Sunday, February 25, 2024

What is Truth?

 Have you ever walked into the midst of a heated argument, and thought, “Wait; you’re both wrong!!”  I have that feeling when reading one of the iconic scenes of the Bible, the questioning of Jesus Christ by Pontius Pilate.  Pilate was the Roman prefect and governor of Judea.  Let’s review the conversation as reported in the gospel of John.  (Keep in mind that the gospel of John was probably maintained by oral tradition for at least 35 years, and did not reach final form until about 70 years after Jesus’ crucifixion.  The conversation may not reflect historical accuracy.)

“36 Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.’
37 ‘You are a king, then!’ said Pilate.
Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.’
38 ‘What is truth?’ retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, ‘I find no basis for a charge against him.’”

                            John 18:36-38, New International Version


"What is Truth?"  Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate
Image credit unknown.

Jesus brushes aside the accusation of being an earthly king, and instead asserts that his entire mission is to testify to truth.  The gospels tell us that the truth Jesus preached is the reality of God, the necessity of worshiping God, the importance of loving neighbors, even neighbors you dislike, the importance of humility and forgiveness, the importance of renouncing worldly obligations (including family obligations) to follow him, the reward in the afterlife for worshiping God, and punishment in the afterlife for rejecting God.

But what if God isn’t real?  What if it is all a lie?  This seems to be the question that Pilate is asking, when he says “What is truth?”  Pilate doesn’t stay around for an answer to his rhetorical question.  I would read into Pilate’s question a rejection of the idea of truth, or a belief in relative truth, dependent on circumstances.  Let’s deal with Pilate first.

Pontius Pilate
Religion in the Roman empire of 33 AD was complicated.  Roman was polytheistic.  Roman gods and goddesses had parallels in Greek religion (I will call these beliefs religion, rather than mythology.  People of the time regarded their gods as real as Christians regard their God today.)  Egypt had its own gods and goddess of quasi-human character, and there were a number of Levantine religions in addition to Judaism.  Further complicating the divine roster were ruler-gods.  Ancient Rome was surrounded by cultures which venerated their rulers as gods.  Egypt is the most well-known example of divine rulers, with pharaohs regarded as divine intermediaries between gods and humans.  First Greeks and then Romans adopted the practice of deifying rulers after death.  We can’t know what Pilate thought of these conflicting religious ideas, or if he was a true believer in Mars, Zeus, or the emperor Augustus as real divine gods.  The rhetorical question “What is truth?” suggests that he regarded Jesus’ god as no better and no worse than the rest.

But regardless of uncertainties, we cannot disavow truth.  Logic falls apart if we cannot say that any proposition is true.  Mathematics disintegrates if we cannot firmly assert that 2 + 2 equals 4.  There is no corner of time or space in which 2 + 2 does not equal four.  Even in relativistic physics, the resting mass of an object is constant.  Truth is absolute.

Like Goedel’s theorem in math, truth is also necessarily incomplete.  We will never know the full truth about many things.  Also, some aspects of physical reality, like quantum mechanics, are subject to probabilistic rules.  But these probabilistic rules are themselves truth over the domains where they apply.  Further research will undoubtedly produce new fundamental discoveries and overturn current knowledge, but this does not invalidate the idea that truth exists.  Do not confuse knowledge and truth.  Knowledge is necessarily incomplete and imperfect.  Truth, which we may only approach, is absolute, whatever it is.

I cannot resist a tangential mention of a brilliant essay by Isaac Asimov, The Relativity of Wrong, published in Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1986, and in a collection of non-fiction essays in 1988, under the same title.  While truth is absolute, there are degrees of falsehood.  The statement 2+2=5 may be false, but it is less false than 2+2 =5,492,817, which is less false than 2+2=purple.

We recognize different degrees of certainty in determining truth in different settings.  In the courtroom, the preponderance of evidence (i.e. >50%) is sufficient to determine truth in a civil case, but evidence beyond a reasonable doubt is necessary for a criminal conviction.  Similarly, in science, different levels of certainty are assigned to scientific findings, with the ultimate determination of "unequivocal" for the highest level of certainty.  In this essay, I am searching for truth beyond a reasonable doubt, or unequivocal truth.  These are criteria where objections to the finding are not based on reasonable evidence, or opposing arguments which are not in good faith.

Jesus
Our discussion of Jesus begins with another iconic passage from the gospels.
“Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’
Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”
                    
John 14:5-6, New International Version.

In his statement to Pilate, Jesus said that he came into the world to testify to the truth.  In his statement to Thomas, Jesus said that he embodied truth, as well as the unique and only path to God.  Remember that claim as we consider statements from a number of other religions.

Jesus taught that he was the prophesied messiah, that God was real, and that there exists a kingdom of heaven which only believers can reach.  Jesus taught that devotion to God and Jesus was necessary for salvation from sin and eternal life in the kingdom of heaven.  There were many other teachings involving empathy, equality, forgiveness, and human relationships, but Jesus’ core message was about religion and the human relationship to God.  But how do we know that Jesus’ testimony is, in fact, the truth?  There are many claims to be the one true religion on Earth.

"The Christian religion is true, because it has pleased God, who alone can be the judge in this matter, to affirm it to be the true religion· And it alone has the commission and the authority to be a missionary religion, i.e., to confront the world of religions as the one true religion, with absolute self-confidence to invite and challenge it to abandon its ways and to start on the Christian way."
                         ― Theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968).

“The Bible clearly states that repentance and faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to receive salvation. And that's how we can know that Christianity is indeed the one true religion.”
                        
United Church of Christ Webpage


The Truth of Shintō is to be seen in the inevitability of its underlying doctrine.  This is apparent on consideration of the real significance of the great deities introduced in the oldest Yamato literature….This is the Truth of the Way of the Gods.
                        ― Kazusaku Kanzaki, Shintō Honkyoku no Kyōri ("The Doctrine of Shintō Honkyoku"), Uchü ("The Universe"), (January 1930).  [Complete quote and list of gods given below.]

“It is our firm conviction that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is, as the revelations state, ‘the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth.’”

                        ― Elder Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, 1985, on the webpage of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, "The Only True Church".

"30 And also those to whom these commandments were given, might have power to lay the foundation of this church, and to bring it forth out of obscurity and out of darkness, the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased."
                        ― Doctrine and Covenants 1:30, 1835  (Church of Latter Day Saints).

“If I were asked to define the Hindu creed, I should simply say: Search after truth through non-violent means. A man may not believe in God and still call himself a Hindu. Hinduism is a relentless pursuit after truth... Hinduism is the religion of truth. Truth is God. Denial of God we have known. Denial of truth we have not known.”
                        ― Mahatma Gandhi

There is only one God, and It is called the truth, It exists in all creation, and It has no fear, It does not hate, and It is timeless, universal and self-existent! You will come to know it through the grace of the Guru.
                        ― Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Holy Scripture of Sikhism, circa 1604.

“‘Once that has been made clear, we can easily say that Allah sent only one form of legislation for all of mankind to follow, otherwise if we were to say that there is more than one then that would entail that Allah is unjust because He left us to wander about on earth without showing us the right way to do things, and this is impossible because Allah is Just.  Therefore the only logical conclusion is that there is only one true religion, which contains guidance in all spheres of life, and that all other religions are false.”
                           ― Kamil Ahmad, current webpage.

“He who upholds Truth with all the might of his power, He who upholds Truth the utmost in his word and deed, He, indeed, is Thy most valued helper, O Mazda Ahura!”
“Truth is best (of all that is) good. As desired, what is being desired is truth for him who (represents) the best truth. (Gathas 27.14)”

                            ― Zarathustra, circa 1000 BCE

There are approximately 3000 to 4000 different religious faiths and traditions known in historical times.  Most of these claim to be the one and only true religion, and the only path to know God, receive salvation, have happiness in the afterlife, etc.  A few religious traditions, like Unitarianism, accept all faiths, but this sweeps contradictions under the rug instead of rationally working toward an understanding based on truth.  Some of the intellectuals writing about religion come very close to the correct analysis, but fail at the end. 

