things I’m not saying are douchebaggy and factually incorrect and also completely unnecessary.
My radical position is that you should not believe things that are factually incorrect. Even if believing them makes you feel nice. Even if it makes you a better person. Even if it connects you to your community and your ancestors. (You can go to the rituals without believing in God, anyway.) Even if some other people over there believe factually incorrect things sometimes too.
I feel like having to justify why believing things that aren’t true is bad is like having to justify why hitting people who don’t want to get hit is bad. It… is? Duh? But the number of otherwise intelligent people who say “they’re nice and they aren’t hurting anyone, what do you care?” suggests otherwise.
The doublethink necessary to believe things that aren’t true hurts your ability to figure out what’s true and what’s not. Not necessarily; humans are very good at compartmentalizing and often, say, take “I feel it in my heart” as adequate on matters of theology but not on matters of medicine. But in aggregate turning off your critical thinking and rationality sometimes hurts your ability to be rational.
If you believe things that aren’t true, you’re going to make decisions based on the false things you believe, and decisions made based on inaccurate information are usually bad decisions. If you believe apricot pits cure cancer, you might skip chemo. If you believe there aren’t any cars on the street when there are, you might cross and get hit by an SUV. If you believe all-nighters improve your grades, you might flunk an exam. If your map says that Disney World is in Michigan, you will never get to meet the Mouse. For that matter, look at basically any atrocity in history, nearly all of which were caused by people believing untrue things (usually “this group of people is inherently evil,” “God said so,” or “our ludicrous political system totally works”).
As a practical matter, there are a lot of false beliefs in the world, and most forms of theism I encounter in day-to-day life are not actively hurting people and, in fact, might be making people’s lives better. So I’d prefer to try to get people to not believe in untrue things that are also hurting people first.
This is really just a plea for atheists and theists to stop arguing about religion is good. Who cares? The question is whether it’s true.
Thing of Things 
– Bertrand Russell, in “Why I Am A Rationalist”
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I prefer W. K. Clifford, who incidentally was also earlier (not that it was completely novel in his time, either, just rare, as it as always been): “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” His “The Ethics of Belief” is excellent, and of course religious belief was one of his central topics in the essay.
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Meanwhile, I was just thinking about the *opposite* of this.
Like, there are a lot of atheists who seem to take it for granted that ‘you should only believe true things’ is some kind of absolute value, in a way that would only make any sense if they believed in a morality of the universe. Except that atheists who don’t believe in a morality of the universe do this too.
If you don’t think there’s a morality of the universe that makes it important to only believe true things, it seems that whether or not this is the case, always the case, when it is the case, etc, should be subject to the same kind of cost-benefit analysis that anything else is.
Like, given an atheist world view, if it turns out that it is the case that believing X untrue-thing-that-doesn’t-hurt-anyone will make someone happy and satisfied with their life, while not believing it will make them miserable, why on earth should they sacrifice what in an atheist worldview is the only life they get to ‘truth’ if they don’t get more out of it then they lose on it?
So in my opinion good is a way more important argument than true, unless you have some reason to hold truth sacred such that sacrificing good to it is justified for you.
(Note, I myself am an agnostic.)
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The reason to “hold truth sacred” is that you can only know whether a belief does harm or good by knowing the truth.
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That’s true for yourself, but you can still apply the reasoning to other people. If knowing something is true is harmful, you can still decide not to teach it or argue for it publically and do your best to ensure that other people don’t believe it.
For instance, imagine that some people really do need belief in God to keep them from committing mass murder. Then it might be good for you to ensure that other people believe in God–even if there’s no God. Also, only some people might be affected–not everyone will commit mass murder after they become atheists, but if even a small proportion such as 1 out of 1000 people will, that still may be enough for spreading atheism to be a bad idea.
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The only way to know whether a belief does good or harm is to know a truth. If I plant a chip in your brain which I say will turn you into a violent murderer if you believe a a collapsing blue giant usually forms a quasar, whether that belief does good or harm does not really depend nearly as much on whether this is, in fact, true, as it does on whether the chip actually does what I said. That’s still a truth, but it’s not the entire truth.
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I strongly suspect that the number of people who are actually restrained from committing mass murder by their religious beliefs is zero. Mostly this is because religious beliefs, like any beliefs, can always be bent/selectively emphasized to justify mass murder.
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But you need to take the long view in such a cost-benefit calculation. Even if it feels good short term, it may cause long term harm, or harm at a broader social level.
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I think the basic problem here is that holding truth sacred leads you to make the same errors regarding truth that holding anything else sacred does towards that thing, viz. overfitting on minor points and failing to pick your battles.
Sacredness doesn’t lend itself to optimization. It lends itself to scoring ingroup loyalty points, and to defending fixed positions that already enjoy a lot of support — and that’s particularly dangerous in this case, as “truth” is already the kind of concept that tends to mold itself to ideology.
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It isn’t possible to simultaneously believe that something is false, and yet believe it. So even if you’re convinced that believing untrue X will make you happy, knowing that X is untrue precludes believing it; an atheist who judges that he’d have been happier had be believed in a (false) religious claim X has no way of actually bringing about such a change in belief, so long as he believes that X is in fact false.
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But he may be able to bring about a change in his belief that X is false.
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“You are wrong, but that doesn’t mean you are stupid, or evil, or anything other than wrong about this one thing” is a difficult notion to communicate and a difficult one to hear.
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And a difficult notion to believe, at that.
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“If you believe things that aren’t true, you’re going to make decisions based on the false things you believe, and decisions made based on inaccurate information are usually bad decisions.”
I think that this is generally true. But the counterexamples, while not common, tend to be very important. A good example is the idea of a “growth mindset.” Alot of research suggests that the growth mindset is mostly false. The past predictor of future performance is past performance. In many fields ability is mostly genetic. Of course people often manage to moderately improve their performance but dramatic change is rare. In theory one might call the “you can do somewhat better” attitude a growth mindset but this is not what people usually mean by growth mindset.
On the other hand a growth mindset is super useful People with growth mindsets consistently do better. So if I had to chose I would rather have a growth mindset. Even though the research suggests its probably less accurate than the fixed mindset. (of course the “100% fixed mindset” is false). Having a growth mindset helps you get the moderate gains that the correct view allows for.
Another example is that optimistic people tend to be happier and more successful. Optimism is clearly a bias and causes one to systematically hold wrong beliefs. But given its utility I would not try to reduce the number of (moderate) optimists. This bias pays rent on average.
