respecting beliefs | why we should do no such thing [cc]

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It's a sentiment that crops up with some regularity in religious discourse. Sometimes it's expressed obliquely as a suggestion that we should all respect each other's beliefs. Other times it's delivered is a demand: 'I respect your beliefs so you should respect mine!' But in all cases, my reply is the one every groom and bride dreads: 'I don't.' With the betrothed, those words understandably arouse feelings of disorientation, alienation, even betrayal. But similar feelings are often evident in the reaction of those theists whose beliefs I decline to respect. It might be implied I've broken some unspoken social contract that demands my reciprocation. It might be insinuated that I'm being gratuitously mean. It's even been put to me that it's my kind of attitude that causes wars. But is any of that true? I want to unpack some of the tangled-up dynamics going on here. I'll be exploring four kinds of emotional blackmail designed to elicit undeserved respect from others, and looking at why declarations of respect from theists might be problematic for them. I'll then be setting out why I don't respect beliefs, explaining why religious beliefs — far from deserving privileged immunity — are among the most deserving of scrutiny and criticism, and addressing a last-ditch defence often offered that, even if it's false, religion should be left alone because it performs a positive social function. One of the things the atheist satirist and critic H. L. Mencken got wrong was his assertion that we must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. We don't need to respect the other fellow's religion at all. Mencken muddies the waters by blurring together items from very distinct categories. The theory that your wife is beautiful is an aesthetic judgment. Even if you phrase that judgment so it sounds like a truth claim — ie 'She's beautiful.' — you and I both know — don't we? — that this is just shorthand for 'She's beautiful to me.' I have no reason to respond to this statement. I'm not implicated by in any way. That only comes if you go a step further and say, 'She's beautiful isn't she?' — in which case, prepare yourself for an honest answer. Religion, on the other hand, is in the business of asserting facts about existence. That does implicate me — irretrievably — and it requires my response. If your reasons for asserting these facts stand up to scrutiny, I have some rethinking to do. If they're based on unsubstantiated phenomena and fallacious arguments, I don't. Oddly, mirroring the way aesthetic judgments get phrased like truth claims, religious truth claims frequently get phrased like aesthetic judgments. We often hear it said of some god, 'He's real to me.' In many cases this is simply to forestall any possible challenge, translating to: 'He's real to me, no matter what you say!' But in other cases, this strangely personalised reality claim offers an implicit bargain: 'If you let me make my truth claims unchallenged, I'll let you make yours.' It attempts to establish sympathetic interests between both parties. It says, 'Hey, we can both come out winners here if we agree to look the other way while we both do something very bad — epistemologically.' Other folks take a more psychologically hard-line approach invoking a mutual obligation. Here the message is: 'Look, I'm willing to let you make your truth claims unchallenged, so you should let me make mine!' But reality can't be bargained with in this way. The earth isn't a flat disk for you and a globe for me just because we make some wishful pact. If you're claiming that any gods exist then you're making a truth claim about a reality of which I'm a part — and it's your burden to substantiate it. Some folks have no such squeamishness about proclaiming the universal truth of their religion, and adopt an openly threatening, violent approach to inspire fear among critics — especially satirical critics. The need to be able to subject beliefs to ridicule is not a trivial one. It's a very important one, and becomes more obvious the greater the power and influence involved. When a person or group assumes a position of power, their reaction to ridicule can tell us a lot about their robustness and their humanity. We might expect to see a range of responses from amusement to anger. But when the responses tip over into violence and persecution, that's where we see the warning signs of dictatorships — autocracies headed by brittle narcissists, prone to self-mythologising. Ridicule is especially threatening to these folks. Not only does a prick their inflated self-image, it also reduces their capacity to inspire adulation and fear among the masses. No authority is beyond ridicule. No politician. No priest. No prophet. No parent. Because that's what theism comes down to in the end, isn't it. Our simultaneous longing for and fear of the magical, mystical, unquestionable parent. When we were infants, our parents or guardians were our protectors and our punishers and this inspired two irreconcilable responses in us: love and fear. In healthy relationships, where parents' actions were grounded in love, we begin to appreciate their punishments in that context. We see why our parents snatched our hand away from the fire; why they berated us for walking away with that nice grown-up in the park. Consequently, the fear response is resolved and recedes. But in unhealthy relationships, where parents' actions are grounded in power, leading to erratic, overblown and blatantly unjust punishments, the fear can endure — sometimes at the expense of love — and we remain infantilised, afraid to challenge a corrupt authority. Which end of the spectrum would you put a parent who threatens to burn its children for declining to worship it? Of all the authorities we need to be prepared to question, to resist, to ridicule, the most urgent cases are the ones that threaten violence when questioned, resisted, or