Crooked Timber

I think that I largely agree with this. The one place I might disagree (though I’m not sure if this is a disagreement or not) is about one way in which I tend to feel about much religious belief that makes it hard for me to characterize the feeling I have as respect. That is, it seems to me that the causal origin of much religious belief is such that it’s not the sort of thing we can expect to have a high likelihood of truth, and the methods of testing religious beliefs (one’s own, I mean- not scientific testing) seem to me to be pretty dubious devices for finding truth as well. Much (probably most) religious belief is held because one was raised in a tradition- one is a Christian (or sub-branch there of) because of where one was born and who one’s parents are. If the same person had been born elsewhere her religion would have been different. This makes religion more like culture, and I can enjoy various cultures, appreciate facts about them, and be glad they are around but I don’t normally respect them unless they are distinctive in some ways. (We might say we respect a culture because of its great achievements, but it would still be a bit funny, I think, to say we respect a bearer of the culture for that reason.) Now, not all religious belief is like that, but much is and when it is I cannot say that I respect it, even if I don’t have negative attitudes towards it. Similarly, it seems to me that the methods often used to test one’s own religious belief- introspection, prayer, mortifications of various sorts, etc., are particularly unlikely to lead to true outcomes as opposed to either wish fulfilment or delusion. This is so when these methods are applied to non-religious beliefs, too- deep introspection isn’t a very good way to find out about much of anything, I think. But, religious belief doesn’t hold up that well, I think, to methods of testing we do find more reliable. So, the fact that a believer has subjected her beliefs to the common methods used to test religious belief by believers also doesn’t make me respect those beliefs. The pay-off of this is that while I don’t disrespect all religious belief, or disrespect it as such, I don’t want to say I have respect for much of it- it doesn’t seemed formed in the right way to me. That doesn’t mean I want to stamp it out or that I have any deep desire to discourage it. I especially don’t think that a liberal state can or should use the machinery of the state to stamp out religious belief. I’m glad there is a diversity of ways of life around, for basically Millian reasons. But in many cases I suppose my attitude is something other than respect, if that means holding in esteem and not willingness to accept the existence of.

(Note that much of what I say here applies to other views, such as political views, which most people also often hold for reasons that ought to make us not respect their holding of the views, even if we favor the views they do hold.)

jacob—careless copy-editing (which careful readers of my posts must have come to expect, surely…) will fix.

I’ll respect any irrational belief, seeing that everyone holds one or another, as long as the holder fully recognizes that he is not entitled to base any form of public argument or action upon it. Unfortunately, when it comes to religious beliefs, many people seem unable to do so.

I think that some Christians [...] have genuine faith in God, which, though not rationally supportable, is not excluded by straightforward canons of rationality

I think you might take some heat with this comment, Harry. After all, outside the realm of logic, very few things are excluded by straightforward canons of rationality, and though something as vague as faith in a deity certainly is not, the same is true about the existence of leprechauns and unicorns (especially invisible pink ones). Religious beliefs are in that respect extremely different from, say, political ones: though I might not agree with conservative beliefs, I agree that many people holding them do so in a way responsive to evidence and strive to present them in a way that allows me to challenge them in a meaningful way. The same is not true of religious beliefs, almost by definition.

“Is it not always the case that your friend would be better off holding correct rather than false beliefs?”

No, it’s not the case. What does “better off” mean? Happier, healthier, more productive, wealthier, a better spouse, neighbor, parent, colleague or friend?

I am myself an atheist, but I don’t see how my atheism makes me better off than my believing friends and acquaintances.

One issue here is the connection which Harry mentions between religious belief and the Euthyphro problem. Those of us who think that, for Euthyphro-like reasons, most theists are mistaken in their beliefs about what the connection between God and morality would be (if God did indeed exist), will not find it so easy to allow that theistic belief is not excluded by straightforward canons of rationality.

Insofar as it is implicit in the faith of many theists that the existence of God is morally necessary, their faith rests on a philosophical error. That error is not itself a result of faith (it isn’t that they have faith that the Euthyphro problem has a solution, or some such), and so it cannot be defended in the way that Harry suggests. If a strong connection between God and morality is not rationally defensible, then a certain widespread kind of theism isn’t either.

Another part of this issue is that one notorious way of responding to the Euthyphro problem, i.e. voluntarism, is itself morally (as well as philosophically) problematic. Since Harry agrees that it is harder to respect those who have wrong moral views, and many (most?) theists are voluntarists, at least implicitly, respect for those theists is trickier, even if their faith doesn’t depend on their voluntarism. Of course none of that is to suggest that the relevant philosophical issues are easy, or that I have more than very-close-to-certainty (if that!) that I’m right about them.

Prior to about January 2003 I leaned largely toward Harry’s view of things, but since then it seems that the evidence has forced me to skew more toward Matt’s.

The problem is that respect is an enabler.

On the ground though there’s probably not much difference, as Matt notes, but for me personally there’s a big difference in the way I understand people. Just getting older, I guess.

