God is not Great

Great Debates
61

Yup.

And you answered that earlier question asked of you about ‘of what use is such a statement?’ by saying that, “Well, for one thing it’s an argument against the standard religious claim that religion is necessary.”

And the reply you got was, “Which I haven’t made” which of course changes the subject. The question asked was “what’s the use of such a statement?” and you answered it.

From there, the standard MO of this religious POV is to slip, sliiiide awaaay…

And Hitchens point isn’t imbalanced because he isn’t asserting that non-religion is necessary. He’s responding to the assertion that religion is necessary.

62

Can we celebrate now? LOL

Surely someone must have prayed to a non-corporeal god for this to happen.

63

That’s a valid point.

What’s typically done in social science research is that people are asked what their motivations are. The theory is that while motivations themselves are very hard to pin down, if you ask everyone on all sides then you get closer to a wash of that part.

It’s not dissimilar to studies that are done asking people if they are happy and why.

That definition could be all over the map as well as the reasons but when you ask the next person you can reasonably assume that since they are human they are also going to have reasons all over the place and so on and see which way the trend goes when you have all of your data. And that contributes something; it’s not presented as conclusive but it’s also not the equivalent of saying nothing can ever be known so it’s a useless thing to look into (not saying that you’re saying that).

64

Good one. Now watch the other POV twist that away into meaninglessness. :rolleyes:

By the way, it occurs to me from an earlier post where you were theorizing that one would need a completely religion free culture to test out some of these ideas that the in-game behaviors and ‘morals’ of a RPG could provide a version of that kind of world and I’d be willing to bet a dollar that there’s probably been studies done already on that which could be interesting to read for what they’re worth.

Also, studies of animals and their ‘morals’ are done all the time and are fascinating in watching behavior unfold without a religion (religious people of course can dismiss that since god made the animals and we named them, etc.; postmodern religious people can posit that animals might have religion but let’s leave the insane to themselves). In fact, there’s an article in last month’s Atlantic, I believe, about the evolutionary development of altruism as an in-world value. The interesting analogue with evolution to religion is that both seem to operate on ‘extralife’ POVs in that evolution is for the sake of the future species.

65

Explained in #46 (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9182051&postcount=46)

66

Funny, I don’t remember theorizing about that. Are you sure that was me?

And there are two problems with using your usual RPG as a testing ground: 1) they usually have a ‘scoring system’ that adds artificial values to actions like killing things, which would skew behavior, and 2) the people playing the game would bring their external religion and morals in with them, contaminating the experiment. So I’m not sure the RPG testing ground idea would pan out in practice.

Oh, and your formula in post #46 seems to rely on some unjustified valuations of things. In reality it’s not really possible to assess the “value” of various good and evil acts, and thus we can’t compare them or put them on a balance, not really.

67

Sorry, it was NDP responding to a quote from you I got that twisted. Studies on virtual worlds, if not RPGs per se, are actually being done (without scoring). I don’t know about contaminating the experiment; the idea is to see how they behave in an area where they’re playing the game for itself and there are no benefits or costs added that don’t naturally arise from the interaction of people. Of course people playing the game have their morals that they’d be using, but that’s not the same as religion. In fact, separating those two things out would be one of the points of virtual world study. Religion is defined in #46 as beliefs that include extraworld benefits, not morals.

One of the religious beliefs a player would be less likely to use is one that demands they play a certain way to avoid personally going to hell. That aspect of their religion is suspended in the game. The degree to which that religious belief infects their morality as its played in the game would be one thing to study and control for with debriefing after the game and other such tools. Also, you can control for contamination by vetting the values of the players before doing the test. It’s done in social sciences all the time.

As for #46, I’m not sure what you mean about the ‘value’ of the acts; there are no valuations posited, it isn’t a mathematical formula just a clarification of the language used to explain the assertion that religion is a net negative even in theory. ‘Secular good’ is pretty commonly understood and for those examples that are highly controversial, they wouldn’t be used on either side.

For example, causing someone suffering vs. not causing someone suffering.

The only thing you’d need there is the concept that causing suffering is bad, and off you go with your experiment. Up front, participants can be asked if they believe that or not. If they do, and indicate their desire to adhere to those values, but nonetheless act differently in practice then there’s something to explore.

68

You’re right the first is murder. The second would be malicious manipulation and there are an abundance of secular examples.

That’s what I mean by uneven. If you want to discuss the act itself then break it down to the act without the motivational label. If you want to examine religion from a human basis without the special status protection I think that’s the right thing to do. Then remove the special status from the bad as well as the good.

69

Not really. You created a formula and created the values yourself. It doesn’t really demonstrate anything. I chose to let someone else point that out and I see BB2 has.

