There is no more reverent way to wake to a fine Sunday morning than to discover another religious zealot punching himself in the face. Repeatedly. The Rabbi Avi Shafran is waxing indignant in a syndicated article that is popping up all over the place, in which he tries to denounce Zizek’s most excellent article on the virtues of atheism. The best he can do, though, is whimper at length that atheists are just plain bad people—it’s an argument to appeal to bigots who already have a prejudiced view of those who don’t share their religion, but it’s not very persuasive to people who can think.
It is fun to shred, though.
Back on March 12, a paean to “the dignity of atheism” appeared on The New York Times op-ed page. It was penned by celebrated philosopher Slavoj Zizek who, had he consulted the same periodical’s obituary page a mere three days earlier, would have come face to image with the late Richard Kuklinski.
Mr. Kuklinski, who was retired from life at the age of 70, claimed, utterly without remorse, to have killed more than 100 people as a Mafia enforcer; his favored methods included ice picks, crossbows, chain saws and a cyanide solution administered with a nasal-spray bottle.
The happy hit man’s example might not have given pause to Professor Zizek, the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. But it should have.
Mr Kuklinski was brought up as a Catholic, and sent his kids to a Catholic school, and he was affiliated with the Mafia, whose members are often (but not necessarily, of course) Catholic. I can’t find anything to suggest he was an atheist. He was certainly a despicable character, but I don’t see why he would be brought up as an example of the corrupting influence of godlessness. It would be easier, and just as fallacious, to use him as an example of the moral bankruptcy of Catholicism.
Because the notion that there is no higher authority than nature is precisely what enables people like Mr. Kuklinski — and the vast majority of the killers, rapists and thieves who populate the nightly news.
The majority of killers, rapists, and thieves don’t believe in any gods? That’s amazing, because only about 0.2% of the prison population are atheists. The godless criminals must possess such diabolical cunning that they are almost never caught. I am forced to conclude that religion makes criminals stupid and easy to catch (which would constitute a utilitarian reason for promoting religion, I suppose, but Rabbi Shafran does not seem to be arguing here that the virtue of religion is that it makes the population sheeplike and easier to control).
No, no, of course that is not to say that most atheists engage in amoral or unethical behavior. What it is to say, though, is that atheism qua atheism presents no compelling objection to such behavior — nor, for that matter, any convincing defense of the very concepts of ethics and morality themselves.
The reason is not abstruse. One who sees only random forces behind why we humans find ourselves here is ultimately bound only by his wants. With no imperative beyond the biological, a true atheist, pressed hard enough by circumstances toward unethical or immoral behavior, cannot feel compelled to resist. Why should he?
He admits that most atheists don’t engage in amoral behavior. Hmmm. I wonder what’s keeping me from wandering off to rape some little old lady on my way to knocking over the gas station? At a guess, it’s that good parenting brought me up to value the stability and prosperity of a civil society, and to appreciate the rewards of good behavior. It’s also the possession of empathy, and a recognition that other human beings value their lives and well-being as much as I do mine, so that harming my neighbor or seeing him in distress pains me. None of these genuine motivations for moral behavior require the imposition of a higher authority. In fact, we tend to think that people who would harm others were it not for an artificial restriction by a watchful authority to have a lesser sense of morality.
I’d also have to say that religion qua religion not only has few strictures against evil behavior, but often condones and encourages it. The rabbi might want to look up the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites in his holy books—you know, the people that God’s Chosen People™ were told it was OK to murder, rape, and sell into slavery. Religion, especially the monotheistic ones that demand obeisance to a single imaginary being, is very good at fostering divisions between people and demanding destruction on the basis of differing superstitions.
In his view, a purposeless process of evolution has brought us to where we stand, and our feeling that there are good deeds and evil ones is but a utilitarian quirk of natural selection — like our proclivity to eat more than we need when food is available. And so, just as we might choose to forego a second helping of pizza if we harbor an urge to lose weight, so may we choose, for personal gain (of desires, not pounds), to loosen our embrace of a moral, ethical life. Biological advantages, after all, are not moral imperatives.
Atheism, in the end, is a belief system in its own right, one in which there can be no claim that a thieving, philandering, serial murdering cannibal is any less commendable a member of the species than a selfless, hard-working philanthropist. In fact, from an evolutionist perspective, the former may well have the advantage.
I knew he’d come around to ranting against evolution sooner or later.
Evolution is very good at cobbling up functional systems; it isn’t entirely purposeless, in that it favors elements that promote survival. Not going on murderous rampages seems to enhance one’s chances at reproducing and surviving, so sure, utilitarianism seems to be promoting some things that are good. But he’s right in one thing: biology is not a moral imperative. Morality is more of an emergent property of social systems. The fact that we evolved doesn’t dictate our social behavior, nor does it assign a ranking value on certain classes of behavior. We do that.
Personally, I prefer the company of philanthropists to that of cannibals. I also don’t operate under a moral code that says the crimes of cannibals are forgiven if they believe in Jesus or have been properly circumcised. Remember, biology is not morality: I freely evaluate the worth of an individual’s behavior irrespective of their status as conspecifics…or co-religionists.
To a true atheist, there can be no more ultimate meaning to good and bad actions than to good or bad weather; no more import to right and wrong than to right and left. To be sure, rationales might be conceived for establishing societal norms, but social contracts are practical tools, not moral imperatives; they are, in the end, artificial. Only an acknowledgement of the Creator can impart true meaning to human life, placing it on a plane above that of mosquitoes.
Proponents of atheism bristle when confronted by the implications of their belief, that morality and ethics are mere figments of our evolutionary imagination. But, for all their umbrage, they cannot articulate any way there can really ever be, as one writer has put it, “good without God.”
What are they teaching the kids in rabbinical schools nowadays? In my charitable moments, I think of theologians as scholars, poring over a wide range of books in philosophy, ethics, and religion, sampling the diversity of thought in those disciplines. Rabbi Shafran seems to have missed all that, and thinks that the only reason to be good is because there’s a cosmic policeman glaring at him.
