From PhiloMadrid Moderator, Lawrence . . . Dear Friends, This Sunday we are discussing: Religion free society. Although, as you know, religion is a topic we approach with caution during our meetings sometimes we have to cross this minefield in the name of philosophy. In my essay (I was not that busy this week) I argue that our topic is not a question of getting rid of religions or religions are good for us. My position is that religions are made up of a belief side and a prescriptive side. And should we end up with a religion free society it would have been the result of the prescriptive aspect of religion. In the meantime Ruel has sent us his link to his essay: https://ruelfpepa.wordpress/2015/01/13/a-religion-free-society/ Religion free society by Lawrence This question may be interpreted in two meanings. The first is when religions lose or change their scope within society through an evolutionary process. A process that has been going on for centuries. The second meaning is to ban religions outright. Something that is quite common these days. However both processes have their drawbacks. Evolution takes too long and does not necessarily lead to an equitable and ethical state of affairs. A ban on religions, though, implies the oppressive hands of a dictatorship. Some might even argue that even a ban on religion is part of an evolutionary process. Since, a ban on religion would no doubt be due to a conflict between the new ideology and religion. Except that there is a slight difference here, the ban usually happens in a relatively short time frame compared to natural evolution. Besides, a ban is also intentional whilst a natural process is just a natural causal chain of event with the impression of being random. So a religion free society depends on and is the result of two forces: a natural causal process vs an intentional human desire for short term results. But why should we care about what happens to religion? I do not wish to go into any detail about the meaning of religion since we only need to understand the basic components of a religion: 1) a belief in a superhuman deity or god to legitimise those beliefs and the consequential actions, 2) a set of beliefs that are accepted as representing the state of affairs of the world we live in and that such beliefs are accepted on the principle of faith and not empirical justification, and 3) religion prescribes a lifestyle and behaviour that is usually based on coercion and/or indoctrination. It may be argued that it is a very human capacity to identify with some imaginary form or being as having superhuman powers. Something we can relate to but does not have the human weaknesses. Look, for example, at such fictional characters as Super Man, Bat Man etc. However, the argument used by religion is that these gods are real as much as the plastic that makes up the keyboard on my PC is real. Unfortunately, the reality issue is not available as a philosophical argument for religions. Firstly, unlike say scientific claims about real things, the absence of empirical evidence of a god fails on the ground that we do not have a methodology to verify or refute the existence of a god. The reality of a god does not seem to be established with any methodology. However, we are hard wired to have methodologies to discover whether something is real or not or true or not. How many times have you come across some new food and started eating without first discovering what kind of food it is? Indeed we are hard wired not to belief anything rather than to belief anything purely on a verbal claim by someone. Faith, belief or call it what you will is not a methodology but an emotional disposition. In the same way that, for example, reciting a mantra before I check my lotto ticket is an emotional disposition and not a method. Even if one day I do win big at the lotto. As I will argue the flaw about faith or belief about anything is that we have to fact-check it with the world outside our brain and then whether we can make predictions about whatever it is we believe. The philosophical point is that faith about something does not equate to a factual event about our universe. On the contrary, what we can say for certain about doing things by faith is that it is an emotional state of affairs in some people and not a proof of anything. Moreover, since we are all human beings the scope of one of us having some super human access to the most secretive aspects of the universe is very slim indeed. But the status of religion depends purely on the existence of a god or a super human figure. This is what is supposed to give legitimacy of religion over all other beliefs. However, as human beings we dont have the means to establish the existence of such beings. Firstly, we are asked to demonstrate something that by all accounts does not seem to have anything in common with the way the universe functions. Secondly, and more importantly, we have so many conflicting accounts of what such a god or gods are that we have no idea what were looking for. An thirdly, the bottom line is that we can discover or know about anything if information about that thing can be communicated to us in an empirical format; the only format we have. Unlike photography we only have one format for transmitting information about anything the empirical one; in photography if you really want to know we have raw, jpeg, tiff, png (there are more in the pipeline) and thats just the digital formats. This leaves us with the prescriptive lifestyle religion imposes on people; some religions only impose lifestyles on their followers while others also want to impose lifestyles on the rest of humanity. This prescriptive attitude of religion is usually accompanied with coercive methods to impose their set of lifestyles or behaviour. Therefore, this make religion a legitimate subject for philosophy since it is a question about ethics and political philosophy. Lets be clear about it, if it wasnt for the prescriptive aspect of religion it would not be of any interest for us, or anyone else for that matter. The descriptive aspect of religion, i.e. faith, beliefs, gods and deities, is a normal human mental activity we all enjoy; this is one of the things we do with our brain. Incidentally, the very same brain that has served us so well to cure diseases, overcome natural challenges, manipulate our environment to increase access to resources, and the brain that has created art, music, literature, the Christmas pudding and, maybe, football! What is sure though is that as a consequence of our understanding of the world