Does religion expose the shortcomings of empathy based moral systems

[The Grand Nudger]

Here's the problem I see.  When you look at something really bad, let's say the Spanish Inquisition.  The inquisitors weren't wandering around torturing people willy nilly on orders from God.  While they would claim they were operating according to God's moral commands, we know that's nonsense.  There is no God.  They are just regular people.  Regular people travelling the lands jamming large devices up people's assholes until they died.

That's not what they believed.

We pin that on religion/god being awful, but the religious folk aren't really following a God's law.  There is no God.  They were just regular people with the same governing biology as everyone else.  They had empathy and social inclinations and all that evolutionary jazz that Atheists usually use to explain our own moral inclinations.  

That's not what they believed.

What I think the violent history of religion makes pretty clear, is that empathy/social inclination shit is weak sauce.  Because it just took a couple make believe stories for people to toss their empathy to the road side, and start literally tearing people in half.  

They thought they were doing the right thing.  They probably even thought that they were saving other people..and in many cases, saving the souls of the condemned.  That's empathy working as intended..through a horrid religious filter.  

It seems clear empathy is only a factor in our behavior/morals.  One that can and has been overridden by a vast number of other impulses, and I don't know if anything makes that clearer than religion.  

Meh.

I know a lot of theists and a few of us nihilists do the "Without God, morality is iffy at best!"  And for whatever reason, we always focus on atheist behavior when trying to make that point.  But isn't the point really driven home by religious history?  Because despite those people holding a dopey belief in God, they are still a prime example of what happens in an existence without God.   Religion and all the atrocities committed by it are the product of a godless world.  And that humanity has been so easily overrun with religion is just a testament to how flimsy empathy as a moral foundation really is for humans.

Not really.  People will do terrible things to other people...particularly if they think it's the right thing to do, if they think they are protecting people or saving people by doing so. To use a less contentious example..a soldier isn't thinking of the guy he's about to shoot when he justifies it to himself. He's thinking of folks back home, or some pretty thing that has to live in the hellhole he's invaded. -Then-..he thinks about the guy he's about to shoot, and how horrible that guy is for those other people.

[Whateverist]

Did anything I said suggest I thought there was a biological aspect that governs their behavior?  Don't think I understand your point.

I guess I don't understand your original point has to do with my original post.  I tried to infer some context to make them related.

The key original point is that religion is an example of human behavior in a godless world.  So the shit that's done in God's name exists as a byproduct of our godless reality.  Religious people are what happens when there is no god, not when there is a God.

Atheists think religious people are historically the worst.  So when religious people say "If there's no God, then people would be shit."  They are right, and they are also the evidence of their being right.

Oh I see.  Yeah I did miss your original point.  My point didn't address that but from a rough reading it made me think about the way Christians seem to be disposed against trusting their natural inclinations including empathy.  That reaches a zenith under Kant when he decides that the person who goes to see his ailing mother in hospital from a sense of duty is morally superior to the person who does so out of kind regard for his mother.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'd say that religious belief exploits empathy to counterproductive ends, personally.  Religion works on and because of that stuff, not against it or in spite of it.

It circumscribes what you are to be empathetic about and how your empathy is to manifest itself.

"If there is no god....what happens to the evildooers who get away, wheres the justice?"

[Whateverist]

No.

We all create theories, conscious or unconscious, about what reality is, how it works, and what the underlying picture really is.  Moral systems -- all moral systems -- are layered on top of these theories and interpreted through them.  Just as the meaning of a mathematical theorem depends upon the definition of its terms, and a sentence depends upon the meaning of individual words, so too, moral theories depend upon metaphysical and naturalistic assumptions.  Our morals are built out of these underlying theoretical assumptions.  A world that contains a God who is an embodiment of the good is going to inspire a different set of morals than a world which contains no god.  It is the underlying worldviews which are constraining the nature of the resultant moral systems; not any defect in sourcing morals to empathy.  My empathy is always going to be framed by what I view as the truth about the world, whether that truth is religious or not.  So no, religion doesn't expose any such shortcomings, or, if it does, it exposes them as being shortcomings which all moral systems share, namely a dependence upon the physical and metaphysical views of the holder for the ultimate content of those moral systems.

But I think you would agree that a metaphysical assessment which leads a person to distrust their empathic responses would be a detriment, as I think Christianity largely does.

---

I'd say that religious belief exploits empathy to counterproductive ends, personally.  Religion works on and because of that stuff, not against it or in spite of it.