One doesn’t have to agree entirely with Kohlberg or Piaget to be able to admit that they did articulate the development of moral behavior without reference to any gods—it arose naturally out of social interactions. There are utilitarian reasons to be good, as already mentioned. Heck, there are bucketloads of philosophers writing about the mechanisms of morality all the time, but as a mere biologist with no formal training in philosophy or ethics, I’m not really competent to go on about them.
The weird thing is, though, that I seem to be more familiar with these other ideas than Rabbi Shafran.
The bristlers are not liars, only inconsistent; some well-hidden part of their minds well recognizes that humans have a higher calling than hyenas. But while the cognitive dissonance shifts to overdrive, the stubborn logic remains: The game is zero-sum. Either there is no meaningful mandate for human beings; or there is. And if there is, there must be a Mandator.
First he disses mosquitos, now hyenas. Those are really nifty animals, but the reason we don’t consider them in discussions of morality isn’t that they should be regarded as lesser beings, but because they are not members of our social compact (although, of course, there is growing interest in widening our views to encompass a larger part of the world; hyenas and mosqitos are not, unfortunately, at all interested in participating in the discussion).
I don’t believe in a Mandator or a Mandate. I think we humans are truly and completely free to choose—Nature has generated us, and now we stand here, a product of our world and bound by nothing but natural law, with the capacity to shape our own lives by conscious decision. That is the highest and most awful form of morality; not mere blind obedience to authority, but taking independent responsibility here and now and seeing the consequences of our actions played out in the people around us. We have no mandate but the liberty of our conscience. Will you better the world, or will you waste your life in a vain pursuit of some non-existent post-mortem redemption?
I think it is a nobler and more enriching view of humanity to consider us free agents, able to choose our fate, than as lackeys to an imaginary being who regards our servility as our chief virtue. The higher morality is found in using our liberty well, rather than in shackling ourselves to superstition.
What inspired Professor Zizek to celebrate atheism as “perhaps our only chance for peace” in the world was the unarguably dismal example set by some people who are motivated by religion. He is certainly correct that much modern mayhem is deeply rooted in claims of religious rectitude. What he forgets, though, is that the world has also seen unimaginable evil — perhaps its greatest share – from men who professed no belief in divinity at all, whose motivations were entirely secular in nature. Adolph Hitler was no believer in God. Nor was Joseph Stalin. Nor Pol Pot. Together, though, the trio was responsible for the murders of tens of millions of human beings. They pursued their dreams as atheists with no less relish than Osama Bin Laden pursues his as an Islamist. Evil is evil, whether expressed through faithlessness or misguided faith. But only a belief in a Higher Being has the potential — realized or not — of reining in the darker elements that haunt human souls.
The Hitler who said, “I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so”? Some might say he wasn’t a very good Catholic (although the pope at the time didn’t seem to have any major objections) and was just playing to the crowd, but it’s interesting that he turned to religion when he needed to appeal to the people to support his agenda. Stalin and Pol Pot were professed atheists, of course, but I don’t think it was a sense of random purposelessness that motivated them to murder millions of Russians and Cambodians. Genocide takes discipline and purpose and hard work, yet Rabbi Shafran has been telling us throughout this article that the hallmark of atheism is a sense of meaningless futility. Instead, it seems to me that it takes an ideology to drive people to commit truly horrible, world-class evil. Sometimes that ideology can be a godless philosophy like communism, sometimes it’s religion.
Some of my best friends — okay, one or two — are atheists. Stranded on a desert island, I would prefer the company of any of them to Osama’s.
But if my choice of island partner were between two strangers about whom I know only that one believes there is no higher reason for human life and the other that there is, I know which one I’d choose.
And I think Professor Zizek might make the same choice.
I don’t know about Zizek, but if I were given a choice between exile with a god-bothering fool and a godless heathen, and if that were all I knew about them, there’s no question: I’d pick the latter. After all, if atheists are smart enough to escape jail despite committing the majority of crimes, between the two of us we’d certainly be able to figure out how to escape that desert island.
I want everyone to know that it was a difficult struggle to avoid the obvious “God is a Mandator” joke.
Oh, my, whatever meaning can we get from life in the absence of a Supreme Invigilator?
“Some of my best friends — okay, one or two — are atheists. Stranded on a desert island, I would prefer the company of any of them to Osama’s.
But if my choice of island partner were between two strangers about whom I know only that one believes there is no higher reason for human life and the other that there is, I know which one I’d choose.”
Now, if I were stranded on a desert island, and I had the choice of spending my days lounging with a known atheist or a possible Osama Bin Laden?…yeah, I think I know which choice Professor Zizek would make also.
What has more to do with a criminal act is the inability of a person to empathize with another human being. You can morally instruct a psychopathic murderer until you’re blue in the face, but they will turn right around and murder again anyway if it suits them. The good Rabbi is just making a con man’s argument by pretending that unless we have G_d we will run amok. Nonsense. It’s like saying that proscriptions forbidding the eating of pork “because G_d said so” are more valuable than knowing how trinchinosis is caused by a parasitic worm that infects swine. Rather than go on about how morality is some sort of disembodied thing, we’d be better off looking at how people actually behave for clues about what makes us able to function as social animals.
Hey, on the plus side, while the Rabbi did repeat the lie that Hitler was an atheist, he didn’t repeat the lie that Einstein wasn’t — I rather thought that those two memes were linked (as they are usually repeated one after the other.)
Indeed that was a good Zizek article.
Whatever meaning can the citizens of North Korea have in the absence of Dear Leader?
Shafran’s argument isn’t that atheists are less moral than believers, but that they have less basis for their morality, because they have no god to mandate that morality. No one yet has pointed to the logical flaw in Shafran’s argument.
