RE: Atheist vs Anti-theist
July 12, 2015 at 10:49 pm
(This post was last modified: July 12, 2015 at 10:59 pm by Excited Penguin.)
(July 12, 2015 at 10:41 pm)robvalue Wrote: I'd be interested to know how people's answers would change in the following scenario:
Imagine religion still exists, but it somehow does no harm anymore, in any real way. Obviously it still involves some irrational thinking to believe in it, but it's not been forced on anyone anymore (especially children) and any other negative factor you can think of has been neutralised. It's a secular masterpiece.
Would you still consider yourself "against" religion (further to it being irrational) and if so, to what degree?
Personally I'd be very happy, in fact ecstatic, with this scenario and I wouldn't be against it at all. I'd still encourage more rational thought of course, and keep a beady eye on things.
I just realised this may well be a loaded/obvious question! Oh well, discussion welcome
By your own premise religion would still be harmful. There is no possible universe, by my reasoning, in which irrational thinking would be harmless. Just because we can't actually understand the degree to which a brain-washed zombie can fuck up society just by using his impotent reasoning, it doesn't mean the problem's not there.
It's kind of like this: The philosopher Peter Unger has made a persuasive case that a single dollar spent on anything but the absolute essentials of our survival is a dollar that has some starving child’s blood on it.*
That's exactly the way a religious person can fuck up society, I think. He invests time and money in a ridiculously unproductive thing. And if that's not enough, the way his thinking changes due to this can be extremely dangerous. A theist must basically think everything is going to be ok because God - he is implictly irresponsible, no matter what his holy book tells him to do. He can't possibly think he can contribute something to change- his universe is a very confined one; it's all there, life, heaven, sins, angels, all that stuff. He doesn't have to worry about understanding the world - it has already been all explained to him. How can this type of thinking ever be harmless?! Can you imagine what kind of society we would be living in if the majority actually believed this kind of nonsense? Oh, shit, what am I saying, I guess we are living in that kind of society!
*Sam Harris, The End Of Faith, Leftist Unreason and the Strange Case of Noam Chomsky
