But Religion is Useful!
Follow up to: Why Argue About Religion?
In my previous essay, “Why Argue About Religion?”, I responded to a commenter who critiqued the usefulness of arguing religion. But there was another part of the argument worth responding to, and I come to focus upon it in another essay:
I think that the story “San Manuel, bueno martir” would be eye opening for you. It’s about an agnostic catholic priest, who teaches his people salvation and prayer to keep order, provide hope, and give them reason to do good deeds, while he’s really working to better the world, and has no idea what’s out there in terms of religion.
This is a statement made by many defenders of religion who aren’t very religious themselves. Religion is useful. Religion makes people happy, provides them with a reason to do good things, and comforts them in bad times. So who cares if it is true or not?
Put in a logical argument, it would look something like this:
- Even if religion is not true, religion is useful to believe.
- We still should believe in things that are useful, even if they are not true.
- Therefore from 1 and 2, we still should believe in religion.
When The Argument Isn’t Relevant
Before even beginning to analyze the argument, a good point can be made about its relevance. If religion is useful, can’t it still be useful even if atheists critique it? As I’ve said in many different essays (see “Where is God?”, “The Great Problem of Evil”, and “The Contradictory Failure of Prayer”), the traditional God; the kind of God seen in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam; most certainly does not exist (I’ve said nothing about deism yet, but I will).
And the idea religion may not be true, but it’s useful completely agrees with me on the may not be true part. So why there is a problem? My arguments against religion are not met with a “Yeah, I guess my religion is false, but it’s still useful”. They’re not met with a “You’re right I can’t present a case, but would you still leave me alone to delude myself?”. My arguments are met with a “How dare you say that! Your arrogance is astounding!”.
As Greta Christina pointed out if people think that religion is not true, but rather some metaphor, they should be reacting to the idea with about the same ferocity as they would react to someone saying “Alice and Wonderland probably never happened”. Well, duh. But remember that saying Alice in Wonderland never happened is not the same as saying the story has no literary merit — just as saying religion isn’t true is not the same as saying religion is useless.
I have never said religion is useless. I agree that religion does have some benefits. So why is this argument even being made?
When Religion Goes Bad
Yes, I did just say that religion has some benefits. I did say religion wasn’t useless. But I never said it was useful, for while useless implies that there are absolutely no benefits, useful implies the benefits outweigh the costs. I do not think the benefits of religion outweigh the costs.
And the costs of religion are legion. Sure there is Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., religious charities, and religious hospitals. But religion also regularly goes bad. I wrote about the one example of John Shimkus in “Why Argue About Religion?”, but there are tons of others.
Let’s start in the many cases where religion outright directly causes deaths: consider religious honor killings, the religious endorsement of stoning as a punishment, the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch burnings, and religious terrorism.
Consider religion’s contribution to health problems: increases in STDS because of opposition to condoms and bad sex education, deaths brought along because of faith healing, deaths brought along by refusing blood transfusions, and deaths brought along by exorcisms.
Consider religion’s endorsement of bigotry: many women are mistreated, left uneducated, and forced to be submissive because of religion. Religion helped perpetuate slavery, both theologically and in practice. The opposition to interracial marriage was often religiously motivated. The opposition to same-sex marriage is almost always religiously motivated. General bigotry and hatred towards homosexuals is also almost always religiously motivated. Bigotry against atheists is definitely religiously motivated.
Consider religion’s suppression of science: The opposition to stem cell research is religiously motivated. Galileo was imprisoned because of religion. Evolution is maligned in favor of creationism, leading to problems in public education.
Consider religion’s suppression of free speech: The Catholic Church maintained an Index of Banned Books until 1966. Blasphemy laws make it illegal to criticize religion in many countries. South Park was censored due to religiously motivated death threats. Consider Damon Fowler and every other atheist kid thrown out of their homes and ostracized by their communities for speaking out against religion in even the simplest ways, by challenging unconstitutional school prayers.