The fact is that believers have no more basis for choosing to follow their god’s mandate than non-believers have for their moral convictions. Does the believer follow god’s rules to earn paradise or avoid hell? Then he is merely acting hedonistically, seeking his own interest. Does he do so because his god is powerful? Then the believer is worshipping power. Does the believer obey because he believes god is his creator? Then his morality is simply to follow whatever created him. Anyone who thinks that is the height of moral sense should consider how it plays out when we create artificial intelligence. Or does the believer do what he thinks is right, not because his god orders it, but because he believes it is right? Well, then, he is acting just like an atheist.
The assumption that there is a god does not alter the issue of moral grounding one bit.
All this anti-atheist scribbling is part of a larger conspiracy to simply keep the Saturday or Sunday coffers full at the local church.
That’s my take on it. By the way, since we’re playing this “stranded on an island” game, can my choices be hot women?
To be serious though, a lot of these people seem to be really comfortable overlooking (intentionally or otherwise) the social constructs that really are the root of what they say comes from religion. I would think they would argue that “well, your parents only knew all that moral stuff because religion taught it to them. This morality has been passed down for generations over millenia, so it’s only fitting that it made its way to your parents.”
This thinking seems to me to be rooted in a belief that man was in fact not created in God’s image (or even endowed with goodness by Him), but is something less of such, that must aspire to what God wants him to be. That’s the only logical deduction from believing that we all would turn into unethical monkeys were it not for a book that told us what morality was and how to enact it. It’s really conflicting with the Bible if you ask me. Which is not surprising. Religious fanaticism almost never makes any real sense of anything. Their proponents almost never make decent arguments either.
It’s funny just how many nuts conceptualize morality as a set of divine commands. I mean, that idea has been about as intellectually dead as an idea can be for quite a long time. Virtually no philosopher takes it seriously. I mean, what sort of morality (or immorality) could possibly follow from “Behold! Sky-beast!” any way?
There is so much wrong in Shafran’s piece.
He also makes the common inflation of atheism and a specific moral system. “Atheism, in the end, is a belief system in its own right, one in which there can be no claim that a thieving, philandering, serial murdering cannibal is any less commendable a member of the species than a selfless, hard-working philanthropist.”
But he also confesses that “that is not to say that most atheists engage in amoral or unethical behavior.” He is himself hit by cognitive dissonance.
This is also typical standard resoning: “social contracts are … artificial”. As they are established, as PZ says, by many social interactions one can hardly think of anything less artificial.
What is artificial is to try wringing morals out of a several thousand year old book. “This book has passed on! It is no more! It has ceased to be! It has expired and gone to meet its maker!”
I don’t agree with communism being a philosophical ideology though.
My understanding of communism is shallow. However I have been discussing with communists and their reasoning seems based on accepting the ideas on faith alone. Ordinarily a political ideology has parts that are influenced by factual arguments. (Statistics, correlations, practical tests.) Communists doesn’t seem to care.
I have also seen parts of the pseudoscientific ‘communistic science’ that was proposed to replace ‘capitalistic science’ to support the ideology.
So for me communism reminds me mostly of a religious ideology, with “communistic science” in the same function as “creation science”/ID.
Don’t you love it when religious people try to affirm the rightousness of their beliefs by capitalizing words like “Truth” and “Mandator”?
Anyway, a good way to counter this tired old argument is to switch it around:
Shafran would probably continue to insist that morality requires a mandate and, hence, a god. But… how does he know? Even if he’s right about the existence of a Judeo-Christian, then what does that tell us about a world where no such entity exists? Nothing. In fact, most Jews and Christians cannot even conceive of a world existing without their god since if there is a “Mandator” he/she/it must be the “Creator” too.
And so Shafran’s argument for a “Mandator” is completely baseless.
While it would not suprise me that there are less atheists in prison population, I have got to question that statistic. There are two types of defendants and/or prisoners who say they are atheists: 1) complete idiots and 2) people willing to risk longer time in lockup for their lack of belief. Playing the religion card is about the oldest game in the book for those wanting to get out of punishment. One would have to be insane to really want the parole board, judge, jury, etc. to know that one is an atheist. The First Amendment does not change the reality of the bias agaist atheists. The linked to citation said that 95% of rapists admitted to reading the Bible. I don’t believe those rapists. 1) Most criminals read less than the general population. 2) No where near 95% of people have read the Bible. 3) There is clear motivation to lie. 4) Many might be calling having read a few verses in Sunday School “reading the Bible.” 5) The literacy rate among criminals is no where near 95%. Do we have any reason to suppose that rapists are more literate than other criminals? Clearly the number of prisoners who read the Bible can’t be greater than those who can read. 6) 95% is easily greater the percent of people who are Christian.
Capitalization of that sort is quite useful. The capitalization indicates that the new word is being used in a way that is supposed to carry the same emotional punch, though leaving behind entirely the meaning of the uncapitalized original. Thus, Truth has little to do with truth, Good little to do with good, Reason little to do with reason, History little to do with history, and Word little to do with word. ;-)
What makes a religion religious is the way ideas are treated, not the content of the ideas themselves. Communism is both a philosophical/economic stance, and a set of political beliefs accepted on blind faith in which the traditional roles of the Church are subsumed into political entities.
The statement that the Earth revolves around the Sun can be a simple statement of fact or the pivot of a religion, depending on how you treat it. It isn’t one thing and not the other.
yes yes yes, but is capitalization Capitalization?
Either there is no capitalization for these words; or there is. And if there is, there must be a Capitalizor.
It’s funny just how many nuts conceptualize morality as a set of divine commands. I mean, that idea has been about as intellectually dead as an idea can be for quite a long time. Virtually no philosopher takes it seriously.
As a philosopher, I can tell you that Plato knocked that idea down very convincingly. So yes, it has been quite a long time since it’s been taken seriously, by most of us.
I have an off-topic question, but this is as good a place to ask it as any other thread. Is there some difference in the shade of grey in which a commenter’s comment is displayed that corresponds to some system of ranking of those commenters? I ask only because I can’t seem to convince myself, when reading Pharyngula or other Scienceblogs blogs whether the shading has anything to do with who is posting or not.