Zacharias Ursinus, circa 1563 AD, wrote: “doctrine which contradicts itself can neither be true, nor from God, since truth is in perfect harmony with itself, and God cannot contradict himself.” 
And yet, despite obvious contradictions in doctrine, in the Bible, in the concept of God and the injustice in the world, Ursinus fails to conclude that religious doctrine is false, and God isn’t real.  He was so close.

Sometimes an Internet meme is the simplest way to convey an idea.  The claims by many religions to be the one true faith cannot possibly all be true.  Nor do relativistic equivalencies between different churches make sense.  While there are some similarities between religions, there are also deep and fundamental differences of doctrine and belief, from polytheism/monotheism, to creation stories, to religious commandments, etc.  These differences are real and irreconcilable.


Since Jesus declared that he embodied truth, the subsequent 2000 years have not provided any convincing evidence that God exists.  There is no evidence that prophecy is true, that spirits exist separately from corporeal humans, that life does not end at death, or that an alternate world of God’s kingdom exists.  It is a lot to accept without evidence.

I will explore further proof that God doesn’t exist in my next post, “From Agnosticism to Atheism.”
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The image of Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ is used without permission and not for profit.  It will be removed upon a received request.

References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_imperial_cult
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_deities

https://bahai-library.com/hick_one_true_religion
https://kamilahmad.com/islam-the-one-and-only-religion/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Sikhism
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Shinto
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_true_church
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1985/10/the-only-true-church?lang=eng
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_on_truth

Additional claims of religious truth:
“The expression "one true church" refers to an ecclesiological position asserting that Jesus gave his authority in the Great Commission solely to a particular visible Christian institutional church—what is commonly called a denomination. This view is maintained by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox communion, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East, the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, the Churches of Christ, and the Lutheran Churches,[1] as well as certain Baptists.[2] Each of them maintains that their own specific institutional church (denomination) exclusively represents the one and only original church.”
― Wikipedia, The One True Church

“It is not possible that that religion should be true and divine….it is only the doctrine of the church that is true and divine….Now, as the doctrine of the church is the only system of religious truth that has ever discovered and proclaimed a way of deliverance from the evils of sin and death, which alone affords real and substantial comfort to the conscience, it must be true and divine.”
― Zacharias Ursinus, circa 1563, 14 Reasons Christianity is the True Religion, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism.

The Truth of Shintō is to be seen in the inevitability of its underlying doctrine.  This is apparent on consideration of the real significance of the great deities introduced in the oldest Yamato literature.
Ame-no-Minaka-Nushi-no-Kami (‘‘The Deity Who is Lord of the Center of Heaven’’), the first god named in the Kojiki is correctly understood as the central existence of the universe, the primary source of all things, both animate and inert. All the phenomena presented to human senses are the manifestations in time of this absolute god. The Absolute functions in time in the form of the two-fold creation kami, Taka-Mimusubi-no-Kami and Kami-Musubi-no-Kami. These two beings represent activities of opposite kinds, from which the phenomenal world has had its rise. This positive-negative, or male-female, potency appears in Japanese history as the great father and mother of the race, Izanagi and Izanami, from whom is born the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu-Ōmikami, who in turn is the progenetrix of the Imperial Family and the Japanese people. Amaterasu-Ōmikami, in her position among the historical personages of Japan, is like the sun in heaven about which the planetary bodies revolve. The aptness of this solar metaphor accounts for the sun imagery of the early mythology. The statements just made point to undeniable facts in Japanese history. This is not a matter of mere chance or coincidence, but is so by inner necessity. This is the Truth of the Way of the Gods.

Kazusaku Kanzaki, Shintō Honkyoku no Kyōri ("The Doctrine of Shintō Honkyoku"), Uchü ("The Universe"), (January 1930), quoted in D. C. Holtom, The National Faith of Japan: A Study in Modern Shinto (1938).

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Is Religion Benign? Part II

I have a former classmate who is an aggressive atheist.  Her worldview is largely built around an idea, frequently and obsessively repeated on social media, “Religion is never benign.”  Her framing is that absolutely no good ever comes from religion.  In this two-post series, I’m considering a milder form of that framing.  I freely acknowledge that religion brings good into many lives and societies, but also harm.  As Mark Twain noted in “The Dervish and the Offensive Stranger”, there is both good and harm in every deed.  There are no good deeds without bad consequences, and no bad deeds without incidental good.  My question, then, is whether religion is a net benefit or a net harm to society.  

My previous post considered the historical record of religion – unjust sacred texts, religious wars and persecutions, absolutism, abusive cults, abusive clergy and misdirected social resources.  Weighing against those are unquantifiable benefits of kindness and community, which sometimes (but not always) accompany religion.  This post will address the principal harm from religion, which is that religion does not have a foundation in truth.  The problem with religion is that it simply isn’t true.  

Is Religion True or False?  How We Know What is True

"Inuring us to lies lays the groundwork for many other evils."
                        -- Thomas Paine, quoted by Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World

We know religion isn’t true for several reasons.  First, there is an utter lack of reliable evidence for the existence of God or unseen sentient spirits.  Second, there is a complete lack of agreement among the world’s cultures regarding the nature and history of these unseen beings.  Third, there is a lack of reason and justice in acts attributed to God, and in sacred literature.  Finally, there are irreconcilable logical inconsistencies regarding God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and goodness, compared to what we observe in the world.  Occam’s razor forces the conclusion that God isn’t real, and religion is false.

People are responsible for discerning what is true and what is false.  It is essential for personal safety, for citizenship, and for social order.  Without a common agreement on what is true, a society cannot have a fair football game, fair marathons, fair elections, ethical marketplaces, prices and advertising, trustworthy science and medicine, etc.  Civilization falls apart without widespread integrity and commonly accepted truth.  

I have a friend who maintains from a philosophical perspective that there is no such thing as absolute truth.  I strenuously disagree.  The concept of absolute truth is necessary for science, for justice, for government, for business and for society.  We cannot deal in relative truth when submitting annual reports to investors, writing a scientific publication or deciding on the guilt of an accused person.  I believe that absolute truth exists, and is generally accessible to everyone.  (This is one of the few statements in which I will say “I believe”, as an assertion that cannot be proven.)  In a scientific sense, truth will always be incomplete, like the mathematics of Goedel’s theorem.  For example, complete truth about historical matters may never be known.  We will never know the music that was played on a 40,000 year-old bone flute.  In physics, we may never know the true nature of dark matter or energy.  But we can put firm bounds on what is known to be true, and reach whatever conclusions are possible from these bounded uncertainties.


The Triumph of Conscience over False Prophets
(Also called the Triumph of Truth over Falsehood)
Johann Sadeler, Circa 1580

Does It Matter If People Believe In False Gods and Spirits?

“When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer.  Superstition ain't the way.”

                                                            -- Stevie Wonder, Superstition


One person’s religion is another person’s superstition.  It’s kind of astonishing how missionaries (including my ancestors) traveled the world, met indigenous people, told them their timeless beliefs were false, and replaced those beliefs with other false beliefs.  We tend to look with derision upon ancient Greek oracles, and the notion of gods dwelling and squabbling on the top of a mountain, but those were very real articles of faith for those people.  Socrates died for “impiety and corrupting youth” by questioning those beliefs.  A few plots of Star Trek imagined encountering cultures that worshipped a rock, or an ancient visitation by space travelers.  What would star-faring visitors to Earth think of our religions?  

As atheists, is religion something we can safely ignore, or should it be challenged in public discourse?  I copied this rhetorical question somewhere, but have lost the source: “All major religions exhort followers to be good, ethical, moral...if that helps you live well, what difference does it make if there is heaven or hell at the end?”

Does it matter whether religion is true?  Yes, it matters.  Faithful people rarely consider the question, “But what if it is all a lie?”  As a consequence, there is great harm done by what follows from believing in things that are not true.