Consider religion’s defense of bad thinking: “God told me to do so” is a reason that has been used to justify many terrible things. Age-old kings used it to defend their position on the throne. George W. Bush used it to defend the Iraq War. Multiple presidential candidates have used it to say they’re the right candidate for the job. People pray instead of doing things to actually help, like donating or volunteering. Religion allowed people to think a rapture was eminent, selling all their possessions and ruining their lives, often committing suicide.
Consider religion’s abuses of power: Televangelists use religion to scam people and collect wealth. Catholic priests are able to sexually abuse children and not go to jail. The Catholic church put kids up for adoption against the will of their parents.
When Arguments Need Disclaimers
Now there are many attempts to circumvent these arguments, but they won’t fly here.
There’s the overstatement punch which accuses me of saying religion is the root of all evil, but I never said that — I just said that religion goes bad in many different ways. I never denied that religion does good things, and I certainly don’t think all these problems would be solved by eliminating religion. However, it is undeniable that religion is the main contributor to all of these problems. It is undeniable that religion very often does harm.
There’s the double standard jump, where people say that every good thing done in the name of religion is because of religion, but every bad thing is due to politics and culture. But obviously that is just silly — religion is clearly to blame for any bad it causes, just as it is to praise for every good it causes.
And don’t forget the topic switch jab, where all of a sudden we’re talking about all the horrors that atheism and science has brought upon the world. However, that’s talking about a different claim, that “atheism and science are useful”. I never said that atheists were all saints. The “religion is useful” argument is talking about the usefulness of religion, and says nothing about “well, at least religion is better than atheism”. That’s an entirely different argument.
And lastly there’s the correct religion dodge, which suggests that all these evils are because some people don’t practice religion right, and the real religion would never do these evil things. That would be great if only you could convince all these other people to adopt your obviously right religion, but we still have to wonder: what is making people practice their religion wrong? And we still have to recognize that religion is still motivating them to do harm, even if their religion is wrong by some standard you have (and I’d love to know what that standard is).
Religion does harm. Religion is not always beneficial. We must, at least, acknowledge this.
When Religion Isn’t All That Comforting
However while religion isn’t always blatantly evil, there are often times when religion isn’t comforting at all. People can only hear “God works in mysterious ways” so many times before they stop being reassured, and this is why the problem of evil has so much emotional force in addition to its logical force.
Some religions, such as Christianity, contribute to a culture of sexual guilt where any sexual thoughts one might have are thought to be evil, resulting in self-loathing. These religions also contribute to a lot of fear and feelings of inadequacy, where people worry they may not be good enough to avoid infinite torture in Hell.
Occasionally, religion does the opposite of what it is “supposed” to do — it often fails to provide comfort to people, especially when they need it most. I don’t think this is a fault in religion, but it is a fault in this argument. Many times we can do better with atheism.
When The Benefits Can Be Replaced
Now that I’ve talked about how religions can cause harm and also fail to provide comfort, what’s left? Do we just weigh the benefits against the harms and try to determine if religion comes out ahead on our usefulness scale? Well doing so ignores one key item — the benefits of religion can be replaced. You don’t need religion to have comfort.
I don’t think there is anyone helped by religion who could not be helped equally by humanism. We can match loving community for loving community, care for care, aid for aid, so the only difference we have is in hope — false hope vs. true hope. And I hope everyone would rather have true hope.
Saying otherwise is suggesting something like “Well, maybe we don’t need religion to be good, but the hoi polloi over there don’t know any better, and would descend into madness without their superstitions”. I have a higher hope for humanity than that, and I think that people will readily be compassionate without needing a God to strike fear into them. People can be good without god and people can find the comfort needed to live their lives; something I have said in many places.
I recommend “What is Naturalism-Humanism?”, “The Patriotic Humanist”, and “The Death of a Friend” for more on all this.
When One Aims for Delusion
So I think this argument conclusively fails — religion may not be true, and it may not be all that useful either. Sure many people find benefit in religion, but these people are buying into a system that also causes a lot of harm, may not always get the comfort they need, and could have their benefits matched by humanism.