Thanks.
Like Mr Hopkins said ^ …..
I’ll bet the rent that saying “no belief” or “atheist” completely scotches the possibility of parole here in Texas or anywhere in the Bible Belt. It would matter not a whit how “model prisoner” your behavior was – the one entry on the form would kill your chances of consideration.
Shafran’s article is quite bizarre, actually: I would have expected such from Hovind or a low-budget Pentacostal radio preacher, but I always had the impression that even the Hasidim, reactionary as they are, were better educated than that.
Coragyps, it just goes to show that you can be very educated, but still fall prey to the blindness of religious reactionism. It has always amazed me that there are subjects that people seem simply incapable of viewing from a rational, logical perspective. It’s almost like there are places their brain can’t look.
Then one gets to wondering if there are places one’s own brain isn’t looking, and then one pours a scotch and decides its not the right time of day for such introspections.
Like I’ve never heard this guy’s old diatribe before.
Zizek’s article is wonderful. It’s a shame his philosophy deals with obscurantists like Lacan, really, I’m sure he’d be more effective if he wasn’t so mired in that tradition.
It continually surprises me that people try to respond to these circular, presumptive, theistic attacks by basing their stances on weak agnosticism (“Yes, I’ve heard about god, but the premises and information are not enough to support belief.”) instead of strong agnosticism (“God? What’s a god? You’re joking.”) Atheism is a natural consequence of the latter; in fact, it’s the default position. With weak agnosticism, an atheist is participating in a continuum that presumes belief and places the atheist on an extreme believing in nothing. Moreover, in any argument, the atheist is attempting to prove or at any rate support a negative– hard, unrewarding work.
My favorite part of the Rabbi’s essay is how he kept referring to ‘the True Atheist’ as thinking this or that, thus allowing him to redefine atheists however he wants. If you don’t fit into his definition, you are No True Atheist, but are, according to him, a god-botherer in denial.
Oh, Rabbi, Rabbi! Is there any fallacy you missed?
If I had to choose between a believer and an atheist for my island companion, I’d choose the believer–assuming the atheist was an infant and the believer a wilderness survival expert. Preferably also a hot chick, as well.
Steve “If it’s Rob Schneider, the deal’s off” James
Baka,
Every other comment is lightly grayed for readibility. The blog owners comment is darker grey. If the later is a positive ranking or not may depend on which blog you are viewing. :-)
Caledonian,
I agree. Religions have certainly some philosophical, political, and economical stances too. Likewise political ideologies have traditions.
The problem is of course to make the distinction for ideologies, since much is faith based. Here it is probably worthwile to distinguish between ideologies and movements.
For example, libertarians seems to disallow that their political ideas could fail in practice, and some have pseudoscientific ideas in Ayn Rand’s objectivism. OTOH, the later seems to be more of an attempt to ideologically base science in metaphysics than to replace it. Again, it is very much like ID attempts of redefining science methods to be able to highjack biology (to start with).
Some here has called libertarians religious. I’m not sure. Likewise I’m not sure if communism is to be called a religious ideology. But I’m sure that it looks like a religious movement to me.
“Here it is probably worthwile to distinguish between ideologies and movements.”
Yes, since I should have said “Likewise political movements have traditions.”
Duh!
Baka, light and dark shading alternate for readability–setting off comments from preceding and subsequents ones–and as blog owner, PZ has a unique shade of gray.
If you want the higher ranking of the light blue-grey, then post immediately after one of the plebes whose scribblings appear on a white background. :-)
The most thoughtful, considerate people I’ve dealt with in my life were a bunch of Ayn Rand Objectivists whom I once took a class with.
The biggest jerks I’ve ever dealt with in my life have been (every single one) born-again Christians.
I believe this is because the born-agains figure they’ve got it made and don’t need to do anything else, while the Objectivists were committed to the here-and-now and were working to make the best of it.
Ah, yes. That’s quite obvious now. Should’ve looked a bit more carefully. Thanks.
So the Rabbi argues for religion for the same reasons as many argue in favour of capital punishment or the flogging of disobedient children?
What a dismal worldview! How it gives life meaning to think of it as a huge moral obstacle course to be negotiated is beyond me.
And, of course, even if we were immoral without the straightjacket of religion, so what? Grant him his argument and it still doesn’t follow that God exists; God becomes a necessary illusion to be instilled in the masses to keep them in line.
I don’t understand the logic that atheism = morality. I like to think of it that atheists have a better reason to behave, because if you don’t believe in heaven or an afterlife you want to make the life you have the best it can be.
I think you could make the exact argument that religion can actually encourage bad behavior. In evangelical religions, you are “born again” and your sins are washed away so you can go to heaven. If you know you can do that, why do you need to abstain from bad behavior. There is also Confession, where you do penance for your sins, but that doesn’t stop you from sinning.
I think the lesson is that human nature is human nature, no matter what your belief systems are. Religion or lack of it has not stopped people from doing terrible things. It’s just another way of categorizing people into “teams.”
Well, Duh. From the article’s byline: “Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.” Agudath Israel is dedicated to the restoration of Torah (as interpreted by their own rabbis, of course) as the supreme law for individual and political Jews. In other words, they are Torah Reconstructionists, the ideological cousins of the Christian reconstructionists. Interesting how they use the same words about Biology.
Boy, I guess being a Rabbi doesn’t make you a smart guy.
No I don’t. It’s pretty much what I believe. Not particularly stasfying, I know, but it’s one of those problems that religion doesn’t actually solve, as Russel already ably explained.
Hmm. The person on this planet whom I dislike the most is a Randroid who uses Objectivism as little more than an excuse to be a complete asshole and who, strangely enough, lacks even a basic capacity for objectivity.
Maybe, just maybe, both intelligent, reasonable people AND idiotic jerks can hold the same ideology. Maybe, just maybe, some people who claim to hold a specific ideology are just giving it lip service.
But, but it’s maaaaagic! A wizard did it!
