Is the Left Hostile to Religion?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Is the Left Hostile to Religion?

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Surely you can think of a few examples where religious people have been motivated into highly moral acts by their religion.

# ? Mar 10, 2017 23:48

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# ? May 11, 2024 10:58

Shbobdb: Dec 16, 2010; by Reene

When it happens, it's usually in spite of not because of religion.

I'm having a hard time thinking about one motivated by religion. I'm sure you'll go straight to MLK and Gandhi but while their language was clearly religious I can't say they were motivated by religion. You don't fight against oppression because of religion (if anything, religious teachings normalize and enable oppression). And for every abolitionist Quaker you've got ten Baptists saying the slavery is a divine institution.

But what about those "good ones," the minority of seemingly motivated religious good people? So what? Liberal churches bleed membership like crazy because religion is necessarily hostile to leftism.

It's like Hillary going after suburban Republicans. You have a hostile group that is not going to get on board with the program and catering to them will alienate allies.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 00:20

Bolocko: Oct 19, 2007

So, if they were motivated to do bad, they were motivated by religion, and if they were motivated to do good, they were not motivated by religion?

quote:

I'm having a hard time thinking about one motivated by religion.

You can't come up with ONE? This isn't an indictment of religion; you're feeling around in darkness to wring the neck of a straw man's straw hat.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 00:35

Shbobdb: Dec 16, 2010; by Reene

Bolocko posted:

So, if they were motivated to do bad, they were motivated by religion, and if they were motivated to do good, they were not motivated by religion?

Is it any surprise that institutions that teach xenophobia, tribalism, anti-modernism and tradition end up resulting in people more right wing? That's the system working as intended.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 01:09

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Shbobdb are you saying everything that's not leftist is bad? That the only way to be good is to be leftist?

What about charity work, aid work? Random acts of kindness? The good kind of pro-life activism, e.g. the church stopping Nazi euthanasia? What do you think of these?

# ? Mar 11, 2017 01:42

TomViolence: Feb 19, 2013; PLEASE ASK ABOUT MY 80,000 WORD WALLACE AND GROMIT SLASH FICTION. PLEASE.

Shbobdb posted:

When it happens, it's usually in spite of not because of religion.

This old chestnut. "Oh, sure, there were religious people who did good things, but the worldview leading them to do such good things was in no way informed by their devout religious faith that they built much of their life around, no sir."

If we discard the possibility of religion motivating people to do good things, why are we suddenly to embrace the idea that religion motivates them to do bad?

# ? Mar 11, 2017 03:07

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

Cingulate posted:

Still: non-secular states have problems with tolerance. Surely religious people tend towards religious governments and laws; never mind that amongst the religions that currently exist and play big enough of a role to become candidates for governing major states, biases and rejection of groups like women or sexual minorities are widespread.
So you'd first have to found a new religion that's not like that, or grow a minor super tolerant one. How does the history of the middle east show that?

It's not shocking that when explicit preference for one group (whether it's white people, Catholics, Muslims, or Orthodox Jews) is openly written into a country's laws, that country tends to have issues with giving equal treatment to other groups. It's not a 1:1 correlation (after all, the US has had serious issues with oppression of Muslims despite its strong separation of church and state), but a commitment to equality means not giving preference to any set of beliefs - including atheism.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 04:07

Avalerion: Oct 19, 2012

One shouldn't need religion to know that charity and giving to the poor is good, those are things that are generally seen as positive and encouraged even by atheists and other secular groups. The twist is that religion also encourages things like bashing gays and picketing clinics, and it does that by convincing the people that doing those things is also good and necessary.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 08:09

Shbobdb: Dec 16, 2010; by Reene

Cingulate posted:

Shbobdb are you saying everything that's not leftist is bad? That the only way to be good is to be leftist?

Yes, absolutely.

quote:

What about charity work, aid work? Random acts of kindness? The good kind of pro-life activism, e.g. the church stopping Nazi euthanasia? What do you think of these?

The bolded portion is hardly restricted to religion. And religion tends to overly complicate them. Was Mother Theresa's aid work in Indian better than secular groups like MSF?

On the latter, when you have to reach for the Nazis (one of the most evil regimes in history) for an example of "good" religious people your argument might not be as strong as you'd like.