People make irrational decisions based on faith, ignoring the obvious consequences if that faith is misplaced.  Plains Indians warriors believed that Ghost Shirts would protect them from bullets (didn’t work).  The mother of a childhood friend, as a practicing Christian Scientist, did not take my friend to a doctor or dentist, believing that God would protect him.   Many people refuse vaccines, believing that God will protect them.  Others refuse life-saving medical care for themselves or their children, instead trusting to “God’s will.”  In recent memory, many Christians believed that religious gatherings would be protected from COVID.  In a cruel inversion of that belief, fundamentalist Christians sometimes ostracize members of their congregation who fall ill to cancer or other diseases, inferring that it signifies sin on the part of the member who falls ill.  

Apart from irrational decisions about health and wellness, religious faith leads people into other irrational behaviors regarding diet, dress, social hierarchy (particularly regarding women) and sexual orientation.  These result in personal guilt, a loss of personal realization, oppression of others, psychological distress, and misdirected time, energy and financial resources.   Other people have taken random events as signs from God about pathways or decisions that may have been far from the best choices.  What could humanity have achieved if we had not spent our fortunes and energy in building pyramids and cathedrals?  Some people have piloted Kamikaze planes or strapped explosives on their bodies, trusting that they will receive eternal reward in the afterlife.  Some people have spent their lives in devotion to God, through prayer, worship and contemplation.  What could they have achieved, if they had applied their intelligence and energy to science, education, or public service? 


Truth and Untruth, Anastasia Tyutyunnik

Conclusion

“In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts.  But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous.  The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, but that it should become credulous.”

                -W.K. Clifford, in Bronowski, Science and Human Values, published 1956

You cannot reliably reach good conclusions from false assumptions.  False assumptions will inevitably lead to a loss of reason, a loss of rational judgment.  No matter how well-intentioned, any system of false belief will ultimately result in irrational and damaging decisions and behaviors.  

When people learn to accept their deepest beliefs without proof and without question, it erodes their ability to discern what is true.  When holding one unfounded belief, it becomes easier to accept other unfounded beliefs.  Judging by comments on social media by religious people, it also becomes easier to reject truths that are established through rigorous processes of proof.  The alignment of conservative religious beliefs and conservative social and political beliefs is a major social phenomenon of our time.  It’s a movement that crosses national and continental boundaries.  In the United States, someone who is deeply faithful to Christianity is likely to accept false claims of faith healing, election fraud (when Republicans lose), conspiracy theories about the political opposition (ranging into the absurd), etc., and to doubt well-established truths, such as the safety of vaccines, human-caused climate change, the reality of the moon landing.  

In recent history, religious belief has been politicized.  Religious belief seems to predispose believers to believing political falsehoods, influencing their votes.  Our current presidential race features former President Donald Trump, an inveterate liar.  The Republican party has doubled down one his false claims,  regarding the integrity of Joe Biden’s electoral victory in 2020, the dangers of immigration, the state of the economy, the war in Ukraine, etc.  There’s a good correspondence between people with strong religious beliefs and those who strongly disbelieve facts from science, medicine, journalism and politics.  The Venn diagram approaches a circle.

False beliefs lead to irrational and harmful actions.  Someone who believes that God will protect them from COVID at a family Thanksgiving dinner may transmit the disease to me at the grocery store.  Someone who believes that their God is the right and true God may blow up a bus, or start a war that will kill, maim, and make homeless thousands of innocent people, including many of their own sect.  Yet 90% or more Americans believe in God, or spirits or the afterlife, and every day are making irrational decisions that affect me and society.  I live in the Middle Ages, a time of superstition, ignorance, plague, war and feudal hierarchies and other than writing this blog, I am powerless to correct the problem.

I conclude that my classmate is essentially correct.  Religion is not benign, and causes more harm than good, because fundamentally, the precepts of religion and spiritualism are false.  Religion and spiritualism inevitably lead to harmful decisions and behaviors affecting all of society.

Allegory of Truth and Falsehood, Fortunato Duranti, circa 1835

Irrational Beliefs
https://www.progressfocused.com/2016/05/3-types-of-harm-from-irrational-beliefs.html

Donald Trump’s Lies
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/01/politics/trump-dishonesty-avalanche-102-fall-false-claims/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-fact-checker-tracked-trump-claims/2021/01/23/ad04b69a-5c1d-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html


Images in this post are used without permission, but not for profit, and will be removed upon request.

Monday, January 29, 2024

Is Religion Benign? Part I

“Religion is never benign”
            -- College  classmate

One of my college classmates is an aggressive atheist, and has a mantra, “Religion is never benign.”  She uses the phrase frequently to accompany anti-religious memes on Facebook.  She is unkind toward expressions of faith and publicly disparages religious posts by other classmates.  In her view, religion is entirely harmful, and should be opposed in every venue.  

I disagree with my classmate in the straightforward meaning of her mantra.  Clearly, there are many times that religion has prompted people to act kindly toward others.  Sacred texts from most faiths have some expression of the Golden Rule, urging believers to treat other people as well as they hope to be treated themselves.  It’s a foundational concept of justice.  Christianity charges its faithful to serve the poor, to uplift those who are suffering, to forgive offenses, not to lie or cheat, and generally behave as a decent human being.  Islam requires its faithful to do the same, and to never turn away someone who is hungry.  Judaism has the expression “tikkun olam” – to heal the world, that is considered by many Jews to be the core of their faith.  Eastern religions have their own precepts on making the world better.  

But looking at history and current events, harm from religion is also evident.  We should ask whether religion does more harm than good.  Are the apparent good deeds done in the name of religions outweighed by the negative impacts on society?  Let’s consider some of the negatives associated with religion.


Ancient Texts, Practices, Beliefs and Values
In Christianity, there is a lot of baggage in the Old Testament which contradicts the love expressed in the New Testament.  Christianity does not repudiate the Old Testament, with its agenda of genocide, tribalism, misogyny, intolerance and authoritarianism.  Rather, modern American Christianity has doubled down on the repressive laws of the Old Testament, and used those to justify modern bigotry, just as slave owners before the Civil War used the Bible (both testaments) to justify slavery.  Conservative Christians use the briefest mention of homosexuality to justify their bigotry, but ignore nearly adjacent verses advocating religious violence.  If Christians are to strictly enforce Deuteronomy 22:5, prohibiting cross-dressing, will they someday enforce Deuteronomy 13, 12-17, commanding genocide against those who worship other gods?   I discussed problematic Bible verses at length in previous posts, so I won’t repeat myself.  I will just say that the Bible contains directives that are deeply unjust according to modern values.

Violent History
The second problem is the history of religion.  I will discuss Christianity, because I know it best, but religious wars and persecution occurred across all cultures.  The process by which Christianity spread across Scandinavia and Eastern Europe was horrific.  After a few key leaders adopted Christianity, those who opposed conversion were tortured and killed.  One of the most significant leaders was Olaf Tryggvason of Norway.  Olaf sent missionaries to Greenland and Iceland, but within his own country used forced conversion through means such as exile, hostage taking, mutilation, torture, and death for those who refused as well as destroying pagan temples” (Wiikipedia).  The godson of Olaf Tryggvason, King Olaf II Haraldsson, was canonized as Saint Olaf, but by contemporary accounts was a brutal and violent ruler.

 

I recall seeing an item of ancient religious art in a convent in Russia, showing a saint overseeing the conversion of a population, while one who opposed the conversion was shown impaled on a spike.  The forced conversion of American Natives by conquistadors was in the same vein.  The idea that Christianity was about kindness was not part of the deal during the spread of Christianity around the world.

Religious wars are an inseparable part of religious history.  Biblical wars, the Crusades, Islamic wars of conquest, Papal wars, the 16th century French wars of religion, and eastern wars were driven by the question of what religion would be observed in the land.  There were sometimes ethnic or nationalistic aspects to the conflicts, but religion was a key component.