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If people with growth mindsets consistently do better, the performance of a person who adopts a growth mindset should improve, making the growth mindset a correct belief in this case – it only becomes wrong when a plateau is actually reached.
Also, even though I have a growth mindset, I agree with the statement that the best predictor of future performance is past performance. Firstly, actually growing is hard work and there is a large number of areas where I would like to do better, so I have to prioritize and can only grow in a very limited number of areas at a time. Secondly, “growth” is not linear and often requires multiple attempts and/or growth in different areas before improvements happen. Hence I’m generally cautious and don’t rely on any improvements before I’ve actually seen them – but I still expect them to happen at some point.
Of course, maybe my interpretation of a growth mindset is weaker than yours: I don’t expect to be able to reach unusually high levels of ability, “merely” significant improvements and the possibility to break free from the reign of past performance in at least one area at a time.
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I wrote a thing a little while ago about why I’m still Catholic even though on at least some level I agree that it’s probably factually inaccurate – http://wildeabandon.dreamwidth.org/237961.html
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Well … OK. That’s great and all. I have atheist friends, etc etc, yada yada.
But … as you admit, there are a whole bunch of atheists, probably a sizeable majority, who are saying these false things.
And … the “good” atheists pretty much universally don’t have a problem with it; indeed, this is the only time I’ve ever seen you mention it. Indeed, many people I respect, who mostly stick to the “but religion is wrong” bit of atheism, occasionally slip into this attitude; which makes me wonder about their motivation.
Ultimately, how can you object to people arguing against this? People bringing it up when you mention you’re an “atheist”, even?
Heck, it sucks to be on the wrong side. I’m pro-life, and I’m well aware that many people on “my” side are bastards. I think it’s often overestimated, but yeah, many pro-lifers are motivated more by self-righteousness and a vague distaste for pregnant women rather than ethics. It happens.
But I make a point of making my reasons and positions clear, or as clear as they can be when you’re doing political signalling. If people yell at me based on misconceptions, I correct them. It’s not even fundamentally unreasonable to oppose the “pro-life movement” if you’re pro-life, although I’m not sure whether I agree with it.
Labels are meaningless. “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” and all that.
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Heck, it sucks to be on the wrong side. I’m pro-life, and I’m well aware that many people on “my” side are bastards. I think it’s often overestimated, but yeah, many pro-lifers are motivated more by self-righteousness and a vague distaste for pregnant women rather than ethics. It happens.
But I make a point of making my reasons and positions clear, or as clear as they can be when you’re doing political signalling. If people yell at me based on misconceptions, I correct them. It’s not even fundamentally unreasonable to oppose the “pro-life movement” if you’re pro-life, although I’m not sure whether I agree with it.
Just commenting to second the hell out of this, with the possible exception of the last sentence (in which I am uncertain what the “it” you’re not sure if you agree with is).
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I am an atheist, and admittedly a bit of an asshole, and I do believe some of the things that Ozy is opposing in this article. More specifically, I believe that science and religion are fundamentally irreconcilable; that religion does more harm (on average, in the long term) than good; and that, while religion is not a priori tyrannical, it does make tyranny easier to achieve.
I think I have good reasons for believing these things, and I could enumerate them if someone is interested, but that’s not really my point. My point is this: did I fail some sort of a litmus test, and are you now going to dismiss me forever simply because I believe in X, Y and Z ? If so, then obviously we can’t discuss anything further in any meaningful fashion; but if not, then I think we need to get out of the habit of using litmus tests, and engage with the arguments people are actually making. Which might be the same thing you’re saying, I’m not sure.
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>I think I have good reasons for believing these things, and I could enumerate them if someone is interested, but that’s not really my point. My point is this: did I fail some sort of a litmus test, and are you now going to dismiss me forever simply because I believe in X, Y and Z ?
No, and I would indeed be interested in those reasons.
Obviously, I don’t agree with you (yet? Those might be some impressive reasons), and neither does Ozy – which is what the OP seems to be complaining about. Less that they’re being pigeonholed with the crazies, more that they’re being pigeonholed in the wrong place, which is a problem because it leads to people talking past each other.
That’s not to say I don’t use “litmus tests”; I do. It’s not ideal, but sometimes you need a handy heuristic. You passed the “is this person worth talking to” set of litmus tests; and you were pegged as probably belonging to a certain subset of atheist/skeptic memespace – the same rough cluster that Ozy is complaining they’re often lumped into.
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Pingback: Brief Angry Atheist Rant About Angry Atheist Rant About Angry Atheist Rants | Imp Hurls Ennui
I forgot that this isn’t tumblr and comments are a thing, so I will post link instead. https://imphurlsennui.wordpress.com/2015/01/24/brief-angry-atheist-rant-about-angry-atheist-rant-about-angry-atheist-rants/
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Interesting post. I have always found it useful to distinguish when having discussions like this–and I am an atheist–between believing in something having faith in something. There is a huge difference, I think, between believing something that can be demonstrated concretely to be untrue (are there in fact cars on the road?) and having faith in something that cannot (is there a god?) The people I know who truly understand what it means to have faith, who are honest about it, about their own doubts–who live in the crisis that anyone who has real faith must, on occasion live in, i.e., that their faith might be mispaced—also understand and are honest about the fact that their faith cannot be proven to be factually correct; and they are among the most tolerant, inclusive, and politically progressive people I know.
I don’t share their faith, but I respect it, and I respect it, in part, because however much their faith is framed by whatever religious tradition they belong to, the faith itself is not about their religion per se, not about this particular understanding of whichever holy text, or about somehow “knowing” that their god demands of them the demonization (or whatever kind of exclusion) of others, or about proving this doctrine to be more right than and therefore superior to any other doctrine.
The people I am talking about would agree with you that religion is factually inaccurate, and they would agree that an awful lot of horrific things have been done in the name of those inaccuracies, but I think they would also tell you that when it comes to faith, factual accuracy is irrelevant.
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Well, yeah, the factual truth of religion explains why it’s good, not the other way around. (and “reconciling science and religion” is just an ill-formed statement that requires a nontrivial commitment to Science-as-religion to hold in one’s head.)
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Which religion are you (tactily) asserting to be factually true? They certainly can’t all be!
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A lot of religious claims are claims that, like moral claims, can’t really be true or false. “There is a god, but he doesn’t intervene in the world in any detectable way and there’s no way to get real evidence of whether he exists are not” is not a statement that’s _capable_ of being true or false. It’s a story we tell about the facts we observe, and like any other story should be believed exactly insofar as it’s helpful or useful.