ridiculed. The fourth manipulative strategy attempts to silence challenge by appealing to guilt. Here, the message is: 'My beliefs give me comfort — can't you just leave them alone?' There are times in life when circumstances run us into the ground. Numbly waiting for a phone call about a child who's been missing for days. Or dreading lonely evenings after a divorce. Or sitting at a loved one's hospital bedside watching them slip away from us. In these situations, we might find comfort in many things. A hug. A chat with a friend. A piece of music. A drive to the coast. The opportunity to escape for a day, an hour, even a handful of minutes — to lay our burden down and let in some comfort — can be invaluable in refilling our depleted reserves, and keeping us going. And many of us would do whatever we could to facilitate that comfort for others. But what if a loved one risked his health by diving into relentless unprotected sex with strangers to drown out the pain of divorce? What if a loved one started handing over her savings to a con artist to commune with a dead relative? Would we be so quick to facilitate these comforts? What about the knock-on effect on others? If parents take comfort in fantasies of an afterlife to avoid dealing with death, what will their children be taught? Will they get the chance to face death honestly? or will they now be forced to collude with their parents' denial? Without afterlife fantasies, would parents be so quick to deny their children life-saving medical treatment on religious grounds? What about suicide attackers who anticipate a glorious martyr's reward for their deeds? Afterlife fantasies are not harmless or neutral. They're multivalent: susceptible to a wide variety of applications. The desire for comfort can lead to destructive and deadly behaviors as well as states of perpetual denial which are frequently imposed on others. Which is why I don't view comfort as something to be automatically cherished or facilitated. And why it's often more humanitarian to challenge comfort than to enable it. Feelings of fear, obligation, guilt and sympathy can help us in some scenarios. Fear can help us escape dangerous situations. Obligation can help strengthen legitimate social contracts. But when folks try to play on these feelings to get us to comply with unreasonable self-serving demands, that's emotional blackmail — and we need to be clear that that's not acceptable behaviour. It's worth noting that when people tell me they respect my beliefs, a little probing often reveals problems with that statement. With christians, I have to put it to them that this professed respect directly conflicts with their Bible. First, let's consider the earthly life. In the Bible's blood-soaked old testament, Deuteronomy chapter 13 sets out the christian god Yahweh's punishment for worshiping other gods: the sword and the stone. Though less saturated with sadism, the Bible's new testament, which introduces the christians' messiah, Jesus Christ, maintains its distaste for non-christians. In 2 John chapter 1, verses 9 to 11, christians are clearly instructed not to receive non-christians into their houses. Even by greeting them, christians are apparently taking part in their 'wicked work'. When we look beyond death to the christian afterlife, the gloves come off completely. If you don't believe in the messiah, you're condemned to eternal fiery punishment. I put it to the christians who say they respect the beliefs of non-christians that you cannot reconcile your professed respect with these kinds of Biblical passages. Beliefs for which your God prescribes execution, social rejection and, ultimately, eternal torture cannot be respectable. With muslims, similar problems arise. To them, I would be considered 'culpably ignorant' and, therefore, destined for perpetual hell-fire. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not asking you to respect my beliefs — in a moment, I'll be explaining why beliefs don't require respect — but I encourage you to have a serious think about these passages. Because when your religion tells you that non-members deserve execution, social rejection and eternal torture, we're not just talking about disrespecting beliefs. We're talking about dehumanising people. Later on, I'll be looking at the evasions some folks offer when this begins to hit home. Every belief that gets introduced into the public space needs to be open to criticism. If we take its validity as untouchable, then we'll be forced to reject valid information the conflicts with it. The need to be able to criticise beliefs becomes more obvious as the reach of those beliefs increases. The belief that Henry VIII occasionally liked to dress up in his wife's clothes isn't going to have a huge impact on our lives. But the belief that our government is always right would have a huge effect on how we assess all kinds of information. Another reason already touched on is that beliefs shape behaviour. Group C believes cancer always results from a guilty conscience, and can only be healed by confession and sincere repentance. Group D believes cancer is a cluster of diseases, prompted by a range of genetic and environmental triggers. It's clear to see these beliefs will result in very distinct patterns of behaviour. For group C, cancer is a very straightforward matter. Patients will be judged as bringing it on themselves and will be urged to confess and repent. Those who die will be judged insincere. Knowledge about cancer will not increase, nor will survival rates. For group D, cancer is a complex phenomenon. Patients will be studied to identify genetic and environmental triggers and, in response to the patterns that emerge, corresponding treatment plans and preventative measures will be developed. As studies open up new avenues of investigation, knowledge about cancer will increase as will survival rates. 'Ah,' you might say, 'But even though group C's belief is false, it could actually have great benefits for society.' 