Should Religious Beliefs Be Immune From Criticism?

[Makalakumu]

In our PC society, we often find that certain religious people, be they muslim, buddhist, hindu, jewish or christian, hide behind the fact that their views on reality are religious and thus they are immune from criticism.

For example, if you are a 6 day, 6000 year Fundamentalist Christian creationist and you find that your beliefs are assailed by the scientific community, one can seek refuge in the fact that you are being "persecuted" for your beliefs.

Or

If someone presents an argument regarding the historicity of an actual physical Jesus, this argument can be summarily ignored because it is perceived as an attack on religious belief.

With that in mind, should we, as a society, insulate all religious beliefs from rational criticism? If so, why? If not, why not?

 

[Makalakumu]

The same question can be applied to any faith.

Should women have to be forced to wear burkhas?

Is dying in the service of Allah the highest form of good?

 

[Kacey]

The primary difficulty involved in religious debate - critical or otherwise - is that many of the tenets of most, if not all religions, are based on faith, unprovable through any application of the scientific method.

This tends to make for circular arguments - for example: "I believe X because my primary religious text tells me to do so; I know this because it was written by [supreme deity]; I know that this is so because it says so in my primary religious text". This is often exacerbated because, while most people know the primary tenets and beliefs of their faith, few are truly knowledgeable about the details of their own religion.

The above circular logic often leaves many people unwilling to engage in debate on their religious beliefs because such debates devolve into the above circular logic - it is much easier to claim persecution and refuse to debate the issue at all than to take the time to acquire the necessary knowledge, and also because arguments based on faith quickly reach the "because I said so" level of logic, which is both unrefutable and frustrating.

Added to this is the frequency of persecution based on religious belief (or lack thereof), the source of the laws and PC viewpoints leading to the attitude you describe.

To return to your question, should we, as a society, insulate all religious beliefs from rational criticism? If so, why? If not, why not? I don't believe we, as a society, should insulate all religious beliefs from rational criticism - however, this is complicated by the fact that, in polite society, we as individuals should not deride the beliefs of others, religious or otherwise, solely because one holds a different opinion. Discussing differences and rationales requires walking a very fine line that varies in location from religion to religion, and from person to person - often from day to day even for a particular person - and it is, in many cases, easier (if not better) to avoid discussing such issues at all than to risk being caught up in the almost inevitably emotionally charged debate that ensues.

 

[Darksoul]

-Not sure if there is a way to insulate religious beliefs from criticism. No one should be questioned or what have you for their beliefs but on their actions to others and the world around them. Each religion has basic principles that are accepted across the board, for the most part. Unfortunately, some people are determined to focus only on what makes us different as human beings, people who often are in control of religious groups, politicians, televangelists and so forth. And there is nothing wrong with the differences these people raged against, its their emphasis that because its different, its wrong or evil that causes so much grief and conflict. I cannot imagine all humans being the same in terms of religious views or any other criteria. Boring! People should be called on, exposed, whatever when their actions negatively affect the quality of life of others. Yet its the beliefs that often spur these actions. I guess I cannot stress enough the importance of education.

Good topic!!

A--->

 

[Ray]

The primary difficulty involved in religious debate - critical or otherwise - is that many of the tenets of most, if not all religions, are based on faith, unprovable through any application of the scientific method.

I don't think that religious beliefs should be immune from "criticism" (immune from tarring and feathering, immune from discrimination, yes).

I believe that debate, conversation and arguement about religious belief ought not to be immune from criticism as it would be a stifling of freedom of speech.

I don't think the difficulty involved in religious debate is because they are unprovable through the scientific method. The difficulty is that people want to argue and demean each other for holding different viewpoints.

This tends to make for circular arguments - for example: "I believe X because my primary religious text tells me to do so; I know this because it was written by [supreme deity]; I know that this is so because it says so in my primary religious text".

I'm a "believer" and none of the above is why I believe what I believe. But it is among the first things out of people's mouth when they want to demonstrate how foolish I am for being a believer.

This is often exacerbated because, while most people know the primary tenets and beliefs of their faith, few are truly knowledgeable about the details of their own religion.

And you have the numbers to support that conclusion.

The above circular logic often leaves many people unwilling to engage in debate on their religious beliefs because such debates devolve into the above circular logic - it is much easier to claim persecution and refuse to debate the issue at all than to take the time to acquire the necessary knowledge, and also because arguments based on faith quickly reach the "because I said so" level of logic, which is both unrefutable and frustrating.