I don’t understand why people find the idea of God useful or comforting. It’s as crazy as believing in an objective morality, or that words have meanings, or that life has meaning. But people believe all those things, and it seems to work for them.
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I think there are two possible answers to the universe. One involves objective morality and one involves nihilism. Both are equally valid solutions to the universe, but you either view it through the assumption that all our experiences are illusions or they are not. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong (or “crazy”) about preferring one over the other.
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I don’t claim our experiences are illusions. I claim that the idea of objective morality is totally crazy. Because you can’t justify values except in terms of other values.
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I used to assume that religious people were religious because they had frequent supernatural experiences. I then read that they don’t have more supernatural experiences than anyone else. Either way, there are certainly religious people who hear God talking to them, have visions etc. If they accept there is no God, but continue to communicate with it in a way that is satisfying to them, isn’t them saying there is no God merely a matter of semantics? Or maybe they are gnostic atheists? They have personal knowledge of the thing they believe does not exist?
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This is really just a plea for atheists and theists to stop arguing about religion is good. Who cares? The question is whether it’s true.
The obvious problem is that that question is, for many religious matters*, rationally unanswerable. Deduction starts from axioms and Bayesian induction starts from priors. The difference between your position on the existence of my gods and my own is fundamentally rooted neither in reason nor in evidence. Short of one of us having a conversion experience, we can’t agree on this. But that doesn’t mean we can’t, at least in principle, agree on whether the effects of my believing in the gods on my character and actions are good or not.
Now, of course, a quick look at our respective posting history shows that there’s plenty of moral questions that we cannot come to an agreement on. And there are (clearly, insofar as we both at least approximately inhabit consensus reality) plenty of truth questions that we can. So the reverse of your statement is also false. Whether truth or morality is a better topic for debate (or whether both are suitable, or neither) varies from religious question to religious question, and from pair of debaters to pair of debaters.
My radical position is that you should not believe things that are factually incorrect. [. . .] I feel like having to justify why believing things that aren’t true is bad is like having to justify why hitting people who don’t want to get hit is bad. It… is? Duh?
This would seem to contradict your stated hedonic utilitarianism, unless you make the fairly strong assumption that not only are the detriments of theism that you argue for true, but they outweigh the benefits that you’re willing to (at least for the sake of argument) grant. Which, maybe you do. But that’s certainly not “duh”-level obvious.
My radical position is that you should not believe things that are factually incorrect. [. . .] Even if it makes you a better person.
That is a very radical position indeed! And one that I’m fairly sure you don’t actually hold in full generality.
Take, for a useful hypothetical, the case of a man who really would (as some fundamentalists like to claim everyone obviously would, for some reason) go on a rape-and-murder spree if not for his belief in a god who will reward him for his righteousness and punish him for his misdeeds in the afterlife, so he spends his time practicing effective altruism instead. To make the case strong, let’s assume that he believes that wanting to do good things for their own sake is itself righteous, and is working on reprogramming himself toward the end of not wanting to go on a rape-and-murder spree (or even stop practicing effective altruism) . . . but he’s not there yet. And let’s add that his god isn’t the Abrahamic one, with its long history of hypocritical atrocities, but something akin to Thomas Paine’s, but with a certainty of reward and/or punishment thrown into the mix.
Now, would you say that that man should not believe in this thing that is not factually true? Somehow, I doubt you would!
*Talking about whether “religion” is true is, in my view, silly.
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> Now, would you say that that man should not believe in this thing that is not factually true?
Well sure, this hypothetical man who most likely does not exist should keep believing in his god. Similarly, an addict who believes that only a very specific god can aid him in staying sober, should probably keep believing in this god (and, bonus, such people actually do exist).
However, this line of reasoning is not generally applicable. If everyone believed in whatever things gave them the most comfort, or even the most willpower to go on with their lives… then we’d not be having this conversation, because it’s hard to transmit several paragraphs of text across the world by using smoke signals.
The problem with the psycho and the addict is no that there’s some sort of a god-shaped hole in their hearts that they need to fill. Their problem is that they are biochemically incapable of holding certain very specific true beliefs; namely, “murdering people is detrimental to my long-term well-being”, and “continuing to ingest this drug is detrimental to my long-term well-being”. Religion is not a solution; it’s a hack that allows them to keep going. If we had a magic wand that would flip a switch in their brains from “unable to hold true beliefs” to “able”, we’d just wave the wand, and then we wouldn’t need any gods.
Unfortunately, we don’t have such a wand, but we’re getting closer every day. For example, everyone used to believe that the Earth was flat, and that slavery was a perfectly acceptable socioeconomic system, but today almost everyone knows better; this was accomplished by using the wands called “science” and “economics”. People used to talk to demons a lot, but today we have a wand called “medicine” that can make at least some of the demons go away some of the time. Meanwhile, with every banished demon, religion keeps getting more and more esoteric (e.g., hardly anyone believes in literal talking snakes nowadays).
Our way to the future is paved with stronger magic wands, not with increasingly convoluted hacked-together mind-kludges.
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However, this line of reasoning is not generally applicable.
It’s certainly not universally applicable. But I’d argue that it is applicable a non-trivial fraction of the time. Moreover, if it were applicable even once—indeed, even if it were applicable only in hypotheticals—this would still be enough to demolish the statement of principle “you should not believe things that are factually incorrect. [. . .] Even if it makes you a better person,” and replace it with the far less ringing “Even if the effect of believing a thing that is factually incorrect is to make you a better person, this may be outweighed by the long-term downsides of your doing so. If it is, then you should not believe that thing.”
And that matters. Because the more qualified form requires consideration of the pros and cons for each case of a person holding a useful but inaccurate belief, and the absolute form does not.
If everyone believed in whatever things gave them the most comfort, or even the most willpower to go on with their lives… then we’d not be having this conversation, because it’s hard to transmit several paragraphs of text across the world by using smoke signals.
That is a very strong assertion, and one that I don’t believe is accurate, even as stated. But more to the point, “X should believe Y if it gives him comfort” is a very different assertion from “X should believe Y if it makes him a better person.”
Their problem is that they are biochemically incapable of holding certain very specific true beliefs; namely, “murdering people is detrimental to my long-term well-being”, and “continuing to ingest this drug is detrimental to my long-term well-being.”