I suspect that the Rabbi’s inability to reconcile atheism with morality comes from the very common human tendency to classify anything which is not a material object which can be held and measured scientifically — a category which includes such things as abstractions, values, and thoughts — as something which is somehow “above” nature, non-material, and therefore legitimately closed off to the atheist. Nature is what you can hold in your hand. You can’t hold “love” or “right and wrong” in your hand. Therefore, atheists, if they are “true” to atheism, shouldn’t believe in either. After all, this is just like believing in God — which also can’t be held in a hand, which is why atheists reject it.
It’s a bit like thinking as a child might. The subtle recognition of levels of abstraction and emergence requires some thought and sophistication; “Like Comes From Like” is intuitive. From what I can tell, many people seem to automatically see the world in terms of discontinuous hierarchies. Top-down thinkers get to start off with high ideas. Bottom-up thinkers never get off the ground.
This may be an underlying reason why a large part of the public seems to assume that atheists are simplistic reductionists who can’t think “”above” solid objects and basic animal instincts. It might account for the widespread bewilderment over how atheists can claim to have a *basis* for morality as much as that habit of conflating ethics with commands.
…The assumption that there is a god does not alter the issue of moral grounding one bit.
Excellent argument, Russell.
There’s something disturbing about these people who can’t comprehend how humans can be moral without fear of the “glaring cosmic policeman.”
And this perhaps shows us the true value of religion: There are a lot of people who need a belief in the glaring cosmic policeman to keep them in line. If Rabbi Shafran wasn’t a rabbi, he’d probably be a pretty scary dude. He’d be raping, pillaging and murdering, apparently.
And maybe some people will never be able to develop a more sophisticated moral awareness, based on empathy and respect for the truth (which I believe are the twin pillars of a healthy, adult morality). Maybe that’s why we do need religion. Maybe it does us more good than we realize.
I think this is actually what many of the Founding Fathers believed about the Christian religion. It was something necessary to keep those less philosophically sophisticated in line. Maybe they were right.
Well they obviously weren’t being very good Objectivists – I thought their central tenet was to screw the worthless masses over?
I really think that some Rabbis are getting frustrated by Atheist arguments and questions they get by their congregation.
There are quite a few YECs still around in Jewish circles. It is pathetic but true.
Atheist attitudes and questioning the OT causes people to leave the cult. Jews are still progressive and get a pretty good education on average. But science and real history actually drives more Jews to out of faith marriages, and gets them to stop taking the Sabbath very seriously.
So this Rabbi, and Gelman a few weeks earlier, have taken a different approach. ATTACK THE MESSSENGER.
The ideology one holds is mostly irrelevant. It is often difficult to trace a relationship between a person’s ideology and that person’s behavior. It is a person’s behavior that makes that person moral or not so.
An ideology is not a religion, but a religion is an ideology.
And I am quite fond of this quote:
“An Ideology is not responsible for the people who believe it”
Not sure who said it.
Maybe, yes. But which one is doing lip service, the intelligent reasonable person or the idiotic jerk?
I thought this part was particularly funny:
To be sure, rationales might be conceived for establishing societal norms, but social contracts are practical tools, not moral imperatives; they are, in the end, artificial. Only an acknowledgement of the Creator can impart true meaning to human life, placing it on a plane above that of mosquitoes.
The humor, of course, is that the Rabbi doesn’t see how he’s contradicting himself because *his own concept of a Creator is a social construct*. Thus his “true meaning” is just as artificial as any non-superstitious form of morality.
(This is, of course, aside from the issue that gods can simultaneously exist and be very poor sources of moral guidance. But I think that one’s been done before – too bad the Rabbi didn’t notice.)
udargo: Are you prescribing some opiate of the masses?
The problem with that approach is that a lot of people have been raping, pillaging and murdering *because* of their religions, not in spite of them. Hitler comes to mind – he attacked Jews because it was part of the Christian tradition to attack Jews, and he was a Christian (he even described himself as a warrior for Christ). But even if you deny Hitler’s religion, there’s still Bin Laden, Torquemada, Cortez and many others. The glory days of the kingom of Israel had enough mass murder, genocide and slavery in the name of “the Lord” to make the Trail of Tears look like a mild inconvenience.
Living with people whose moral development is so stunted that they only do good out of fear of a cosmic policeman is bad enough; but if they believe in that cosmic policeman on the say-so of some guy in a funny hat, then what’s to stop them from going along when the guy in the funny hat says God wants them to kill those people over there? Well, nothing, apparently. As history has sadly demonstrated.
We have to cut off the supply of “hit-men for God” in order to stop the religious violence that continues to afflict our species.
That, ultimately, is why promoting critical thinking is a moral imperative: because failure to think critically can be dangerous not just to the gullible, but to others around them as well. Every crusade, every pogrom, every Holocaust, and every 9/11 reminds us of the consequences of credulity.
And I don’t need a god to tell me so.
Caledonian:
Jeez, Cally. Even on the rare occasions when you actually make a reasonable point, you’re still a pompous assgoblin. Maybe you should get some therapy, or something.
Sastra,
“This may be an underlying reason why a large part of the public seems to assume that atheists are simplistic reductionists who can’t think “”above” solid objects and basic animal instincts.
Either you are making a very funny observation or I don’t get the rational part. Are you saying that some people think atheists can’t think abstractly because *they* can’t think abstractly?
Ian,
“Well they obviously weren’t being very good Objectivists – I thought their central tenet was to screw the worthless masses over?”
That is another saying about objectivists or libertarians I don’t get. They seem to object to protectionism and taxes.
It is true that any trade hurts poorer people relatively more. (They can easier go bankrupt.)
But statistically free trade without protectionism and taxes has in absolute terms elevated the poorest conditions fastest, or so I have been told repeatedly. In combination with democracy, I think. Not incidentally, I think they say the amount of corruption is lower too, since that ‘market’ is minimized.
So I would be very supicious about protectionism and unneccessary taxation too.
