Over on my personal blog, Metamagician and the Hellfire Club, I’ve made a statement that’s been forming in my mind for a long time now. Readers can draw their own conclusions about the timing, though part of it is simply that Metamagician and the Hellfire Club is winding down to an extent, as I find myself doing most of my “serious” blogging here at Talking Philosophy. I was reaching the end of another month, and another months’ statistics, and this seemed like a good time to say something about the history and character of the blog. Another reason is that I was asked yesterday to take part in a survey on closely related issues.
Do have a look if you’re interested. I explain why I never considered Metamagician and the Hellfire Club to be an “atheist blog”, and never decorated it with any appropriate images for that purpose.
As I explain, that is not, at least in my mind, inconsistent with a degree of atheist activism that I’ve been invoved in (with more to come…). But the blog always had more dimensions to it than that, and actual atheists tend to have more to them than atheism. At least, I hope so!
I wonder about this statement on your blog:
“Given that religious leaders and organisations do not just put arguments based on widely-accepted premises, but rely on their appearance of moral authority, which supposedly has some transcendent backing, I think it’s appropriate, and necessary, to ask whether this appearance is an illusion.”
Lots of people and their followers try to influence by moral pronouncements. Ayn Rand. Karl Marx. Oprah Winfrey. Sam Harris. Peter Singer.
In my view, Oprah has no claim to moral authority other than her gut, Rand was deranged, Marx is interesting but I’m a doubter, Harris is a buffoon, and Singer is a bright man who makes me uncomfortable. Some people will be persuaded by each of them; I’m not at peace with any of them. In the end, the fact that each of them has an ethical theory or viewpoint matters little; what ends up happening is that the theory that prevails most appeals to cultural prejudices.
Compare these authorities to the Pope, for example. The Catholic Church makes extensive logical arguments, has big books arguing for its ethical views, mostly based on ideas of natural law that have been discredited for 150 years. And these arguments lead the Pope to endorse universal health care, declare collective bargaining to be a fundamental economic right, decry the excesses of capitalism, and call for the forgiveness of third world debt. Where the Catholic Church mainly lags is in dealing with the sexual revolution – birth control and gay marriage (the APA considered homosexuality a disorder in the early 70s, not so long ago). But they have largely lost the argument on these topics with the flock, if you believe polling that says 90 percent of Catholics have used birth control and a majority support gay marriage. These are, by any historical measure, extremely rapid social developments, and churches are conservative institutions, but they do change.
So authority only carries to Pope so far. And, my personal observation, which I consider blindingly obvious is: people listen to God when God tells them what they want to hear. So the pope’s authority ultimately comes from the same cultural prejudice as everyone else’s. The culture moves as it may, ethical and religious theories notwithstanding. Churches may be a drag on progress sometimes, but I’m not convinced that, overall, that’s always bad thing.
I hope not to stay too far from topic. I’m not talking about the Taliban or the Inquisition, or the influence that religion plays in cultures that are not moderately functioning, classically liberal democracies. I’m wondering why it’s so bad for someone to claim a supernatural ethical authority, when there is no agreed non-supernatural ethical authority, and these issues are decided on cultural prejudices, rather than logic anyway.
No straying from the topic at all, thought there are a lot of points there. Of course if you think the influence of the church is mainly beneficial, which I don’t, you may not care that it exides this appearance (for many people) of speaking with authority. In that case, even though you know the appearance of authority is an illusion you’ll see no urgency in dispelling the illusion. You may even be Machiavellian enough to want ordinary people who are not philosophers (for example) to remain under the illusion. Plenty of thinkers have taken the stance that religion, though false, is useful in that way.
Since I view the political and social influence of religion as mainly negstive, I see things differently. I want to dispel the illusion. And of course, to the extent that these religious figures are relying on arguments that involve otherworldly claims or other philosophically unlikely claims such as those that underpin natural law theory, I’m going to want to challenge those claims.
I agree that many other individuals or organisations make a pretence to authority that they lack. I think this should also be explosed (though there’s only so much any of us can do, there needs to be a division of labour, someone needs to do the hard work of trying to develop moral positions that are more intellectual rigorous, etc.).
I doubt, alas, that this deals with all of your points.
You didn’t cover everything, but you did mention a major point. Personally, I find any statement that “religion is x” – negative, positive, beneficial, a scam, the opiate of the masses – to be ridiculous. You just can’t compare Pure Land Buddhism, Catholicism, Jainism, and Hinduism in any sensible way. You can narrow the focus, and try to talk about monotheism, or institutional religion in the west, the subject is still too broad, and a general understanding of history (history being mainly a list of catastrophes) produces a negative bias.
Which is why I mentioned the Pope: to keep it specific. If the Pope decided tomorrow, infallibly, that the church would no more intrude in sexual matters, would you see a social benefit to disabusing Catholics of their faith? Is there a social value to converting Unitarians to atheism? If there is no social harm, and their ethics are no worse than anyone else’s, what is the specific negativity churches are spreading in an open society?
My view is that atheists are not winning the argument against religion; rather conservative churches are badly losing the political battle over sexual freedom and women’s rights. Most churches will adapt and survive, or new churches will replace them. They always do, or churches would have died shortly after the French Revolution.