I’ll be giving a couple of talks at this summer’s FreedomFest on economic growth, the power of incentives, and why More Sex is Safer Sex. More provocatively, I’ll also be going head to head with Dinesh D’Souza in a session called “Religion on Trial: Is God the Problem?”. Dinesh will argue that religion makes the world a better place, and I’ll argue the opposite. We’ll each call on the testimony of witnesses (in my case, Michael Shermer and Doug Casey). After our closing arguments, a jury of twelve, chosen from the audience, will deliver a verdict.
Dinesh has done this before; I haven’t. So I’m calling on you guys to help me out here by giving me your best arguments—either on Dinesh’s side, so I can practice rebutting them, or on my side, so I can plagiarize them.
Remember that the ultimate question is whether religion makes the world a better place, not whether religion is true. (On the other hand, truth becomes relevant if you’re arguing that religion makes the world a worse place by making people believe false things.) So what have you got for me?
Religion can be helpful in that it inspires many charitable organizations, such as hospitals and colleges. A great many social service organizations take their funding, or at least their organization, from religious groups.
I think a weakness in the Hitchens and Dawkins books is that they argue that both good and evil things have been done by believers and atheists alike, without addressing the question of whether either group is more *likely* to do good or evil things.
Decide what counts as a “good act”, or pick a particular category of good acts that are easy to measure (for example, hours spent volunteering — not that that’s necessarily the best one, but it’s measurable). Then see how religious people score compared to non-religious people.
Unfortunately for your side of the argument, I suspect that many categories of “good acts” really would be more common among deeply religious people. They may be doing them for the wrong reasons (fear that God is spying on them), but they still do them.
So you could counter-argue that while religious people may be great at *following* moral rules, they seem worse than average at actually thinking about the rules and whether they make sense. Many major advances in science (heliocentric solar system, theory of evolution) and morality (rights for women and minority religions) were advanced in the face of stiff opposition from the church.
I was once very much into the “atheism vs religion” debate and I considered the following video lectures to be the most succint and complete statement of the atheist’s arguments:
http://dotsub.com/view/fbf15461-335e-4ba0-8398-d4db2dbd3927
the first two lectures are by Sam Harris, the third one is by Richard Dawkins.
Also, here is a video debate between Daniel Dennett and Dinesh D’Souza.
http://richarddawkins.net/videos/1942-daniel-dennett-debates-dinesh-d-39-souza
You can have an overview of D’Souza’s arguments there.
Steven,
You may be interested in this debate on “The Catholic church is a force for good in the World.” Arguing for the motion Bishop John Onaiyekan and Ann Widdecombe MP; arguing against the motion Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens.
It’s a little more specific than your topic, but you may still be able to borrow a few arguments from there.
It may also be worth mentioning any of numerous examples (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam) of people being threatened, arrested, imprisoned, tortured and even killed for the act of apostasy, making a private decision in your own mind that a religion is untrue. This ‘crime’ is at odds with liberal/libertarian thought in that there is no victim – no-one is harmed by your decision to not believe religious doctrine.
Sorry, I forgot to post the link to the aforementioned debate, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSB0UOd3U_g
For each witness for the other side, hand him a marker and an easel and ask him to draw a picture of Mohammed and be photographed holding it.
Although that might be considered fighting dirty. And you don’t actually want anyone killed. :)
Sure, religion’s the problem, but you leave God out of it ;)
A lot of people can have very “religious” attitudes to things that have nothing to do with God; consider the environmentalist, and the venom with which they spit out the word “global-warming denialist.” One could almost imagine a 16th century inquisitor adopting the same tone for the word “heretic.”
They may well be right, but no amount of hard facts excuses such arrogance and vitriol.
The problems of religion: dogmatism, hatred of apostasy, etc. are very human traits. Sometimes I think we have a religion-center in our brain that we fill with whatever is to hand: environmentalism, socialism, islam, christianity, libertarianism.
All or none of these things may be perfectly correct, but their truth or lack thereof has nothing to do with the hostility and arrogance with which we hold those views.
Religion is not the cause of man’s propensity to do stupid things, it’s just another facet of the same neural quirk. On balance, I suspect this neural quirk has done more good than harm, but who knows?
On the need to rebut, if you haven’t already, I think that you should take a look at at the book _Who Really Cares_ by Arthur Brooks, who currently heads up AEI. The book analyzes the data that shows that conservatives are more charitably generous people than liberals, from donations to charities to giving blood and serving on the local PTA. I read it a couple of years ago, and it turned out that the public generosity turned largely on the religiosity. If I recall, secular conservatives were even less charitable than secular liberals, and religious liberals were similar to religious conservatives, but conservatives are more likely to be religious, hence his main thesis. Also, he argues that the result holds even when donations to churches are netted out.