However, there is another huge piece missing from this argument: the establishment that premise two is true. How do we believe something to be true when we also know it is false? How do we delude ourselves like this? And more importantly, why would we want to?
Knowing the truth is a benefit in itself, no matter how useful a false belief may be. I think this is self-evident simply because of the ascetically pleasing and curiosity-satisfying nature of truth, but the truth is also useful: for wrong beliefs often lead to wrong actions. If we think everything is going to be okay when it isn’t, we’ll feel fine… until the world comes crashing down around us. One can only believe things are fine for so long; complacency only goes so far. Knowing the truth is necessary to act correctly.
But I also think self-delusion is not psychologically possible without some massive attempt at Orwellian doublethink. By holding a belief and acting as if it is true, one is asserting that belief to be true. Yet one also says it is false and act as if it is false (for one acts upon the belief’s falseness every time one says the belief is false). These are all the problems we see in Pascal’s Wager, an argument so false as to be outlandish.
I’m often reminded about how a perfect analogy can be drawn here to Santa Claus. Believing in Santa is immensely useful — it provides us a reason to be good, a reason to be happy, and comfort in bad times. So who cares if it is true or not?
But honestly try to convince yourself that Santa is real, despite everything you know about how Santa Claus makes no sense in reality, despite some attempts to solve problems. Now try to convince yourself that adults would be better off believing in Santa, and that we shouldn’t eventually tell kids that Santa is false. Now try to convince yourself that a belief in Santa is necessary to have any purpose or meaning in your life.
One might counter this by saying, well Santa is obviously false, but God at least has a chance of being real… but now you’ve abandoned the argument from usefulness, and are back to trying to prove that God has a chance of being real. You’re back to debating what I’ve been debating all this time. And that’s where I strongly disagree with you; I don’t think there’s any reasonable way you can expect God to be real as traditionally conceived.
If you’re holding onto religion not because it’s true, but because it’s useful, then I implore you to consider atheism and humanism. Millions of atheists are living fulfilling lives right now, rich with meaning and purpose. Aligning yourself with humanism lets you take a stance against all the harms of religion and the guilt religion causes while still giving you access to a caring community and comfort in hard times.
Not to mention you can free yourself from the backflips you need to make in order to sustain doublethink. Humanism lets you be honest with yourself.
Followed up in: The Good of Religion and How To Ignore Everything I Say (About Religion)
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I now blog at EverydayUtilitarian.com. I hope you'll join me at my new blog! This page has been left as an archive.
On 2 Aug 2011 in All, Atheism, Counter-apologetics, Responses. 20 Comments.
2 Aug 2011, 1:15 pm
Correct a typo. Its “put kids up for adoption” not abortion — that would be really bizarre.
2 Aug 2011, 1:25 pm
Thanks!
2 Aug 2011, 3:36 pm
Peter,
I’m still looking for some time to write a response to your comment on commonsenseatheism. I will on my blog.
Regarding your very long post here, here’s a few things I’d like to mention.
1. Talking about ‘religion’, as if it is just one or very uniform, isn’t really taking anyone anywhere. You’re loosing your time and others. If you try to find the common denominator between judaism with all its braches, islamism with all its branches, christianity with all its branches, than good luck with that. If you think you got a pretty good idea, well, you might. But please, try to put that in a scientific paper and get recognition from specialists. My take is that it will not be easy.
2. Humans are humans. Understanding humans falls under sociology, psychology, psychiatry, and all kind of others fields of research. If someone calls himself a christian and kills his daughter for picking flowers in the morning, are you gonna say that Christianity is evil? Isn’t it more scientific to break down the situation in all the pieces and try to understand them separately, and then see how the actually fit together?
If one religion is true, no one has the right to impose it everyone. That means there will always be wrong religions. And even within the right religion, there will always be some bad implementors.
If no religion is true, then we’re 7bln different people with 7bln different opinions. Are you or me to say what’s good or wrong?