Have you known many addicts? Because this does not sound like a very accurate description of addiction, based on my own observations. Plenty of addicts know perfectly well that continuing to use is damaging their lives. They’re just incapable of foregrounding and acting on that knowledge in the face of a combination of stress and the opportunity to relieve it by using. (Of course, past a certain point, not using is itself a source of stress . . .)
Religion is not a solution; it’s a hack that allows them to keep going.
I’m not convinced that solutions and hacks are meaningfully distinct in most circumstances.
Our way to the future is paved with stronger magic wands, not with increasingly convoluted hacked-together mind-kludges.
Perhaps. And perhaps not. But even if you are right, people live in time. What is right for an actual human being to do, living at this time, with the cognitive wiring and the resources they have available to them, is not necessarily what would be optimal for someone with issues analogous to theirs to do in some distant transhumanist future.
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Obviously Ozy has some solid points here, and atheism more than almost any other ideology should be able to resist motte&bailey claims. It literally means “no god”. if anyone is implying it means anything more… point them to the word itself.
Still. If people consistently think atheism means something more, it’s worth exploring why. Heck, Ozy’s rant here even slides very smoothly into “People shouldn’t believe things that are factually incorrect.” That’s a very bold moral statement, and not the same as “there is no god.” Is it the case that every atheist can’t resist going into epistemological pontificating even when they start with the very limited and explicit starting point? If so, why?
As to “People shouldn’t believe things that are factually incorrect,” commenters above have mentioned the practical use of factually incorrect beliefs. That’s one point (though highly empirical.)
But I think people believe a lot of quasi-mystical things that I’m not comfortable condemning. Like love. Some people believe love is an Actual Force. Even those who don’t, believe their chosen romantic partner really will be with them No Matter What, when any behavioral psychologist or social science statistician is well aware that our relationship is up to the whims of many external forces. “In sickness and in health… but not if we suffer sufficient financial stress” is more accurate, and a lot less poetic. And belief in the power of love is at least as misleading to the average person as belief in god.
But I don’t really think people are wrong to believe their love is inviolate. I hope they never find out otherwise.
(Plus, this isn’t even getting into “hope for the afterlife while on your death bed”.)
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Seriously?
If you believe that love can conquer all, you will make the wrong decisions and you will suffer as a consequence. Examples:
You believe that love will conquer financial stress, which is false. This means you will fail to put aside a reasonable investment fund as a buffer because you fail to understand the possible consequences and the very belief in love as a force is the actual root cause of your divorce. How is this a good thing?
You believe in love at first sight, marry hastily and end up spending 15 years with a violent psychotic who keeps punching holes in you with the nearest sharp object for no apparent reason. (Pencils are worst because they tend to break off and cause all sorts of nasty infections. Scissors not so bad even if they look scary) If you instead believed something more reasonable like “affection can grow reliably from shared interests and values”, you spend some time finding such a person and don’t spend 15 years with arbitrary holes in your body
Frankly, the incorrect belief in love as a force causes so incredibly many stupid decisions and misery that I think it should be one of the first crazy ideas we should work to eradicate.
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It is all to easy to be factually wrong about love. Hundreds of thousands of abused life partners are doing it every day.
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Intellectually consistent atheists must conclude that raising a child within a religious tradition is wrong. Intellectually consistent theists must conclude that not raising a child within their religious tradition is wrong. This is an irreconcilable difference that will only be resolved with complete unanimity of opinion on religious questions, i.e. never.
My biggest piece of advice, from sad personal experience, is “Don’t get into a potentially reproductive relationship when you have significant and deeply-held religious differences.”
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I think you either are presenting a false binary, or require stronger assumptions than mere consistency. It is certainly possible to raise a child in a framework that says “this is what Daddy believes, and why he thinks it’s right, and this is what Mommy believes, and why she think’s it’s right,” and let the kid figure out what they believe for themselves. This does, however, require (a) both parents not having a strong moral disagreement with the other’s faith, (b) neither parent’s (ir)religion having mandatory initiation ceremonies (since the obvious resolution to the question of what if any rituals the kid should attend is to allow them to decide for themselves (which, knowing kids, will likely vary unpredictably)), and (c) both parents being good at clear communication.
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One of the jobs of a parent is to teach certain things to their children. Telling the kids “this is what your parents believe and I won’t tell you which one is right” ignores what it means for one to be right–if you *really* believe you are right, you should then want to teach it to your child, and not want give your child a 50% chance of believing something that you know to be wrong.
The only way this would work is either
— if you have really low certainty that you’re right, which would mean that making the child choose wouldn’t reduce the child’s chance of learning the right thing by very much.or
— if your religion or lack thereof doesn’t affect your life very much, so the child isn’t greatly harmed by believing the wrong one. If the other parent’s religion is to say that God exists but not to actually alieve the implications of that, this may be so. And probably most modern Americans have this sort of “religion”.
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Option 3: If you really care (whether as a matter of religious doctrine or otherwise) whether your kid chooses to share your faith, being aware of the alternatives, as opposed to picking it up unthinkingly and continuing in it equally unthinkingly.
I mean: I plan to teach my kids “This is what Mommy and Daddy believe, why we believe it, and why we hope that you will share our beliefs. If you decide that you don’t, then we will be disappointed, but we will still love you and [in the absence of behavior that forces us to conclude otherwise] believe that you are a good person” even if my wife and I have the same beliefs. From there, it’s not a huge step to doing the same with a wife who has different beliefs (and knowing that she’s doing the same on her end), and hoping to be more convincing.
Of course, like I said, this assumes a certain degree of moral compatability. I wouldn’t want to raise kids with an Abrahamic spouse, but I’d be fine raising kids with a (suitable) atheist spouse.
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I have to agree with Jiro here – it’s certainly possible to raise a child in a respectful interfaith household, but it’s difficult, precisely because “well, Mommy and Daddy believe different things” is kind of a cop-out unless Mommy and Daddy don’t really care about those beliefs very much. We wouldn’t expect parents to raise their children this way on any other moral issue.
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In what way is it a cop-out? One can perfectly well say “Here is what I believe, why I believe it, and why I want you to share in that belief. Your Mommy believes different things, and wants you to believe in them too. She’s not stupid, but she is wrong. If you end up agreeing with her, then I will be disappointed, but I’ll still love you and think you’re a good person” and fully expect that Mommy will say essentially the same thing in reverse.
