Why aren’t the acts themselves that you list evidence of malice?
Well, I really wasn’t trying to explain anything beyond the perspective of an atheist to a theist. Science has explanatory power with regards to the real world, whereas religion clearly does not. We seem to be in agreement on that point.
I, along with many scientists and atheists, would argue that a scientific view of the world is more humbling, astounding, and, in some individuals, more spiritual* when compared to many modern religions. We feel religion is actually inferior in the respects you list, even aborted of their supernatural baggage.
- except without actually believing in spirits of course
I, and other atheists naturally, would argue that religion is an impedient in many cases and that it can be shed of its super natrual underpinnings. We don’t need to believe in Jesus returning from the dead or Muhammad flying through the air on a white horse to have weddings, funerals, morality, poetry, art, be at peace with our existence or whatever else you believe religion does.
Because none of the authors ever expressed hatred or indicated to any of the many reviewers of their work that they desired anything other than the betterment of humanity. Why would you assume malice?
Howard was hailed as a brilliant researcher (even after a number of his conclusions had to be withdrawn) and I do not recall any of his contemporary scientists taking him to task for ethical reasons. (I will not claim that Howard or Terman or Gaston before them never faced ethical scrutiny, but if such was voiced or published, it was clearly a minority opinion and eugenic sterilization continued to be employed by several states into the 1970s.)
(Is this, by chance, a case of special pleading where anyone promoting evil science has to have been evil because, otherwise, the equation “religion = bad; science = good” loses a bit of its luster?)
I halfway agree with you, tom. I am somewhat disappointed when I see atheists arguing that religion is always bad and that science is always good because they are behaving, in many ways, in a black and white world similar to the very theists they abhor and ridicule.
Science can’t be evil or good, though, no more than a hammer can be. It can only perform its function, which is to find and describe truth. What one does with that truth is up to you and all your human trappings.
Science comes off the better by far, if only for the fact that it’s not a book of bronze age (or 1830 or 1952…) myths claiming to be the word of god and telling you what to do. I tend to agree with Weinberg in many aspects. It’s not hard at all to use certain religions, based on the morality of 2000 years ago, to justify stoning, murder, or sexism, as long as you were brought up in that religion. It’s been done plenty of times before. The fundamentalists understand their holy books quite well in some cases.
I think we can both agree that using science to justify eugenics is horrible. We don’t need to borrow from either religion or science to condemn it, though, because we are a species evolved with a moral framework. We can point out the immoral scientists and the immoral terrorists all on our own. We can discuss with each other why we find some things immoral and why we disagree on other issues. Perhaps we may even change our opinion. This is also how science works, except it has no say on morals of course (except it is evolved and very natural).
We can agree that a Christian who opens up a soup kitchen is acting morally according to his religion. But then, unfortunately, one could argue that someone stoning homosexuals or whores is acting within the teachings of their faith as well. This is a serious problem in societies where this is the rule of God almighty. You can’t argue with that…it can’t change. Solid as a rock. There is no give and take, like when two friends sit down in the early 1900s and say to each other hey, you know what? Women should be able to vote. It’s a scandal of our entire so called civilzation that we’ve denied them it for all these years. And off we go.
If only the world followed the liberal (and, sad to say, not theologically sound in many cases) stance of some members of this board! Or if Buddhism was a little more popular…it’s really hard to justify stoning whores with that one…or if a new religion came about which aborted all the immoral trash from 2000 years ago which is an affront to all civilized persons, I could really get behind it. I’d still have problems with it for other reasons, but in terms of morality it’d be a breath of fresh air.
The name Howard, (that apparently came to my fingers as the result of a poltergeist’s interference), should obviously have been Goddard, as in Henry H. Goddard.
My only intention was to point out the seriously flawed claim of Steven Weinberg . The explicit claim that
is simply a profoundly stupid remark.
Weinberg’s comment is extremely correct because there is a difference between evil acts committed by some persons and a thought and belief system that allows people to justify evil acts as as being good acts that justify the will of an invisible being contained in an inerrant book allegedly written by the almighty creator of the universe.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study involved evil, immoral and unethical actions, to be sure. These actions were condemned by just about every scientist and health professional when the details of the study became generally known. There is not, to my knowledge, an allegedly inerrant doctrine or divinely-inspired book used by scientists to justify in any way what was done in that survey. The decision to test nuclear arms in the atmosphere, or even to build them, were not taken by scientists but by politicians, who copuld have signed the orders for the tests and then attended prayer breakfasts.
Weinberg fully admits that evil actions would exist without religion. But what he is attacking is* the particular ability of religion to provide a justification for evil acts by dressing them up as obedience to the will of an almighty creator who allegedly wrote a book expressing that will.*
It is this ability of religion to blind otherwise good people to the evil they do that Weinberg is attacking.