3. As an agnostic, or atheist, you come with your own perception of what’s good or bad. Some of the things you mentioned above as being bad are bad in your own system of values.
You first need to understand the system of values of the view your analyzing. Religions put soul above the body. In their specific way, but they do that.
It’s one thing to say that for the greater good of science, children should be sacrificed before they are born. That’s because you don’t really believe those children already have a soul and are real persons. If you’d consider that, then the good-evil picture will be slightly different.
2 Aug 2011, 5:44 pm
Cristian,
I look forward to it, as well as any other replies or commentary you provide.
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I of course don’t think that religion is this one monolithic influence, but when people say “religion” is useful, they are the ones taking religion into some sort of aggregate. So I want to reply in kind.
If I spent time trying to tease out the various nuances of how Islam isn’t contributing to harm A but contributes to harm B, yet some sects don’t contribute to harm B, this very long blog post would have to be many times longer.
Honestly, I think there are some people who don’t know of the harms that can be attributed to religion, and they would benefit from reading this. A decent group of people I know think religion is all sunshine and benefits, often employing the “double standard jump” I talked about.
Additionally, other people honestly ask “What is the harm of religion?”. I can now refer them to this essay.
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Of course not, that would be the “overstatement punch” I was just talking about if you think I would. But if that person killed his daughter because he thought his religion commanded it (maybe he took the commandment to let no one work on the Sabbath *very* seriously), then we have something to talk about.
Though I agree that I don’t think Christianity was the motivator in that instance, but some sort of bad thinking that certain interpretations of religion seem to promote.
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Definitely. And it’s something I honestly want to do. It’s just not something I can do in a few hours of my time with one published essay.
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I agree completely, though be careful of the “correct religion dodge”. Just because some people do religion badly does not mean religion (even when done wrong) has no influence on bad behaviors. For we have to wonder, why are people practicing their religion badly? What is motivating them to do that?
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I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. You and I both say what is good and wrong every time we discuss ideas with other people. We’re doing it right now, by virtue of disagreeing.
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I agree with this, because not everyone holds the same ideas of what is wrong. I’m pretty sure there is at least one thing on my list you think is harmful, though.
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This is a great point. But the people making the argument from usefulness are not the same type of people who think that religions are true, and may not agree with the soul concept. To them, putting off stem-cell research is a harm.
On your view, it obviously isn’t a harm. But I think your view is wrong. And the fact that your view (which I think is wrong on my view) is also causing harm (on my view) gives me reason to think that your views aren’t always useful (on my view).
You probably see the flip side, and think that my promotion of atheism causes harm. This is why I think religious debate is important, so we can get to the bottom of this.
3 Aug 2011, 2:09 pm
Me: “If no religion is true, then we’re 7bln different people with 7bln different opinions. Are you or me to say what’s good or wrong?”
You: “I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. You and I both say what is good and wrong every time we discuss ideas with other people. We’re doing it right now, by virtue of disagreeing.”
Me: The good old debate on absolute/relative moral grounds. If there’s no ground, we really don’t have a de facto absolute scale of values. It’s all downhill from here. :)
I do believe the religion causes harm when it doesn’t. :) But that not’s because of the mere fact of accepting a divinity above our heads. But rather our inconsistency with that divinity.
As Apostle Paul says, our life is a fight with ourselves. Not every one manages to stand straight in this fight. I don’t always, that’s for sure. We need to have understanding and discern people’s actions from the principles behind. Christianity does not promote greed, yet christians and even priests are greedy. The same with all other sins.
How Christianity explains this is through the fallen human nature (we’re weak) and temptations (with which we have to fight, coming from within ourselves, from our weak bodies/souls, and from the daemons).
That’s why I think it’s critical to understand each religion’s teachings first, before attempting to understand people’s acts. It’s a matter of intellectual honesty.
For instance, I don’t know much about Islam, so I have no idea what’s the relationship between extremists and the rest of Islam world. I wish I knew, that’d offer me a more clear perspective. They do a lot of harm, from my perspective (specially on women), but I’d rather have the whole picture first.
