R-E-S-P-E-C-T: It's for People, not Beliefs

"Test everything, hold fast to what is good" - 1 Thessalonians 5 21-22

Douglas Adams, hilariously hyperbolic humorist and author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, once attended a conference called Digital Biota 2, where he stood up and gave a impromptu, rambling, and altogether brilliant talk. People still read and quote it today, years after his death.

One of the topics he covers is the way people tiptoe around other people's religious beliefs:

Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That's an idea we're so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it's kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? - because you're not!' If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it, but on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'Fine, I respect that'.

He goes on to say:

It's rather like, if you think back in terms of animal evolution, an animal that's grown an incredible carapace around it, such as a tortoise - that's a great survival strategy because nothing can get through it; or maybe like a poisonous fish that nothing will come close to, which therefore thrives by keeping away any challenges to what it is it is. In the case of an idea, if we think 'Here is an idea that is protected by holiness or sanctity', what does it mean? Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows, but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe, no, that's holy? What does that mean? Why do we ring-fence that for any other reason other than that we've just got used to doing so?

This question has been nagging at me lately. I absolutely agree with him that the best way to find the truth is to test and question every idea. Whatever ideas can survive the questioning are the ones most likely to be true or useful. But if questioning is essential, how do we approach religion? Religious people can be very attached to traditional religious answers to big, important questions like, "Where do we come from", or "How should we act?" Those who question those ideas can face a backlash. Once they were burned at the stake, and they still face violent reprisals and arrest in many parts of the world. Such backlash is just one reason people avoid questioning religion, but it's a pretty compelling one.

These days, it's not just Christianity that gets this kind of deference. Lots of secular liberals have a knee-jerk respect for most of the world's religions. That comes from an admirable impulse to avoid ethnocentrism, but it can be problematic, too. A while back, for example, I was reading about how Bob Marley died. He had found a melanoma on his toe, but when doctors advised him to have it amputated, he refused, saying it was contrary to his Rastafarian beliefs. He died of cancer at the age of 36. People praise him for being brave enough to stick to his beliefs in the face of death. I even had the same reaction at first. And then I thought, "Well, yeah, it was brave, but it was also a tragic waste of a brilliant life." If he had stopped to question why it should be taboo to amputate a cancerous toe, he might have stayed alive these last 32 years.

When people react to such stories with approval, rather than sadness, it shows that they're respecting people's beliefs more than their actual lives. And that's perverse. Beliefs have no feelings, no hopes, no family...people do. Beliefs aren't the kind of entities that deserve dignity and respect. People are. Life is precious, not belief.

When so many beliefs in this world are both wrong and harmful, being deferential to them is a luxury we can't afford, and that includes religious beliefs. But that doesn't mean we should start ridiculing religion willy-nilly, the way a lot of people in the secular humanist/atheist/skeptic movement do these days. There's no reason you can't question somebody's religious beliefs politely (unless questioning them at all is considered impolite, and that's what needs to be changed). Questioning is essential for all ideas, not just religious ones. But it can be done considerately: by trying to understand and respect people's feelings...and remembering they have every right to question your beliefs, too. Fair is fair.

But having a frank, respectful discussion of religion can be especially tricky. One thing secular types like Douglas Adams and myself forget is that religious people see the things they believe in as real and deserving of respect--even worship. To a secular person, God is an abstract idea. To a believer, God is the supreme creator and ruler of the universe, who loves them and watches over them. They may see any questioning of God or other sacred things, like sacred texts and rituals, as disrepectful to God; as sacrilege or blasphemy. Secular people have a hard time understanding blasphemy: how can an abstract idea be insulted? But to religious people, that abstract idea is very real. Maybe they're even right. But if the ideas that can survive our questioning are the ones that are true, and God is a real, all-knowing, all-powerful being, then he should have no trouble weathering our puny little human questions.