Another angle on this is to question the degree to which you can truly be said to respect a person if you allow them to continue to hold false beliefs without any attempt to correct that. Surely that puts you, the holder of knowledge, in a position of power (no matter how slight) over the person with the false belief? Isn’t it patronising to decide that some people are simply better off holding false beliefs and that you will not attempt to enlighten them? Can you have a relationship of equals in such a situation, and can there be real respect without that assumption of equality?

I think I agree with a lot of this up to the last paragraph.

I don’t see how it’s really a response to Blackburn’s saying that the religious believer has false beliefs to “emphasize our recognition of our fallibility”. You recognize that we are fallible, and you think that the religious believer has false beliefs, so for all that’s been said here (admittedly I haven’t read the Blackburn paper) Blackburn might too.

Indeed, Lindsey’s entire response seems to turn on reading into Blackburn something that just isn’t there, at least in the quoted passage. Blackburn says he’s convinced that theists are false. Does this mean he’s concluded that theists must, in any interesting sense of must, be wrong? No, he’s just concluded that they are wrong.

What could possibly be the mistake here? Is it assumed that we can only be convinced of something if we think we are infallible on the point? There’s no reason to attribute that view to Blackburn. Is it that we should never draw any conclusions on points on which we are fallible? Again, it’s hard to charitably credit that view to Blackburn, and I’m not sure any anti-agnostic will want to run with it. Lindsey appears to draw an absolutely absurd sceptical conclusion here: “Because we cannot know, we have a compelling reason to give some credence to other belief systems.” There’s really no compelling reason to believe this. Certainly no compelling reason is offered, and I don’t know of any good arguments for scepticism from the premises that are even suggested. Moreover, if there were such an argument, there would be a compelling reason to be an agnostic.

The simple point is that there’s no logical space between being an atheist, and believing that theists are wrong. Nor is there any logical space between believing in atheism, and believing that your belief in atheism is correct. There may be logical space between believing in atheism, and believing you don’t know that atheism is true, but I don’t know that it’s an attractive space. In general when I believe I don’t know that p, I give up belief in p. I don’t think I have to respect people who don’t do that – in fact I’m not sure I even have to regard them as believing in the sense of belief that I’m most interested in.

john m- I respect many religious believers. Garry Wills, for example, is a deeper, more insightful, more humane person than I am. If I ever had the opportunity to have a conversation with him, we would not be on a plane of equality – I would be at his feet. But that doesn’t affect my conviction that his religious belief is mistaken.

Ralph, you’d respect them LESS if they continued to be virtuous, admirable people but left the LDS church? If you’re not saying that, it’s not clear that you’re contradicting what Blackburn actually wrote.

As it happens, Christians are perfectly familiar with the logic of his position: love the sinner but hate the sin.

Russell- I guess that on your first point I’d insist that “respect” is a feeling towards something that implies an achievement of some sort. We talk of things as being “worthy” of respect. So, I don’t “respect” people’s common-sense beliefs, the ones they just have. It’s awfully good that they have them, and it would be silly to question most of them very seriously, but it also seems funny to me to say that I “respect” them in any real sense. To the extent that people have their religious beliefs because of accidental reasons, and the means they use to test them are unlikely to be truth-conducive, they also seem to fall into the category of things that are not the right sort of things to be respected. Again, not all religious belief is like this, but much is.

(“Respect” here might mean ‘not denigrate’ or “hold in esteem” or something like that. I’m using it exclusively in the latter sense- in the large majority of cases I don’t think we should denigrate people’s religious beliefs.)

So, beliefs that one just has are not, I think, worthy of respect no matter what those beliefs are. Nothing Hume says opposes that, I think. To think otherwise would be like respecting someone because of their race or their height- it’s the wrong sort of thing to respect.

On the second point, I’ll admit to not being very clear, in part because my comment was too long already. But, if it makes sense to respect, in the sense of holding in esteem, a culture at all (I’m not sure it does) then we might well respect a culture that has achievements we value- if it encouraged great learning, or care for all people, say. It would usually be a mistaken leap to extend this same respect to the individual members of the culture, though, unless they have done something in particular. As for most cultures, and most things about any culture, it seems wrong to me to say that we have respect towards them as opposed to other feelings, many of which can be positive and of course some negative, once again taking “respect” to mean “hold in esteem” and not “not denigrate.” Anyway, I hope that’s of some use.

Richard – the holding of a belief, whether true or false, can be beneficial or harmful without respect to its truth. The same belief can be beneficial in some respects and harmful in others, or beneficial at some periods and harmful at others, or beneficial to some people who hold it and harmful to others.

Imagine a soldier in a war who believes that God does not want him to kill innocent civilians. His belief may be simple: If I kill innocent civilians, I will go to Hell. His belief may be more sophisticated: all human life emanates from God; when I kill, I destroy God’s holy creation; therefore God forbids me to kill without necessity. In either case, his belief is false. If he refrains from killing innocent civilians because of his belief, both he and the innocent civilians are better off.

You could have written a much shorter post by just writing the following:

1: Blackburn believes that we can respect people whom we believe hold false beliefs, but that the fact that we believe they hold false beliefs means that we cannot respect them FOR that false belief, and that we respect them less WITH the false belief than we otherwise would WITHOUT.