70

The first is not murder. It is human sacrifice. Murder is defined as an unlawful taking of a life with malice. (Murder - Wikipedia)

Human sacrifice has no malice; it has beneficence when motivated by religion.

Therefore, an act of human sacrifice cannot happen without religion.

An act of murder can.

Acts of murder will happen with or without religion.

Take away the religious motivation and you have one less murder. Net plus good.

71

The second is malicious manipulation.

Malicious manipulation can happen with or without religion.

With religion, there’s one more (religiously required) reason for malicious manipulation.

Take away religion, and you have one less cause of malicious manipulation.

Given that there is no secular good act that requires religion, that leaves religion back in the net negative column.

It subtracts secular good by religious requirement that wouldn’t otherwise be subtracted, but it doesn’t add anything secularly good by religious requirement that couldn’t otherwise be added.

72

The “motivational label” is religion. That’s the point of what’s being discussed.

Remove the “motivational label aka religion” and you’ve left the discussion.

In other words, if you remove the motivational label/religion then all you’ve got is a bunch of acts that wash.

The entire point is to investigate the degree to which religion motivates those actions in a way that only religion can to see if it’s a net positive or negative in terms of secular good. The motivation can’t be removed in such a discussion.

73

Sorry, that’s not what was being answered. Nice try.

Your question was “If the suggestion by Hitchens is that we don’t need religion to do good things I’m pointing out that we don’t need religion to do bad things either and once more, so what?”

#46 answers the “so what?”. Specifically, is religion a **net **positive or negative. That addresses the “so what?” suggestion that it’s a wash.

So if you were sincerely asking why anyone would care or what difference does it make (“so what?”), that’s why they’d care.

You don’t have to agree (or understand) the values, but that’s “so what?” which is what I was responding to. Understand now?

If by “so what?” you mean there’s no point in discussing the value of religion in today’s day and age given the world we live in, then I can’t help you there it’s just too obvious.

Furthermore, your pointing out that we don’t need religion to do bad things was taken into account in that formula, and conceded. (Your statement of saying that, is itself a formula by the way; using values you made up).

So, taking into account that there are bad things done that don’t require religion (SBNR), there are **bad **things done that **do require religion **(SBRR), there are **good **things done that **don’t require religion **(SGNR), and there’s yet to be a single example of anything secularly **good **that **requires religion **(SGRR), you end up with a net negative for religion. It’s not about assigning values. It’s about logic.
Incidentally, popping in to a thread to ask “so what?” So what?

74

"If the suggestion by Hitchens is that we don’t need religion to do good things I’m pointing out that we don’t need religion to do bad things…"

And that also contains a plainly false implication.

We **do **need religion to do **some **bad things. But we don’t need religion to do a **single **good thing. That’s the difference and why it’s not a wash. Several examples have already been offered and it is, as Hitchens says, always easy to get lots of answers from most anyone in naming one act that’s bad that **requires **religious belief to do.

There’s a woman that’s about to be killed (secular bad) as human sacrifice (a religious concept that is not the same as murder; consult the dictionary).

If the religious belief motivating those killers were to suddenly vanish, would she be killed?

Is there any other secular motivation to kill her then and there that remains? Like what?

All other killing of women that goes on elsewhere in the world for secular reasons is going to go on anyway. This human sacrifice adds to that, but without any secular reason; religion adds an additional, essential reason to commit bad acts. It doesn’t add any good acts whose only essential reason is religion.

Religious people like to say “well, these people really wanted to kill a woman so they made up a religion to justify it” but I don’t think one can so summarily dismiss the conviction of those religious people that their religious belief is their motivation. Some people will certainly misuse religion and come in with their own agendas in advance; however, in addition to those people you’ve got those with devout religious beliefs in killing. Those people add to the negative total. And they haven’t added anything positive that requires the same religious beliefs that add the negatives even by their own admission.

75

Except, of course, I explicitly refer to the type of ‘malicious manipulation’ that secularity is unable to achieve, on account of the fact that it cannot threaten past death. Equating it to life-limited threats is invalid, or so I claim. Ignoring that fact rather than refuting it is fallacious argument.

And Hell-threats require religion, regardless of motivation, because they are dependent as much or more on the victim’s religious beliefs, since the threat is impotent in the absence of such belief.

(I’m not going to argue the sacrifice angle further; the Hell-threat point is the far stronger one.)

9thFloor, as for your post #46:

You have artificially thrown a 0 and 100s in for all the values, which makes the following unproven claims:

SGRR = 0. Bunkus. As you’re comparing, you’re not talking about good religious acts that have no secular equivalent; you’re talking about all good religious acts, period. And it’s clearly not zero.