Ideas have to be questioned. It's the only way to figure out which ones are true. Such questioning might be the chief engine of human progress (a twin engine is compassion). But we can do our questioning with respect--not for the ideas themselves, but for the people who hold them. One reason to be respectful is simply practical: if you want someone to seriously consider what you're saying, the last thing you want to do is offend them. Sometimes you truly can't help offending people, but the less you do, the more likely they are to listen. The other reason to be respectful is that most people--religious and otherwise--really do deserve respect. When I think about the people I admire most in this world, some of them are atheists, and some of them are devoutly religious. I know truly great people in both camps, and at many points in between. I know people on both sides whose compassion and selflessness I find awe-inspiring. When I write this, I hope some of the religious people I admire will read it, too, so I'm trying to show them the respect they deserve.

I don't always succeed, of course. I get mad and scathing. I forget that the point of having a discussion is to get at the truth, not to win the argument or show off my debating skills. I let my ego get in the way of productive debate, and try to back people into embarrassing logical corners. Then I feel bad about it later, unless they're absolute jackasses, and then I really don't. Maybe I should anyway. I'm only human, though, and I still have a lot to learn from wiser people than myself--religious and otherwise.

My point is that we need to change how we conceptualize respect for other people's opinions. Maybe true respect is best shown by having an honest, civil discussion, with no taboo topics. After all, are you really respecting someone's intellect when there are topics you avoid, for fear of giving offense? I don't think so. I think polite honesty can be more more respectful than deferential silence. Besides, as I've been saying, beliefs don't deserve respect. People do, and that's why it's possible to question a person's beliefs while respecting them as a person. In fact, it's not just possible. It's essential. There's not much hope for humanity if we stop questioning old beliefs and looking for better ones. But there's also not much hope if we forget to treat each other with respect.
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http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/

Euthyphro's Dilemma: Why You Don't Have to Be Religious to Be Moral

In the last few years, the secularist movement has gained a lot of ground. When asked what religion they belong to, more and more people are responding "none", and so the demographers have dubbed them "Nones". I'm one of them. I'm not an in-your-face atheist in the mold of Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, but I do read books and follow organizations associated with atheism and secular humanism. But I don't identify with the movement completely, and there are things about it I don't like. First, most of the humanist organizations seem to take it for granted that all their members are atheists, which grates on me, because I'm not. Second, most of them have far too many members who love to ridicule religious people. I think that's generally both disrespectful and counterproductive (though I admit I've done it with some true wackadoodles, like Pat Robertson). Third, I don't like the idea of identifying myself in terms of what I'm not, or what I don't believe in. I'd rather focus on what I do believe in.

Still, I do identify with the secular movement enough to be sensitized to something: lots of religious people assume you can't be moral if you aren't religious. As a non-religious person, I don't much appreciate that. I don't like the idea that I can't be good or moral. Not only is it insulting and prejudicial, it's not true. I'm actually a pretty decent sort, and so are a many other non-religious people. It's just that we base our morality on different foundations than most religious people.

Still, I do understand the "morality requires religion" line of reasoning. The argument is that if morality comes from God, and if you aren't a true believer, then you can't really be moral, since you have nothing to base morality on. That seems to make sense at first, but I think it's misguided for at least two reasons. One is that there's a lot of evidence that people have a complex sense of morality as a result of evolving as an intelligent social animal. That doesn't mean our moral sense always tells us what is really good and right (often it doesn't) but it does explain where our moral sense comes from. The second reason it's wrong is that it's logically incoherent to think that morality is ultimately based on God's will.

Here's why, and I think this is surely one of the most important philosophical ideas ever put forth (it's called the Euthyphro Dilemma, because it comes from a dialogue between Socrates and a man named Euthyphro).

If you say that morality is based on what God wills, that raises the following question: does God will it because of some independent standard of what is moral, or is what is moral simply whatever God says is moral? Many people would say they believe the second option, but only the first actually makes sense. If you think that what is moral is whatever God says is moral, then you would have to agree that if God said that, for example, torturing babies was moral, it would be. But practically nobody would think that, which means they do think there's a standard of morality independent of God. Now, you could say that God is good, so he would never will something bad, but that also shows you believe in a standard of goodness independent of God. 