If anyone could give me some reasonable arguments why libertarianism is to be considered a religion or have horrendous economics, I would appreciate it.
Well, Objectivism and libertarianism are two different things.
Objectivism holds altruism to be evil. I’ve heard from them occasionally that altruism caused the holocaust.
As for Libertarianism, the central assumption of the ideology is that the non-government market always provides the best solution to a problem, which I find hard to believe.
For one thing, in some cases there quite simply can’t be a free market. The water and sewage systems, for one thing. Once one company gets their hands on it, there’s no opportunity for competition. Think about it; in order to start a new water and sewage company, I have to convince all the people who already have it that I should be able to dif up their yards and instal new pipes, even though for all they know my startup could go bankrupt at any time and leave them with a bunch of redundant plumbing.
Not to mention that the sewage company could pretty much charge whatever they wanted, since they provide a neccesary service. You can’t just pee in the street, after all.
Of course, since Libertarianism is a political idea, there’re many different shades of it.
Christopher,
Thank you for your response, I really appreciate the input.
“Objectivism holds altruism to be evil.”
That would indeed be a problem, since altruism seems to work in animal societes and software tests of game theory. OTOH there are philosophies that seems to be happy to work against evidence. But we abandon them.
I don’t see the religious claim supported, however.
“Well, Objectivism and libertarianism are two different things.”
Kind of, yes. “Libertarianism and Objectivism have a complex relationship. Though they share many of the same political goals, many Objectivists see libertarians as plagiaristic.” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism ) I see that my tacit assumption of libertarians maybe being objectivists as probably being wrong.
“in some cases there quite simply can’t be a free market.”
At least there are cases where it seems to be problems.
For your specific example, one could envision a system where the pipes were shared, as power lines, rails and air fields where I live.
Airplane infrastructure sharing works reasonable well. The rest are newer, differently (some say wrongly) set up, and troubled. The shared infrastructure would typically be a monopoly, and while competition for timed contracts is a market of sorts it often doesn’t seem to work well.
If libertarians don’t allow for these troubles due to ideology, then I would tend to see a fundamentalistic streak. Coming back to your example, it could be horrendous indeed. Poor water supplies directly affects poor peoples standard and health.
I don’t know nearly enough about markets to see if free markets aren’t universal applicable if done right, however. (I wouldn’t try to include courts, police or emergency systems for several reasons.) Airlines markets makes me tentatively optimistic.
The Rabbi “rabbied” the following.
“Some of my best friends — okay, one or two — are atheists. Stranded on a desert island, I would prefer the company of any of them to Osama’s.
But if my choice of island partner were between two strangers about whom I know only that one believes there is no higher reason for human life and the other that there is, I know which one I’d choose.”
I would have to ask this Rabbi, “Do you not see that you are lying when you say this?” Because as far as anyone knows Osama believes.
So much for the moral sanctity of believers. Lying like that while decrying the amorality of the unbelievers. For shame.
PS I would choose to be on the island with Osama. Two reasons.
1) We will be rescued before November as the republicans will need to find him to save themselves in November. Salvation would not be necessarily a good thing, as I will be taken to another island and tortured. At least I would not have to worry about food though. I hear the guards will even force feed you if you refuse to eat.
2) He apparently needs kidney dialisis to stay alive. Thus if we are not rescued, he will not be alive to bother me for ever.
Interesting thought though… Would the dear Rabbi be like to be stuck on the island with a Thuggee?
Yet again, this creature is certainly a liar, and probably a fool.
He certainly believes his own propaganda.
He would obviously answer Scorates’ question on “What is good?”
By saying – “what god says is good”
Which is crap, as we all know.
No doubt the Rabbi believes the biblical Abraham was a moral, righteous man BECAUSE he all but murdered his own son when the Great Hebrew Thunder God told him to.
Any atheists here believe it’s right to murder their kids if an invisible being tells them to?
Hmm…
Torbjörn Larsson
I took your advice in a PZ blog of about 6 weeks ago. The Evidence Project worked out well, I thought. Thanks for taking tthe time to make suggestions.
“Adolph Hitler was no believer in G-d.”
— Rabbi Numbnuts, c. 2006
“Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without religious foundation is built on air; consequently all character training and religion must be derived from faith.”
— Adolph Hitler, on signing the Nazi-Vatican Concordat, April 26, 1933
Religious nuts are much more likely to be rapists, so I definitely wouldn’t want to share an island with one.
But some ideologies, as demonstrated by Rabbi Shafran, are indistinguishable from bowel movements.
Anyone else find it hilarious that a holy man, in an effort to show the world how superior being a theist is, resorts to lies, slander and misinformation to make his point? So much for theists being more moral.
Yes, it is particularly odious to see the Rabbi pull out the “Hitler was an atheist” card. And it’s depressing to see an allegedly moral man resort to lying to make his case. But the most annoying thing is that I’m _tired_ of reading how somebody who is not an atheist tell me that without his religion, I am going to be a murderer because there’s no reason to not be one. Such a person is neither learned nor serious about his study of morality. He’s the intellectual equivalent of a first-grader resorting to name-calling.
Torbjörn Larsson wrote:
No, I’m trying to say that some people apparently believe that while atheists *can* think abstractly, just like theists can, the atheist really has no basis or explanation for doing so because abstractions are not material. If they’re not material, then they must somehow be “above” nature. Atheists aren’t supposed to go “above” nature. Intuitive folk psychology and folk physics are being used to help nontheists figure out how atheists must think – and it’s messing them up terribly.
When it comes to the loose way people classify different kinds of stuff, it looks like the solid objects we can easily sense are on one side, and everything else — thoughts, values, abstractions, emotions, meaning, gods, magic, and spirits — is on the other side. Since the average person interprets Naturalism or Materialism in the most clunky, simplistic, mad-dog reductionist terms possible, this means they tend to see atheists who believe in morals, ideals, values – and even minds – as somehow being self-contradictory. Those things aren’t physical. In our eagerness to deny God, we’ve ended up denying them, too. Or so they see it.