Science can fully admit horrors of evil like the Tuskegee study. Compare this to the unbelievably lukewarm and equivocal “apologies” that Pope John Paul II issued over the persecution of Gallileo (“he should have worked with the scientists of his day” – as if that gives his Church the right to torture someone!) or over the Spanish Inquisition, when he visited Spain in the 1990s.
The present Pope continues to attack gay rights and laws giving equality to gay couples. Even laws favoured by some conservative Republicans, such as State legislation allowing for “civil unions” is expressly attacked by the present Pope, who opposes any laws that would give same-sex relationships any kind of legal recognition as a conjugal relationship. He even opposes civil marriages for gays, in spite of the fact that his Church does not recognize civil marriage!
Will a future Pope someday issue some lukewarm apology for this?
Catholic-run hospitals in Africa refuse to give out contraception to women, even when another pregnancy is medically deemed to be a death sentence for the woman. A doctor working in Africa who wrote an article in The Lancet a few years ago (not exactly a rable-rousing rag) urged doctors to write to the Pope and to Muslim leaders every time one of these women died as a result of an unwanted pregnancy that could have been prevented by contraception.
As AIDS ravages Africa and the deaths pile up, Catholic authorities continue to oppose the use of condoms. How can they hold this position? Because religion has convinced them that they are conforming to the will of God.
Consider the young girls at a school in Saudi Arabia who died in a fire because firemen and rescuers were prevented from coming to their aid. Why? Because they were not wearing their head scarves. Do Muslim clerics necessarily see this as evil? No, because religion provides the justification.
In a world-wide survey involving over 38,000 people entitled “What the World Thinks in 2002” (see What the World Thinks in 2002 | Pew Research Center )
Muslim respondents were asked about suicide bombing. The summary of the survey reports that:
“Sizable percentages of Muslims in many countries with significant Muslim populations also believe that suicide bombings can be justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. While majorities see suicide bombing as justified in only two nations polled, more than a quarter of Muslims in another nine nations subscribe to this view.”
Lest the apologists of religion take too much comfort from the word “defend” in the above quote, it should be noted that the specific question that was asked specified “suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets”.
In other words, Israeli teenagers dancing in a disco and little old ladies at bus stops are considered targets for the purposes of “defending” Islam.
Also, there is no point in grabbing onto the fact that “only” about a quarter of Muslims overall, and a majority in “only” two nations see it as justified.
This truly germane point here is that this statistic perfectly illustrates the correctness of Weinberg’s statement. If about one quarter of the Muslim world thinks like this, we are talking about over 250 million people!
But who are these people? My guess is that they are people who have held their babies and kissed them, who give to the poor, and who are by and large good citizens and decent human beings.
Now, either you accept that 250,000,000 people in the Muslim world are fundamentally evil and inhuman, or you accept Weinberg’s statement that religion has the insidious power to dress up evil as good and to blind people to the evil they do.
If you need confirmation, try this simple test. Take the concept of “defend Islam from its enemies” out of the sample question. Show Muslims a picture of a little old Israeli lady who was blown up by a suicide bomber, and just ask them point blank if they would approve of blowing her up.
As soon as you remove the cloak of religious justification, the evil of the act becomes apparent.
Many people have pointed out that the Nazis and the Communists like Stalin or Pol Pot participated in mass killings that would put Tomas de Torquemada to shame.
**And this is ONE thing I will admit is wrong with Weinberg’s statement. **
Instead of saying “religion” alone, he should have said “religion and other irrational doctrines”.
We know for a fact that guards in Nazi extermination camps took their wives and families out to picnics and family fun on their day off. We know as a matter of record that Nazi doctors hanged for experimenting on “inferior” races died proclaiming they had done nothing wrong.
We have every reason to believe that Pol Pot and Stalin seriously believed that all their acts of evil were justified under the unproven political doctrines they believed.
To argue that the irrational doctrines of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot were not “religions” in the strict sense of the term is surely sophistry.
Weinberg was right. Only, he should have broadened his definition of religion. I think we can be forgiven if we do it for him.
No. Weinberg’s comment is still wrong and trying to plead special cases to excuse it does not make it right. The Tuskeegee study was known for years with no condemnation from the scientific community until it became more broadly known at the height of the Civil Rights movement and became a rallying cry for Civil Rights activists regarding the inhumanity inflicted on black people.
And that hardly addresses the issues of the eugenics sterilization practices that were carried out in several states right into the 1970s (long after similar practices had been condemned when seen in Nazi Germany).
If you would like to hold that religion is a net negative to humanity, go forth and hold that position. If you make a claim that “for good people to do bad things, it takes religion,” or even “for good people to do bad things, it takes religion or some other irrational system,” then you will find yourself twisting and wriggling to make special pleadings to excuse groups whom you do not want associated with your evil religion/irrationality bugbear.