The Euthyphro Dilemma doesn't (necessarily) mean God is irrelevant to morality, but it does mean that when we ask what makes things good or bad, or right or wrong, saying "because God says so" is not a sufficient answer. So, whether you're religious or not, if you want to seriously think about morality, you have to think about why something is good or bad, apart from God's will, or some "because I said so" command in the Bigle. It's not enough to say something is wrong or right. We have to grapple with why it's wrong or right. Some people might think we still have to rely on God to tell us what is moral, even if there's a standard of morality other than his will, because he knows that standard better than we do. Maybe, but I don't think so (for reasons I don't have time to get into here). I think we have to use compassion, evidence, and reason to decide what is right and what is wrong, and those things are just as available non-religious people as religious people. 

It's true that people might behave better if they believe in divine punishments and rewards (unless they believe they will gain divine reward by doing something awful--and we all know that happens), but such beliefs won't make people more intrinsically moral. If you're only good because “God says so”, or because of the anticipation of rewards and punishments, then you're actually not very good. Good behavior is great, but it's a lot better to be good because we truly feel it's the right thing to do. People who can do that have a true sense of morality, whether they are religious or not.

What Is and What Ought to Be: Speaking Freely About the Big Questions

Sometimes I think all serious questions in life are just variations of two basic Big Questions. Big Question One is "What is true?" and Big Question Two is, "What is good or right?" Put another way, the Big Questions are: 1. What is? 2. What ought to be? For years, I was more interested in Big Question One. I wanted to figure out the basic facts about what reality was like, so I read all about science, history, and other fact-oriented fields. I even tried to write a humongous book attempting to tie the most important facts together in a coherent narrative. Nobody wanted to read it, of course, but I put it online just in case.

After all that time pondering Big Question One, it ocurred to me that I had mostly forgotten to consider a whole other dimension of life; Big Question Two. So, in the last couple of years I've gotten fascinated by the second Big Question, and thought a lot about the foundations of morality and ethics. I want to know what determines what's good and bad, and what's right or wrong. On what basis can we decide how to behave, and how to treat others? This blog has mostly turned into an exploration of those questions.

With both Big Questions, however, if you want to think and write about them, and discuss them with other people (and that is essential) then before long you'll run smack into religion, and then things get touchy. In this country, a majority of people try to answer one or both questions by turning to their Christian faith. Of course, Christianity is diverse, and the Bible is big, complex, and subject to a wide range of interpretations, so different Christians answer those questions in a different ways. Some think we were literally created in God's image sometime in the last few thousand years, while others think scientists are basically right about evolution and the age of the universe, but still think God's ultimately in charge. Some Christians think homosexuality--to take a currently contentious example--is wrong because of things the Bible says, while others think the negative passages about homosexuality should be dismissed as belonging to an ancient, pre-scientific, and rather cruel culture.

Since I live in a country with a large Christian majority, if I want to write openly and honestly about the Big Questions that interest me, I can't avoid discussing the traditional Christian answers to those questions. That's why I end up talking about religion a lot in this blog. I'm interested in morality, which is bound up with religion in most people's minds, and in science, which is often at odds with religion, at least when it comes to more literalist branches of Christianity. In both cases, I usually disagree with the conservative Christian interpretations of these things, and sometimes even the liberal Christian interpretations.

And these aren't trivial disagreements, like disagreeing about whether licorice tastes good or not (it doesn't--it's gross). These are disagreements about things that matter. It matters that people think gay people shouldn't be able to marry, or that global warming can't happen, because of their interpretation of the Bible. Those beliefs determine their actions, and their actions affect others. So I find myself at odds with conservative Christianity a lot of the time, even though I respect some conservative Christians a great deal (I'm planning to blog about the respect issue soon). 

Another reason I talk about religion a lot is that I think it's important for people in a country with freedom of speech to actually speak freely, so I've been much more open lately about being non-religious. These are Big Questions, after all. The answers are important; important enough that if I think some of the dominant religious answers are wrong, and even harmful, then I can't just keep my mouth shut about it for fear of offending the religious. To do so, I think, would be immoral. Which brings me to my next post.