One last point, as I remember you mentioned slavery in your list. Remember that Christianity indeed didn’t pushed slaves to escape from their masters, but to listen and obey. But, as Paul says, in Christ there’s no man, woman, free man or slave, greek or jew, which means they’re all equal and free in Christ. Would you call this misogynistic or slavery promoting?
If Christ is God, anyone who does not live by these principles (the equality of all humans in dignity and rights), will not be in a good position at the second coming.
3 Aug 2011, 11:48 pm
I think there is an absolute ground on which moral statements can be made, and I do intend to eventually outline it here on my blog, but I’m nowhere close to the position where I can explain it and avoid all the problems everyone else has run into.
Still, I think that this discussion can be done perfectly fine without needing a theory of morality, for it’s enough just to say some religious practices cause people to suffer in a way they wouldn’t have without that religious practice (and hold off on saying that is normatively/morally wrong for now).
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I’m not saying that religion will make everyone do harm, but that there are indeed many instances where religion has provided motivations for certain harms. The fact remains that people do harm in the name of religion. You may think they are acting inconsistently, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t acting that way. Religion, even when done wrongly, is still a motivator.
Obviously the people preforming the religion wrongly don’t know they are doing so wrongly. If everyone knew when they were wrong, no one would ever harm others ever. But we have to ask — what leads people to practice religion wrongly? Why do they harm others in the name of religion?
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I think this is a case in point for the clarification I just made: I don’t think that Christianity always endorses slavery. But it is a fact that people have used Christianity to endorse slavery. It is also a fact that people have used Christianity to oppose slavery.
Religion isn’t absolutely perfect — it goes bad sometimes, and is used to harm people, and that isn’t useful. That’s the only point I was making when talking about the harms of religion.
I’d love to see a world where religion exists, but harms no one.
12 Jul 2012, 4:16 pm
I wanted to respond quickly to a point. You say “If religion is useful, can’t it still be useful even if atheists critique it?” I believe that the usefulness of this false belief fails when logical arguments undermine it. Essentially, once a person has to deal logically with their false belief, they either temporarily or permanently lose the use of it. They have to permanently stay in a state of double-think in order to make it work.
IMHO, anyway.
Good write up!
12 Jul 2012, 6:50 pm
I think that view is the real demon. (I wish you’d hurry up and express it, so I can fiercely attack it. :))
Today, the attack on religion is but prolegomena to the delegitimization of morality.
12 Jul 2012, 6:58 pm
I no longer hold the same view I did in that comment. I think “Too Many Moralities” gives you a good account of what I think about moral reality and “The Is-Ought Gap” explains the normative force of these moralities — they exist, but they co-exist — they aren’t overriding of all other concerns.
So there still is a ground on which moral statements can be made. Utilitarianism would be my preference. But it is just a preference, I think.
12 Jul 2012, 7:00 pm
I agree with that.
I think this is true in so far as the religious person thinks their beliefs are factual. But I also know of a minority of religious people who at least seem to advocate their religions as mere stories, community, and ritual; not an actual history of an actual God.
12 Jul 2012, 7:04 pm
Yet, I do think you omit the most important reason that religion is harmful to the real interests of most people: Marx’s “opium of the people” argument. Religion still does its worst harm among the most downtrodden, in whom it instills hope they’ll be rewarded in the afterlife if they endure their oppression on earth. In America, this is mostly the situation among blacks, despite their religion’s politically liberal character, and among working-class and poor whites, whom religion has helped deliver to near-fascist demagogism.
The consolation function, rather than being a limited positive, is religion’s worst negative. All religions have shared this function and the corresponding reactionary societal role.
But as Marx also realized, the critique of religion isn’t fundamental to ending social oppression. Many people will cling to religion when they face miserable, oppressed lives. Material conditions will have to change before religion and morality disappear.
12 Jul 2012, 7:20 pm
Sorry, I tend to forget to look at dates. The comment is a year old.