Religious persecution is also part of religious history.  The torments of the Catholic inquisitions defined an entire period of European history, and stifled the development of science in renaissance Catholic Europe after Galileo.  European and American witch trials were another horror of religious history.  The partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 led to huge massacres of and torture of innocent people.  Estimates of the number of people who departed their homes, but never arrived in their new country range from 2.2 million to 3.2 million people.  Today, on a smaller scale, religious and ethnic genocide continues in Armenia, Gaza, Myanmar, Xinjiang China, Somalia and recently Rwanda.  In Russia, the Orthodox church requires priests to pray for military victory and the subjugation of Ukraine.  

What can we conclude about the long history of religious conflict and repression?  Somehow the kindness in the sacred texts doesn’t diminish the violence.  In fact, religion often seems to justify  the violence.  Common soldiers are promised benefits in the afterlife, whether they are Russian infantrymen, Japanese kamikaze pilots, Islamic suicide bombers, etc.  

Historian (and deeply religious author) Thomas Cahill claims that human sacrifice was a feature of every culture prior to the arrival of Christianity.  Human sacrifices, for religious or spiritual purposes, do seem to be ubiquitous in early cultures.  Several cultures of Meso-Americans ritually murdered prisoners,  bronze-age Europeans ritually murdered select individuals in northern Europe and Spain, Vikings sacrificed people to protect new ships, and in cultures as widely separated as Japan and the Balkans, maidens were buried alive in the foundations of new buildings.  Scythians, Mongols, Egyptians and Meso-Americans murdered and buried wives and servants of leaders, to serve the deceased leader in the afterlife.  Celts and other cultures murdered victims for divination of the future.  Middle Eastern cultures sacrificed infants to the gods.  All of this violence was based on false beliefs about spirits, gods, and the afterlife.  Where would humanity be today, if not for false beliefs?

Absolutism
Religions, especially monotheistic religions, generally claim to be absolute truth.  There’s no discussion, reasoning, argument or rebuttal with the sacred texts, the church, or the clergy.  To question sacred documents, their interpretation, or the leaders of the church is to question God himself.  The aura of infallibility is considered to be transferred from God to the representatives of the church.  To oppose those officials is to commit the crime of heresy.

Many Christians are taught that the Bible is the inspired word of God.  A religious injunction carries absolute authority for the faithful.  No personal judgment is allowed.  There’s no Nuremburg example of orders that should be disobeyed.  Faithful Christians set aside their own rational moral judgment to accept the precepts of the Bible – the commandments of God.  And they become absolutely unreasoning in civil discourse about various human rights.  An absolutism takes hold, and it cannot be reasoned with and cannot be changed.  Why?  Because it is founded in a belief that God exists, and that the sacred texts of religion are his will.  The result is a loss of reasoned consideration of social issues, a loss of tolerance for difference and ability to compromise with those of differing ideas and beliefs.

The consequence in American society is bigotry toward gays, transgender people, immigrants, women and atheists.  Other religions have their own immutable laws and biases.  At the core, the problem is the notion that religion is an absolute truth.  When religious leaders represent that they are the channel of the absolute truth of God, it opens the door to sexual and financial abuse of their followers.

Cults, Evangelical Leaders and Sexual Misconduct

“Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.”
    -- Robert Heinlein, as Lazarus Long, in Time Enough For Love.  

Sexual and financial misconduct is strangely prevalent among religious leaders.  It seems more common among religious leaders than business leaders or others (although politicians are not far behind).  Perhaps it is because of power; or perhaps it is because religious leaders know they are already lying.  In any event, an entire blog could be written about misconduct by religious leaders.  To research the topic it seems you could fall into a bottomless rabbit hole.

Closely associated with the problem of absolutism is the problem of cults.  Cults often center on a single charismatic leader, who assumes the infallibility of God as God’s representative to the cult.  Why is the cult leader seen as the representative of God?  Because he said so.  Cult leaders gain enormous power over their followers, power that is usually ultimately abused.  If you find a cult led by a charismatic leader, you often find that the leader has enjoyed sexual relations with numerous members of his flock, while psychologically manipulating them to accept abuse without complaint.  Jim Jones, David Koresh, Warren Jeffs, Shoko Ashara, Joshua Duggar, Tony Alamo and others exemplify the hazard of religious authority assumed by a charismatic leader.

Rulon Jeffs and his son Warren Jeffs were leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a cult-offshoot of the Mormon religion.  At the time of the elder Jeffs’ death, he was reported to have between 60 and 65 wives, and a similar number of children.  Among his wives were girls as young as 14.  Warren Jeffs married most of his father’s surviving wives, and more of his own, for a total of 78 wives.  Again, some were as young as 14.  The younger Jeffs is now serving a term of life in prison for statutory rape of children.


Some of the wives of Warren Jeffs
Rulon Jeffs with some of his sons.  
Boys were often expelled from the polygamous society, while girls were given to older men as wives.

Cult leaders David Koresh and Jim Jones similarly engaged in sexual coercion, requiring that wives of cult members and other women and girls perform sexual favors for the leader.  Both Koresh and Jones ultimately led their followers into horrific self-inflicted massacres.

Cult Leader Jim Jones
In 1978, Jones ordered the murder of an investigating Congressman and four others who wished to leave the cult.  Jones then ordered a mass murder-suicide that killed 909 of his followers.

Christian leaders and clergy are no exception to the generality about sexual misconduct by religious cultists.  In fact, sexual misconduct seems to be the norm rather than the exception, involving some of the most successful televangelists, including Jimmy Swaggert. Ted Haggard, Carl Lentz, Jim Bakker, Bill Gothard, Jerry Falwell Jr., Bob Coy, Doug Phillips, Earl Paulk, Coy Privette, Joe Barron and many others.  Investigations have revealed credible accusations of sexual abuse by over 6000 American Catholic clergy, and hundreds of cases by Baptist clergy.  Often the victims of the sexual abuse are children.   The hypocrisy is stunning.  Misconduct is often in of a form regarded by the church as morally worse than consensual affairs, including adultery, prostitution, homosexuality, pedophilia and group sex.  Financial misconduct or excess is often part of the package.  The psychological, financial and physical damage to religious believers is substantial, in any accounting.

Cult leaders such as Jeffs, Koresh and Jones are outliers in the spectrum of religious leaders.  But there are thousands of known Catholic pedophile priests, and hundreds of known abusers in even a single protestant sect.

Evangelical Leaders, Financial Excess and Misconduct
Houston mega-church pastor Joel Osteen has a net worth reported between $50 million and $180 million, lives in a 17,000 sq. ft. mansion, owns a $338,000 Italian sports car and a private jet.  Other televangelists with excessive wealth include Kenneth Copeland ($300 M to $760 M, source: MSN), David Oyedepo ($150 M), Ayodele Oritsejjafor ($120 M), Pat Robertson ($100 M), Benny Hinn ($60 M), Uebert Angel, ($60 M), Chris Oyakhilome ($50 M) , Creflo Dollar ($39 M), EA Adeboye ($35 M to $130 M), Rick Warren ($28 M), Ray McCauley ($28 M), Tshifhiwa Irene ($35 M), T.D. Jakes ($20 M).  Certainly, there are business leaders who have accumulated far greater wealth, so one might ask why is the enrichment of clergy a greater harm?  It is because the product clergy are selling is a fraud.  Prominent clergy convicted or disciplined because of financial fraud include Peter Poppoff, Richard Roberts, Mike Warnke, Robert Tilton, Kent Hovind, and Mike Guglielmucci.

There is no basis for the offer of eternal life or earthly blessings in exchange for donations to the church.  Huge sums from donations are diverted to line the pockets of the clergy, rather than for good works in the world.  There is also the hypocrisy of Christian faith leaders, considering the words of Christ: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God”  (Matthew 19:24).

Conclusion
The history of religion is deeply unjust, from our earliest understanding of Neolithic cultures to the present.  Ancient sacred texts reflect beliefs, practices and values which have no place in the modern world.  Murder, slavery, misogyny, tribalism, xenophobia and classism were part of the ancient world, and feature prominently in sacred texts.  The history of religion is saturated with violence and cruelty.  Religion brings absolutism and dogma, choking independent human thought.  And from absolutism, religious leaders assume power and commit sexual and financial crimes against their followers.