What? Religion is an "issue" that needs to be debated so that the poor, misled believer can be set straight?

 

[Makalakumu]

The primary difficulty involved in religious debate - critical or otherwise - is that many of the tenets of most, if not all religions, are based on faith, unprovable through any application of the scientific method.

I would argue that this is false. If a particular religious belief makes any claim on reality, then it is subject to the scientific method and the weight of evidence.

 

[Kacey]

Ray - your response is - despite your protestations otherwise - an example of what I was trying to say. You did not support your perspective in any fashion except to state that I am wrong, solely because you believe otherwise - but the nature of that belief was not stated. As for my own post, I very deliberately avoided specifics in an attempt to avoid having this thread - which I think poses a very interesting and important question - from devolving into a debate over the supremacy of particular beliefs.

To answer your question What? Religion is an "issue" that needs to be debated so that the poor, misled believer can be set straight? Not at all - but as a member of a minority religion (I am Jewish) I have often been told that I need to change my beliefs, that I am damned to eternal perdition for not believing Jesus was the Messiah - often by people who know less about Judaism than I do about their religion. Yes, there are people out there who are knowledgeable about their own religion - but there are also quite a few people like my friend Angelica, who was raised Catholic in a parish where questioning the priest was strictly forbidden, no matter the question, and who therefore asked me about Catholocism, because I knew quite a deal more about it than she did.

Religion is an issue than needs to be aired and discussed - not debated - so that more people have information about the religions of those whose religion is different from their own, because only through knowlege can understanding truly be gained - not so that "unbelievers" can be turned to the "one true faith", but so that people will see that there are many more similarities between belief systems than differences, and so that people can learn to let others have their own beliefs.

 

[Kacey]

I would argue that this is false. If a particular religious belief makes any claim on reality, then it is subject to the scientific method and the weight of evidence.

An example of what I am talking about: many religions claim "God exists". This is a statement based on faith. How do you prove, or disprove, the existence of God, an unseen, immaterial, unknowable entity? Positive proofs (in the scientific sense of proof) are beyond the current state of the art, and negative proofs are effective only in eliminating impossibilities.

Another example: many religions claim to represent the "one truth". This is a subjective statement based on faith and opinion, and therefore the acceptance of any particular religion as the "one truth" will vary from individual to individual, based on that person's experiences throughout life.

 

[BlackCatBonz]

i think science is humanity's weak grasp on the fundmental gears that drive the universe and this somehow gives us some kind of mental haughtiness to poo poo the ideals of religion.
On a grand scale we don't know squat; but you'd think by now we would at least have learned how to put our religious differences aside and treat each other with the love, respect and tolerance that our religions teach us.
that being said, IMO, only a fool believes 100% of what they are told as the truth.
A line was crossed a long time ago and people started accepting the lessons as reality......those people oppressed (or slaughtered) the one's that didnt see things the way they did and so a new belief system is born.
If you believe something, have the cajones to back up your beliefs and dont hide behind the argument that religion has no business being scrutinized by a scientific eye. the religious eye has no problem scrutinizing scientific discoveries that threaten the basis of faith, or coming up with some new explanation that justifies a discovery by putting a religious spin on it.

 

[Makalakumu]

An example of what I am talking about: many religions claim "God exists". This is a statement based on faith. How do you prove, or disprove, the existence of God, an unseen, immaterial, unknowable entity? Positive proofs (in the scientific sense of proof) are beyond the current state of the art, and negative proofs are effective only in eliminating impossibilities.

Another example: many religions claim to represent the "one truth". This is a subjective statement based on faith and opinion, and therefore the acceptance of any particular religion as the "one truth" will vary from individual to individual, based on that person's experiences throughout life.

The claim that one cannot disprove that God exists is much like attempting to provive that the Flying Spaghetti Monster does not exist. Both beliefs are wildly improbable, but not not disprovable.

However, this thread isn't neccesarilly about the existence of god or god-like beings (which I personally wouldn't deny). This thread is about particular religious beliefs that are assaulted and destroyed by the power of reason yet they are still embraced because they happen to be "religious".

I, personally, find this phenomenon maladaptive. Especially when it drives our ego to overwhelm our drive to protect our progeny...

"The Rapture is not an exit strategy, Mr. President."

 

[Makalakumu]

i think science is humanity's weak grasp on the fundmental gears that drive the universe and this somehow gives us some kind of mental haughtiness to poo poo the ideals of religion.