If you reread the rabbi’s essay — and think over the implications of those many many arguments for God which compare believing in God to believing in Love or to loving your mother – I think there’s a strong case that the problem isn’t just that they think we can’t be moral because we have no authority to obey. They apparently believe that the entire realm of abstractions and emotions and meaning are on a “higher” plane than the physical … and therefore must be as foreign and closed to us as spiritual realms.
These people have a serious problem confusing morality with beliefs. Sure you can have beliefs on what is right and wrong, but beliefs themselves aren’t morals. Especially the particular beliefs that define religions themselves have nothing whatsoever to do with moral decisions. I believe it is morally wrong to kill. However I also believe the earth is round. That belief isn’t something that defines the foundations of my moral beliefs. Believing the earth is round is just something i think is the way it is, versus the way it isn’t. Similarly, if you believe there is a god and afterlife, that is a matter of what you believe is how things are, not something based on moral issues. But these religious kooks who claim they would do all sorts of horrible things were it not for religion are apparently being held back from sinning by believing that Jesus is the son of god or something. An issue similar to whether or not the Earth is round in that its simply a belief on the facts of the world.
As I see it:
Science is descriptive: It’s about how the universe is.
Morality is proscriptive: It’s about how the universe should be.
If you don’t know how the universe works, you aren’t going to be able to make it the way it should be.
PZ, great post, necessary post. I don´t understand how this rabbi can live and eat and dress himself without aid, how stupid he is. This kind of stupidity helps ruin our world.
That isn’t quite what they mean by “purposeless”.
It should be noted, however, that evolutionary change is a direct result of certain basic principles inherent to the universe. This Rabbi and others like him believe that the entire universe was made for a purpose — how can something that is intrinisically necessary to its existence be purposeless, then?
This joker is just upset because science showed his fairy tales to be false.
Rather than engage in an erudite discussion of morality, all I have to say is you don’t need religion to act ethically and morally any more than you need it to really, really like puppies.
So, being a nontheist, I assume what you mean is that acting ethically and morally is excellent with ketchup? ;/
I absolutely hate this line of reasoning. It’s the same type of argument that says we should all believe in Santa Claus. Just look at how good kids act when they think that getting presents on Christmas is dependent on whether or not that Jolly Old Elf approves of their behavior. What motivation is there to act good if there is no Santa? Therefore, Santa exists, or at least believing in Santa will make you more moral.
As someone who recently felt it necessary to leave a job (that I held for over 7 years — as a respected IT consultant) because of the hostility and hatred directed at me from a boss (who was respected by her boss for her ‘strongly held beliefs,’ rather than her management skills or achievements in the field) — once she found out that I am a non-theist — I must say that the self-righteous, magical thinking, neo-medieval types are running roughshod over those of us who see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.
This sort of infantile flapdoodle (i.e. religion of all types) is being freely bought and sold (or wantonly pushed and swallowed) from the highest political and corporate offices in this land to the most lowly and shadowy corners of society.
Science (which teaches one HOW to think) and all its great achievements are being discarded and pushed aside in favor of religion (which teaches one WHAT to think).
We will continue to be a people divided and in decline as long as we slavishly cling to the nonsense that is religion. Ethics and morality can easily (and properly) be achieved without the invocation of a supernatural boogey-man-thing.
Nowhere in the statement “Treat others the way you wish to be treated” appears the names of gods.
Rather, we will surely perish from this earth (much earlier than nature intends) if we do not abandon our hostility and hatred of our fellow human beings, which has its basis on religion and prejudice.
It’s an argument to appeal to bigots who already have a prejudiced view of those who don’t share their religion.
You should post this as your logo.
SkookumPlanet,
Good to hear!
Sastra,
The usual argument is the authority argument, that moral thoughts must be given by a god, or inspired by believing in a god. But you are probably correct, they could also mean that moral thought is impossible. Perhaps they are even conflating these ideas. (I haven’t been able to tease out exactly what they say.) Theism is a melange of different dualisms and the mind/soul idea is alive in there, or at least the soul part.
Their view would be analogous to the impression nontheists get, that some theists (by no means all) have a problem to think abstractly and that is why theism is appealing to them.
So I still see a joke, but on a different level now.
“But you are probably correct, they could also mean that moral thought is impossible.”
Uuups. I somehow left out “… for nontheists.”
“But you are probably correct, they could also mean that moral thought is impossible.”
And I should probably say “But you could be correct…” since I can’t tease out exactly what they say. You have given me a new perspective however, that always help.
I am reminded of the bumper sticker pasted on the back of a small pickup in Clarkston, WA that I used to pass by every day. It proclaimed:
If you act like there’s no God, you better be right.
I always thought the reverse made more sense: If you act like there is a God (to save your ass), you better be right.
Acting as if there is no God assumes that my behavior is guided by my interaction with those around me, compelling me to reponsible social actions. After all, I cant claim that immoral behavior will be forgive if I only believe …
It really is sad that ‘learned’ men such as the Rabbi are so unwilling to think instead of shallowly believe.
PZ: I totally agree with you on the idea of Morality as an emergent property (and don’t let those “formally” trained philosphers intimidate you!)
Arun Gupta: You’re right on about how our actions determine our morality, and I would go further to say that morality itself exists as the relation of one person to another, through actions that materially affect that other person. Thus, while Dr. Rob Buckman asserts that we can be “good without god”, I assert that we can’t be good without EACH OTHER. Our thoughts and feelings and what we do to ourselves is of no material consequence to anyone else, and thus have no moral content (which is not to say that we don’t have a moral obligation to keep a child or incapacitated adult from hurting themselves, but that’s because we regard such a person as not possessing the consent to hurt themselves).
Let’s not forget that the big three religions are the faiths of Abraham…and if we consult our old testament, we discover that Abraham was rewarded by his god because he was sufficiently afraid that he was willing to kill his son to satisfy his god’s capricious will. This test was not about Abraham’s faith; Abe’s god wanted to know that Abe FEARED him (and the angel who delivers the news tells us so in the story). Religion is not about faith or morality, it’s about fear and submission.
