Should we respect Religion?

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Hi there, I was fascinated by your response and I wanted to address a few points.

… 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.

How are you distinguishing ‘individual perception, theory and belief’ from ‘philosophical argument about objective good or bad’? It seems to me they are not mutually exclusive.

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.

There has been some interesting research done in this area. Broadly speaking I would agree with you, although I arrive by a different route. I would separate out ‘god’ from ‘religion’ at this stage. We know from developmental psychology that children, when experimenting with causal reasoning, will spontaneously create disembodied sentience, such as the man in the moon (to make it move across the sky), bogeyman in the wardrobe (to make those wood creaking noises)and even god-like entities as the overall cause of the world/universe, but, a lone-god does not make a religion. The development of religious dogma has far more to do with group psychology and the evolution of proto-societies. That the two different strands come from two different areas is much more revealing.

Because of this, I would argue it is easier to be tolerant of god(s) because these ideas, as you put it, “… aren't pure ideas that [people] can take or leave based on rational consideration alone”.

Religion, however, is different and needs to be considered in light of it's social evolution.

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.

I think what you are talking about here is libidinal cathexis. I have to be honest and say I’m not sure if age has an effect on libidinal cathexis, I’m fairly sure that whatever age this occurs at it is fairly difficult to undo.

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.

This is a bit too much of a generalisation for me. I think some people find it hard to understand alien cultural norms, others can assimilate them quickly and without problems. This would seem to be an intelligence issue for me (and I don’t mean education).

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.

I’m inclined to agree with the pressure created by social norms (including the teenage social norm of rebellion) but when we get into the realms of ‘free will’ I think there are too many assumptions in your statement, that opens up a more significant problem.

Neuroscience has all but determined free will doesn’t exist as we historically imagined and further research by social psychologists seems to suggest that the belief in free will (regardless of its nature) is more important to individuals and has social advantages. This then gets tantalisingly close to opening up another thread of debate. But let’s stick to the matter at hand. Suffice it to say the end of that last section seems to me to be considerably dismissive of a much broader issue.

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.)

I am inclined to agree.

(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.)

I’d be interested in some references for the research mentioned in this section.

MM