This post began with the question of whether religion is a net benefit or a net harm to humankind.  I’ve focused only on negative issues, which are substantial.  There is really no way to tally the cumulative harm from religion, and no way to tally the cumulative benefit from religion.  The issues that I’ve raised in this post are mostly in the past, although problems of fraud, absolutism and bigotry remain today.  In my next post, I’ll consider the primary issue going forward, in my opinion.  That issue is the issue of credulity, and the harm from believing things that are not true.
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References on Scandals Involving Clergy
Richest Pastors in the World vs. an Average Pastor’s Salary
https://churchleaders.com/pastors/450460-richest-pastors-in-the-world.html
Highest-Paid Pastors in the World (MSN)
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/highest-paid-pastors-in-the-world/ss-AA12NTCj#image=25
Sexual and Financial Scandals
https://www.ranker.com/list/pastors-that-fell-from-grace/genevieve-carlton
https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/118212
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamo_Christian_Foundation
Lists of Religious Scandals in Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Misconduct_by_Christian_clergy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Scandals_in_Evangelicalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Scandals_in_Christian_organizations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Child_sexual_abuse_scandals_in_religions




Friday, November 10, 2023

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

Carl Sagan popularized the phrase “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (ECREE), in his 1979 book “Broca’s Brain” and the Cosmos television mini-series in 1980.  Sagan was drawing on previous use of the concept by Marcello Truzzi in the 1970s, Thomas Jefferson and Pierre-Simon LaPlace in the early 1800s, and ultimately by philosopher David Hume in his 1748 essay “On Miracles”. 
 
“Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence”
Carl Sagan, 1979
To make sense of the aphorism, we should first ask what qualifies as an extraordinary claim.  There are three classes of extraordinary claims:
  • Statistically improbable claims.
  • Claims outside the range of prior experience, with unknown probability.
  • Claims contrary to the body of established scientific knowledge or preponderance of existing evidence.
Religious ideas are of the third kind, assertions that are contrary to established scientific knowledge.  (I will discuss other kinds of extraordinary claims and evidence in my science blog.)  Religious or spiritual claims are closer to Hume’s original idea about extraordinary claims in 1748 than the other kinds of extraordinary claims.  

                        “What is a miracle?”
                        “A miracle is something that happens contrawise to the will of nature.”
                                            Source is forgotten, likely to be Robert Heinlein or A.C. Clarke


Social scientist Marcello Truzzi, who founded an organization to investigate paranormal claims, coined a similar wording of the ECREE aphorism that Sagan later used.  In 1978, Truzzi wrote, “extraordinariness must be measured against theoretical expectations provided by the general body of scientific knowledge at the time...claims require extraordinary evidence if they entail the falsehood of established scientific results that are themselves extensively tested and well understood.... A black swan is one thing; a swan that visits you from beyond the grave is something else.”

Religious Claims
Let’s try to summarize religious and spiritual claims.  It won’t be easy.  There are about 3000 distinct religions followed by some group of people, now or in the past.  From this variety, it may be difficult to compile a simple list of religious claims, but I will try, using parallel ideas in a number of religions.  

God and Gods
, each having many of the following characteristics:
    Non-corporeal, invisible, silent spirits.
    Immortal.
    Capable of magic or miracles.
    Interested in humanity.
    Intervening in human affairs.
    Responsible for creation of the world, or parts thereof.
    Often engaged in conflict with other gods, spirits, or beings.
    Protecting humans from evil spirits, people or natural disasters, often in exchange for worship.
    All-powerful.
    All-knowing.
    All-good. (In some traditions, not all.)
    
Divine Creation of the World
    Creation of the universe or world by gods or other spiritual beings.
    Creation of the living world.
    Distinct creation of people, separately and above the living world, and endowment of people with sentience, knowledge or wisdom.
    Creation of the spiritual realm, of heaven and hell.

Sacred Gifts
    Gifts of knowledge or other gifts to humanity, including positive and negative gifts.

Immortal Souls
    Spiritual, immortal extension of the human self, capable of existing without the body after death.
    Includes self-awareness, memory, will, thoughts and emotions.
    Generally believed to travel to non-material spiritual places after death -- Heaven, Hell, Limbo, Valhalla, Folkvangr, the seven Samaawat, Alma d-Nhura, Deva Loka, Narka Loka, etc.

Human Spirits
    Ghosts existing after life in the physical world (but not necessarily immortal).  May include malevolent spirits.

Divine Superior Beings
    Demi-gods, including Jesus, Maui, and Heracles, and divine relatives, including the Virgin Mary.  Often considered the offspring of god or gods, sometimes through parthenogenesis, sometimes the offspring of humans and gods.  Often believed to have a previous physical life, but currently are non-corporeal spirits.  Prayer for intercession is often directed toward divine superior beings rather than to God.

Spiritual Superior Beings

    Angels, demons, animal or natural spirits with greater magical power than humans or human spirits.
    May include antagonistic spirits such as Satan.

Afterlife Places

    Heaven, limbo and hell.  Places without a physical presence or contact with the physical world, where one can meet people from one's former life.

Miracles
    Extraordinary events, contrary to expected behavior of natural systems, generally for the benefit of people experiencing difficulty.

Divine Causation

    Routine natural events, seasons, tides, eclipses.
    Routine human events, birth, death.
    Movement of heavenly bodies.
    Extraordinary events as reward or punishment (usually punishment), including natural disasters, virgin birth, ascension to heaven.

Natural Spirits
    Attribution of living identity, will or sentience to animals, plants, places and objects; anthropomorphism of nature.  

Sacred Places
    Attribution of sacred living identity to mountains, rivers, and lands.  Sacred objects and places are believed to enable religious miracles.     

Spiritual Inanimate Objects and Places

    Religious icons, relics of saints, churches, temples, springs and objects or places believed to have magical powers or enable miracles.

Reincarnation
    The belief that souls are recycled into new people or animals.  Some religions attribute a “leveling-up” process of attaining higher or lower status according to moral behavior during life.

Divination and Prophecy
    Belief that the future can be determined by religious ritual or by religiously endowed individuals. 

Saints and Spiritual Intermediaries

    Belief that the spirits of sacred humans can intervene and influence God’s actions, or parallel beliefs in non-Christian religions.

Sacred Texts
    Belief that the Bible, Devi Bhagavatam, Quran, Book of Mormon or other sacred texts are divinely inspired, contain divine revelation, are literally true, and have an absolute obligation to be obeyed.
    
Prayer
    The belief that humans can communicate with gods and higher beings, to give thanks and ask for divine help.

Ancestor Worship
    Belief that deceased ancestors actively intervene and protect their descendants.

Human Religious Intermediaries Priests, Pastors, Popes, and Shamen
    Belief that special humans possess magical powers or can intervene to influence divine action.

Divine Humans

    Egyptian, Roman and Japanese societies held that their leaders were gods, or became gods when assuming office as emperor or pharaoh.  Chinese and other cultures believed that their leaders were semi-divine descendants of gods.

Belief in Transcendent Reality, and/or denial of physical reality.

    Belief that physical reality is corrupt and is superseded by a transcendent reality.

Karma
    Belief that good or bad actions have real-world consequences in luck or future events.

Ordinary Scientific Evidence
The scientific method systemized the search for truth and standardized the criteria for truth, beginning in the 17th century.  Scientific evidence involves the following elements.
  • Empirical observation.
  • Identification of processes and developing hypotheses about processes.
  • Experiments designed to fulfill predictions or invalidate the hypotheses.
  • Clarity of data from experiment.
  • Repeatability.
  • Relevance of evidence, often measured by statistical tests.
  • Peer review and publication.
In general, religious claims fail most or all of the standards for scientific truth (or as it is otherwise known, truth).  Stories of 14th century BCE conversations with a burning bush or visions by a 15th-century French girl do not qualify as evidence.
 
