# Religion and arrogance? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 14, 2017, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209 "2017-07-14T01:47:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2017, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/41 "2017-07-17T16:13:54Z")
> [@pianodave](#): > > I ask because it seems to me that if you are willing to make it a driving force in your life, you wouldn’t do so unless you were willing to bet the farm that what you believe in is real… Sort of. From the atheist point of view, however, you aren’t betting anything, because there isn’t anything to bet, and thus you gain (or lose) nothing. I.E. there is no God, I believe there is a God, I die and cease to exist without ever knowing I am wrong, or having any consequence. Or there is no God, I don’t believe in God, I die and cease to exist without ever knowing I was right. It’s Pascal’s wager. > [@](#): > > It also makes me think…shouldn’t the fact that religious fundamentalism exists and there are people all over the world saying that everyone who doesn’t worship the God they do is going to Hell seem to indicate that there is no real consensus? I mean, odds are greater that no one is right versus that they alone are right and everyone else is wrong? I don’t know if there is a consensus, but there is also no consensus on whether or not God exists. So lack of consensus doesn’t necessarily prove anything. Somewhere [north of 80% of the world believes that God exists in some sense](http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/dec/23/84-percent-world-population-has-faith-third-are-ch/)- four out of five is starting to verge on consensus, IMO. Although you are correct that they don’t generally agree on the details. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2017, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/42 "2017-07-17T16:24:54Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Somewhere [north of 80% of the world believes that God exists in some sense](http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/dec/23/84-percent-world-population-has-faith-third-are-ch/)- four out of five is starting to verge on consensus, IMO. Although you are correct that they don’t generally agree on the details. The devil is in the details, dude-Your statement heavily implies that 80% of the world are worshiping the same deity in some sense, and that just ain’t so, Joe. This seems like part of the arrogance I described in post #18. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2017, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/43 "2017-07-17T18:58:57Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Somewhere [north of 80% of the world believes that God exists in some sense](http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/dec/23/84-percent-world-population-has-faith-third-are-ch/)- four out of five is starting to verge on consensus, IMO. Although you are correct that they don’t generally agree on the details. Means nothing, 93% of Americans think they they are in the top 50% for safe driving. And that’s for something that has associated evidence and can be empirically tested. ---
**Author:** ![Dragwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dragwyr/32/2855_2.png) [@Dragwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dragwyr)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2017, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/44 "2017-07-18T13:44:12Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > I think the OP’s thesis could more concisely be expressed as: > Are beliefs _that are not based on evidence_ inherently arrogant? > > And it’s not an unreasonable question, given that hundreds of millions religious people around the world devoutly believe in things that are mutually contradictory, and cannot possibly all be true. If these beliefs are based on perceived “revelation” rather than evidence, then it seems an arrogant position to suppose that a deity would choose to reveal important truths solely to adherents of your particular religion, while allowing adherents of other (presumably fake) religions to wallow in ignorant delusion. When it comes right down to it, all religion is based on faith. Faith is believing that something is true without any good evidence. When someone makes statements without evidence, that is arrogance. Therefore, religion is inherently arrogant. However, I don’t think that people who believe the tenets and dogma of religion are necessarily arrogant in other areas of their lives. A lot can be said for the ability of the mind to compartmentalize ideas. I think that despite religious thinking, many people are perfectly reasonable, open to change, and often skeptical. While there are some who allow their entire lives to be defined by their religious thinking (and thus allow it to basically hijack their ability to think rationally), not everybody does this and I submit that even if a person was an atheist, they wouldn’t necessarily be someone who can think rationally. In summary: Religion is inherently arrogant, but religious people can be rational. Non-religious people can also be arrogant and irrational. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2017, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/45 "2017-07-18T13:58:04Z")
> [@Dragwyr](#): > > When someone makes statements without evidence, that is arrogance. What’s your evidence for this statement? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2017, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/46 "2017-07-18T17:13:16Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > Means nothing, 93% of Americans think they they are in the top 50% for safe driving. And that’s for something that has associated evidence and can be empirically tested. I don’t understand this. How would you empirically test for belief in God? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2017, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/47 "2017-07-18T22:12:23Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I don’t understand this. How would you empirically test for belief in God? > > Regards, > Shodan I maybe wasn’t clear. People have wholly unrealistic beliefs about their driving ability even when such an ability can be empirically tested. The fact that 80% of people have a belief in something as nebulous and intangible as a god is therefore not surprising nor unusual, nor is it evidence in the favour of a supernatural entity. “A lot of people think X” is utterly useless other than as a statement of fact. It adds no evidential weight to the validity of x. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2017, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/48 "2017-07-18T22:41:12Z")