'If group C believes guilty consciences cause cancer, surely,' you might say, 'we'd expect to see much more moral behavior from its members.' 'After all, for them, a clear conscience would mean a cancer-free life.' 'Isn't that a powerful motivation to treat each other well? Group D, on the other hand, who doesn't see cancer is a moral issue, has no such incentive.' Both groups, you might say, offer their own advantages — with group D offering improved survival rates, but group C offering substantially enhanced relationships across society. But what if we were to discover that, far from leading to some moral utopia, group C's belief actively encouraged some of the most extreme immorality we'd ever come across. Let's look at a couple of strategies that comfortably combine repeated immorality with a clear conscience. Strategy one simply acknowledges the power of confession and repentance. According to group C's belief, it doesn't matter what we do. Even if we invite cancer by knowingly committing immoral acts, we'll be healed the moment we confess and repent. Now, there is a small problem here in that, if we keep repeating the same transgressions, the sincerity of our repentance must be called into question. To make the strategy more viable, we need to make it more difficult to be moral. One way of doing this is by viewing ourselves as substantially more flawed than we really are — picturing ourelves as wretched, weak, selfish creatures, powerless to resist all kinds of temptation. By doing this, we can set up the idea of a noble struggle, in which we're constantly battling to stay moral, despite overwhelming odds. This version of the strategy allows us a lot more latitude. Here, we can plausibly repeat the same transgressions indefinitely, while continuing to express contrition. Strategy two does away with confession and repentance altogether. In this strategy, we simply reframe immoral behavior as moral. This can easily be achieved with a phrase familiar to us all: 'It's for your own good.' With these five simple words, vice becomes virtue. Bullying becomes discipline. Rape becomes therapy. Intolerance becomes charity. Hate becomes love. We can now abuse people without the slightest small twinge. Any of this sounding familiar? Group C's belief about cancer doesn't guarantee a better society. In fact it guarantees a lot of destructive behaviour. After all, those who commit immoral acts and stay cancer-free have proof of their righteousness. It will also lead to a lot of unnecessary soul-searching by folks who get cancer despite behaving morally. They'll be forced to identify non-existent transgressions and, of course, being human, they'll find them. Or have them found by others. Cancer doesn't give us moral understanding. And neither do holy scriptures that approve so much blatantly immoral behavior that it's possible to justify acts across the entire moral-immoral spectrum, to the extreme of genocide. A moral compass with two norths is no compass at all. Moral systems need to be open systems because our moral awareness advances with the discovery of new information. For example, the morality of vivisection, performed by anatomists such as Galen and Versalius, and justified by philosophers such as Descartes, was called into question when animals, previously viewed as insensible machines, were instead seen to be capable of experiencing pain. Scriptures like the Bible and Qur'an are not open systems. They don't allow for new insights which change the moral landscape. Instead, they present fixed moral pronouncements, based on moral conjecture from centuries ago, preserving all the moral ignorance of those times. To increase the frequency of moral behaviour throughout the world requires that we think; that we question and reason and discuss; that we gather good information about the needs, the benefits and the harms involved in a given situation; and that we're willing to review our assessments as new, relevant information emerges. Most important of all, it requires that we reject ideologies which obstruct all of these processes by attempting to anchor us in an ignorant past we've long outgrown, and by demanding privileged immunity from criticism. Some theists express confusion about why atheists have a problem with the idea of hell when we don't even believe it exists. To those theists, I ask a simple question: 'Do I deserve eternal torture?' Those who answer 'Yes' make my point for me. Their belief has dehumanised me to the point that they can tell me — without shame — that they support a system that consigns me to unending suffering. Not for committing some genocidal atrocity. Not for harming a single person. But for the crime but not believing in something for which I had no evidence. Those who evade my question also illustrate my point. The first of two common evasions is: 'It's not up to me.' This is disingenuous redundancy. Folks who respond this way know full well that's not the question I'm asking. But I'll walk them through the long version anyway: 'I'm a non-believer.' 'According to your god, non-believers deserve eternal torture.' 'Do you agree with your god that I deserve eternal torture?' More often than not, I'll get exactly the same politician's response. These folks are stuck between defending the indefensible — hell — and questioning the unquestionable — their god. And it's not always realistic to expect a swift resolution to that kind of internal conflict. But for me, it's a promising sign that there is at least some internal conflict. It shows me there's some appropriate discomfort about this vile concept. It also means they haven't yet rationalised the problem of hell. They haven't invested in a fallacious justification. This leaves room to hope that their internal conflict will inspire further private reflection. The other common evasion is: 'You send yourself to hell.' This is a very different kind of evasion. Here, the problem the hell has been rationalised, removing responsibility from the god in question and placing it on the