[ I was without internet connection over the weekend, therefore I can
only follow up on this now. I don't want to give the impression that I
just wanted to rile people up without really participating in the
discussion. ]
On Fri, May 04, 2007 at 18:20:31 -0400, Celejar wrote:
> On Fri, 4 May 2007 18:30:32 +0200 Florian Kulzer wrote:
>
> > On Fri, May 04, 2007 at 10:09:38 -0400, Celejar wrote:
> > > On Thu, 03 May 2007 18:52:02 -0700
> > > Kenward Vaughan wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > > Kenward
> > > > --
> > > > With or without (religion) you would have good people doing good things
> > > > and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
> > > > things, that takes religion. --Physicist and Nobel Laureate Steven
> > > > Weinberg
> > >
> > > Even if true, there are different ways to interpret this:
> > >
> > > a) religion increases the number of people who do evil things,
> > > extending {E:E does evil things} and causing it to overlap with
> > > {g:g is a good person}
> > >
> > > b) religion increases the number of good people, extending {g:g is a
> > > good person} and causing it to overlap with {E:E does evil things}
> > >
> > > In any case, I think Weinberg's assertion is ridiculous; no 'good'
> > > atheist has ever done evil? Perhaps he means 'for good people to do
> > > evil in the name of good', but it's still patently false; no 'good'
> > > atheist has ever done evil in the name of a (secular) humanist ideal?
> > > If Weinberg means that a 'good' atheist who does evil is by definition
> > > not good, then this is sophistry; the same can be said about believers.
> > > Apparently scientists, even great ones, can be as ignorant and shallow
> > > as anyone else outside of their areas of expertise.
> >
> > What are, then, your definitions of "good people", "evil things" and
> > "religion"? Which events in human history do you consider to be examples
> > of good people doing evil things without religion being involved?
>
> Good questions, certainly, and difficult to answer well in any context,
> and certainly in an OT discussion on d-u. I'll pass, for now at least,
> on your first. WRT to your second, one example of what I had in mind
> might be the murders and other evil acts committed by some communists
> in the name of communism. While Stalin was as evil as they come, I
> would conjecture that there were communists that one might consider
> 'good' (without providing a definition, but something along the lines
> of well-meaning, unselfish and generally following, or trying to
> folllow, some sort of moral code recognizable as such - I know that's
> not a very good definition) who nevertheless did evil in communism's
> name. Anothe example, for balance, might be certain US military actions
> in Vietnam or even WWII. I believe that there were good (as above) US
> military personnel who committed acts that one might consider evil.
I realize that it is extremely difficult to define these things. My main
point is that it is therefore not immediately obvious that Weinberg's
statement is "ridiculous". I also would like to point out that his work
on the theory of the electroweak force does not rule out that he has
spent time to read religious and philosophical texts, has thought about
these issues and has reached an informed opinion. (An informed opinion
is still just an opinion at the end of the day, of course.) It also goes
without saying that his Physics Nobel prize does not make him more
qualified to judge these things. To my knowledge, he himself has never
tried to use his achievement in that way. I can understand that seeing
his statement cited like it was here tends to put religious people in
the defensive; after all, it sounds a bit like: "A really smart person
has said that religion is evil/wrong/stupid, so there!". Nevertheless I
think it is not justified to assume that Weinberg is "ignorant" and
"shallow".
Unfortunately I have never been able to find a full transcript of
Weinberg's 1999 speech from which the "religion is an insult to human
dignity" quotation is taken. From what I understand he makes these two
points:
- Most people have the capacity to understand, on an intellectual and an
emotional level, the consequences that their actions have for other
people. This results in a built-in "moral compass" which all the "good
people" have. The "evil people", by contrast, are the ones lacking
this moral compass, for example due to certain pathologies which are
recognized in clinical psychology. As far as I know, there are a
number of anthropological studies which show that people from vastly
different cultural backgrounds give strikingly similar answers when
asked about their evaluation of certain ethical problems. While it
easy for all these people to come up with these similar answers, they
often have difficulties to explain any kind of "reasoning" behind
them.
I think this first point does not really pose any problem for
religious people. At the very least you can view religion as a useful
means to codify our built-in sense of morality. If you believe in a
supernatural creator it will probably make sense to you that he/she/it
gave us the capacity to tell right from wrong, because otherwise it
would not make much sense to hold us accountable for our actions. An
evolutionary psychologist would probably argue that it was simply
advantageous for our species to evolve such a moral compass.
- What does it take to override this moral compass, how do you make
"good people" lose their natural inhibition against inflicting
unnecessary harm on other people? Weinberg argues that you need to
trick them into thinking that their actions will be for some "greater
good", thus justifying "breaking eggs to make an omelette". This is
not yet so controversial, but then he goes on to claim that the only
way to get away with this is by involving "religion".
It seems to me that if you want to argue against Weinberg then you
need to establish an objective way to distinguish "religion" from mere
"ideology". That is probably difficult, also because every good
demagogue knows the profound effect that religiosity can have on the
human psyche and therefore he/she will often tend to mimic religious
language, ceremonies etc. to manipulate people and to achieve his/her
goals.
Maybe it is better to look at the issue this way: There are,
obviously, some psychological mechanisms that are responsible for the
fact that a large number of people consider themselves to be
"religious". (I leave it to the individual people to define what
exactly that word means to them.) The same mechanisms can be (and have
often been) abused to make ordinary people do extraordinarily cruel
things. I think it is dangerous to ignore this and to reflexively
dismiss every critique of religion as shallow and ignorant.
--
Regards, | http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
Florian |
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