There is something there, but there are definite weaknesses in the thesis, and I believe that he “strengthened” the results by working in percent of income and not absolute dollars. The book is a quick read.
I’d review Dinesh’s past arguments, so that way you know what to expect. A lot of them are on youtube, commonsenseatheism.com is currently down, but when it goes back up, there are a lot of debate linked there, and watching them with a careful eye is a good idea.
Also, there was a debate on whether the Catholic Church is a force for good or not, and I think that it could give some good ideas. (Al, already linked to it, but the atheists blew the Catholics out of the water)
That being said, read some history on how the Bible was used to uphold slavery. (Dinesh likely knows about this line of reasoning, so he’ll try to say that the “true Christians” were the ones who tried to abolish this, so you need to rebut this.) Given that this is a libertarian event, you could try to hit Dinesh on gay rights, as Dinesh tends to be more of a conservative. (I don’t actually know his stance on gay rights, but if you work your position right, you might in some sense force him to stand against the mainstream conservative position on the matter) You just have to make sure that you can make a very solid and tight argument on how religion is harming homosexuals.
Dinesh will also likely hit you on “Godless communism”, saying it is the result of atheism(he’s done this a number of times) so you’ll have to rebut that as well, and given that this is a libertarian event, you could likely appeal to a large slew of libertarian heroes as examples of how the “Godless” can be very reasonable. You can also emphasize whatever you think you need to about religion or atheism to get the job done here, however, libertarian arguments about how communism is inherently flawed (such as Hayek’s) could be very powerful in showing that Russia was a result of bad economics more so than just “Godless communists”. (He might hit fascism too, but I don’t know, I think that Hector Avalos is said to have done a powerful job arguing that Hitler was not an atheist in an article in the book “The Christian Delusion”)
Bennet Haselton: This is a good point, but must be counterbalanced by choosing a “bad” act and applying the same test. A bad thing might be distorting the education of our young for an ideology. Just take a look at Texas education board. This is a continuation of church opposition to the progress of knowledge. In this case does it matter if the ideology is wrong?
An interesting book is : – Gods Mechanics: The Religious Life of Techies by Guy Consolmagno, SJ . The author is a Jesuit and astronomer, and obviously quite bright. It explores how religious “techies” square their belief with science (often by ignoring ideas of “truth” and focusing the good parts of belonging to a church community). Worth a read to get a look inside a believers head and to see what benefits people get from their religion.
The fact is you are never going to win by challenging peoples beliefs. People are too entrenched. They have too much invested to change track, and the arguments have already been made and rejected.
If you start from a position that with religion you get eternal life of love and happiness, and without it you don’t, then it is hard to make the case against. The focus has to be on this life, not the next. This to some extent side-steps the “does god exist” question, except for the cases where believers think God intervenes in daily life.
There are something like 2 billion Christians and well over 3 billion followers of other major faiths. Coming from a Christian culture, discussions about religion tend to assume Christianity, but Christians are in a minority in this world. It might be better to illustrate points with non-christian examples so as not to alienate most of the believers and take some of the heat out. Probaly non-muslim as well in the current climate. This does allow you to bring in the truth argument. If Christianity is right, then more people are wrong than right, so some religion could be bad, even if Christianity is right. The divine interventions in the daily lives of most people can be accepted as an illusion. Most of the audience will probably reject the idea that Ganesh will assist your journey if you make a prayer and an offering.
So the argument could be that religion makes the world worse because living your life with considerable constraints based on a false belief is not optimising happiness. Examples could be taken from “normal” religious practices in non-christian religions. The requirement to pray 5 times a day gets in the way of more productive activities. Not allowing women out of the home stifles freedom. Giving offerings to a temple god is wastful. Blaming “spirits” for illness prevents seeking proper treatment. With a little research it should be possible to find examples of normal practice that sound absurd to non-believers. The argument must be placed in terms of does the worship of a false god make the world a better place? Is the compensation for the believer on balance greater than the cost? Using non-christian practices makes it possible to at least make the argument without getting sidettracked into a heated debate. All religions have costs. Does Hinduism make India a better place?