> [@Dragwyr](#): > > When it comes right down to it, all religion is based on faith. Faith is believing that something is true without any good evidence. When someone makes statements without evidence, that is arrogance. Therefore, religion is inherently arrogant. > > However, I don’t think that people who believe the tenets and dogma of religion are necessarily arrogant in other areas of their lives. A lot can be said for the ability of the mind to compartmentalize ideas. I think that despite religious thinking, many people are perfectly reasonable, open to change, and often skeptical. While there are some who allow their entire lives to be defined by their religious thinking (and thus allow it to basically hijack their ability to think rationally), not everybody does this and I submit that even if a person was an atheist, they wouldn’t necessarily be someone who can think rationally. > > In summary: Religion is inherently arrogant, but religious people can be rational. Non-religious people can also be arrogant and irrational. I don’t think it’s arrogant to decide what to believe _for yourself_. There are a lot of areas in life where we either can’t know or don’t have the bandwidth to find out, what is actually correct. See, for example, all the contradictory stuff out there about nutrition. That is not to say that religion vs. atheism (or faith vs. science, or credulity vs. cynicism, or or or…) is the same kind of decision as deciding what to eat. On the other hand, (for example) there is at least some evidence that eating less red meat would be healthy for most people, those same people know that, and they continue to eat lots of meat anyway because they want to. A lot of people are convinced about a lot of things either without scientific evidence or in spite of it. There are probably a lot of ways to characterize this mindset, but I don’t think arrogance necessarily comes into it. Where religious people are arrogant, of course, is when they want to prescribe my life for me, instead of being satisfied to govern their own lives. Even if they’re only tut-tutting in their mind, that is a kind of arrogance. I try not to do that to them, and I appreciate it when they likewise don’t do it to me. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2017, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/49 "2017-07-19T14:48:03Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > I maybe wasn’t clear. > > People have wholly unrealistic beliefs about their driving ability even when such an ability can be empirically tested. > The fact that 80% of people have a belief in something as nebulous and intangible as a god is therefore not surprising nor unusual, nor is it evidence in the favour of a supernatural entity. > > “A lot of people think X” is utterly useless other than as a statement of fact. It adds no evidential weight to the validity of x. **pianodave** was arguing the other way, that lack of consensus was evidence that God does not exist. > [@](#): > > shouldn’t the fact that religious fundamentalism exists and there are people all over the world saying that everyone who doesn’t worship the God they do is going to Hell seem to indicate that there is no real consensus? I mean, odds are greater that no one is right versus that they alone are right and everyone else is wrong? That’s just as invalid as saying that complete consensus would prove He does. Consensus does not logically change the odds that something is true (or false). Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2017, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/50 "2017-07-19T15:41:49Z")
Then bringing consensus up at all, [especially a misleading one](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20351073&postcount=41), is a waste of time? ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2017, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/51 "2017-07-19T16:02:32Z")
What the lack of consensus means to me is that any particular religious belief (including a belief that there is no God), while it may be _true_, is not _obvious_. Failure to hold that belief doesn’t mean that a person is mentally deficient or morally deficient. To think that it does is arrogance. ---
**Author:** ![Shamozzle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shamozzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shamozzle)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2017, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/52 "2017-07-20T01:27:41Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > I have no problem with people not believing in God, my problem is when they decide to mock anyone who does. In that it is cruel to rub someone’s stupidity in their face? ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2017, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/53 "2017-07-20T05:57:45Z")
> [@Shamozzle](#): > > In that it is cruel to rub someone’s stupidity in their face? Might that be considered arrogant? ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2017, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/54 "2017-07-20T07:12:39Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > I have no problem with people not believing in God, my problem is when they decide to mock anyone who does. Good manners demands that we don’t mock the person but mocking the belief is absolutely fine, in fact it is part and parcel of a healthy society. Trouble is, who gets to decide what is mockery? And why would someone believing in a god or gods automatically protect their beliefs from mockery? Would you be so quick to defend the mockery of beliefs of people who have created their own personal gods? Or that a sportsman, politician or singer was a god? or someone that clung to an aztec, egyptian, greek, roman, old norse, pagan or aboriginal god? What about scientology? What about pretty much any set of supernatural quasi-religious beliefs on how the world is ordered? None of the above are intrinsically more believable or sensible than the “classic” jdeo-christian and islamic gods. To me, those beliefs are all fair game for equal treatment. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2017, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/55 "2017-07-20T15:04:23Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > Good manners demands that we don’t mock the person but mocking the belief is absolutely fine, in fact it is part and parcel of a healthy society. > > Trouble is, who gets to decide what is mockery? And why would someone believing in a god or gods automatically protect their beliefs from mockery? It’s not that being about God should protect a belief from mockery. It’s that religious beliefs tend to be among those beliefs that are most deeply held, that people take most seriously. If you mock a belief that a person considers an essential part of them, it feels to them like you’re mocking the person. And if they hold that belief in common with other people they care about, it can feel like you’re mocking those other people. Which is not to say that such beliefs shouldn’t ever be mocked; but you should be aware of what’s at stake when you do. Another caveat is that, often, what happens is that people mock a strawman version of other people’s beliefs, either deliberately for the sake of mockery or because they don’t really understand those beliefs. This can be arrogance. Although to be fair, sometimes people who claim to hold a belief don’t really understand it either, or what they hold is actually a strawman version of the belief. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2017, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209/56 "2017-07-20T16:24:58Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > It’s not that being about God should protect a belief from mockery. It’s that religious beliefs tend to be among those beliefs that are most deeply held, that people take most seriously. If you mock a belief that a person considers an essential part of them, it feels to them like you’re mocking the person. And if they hold that belief in common with other people they care about, it can feel like you’re mocking those other people. I have not the slightest shred of doubt that I hold views just as strongly and just as deeply as any random Catholic you pull off the street. Views that are central to my worldview and inform how I treat others, how I interpret the beginning and end of life and the universe. I’m sure you and most others on this board are the same. Now if I and the random catholic were to enter into heated debate on any opposing views we may have I suspect that only one side would be accused of “mockery” regardless of how moderate the debate was. I think we all know that to be true and we surely know that there is no justification for such a double standard. Still, traditions die hard and we spent millennia incorporating our terrible first stabs (literally in some cases) at science and philosophy into everyday society and they are afforded an unwarranted deference simply by being old and “religious”. Douglas Adams said it well. > [@](#): > > **Douglas Adams** > Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That’s an idea we’re so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it’s kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? - because you’re not!’ If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it, but on the other hand if somebody says ‘I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday’, you say, ‘Fine, I respect that’. The odd thing is, even as I am saying that I am thinking ‘Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?’ but I wouldn’t have thought ‘Maybe there’s somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics’ when I was making the other points. I just think ‘Fine, we have different opinions’. But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody’s (I’m going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say ‘No, we don’t attack that; that’s an irrational belief but no, we respect it’. > [@](#): > > Which is not to say that such beliefs shouldn’t ever be mocked; but you should be aware of what’s at stake when you do. Well quite, both ancient history and recent events are clear examples of what is at stake when religion is criticised, let alone “mocked” (again, I’m not entirely sure where the line is for that) > [@](#): > > Another caveat is that, often, what happens is that people mock a strawman version of other people’s beliefs, either deliberately for the sake of mockery or because they don’t really understand those beliefs. This can be arrogance. Although to be fair, sometimes people who claim to hold a belief don’t really understand it either, or what they hold is actually a strawman version of the belief. A very good point. It is lazy to attack a caricature of belief so it is always best to understand what beliefs a person actually holds. Again though, it seems as though asking people to explain which version of god they believe in? what are their powers? what evidence do you have for that? did Jesus really die? Were there really Jewish slaves in Egypt? etc. etc. that seems to often touch a nerve, as though it is mockery or offensive to even ask those questions in the first place. A wall of defense is put around the faith that wouldn’t be given to another subject of equal importance to a non-religious person. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-and-arrogance/791209.md?page=2)