Moses and the Burning Bush, Holman Bible, 1890

Vision of Joan of Arc (1428), artist and date unknown to me.

With religious claims, there are few repeatable observations with objective observers.  There are no identified processes.  There are no experiments to invalidate the claims.  There is little clarity of the data.  There is often little relevance of the evidence, and little critique of the claims.  We see that religious claims fail to meet standards for ordinary evidence before even considering the need for extraordinary evidence,

Why Are Religious Claims Extraordinary Claims?
Religious claims are extraordinary claims because they violate known scientific knowledge about processes.  The list of religious claims is too long for a complete rebuttal, but fall into four general categories.  First are claims involving spirits, second are claims involving higher classes of beings, third are claims involving miracles and fourth are claims of future knowledge or predestination.

Spirits represent disembodied beings, with self-awareness, memory, will, ability to communicate and other powers.  But scientific knowledge places the seat of sentience in the brain.  Through observation of patients with brain injuries (as described well in the books by Oliver Sachs) we know which parts of the brain enable these aspects of sentience.  We can observe patients in which memory, will and communication are gone, and have established that the brain performs those functions of humanity.  Without a physical brain, spirits cannot have sentience; souls cannot persist after death.  To claim otherwise is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary evidence.  

The same reasoning applies to the existence of higher beings, gods, demi-gods, angels and demons that are believed to exist in the spiritual world.  Without a brain, how do they think?  How do they persist as self-aware entities?  To claim that an angel or demon possesses sentience without a brain violates our scientific understanding of sentience.

Religious claims of miracles and magic are also extraordinary claims.  We know how physics, chemistry, and life sciences work.  A miraculous event, by definition, is contrary to the expectations from those natural processes.  As such, every miracle or magical claim requires extraordinary evidence.

Claims of prophecy and predestination violate the scientific understanding of time.  In all well-documented experience, information can not flow backwards through time.  Future events are fundamentally uncertain, despite high precision in prior conditions and known processes.

Extraordinary Evidence
What is extraordinary evidence, as compared to the normal scientific evidence described above?  

I return to David Hume, who first established the ECREE standard in 1748.  “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish”.  

In essence evidence of a miraculous event must be strong enough to invalidate the scientific knowledge precluding that event.  To be considered true, a miracle involving levitation must be supported by evidence sufficient to invalidate our well-established notions about gravity.  To be considered true, the claim of a soul, ghost or spirit must demonstrate disembodied sentience in some unquestionable, observable, repeatable form.  The claim that God exists needs to be demonstrated by apparently unlimited power – perhaps by moving thousands of galaxies overnight to spell out, “I am God” in every language on earth.  Of course, none of those things have ever happened or ever will happen.

Conclusion
Religious claims are extraordinary claims, defying our existing body of scientific knowledge.  Religious claims fail to meet even the lowest standards of scientific evidence, much less the extraordinary evidence required for such claims to be regarded as truth.  
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Afterword
Non-Religious Paranormal Beliefs
There are also a substantial number of non-religious paranormal beliefs, some of which overlap with religious beliefs.  Some (telekinesis, telepathy, extraterrestrial visitors) do not involve spiritual elements, while others (ghosts) do not involve higher spiritual powers.  These also require extraordinary evidence, but are irrelevant to the discussion of atheism.

Non-Interventionist God
Albert Einstein said, "I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist... I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings”  The Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) framed a special case of the non-interventionist God.  Spinoza held to a physical sense of reality, but viewed all of creation as a sub-set of God.  According to commentator Paul So, Spinoza “rejected the existence of Soul, Angels, Demons, Miracles, Divine Creationism, the possibility of Afterlife, Divine Revelation, validity of Prophecy, Biblical literalism, Tradition, Scriptural authority, and last but not least the existence of a personal God.”

Giordano Bruno in the 16th century rejected many of these same religious claims, while introducing revolutionary speculative cosmological ideas that are today held as true.  He speculated that stars were far-away suns, that planets might orbit those suns, and that intelligent beings might live there.  He also made contributions to the study of memory, mathematics, geometry and language.  Bruno may have been approaching the rationalist’s idea of a non-interventionist God, but was burned at the stake for heresy in 1600.
Giardano Bruno, 1548-1600, portrait from 1830 biography.
Execution of Giardano Bruno, source unknown to me.

Spinoza’s non-interventionist God eliminates most, but not all, of the unsupported religious claims.  Spinoza’s God presumes that God is the creator; that God is reality, and that God is greater than reality.  These claims are also unsupported by evidence. 

Baruch Spinoza, 1632 - 1677.
Spinoza tried to rationalize religion by removing the most fantastic claims, and altering the definition of God to equate God with our observed reality.  But God is unnecessary to explain our observations, and equating God with reality brings no additional understanding.  There’s also no evidence, extraordinary or otherwise, that God is greater than our reality.  The central claim that God exists is completely unsupported.  According to Occam’s razor, the best explanation of our reality is that God does not exist.

Monday, October 30, 2023

Atheism and Morality, Part II: How Does an Atheist Become a Moral Person?

Christians sometimes ask atheists, “If you don’t believe in God, how can you be a moral person?”  

The question is really two questions.  First, how do you know what is moral without being told by a religious authority?  Second, how do you control your impulses without the threat of divine punishment?  I addressed the first question in last post, and the second question in this post.

How Does an Atheist Become a Moral Person?

The answer is simple.  You choose to be a moral person.  Personal morality is based on personal values, which can be derived through lived experience, observation of other humans, and self-reflection.  I believe the most important human values developed through this process are empathy, truth, justice (i.e., equity, fairness) and responsibility.  Other core values include service, progress, respect for nature & animals, self-care and liberty.  Not everyone who observes and reflects on the human condition gets there; there are a lot of people whose world-views are based on self-interest and bullying others.  But the morality of the four core values of empathy, truth, justice and responsibility should be indisputable.  Atheists and religious people alike should agree that these are the foundation of morality, based on the precepts of caring for other people and doing the least harm.  

 “The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what's to stop me from raping all I want?  And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero.  And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero.  The fact that these people think that if they didn't have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine.  I don't want to do that.

Penn Jillette, of the illusionist team Penn and Teller

 The entire question of morality, of course, concerns people who are interested in being moral.  There exists a distressing percentage of people who have no interest in being moral and act entirely for their own self-interest.  According to popular media, about 1% of men are psychopaths, and up to 4 % of men are sociopaths; a somewhat smaller percentage applies to women.  This blog post is not about them.  This blog post is about the people who aspire to live moral lives, and their reasons for doing so.

A good friend just posted a question on social media regarding religion and morality.   She asked her religious friends (excluding the non-religious) this question: “Does either fear of hell or promise of heaven/good rebirth affect your choices/behavior?  If so, which is the stronger motivator?”  She had about a dozen responses.  Interestingly, in all of the current responses there was no consideration for consequences in the afterlife due to their decisions and behavior.  (I think that I read one response that half-heartedly admitted to fearing punishment after death, but it seems that response was deleted.  So it may be that people don’t want to admit that fear in public.)  The question was posed by someone who is generally on the liberal side of the political spectrum, and I presume that her respondents are also liberal.  A conservative group may produce different results.  But with those caveats, this group makes their moral decisions in the same way as atheists – according to principles of right and wrong, and consideration of doing good or harm to other people.  The only religious motivation mentioned in the responses was that the joy of a religious life gave motivation to do good works.  Religious joy may be a motivation for religious people, but that does not imply that atheists are immoral.  Like many religious people, atheists find joy in doing good deeds for the sake of doing good. 


Dudley Do-Right and Snidely Whiplash

Does Religion Make People Moral?
If people require the discipline of a God to be moral, are they really moral?  If fear of God is the motivating factor to behave with kindness and justice toward other people, is that behavior moral, or simply fearful?  Coerced behavior isn’t rooted in morality.   For people who are only moral because of the threat of eternal damnation, the only thing that matters is avoiding punishment.  When religious doctrine becomes the authority for what is moral, morality itself is distorted.  Religious doctrine has no clear foundation of ethical morality.