non-believer. This is known as blaming the victim and it's a well-known distancing manoeuvre employed by abusers and their conspirers. After they've beaten their spouses, instigators of domestic violence deny responsibility for their actions by complaining: 'Look what you made me do!' In the novel 'Sophie's Choice' The eponymous character, a Holocaust survivor, is forced by a sadistic doctor at Auschwitz to decide the fate of her two children. One will be gassed. The other will be allowed to live. When she fails to choose, she's told they'll both be gassed. In a moment of panic, Sophie chooses and is tormented by guilt for the rest for her days. But she's utterly blameless. The doctor was entirely responsible, forcing her into a grotesque position. Non-believers don't send themselves to eternal torture. That's the rationalisation of the sadist. All of these responses show why atheists have a problem with hell even though we don't believe it exists. It's because it dehumanises us. One of the first things done to groups who are targeted for discrimination is that their human status is stripped of them. They might be described explicitly as subhuman, or as animals or insects. Rats. Monkeys. Cockroaches. If you view people as cockroaches, how are you likely to treat them? What about when you downgrade people to kindling? The day Christopher Hitchens died, I remember being sent a link to a freshly uploaded video gleefully depicting him burning in hell — an image relished by many and reflected in a range a very public expressions, from the blogs of christian zealots to the joyful chants of muslims protesting outside the 2012 atheist convention in Melbourne — alternating his name with 'Ayaan Hirsi Ali'. This ghoulish disposition was embraced as a lifestyle by the Westboro Baptist Church who plumbed new depths of tastelessness by picketing the funerals of various groups they considered hellbound, and any perceived sympathisers. In 2015, they were reportedly thwarted in their attempt to obstruct actor Leonard Nimoy's funeral when they couldn't find its location. The church's leader Fred Phelps openly revelled in the hate his actions provoked, interpreting it as evidence of his righteousness, on the basis that the Biblical prophets were also hated. When you reduce people to hell-fodder, it's remarkable how low you can go. Which is why it's especially important to attack beliefs that dehumanise. My impression is that most theists have a great discomfort about the whole 'sending non-believers to hell' concept. Many Christians I've spoken to flat-out deny the existence of hell, asserting that their god simply wouldn't allow such an abomination. Others have cheerfully consoled me with their view that non-believers just die. That's it. No eternal punishment. I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I do have to ask: where are they getting this information? Certainly not from Matthew chapter 25 which refers explicitly to eternal punishment. Sometimes I'm genuinely touched by the obvious positive intentions of theists who distort their ideology in all kinds of ways in order to reach out their hands in brotherhood and sisterhood. Some christians go as far as declaring that a belief in their god is non-essential — all that matters is how we treat each other. But we have to acknowledge that this is exactly the kind of thinking that got us into this hellish mess in the first place: making up whatever we want to believe. It's sometimes asserted that religions like christianity have withstood the test of time. They haven't. They've cheated the test of time, employing various dishonest tactics such as the indoctrination of children who've not yet developed their critical faculties. But a dishonest tactic that spans both young and old, members and non-members, is the consistent attempt to marginalise and silence critics. We need to be able to subject all beliefs to criticism and, as I've shown, that need only becomes more obvious the greater the knock-on impact a belief has on other ideas; the greater the power and influence involved; the more fervently criticism is discouraged — particularly by violent means; and the more a belief has a dehumanising effect, facilitating remorseless abuse. Doesn't get much plainer. We're talking about the major world religions. The resentments harboured against me and others like me, who decline to respect religious beliefs, are unfounded. I've broken no contract. I give no special regard to your beliefs, but I ask no special regard for mine. Beliefs stand or fall on their own merits. I'm not being mean — criticising unjustified beliefs is important because they can lead to real problems. If some folks make the mistake of investing their core identity in an unjustified belief so that when it gets criticised, they feel criticised, then it's up to them to learn from that mistake — not up to everyone else to pay for it. And it's not my attitude the causes wars. Wars are caused by beliefs like supremacism — the idea that one group is intrinsically superior to all others. Supremacism can be based on many things. Gender. The colour of skin. The scriptures of major world religions like christianity and islam are about as supremacist as it's possible to be, damning all non-members to eternal torture. No earthly supremacist could hope to achieve sadism on such a scale. For centuries, religious supremacism has inspired a range of conflict from everyday acts of social discrimination to colonialism to genocide. Beliefs like these are what cause wars. And I hope it's now clear why I decline to respect them.
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Channel: TheraminTrees
Views: 398,100
Rating: 4.7116017 out of 5
Keywords: atheism, religion, beliefs, religious beliefs, christian, christianity, muslim, islam, ridicule, criticism, emotional blackmail, hell, respect, dictatorship
Id: r_5yUXjXizQ
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 22min 15sec (1335 seconds)
Published: Thu May 07 2015
Reddit Comments