2: I do not believe that religious people hold false beliefs. I have placed that matter in abeyance. I disagree with their beliefs, but I am not willing to call those beliefs false in an official sense.

That’s the only part of your post doing any analytical work. The rest of the material, about good faith and careful deliberation, can apply equally to persons holding both true and false beliefs. And that just brings you back to Blackburn and the degree of respect you would accord each group.

23: except that your examples depend on the belief impinging on the believer’s actions and practices, which I hedged against, following the line of the original argument. FTR I think that’s a problem with the whole line of argument per se, but we’re able to hold this kind of ‘ideal space’ argument because we have a society where consequences from belief are not in play – most atheists and Christians adhere to the same social and cultural norms anyway.

A fascinating and illuminating discussion.

I do wonder, though: Why is it that so many people who are profoundly skeptical of religious experience so unskeptical when it comes to moral experience? Let me explain. Except for radical utilitarians and sociopaths (not necessarily the same thing!), all human beings have had experiences of nobility or dignity—of being moved by a person or an act of sacrifice that makes us think that the person or act is HIGHER or NOBLER than other persons or acts. These are usually acts that we judge to be intrinsically good in themselves, regardless of the consequences (for the moral person himself or even for the object of the act, provided the intention was pure). I’m not making some contentious Kantian claim here; rather, I’m making a phenomenological claim about fundamental moral experience.

So, my question is: What is the ontological status of these pre-theoretical judgments, which all of us have made and make all the time? Do they respond to a fact about the world—namely that there are certain acts that are, in fact, intrinsically good in themselves? If so, what could this possibly mean? What is the ground of this dignity? Did it evolve through the same blind processes that have guided the evolution of the physical universe (including biological species)? Or, instead, are these experiences groundless—a kind of psychological/subjective projection onto a meaningless universe?

I bring up all of this because (1) I think that it is these moral experiences that lead so many people to embrace some form of theism, as a ground for the nobility we all experience; and (2) anti-theists might be able to undermine the grounds for belief in this or that theistic view, but they cannot destroy the phenomenological motive for holding SOME such belief without taking aim at the coherence of moral experience itself.

And so we go, round and round.

The question is whether or not to concentrate on beliefs as such as opposed to values, and beliefs concerning value. Everyone maintains logically indefensible beliefs of one sort or another. Billionaires value money, that is their own control of large amounts of it. I find that desire both illogical and wrong. But it is not illogical and wrong to engage in the discussion of the significance of greed, even the benefits, over the course of human history. Still I would prefer the “logic’ of a local priest to that of a billionaire, in the same way that I would prefer the logic of an atheist english professor: one who believes that curiosity about the world does not require greed. These days the defense of the existence of greed often becomes a defense of greed, but there’s a distinction. So now I guess I’ll make a qualified defense of the existence of religion.

When it comes to things people value, there’s a whole list of people I have a hard time having respect for; from Rawlsians to Libertrians, to the nobel prize winning physicist who wrote a chapter defending Zionism in a book titled “Science and Its Cultural Adversaries.” How can I respect such irrationalism?

The question regarding religion is what takes its place. Philosophy can’t, at least as long as philosophizing resides in the attempt to create a unified formal system of value and thought, and as long as it refuses to look at the function of religion and its irrational beliefs, rather than simply at the irrationality itself [that is without some sense of “second order” curiosity]
Religious texts function as a way of ordering experience and prioritizing in the public discussion of values. The Bible has the function we now give to founding documents and constitutions, which remain after all historical and temporal, not absolute.
To a believer the only philosophy that matters is moral philosophy. Everything else is ancillary. To many modern thinkers it’s the reverse. This is an idea cribbed from science, and it’s resulted in a fair amount of absurdity. For others, equally modern and equally secular, that reversal is in error. To them moral philosophy, the discussion of value, is still primary. And science does not answer questions of value.

I’m a fan of Blackburn in other affairs, but he is way off his game here.

Theists and atheists do not disagree on facts, they disagree on metaphysics. What may or may not be respectable about religious belief is not what it gets right or wrong about naturalistic truth claims, like gods or afterlives, but the depth and meaningfulness the belief engenders. I think most people can observe that this is a feature that is highly variable, both among the religious and irreligious alike.

I don’t know who Simon Blackburn’s friends are; they may be shallow and sanctimonious, they may be humble and wise, or somewhere in between—in other words, whether they are the kind of people who use religion to “demand respect.” He doesn’t say, but it seems unlikely that if they were such, he would have dropped off their dinner invitation list long ago.

Blackburn didn’t have to put on the yarmulke at dinner, and was within his rights withholding his respect for the sabbath ritual, but to rule out the possibility that religious beliefs he considers false can directly contribute to a humane, compassionate, thoughtful—in short respectable—life, seems to me terribly tone deaf.

Assuming that “respecting someone” isn’t itself a magical or sacramental act, what is the importance of the original question? Why should we worry about whose opinions we respect unless our respectfulness or lack of respectfulness is somehow helpful or otherwise valuable. In profane life, after all, as opposed to a seminar room, it is routine not have respect for people’s ideas about almost everything since most people don’t have a worthwhile understanding of anything and those who do have some understanding, have it about a very small range of topics since the default case for our kind is obviously ignorance and confusion (Urdummheit).