It circumscribes what you are to be empathetic about and how your empathy is to manifest itself.

I still think that by positing a higher moral authority, Christianity leads to alienation. Not that they can't be good people or happy, but I personally wouldn't want what they're having.

"If there is no god....what happens to the evildooers who get away, wheres the justice?"

The same thing that happens to them under Christianity, nothing, as opposed to what they imagine happens to them.

[henryp]

No.

We all create theories, conscious or unconscious, about what reality is, how it works, and what the underlying picture really is.  Moral systems -- all moral systems -- are layered on top of these theories and interpreted through them.  Just as the meaning of a mathematical theorem depends upon the definition of its terms, and a sentence depends upon the meaning of individual words, so too, moral theories depend upon metaphysical and naturalistic assumptions.  Our morals are built out of these underlying theoretical assumptions.  A world that contains a God who is an embodiment of the good is going to inspire a different set of morals than a world which contains no god.  It is the underlying worldviews which are constraining the nature of the resultant moral systems; not any defect in sourcing morals to empathy.  My empathy is always going to be framed by what I view as the truth about the world, whether that truth is religious or not.  So no, religion doesn't expose any such shortcomings, or, if it does, it exposes them as being shortcomings which all moral systems share, namely a dependence upon the physical and metaphysical views of the holder for the ultimate content of those moral systems.

But the idea of the world that contains God is a product of a world that doesn't contain God.   When I talk about religion, I'm talking about its existence as an example of what humans look like in a godless world.  As an atheist, I look at religion and think "Clearly, empathy isn't some inherent trait we can rely on, as religion happened, and everybody jumped on board that and started murdering each other."  That is what morality in a godless world often looks like.

Our morals are built out of underlying theoretical assumptions.  But our underlying theoretical assumptions are built out of something more base.  Our very nature pushed us to create religion, and for billions to frequently allow this nonsensical idea that satisfied some impulses to override our empathy, and act out in a pretty non-empathetic manner.

I think the flaw, is that the empathy based morality is built on a deck of cards.  It's not the root of our morality.  It's more the midway point.  A conclusion that can be reached if the stars align in a particular manner, and one that can be lost just as quickly should the stars shift, so to speak.  It seems flimsy, no?  Many people think of empathy as the bedrock of their morality, and I think it's clear that's not the case.  And human history, in particular the atrocities committed in the name of religion, which often are passed off as God's problem, when they are actually our problem, show how vulnerable empathy appears to be.

[The Grand Nudger]

"If there is no god....what happens to the evildooers who get away, wheres the justice?"

The same thing that happens to them under Christianity, nothing, as opposed to what they imagine happens to them.

LOL, yes, I know..I used it only as an example of how..even in proposing the eternal torturer..there's a component of empathy for the victims of their offenses.

[brewer]

While religious beliefs may promote certain aspects of empathy, it also constrains empathy to the belief system.

[The Grand Nudger]

Empathy is commonly constrained.  All cultures have what we could call "limits of empathy". Reasons not to feel it, or people who are not considered worthy of it. It's the constarint -to the belief system- that makes it shitty..when it's shitty,not the mere presence of constraints. Constrained empathy is empathy working as intended.

[Catholic_Lady]

In the sense that you are speaking of it, i dont think religion is differemt from anything else people have "used" to commit bad deeds. Politics, culture... any ideology or way of thinking can make an already crappy person hold on to it as an excuse to axude power over others.

Besides that, I agree with you that empathy is always in competition with a person's more selfish or animalistic urges. Having empathy obviously doesn't mean that's all there is to us, and much less, that it always turns out being the more dominant part. Being religious, while it can be a positive influnce/motivation depending on what the religion teaches, doesn't make the person immune to what everyone else has to deal with inside of themselves.

[henryp]

In the sense that you are speaking of it, i dont think religion is differemt from anything else people have "used" to commit bad deeds. Politics, culture... any ideology or way of thinking can make an already crappy person hold on to it as an excuse to axude power over others.

I'd agree with this.  But the part that's interesting to me, is that religion (assuming their is no God) is what billions of humans look like in a godless world.  

I think intuitively people split it into two.  There's how people behave with God, and how they behave without one.  But we're all the product of the same godless world (in our opinion).  So we (atheists) can't discount the behavior of religious folk as something separate.  The acts that we blame on religion are ultimately to blame on the nature of our godless world.