Of course, I have a notion of “respect” in which “you’re wrong, and here’s why” is more respectful than “eh, we basically believe the same things anyway; it’s all a matter of points-of-view,” since the former is respectful enough of one’s interlocutor to take what they’re saying seriously.
We wouldn’t expect parents to raise their children this way on any other moral issue.
Really? If so, this bodes poorly for my odds of reproductive success, given my not-at-all-tribally-aligned moral views.
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Well, for one thing, phrasing it as you did is essentially telling your kid “Pick sides, and whichever parent you don’t side with is going to be hurt and disappointed.” That’s not a very healthy emotional load to drop on a child.
For another thing, that is a cop-out when parents have strong beliefs. If Daddy is a neopagan who believes it’s important to honor the divine essence of the Goddess in all things, and Mommy is a militant atheist who thinks that believing religion at all is one step on the path to totalitarian stupidity, there’s not a lot of room for ‘oh, we just disagree and you can make up your own mind’, because you have parents who believe that a different choice may be actively harmful to their child. I mean, if Mommy thinks it’s OK to hit other kids and take their stuff because if they’re too weak to defend themselves they deserve it, and Daddy has a problem with that because he thinks it’s hugely immoral and going to lead to the kid getting in trouble at school and with the law, can we really expect Daddy to say “Well, honey, Mommy is wrong, but she’s not stupid, and you’ll have to make up your own mind if you agree with her” and leave it at that?
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Well, for one thing, phrasing it as you did is essentially telling your kid “Pick sides, and whichever parent you don’t side with is going to be hurt and disappointed.” That’s not a very healthy emotional load to drop on a child.
I don’t see it as “pick sides,” anymore than deciding what hobbies you like is picking sides. I hope that some or all of my kids will enjoy tabletop roleplaying, and will be a bit disappointed if none of them do, but that doesn’t mean I’m asking them to pick sides if by the time they reach college, they don’t have time to do that and [hobby their mother has, that she would like it if they carry on], and they have to choose on or the other. In fact, I would hope that they wouldn’t make the choice based on whose “side” they wanted to be on, but based on what they most enjoyed. And likewise, I’d hope that they’d choose their religious beliefs not based on which parent they most wanted to please, but on what made the most sense to them.
Regarding your second paragraph: Obviously, there are cases where the individuals moral convictions are too strongly conflicting (as I noted to Jiro, I wouldn’t want to raise kids with an Abrahamic, because of my moral objections to the Abrahamic faiths), but disagreement on strongly held beliefs does not have to imply strong moral condemnation.
Even on moral questions, I think that this attitude is feasible up to a point. Certainly, in the example you give, it is not. But if Daddy believes that you should always hit someone back who deliberately hits you first, and Mommy believes that you should warn them first, and hit them if they persist, then leaving it to the kid to work out what he believes is right may be possible.
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osberend: Presumably the religion says you should do X because, at a minimum, it asserts that you are better off if you do X. Why in the world would you as a parent want a child to decide between doing X and Y, where X leaves the child better off and Y leaves the child worse off, rather than just teaching the child to do X?
(And if your answer is “the child will learn for himself which one is better, remember that even lots of adults came to the incorrect conclusion about which one is better. A child could easily not figure it out.)
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The obvious answer, to my way of thinking, is this: If you offer your children a choice, then they will (likely) (a) consciously choose whether to do X, and possibly (b) consciously choose to do X, and if so will then also (c) do X. If you do not, they will mostly likely do (c), but not (a) or (b). It therefore makes perfect sense to offer them a choice if (a) and/or (b) is sufficiently large relative to (c)*.
*With appropriate weightings by the relevant probabilities; I could write it up formally, but I doubt that would actually increase the clarity of my position.
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osberend: “I like tabletop games, and Mommy likes rock climbing” is just having different hobbies. Telling your kids the other parent is wrong (while reassuring them that Mommy isn’t stupid), and emphasizing how disappointed you’ll be if they don’t agree with you – yeah, sorry, that’s dropping an emotional load to get the kid to side with you. It’s putting your thumb on the scales in an emotional way. Especially because it’s not really honest to say, on the one hand, ‘figure out what is best for you’, and then on the other hand to say ‘but of course if what you decide is best for you is Mommy’s approach, you’re wrongity wrong wrong and I’ll be disappointed, though not to the level of actually ceasing to love you.’
Negotiating those tough disagreements as parents is, well, tough, speaking from experience. But it isn’t fair to the kids to deal with that problem by punting it to them to figure out.
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I think that emphasizing disappointment is bad, but I think that’s different from being honest about the basic truth: They will make choices that disappoint you. That’s a given, it’s not the end of the world, and it doesn’t even necessarily mean that they should have done otherwise. It just means that they made a choice, and it disappointed you. And I think you can be honest about a particular choice falling into that category without emphasizing it in order to put an emotional load on them.
Negotiating those tough disagreements as parents is, well, tough, speaking from experience. But it isn’t fair to the kids to deal with that problem by punting it to them to figure out.
But ultimately, it is theirs to figure out, just as much so if you don’t present it to them as a choice. It’s just that if you don’t, they’ll probably punt on it, by just going with what you’ve told them. Since that’s a vicious thing to do, in matters of importance, you shouldn’t behave in such a way as will encourage them to do it.
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“Why in the world would you as a parent want a child to decide between doing X and Y, where X leaves the child better off and Y leaves the child worse off, rather than just teaching the child to do X?”
Its their life not mine. They can do with their lives what they wish to.
Also you don’t “know” X is better than Y. You THINK X is better than Y. Or you think X being better than Y has a higher probability than the reverse.
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“Its their life not mine. They can do with their lives what they wish to.”
“Also you don’t “know” X is better than Y. You THINK X is better than Y”
If I were to take these arguments literally, they imply that you shouldn’t teach your child anything at all. But obviously you do. Which means there are unspoken assumptions you are making about why what you say applies to religion but doesn’t apply to other things. What are they?
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On moral issues, again, we don’t really expect parents to take that approach with things they feel strongly about. “I think stealing is wrong, but if you grow up to be a thief, that’s your choice and I will still love you” is…bizarre, no? And kind of a cop-out.
And it’s particularly so in regard to religious beliefs precisely BECAUSE they are so important and emotionally charged for people. If you don’t particularly care about your faith tradition, then you wouldn’t need to tell your kids “mommy’s wrong and I’ll be disappointed if you don’t side with me.” But if you do, well. It’s a lot easier to put off those tough discussions with the excuse that ‘we’ll let the kids pick’ than to sit down and actually work through with your partner how each of you really feels about transmitting dearly-held morals and beliefs to your children, particularly if it’s impossible to actually square those beliefs.