As far as I can see, the utility of not respecting religious belief lies in this: it is necessary to find some way to convey to the listeners who need to know that ordinary religious beliefs are not legitimate hypotheses about the nature of things or the basis of morality but gross and obvious superstitions irrelevant to any serious attempt to understand the world. Engaging popular theological notions is already an error, because such bits of nonsense don’t rise to the status of mistakes. Acting like the promoters of doctrines of vicarious atonement or eternal punishment or divine election are reasonable individuals is no way to get the chewing gum off your fingers. Of course, since the inmates in this particular madhouse are in charge of the place, it is prudent to dissemble or follow Aristotle’s ancient advice about regarding the others with light irony, but it remains necessary to devise ways to communicate with other reasonable people—or the reasonable parts of other people. Hence the value of disrespect.

(sorry for the long post…)

John M writes (#13): Another angle on this is to question the degree to which you can truly be said to respect a person if you allow them to continue to hold false beliefs without any attempt to correct that. Surely that puts you, the holder of knowledge, in a position of power (no matter how slight) over the person with the false belief? Isn’t it patronising to decide that some people are simply better off holding false beliefs and that you will not attempt to enlighten them? Can you have a relationship of equals in such a situation, and can there be real respect without that assumption of equality?

To be fair to this point, there’s a difference between engaging someone in their beliefs and doing everything in your power to change their minds. Admittedly, I, and many Christians, do try to persuade others to believe in God (because we believe that we hold a true belief, laugh all you want). In the same way, Harry at least, does engage with Christians (or at least me) about my beliefs, making it clear why he doesn’t believe, and genuinely interested in why I do. He’s not bothered if I don’t change my mind, but he does engage those beliefs (Harry you may want to say something about Kerry’s debate where he just ignored the question in the audience, which showed a disrespect to the audience member—sorry I’ve forgotten the story). So in that sense, engaging in each others beliefs through conversation is our way of both understanding and respecting each others beliefs, and I suppose in our way we are each trying to show each other why their belief is false. But that doesn’t amount to an outright campaign to change each other’s minds. I don’t think that you can both respect someone’s belief and ignore it (or merely tolerate it). Real respect, in my opinion, requires you to treat that belief as one that is worthy of both consideration and critique. If you didn’t respect it, you wouldn’t bother to critique it. Whether you care if the person actually changes her mind is not the same as treating her belief as something that is worthy to be evaluated (for both its merits and shortcomings).

Brian W (#15) says: (about Harry’s last paragraph)…Indeed, Lindsey’s entire response seems to turn on reading into Blackburn something that just isn’t there, at least in the quoted passage. Blackburn says he’s convinced that theists are false. Does this mean he’s concluded that theists must, in any interesting sense of must, be wrong? No, he’s just concluded that they are wrong.

Okay, on this point I will concede that perhaps I wasn’t reading Blackburn charitably, BUT that was how it came off to me (and I think, to Harry, though he can comment on that himself). The attitude seemed pervasive throughout the article, and it was easily recognizable in the sense that I’ve come across it all too often (not least among Christians). It’s the idea that I can’t respect you because you just are wrong, when in reality you don’t respect them because you think they are wrong. You may, as Harry said, be “very-close-to-certain” that you are right, but that’s quite different from being completely certain. Perhaps this has no effect on how we should evaluate each other’s beliefs per se, but having this sort of humility does enable the process of respect formation. Because I am aware that I could be wrong, I find it easier to engage with and appreciate your (opposing) beliefs. I think that a lack of this sort of humility is a block to respecting others. That doesn’t mean you and I can’t draw conclusions, even fairly close to certain conclusions (as we all do), but it does mean we have to at least approach opposing view points with a different sort of attitude. Maybe you don’t think that’s important, but I think it is precisely because I see humility as a key to respect. If I was completely convinced in my own infallibility, then I would not bother to even consider opposing beliefs, because it would be a non-question. And perhaps Blackburn doesn’t have this attitude, but after reading the article, he could’ve fooled me.

Damon (#29),

Great to see you commenting here; thanks.

[A]ll human beings have had experiences of nobility or dignity—of being moved by a person or an act of sacrifice that makes us think that the person or act is HIGHER or NOBLER than other persons or acts….What is the ontological status of these pre-theoretical judgments, which all of us have made and make all the time? Do they respond to a fact about the world—namely that there are certain acts that are, in fact, intrinsically good in themselves? If so, what could this possibly mean? What is the ground of this dignity?