In the modern world and throughout history religious institutions have been willing handmaidens to the most reactionary regimes. The juice of "what about these weird and rare outliers" is absolutely not worth the squeeze of day-to-day injustice. Including injustices on a massive scale.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 09:03

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Main Paineframe posted:

a commitment to equality means not giving preference to any set of beliefs - including atheism.

I don't believe this is a thing.

There's some people who've turned being atheist into a quasi-religious identity, but they're very few. But for atheism in itself, it's in practice just being neutral, and can't be given preference to in the same sense one could prefer a religion.

Avalerion posted:

One shouldn't need religion to know that charity and giving to the poor is good

Shbobdb posted:

The bolded portion is hardly restricted to religion

Yes, that is true - but what I was asking is if you can think of any good acts that were up to that person's religion.
What I'm going for is, billions and billions of people have been religious, and a lot of them were very smart, and a lot of these have tried to claim that religion is a force for good, some even that only with religion can one be good and moral. Now you and I agree these people were wrong: on average, religion is probably more of a negative influence than a positive. But I think if you can't even say anything good about religion at all - then it seems to me your critique is not a fair one. That it is so one-sided, it probably comes from a very ignorant position.

Shbobdb posted:

Mother Theresa's aid work in Indian

Actually I'm with Hitchens on this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65JxnUW7Wk4

Shbobdb posted:

Yes, absolutely.

I think a more pluralistic, more complicated view of the ethics of humanity is probably more realistic, and also more fair. Looking at how messy the world is, ways to be good are probably distributed all over humanity.

Shbobdb posted:

On the latter, when you have to reach for the Nazis (one of the most evil regimes in history) for an example of "good" religious people your argument might not be as strong as you'd like.

In the modern world and throughout history religious institutions have been willing handmaidens to the most reactionary regimes. The juice of "what about these weird and rare outliers" is absolutely not worth the squeeze of day-to-day injustice. Including injustices on a massive scale.

Aren't the Nazi crimes more an example of how 1. being religious doesn't reliably prevent one from being really bad, 2. being not religious (Hitler was maybe spiritual, but he wasn't particularly church-aligned!) isn't required to be really terrible?
And then you go to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th place on the list of really terrible people and you have atheist Pol Pot, atheist Stalin, atheist Mao. A lot of people read this as a convincing condemnation of leftism. And I don't, but at least we should take from this that the world is a bit more complex. That if your way of thinking has everything good turn on your side, and the other side is all bad, then you're probably not being realistic.

I know I'm not making an actual argument against any of your claims - I'm making a much broader, vague suggestion. I'm not saying "you are wrong for this and this reason", I'm saying, I think you should critically reflect on your views, be a bit relativistic about them. Cause being absolutist has a very bad track record, both politically and epistemically.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 11:58

Commie NedFlanders: Mar 8, 2014

Unfortunately yes. I think this is a major flaw with 20th century Marxist projects.

This is from official Soviet handbook "the ABCs of Communism"

quote:

'Religion is the opium of the people,' said Karl Marx. It is the task of the Communist Party to make this truth comprehensible to the widest possible circles of the labouring masses. It is the task of the party to impress firmly upon the minds of the workers, even upon the most backward, that religion has been in the past and still is today one of the most powerful means at the disposal of the oppressors for the maintenance of inequality, exploitation, and slavish obedience on the part of the toilers.
Many weak-kneed communists reason as follows: 'Religion does not prevent my being a communist. I believe both in God and in communism. My faith in God does not hinder me from fighting for the cause of the proletarian revolution.'
This train of thought is radically false. Religion and communism are incompatible, both theoretically and practically.
Every communist must regard social phenomena (the relationships between human beings, revolutions, wars, etc.) as processes which occur in accordance with definite laws. The laws of social development have been fully established by scientific communism on the basis of the theory of historical materialism which we owe to our great teachers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This theory explains that social development is not brought about by any kind of supernatural forces. Nay more. The same theory has demonstrated that the very idea of God and of supernatural powers arises at a definite stage in human history, and at another definite stage begins to disappear as a childish notion which finds no confirmation in practical life and in the struggle between man and nature. But it is profitable to the predatory class to maintain the ignorance of the people and to maintain the people's childish belief in miracles (the key to the riddle really lies in the exploiters' pockets), and this is why religious prejudices are so tenacious, and why they confuse the minds even of persons who are in other respects able.
The general happenings throughout nature are, moreover, in no wise dependent upon supernatural causes. Man has been extremely successful in the struggle with nature. He influences nature in his own interests, and controls natural forces, achieving these conquests, not thanks to his faith in God and in divine assistance, but in spite of this faith. He achieves his conquests thanks to the fact that in practical life and in all serious matters he invariably conducts himself as an atheist. Scientific communism, in its judgements concerning natural phenomena, is guided by the data of the natural sciences, which are in irreconcilable conflict with all religious imaginings.
In practice, no less than in theory, communism is incompatible with religious faith. The tactic of the Communist Party prescribes for the members of the party definite lines of conduct. The moral code of every religion in like manner prescribes for the faithful some definite line of conduct. For example, the Christian code runs: 'Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.' In most cases there is an irreconcilable conflict between the principles of communist tactics and the commandments of religion. A communist who rejects the commandments of religion and acts in accordance with the directions of the party, ceases to be one of the faithful. On the other hand, one who, while calling himself a communist, continues to cling to his religious faith, one who in the name of religious commandments infringes the prescriptions of the party, ceases thereby to be a communist.
The struggle with religion has two sides, and every communist must distinguish clearly between them. On the one hand we have the struggle with the church, as a special organization existing for religious propaganda, materially interested in the maintenance of popular ignorance and religious enslavement. On the other hand we have the struggle with the widely diffused and deeply ingrained prejudices of the majority of the working population.