But when you say you think there’s an objective basis from which to make moral statements in your most recent essays, I must ask, who would disagree? Who doubts that practical reasoning (reasoning to “end relations”) is meaningful. Or that a “categorical imperative” ceases to be incoherent when replaced by an-end relation statement?
I haven’t gotten around to reading Finlay yet, but it seems to me what’s contentious in his work is just the claim that people generally mean an implied end relation when they use what appear to be categorical imperatives. This is opposed to my view, that they generally mean a statement that’s really incoherent. As I parse your position, you’re saying instead something like people ought to imply end relations instead of using potentially incoherent categorical imperatives. I think that’s right in a sense; but they’re only going to do that if they realize they’ve been intending something that’s meaningless.
12 Jul 2012, 11:41 pm
If this meta-ethical view is trivial, then all the better for it — there’s not much left to really squabble over in meta-ethics. But I don’t think agreement to it is widespread, given how infrequently I’ve ever seen it mentioned in all the literature I’ve read.
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I think if you’re going to read just one thing from Finlay, I’d make it “The Error in Error Theory” (PDF). It’s what I plan on writing about next. (You may also enjoy Richard Joyce’s response “The Error in ‘The Error in Error Theory’” (PDF).
13 Jul 2012, 1:26 am
Thanks. I’ll try to get to it soon.
The biggest issue in metaethics seems to be the realism question. If it’s not the biggest, you’ll probably agree it’s an issue.
I don’t think you as much as touch it. To be clear, the question is whether incoherent reference is part of conventional moral discourse. If so, the philosophical question issue concerns how can incoherent statements have a semantics. (I approach that question in A habit theory of explicit morality–http://tinyurl.com/7dcbt7y).
You may imply–I’m not completely sure–that there is an incoherently referential aspect in conventional moralizing. But you don’t say so, provide arguments regarding it, or do anything with it. On the other hand, you don’t explicitly deny an essential incoherence resides in conventional moral discourse.
So, I think all of actual metaethics–or at least a major issue in metaethics–remains to squabble over.
What claim exactly do you mean? Means-ends reasoning has been subject to endless analysis. Most ethics philosophers that I’ve read distinguish hypothetical from categorical imperatives and regard hypothetical imperatives as essentially trivial or at least unproblematic. So, that part of the analysis is widespread. If you extend the claim to say all categorical imperatives are at least implied hypotheticals and (maybe) emotives, then you have a fairly unique theory, I think–I anticipate it’s Finlay’s, mostly from Garren’s comments. But you don’t say that–at least I thought you denied it when I asked you.
30 Jul 2012, 11:00 am
There’s a Conversation From The Pale Blue Dot on that paper:
http://archive.org/details/ConversationsFromThePaleBlueDot008-StephenFinlay
30 Jul 2012, 6:19 pm
It seemed to me that Joyce kicked Finlay’s butt in that exchange. Of course, there’s a huge possibility of confirmation bias, particularly inasmuch as I don’t claim to have read Finlay carefully. But it would be interesting to see Finlay’s reply to Joyce’s opposition. In written legal disputation, there’s traditionally a reply by the proponent, and the reply often proves extremely useful.
30 Jul 2012, 6:33 pm
You’re in luck! Finlay’s rejoinder to Joyce is “Errors Upon Errors” (PDF). I’m interested in concrete reasons you think Joyce kicked Finlay’s butt, especially now that I’m re-reading the exchange.
30 Jul 2012, 6:40 pm
Thanks Garren, I’m really enjoying listening to it.
4 Apr 2013, 8:14 pm
Cristian I am an atheist and I completely hate abortion and only think it should be performed in certain circumstances, such as the parents life being at risk. I do not believe in souls, but I do believe that an unborn baby should get to live because a life is a terrible thing to take from someone, not because of a soul that was given by some god or another but because of the experiences and enjoyments in life, I know I am only replying to a small section of what you said but that is the only part that I had an urge to reply to. Thanks for reading!
4 Apr 2013, 8:16 pm
Oh and by the way don’t reply to me as I will probably never be on this page again so I will not see it.