around us we also understand that the workings of the brain are not always perfect or satisfactory; like many causal processes, we sometimes fail. In other words, sometimes we are wrong. By virtue of the fact that religions pay a huge amount of intellectual effort and human resources on the prescriptive aspect of religion, it betrays the genesis of religion in general: i.e. our biological make up and behaviour. Our biological make up, or nature if you wish, dictates that we have a lifestyle and behave in certain ways in the same manner that nature dictates to ants and lions what to do with their time. If religions where not so obsessed with lifestyle they would just have written the manual and left it to people to do what they want; religions are not like that. Thus the prescriptive side of religion is an empirical phenomenon and therefore, is covered, fair and square, by empirical criteria. And one of the most important empirical criteria is that what is empirical can be measured and verified/falsified. From this premise it follows that if we have a belief about something in the world then we can reasonably assume that this belief can be measured, verified/falsified and so on. This does not mean that if we demonstrate that what we believe is not the case, we should stop having that belief. Indeed I will never stop believing that the universe was created so that we can have Christmas puddings, however, I havent yet started making plans for the Nobel Prize in physics and astronomy I should be receiving in the near future! Beliefs do not make facts! But beliefs can lead to action. For example, thinking that vegetables are good for me we expect that I sometimes eat vegetables or at the very least promote the eating of vegetables amongst the people I know. But with this kind of situation, we always come up with the problem of induction: just because vegetables are good for me it does not necessarily follow that they are good for everyone, they are not! The biggest problem for us here is one of ethics and morality: do good things follow a zero sum game or are they subject to the law of excluded middle? Meaning that if something is good then it must be universally good, for all time and everyone, or if something is good it cannot be contradicted to being not good at the same time. Good wins everything, and there cannot be both good and not good. Lets take an example: some religions (and societies) prohibit or disapprove of siblings known to each other to procreate (or incest to widen our scope people). Today we know why this is undesirable, we can read why and most of us know enough biology to understand the reasoning behind this prohibition. However, there are/were many societies and religions that allow such procreation. Who is right? We certainly know that we are right, however, it does not follow these other societies are wrong. For example, maybe the community some three thousand years ago was small and isolated and therefore it was much better that the few people procreated hoping for the best rather than for the society to die out. Sure, this is not the best of all solutions, but the issue, I am sure we all agree, is not one of what is good? My point is that whilst our beliefs may be constant over time, our empirical knowledge about the world changes because we are always on a learning curve about life. Thus religions that remain stagnant despite access to new knowledge are also in a regressive process of life. Those who insist on still using a Bakelite rotary phone today are having a very hard time making calls. Incidentally, this is a very clear example of how religions and beliefs can fail the evolution race; stagnation. However, persistent conflicts between sections of society about empirical issues cannot be a sign of good tidings. And usually, conflicts within society that involve religion centre on issues of power, wealth control, and certainly, radical change of accepted beliefs. So at the end, our topic centres as much on the evolution and development of beliefs (religion) as much as the chaotic distribution of knowledge and acceptance of that knowledge amongst humanity. It seems that knowledge and attitudes as a consequence of that knowledge do not develop within all societies at a lightning speed, despite the internet, and do not influence everyone in the same way. Of course, in my argument I am assuming that any evolutionary development or any state of chaos is the product of a fair random process. For example, I am not considering issues of oppression, manipulation of people for the benefit of the few. I am also assuming that any knowledge is eventually discovered by all societies and religions, not to mention that there is no reason to assume that we are all affected the same with any new knowledge. The question, for us is not whether we should get rid of religions, or are we better off with religion. The question for us is what will cause the disappearance of religion as a consequence of its body of philosophical principles. Incidentally, all aspects of our life are governed by a body of philosophical principles; its just that we dont call them as such. A religion free society is certainly a result of evolutionary forces probably caused by access to more up to date knowledge about the world in association with sections of society not sharing the same set of beliefs. Having said that, I really doubt that an evolutionary would really wipe out a set of beliefs, no matter how weird those beliefs are. Unless those people with those beliefs are themselves wiped out of existence. In a way rights about beliefs and free speech are there so that no set of beliefs are allowed to disappear, even the weir one. Because, as I said, we are hard wired to have beliefs we abhor beliefs being lost forever; history, history of ideas, leisure reading, and passing interest in unpleasant sets of belief (e.g. Nazi doctrine) are evidence of the importance beliefs have for us. What is likely to wipe out a religion from its privileged status (and therefore society), is its prescriptive nature. Prescription is an empirical challenge to an individuals existence and as we know, in a conflict the side with the smarts are more likely to win than the one with the muscles. Or to put it in a different way, the group with the set of beliefs that has a flawed philosophy is more likely to cause its own downfall than the set of beliefs that are a step ahead of evolution. Best Lawrence
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 09:10:42 +0000
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