I don’t think we’d have trouble recognizing guilt-tripping and avoidance if we were talking about other areas. “I really want you to be a doctor when you grow up. But if you decide that’s not for you, or if you want to be an engineer like Mommy, well, I’ll be disappointed. But I’ll still love you.” Uh….thanks?
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On moral issues, again, we don’t really expect parents to take that approach with things they feel strongly about. “I think stealing is wrong, but if you grow up to be a thief, that’s your choice and I will still love you” is…bizarre, no? And kind of a cop-out.
That seems like a fairly extreme example. What about effective altruism “I think it’s important morally to give value equal to at least 10% of your income to highly effective charities, but if you don’t, that’s ultimately your choice, and while I’ll be disappointed, I will still love you” strikes me as a perfectly reasonable attitude to take.
But moreover, as I noted in a response to Jiro, I’m operating under the assumption that consciously choosing to believe the right things has value independent of the value of simply believing the right things—and, indeed, that consciouly choosing what to believe in matters of importance has (some) value independent of whether you choose correctly.
If you don’t particularly care about your faith tradition, then you wouldn’t need to tell your kids “mommy’s wrong and I’ll be disappointed if you don’t side with me.”
Okay, so this is just reinforcing that my ability to predict what neurotypicals (or differently neurodivergent folks—I don’t actuall know which category you fall into) will infer from my statements is pretty damn poor.
I was not suggesting that one should sit one’s offspring down for the religious analogue to “the talk” and say the words that I put in quotes in various places. What I was suggesting is that that is the attitude one should have, and that one should be honest with one’s offspring about, as it becomes relevant.
So, no, I wouldn’t say, on my own initiative, “mommy’s wrong, and I’ll be dissappointed if you don’t side with me*.” I’d say “here’s what I believe, why I believe it, and why I hope you’ll believe it too” knowing that their mother will be doing the same thing. If we’ve done our job raising them remotely well, then they’re going to notice the contradiction at a pretty young age, and ask about it. That’s where “Mommy’s/Daddy’s just wrong. Sometimes, smart people can be wrong about things, even after talking about it with other smart people who are right, and this is one of those times” comes in.
And, knowing kids, they’ll probably ask (sooner or later) one or both parents how they’d feel if they chose the other parent’s faith. And honesty demands that the answer be something like “I’d be disappointed, of course. I believe, very strongly, that what I believe is right, and that believing it is virtuous, and because I love you, I want you to believe things that are right and that are virtuous to believe. But it’s your job to look out for your own virtue, and so if you believe that Mommy’s beliefs are right, not mine, then you ought to chose to follow them. And if you do that, I’ll be disappointed, yeah, but I’ll also be proud of you for doing what you believe is right, and I’ll still love you and think that you’re a good person.”
The same thing goes for other areas. Don’t lead with, “but if you do that, I’ll be disappointed,” but if the kid asks, be honest.
*Framing it in terms of siding with one parent or the other still strikes me as really fucking bizarre. I want my children to share my religious beliefs because I think they are right and virtuous, not in order to score some sort of points against my (currently hypothetical) spouse and/or society.
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“What about effective altruism “I think it’s important morally to give value equal to at least 10% of your income to highly effective charities, but if you don’t, that’s ultimately your choice, and while I’ll be disappointed, I will still love you” strikes me as a perfectly reasonable attitude to take.”
It seems like a perfectly reasonable attitude to take because when you’re actually donating, you believe in effective altruism, but when it comes time to teach your children, you don’t really alieve it. You alieve either that it’s unimportant, or that it’s not very likely to be true.
There’s a contradiction between “this is moral, and I’m certain of that” and “… but that’s just me,” even though a lot of people think that way.
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@Jiro: Or you *lieve in effective altruism, but also (a) *lieve that it is virtuous to consciously decide what one believes about morality, rather than blindly absorbing what your parents say, and (b) *lieve that failing to engage in effective altruism is bad, but not so bad that it rules out being a good person, or is a reason not to love someone whom one would otherwise love.
There’s a big gap between “unimportant” and “important enough that anyone missing it is reprobate.” Relatedly (I think), I’m not quite sure how you get from “this is what you should do, but whether you do what you should is beyond my power to control, and I won’t stop loving you if you decide wrong” to “. . . but that’s just me.”
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The question is whether it’s true.
Whether *what’s* true?
You’re assuming that religion has a specific ‘it’ that is either true (in which case you are religious!) or isn’t (in which case you’re an atheist!) and that’s…oversimplifying doesn’t even go there.
And “you can still go to the rituals!” is super condescending. You’re either telling people who follow faith-based rituals that those rituals have no value – just show up and pretend, like faking an orgasm, I guess? – or telling people who already practice rituals whose importance doesn’t depend on faith that what they’re doing is totally OK. Gee, thanks, I guess?
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> You’re assuming that religion has a specific ‘it’ that is either true…
As far as I understand, most religions would claim, at the very least, that some specific god exists — is that not correct ? I am aware of religions such as Buddhism (which has no gods as such) or Deism (which claims that a god did exist at some point but basically doesn’t now), but a). such religions are outliers, and b). they usually make some other factual claims.
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Obviously you can’t make blanket statements about the beliefs of everybody who identifies as a Buddhist, but in the most widely practiced forms of Buddhism (Vajrayana, Theravada, Dharmapala, Mahayana) involve believing in the existence of powerful supernatural beings who are essentially gods in every meaningful way. There are some Buddhists who’ve converted Buddhism into a secular practice, but they’re almost totally confined to the West and don’t tell us any more about Buddhism as a whole than the existence of “Catholic Atheists” tells us about Catholicism.
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Sure, but by that definition “it is true” gives no information whatsoever about who is more right in an argument between an atheist and a particular theist, while “it is false” is so hard to prove (or even to offer evidence for), that it’s really tempting to take stupid shortcuts.
This is not, by the way, a hypothetical. I’ve had to quit multiple “debate theism” groups when it because clear that most or all of the atheists in them felt that evidence against omnimax monotheism constituted evidence against theism generally (and, conversely, most of the theists felt that evidence for theism generally constituted evidence for omnimax monotheism).
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>>And “you can still go to the rituals!” is super condescending. You’re either telling people who follow faith-based rituals that those rituals have no value – just show up and pretend, like faking an orgasm, I guess? – or telling people who already practice rituals whose importance doesn’t depend on faith that what they’re doing is totally OK. Gee, thanks, I guess?