Weak as that grasp may be, it is far better then any religion has offered to date.

 

[Rich Parsons]

. . . should we, as a society, insulate all religious beliefs from rational criticism? If so, why? If not, why not?

No.

Because everything should be up for discussion, or absolutes will become accepted. With these absolutes, will be peopel killing in the name of their religion and or hurting minors or the sick or innocent people who only have teh crime of being not of their faith.

 

[MBuzzy]

There is a fine line between persecution and criticism. And people have the same right to criticize beliefs and they do to hold beliefs of their own.

The danger is that in the PC society, it is wrong to criticize other people's beliefs because it might hurt their feelings. Or cause them to think for themselves without retreating to their religious text.

 

[BlackCatBonz]

Weak as that grasp may be, it is far better then any religion has offered to date.

im not knocking science.
but, when was the last time science taught you a moral lesson?
now you could argue that it is up to a parent to teach a moral lesson.
who teaches the societal moral lesson.....usually the clergy.
science and religion perform 2 different functions......people shouldnt confuse that.......

 

[Makalakumu]

im not knocking science.
but, when was the last time science taught you a moral lesson?

Since when has Religion offered YOU a moral lesson...

The third spurious explanation is that religion is the source of our higher ethical yearnings. Those of you who read the book Rock of Ages by Steven Jay Gould, who argued that religion and science could co-exist comfortably, are familiar with his argument: since science can't tell us what our moral values should be, that's what religion is for, and each “magisterium” should respect the other. A big problem for this hypothesis is apparent to anyone who has read the Bible, which is a manual for rape and genocide and destruction. God tells the Israelites invading all Midianite villages, “Kill all the men, kill all the kids, kill all the old women. The young women that you find attractive, bring them back to your compound, lock them up, shave their heads, lock them in a room for 30 days till they stop crying their eyes out because you've killed their mom and dad, and then take her as a second or third or fourth or fifth wife." So the Bible, contrary to what a majority of Americans apparently believe, is far from a source of higher moral values. Religions have given us stonings, witch-burnings, crusades, inquisitions, jihads, fatwas, suicide bombers, gay-bashers, abortion-clinic gunmen, and mothers who drown their sons so they can happily be united in heaven.

Perhaps a better explanation as to why we have morals lies in the totality of this explanation which is partially summed up here...

To answer the “why is Homo sapiens so prone to religious belief?” you first have to distinguish between traits that are adaptations, that is, products of Darwinian natural selection, and traits that are byproducts of adaptations, also called spandrels or exaptations. An example: Why is our blood red? Is there some adaptive advantage to having red blood, maybe as camouflage against autumn leaves? Well, that’s unlikely, and we don't need any other adaptive explanation, either. The explanation for why our blood is red is that it is adaptive to have a molecule that can carry oxygen, mainly hemoglobin. Hemoglobin happens to be red when it's oxygenated, so the redness of our blood is a byproduct of the chemistry of carrying oxygen. The color per se was not selected for. Another non-adaptive explanation for a biological trait is genetic drift. Random stuff happens in evolution. Certain traits can become fixed through sheer luck of the draw.

To distinguish an adaptation from a byproduct, first of all you have to establish that the trait is in some sense innate, for example, that it develops reliably across a range of environments and is universal across the species. That helps rule out reading, for example, as a biological adaptation. Kids don't spontaneously read unless they are taught, as opposed to spoken language, which is a plausible adaptation, because it does emerge spontaneously in all normal children in all societies.

The second criterion is the causal effects of the trait would, on average, have improved the survival or reproduction of the bearer of that trait in an ancestral environment -- the one in which our species spent most of its evolutionary history, mainly the foraging or hunter-gatherer lifestyle that predated the relatively recent invention of agriculture and civilization.

Crucially, the advantage must be demonstrable by some independently motivated causal consequences of the putative adaptation. That is, the laws of physics or chemistry or engineering have to be sufficient to establish that the trait would be useful. The usefulness of the trait can't be invented ad hoc; if it is, you have not a legitimate evolutionary explanation but a “just-so story” or fairy tale. The way to tell them apart is to independently motivate the usefulness of the trait. An example: Via projective geometry, one can show that by combining images from two cameras or optical devices, it is possible to calculate the depth of an object from the disparity of the projections. If you write out the specs for what you need in order to compute stereoscopic depth, you find that humans and other primates seem to have exactly those specs in our sense of stereoscopic depth perception. It's exactly what engineers would design if they were building a robot that had to see in depth. That similarity is a good reason to believe that human stereoscopic depth perception is an adaptation.