The benefits of even a false belief are considerable. There is social cohesion, community, companionship, comfort, compliance and probably lots of other things not beginning with “c”. All of these things are possible without religion, but some tend not to happen in Western society. We could have regular secular community gatherings where ideas are exchanged and everyone meets their neighbours, but it doesn’t happen, or at least not as effectively as church. Some of the benefits of religion are hard to get without the associated costs, such as an element of compulsion. I think that many of us think it would be a good thing to know our neighbours better. In a religious community it happens almost automatically. However, we live in a world where there is religion. If there were not, then perhaps secular alternatives would have more chance of survival. This is the counterfactual – a world without religion. None of us knows quite what it would be like, but perhaps you can make a case for getting the benefits of religion without the costs using examples of secular communities and societies.
There are obvious examples where religion has been bad, such as the inquisition, wars and terrorism. However, these can be seen as extremes, and not representative of religion as a whole. For each religious extreme, one can think of a secular example also (Stalin, Pol Pot etc.). The fact is these things happen with or without religion, so do not really make the argument one way or the other. They do make the point that religion is not always a force for good. This could be the icing on the cake, but not the main thrust of the argument.
The arguments for god tend to start with a very general type of question -Where did everything come from? Why are we here? Many people find that “God” is a satisfying answer to these questions, despite the fact that it is a non-answer (it just pushes the question back). You will probably not persuade anyone with that. No, the point here is that even if God was the creator, is there any need for religion? Many seem to extrapolate from “there is a creator” to “my religion is right”. But it leaves a dilema for the religious. Given the existence of a creator, why are there so many religions? Consolmagno dismisses this as “they can’t all be right, so they must all be wrong” fallacy. It is a bit deeper than that. Some argue that there are many paths to God. This implies that all the details of their own religion are if not wrong, then not right either. Even moderates must accept that either the other religions do not lead to god, or that everything except the most general aspects of their own religion are unneccesary. Do we need to believe that Christ died for our sins, or is it OK to believe in a pantheon? If god exists and is unknown to most of humanity, what sort of a God is it? If God exists and all religions can lead to him, then we are back with the argument that most religious practices are unecessary, so do the benefits outweight the costs? I suppose it is possible that God requires adherance to some detailed faith, but does not mind which. I do not think this is a position which most religious people adhere to. So you can stick to the same argument without denying the existence of God.
It is possible that humans have evolved with a need to believe in God as an evolutionary advantage. This may now be like the appendix – possibly of some minor use but not really necessary. However, if it is there, it is there, like a need for salt. You can argue that the world would be a better place if we didn’t need salt, but given the world we live in, the world is definitely better for us with salt. It is possible that the world is a better place with religion, even if they are all completely wrong.
Gosh – another long one, and I haven’t even started on morality yet.
You have accepted a slightly unlevel playing field, since any example of harm you adduce will be from a PARTICULAR religion, and examples are never proof. You have signed on to prove a negative: there are no non-harmful religions. Non’t let DD frame it this way. I think your arguments should be as particular as possible.
I think you walk it back this way-
Fundamentalism is bad.
-Fundamentalism prevents the softening or moderation of religion to accept the better principles that have evolved in society (e.g., now that we have prisons, we don’t need to stone people to death).
-Different fundamentalist religions are in conflict with one another in unresolvable ways and many want to, and have, killed each other for no other reason
-Basic conclusion, you must interpret any “word of a god” and be willing to amend the framework of old books (or gold discs found buried in upstate NY) to accept more effective morality that has naturally evolved in society
Faith over reason is bad
-Prevents full understanding
-Damaging to science and human progress
–
Ultimately, it comes down to behavior.
Societal morality is superior to religious morality.
– The principles established in the
Points to concede-
-Accept that some traditions are good, ways that people have learned to live together across the risks of civilization, and some of that is codified in religion. I am thinking here of things such as Taleb’s point that many religions have counseled against debt, and other practical concerns. While religions have good ideas within them, they have bad ones too, and there are better ideas outside of religion.
End with TJ from 1786
“our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than our opinions in physics or geometry”
http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/vaact.html
Three arguments for religion making the world a better place:
1. Religion provides unity to a larger community than mere family ties or regional interests. A white Catholic in the United States shares a bond with a black Catholic in South Africa that is potentially stronger than atheists in both countries.
2. Religion provides a counterweight to other human groupings, including national governments. Part of the beauty of the separation of Church and State is that power is divided, giving individual expression more breathing room than in a monolithic state (either atheistic or theocratic).
3. Religion provides comfort and purpose to many people, and by giving hope to the “virtuous” (however defined) even after death, helps strengthen other institutions. There is a reason that the military includes chaplains.
(It’s easier to point out the evil done in the name of religion, but I thought I’d play the contrarian.)
(
Ignorance is bliss, they say, so I guess ignorance makes the world a better place too. Religion is a mind virus that serves its own ends. To do that, it makes its hosts self-satisfied and self-important, spurring them to spread their bliss to others, even if they must be killed in order to be saved. To the extent that religion makes the world a better place quietly, it does so like a soma-inducing drug.