As a Marxist anti-capitalist & practicing Christian I think this was a terrible mistake. I can definitely understand how organized religion can and has been used as a tool of oppression but I think it's a grave overreach to assume any faith is necessarily counter-revolutionary.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 12:56

Avalerion: Oct 19, 2012

Cingulate posted:

Yes, that is true - but what I was asking is if you can think of any good acts that were up to that person's religion.

It does come back to the "science vs religion" thing again, religion does motivate some, maybe even a lot of good, but it does so on the basic of dogma or divine decree rather than arriving at it's conclusions logically. Someone giving to charity because god says so is good, but doing so because you rationalize that it's the right thing to do or good for society would be, in my opinion, even better.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 13:12

doverhog: May 31, 2013; Defender of democracy and human rights 🇺🇦

Charity in general is bad, and mainly a way for the rich to justify not paying more taxes. Social services need to be comprehensive, and funded with mandatory taxation, so that you don't need charity.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 16:41

Bolocko: Oct 19, 2007

Avalerion posted:

Someone giving to charity because god says so is good, but doing so because you rationalize that it's the right thing to do or good for society would be, in my opinion, even better.

You might be surprised at how uncontroversial this is with a few tweaks with the language. This is part of what Jesus is emphasizing in his Sermon on the Mount when he says that a person who looks on a woman lustfully has already committed the sin of adultery in his heart. In Saint Gregory the Great's Moralia he has a good passage echoing this (concerning goodness more generally), pointing out that those who do good works just to be seen doing them are still blameworthy, and "As long as [people] still do good works out of fear, however, they do not yet avoid evil; for they sin by the very fact that they would sin if they could do so without punishment." In Christianity (and in Islam, Judaism, etc) intention is crucial, even if in contemporary American contexts this is often shrugged off.

doverhog posted:

Charity in general is bad, and mainly a way for the rich to justify not paying more taxes. Social services need to be comprehensive, and funded with mandatory taxation, so that you don't need charity.

Or, charity is good? Charity doesn't preclude organization in services. Taxation is involved because people are not reliably charitable, but this doesn't mean charity itself is bad, just that people can be. This is a weird secularized inverse of the above, where instead of a people formed to do the right thing you want a people forced to do it.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 18:17

TomViolence: Feb 19, 2013; PLEASE ASK ABOUT MY 80,000 WORD WALLACE AND GROMIT SLASH FICTION. PLEASE.

Philanthropy isn't bad in and of itself, it's just symptomatic of the state's inadequacy, unwillingness and inability to tackle the problems it causes or indeed uses to justify its own existence. Ideally there shouldn't exist enough wealth disparity in a society that philanthropy is viable, necessary or desirable to undertake.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 18:23

doverhog: May 31, 2013; Defender of democracy and human rights 🇺🇦

Bolocko posted:

Or, charity is good? Charity doesn't preclude organization in services. Taxation is involved because people are not reliably charitable, but this doesn't mean charity itself is bad, just that people can be. This is a weird secularized inverse of the above, where instead of a people formed to do the right thing you want a people forced to do it.