Likewise for fear of snakes. In all societies people have a wariness of snakes; one sees it even in laboratory-raised monkeys who had never seen a snake. We know from herpetology that snakes were prevalent in Africa during the time of our evolution, and that getting bitten by a snake is not good for you because of the chemistry of snake venom. Crucially, that itself is not a fact of psychology, but it helps to establish that what is a fact of psychology, namely the fear of snakes, is a plausible adaptation.

Our sweet tooth is yet another example. It’s not terribly adaptive now, but biochemistry has established that sugar is packed with calories, and therefore could have prevented starvation in an era which food sources were unpredictable. That makes a sweet tooth a plausible adaptation.

 

[MBuzzy]

Science is the pursuit to acquire knowledge....but I'm not too sure about the purpose of religion being to instill a moral code. Granted, at the base of most religions lies a very well thought out and beneficial set of rules which suggest and govern good behavior....but lets not forget that more people have been killed in the name of religions than any other cause.

 

[Blotan Hunka]

Why dont you just come out and say that your "god" is science? Its been obvious to me for a while. As a nation, government, or publicly funded researcher of course the answer to your question is no. But as to individual beliefs and the freedom to protest, vote, and SPEND based on those beliefs than what is it you propose? If enough people complain, vote and send their children to Parochial schools because they dont like the athiest lean in todays education system than more power to them. I seem to remember a group of people who landed on this continent persuing the freedom to practice their religion and their expression of is as they saw fit.

 

[Blotan Hunka]

This has given rise to different forms of agnosticism and relativism which have led philosophical research to lose its way in the shifting sands of widespread scepticism. Recent times have seen the rise to prominence of various doctrines which tend to devalue even the truths which had been judged certain. A legitimate plurality of positions has yielded to an undifferentiated pluralism, based upon the assumption that all positions are equally valid, which is one of today's most widespread symptoms of the lack of confidence in truth. Even certain conceptions of life coming from the East betray this lack of confidence, denying truth its exclusive character and assuming that truth reveals itself equally in different doctrines, even if they contradict one another. On this understanding, everything is reduced to opinion; and there is a sense of being adrift. While, on the one hand, philosophical thinking has succeeded in coming closer to the reality of human life and its forms of expression, it has also tended to pursue issues—existential, hermeneutical or linguistic—which ignore the radical question of the truth about personal existence, about being and about God. Hence we see among the men and women of our time, and not just in some philosophers, attitudes of widespread distrust of the human being's great capacity for knowledge. With a false modesty, people rest content with partial and provisional truths, no longer seeking to ask radical questions about the meaning and ultimate foundation of human, personal and social existence. In short, the hope that philosophy might be able to provide definitive answers to these questions has dwindled.

In the field of scientific research, a positivistic mentality took hold which not only abandoned the Christian vision of the world, but more especially rejected every appeal to a metaphysical or moral vision. It follows that certain scientists, lacking any ethical point of reference, are in danger of putting at the centre of their concerns something other than the human person and the entirety of the person's life. Further still, some of these, sensing the opportunities of technological progress, seem to succumb not only to a market-based logic, but also to the temptation of a quasi-divine power over nature and even over the human being.

As a result of the crisis of rationalism, what has appeared finally is nihilism. As a philosophy of nothingness, it has a certain attraction for people of our time. Its adherents claim that the search is an end in itself, without any hope or possibility of ever attaining the goal of truth. In the nihilist interpretation, life is no more than an occasion for sensations and experiences in which the ephemeral has pride of place. Nihilism is at the root of the widespread mentality which claims that a definitive commitment should no longer be made, because everything is fleeting and provisional.

-John Paul II

 

[Makalakumu]

Why dont you just come out and say that your "god" is science. Its been obvious to me for a while.

Because this postulation misunderstands what science actually is...

Scientia = knowledge.

This is something that constantly changes as we learn more information.

God never changes...thus it goes extinct.

In fact, I would postulate that all human gods do not represent anything supernatural and are, infact, natural representations of what is expressed in our biology.

Thus any religious position is open to criticism...from creationism to burkhas.

 

[Makalakumu]

-John Paul II

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6169720917221820689&q=The+God+Delusion&hl=en