I appreciate you bringing some phenomenology into the thread. (As we’ve discussed before, and as some here might be interested to know, it appears to be basically this kind of phenomenological appreciation (perhaps, even, “respect”?) that is moving Habermas to reconsider religion as an important contributor to rational discussions in the public square.) I count myself as one of those who employ a theistic explanation to account for the dignity we attach to these “pre-theoretical judgments” (that is, I think there are facts about the created world—what Charles Taylor once called in a debate with William Connolly a “slant” to the way the world works—that our intuitions are often cognizant of). It seems to me that many philosophers, leary of going down Taylor’s route (and perhaps either unwilling or incapable of addressing them through neuroscience, as Collonlly in recent years has tried to do), attempt to elide this whole phenomonological aspect of human existence entirely, shunting it aside as some weird kind of existential question, as opposed to recognizing it as an issue which is central to the whole debate.

You don’t need to maintain that religious beliefs are false to be able to subscribe to Blackburn’s position. It’s enough to maintain that they’re irrational.

Z (#33),

I appreciate you kind words, but I’m fear I’m going to have to disappoint you.

Literal belief of religious statement of facts, I can’t respect too much (in fact, at all), lest I’d fall in a complete solipsism, as they very much clearly contradict each other and are more often than not ludicrous.

First, you’re of course correct that many different religions’ takes on the “facts” about the world are contradictory; it would be bizarre if this wasn’t the case, as those religions teach different things about what God’s or the gods’ relationship to the world is, what He/She/It/They have done and/or are doing, and what we should do to get right with He/She/It/Them. But I don’t see how that’s an invitation to solipsism; it’s an invitation, if you’re a believer, to choice. (I choose not to believe that Hare Krishna will save you; I do not think it is a correct religion. Note that I can still appreciate and learn from and be bettered by and therefore “respect” Hare Krishnas, using the term here in a somewhat broader way that Matt does above.)

Second, are they really all ludicrous? Equally? That all religions worth being called such are at least minimally ludicrous is a given; they involve the supernatural, those things beyond (but, as Harry says, not necessarily excluded by!) the “straightforward canons of rationality.” That’s why they say it involves faith. But I think it also involves some acknowledgement of those “pre-theoretical judgments” that Damon mentioned above, and some religions, I think (but again, of course, I’m biased in this regard) do fewer and less “ludicrous” things with those judgments than others, and that isn’t always irrelevant to choosing between them.

I mean, I am sure you don’t spend too much time carefully thinking about how long Ameratsu shut herself in a cave or whether it was Isaac or Ismaël that was supposed to be offered in sacrifice. I am sure you accept the symbolism of it all and concentrate on the moral teachings. Am I wrong?

Um, I’m afraid so. I actually treat a great many of the claims made by my own religious choice as involving metaphorical and/or symbolic matters, probably more so than some of my ecclesiastical supervisors might appreciate. But, well, when I talk to my kids about the Book of Mormon, or teach Sunday School about it, I’m treat a lot of it as more or less straightforward facts. God and Jesus appearing in a grove of trees, ancient records inscribed on metal plates, the whole nine yards (or at least seven of them). Sorry.

Russell- of course all of our beliefs are tied back to basic belief that we accept as “bedrock”, to use Wittgenstein’s term. We (mostly) just accept those- it’s necessary to do any reasoning at all. But, surely we don’t “respect” those beliefs in others, we would merely find them crazy or unintelligable if they didn’t have them. But also, surely religious belief isn’t like this- it’s open to evaluation in a way that “basic” beliefs are not. (I know some philosophers want to claim that belief in God is “basic” in a somewhat similar way but I find those arguments very week, and don’t think they show much about particular religious beliefs anyway.) Even for beliefs that we ourselves endorse, does it not seem funny to “respect” others for holding them or respect their being held if they are held for bad reasons? We can be pleased that someone is an egalitarian even if this is because they lived next to poor people, but it seems awfully funny to me to respect them for holding that belief. So I guess I’ll just insist that in order for it to make sense to respect someone for holding a belief, or to respect their beliefs, the beliefs must be be caused in the right way. Many, perhaps most, religious beliefs don’t seem to fit here to me, though this applies to many other sorts of belief, as I’ve said.

Next, of course there’s a sense in which the types of evaluative standards we can use depends on our cultural history- it would be funny to hold people who have not developed science to the scientific standards in deciding whether their beliefs warrented respect, we might think. But this doesn’t mean that our standards are not good ones or that it’s not reasonable to apply them. I don’t think Hume’s valid points here help the believer at all. (He’d find it funny to think so, surely, since he thought religious belief was both open to rational criticism and deserving of it.) So, I don’t think your final point applies- when someone holds a particular belief for good reasons, where these are determined by our best standards, that belief is worthy of respect, even if we disagree with it. Lots of beliefs are held for such reasons, and not just by philosophers. It’s anti-intellectualism to think otherwise.

“Of course, if I believe, as I do with some conservatives and libertarians, that their beliefs are really rationalization of self-interest, I do not respect them, or their holding of their beliefs, at all.”

Why are progressives so frequently worried about this possibility? My political beliefs are not really an instrumental good; I will never have any appreciable influence on the political process, so why should I jerry-rig my beliefs as if they were?

For my part, I have no problem assuming that progressive beliefs are always held in good faith.