The ways in which religion makes the world worse–well you can make a long list, starting with all of the religous wars and persecutions throughout history. As for religous folk being more charitable and enlightened–where is the evidence? Do a regression across countries between worshipping and an index of economic and political well-being.
I believe there is some research that came out not too long ago touting links between religion, hapiness, and longevity. I am betting its similiar the effect close community ties and longevity that Malcolm Gladwell talks about at the beginning of Outliers. An argument could be made thats its not religion itself that improves happiness, but having close community ties.
Also there are many faith practioners out there and most are non-violent. Some very great scientific work has sprung from very religious people (Darwin, Newton). These will be tough arugments that will require some rebuttal thought.
Just whatever you do, don’t go into this expecting D’Souza to argue in good faith or adhere to anything remotely resembling commonly accepted notions of logic or evidence. He’s got a 25-year paper trail amply documenting his total lack of interest in all of the above, going all the way back to his days as “Distort D’Newsa” at the Dartmouth Review.
Approach this with the assumption that you’re about to have a long argument with a usenet troll who unaccountably landed a bunch of think-tank gigs based on sucking up to the Scaife family and you’ll be approaching this correctly.
Darwin was not particularly religious–later in life he was pretty much an atheist. He was married to a very religious woman and bit his tongue on many occasion.
like any societal set of laws, religion is a constraint on behavior.
if murder is bad, why would it be more bad under a religous law than a secular one?
clearly, murder is good. we kill to survive. we kill our enemies. we kill to enforce laws against killing. i believe that some religions would even put someone to death by throwing stones at them until they were dead (what a shamefully gruesome and torturous method of execution). sometimes i think we kill because we LIKE killing.
laws are illusions – they only dictate behavior for the supplicated.
on the other hand, altruism also exists. i would argue that altruism exists without religion and give examples of altruistic behavior in the ‘animal’ kingdom.
knock em dead, doc. =]
Religion is believing without evidence. (I think that’s the best we can get to a consensus). Then just talk about anything (the USSR, almost any war, failed economic policy) that has failed utterly. I think this will be especially easy with a libertarian audience, as you can speak of the faith that environmentalists, central planners and drug warriors have. And Steven, will this (and other lectures) be available somewhere (lie youtube)?
Pro-religion:
Ok, I think I read this in the comments of http://www.overcomingbias.com but I can’t find the source now. Basically, someone argued:
1. People have strong tribalistic tendencies. This leads to a lot of fighting between tribes.
2. Religion got people to become part of a much larger tribe. So now they don’t want to attack people who are of the same religion.
3. Sure, violence in the past may have happened in the name of religion, but making the tribes bigger should have reduced this. For instance, nowadays no one in Connecticut would think of waging war against someone in PA, and the reason is that “we’re all Americans”. Go back 1000 years and substitute Christian (or whatever religion) for “American”.
The guy on OB said it better than I can. :)
Having only read the occasional D’Souza tract, I’ll defer to the expertise of other commenters. However, if you are not above a bit of ad hominem (which may very well turn out to be perfectly appropriate in response to some of his arguments), let me note that even a number of true blue conservatives consider D’Souza’s most recent output to be beyond the pale. Therein he is arguing for an alliance with non-violent fundamentalist Muslims against secular liberalism (classical or modern). For a relative kind review which still brings up some embarrassing claims by D’Souza, check out http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/article_print.asp?articleid=1332 .
Coupon Clipper – I agree that this may have been part of th origin of religions, but there is a very long history of wars between Christain nations.
No. Religion is an option that people are free to explore and use. It inspires people and comforts them when nothing else can, like a death of a loved one. While it has been used for evil, so have guns. You can’t have a car wreck without cars, either. Just because some people are irresponsible doesn’t mean what they use to enhance their irresponsibility is inherently bad.
Yes. Religion is a constructed solution that plays to our evolutionary bias for an easy way out. Like a politician who tells us we can spend our way out of debt, it exacerbates problems because people are rationally irrational. When talk is cheap (as it is with religion) we will indulge them even if it makes more problems for others. Like a polluting factory, its optimal amount is not zero, but it’s certainly less than what we have now.
To express my personal opinion:
I probably have more tolerance for most forms of religious expression than most libertarian, Dawkins admiring, Hitchens readings, lifelong (and hereditary) atheists. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that parts of the fears expressed about the end of religious freedom by some otherwise of similar mind as me are hysterical. In my lifetime, organized religion in the U.S. has and will not make the Top 25 list of threats to the liberal order.