The eugenics programs and Tuskeegee study were not carried out by evil scientists or at the behest of any evil group of irrational believers. Neither were the studies on “feeblemindedness” that were intended to keep the U.S. safe from a deteriorating society through sterilization or deportations. Just which irrational belief system dictated open air nuclear testing? They were carried out by rational scientists who allowed their desire to “do good” overwhelm their recognition that the means determine the morality of the ends.
Perhaps it is my fault for being such a prolix poster, so let me reiterate. Science does not have a set of established doctrines set out in a bronze-age holy book that it cannot go back on lest it be forced to admit that its book and its doctrines were not handed down by an all-knowing and inerrant being.
Religion does.
This is why religion (and other irrational belief systems) give their adherents a moral “shield” that allows them to continue to believe that evil performed by their religion was actually good. Since they are based on faith, they are “protected” from reason by their adherence to belief systems that are not fasifiable.
Belief in the superiority of an “Aryan” race that does not even exist would be a similar belief system.
You say that the inherently evil actions of the Tuskeegee study were not condemned immediately because they were not generally known. But when they were known generally, they were condemned. There was no sacred book of irrational beliefs and untestable doctrines that sciemtists could hide behind to continue to alllege that they had done no evil.
Now mind you, there may be a difference of opinion as to whether ANY blind control test that offers treatment to one group and not to the control group is EVER moral, even if the control group are denied the succor of the drug for only a short time. If we achieve a vaccine for AIDS, there will have to be a period, perhaps even a period of years, where some people who are HIV positive will be receiving a placebo, although, if we are at the point of human testing, we are almost entirely sure that the vaccine is beneficial. Individuals may die during that period who would have lived if they had not been members of the placebo group. But scientists are willing to discuss that. And scientists regularly change their minds on such matters.
Do you suppose a future Pope will suddenly decide it is OK for gay people to have sex? Thereby admitting their former doctrine was wrong?
No explanatory power in in fields that can be weighed, measured and tested. In those areas I’m happy to let the scientists figure things out rather blindly accept myths and tradition. I don’t consider the physical world to be the only part of our world that is real, but if thats what you meant okay.
Yes you can argue those things and you can believe those things. Would that mean your convictions in these areas are a sort of faith. Do you believe it because you have hard evidence of the explanatory sort that you can demonstrate to others who are skeptical, or is it something more subjective that you concluded on the basis of your personal studies and experiences?
Not at all. I have made no attempt to interfere with your ongoing crusade against religious belief. I made one, single observation.
You made the claim that Weinberg “said it best” when he noted that “for good people to do bad things, it takes religion” and I have pointed out that while that may sound like a great slogan (it feels like bumper sticker material, to me), it is, in fact, simply wrong.
If you want to hold forth that religion is a great evil in the world, go for it.
If you want to quote some guy claiming that it requires religion to get good people to do bad things, I will point at your claim and laugh and provide lots of examples of good people doing bad things for what seemed to them perfectly reasonable purposes who were prompted neither by religion nor by religious-like irrational beliefs.
This debate has become sterile and pointless because what you are doing is nitpicking an aphorism beyond all reason.
If I were to tell you that “stitch in time saves nine” would you enter into an all-day argument that a stitch may save seven or eight or ten??? :dubious:
An aphorism is a short statement that encloses an essential truth.
What Weinberg said in this aphorism is essentailly this. Yes, people can do evil things and people can do good things. And when you get right down to it, even the thug who robs a corner store thinks somewhere in his heart that what he is doing is somehow justified by the hard life he had, or whatever. I doubt if anyone outside of corny horror movies ever says “Gee, I am going to perform evil.” Probably every wrongdoer has some form of justification playing around in their mind.
What Weinberg was getting at is that religion (and I say other irrational semi-religions like Naziism) provide a cover and justification like nothing else can for hundreds and even millions of people to consistently commit evil acts (like carry on witch burnings or heretic trials, or Christrian Crusades for centuries) and still hold their heads up high and claim they are doing good. Over 250 million Muslims who are probably otherwise decent folk are shown to approve of suicide bombings against civilian targets for the sake of Islam. I know of no equivalent power other than religion that could accomplish this sort of mass insanity.
And if you think that something like the Tuskeegee Study, however horrible it was, is the moral equivalent of the holocaust or the tortures of the Inquisition or 50,000 witches burned over three centuries, you have a strange sense of values.
I am not claiming the “last word”, but I think I have made my position clear and defended my original thesis that Weinberg’s statement is basically true. You can add anything you like, Tom, but I have had my say on this subject.
other irrational doctrines huh? So what you and your genius Noble prize winner have taught us is that different groups in history use various irrational justifications for evil acts. What a revelation. Welcome to the darker side of the human race.