I think you and Blackburn are arguing past one another in a sense, because he predicates his statement on the condition “But once we are convinced that a belief is false,” whereas you seem to constrain your own discussion only to those religious beliefs that are not demonstrably false, but merely require faith as justification. I suppose you are directly contending with his “or even just that it is irrational,” clause, but even there I find some trouble. You seem to imply that there are virtuous reasons to believe something that has no rational justification, but I’ve never seen one, nor do you explicitly state any examples.

So to the extent that I assess a religious belief to be false, I agree with Blackburn. This is true of things like disbelief in evolution, the belief that having sex with a virgin cures AIDS, or the belief that women are beholden or inferior to men. I can’t imagine a virtuous reason for holding an irrational belief, but I agree with you that to the extent that they exist, they are worthy of respect.

Finally, I wonder about your claim that a belief in gods “is not excluded by straightforward canons of rationality,”. Isn’t one of the canons of rationality that we shouldn’t believe that which is unsupported by any evidence? Could you respect someone who genuinely believed they had been abducted by aliens, or that they were made of clay brought to life by a magic spell? You can’t disprove these things readily, so is it enough for you that a person holds their beliefs sincerely and that they stand up to your cursory inspection?

Righteous Bubba (#43),

Why two positions?

Um…I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you taking from my comment that there is the way that I understand my own beliefs, and then there is a way I explain them to my children or in a Sunday School class? I didn’t mean to suggest that I take qualitatively different positions at those different times; I was just acknowledging that that sometimes I dwell upon what I believe in a moral/symbolic mode, and sometimes upon what I accept in a more literal vein. Different audiences, different contexts. Is that not what you were getting at? Because if not, I’m sorry, but you kind of lost me there.

Matt (#44),

I’ll just insist that in order for it to make sense to respect someone for holding a belief, or to respect their beliefs, the beliefs must be be caused in the right way.

I think I understand you, but it may be that we’re going to continue to talk past each other a little bit. It would seem to me that even under your terms, one could speak of a certain belief being “respectful” if it was achieved/accomplished in the face of opposition, hostility, an absence of support, etc. That is, I can admire—”respect,” maybe?—the religious faith of a Scientologist (who are, if I may make my honest prejudices known, a bunch of nutcases) who may have endured all sorts of discrimination and abuse will their faith intact. Causation—a question of sources—would have nothing to do with it. Or then again…maybe what I’m respecting there is some virtue of courage or conviction that their religious faith contributed to, but not the faith itself? You make me wonder. I’m going to have to think about this more, but I still suspect that your invocation of respect as a feeling properly tied only to beliefs that are achieved or caused “in the right way” leads us back to bedrock, to formal reasoning—to something that has been evaluated, without cultural influences, in a rational way. And I’m just not sure what kind of belief would really qualify under those criteria.

Blackburn’s point may be a strand in the motivation one sees among some atheists to do missionary work. I’ve always found that curious – the idea that not only is there no God, but I must convert people to the idea that there is no God.

If you think that belief in God is different than the belief that certain facts are true – if you take it that this belief is integrated into the way some people are – then I think the conversion impulse, at least on the part of someone who is an atheist or at least a non-believer in a personal god, is stifled. While there are derivative beliefs that a person might have from his or her God belief that I’d argue about and try to convert that person away from, I’d distinguish that from the central God belief. There is a core of truth in the notion that it isn’t good “manners” to talk about religion. That truth is that one has to be careful about trying to change a person’s fundamental beliefs.

This is what I like about old fashioned atheism – the non-missionary kind. It had a nice asymmetry to the conversion religions – well, massively in the U.S., Christianity. Christianity shows little respect at all for anyone’s fundamental beliefs outside of Christianity. Instead, the Good News was very much like News – intrusive, aiming to get inside people and colonize their thoughts. It succeeded, brilliantly. Non-missionary atheism, on the other hand, was never going to be socially successful.

The set of your beliefs is a product of your environment; you have about as much control over it as you do over the color of your eyes. You are what you are, it’s silly to respect or disrespect people for their eye-color or shoe size or their beliefs.

People’s beliefs are directly under their control, but people’s belief-forming processes certainly are.

I can choose to acquire beliefs about the origins of human life on this planet by studying science, or by uncritically accepting ancient mythologies.

If I knew someone who actually believed in the existence of God on the basis of evidence, that’s a belief I can respect. The diversity of life on earth was some evidence for the existence of a God, until Darwin and others came up with a better explanation. Of course, I think any such evidence was/is misleading. If I didn’t, I would abandon my atheism.

And I can respect philosophers who have believed in God based on subtle but fallacious philosophical arguments. (Not so much now that the fallacies have been explained, but historically.)

But belief in something that you’ve been raised to believe, just because one is too intellectually lazy or timid to consider the alternative? That’s not a belief I’m willing to respect.

No, Brock, you don’t acquire beliefs by studying, you acquire information. Studying may, indeed, change your beliefs, but it wouldn’t be intentional; you still have no control over it, it’s not a deliberate act.

You can study atheism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism and then you might (though unlikely) end up believing something you didn’t believe before, but, again, obviously it’s not because you’ve chosen to, it’s just something that happened to you.