I think that’s addressed to religious people, who believe that the feeling of connection to community/ancient times in some rituals (e.g. christmas/easter night) depends on faith. But you can go to this rituals and get all this nice feelings also without believing in god. So that’s no reason to cling to a belief you would reject otherwise.
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Yes, I know it’s addressed to religious people. “Show up and say things you don’t believe because it’s still super fun!” is a bit clueless, to be charitable.
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How can you possibly be an existential nihilist and still believe in true things? Are you using “true” to mean something other than most people mean?
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That’s the irony, hypocrisy is essential to the functioning nihilist. One has to assign value to facts even if they don’t believe value exists.
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Perfectly sums up why I believe there is objective truth, including objective moral truth. Otherwise you’re either forced to be inconsistent or never say anything about anything.
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Saying that value is arbitrary is a different thing than saying nothing has value. My understanding is that nihilism means the former.
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Truth as an absolute value does seem sort of odd.
If you knew, with certainty, that a false belief spread through the population would improve the survival of a group you care about, wouldn’t you want to spread that belief? Can one not argument that that is exactly what some religions have been? Somebody probably needs to be assessing whether false beliefs are dangerous, but isn’t that what priests or priestly castes are for? What fraction of the upper ranks of clergy do you think don’t believe?
Also, our public health officials fib in the name of the greater good all the time. Look at the way the CDC argues for the flu vaccine, for instance. The flu kills a lot of people. About 40K a year. It’s mostly the elderly, however. The vaccine works *least* well on them. We need herd immunity to protect the old (and also the young who represents a smaller, but more tragic fraction of the deaths). The CDC does not frame their arguments in these terms.
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By and large, though, the CDC does not lie. It’s just very selective about what it does and doesn’t say.
When the CDC does actually lie (as in that abominable “one drink can harm your baby” campaign), I and many others oppose it, and the practical consequences tend to be pretty awful as well (in that case, a spike in the demand for early induced abortions).
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I’m not entirely sure about this. On the one hand, I personally benefit from not being an atheist. I was when I was younger, and it led to a whole bunch of existential dread, to the point that I didn’t do much of anything and was just upset all the time. Due to this, I made the decision that I would switch to being agnostic, and acknowledging that there was even a chance that there was something more allowed me to focus on other things. I figured that worrying about death and the point of life all the time wasn’t helping anyone, and if there is nothing more, being able to enjoy life was pretty important.
On the other hand, I can see why this is bad on a societal level. If everyone believes in an afterlife, they’re more likely to risk their own life and the lives of others. I imagine that if a majority of people felt that this life was it, people would be a lot more determined to avoid unnecessary death (so, war) and to put more effort into extending people’s lives.
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A countervailing effect is that the people who believe in an afterlife also believe in some sort of judgment. The prospect of facing punishment in the afterlife may discourage people from unnecessary killing just as much as the finality of death might. In fact, I’m sure you’ve heard religious people say exactly that.
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Some people who believe in an afterlife also believe it involves judgment (i.e. the Christian vision of hell); others don’t.
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You’re right, but at least in the case of war, there seems to be a trend of people twisting various religions to say that fighting for your country is your duty, so you’ll actually be rewarded. As for everyday life, it seems at least Christianity doesn’t take sinning too seriously, so long as you atone for it/confess. I can’t say much with regards to other religions, as I’m not that familiar with them. For that matter, I’m not all that familiar with Christianity either, so if i got that part wrong, sorry.
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I really don’t understand how people do the “this (factual, not moral, moral “beliefs” are different) belief is uncomfortable for me so I will change it” thing so… consciously. I’ve seen people say they believe in Heaven because they don’t want to cease to exist. I… How?
As to the belief in the afterlife making people risk death, I’ve said before that this is especially relevant in regards to transhumanism. If you believe in the afterlife life extension is not a high priority. If not, beating aging is pretty damn urgent.
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Well, just doing it directly is not easy. But that’s true for moral beliefs as well. In both cases, the practical approach is essentialy habitual: You consciously do and think things that reinforce the beliefs you want to have, and avoid doing and thinking things that reinforce the beliefs you don’t have (and do and think things that challenge those beliefs and/or simply dismiss them as silly, if and when they arise anyway), until it becomes natural, and you no longer need to think about it.
This proably sounds horrifying from a rationalist standpoint, but bear in mind that the same method works from bringing stubborn aliefs* into line with one’s rational conclusions.
*Assuming that I am understanding the term correctly, which I am about 80% confident of.
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I can’t speak for everyone. For me, it basically went in steps, and I think at this point it’s more a matter of being optimistic. I kind of simplified it in my previous post.
Either way, at first, I just tried to distract myself and not think about anything related to death. Kind of like how osberend said, I just got in the habit of stopping any line of thought that was headed in that direction. It didn’t work very well, so then I just tried to convince myself through other theories. The one I remember best is the theory of conservation of energy. Basically, I told myself that maybe people do actually have souls, and if we do, they would have to go somewhere. I was probably 13 at the time, had a very basic understanding of the theory, and grew up around a lot of people who definitely believed in souls (and a few who thought dinosaurs were a conspiracy), so it wasn’t too difficult.
Now, I tend to kind of go between those two. I try to not spend a whole bunch of time dwelling on this stuff, and I try to be optimistic when I do. By that, I mean, “Hey, our understanding of the universe is fairly limited, so there’s a possibility something like an afterlife exists, and I will focus on that for my own mental health.” Still, it’s more something I remind myself of than something I firmly believe in. I still think we should be putting more effort into extending life, and if somebody offered me immortality I wouldn’t exactly spend time wondering if some higher power disapproved.
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Religion major here. I recommend getting to know Ninian Smart’s seven dimensions of religion (http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Suydam/Reln101/Sevendi.htm). I think what a lot of people fail to understand is that religion isn’t just a belief in the supernatural. In many places, it’s part and parcel of a whole cultural system. Boiling it down to “magical sky fairy” rhetoric is, in my opinion, a weak man.
While some religious people do rely on the “magical sky fairy” for the basis of their creed, other people (and even whole traditions) actually de-emphasize belief, prioritizing instead other cultural attributes. Compiling all of that under the heading “religion” and declaring it all factually untrue seems uncharitable to me.