Thanks, I just wish Theramine Trees can also capture his excellent videos in a written format that I can take and read in a peaceful seclusion of a beach watching a beautiful sunset.

...

But, but, Islam is a Religion of Peace!!! ... - apologists

Except, it demands that I, a non-believer, and others, adulterers, homosexuals, blasphemers, and witches be punished by the submitters with their almighty relishing while seeing its edicts being carried out.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/sherwin_v 📅︎︎ May 07 2015 🗫︎ replies

One of his best videos yet!

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/ianyboo 📅︎︎ May 08 2015 🗫︎ replies

I question that 'respecting beliefs' comes from those who are not absolutist or egocentric.

As a Christian, I am called to love both neighbor and enemy and must deal kindly, lovingly, and not 'seeking my own way.' I Corinthians 13

I practice this to mean that, I respect muslims, jews, hindus, radical feminists, radical MRA's, nationalists, anarchists, communists, capitalists, etc even if I have a differing view.

it's hard to love those who share contrary thoughts, especially when to us they seem ignorant, hateful, and, sometimes, downright evil. however, that is the challenge Jesus of Nazereth presented. Love thy neighbor. Love thy Enemy.

sincere respect and love, your friend

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/anglosaxoncelt 📅︎︎ May 09 2015 🗫︎ replies
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