No, a summary of the disagreement between Blackburn and Harry would be “Harry doesn’t believe religion is false in the same sense that Blackburn does. For Blackburn, the truth or falsity of religious claims is of the same character as the truth or falsity of any other claim. For Harry, religious truth values are softly bracketed.

Harry in no way disagrees with Blackburn’s rule, just its application in this context.”

…belief in God is different than the belief that certain facts are true…

This reminds me of an exchange from some Soviet novel (“village prose” kind) circa 1960s. It goes something like this:
A: there’s no God.
B: how do you know?
A: why, Gagarin flew in a spaceship, orbited the earth, didn’t see any gods out there.
B: ah, but have you ever seen Gagarin?

Simon Blackburn states he “deplores the features of humanity…”.

It seems irrational to deplore a fact. Values and emotions and morals and dignity and free will are all so obviously irrational that it hardly seems worth the time to try to separate the cases.

Righteous B.

I scanned the first 20 hits. I’ll turn up the rhetoric.

It seems irrational to deplore a fact. Values and emotions and morals and dignity and free will are all so obviously irrational that it doesn’t at all seem worth the time to try to separate the cases.

Blackburn gets so very close to taking himself ironically, but just can’t quite do it. His ability to deplore is so sincere, so convincing, so undeniable, that he must write against those deplorable humans with all their “cheating” land and respect grabbing existential poses.

He’s so deplorably beautiful! He’d approach the sublime if he could just add a little Tammy Wynette “Stand by your Humanity” to his grief at those cheating religious hearts.

Roger at #55 has already said much the same thing, but I’ll have a go as well. It seems to me that “respecting religious belief” here does not mean “admire” but “respect the right of people to hold whatever beliefs they do”. As the song has it “You go to your church, I’ll go to mine.”

This obviously entails legal toleration of “all beliefs and none” but goes beyond that to imply that vigorous attempts at conversion are a bad thing, particularly if they take the form of attacks on the current beliefs of the hoped-for convert.

Long experience suggests that this is a sensible view in relation to religion.

[...] An amazing post from Harry Brighouse over at Crooked Timber: I think that some Christians (the ones whose adherence to Christianity I respect) have genuine faith in God, which, though not rationally supportable, is not excluded by straightforward canons of rationality, and their faith is sincere and would survive testing and careful reflection. In that respect it is not unlike my belief in the basic decency of most human beings and our ability radically to improve the quality of social institutions. [...]

This entire discussion is about doctrine. I can’t even begin to count the number of arguments on this site that have originated in little more than subjectivity, assumption and blind faith, and most people here are trying only to replace one foundation with another. There have been village atheists for as long as there have been village priests, and the village atheist will say quite correctly that life is eating, fucking, shitting, and dying, and that the point is to enjoy what you can while you’re here. There is no purpose and no telos, and the scientists’ grand and endless search for facts, hyperbolically referred to as “truth,” is silly. Platonism is still the most common faith of so called secular science. And of course the people involved in it are more interested in the adventure, intellectual or otherwise than in he social aspect or actually helping people. Big science is largely self-justifying pyrotechnics. Water treatment plants and general medicine are not glamorous.
Everyone wants to believe that their metier will have some great moral purpose. By and large it won’t. Being an atheist isn’t trying to find something else to believe in, as grand and glorious as you old religion was supposed to be.
To want the grand and glorious is to miss the point.

Water treatment plants aren’t glorious? Speak for yourself, sport; I think they’re fascinating. (Sewage plants even more so—it’s amazing how little smell they have.)

The US alone has a population of 300 million people and waterborne diseases are virtually exterminated! When in this history of humanity have so many worried so little about something so important?

Crystal, I like the motto, dont be an asshole. But you need to turn it into Latin to make it more resplendent!

“I know too much to be a skeptic and too little to be a dogmatist”—Pierre Bayle (1847—1706)

Well actually bubba if you think of the computer in terms of telos, then you’re the one indulging in magical thinking.

I don’t. Please fire more electrons at me regardless of what those silly scientists with their facts say.

I’m not defending glamour, I’m describing why public health is not considered glamourous even by the majority of proudly rationalist pedants. And sanitation? In the US? Did you know that in NY until it was made into a scandal by of all things a feminist orthodox jewish performance artist the sanitation workers in NYC got their desks and lockers as hand-me-downs from the Police and fire department? The trashmen were given the trash! Literally. Fascinating stuff. One of her performances involved shaking the hand of every garbageman in NY, and they loved her for it. She showed them respect, and that doesn’t happen very often. After all they’re trash-men!

And blubba, unlike you and most others here (I’d bet) I’m a third generation atheist. And speaking of electrons my grandfather invented that little round thermostat you’ve lived with in your various homes throughout your life. He sold to to “old man Honeywell” back in Minneapolis, because marketing bored him, and he wasn’t greedy. But he also wasn’t poor. He had 20 patents and owned a small phone company. Look inside that thermostat and think phones circa 1953 and you’ll understand, unless you’re even more dull than I think you are. But maybe somebody give you a dictionary so you can look up “telos.” It’s the difference between technology and Fordism. Im sorry son, but the answer to the question “why are we going faster?” is not “because we’re going faster!” Next up I’ll be going into my “why sheetrock sucks and plaster doesn’t” routine. But since your name’s bubba you should know that already. But maybe since this is america all you know is sheetock… and McDonalds.
I’m sorry for you son, rilly I am. Maybe it’s because of those three generations: my family got over seeing atheism as the magic bullet long ago. True believers will always find something to worship, even if its only themselves.