The inference that using some Holy Book as justification makes an act even more evil is just ludicrous. Most people committing an evil act create some justification for what they do, and why it’s really okay. That’s part of human nature and not unique to religion.
You’ve broadened your definition to the point where it doesn’t support your original assertion, and shown you and Mr prize winner to be incorrect.
other irrational doctrines huh? So what you and your genius Noble prize winner have taught us is that different groups in history use various irrational justifications for evil acts. What a revelation. Welcome to the darker side of the human race.
The inference that using some Holy Book as justification makes an act even more evil is just ludicrous. Most people committing an evil act create some justification for what they do, and why it’s really okay. That’s part of human nature and not unique to religion.
You’ve broadened your definition to the point where it doesn’t support your original assertion, and shown you and Mr prize winner to be incorrect.
Not at all.
In an attempt to bolster your particular views of the world, you happened to grab a particularly silly statment and identify it as having some great truth. While making no assault on your general views, I pointed out that that statement was, in fact, silly.
You are still free to point out all the horrible manifestations of religion. However, if you rely on bumper stickers with bad logic, you will get called on it. If you repeatedly return to that particular example to make an attempt to defend it or “prove” it instead of simply recognizing that it was a bad example and moving on with your harangue, then you will have chosen to derail your own participation in this thread.
You could have simply noted that the statement made a decent bumper sticker or sound bite, despite its error, and moved on several posts ago. As long as you wish to expend your energy trying to shore up the bad logic of that statement, then you are the one eviscerating the thread.
If it bothers you, I will agree to make no more observations regarding that bit of silliness and you may now return to your grand thesis of the evil of religion.
You yourself have provided the contradiction to your Weinburgs statement and tried to include it to make his statement correct. It just doesn’t work. I understand the point that religions as groups can use a faulty belief system to justify their acts. That’s true. History shows us that religions are not the only ones. What about evil acts done in the name of “national interests” Besides Stalin and Pol Pot you might look at the history of the great empires and see if they in the name of national interests committed acts you might see as evil.
Hijack:
Did that quote originate with Weinberg? I could have sworn I’ve seen it attributed to Voltaire or (!) Pascal, but google yields nothing.
:rolleyes: Thank you so much, Tomndeb, for your permission to continue with my “harangue”, which my dictionary defines as a “long, pompous and noisy speech”. By the way, are you the same Tomndeb who warns me to keep debate civil and to avoid nasty personal remarks or are there two of you? On the other hand, you and Cosmodan may continue with your intelligent, impartial expositions of pure logic in defense of religion as opposed to my “harangues” against religion. :rolleyes:
As I said, I will no longer continue this sterile dissection of what is essentially an aphorism by Steven Weniberg. An aphorism is a short, pithy comment that exposes a fact that is generally true. At least that is what I believed. But your nitpicking (sorry, your “calling” me on it) has opened my eyes to the error of my ways.
I therefore announce that I will no longer use the aphorism: “A stitch in time saves nine.” Why not you ask? Because I have gone over all my clothing and examined with a magnifying glass all the places in which a seam has become unstitiched.
I found three cases in which the original tear in the seam resulted from five, three and six stitches letting go at once. Therefore, a single stitch could NOT have had the stated effect of saving nine.
I also found four cases in which a single stitch had broken on a seam, and decided as an experiment to leave that single stitch unrepaired to see how many other stitches would break. Although I found one case in which an extra eight broke (for a total of nine) I also found three other cases in which the number of stitches that broke following the initial break of one stitch was greater or lesser than eight. I would therefore conclude that in those three out of four cases, a stitch in time would NOT have saved nine.
What I have found is that that aphorism “A stitch in time saves nine” is quite incorrect and from now on, anyone who uses it will be “called” on it. I thank both Cosmodan and Tomndeb for illuminating me in my ignorance. :rolleyes:
Nice sarcasm. Really. I appreciate good sarcasm and this is pretty good.
I want you to understand that I do get your point and the quote. I understand that it is speaking in general. I don’t agree even on those terms. I acknowledge that some heinous moral crimes have been justified by religious belief. I don’t agree that religion is clearly the hands down worst offender in regard to “good people” doing bad things. That’s been the thrust of my objection and several times you’ve ignored direct questions put to you and points I’ve raised. If you now choose to throw in a couple of :rolleyes: and slink away that’s fine. I haven’t attacked you or treated you unfairly. I’ve strongly disagreed. If you can’t take the heat then get out of the GD kitchen. {ooo I like the double entendre… I’ll have to use it again at some future date}
Just to be clear, are you saying that what Weinberg MEANT was “religion and other irrational doctrines?” Was he WRONG in not including the end of that phrase, as you say in post #107? Or were we suppoed to infer that this is what he INTENDED when he said it?