| Monday, April 15, 2002 |
22:47 - More about Selfishness and Religion
http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/04/Beliefanddogma.shtml
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As has happened an eerie number of times lately, Steven den Beste and I have independently arrived at very similar topics to write about. In this case, it's about the role of selfishness in religion.
He has a correspondent who writes:
Anyway, when I did teach morality - and even in the other subjects, since morality came up all the time - I always got very tired of the constant student refrain, "Why should we (fill in the blank)? Why be honest? Why wait until marriage? Why be pro-life? Why care about the poor?
And then one day, I shot back another question in response to theirs:
Why not?
As den Beste immediately points, out, this is a shift of the burden of proof-- and I would like to note that such a shift is epidemic to religious thought. You will always run across such reasoning in creationism-vs-evolution debates, for example. And the reason is that shifting the burden of proof onto the nonbeliever is the biggest logical weapon that believers have in these kinds of debates. "You have to prove that God doesn't exist," they say. And because it is scientifically impossible to do this, the Babel Fish argument notwithstanding, they will claim victory.
The crux is that religions tend to have axioms of ineffability. These axioms are what render any scientific reasoning useless. "You can't use things like dinosaur bones or radiocarbon dating or cosmology to say anything definitive about the nature of the universe, because God could have made everything look however He wanted to." It's impossible to argue against this. We can't know anything for certain about anything beyond "I think, therefore I am"; based on that foundation, any postulate that requires absolute certainty is by its nature one-sided. Science is based on theories that continually change; religious dogma, as den Beste points out, is based on stated truths that even science cannot assail on its own terms. The two sides use different rules.
I'm agnostic; by definition, that's pretty much the only thing a scientist can be, as I learned through long, sleepless discussions in darkened libraries with friends in college. In science, we can't be sure of anything, let alone the existence or nonexistence of an omnipotent force in the Universe that can choose to obscure itself at will (or indeed to manipulate the perceptions of the humans who try to contemplate His nature). Science is about proceeding based upon the facts we have been able to prove; nothing is assumed to be true unless we can prove it. This is the opposite approach from the dogmatic one, or even from the atheistic one: both dogmatists and atheists know the truth about God. Scientists know that knowing about the patently unknowable is impossible, and so agnosticism is the best anyone can do.
Anyway... after discussing these kinds of issues for a while, den Beste turns to the idea of selfishness. His tack on it is not the same as mine from yesterday (that religious belief tends to be based fundamentally on selfishness), but I believe it's related: he says, using the correspondent's letter as a prime example, that selfishness is taken to be an axiomatic evil in Christianty. If anything you do is selfish in nature, you are acting counter to the will of God and you must change your lifestyle.
And ever since, it's become my handiest moral decision-making tool, for myself and to share. Try it. Think of your most pressing current moral dilemma or even spiritual growth issues and apply that question. And see if the only answers you come up with don't make you feel like the biggest snake in the grass ever, and move you a couple of feet closer to doing the right thing.
Why not give more to the poor?
Why not tell the truth?
Why not address your children with a little more patience?
Why not apologize?
Why not go to Mass this morning?
Why not pray tonight?
Honestly - aren't the answers coming into your head along the lines of, Because I want more stuff. Because I'll be embarrassed. Because I don't want to make the effort. Because it will wound my pride. Because I don't feel like it. Because I'd rather watch television. Because I'm afraid of what I'll lose.
Sheesh. Can I feel any more selfish? Can I be any more convinced of my need for God's grace to overcome these stupid reasons not to act out of love?
Funny-- these aren't the reasons I think of when I ask myself "Why not" do these things. My responses are about social responsibility, discretion, social grace, being right, and knowing from my own scientific experience that praying and going to Mass aren't going to make my life (or anyone else's around me) better-- not when I can be doing things for other people based on my own motivations, rather than based on the assumption that if I can't come up with a good reason not to do something, I must do it. There are some things that don't need to be rationalized. Why not go attend the pro-Israel rally in San Francisco today? Because while it's a nice idea, my time is better spent elsewhere, and will provide more of a benefit in the long run. This isn't selfishness, even if we accept that selfishness isn't inherently evil. It's just practicality.
But that's still avoiding the issue that I wanted to return to before closing. Selfishness, I believe, is seen as such a hideous crime in religious eyes specifically because so many people's religious thoughts are founded on their own selfish desires to get to Heaven. They may know subconsciously that that's exactly what it's all about-- and oh, the guilt they feel. Hence their need to decry it all the more in other people, when it's manifested in secular guises. It's the same reason why we saw the 9/11 hijackers in strip bars, using cell phones and wearing expensive sneakers-- the symbolic rejection of such temptation is the whole basis of their spiritual cleansing. When Muslims, Mormons, and the Amish take field trips in their youth to Las Vegas, there to revel in the hedonism of it all and then virtuously reject it-- they're illustrating exactly this phenomenon. Denial of a human instinct on one front so they can have it in a more "pure" form elsewhere.
Don't be selfish in secular matters, say the Christians, and you can safely be selfish about going to Heaven.
Be chaste and ascetic and embrace death, say the Muslims, and you get endless sex and debauchery in Paradise.
It's a double standard, yes. And that's part of what I find so repugnant about organized religion: it's designed very carefully to manipulate these basic human urges-- calling people to deny them so they can be rewarded later by indulgence of those same urges.
I prefer not to be manipulated, thanks. I like to think I can decide what's right and wrong on my own, and act according to the rewards I expect to get directly from those actions. And that, right there, is what makes me a secularist.
...Anyway, on another note. I was sort of hoping nobody would catch me omitting the bit about how there are female teenagers blowing themselves up in the West Bank as well as young men; so what's their motivation? Surely it isn't those 72 membraneous virgins, is it? Nah, I kinda doubt it. But rather than completely puncturing my argument, I think it's more likely just an example of there being a spectrum of motivation for the suicide bombers. Some honestly believe in the 72 virgins and all that. Some don't really believe it, but they're idealistic and desperate enough to blow themselves up anyway. And some are simply miserable and want a way out, one for which they will be remembered.
Which is still serving one's self-interest, come to think of it.
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