SGNR = SBNR. Bunkus. You cite the reason for this number as being to propose a ‘wash’, and then use it to conclude that man is zero-sum without religion. THis is called Assuming The Conclusion and is NOT Kosher. I see no reason to assume that on average man is as good as he is bad, either objectively or in terms of deeds; I see no way of even measuring these attributed for comparison.

SBNR = SBRR. Bunkus. There’s no way to compare this, and therefore equating it is far from good, since this is what you’re “testing for”, essentially. And I note that you claim that you’re being “generous” making NR this bad, but are ‘duly noting’ how bad religion is; in an attempt to rhethorically undermine the equation you just made and make religion worse than you’re arguing.

If you extrapolate from the prior Bunkus, you’ll find that all the equalities and comparative amounts are all Bunkus, which makes a certain amount of sense since you pulled all of them out of thin air (or maybe some orfice of yours).

While I like attacking religious misconceptions and fallacies as much as the next one, one should not stoop to making stuff up yourself to counter their made-up stuff. Never ever ever ever.

76

The massive evil done by Stalin, who was most certainly an atheist, and by Hitler (who probably was NOT an atheist, although he might qualify as a lapsed Catholic) are sometimes trotted out in the context of debates such as this. The problem is that we have to distinguish between good and evil performed “by” people who happen to be religious or atheistic, and good and evil peformed “because” they are religious or atheistic.

77

Actually, the real problem is that the true correlation is betweeen evil and dogmatic ideologies, not specifically evil and religion. Most religions are dogmatic ideologies, of course, and eliminating religion would therefore greatly reduce the number of active dogmatic ideologies and thus be a good thing overall, but nonetheless there still are and have been secular ideologies that have done just as much evil as any religion by most measures, which gives the religious someone else to point at and say “See? The nonreligious are just as bad as us, so religion isn’t bad at all!”

78

I am not religious,but I believe that some people interpet their religion to use it for an excuse to do wrong, but not all of the believers do, some are sincere and try to do good. Racism is in the person that uses it, it is racism because of the ignorance of the person who is racist,in this manner the person creats the racist ideas.

Monavis

79

**9thFloor, as for your post #46:
You have artificially thrown a 0 and 100s in for all the values, which makes the following unproven claims:

SGRR = 0. Bunkus. As you’re comparing, you’re not talking about good religious acts that have no secular equivalent; you’re talking about all good religious acts, period. And it’s clearly not zero.**

Maybe I’m misunderstanding your understanding of that; SGRR refers to secular good acts that **require **religious belief. I’ve yet to hear a single example.

**SGNR = SBNR. Bunkus. You cite the reason for this number as being to propose a ‘wash’, and then use it to conclude that man is zero-sum without religion. THis is called Assuming The Conclusion and is NOT Kosher. I see no reason to assume that on average man is as good as he is bad, either objectively or in terms of deeds; I see no way of even measuring these attributed for comparison. **

That may very well be but even if there is no way of knowing one way or the other if man’s secular goods are greater or lesser than their bads then it still ends up as a wash in terms of knowable fact. It’s not a conclusion I need for my argument and even under the theory that it can’t be known, it still functions as a wash.
SBNR = SBRR. Bunkus. There’s no way to compare this, and therefore equating it is far from good, since this is what you’re “testing for”, essentially. And I note that you claim that you’re being “generous” making NR this bad, but are ‘duly noting’ how bad religion is; in an attempt to rhethorically undermine the equation you just made and make religion worse than you’re arguing.

Again, if there’s no way to compare it then it’s a wash which works fine.

I do suspect that religion is worse than I’m arguing, but I’m making that known and not figuring that into the logical statement.
**If you extrapolate from the prior Bunkus, you’ll find that all the equalities and comparative amounts are all Bunkus, which makes a certain amount of sense since you pulled all of them out of thin air (or maybe some orfice of yours).

While I like attacking religious misconceptions and fallacies as much as the next one, one should not stoop to making stuff up yourself to counter their made-up stuff. Never ever ever ever.**

I’m not stooping to anything. It’s simply a way to clarify the terminology so that a discussion can be had without having to repeat the entire expression for each concept over and over.

The point being, has religion caused more harm than good?

You seem to have an opinion about that – maybe not – but encapsulating each of at least 4 logical possibilities as abbreviations for discussing the effect of religion on secular good and secular bad acts is just that and nothing more.

My purpose, perhaps different than yours, isn’t to attack religious misconceptions and fallacies. My purpose is to make an assertion for the sake of discussion: religious is a net negative because it’s positives don’t require religious belief so could otherwise occur secularly but its negatives do require religious belief and therefore could not occur secularly. I thought you agreed with that statement.

If you don’t agree, find that unprovable, then that’s cool I respect that.

80

Good point. It goes to the notion of a behavior that **requires **a belief in order to be possible rather than one that simply coincides with it.