Bill and Ted really had it right in that secular masterpiece, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure: “Be excellent to each other and party on, dudes.”
All that God stuff is just extra nonsense.
Unstable Isotope from way up in the comments – one crucial requirement for absolution in Confession is the sincere intention to sin no more. You can’t use birth control on Friday, confess it on Saturday, and assume your sin has been washed away, if God knows (and like Santa, he does) that you’re planning to use it again next Friday.
This is only part of a very long article that I was going to publish in responce to the Rabbi Avi Shafran’s claims.
Rabbi Avi Shafran and his moral friend Hitler – including Comparative Quotes:
He makes many unfounded claims, three of which involve Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot.
The Rabbi claims that Hitler professed to have no beliefs in a God. Odd, considering I have a database full of speeches, quotes, writings and letters where he mentions his God beliefs often.
I see that the perfectly moral Rabbi has no problem with lying to defend his position.
Firstly, Adolph Hitler was indeed a God believer, who believed the Godless Marxist Jew would destroy humanity; Hitler believed people needed God beliefs to live a moral life. Basically what Rabbi Avi Shafran is saying about atheists is pretty much the same thing Hitler said about the Jews. So much for Shafran’s morals!
A few quotes from Hitler, with comparative quotes from the Rabbi:
“His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine.” – Hitler Mein Kampf
“Was it possible that the earth had been promised as a reward to this people which lives only for this earth?” – Hitler Mein Kampf
Rabbi Shafran “One who sees only random forces behind why we humans find ourselves here is ultimately bound only by his wants.”
“he cannot very well adhere to the old Biblical recommendation, that the left hand should not know what the right hand giveth;” – Hitler Mein Kampf
“.in Europe they lose millions and millions of inward adherents who either are alien to all religious life or simply go their own ways. The consequences, particularly from the moral point of view, are not favorable.” – Hitler Mein Kampf
Rabbi Shafran “To a true atheist, there can be no more ultimate meaning to good and bad actions than to good or bad weather; no more import to right and wrong than to right and left.”
‘We may therefore state that not only does man live in order to serve higher ideals, but that, conversely, these higher ideals also provide the premise for his existence.” – Hitler Mein Kampf
Rabbi Shafran “But only a belief in a Higher Being has the potential – realized or not – of reining in the darker elements that haunt human souls.”
Rabbi Shafran “Only an acknowledgement of the Creator can impart true meaning to human life, placing it on a plane above that of mosquitoes.”
“We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.” – Hitler Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933
Rabbi Shafran “Well, let’s hope Shafran doesn’t gain any political power” ;)
Ultimately this Rabbi Shafran’s line of thinking leads to the same mentality that created Nazism! Yes, the Rabbi claims Hitler was an Atheist, yet clearly as above, I have shown Hitler was indeed theist, with pretty much the same beliefs regarding ‘morality’ as the perfectly ‘Moral’ Rabbi Shafran.
Throughout history, for some reason, theists seem to believe that their god beliefs give them the licence to demean and persecute vast numbers of people, obviously, Rabbi Shafran swims in the same pot as these people.
Another thing Rabbi Shafran fails to mention is the fact that it was ‘Freethinkers’ who were amongst the first to protest Hitler’s policies towards the Jew. He also fails to mention the fact that many Jews tried to disguise themselves as Christians, they didn’t attempt to disguise themselves as Atheists. He also fails to mention that only 1.5% of the German people identified themselves as Atheist, the rest of the 98.5% of people mostly identified themselves as Protestant and Catholic. So, we can easily establish the vast majority had beliefs in God, and we can also easily establish that Hitler gained support for his policies, the war, and the slaughter and persecution of Jews from the so-called ‘Moral’ majority of God believers. By the way, Italy and Croatia, also God fearing countries, highly Christianised, both countries were chums with the Nazi regime.
Where does all this hate stem from? Maybe part of the answer can be found in a few so-called inspired words from God, religious teachings such as Psalms 14:1, and the many demands of death to non-believers in Deuteronomy, and the likes of John 8:44 which the God-fearing Nazis used on their propaganda.
It seems it is those who believe in God that are the ones who do not know right from wrong Mr Rabbi Avi Shafran, it also seems that they are easily led and extremely gullible!
I wouldn’t go as far as to say the good rabbi has a point but I would say there is a free-floating point from which he benefits. Actually, two.
The first is that religion, probably by nature, and certainly as it is practiced, addresses itself to morality. Atheism does not address itself to morality or anything else, nor should it be expected to, as Ophelia has pointed out.
The second point is that religion, again by nature and in practice, brings people together in situations where morality can be observed and discussed, thus aiding the development and improvement of moral theory and practice. Again, for the same reasons, atheism does not do this.
Does this make religion superior to no religion? Well… not necessarily. But in practice it does show that religion is a tool (an instrument) that can do good work.
Of course, it is rather handicapped by the eternal gymnastics required to maintain the suspension of disbelief that allows it to live. And, possibly in large part due to these exertions, religion has shown itself to be also a tool (an instrument) that can easily be and has very often been used to justify and propagate the most unspeakable misdeeds.
And that situation — the combination of those two situations, if you will, in which religion can serve to support good things and can equally well serve to support bad things — cries out for an alternative.
The obvious alternative — obvious, at least, to someone like me who feels not the slightest inclination to believe in supernatural entities, forces, etc. — is for people who are not interested in theism to consider an ancient word that is at least similar to “religion” if not part of its etymology (‘religare’ = “to bind fast” (see ‘rely’)). This is a suggestion that, by addressing itself to morality and by bringing people together, religion will be (is being) missed when it is shed. And the further suggestion that people like humanists who seek to make something from their atheism rather than leave it at the “not” or “a-” stage, that people like us might wish to gather in some organized way to talk about what is a good life and different ways to lead a good life.