Yes, I want people to be forced to do it. The same way they are forced to not murder. If religion wants to put a God stamp on it, fine. Laws are made by people to force other people to do things, such as pay taxes.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 18:27

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Commie NedFlanders posted:

Unfortunately yes. I think this is a major flaw with 20th century Marxist projects.

My dad's a socialist, and a priest, so this runs very much close to home. I'm an atheist and no longer much of a socialist, but I still really emphasize with a lot of this.

doverhog posted:

Charity in general is bad, and mainly a way for the rich to justify not paying more taxes. Social services need to be comprehensive, and funded with mandatory taxation, so that you don't need charity.

Ok, but I as an individual cannot personally redistribute other's money. So long as we don't have Full Communism, is it truly bad if I send some of my money to prevent kids in Africa going blind?

Avalerion posted:

It does come back to the "science vs religion" thing again, religion does motivate some, maybe even a lot of good, but it does so on the basic of dogma or divine decree rather than arriving at it's conclusions logically. Someone giving to charity because god says so is good, but doing so because you rationalize that it's the right thing to do or good for society would be, in my opinion, even better.

I'm very open to this kind of discussion - are you truly being altruistic and morally praiseworthy if you give stuff to the poor only because you're 100% convinced you will be rewarded for it in the afterlife? Shouldn't Kant say that as the religious person knows their altruism will be rewarded, their altruism is never truly moral, because it is not selfishly conducted due to an insight into what is good, but always knowing that heaven waits?, but I think you're being a bit reductionistic here.
Surely you can imagine there are Christians who have been motivated into charitable acts not so much because of the promised rewards or because of doctrine, but because e.g.
- they are inspired by the image of Jesus or of biblical stories of charitable acts
- the Bible's message of one humanity made in God's image resonates with them
- they have been brought up into a loving, stable community of religious people who have instilled into them a belief that people should be there for each other, much like the early Christians

doverhog posted:

Yes, I want people to be forced to do it. The same way they are forced to not murder. If religion wants to put a God stamp on it, fine. Laws are made by people to force other people to do things, such as pay taxes.

Don't you think this kind of thought - forcing people not only to abstain from damaging the community, but forcing people to actively contribute to the good of society, has a really bad track record?

# ? Mar 11, 2017 19:23

doverhog: May 31, 2013; Defender of democracy and human rights 🇺🇦

Cingulate posted:

Don't you think this kind of thought - forcing people not only to abstain from damaging the community, but forcing people to actively contribute to the good of society, has a really bad track record?

No.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 19:26

Avalerion: Oct 19, 2012

Cingulate posted:

Surely you can imagine there are Christians who have been motivated into charitable acts not so much because of the promised rewards or because of doctrine, but because e.g.

Mhm, my argument is that you don't need this kind of motivation, the good things currently accomplished by religion could and in many ways already are being accomplished by other means also.

But the other side to this is that religion can also motivate those same otherwise good people into supporting bad things. There's no rational argument to ban gay marriage, if you remove the religious motivation here the right won't have much else left.

Cingulate posted:

Don't you think this kind of thought - forcing people not only to abstain from damaging the community, but forcing people to actively contribute to the good of society, has a really bad track record?

Isn't that just taxes? :confused:

# ? Mar 11, 2017 19:56

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

Cingulate posted:

I don't believe this is a thing.

There's some people who've turned being atheist into a quasi-religious identity, but they're very few. But for atheism in itself, it's in practice just being neutral, and can't be given preference to in the same sense one could prefer a religion.

Sure it is. It's rarely done, but both the French Revolution and the Soviet Union featured heavy persecution of religious believers in the name of extreme atheism. During the height of the Reign of Terror, for example, publicly displaying religious symbols or wearing religious clothing was banned, and the churches that had been nationalized by the state were briefly dedicated instead to the atheistic "Cult of Reason", at least until the leaders of the atheistic factions found themselves next in line for the guillotine.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 20:07

Dr. Fishopolis: Aug 31, 2004; ROBOT

Cingulate posted:

Don't you think this kind of thought - forcing people not only to abstain from damaging the community, but forcing people to actively contribute to the good of society, has a really bad track record?

This is an extremely common capitalist narrative that also happens to be a lie. You can point to plenty of governments that have A: created legal obligation to contribute to societal good at the expense of personal wealth, and B: become totalitarian hellscapes.