Let’s briefly consider the historical record for Christianity and morality.  
If religion (specifically Christianity) actually produced moral behavior, would the world have seen the cruelty associated with the following Christian campaigns through history? 

  • Systematic persecution of pagans and Jews in the late Roman Empire and Middle Ages.
  • The coerced conversion of Northern and Eastern Europe to Christianity around 1000 CE, enforced by unspeakable torture and murder.
  • The Crusades, from 1100 CE to 1300 CE.
  • Burning of heretics at the stake in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
  • Burning of witches at the stake in the Renaissance.
  • The repression of science in the Renaissance, through arrest and threatened torture.
  • The Italian and Spanish Inquisitions of the Renaissance, marked by repression, torture and murder.
  • The conquest, enslavement and exploitation of Native Americans and other indigenous groups in the course of conversion to Christianity.
  • European wars of religion from 1400 CE to 1700 CE.      

The Christian Bible had reached its current form by about 400 CE.  By 1000 CE, Christianity was a mature religion, and Christian principles of loving your neighbor, of forgiveness and non-violence should have been well-established.  Brutality in the name of Christianity continued for the next 900 years.  Mark Twain, a relatively recent author, decried the brutality of Christianity during his time, in writings such as “Letters from the Earth”, “The War Prayer”, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness”, “The Chronicle of Young Satan”, and “Grief and Mourning for the Night”.

Across centuries, religious doctrine sometimes corrects errors of the past, with actions ranging from Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses to the belated admission by the Catholic Church, after 359 years, that its conviction of Galileo was wrong.  Missionaries no longer use torture and murder to convert adherents of other religions.  But after a millennium and a half of cruel subjugation of people with other beliefs, can we really say that religion can claim any high ground with respect to morality?  

Historian Thomas Cahill argues that every human culture practiced some form of human sacrifice prior
to encountering Christianity.  That is an improvement, but relative to other crimes of Christianity it is a fairly low bar.  It seems to me that Christianity did not become less brutal according to its own principles, but rather in accordance with the general improvement of human behavior over the very long term.  Steven Pinker documents this gradual improvement well in his books “Enlightenment Now” and “The Better Angels of Our Nature”.  The arc of moral history does bend toward justice in the long run, but not necessarily because of religion.

The Origin of Moral Authority
Morality derived from religious authority is necessarily suspect, because religious authority is often concerned with behavioral issues other than care or harm to others.  Christianity, Islam and Hinduism have many moral laws about sexual issues, including gender identity, sexual orientation, interracial or intercaste relationships, abortion, contraception and sexual liberty.  There are also many non-sexual restrictions specific to women, including the freedom of women to work, study,  to refuse compulsory dress, or even the freedom to appear in public alone.  

There are religious decrees asserting moral control over other aspects of life.  Western societies have slowly loosened these restrictions, but in my lifetime, local government typically restricted business hours and activity to ensure observance of the sabbath.  There are religious decrees concerning caste status, cutting hair or not cutting hair, eating or not eating certain foods, wearing hats or not wearing hats, all of which infringe on the fundamental moral value of liberty.  Some religious moral dictums are arbitrary traditions, and some reflect ancient health concerns, but many aspects of religious morality exist to perpetuate religious control.  Some religious moral standards exist in order to perpetuate patriarchy, slavery, caste systems, or social hierarchy.  There is no real moral authority for these religious judgments.

Considering all of this, moral authority from religion is null and void.  People who take moral guidance from their religious authorities are mistaken.  True morality comes from consideration of the well-being, rights, freedom, and feelings of other people.  Religious issues outside of those considerations are morally irrelevant. 

Atheists in religious societies (as we all are) are necessarily independent-thinkers.  Perhaps atheists understand the origins of morality and its foundation in human values better than religious people.

Moral Dilemmas and Conflicts
Morality necessarily involves dilemmas and conflicts.  Sometimes, moral considerations are in conflict for different people in a particular situation.  Indeed, moral conflicts are nearly ubiquitous in civil discourse.  An example might be the fishing rights of indigenous people, where their need for sustenance competes with the need to protect of wild fishing stocks.  Other examples might include conscientious objections to military service, restricting the liberty to own guns to improve public safety, requiring vaccinations and masking in certain jobs to prevent the spread of disease, or setting immigration quotas for asylum and resettlement.

As an atheist, humanist and western liberal, there are some common notions of morality that I reject.  I reject nationalism and patriotism.  I reject restrictive norms of sexual identity and behavior, except for actions involving minors, actions with those incapable of knowledgeable consent, relationships with a power differential, and relationships which cause harm to others in a committed relationship.  Otherwise, the moral value of personal liberty should prevail.  

I recognize truth, self-care, and liberty as core moral values of a different kind.  These are values which do not directly benefit or harm other people or nature, but exist as moral values for their own sake.  These values are sometimes in conflict with other values, such as when a doctor must comfort a dying patient, or times when self-care is in conflict with serving others.  

There is one value, one of the top four values in my opinion, for which mystical religions are clearly immoral.  That value is truth.  As I hope to show in the final essays for this blog, mystical religion fails every test of rationally determined truth.  

Truth is part of morality, and religion isn’t true.  Therefore, I conclude that religion is immoral.
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The image of Dudley Do-Right and Snidely Whiplash is used without permission and not for profit.  It will be removed upon request.  This seems like a sufficient moral accommodation.

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Atheism and Morality, part 1, Where Does Morality Come From?

Christians sometimes ask atheists, “If you don’t believe in God, how can you be a moral person?”  

The question is really two questions.  First, how do you know what is moral without being told by a religious authority?  Second, how do you control your impulses without the threat of divine punishment?  I will consider the first question in this post, and the second question in the next.

The entire question is vague, because “a moral person” is poorly defined and is up for considerable debate.  If the chosen definition of a moral person involves religious observance, then no, an atheist is not going to fit that definition of morality.  But any thoughtful person can independently determine what is moral and what is not.  I have found that atheists, accustomed to thinking for themselves, are typically more considerate of right and wrong than religious people.  
 
Angel Aziraphale & Demon Crowley, from Good Omens, by N. Gaiman and T. Pratchett

I settled in to do a small bit of research for this post, and quickly realized that I could fall into a very deep rabbit-hole without adding any clarity about the subject.  So I will take a shallow look at the meaning of morality and then address the question of how atheists can be moral people.  

There’s a growing body of academic work on the topic of morality.  The research is focused on the development of morality with maturity, and cross cultural patterns of accepted morality.  There are a few core values across cultures that are widely regarded as moral, though the list of values is by no means settled.  This post will look at the development of moral thinking, moral foundation theory, the Ten Commandments, my own thoughts about morality, and finally, the relationship of morality to atheism.

Development of Moral Thinking
Lawrence Kohlberg (1958) built on the work of Jean Piaget (1932) in looking at the development of moral thinking in children.  Kohlberg defined a hierarchy of six levels of moral development, beginning with the thinking of young children, and continuing to the thinking in (some) adults.  In summary, the six levels represent a growth in care and respect for others.  These include the values of physical well-being, property rights, and liberty.  With increasing maturity, there is an overall decrease in the acceptance of authoritarian guidance on morality, and an increase in independent thought and action relative to morality.  
Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

Moral Foundations Theory

Moral Foundations Theory is a 21st century attempt to categorize moral precepts across cultures.  It was proposed to counter the “developmental rationalist” approach by Kohlberg.  The Moral Foundations authors identify six core values across cultures: Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, Sanctity and Liberty; the converse of these values represent immorality.  Earlier work had identified the areas of autonomy, community and divinity as representing cross-cultural clusters of moral concern.  

