"Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you’d have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion."a short explanation:
no, the quote is not detailed enough to account for the gray area you speak of--though i wouldn't hold that against it. otherwise you can toss in a few "sometimes" after each claim, and what you have as result is a pointless, null statement.
take women's suffrage. which message gets the point across more clearly? "women should vote" or "women should vote according to the law and by means of the necessary legislative stipulations." no doubt we can agree on the effectiveness of sharp, tidy messages. the ten commandments are particularly notable in this regard. "thou shalt not murder." many accept this, though we know this statement is plagued with fine print and thorough exceptions that don't exactly fit well if you're creating a marketing campaign for morality.
the point, and the reason i like this statement, is that it shows that many evils come as result of religion that might not otherwise occur. there is no good deed that cannot be performed by a non-theist, and there is no reason to believe that religion alone is responsible for good deeds, or that the concept of good deeds will dissolve with the passing of religion.
but there is a great many evil deeds that people perform that would not occur if not for spiritual justification--and perhaps if such justification can be thwarted, we might be able to deal directly with law and morality, un-muddied by fundamentalism or religious objectivity. non-theism would promote good for good's sake; no cracker-jack prizes necessary. sure, there is secular evil, as stated, but it would be exactly that--evil. religion makes the line between good and evil a rather blurred one. many claim secularism does this very thing--but i've made many arguments against this claim elsewhere.
note that i do not mean to discredit a thorough examination. your questions and points are valid, and most certainly would be helpful and effective in the execution of an ideal, but you would be absolutely worthless in the marketing department.
3 comments:
I believe you would find this post by Jewish Atheist to be interesting. He too believes that religiosity/ orthodoxy causes good men to do bad things (and then there's simply a scale of how bad and to what extent.)
I find your argument interesting. Nice post.
Well, everything that you say about the “campaign” value of the Weinberg excerpt only makes partial sense to me. Though I didn't explicitly say this originally, one of my motivations in making the initial comment was the thought that your clever quote likely wouldn’t be that thought provoking to those who disagree with you to begin with. Rather, like many catch phrases (religious and nonreligious), it seems to be a rhetorical slogan meant more to bolster the spirits of those already in the anti-religious atheist camp.
In that regard, it doesn’t help much when considering the evangelistic purposes of your blog, although it may be a useful attraction if you also see your blog as a teaching tool for other atheists. All of that being said then, I think my point does indeed have marketing value, unless your target audience is merely the anti-religious atheist crowd.
And I completely agree that non-theists can perform good deeds – I can’t think of any major theologians in the history of Christianity that would deny this either. (By the way, I noticed you using “non-theism” a lot – would you prefer my using that over the word “atheism”?) However, I also really think good non-theists can do and have done bad things in the name of various nonreligious theories or beliefs that they think to be good. This seems so commonsensical to me (and I don't even think we're getting into much complexity), yet you seem to sincerely think this isn’t possible, which truly shocks me. So please, please correct me if I’m misreading you (which I very well may be).
And who knows what Weinberg originally intended himself… though he’s certainly no friend of religion, I’ve been trying to better contextualize the passage and can’t find a single fuller transcript from the original speech anywhere on the web. You don’t perchance have a copy?
I completely agree that non-theists can perform good deeds – I can’t think of any major theologians in the history of Christianity that would deny this either.
but can you, or these theists, submit any good deed that can be only performed exclusively by a theist?
However, I also really think good non-theists can do and have done bad things in the name of various non-religious theories or beliefs that they think to be good.
I'm not denying that people can do evil for whatever reasons they choose--they most certainly do.
Religion, itself, is supposed to be a beacon of morality, but it is not--thereby creating that gray area between good and evil.
From a secular point-of-view, I think we have a better chance at distinguishing the difference between good and evil. But through a religious-lens, it's incredibly difficult.
I simply argue that the only good deeds people "claim" to perform in the name of religion are actually because of their secular morality. Particularly when there is no moral act that is exclusive to religious faith.
...your clever quote likely wouldn’t be that thought provoking to those who disagree with you to begin with...
I'd say considering the incredible lies and deceitful scare-tactics that religion uses to bolster membership, I think I have earned a little latitude when it comes to countering it. Gandhi, while perhaps flawed, didn't get his points across by being overtly polite and apologetic.
But I have no delusions of making total conversions--I think my real audience is those who lie on the fence, or are too afraid to speak up, and perhaps can use some spirited motivation to be proud of their doubt.
You pry just a little, and you'll discover just how flimsy people's supposed "religious" beliefs really are.
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