The problem is that correlation is not causation, and for every "slippery slope" you can find, I can respond with a very pleasant northern european democracy that's doing just fine, thank you. Current problems with social democracy have everything to do with failing to adapt to globalization and nothing to do with some inherent flaw in the concept of the welfare state.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 20:16

Shbobdb: Dec 16, 2010; by Reene

Cingulate posted:

I think a more pluralistic, more complicated view of the ethics of humanity is probably more realistic, and also more fair. Looking at how messy the world is, ways to be good are probably distributed all over humanity.

What is your conception of good such as it can be evenly distributed all over humanity? Republicans who want to steal from the poor to give to the rich are as likely to be good as socialists who want to redistribute unearned wealth to the masses? Violent Neo-Nazis are as likely to be good as public defenders fighting against civil rights?

This is really weak "truth is in the middle" bullshit.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 20:29

CountFosco: Jan 9, 2012; Welcome back to the Liturgigoon thread, friend.

rudatron posted:

I think it's more correct to say that religions have many distinct areas it overlaps into. It makes claims about reality (conflicting with the natural sciences), human beings (conflicting with the social sciences), morality (conflicting with moral philosophy) and society (conflicting with political ideologies). Once you separate out each individual aspect, structure it properly, religion becomes superfluous in its entirety, though of course you need more than just science to do that.

The key problem of religion is that that disentanglement is a difficult thing to do, which is what makes its usefulness in any one of those domains questionable - just because something is so, does not mean it should be so, and conversely just because something should be so, doesn't mean it is. Religion mixes those two things together and so ends up with a series of contradictory and useless statements.

Religious claims about reality are only in conflict to the degree that they are incompatible with reality. I believe that the Universe was created, and this is compatible with the claims of science about reality, vis a vis the big bang. What claims religion makes about human beings is inconsistently in conflict with the social sciences, given that the social sciences give no uniform/universal statement on human existence, and at times I'm sure there can be no agreements. Besides, I can present to you any number of scientists who would laugh at the idea of "social science." Moral philosophy is distinct from religious claims about morality in a similar way.

What you are saying about religion being stripped away to become superfluous could just as easily be said about philosophy, as modern day physics undermines are need for ontologies, modern day data theory and AI research takes preeminence over epistemology, and scientists begin to make the claim that ethics should be grounded in science chips away at ethical philosophy.

In a sense, the modern arena of ideas is a turf war between religion, philosophy, and science. The funny thing, all three are losing to crass consumerism.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 20:30

CountFosco: Jan 9, 2012; Welcome back to the Liturgigoon thread, friend.

Avalerion posted:

One shouldn't need religion to know that charity and giving to the poor is good, those are things that are generally seen as positive and encouraged even by atheists and other secular groups. The twist is that religion also encourages things like bashing gays and picketing clinics, and it does that by convincing the people that doing those things is also good and necessary.

You wouldn't think so, but when one considers the popularity of Ayn Rand's work and the prosperity gospel one has to wonder.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 20:33

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Mm, the problem with religion is not the believing in god part, it's the lovely political part, so it seems weird to conflate the two when they're manifestly capable of being independent.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 20:47

Calibanibal: Aug 25, 2015

imho the problem w religiom is that they believe in dumb fake poo poo that isnt true! the idiots

# ? Mar 11, 2017 20:48

CountFosco: Jan 9, 2012; Welcome back to the Liturgigoon thread, friend.

OwlFancier posted:

Mm, the problem with religion is not the believing in god part, it's the lovely political part, so it seems weird to conflate the two when they're manifestly capable of being independent.

There are plenty of atheist rightists as well.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 20:52

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

doverhog posted:

No.

Then I will be a bit stronger here: I think the ideologies that were not guided by a spirit of being very careful when forcing citizens to actively contribute to the good of society have a very bad track record. Societies which place strict limitations here have a much better track record: that is, societies which try to find a balance between individual liberties and the community. And considering how extremely, tens of million dead, bad the history of totalitarian regimes is, I think we should be extremely careful to not err too much into that direction.
And just for calibration, I think, again, Sweden is a good example of a society that works well.
(Also goes to e.g. Dr. Fishopolis, Avalerion.)

Avalerion posted:

Mhm, my argument is that you don't need this kind of motivation, the good things currently accomplished by religion could and in many ways already are being accomplished by other means also.

But the other side to this is that religion can also motivate those same otherwise good people into supporting bad things. There's no rational argument to ban gay marriage, if you remove the religious motivation here the right won't have much else left.