In discussions of dogma the religiously inclined are among the only defenders of the definition of language as the creation of community and not of individuals. There are secularists who would make the same argument, but they usually avoid these sorts of debate. The secularists who fight with believers are knee-jerk individualists. I will respect the faithful more than those who debate them (at this level of abstraction) because regardless of their metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, their observations about the processes of culture, community and language production are empirically sound. The individualists’ arguments are based on faith.
“I’m free! I’m free!”
No, you’re not. You’re utterly predictable.

The utter absence of evidence for supernatural phenomena

What would you say to someone who had had a direct divine experience? There are a lot of them about. (Of course, what one would say as a materialist would be that this sort of subjective evidence doesn’t count because it can’t be objectively measured. But by this point it is pretty clear that the deck is stacked).

What would you say to someone who had had a direct divine experience?

I would tell him that though I don’t doubt he had this experience, in order for evidences to be acceptable to me, I should be able to replicate them, or at least that some referee we both trust should be able to replicate them, and that I am sure he has the same conduct towards evidence in 99% of cases. I would add, as I in fact did when talking to a good friend of mine who had a divine experience, that whatever she learned during this experience, she has a moral obligation to communicate in a way that is accessible to those who didn’t. And if that person was a good friend and a reasonable person, I would conclude by suggesting we both have a look at the descriptions of conscience-altering experiences induced by drugs, adrenaline, sleep or oxygen deprivation and other similar techniques, in order to see if his experience might somehow fit the description.

As someone who came to faith after spending a long time as an atheist—and an insufferable, rude one at that—I feel that having lacked a belief in God myself allows me to understand atheists better. I know that no amount of conversation will lead to conversion because one cannot choose to believe something they find false. So I don’t argue faith and I respect the traditions of others when they do not conflict meaningfully with my own. What is the cost of “put(ting) on a hat, or some such” to show respect not to a faith, but to the friend who believes in it?

And, when members of my own faith begin to act judgmentally, I remind them of one of the several passages of the Bible I have memorized for such an occasion. “Whoever speaks evil of a brother or judges his brother speaks evil of the law and judges the law. If you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save or to destroy. Who then are you to judge your neighbor?” (James 4:11-12)

“I’m free! I’m free!”
No, you’re not. You’re utterly predictable.

So tell me—what am I going to eat for lunch?

Also, I probably agree that ´militant atheism´, like other forms of militancy, could be a worrying development. But I must have missed the news reports of Richard Dawkins smashing shop windows, Colin McGinn throwing stones at police, etc, etc…

abb you’re like swiss clockwork. And how many others have said that by now?
Engels, you’re not far behind. The history of militant atheism covers the last century and much of its violence. Stalin was an atheist and so am I. I think our differences outweigh our similarities, but you may disagree.

After being sent to church twice a week until college, I have met one person (Ron) who claims to have had a divine experience. God appeared to Ron one night, and temporarily gave him an IQ of 10,000 so that he could follow a debate which God then had with the Devil, proving that every word of the Bible is true.

I have very gently expressed the opinion that the brain is a physical organ, and like other organs, is unfortunately subject to maladies which disturb its functions. Ron will not consider this as a possible explanation, although it turns out he has been diagnosed as bi-polar.

See “Littleton’s Law of Miracles” for an explanation of the other sort of evidence that is commonly claimed for divine experiences.

I like Ron a lot, despite the aching knee joints I get from long discussions with him when we encounter each other on street corners, but I don’t respect his beliefs, nor those of any of the other religious people I know (most of whom are better people than I am). I remain open to the possibility that there may be respectable beliefs among the many religious people whom I do not know, or for that matter that there may turn out to be a god or gods after all. If there are, however, I must assume they have some good reason for leaving their existence ambiguous as it should be easy for them to prove their existence if they wanted to (simultaneous press conferences in every city in the world, for example).

I don’t. Please fire more electrons at me regardless of what those silly scientists with their facts say.

Indeed. And the electrons travel regardless of whether Mr. edenbaum believes that their existence qualifies as “truth” or not. Which some of us consider a significant factor in judging the truthiness of scientific facts.

[...] Lots of bloggers have been commenting on this paper by Simon Blackburn, called “Religion and Respect”. Everyone seems to be commenting on one paragraph in particular: We can respect, in the minimal sense of tolerating, those who hold false beliefs. We can pass by on the other side. We need not be concerned to change them, and in a liberal society we do not seek to suppress them or silence them. But once we are convinced that a belief is false, or even just that it is irrational, we cannot respect in any thicker sense those who hold it—not on account of their holding it. We may respect them for all sorts of other qualities, but not that one. We would prefer them to change their minds. [...]

…because they know The Truth, you see, and they know what’s good for you.