Should we respect Religion?

[Angrboda]

Most Atheists disagree with Christianity from reading the bible, not by reading Anti-Christian books.

And your source or evidence for this claim is what?



I'm not sure how I feel about this. My initial stab was that a "should" is a moral question, and ideally only applies to actions, not beliefs or ideas, lest we want to get into the area of thought crimes. However, nothing is ever that simple, and it does appear that the world "might" be better off with certain ideas absent rather than present, or certain supposedly free choices not allowed. (For example, it's well known that certain industries like pornography inevitably give rise to abuses. Religions in the world seem to have a pattern of effect which might reasonably be attributed to the nature of the beliefs themselves. I'm opposed to legalization of certain drugs because of the ambiguity of whether the choice to continue an addictive drug can be considered truly free and rational.) Anyway, I can't say I came to any conclusions going down that avenue, beyond my basic stance that morals are something to be decided by individual perception, theory, and belief, not on the basis of philosophical argument about objective good or bad.

However, I see another avenue of approaching the question. I'm of the opinion that most religious impulses have their root and sustenance in the way the brain deals with reality, as side effects of useful processes and cognitions. For example, when we see an individual move in a purposeful manner, talk in ways that make sense to us, and respond in speech or act in ways that are sensible to an agent, we attribute a mind to that "fleshy thing" in our world, even though we never actually "see" a mind, or any real mechanism that we identify as something that might give rise to mind. We see a body which we infer is possessed of a mind which is causing it's behaviors. We more than simply "conclude" that a mind is present, we perceive a thing animating that person which is as real to our perception as the table or the song played on a car stereo as it drives by. Other "people" aren't just abstractions or inferences, the other person becomes a composite of two "things" — a body and a mind, which is as real as the body. One can view the concept of a god as the application of the machinery in our brain which makes these inferences in a way that doesn't serve an obvious, social function of helping us to cooperate with other agents in our environment. But notice, we normally don't think about whether to attribute a mind to John or Sue, it's hard wired into us to have certain cognitions in response to similar stimuli in the environment. We don't really choose to attribute mind to a person, it happens below the decks of our consciousness, and therefore appears, to the mind, as an "objective fact of the world". Once our brain has concluded that P has a mind, it's hard to unmake that inference; it becomes "real". Likewise, I would argue that when this same machinery is invoked to lead us to infer that there is a disembodied mind that exists as a ghost or a spirit or a god, it isn't an abstract concept to the person who is persuaded of its existence; to them, it's real, not just in the sense that any true proposition "is real" to you, but in the sense that the person's mind makes it an objective fact of their world, just like other objective facts they take for granted. I guess in some ways, this resembles the case of the legalization of drugs, because, the person isn't completely free to believe or disbelieve based on any abstract consideration of the evidence: their ability to choose is constrained by their brains making the phenomenon "real to them" in a way that other propositions aren't so constrained. So I would argue that there needs to be some tolerance given or allowed because these ideas likely aren't pure ideas that they can take or leave based on rational consideration alone, as the brain of the believer is essentially being hijacked by itself, regardless of the conscious will.

Moreover, the bulk of religious conversions occur by the age of 15, and so religious belief is being built into the individual's world by the normal developmental processes of love and attachment and dependence which ultimately function to transmit the culture of our forefathers to our children. This is a much more thorough and deep "brainwashing" than is going to occur at any other time in the person's life. A westerner raised in a country where Christian belief is prominent will have a difficult time understanding the things someone raised in predominately Hindu India would. Those first 15 years set the stage for so much of what follows, not just in what to think, but also how to think and why. To treat those "decisions" about what to believe in terms of religion (which were made by their parents and society) as possessed of the same degree of freedom as choices and beliefs acquired independently as an adult is, I think, unfair and unrealistic. So, I think there, too, one has to temper one's feelings about the beliefs themselves with a certain allowance for the fact that most people who hold religious beliefs, and may largely be "stuck" in a religious mindset, are not that way strictly of their own choosing and free will.

While I wouldn't argue for according specific ideas, religious or not, special tolerance or treatment where those ideas are unreasonable and probably untrue, on the substance of the belief alone, I think one has to take into account the realities of when these ideas manifest themselves in people, under whose control, and whether they manifest as ideas that can be rationally, abstractly chosen or discarded. I think when you take such things into account, I think it cautions against treating religious beliefs and behaviors in the same moral framework as other beliefs. I don't know whether "respect" is or isn't appropriate, but I think when adjusting one's moral calculus in assessing the good or harm of religious beliefs and behaviors, these facts need to be put on the scale as well, to temper conclusions which would be reached in areas where these realities aren't in play. (Such as whether or not to respect someone's belief that Justin Bieber is dreamy or that heavily taxing the rich is a good thing.)

(It's probably appropriate to put in a word about the nature of belief and reason here. Modern psychology has availed us of truths about human behavior which we would not have suspected on the basis of "common sense" notions about human behavior. There are many aspects of human behavior which are counter-intuitive and defy our "common sense" expectations about how people work. One of the changes over the last few decades has been to enlarge the portion of our behavior attributed to non-reasoning influences on our behavior. As such, one can take a range of stances on what the "blend" of reason and non-reason is in our overall behavior. One can propose we are largely rational in our choices, beliefs and behaviors, such that the ratio of reason approaches 100% more closely than 0% rationality. Someone else, might put the ratio more in the middle, such that it's 50% reason, 50% non-reasoning causes. There are even theories which posit reason's contribution as close to 0%. Needless to say, where you place the ratio — whether closer to 100% or closer to 0% — you will adjust your views on how irrational behaviors of any kind should be weighed. It's worth observing that someone who places the ratio close to 0% would likely view a person who has come to a position of atheism as being every bit as "trapped" by that belief as someone who is "trapped" in a religious conclusion, and view the sides considerably differently in apportioning moral properties and such. I don't have a figure, but I definitely lean much farther toward the 0% estimate than the majority of my peers, here or elsewhere.)