Ok, but I think this X can do y thing is not that strong of an argument. I don't want to say atheism can motivate you to do bad things because I think atheism is not a thing, but the absence of a thing, but extremely obviously, atheist ideologies can also motivate you to do extremely terrible things. So I think you'd have to do some sort of quantitative argument - "on average, religions tend to motivate their followers more to do good things than to do bad things", or something like that.

Shbobdb posted:

What is your conception of good such as it can be evenly distributed all over humanity? Republicans who want to steal from the poor to give to the rich are as likely to be good as socialists who want to redistribute unearned wealth to the masses? Violent Neo-Nazis are as likely to be good as public defenders fighting against civil rights?

This is really weak "truth is in the middle" bullshit.

I didn't say "evenly". I'm suggesting that nobody in here, nobody you know, nobody you've ever seen, has all the answer. There are very moral people on all sides. Maybe - I hope so - we on the left have more of the right answers. But to be super confident that we have a total monopoly on good answers, and everyone else is 100% wrong 100% of the time, strikes me as extremely unlikely.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 20:53

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

CountFosco posted:

There are plenty of atheist rightists as well.

Yep.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 20:56

doverhog: May 31, 2013; Defender of democracy and human rights 🇺🇦

Cingulate posted:

Then I will be a bit stronger here: I think the ideologies that were not guided by a spirit of being very careful when forcing citizens to actively contribute to the good of society have a very bad track record. Societies which place strict limitations here have a much better track record: that is, societies which try to find a balance between individual liberties and the community. And considering how extremely, tens of million dead, bad the history of totalitarian regimes is, I think we should be extremely careful to not err too much into that direction.
And just for calibration, I think, again, Sweden is a good example of a society that works well.
(Also goes to e.g. Dr. Fishopolis, Avalerion.)

I proposed mandatory taxation in place of voluntary charity, not communist totalitarianism.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 20:59

RasperFat: Jul 11, 2006; Uncertainty is inherently unsustainable. Eventually, everything either is or isn't.

CountFosco posted:

Religious claims about reality are only in conflict to the degree that they are incompatible with reality. I believe that the Universe was created, and this is compatible with the claims of science about reality, vis a vis the big bang. What claims religion makes about human beings is inconsistently in conflict with the social sciences, given that the social sciences give no uniform/universal statement on human existence, and at times I'm sure there can be no agreements. Besides, I can present to you any number of scientists who would laugh at the idea of "social science." Moral philosophy is distinct from religious claims about morality in a similar way.

What you are saying about religion being stripped away to become superfluous could just as easily be said about philosophy, as modern day physics undermines are need for ontologies, modern day data theory and AI research takes preeminence over epistemology, and scientists begin to make the claim that ethics should be grounded in science chips away at ethical philosophy.

In a sense, the modern arena of ideas is a turf war between religion, philosophy, and science. The funny thing, all three are losing to crass consumerism.

This argument only works because we allow a shifting definition for what religion is. Religion is a hodgepodge of rituals, traditions, community structure, epistemology, and other philosophy.

If religion went by the wayside, we wouldn't automatically abandon all of our other ethics and societal structures.

Applying science to ethical philosophy actually makes some sense. It can test the implications for philosophical ideas on the real world.

Does a karmic interpretation, sin and salvation interpretation, a secular humanist interpretation, etc. result in a more cohesive society with less crime, more equality, happier people, etc.? We can use scientific methods to determine these things.

Religion always gets to sit in a special place where it gets to be whatever it wants to avoid crippling criticism. It gets to make materials claims, but those claims are judged based on a sliding scale of how much metaphor it is, directly linked to how much science knows about the topic. It gets to make spiritual claims that can't be challenged because you can't prove a negative. It gets to issue social philosophy based on the merit of it's material and spiritual claims. When the material claims are criticized, the definition shifts more towards a spiritual vehicle that helps push ethical social philosophy. When the spiritual claims are criticized, it shifts more to a social philosophy that promotes morals. When the social philosophies are criticized, it's pointed out that religion is more of a personal spiritual connection.

Because religions get to shift what they are focused on, they get to equate themselves to schools of thought, full time charities, and moral social structures, despite not exactly being any of those three.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 21:01

Avalerion: Oct 19, 2012

OwlFancier posted:

Mm, the problem with religion is not the believing in god part, it's the lovely political part, so it seems weird to conflate the two when they're manifestly capable of being independent.