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A friend of mine jokes that ‘internet atheists’ and evangelical Christians agree on exactly one thing: that the only real religion is evangelical Christianity. Being an atheist does not, unfortunately get rid of cultural blinders and short-sightedness in all other respects.
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I’ll have to remember that formulation; it’s nicely pithy.
I experienced that phenomenon directly when I decided to join a facebook “atheism vs. theism” group. Eventually, I gave up and quit, after realizing that not only did most people not even recognize my beliefs as an option, but the vast majority of those had no interest in changing that attitude, even once reminded.
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The problem is often not the supernatural, it is very much in the revealed attribute of any aspect of the religious creed and practice. The belief is baked in, even if t is not necessary for the everyday practice.
Your link does not contradict that, or even support what you are saying in your comment.
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I don’t mean for my link to contradict anything, but rather to broaden the definition of what people think of as “religion”. The concept has so many aspects that it seems…bizarre, at least, to call the whole thing “factually incorrect”. It seems especially bizarre to apply correctness to a cultural practice or individual experience. If Ozy wants to call the belief *behind* those things “factually incorrect”, then that’s fine. But they seem a bit muddled on what, exactly, they are referring to with the term “religion”.
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Considering the tone of the comments, maybe people would be interested in this recent article by Maarten Boudry: The Relentless Retreat: God in the Age of Science. It’s a review and discussion of the central arguments of a recent book by Kelly James Clark, Religion and the Sciences of Origins.
(via Jerry Coyne’s blog, WEIT)
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“Christianity, if it is false, is of no importance. But if it is true, it is of infinite importance.”
— C. S. Lewis
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Rubbish. Christianity, if it is false—and it is—is still of great importance, because many people believe that it is true. Consequently, they hold false moral and spiritual beliefs, which lead them to do vicious deeds, and not to do virtuous ones.
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Substitute just about any faith tradition for ‘Christianity’ and the statement is true – yet Lewis applied this test only to his own Christianity.
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Angry Spiritual Rant-Question of My Own:
Why is this debate always framed in terms of being an atheist or believing in “religion”? I mean, I consider myself a believing person (I am not an atheist), but, while I do observe Jewish holidays (as a way of honoring my history and my family as much as anything), I find the idea of a single, exclusively true, patently necessary organized religion to be… deeply odd at best? Like, maybe it’s because my personal beliefs hold that things like prayer and ritual and even faith itself are for the ones doing them, and if those don’t “click” for you or help you to be a kinder, gentler, more giving and more fulfilled person, then just…don’t do them? And do the things that *do* work for you?
This is why my faith has no missionaries and no proseltyzing (although I’ll admit, being raised in a non-evangelizing faith tradition probably helped me get here).
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Your faith has (almost) no missionaries and no proselytizing partially because it’s tribal, but mostly because it has a long history of being subject to rulers of other faiths who took Jewish proselytism poorly. The Jews have certainly engaged in proselytism at certain points in history, with the conversion of the ruling class of Khazar Khaghanate being their greatest coup.
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Erm, that is, assuming that when you say “my faith,” you mean Judaism. Re-reading your comment, that seems less clear that it did when I read it the first time.
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I was actually referring to my personal set of beliefs, not to Judaism, which I consider more of my culture/ethnicity. 🙂
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Believing in a religion commits one to following certain rules and believing some things about the universe (e.g. miracles, the existence of a soul, an afterlife or reincarnation, etc). Either these things are correct or they aren’t.
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That’s not actually what i was referring to. I was simply talking about how it annoys me that spirituality debates are almost universally framed as a choice between being an atheist, or believing in a pre-existing organized religion (VERY occasionally, someone will name-drop agnosticism). And… no. Those are not the only options.
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Thanks for actually making her original point.
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“it annoys me that spirituality debates are almost universally framed as a choice between being an atheist, or believing in a pre-existing organized religion”
That’s because those are very popular options. Occasionally someone will mention the “spiritual, but not religious” position, but in many respects that’s similar to organized religion – it makes supernatural claims, and sometimes ethical claims as well.
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@blacktrance: SBNR is a load of shit as a concept, but there remains another option: To found you own religion, having a membership of one (unless and until you can manage to convert others), on the basis of those religious ideas which make sense to you. This is what I have done, and it amazes me that more people people do not do the same.
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Dogmatic adherence to beliefs is more of an Abrahamic thing….you are tacitly defining religion as western religion.
SBNR seems like quite a coherent position to me: it means that, unlike the rationalist, you are prepared to entertain supernatural beliefs, but unlike the religionist, you are prepared to abandon or revise them.
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I think what you are missing here is the recursive process of thought and action. Some people call it self fulfilling prophecies, some people call it faith. It’s not a belief per se, rather a process that leads you into the future, where the things happen as you predicted. It’s where your state of mind is an important part of the plan and hard to separate from it. By saying “factually wrong” you omit the problem with implementing the plan on faulty hardware (to put it in LW words).
So, while being an atheist, I don’t think Dawkins is right that religion is a memetic disease. I think at it’s core it has always been a process to achieve greater conciousness, whether by structuring internal dialogue by talking to “a god”, sharing those techniques or meditation. Some of those movements might have been successfully overtaken by religious leaders and that’s surely a disadvantage.
In conclusion, I think “not factually true” is not a good strategy to convince people out of religion. It’s better to find common ground around techniques for greater consciousness and show understanding the process of “god” from the outside.
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I disagree with the notion that belief in god doesn’t hurt people. If you were raised religious and later become an atheist, you will lack the emotional tools to deal with life’s nastier side. Teaching people to emotionally lean on the notion of god means not teaching them coping strategies that work without god. Also, there are many people (including atheists) that implicitly buy into the notion that “spiritual” things, things we tend to connect with belief in god (e.g. meaning of life, compassion for others, etc.) are unatainable without belief in god.
The multiple ways in which religious belief hurts people are made worse by the fact that most (widespread) religions demand you indoctrinate other people, including people whose minds are vulnerable and are helpless to defend themselves.
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A few of these don’t deserve the amount of criticism you give. I disagree with the idea that religions are inherently authoritarian, for example, but I don’t believe that anyone who makes such an argument is automatically a douchebag. Similarly, I think it’s okay if someone argues that religion does not actually make people any happier or more comforted. Such arguments may or may not be correct. But it’s not the case that they’re just so rude we should automatically ignore them.
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“Don’t believe unless you have evidence” is good advice in the domain of facts, but terrible advice in the domain of values. Values are pre commitments, ways of bringing about desired results, not passive reflections of what has already occurred.
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