The Moral Foundation authors remain open to additions or deletions of these core values.  Not surprisingly, there are disputes regarding moral variation across cultures and additional proposed core values.  Other proposed values include efficiency, ownership (property rights), honesty and equity (separate from fairness(?)).  The discourse with respect to Moral Foundations has taken on a decidedly political turn, with conservative and liberal views being argued and amended over what qualifies as fairness in economic distribution.  Certain views of morality appear to be reverse-engineered from self-interest, which is a long way from the authors’ original concept of universal morality.  

The Ten Commandments

Conservative Christians often cite the Ten Commandments as the foundation of morality.  Like the Greek myth that Prometheus gave fire to humanity, there is a Christian myth that God gave morality to humanity.  Conservatives frequently campaign to post the commandments in courts and schools, ignoring the glaring illegality of doing so.  The First Amendment prohibits establishment of a state-sponsored religion, and posting the Ten Commandments in official government facilities would clearly violate that ban.
Ten Commandments, von Carolsfeld, 1850
With that aside, let’s consider what values are expressed by the Ten Commandments.  I will  note that the subdivision and numbering of the commandments is vague and not universally agree upon.  I will use the traditional Christian numbers for this discussion.  

The first four commandments concern the relationship between God and humans.  Certain behaviors are required or prohibited as a form of respect toward God.   The remaining six concern relationships between people.  Here is the list, and the values represented by the commandments.

        You shall have no other gods before me.         Relationship to God.
        You shall not worship any graven image.        Relationship to God.
        Do not take the name of God in vain.              Relationship to God.
        Remember the Sabbath.                                   Relationship to God.
        Honor your father and mother.                         Respect and fairness.
        You shall not kill.                                             Care, avoidance of harm, respect, civil order.
        You shall not commit adultery.                        Sexual behavior, purity, respect, clear inheritance.
        You shall not steal.                                           Property rights, respect, civil order.
        You shall not bear false witness.                      Truth, fairness, civil order.
        You shall not covet your neighbor’s things.     Property rights, civil order.


So we see that the Ten Commandments include generally acknowledged elements of morality, involving respect and care for others.  But the Commandments begin, in a prioritized order, with moral sentiments that are explicitly rejected by atheists as nonsensical.  The remaining commandments, while dealing with aspects of fairness and respect, also show that maintaining civil order is also a priority of the commandments.

Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law, Gustave Dore, 1866

My Take on Morality
Since there is no clear definition of morality, it’s fair that I weigh in with what morality means to me.  I generally agree with the ideas in the Development of Moral Thinking theory.  I agree with some ideas in the Foundations of Moral Thinking theory, but with the caveat that the moral consensus has changed radically over time, and will probably continue to change.  Some part of the moral consensus will soon be judged to be incorrect.  Historically, there has been a consensus about a patriarchal morality across many cultures, but modern western cultures would find many of those ideas unjust.  Consensus and tradition are insufficient; we have to think about these things from the perspective of human values.

The clearest moral principles reflect respect and care for other people.  Many religions contain these principles.  It has been said that the Golden Rule is intrinsic to all religions.  Like the Golden Rule, moral principles can be independently derived by anyone of sufficient intelligence and maturity.  Above all, universal moral principles should reflect care and respect for other people.  “Other people” includes those of different races, ethnicity, beliefs, origin, sexual identity or orientation, age, near and far, and people in the future.  Aspects of that respect should include safety, health and well-being, property rights and liberty, including freedom of sexual orientation and identity. Morality should also include self-care, and care for animals and nature for their own sake.

A few years ago, I initiated a project to identify the core values for the Alaska Democratic party, and to write those values into the state platform.  I interviewed about 40 Democrats, and asked about their  values.   It was clear that there was a strong consensus about key values, but often expressed in different words.  I identified related values and grouped those into six core values.  After some valuable editing, my six core values were named as Empathy, Truth, Equity, Service, Progress, and Responsibility.    A seventh value, Ethics, was added in the editing process.   I also see Ethics as the intersection of Truth and Responsibility.  

Included in each value are other facets which relate to the named core value.  For example, Empathy includes compassion, kindness and generosity.  Truth includes integrity, honesty and accountability.  Equity is a broad value, including fairness, justice, democracy, intentional inclusiveness, equal opportunity, human dignity, diversity, and respect.  Responsibility means taking action for good and ensuring that we create a better world for others and nature, now and in the future.  In the words of Thomas Jefferson, these values are self-evident, without needing the imprimatur of religious authority.  Like the Golden Rule, these values can be derived independently by anyone.  To expand this list to a list of universal morality, I would add respect for nature and animals, self-care, and liberty.  

My list of moral core values is expanded somewhat from the values of the Alaska Democratic Party.  Moral core values include Empathy, Truth, Justice (renamed from Equity), Service, Progress, Responsibility, Respect for Nature and Animals, Self-Care, and Liberty.  To me, those values are founded in care for others, and form the core of morality.  

Other Aspects of Morality

As seen in literature, theater, art, and music, humans are intensely interested in all aspects of love and mating.  For many people across many cultures, morality is directly connected to notions of sexual behavior and gender norms.  If you Google images of "morality", you find iconography of right and wrong; but if you Google for "immorality", you will find an overwhelming majority of references to sexuality.  Note that many of those moral norms reflect patriarchal repression of women and rejection of human gender diversity.  Over the past two centuries, the notion of what is moral for women has changed significantly in western cultures, and notions of what is moral in gender identity has changed radically in the past two decades.  Those changes are reverberating around the globe, as seen in global television dramas.  Still, there is a wide divergence in the perceived morality of women’s dress codes between Taliban Afghanistan and St. Tropez.  There’s a wide gap between the perceived morality of gay marriage between Waco, Texas and San Francisco, or trans-gender rights between Franklin, Tennessee and Key West, Florida.

There is a wide range of perceived morality of dress among different cultures.

Sexual behavior should be judged in the same way as other aspects of morality, in terms of the respect or harm to others caused by different behaviors.  Sexual actions involving minors, or others incapable of knowledgeable consent are clearly immoral, because of the harm caused and the exploitation of a power imbalance.  Sexual relations or pressure in situations with a power imbalance are also clearly immoral.  Relationships which cause harm to those in committed relationships are also immoral.  Sexual relations which result in children create moral obligations.  Children deserve a loving home, ideally with two parents, and sex without fulfilling that responsibility when a child is born would be immoral.  Sexual relationships are complicated, but as for other moral questions, the morality of a situation can be judged according to standards of care and respect.

What about other issues deemed immoral, such as LGBTQ+ rights?  No one is harmed by LGBTQ+ rights.  On the other hand, religious proscriptions on sexuality cause considerable harm to the non-heterosexual community.  

Community standards on dress can be appropriate to a social setting, or can be repressive.  A reasoned judgment can be made about whether it is moral to prohibit wearing a hoodie in the US Senate, or allow not wearing a hijab on the street.  The balance between community standards and personal freedom is on-going in society, and should be addressed from the perspective of who or what is harmed, and at what cost of personal liberty.  

Throughout history, men have largely been responsible for determining codes of morality for women.  This is well-illustrated by the photo of G.W. Bush, surrounded by his old, male advisors, signing into law the United States’ prohibition on so-called partial birth abortions.  Without going into the morality of a procedure which might be required to save a woman’s life in an impossible delivery, I would simply note that no women were included in the celebratory signing ceremony.  It seems to me that deciding moral standards on women’s reproductive rights and issues should necessarily involve women.

G.W. Bush, signing a restriction on abortion procedures, 2003.

Are credit-card interest rates of 18% moral?  I would say no.  We used to have laws against excessive interest rates.
Is is okay to lie on a credit application?  No.  
Is it okay to lie to comfort a dying patient?  Yes.

Morality is simply a question of fundamental human values, applied to questions of behavior and societal norms.  In all of these questions of morality, religion has no role.
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References
Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development
https://www.simplypsychology.org/kohlberg.html


Moral Foundations Theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-nature-of-morality

https://www.yourmorals.org/

The image of Aziraphale and Crowley from "Good Omens", by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett is used without permission and not for profit.  It will be removed upon request. 
Go read the book and see the mini-series.  The story is wonderful.