It is part of it though. When someone holds wrong views about a topic you can generally reason with and educate them into being a better person, but if said views are rooted in an irrational belief you'll just hit a wall going with that approach.

To go with the running example, if someone is opposed to gay marriage because they think we'll then all turn gay and the human race will die out you can easily disprove that with facts. If they are against gay marriage because god thinks it's icky that's not going to work.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 21:04

Shbobdb: Dec 16, 2010; by Reene

Cingulate posted:

I didn't say "evenly". I'm suggesting that nobody in here, nobody you know, nobody you've ever seen, has all the answer. There are very moral people on all sides. Maybe - I hope so - we on the left have more of the right answers. But to be super confident that we have a total monopoly on good answers, and everyone else is 100% wrong 100% of the time, strikes me as extremely unlikely.

Again, I don't see what conception of "good" allows for people supporting economic exploitation, racism and xenophobia to fall into the "good" category.

Can someone who supports the modern Republican Party be "good"? If so, how?

# ? Mar 11, 2017 21:05

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Avalerion posted:

It is part of it though. When someone holds wrong views about a topic you can generally reason with and educate them into being a better person, but if said views are rooted in an irrational belief you'll just hit a wall going with that approach.

To go with the running example, if someone is opposed to gay marriage because they think we'll then all turn gay and the human race will die out you can easily disprove that with facts. If they are against gay marriage because god thinks it's icky that's not going to work.

"Wrong views rooted in an irrational belief" is not even remotely limited to religion, I'd wager it's probably not even majority represented by religion.

I really don't think someone, to use your example, who professes that gay people will turn everyone gay is actually worried about that as much as they just flat instinctively don't like gay people and will come up with post-hoc justifications for it.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 21:07

Dr. Fishopolis: Aug 31, 2004; ROBOT

Cingulate posted:

Then I will be a bit stronger here: I think the ideologies that were not guided by a spirit of being very careful when forcing citizens to actively contribute to the good of society have a very bad track record. Societies which place strict limitations here have a much better track record: that is, societies which try to find a balance between individual liberties and the community. And considering how extremely, tens of million dead, bad the history of totalitarian regimes is, I think we should be extremely careful to not err too much into that direction.
And just for calibration, I think, again, Sweden is a good example of a society that works well.
(Also goes to e.g. Dr. Fishopolis, Avalerion.)

You're still making the assertion that mandating participation in a welfare state has a causal relationship to totalitarianism, but you haven't provided any evidence to support that idea. Every state forces citizens to actively contribute to the good of society. That is a fundamental aspect of what government is. Does every government trend toward totalitarianism?

# ? Mar 11, 2017 21:09

Avalerion: Oct 19, 2012

OwlFancier posted:

"Wrong views rooted in an irrational belief" is not even remotely limited to religion, I'd wager it's probably not even majority represented by religion.

Yea, not saying religion is the root of all evil in the world or anything of the sorts. I do think it's responsible for a lot of it though, and if we didn't have it, a lot (but obviously not all) of it would go away.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 21:12

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

As would the irrational basis for much good in the world.

It's almost like rationality/irrationality is not the problem.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 21:14

Bates: Jun 15, 2006

OwlFancier posted:

"Wrong views rooted in an irrational belief" is not even remotely limited to religion, I'd wager it's probably not even majority represented by religion.

Yeah let's be clear about this. Atheism only answers one single question: Do you believe in a God? If your answer is anything other than "yes" you are an atheist. There's non-theistic religions though so you can still be religious. You can also be spiritual, superstitious and hold any number of other irrational beliefs ie. conspiracy theorists. Some people take atheism to mean rational, anti-theistic or anti-religious but it's simply wrong.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 21:20

Avalerion: Oct 19, 2012

Bates posted:

Some people take atheism to mean rational, anti-theistic or anti-religious but it's simply wrong.

Yea, no argument here, you can definitely be irrational even without religion, but - I think you can't be rational and religious and that's pretty much the crux of my issue with it on the whole.

Avalerion fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Mar 11, 2017

# ? Mar 11, 2017 21:25

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# ? May 11, 2024 10:58

CountFosco: Jan 9, 2012; Welcome back to the Liturgigoon thread, friend.

I refute your argument thus.

# ? Mar 11, 2017 21:27

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Is the Left Hostile to Religion?

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