But D’Souza is an exception. He appears to have embraced, tactically or sincerely, an ideology that can fairly be described as theocratic. Please crush him like a sea cow, Prof. Landsburg.
D’Souza’s arguments will stump you not because of their complexity or elegance, but because they are so painfully ludicrous. I doubt you’ll find it hard to make your audience (and jury) come down on your side, but you might struggle somewhat not to descend into a mocking tone when responding, simply because it’s very difficult not to.
I have noticed, over the past few years, that those people who speak positively about religion in public, do the vast majority of damage themselves. Fatuous questions such as “how can something come out of nothing?” are transparently low in both quality and tone to most audiences; rather than attempt to refute D’Souza’s points, assume that he will do that himself, which should leave you free to focus on delivering hammer blow after hammer blow, which is very easy given the side you’re on.
If you’d like an argument to plagiarize, then feel free to adapt this observation: the source of religion’s greatest power (the books) is contemporaneously the source of it’s undoing. While you can feel free to shift positions; to change your mind or rethink your opinions, religion absolutely cannot. So, in the last hundred years, through intellectual evolution, we have achieved amazing things, and we will continue to do so for the next hundred years, and the hundred after that. If you imagine just how ‘poor’ the magnificence of the miracles is across all the main monotheistic religions to us now, just try to suppose how pathetic they will look to future generations…
If you’ve relayed the topic strictly correctly (“religion *makes* the world a better place”), then it seems like a lot of your best arguments would vanish since “makes” is in present-tense. The Crusades would seem to be a massive indictment of religion, but the worst we have today is what most people describe as a small minority of fundamental extremists causing trouble.
You could also use the trick of lumping all religions together and then attacking the ones that nobody respects any way — the Kool-Aid guys did what they did because of their religion after all.
One thing that actually lends support to your side is that religious people tend to get along less well with all people: http://tinyurl.com/ye4d6o2
However, I’ll have to admit that I’m pretty sure Christianity actually does make the world a better place so I’ll be interested how you argue against a related hypothesis.
I can’t imagine this being a productive debate when the terms are so poorly defined. What constitutes religion? A good point was made above, can a religion be a belief in AGW? Evolution? Is it defined by “any belief outside of mainstream science”?
And how can you stay away from whether any religion is true or not, which is really the heart of the matter.
-If no religion is true, then you can have a good debate and talk about the results of these mystical beliefs.
-If a very small religion is true, say Judaism, then probably “religion” overall has been bad, because all the falsehoods greatly outweigh the truth.
-If a major religion like Islam is true, religion has been positive overall, because Islam would teach that the world is a better place with some Islam than with none.
I strongly advise you to read (in case you haven´t yet) Bertrand Russel’s essay called “Why I am not a Crhistian”. In short, Russel satates that the only contribution religion has made to humanity so far is the development of the calendar as we know it!!!! Simply a genius..
I think Bennet’s point (comment 2) is very hard to argue against.
I have little doubt that there is a strong correlation in genuinely trying to make the world a better place and believing in a higher power (even if in the process you accidentally force the increased spread of AIDS in Africe).
It makes perfect sense to me that if you think you are part of a higher purpose, you will act more accordongly. I for one am pretty selfish (well at least more selfish than if I were to belive in the supernatural) because rationally I believe it ultimately makes little difference what I do.
The Ned Flanders down the street is def more likely to try help out his fellow man than I am.
I like to go to bars and drink. Do bars make the world a better place? My preferences are a pretty good indication that they do. For someone to argue that bars don’t make the world a better place, they have to show me where the externality lies. That’s pretty easy, I suppose, I tend to drive home from bars. I don’t participate in any religion, but I presume that people do so of their own choice. Their preferences are a pretty good sign that its making the world a better place. To argue otherwise, one has to point to an externality in religion that I fail to see (but am willing to be convinced of). Either that, or the concept of what constitutes “better” needs to be defined more precisely. Good luck with that, as I can think of no definition of what constitutes “better” than the preference of the individual–well, unless you want to bring religion into this.
For an historical perspective you should definitely check out David Bentley Hart’s book Atheist Delusions. Despite the blah title (I can only assume his publisher pulled rank) Hart is a first-rate philosophical theologian and structures his argument around the shift from Greco-Roman antiquity that occurred in the “Christian Revolution.”
And don’t forget to mention all the pervs in the Catholic Church. Did they do their part to make the world a better place?
Excellent point Mike. I would point out that religion is a bit like a contract, people choose it so they get the benefits, not all of which are in this life. If the religion’s side of the bargain (eternal life or divine help, for example) is not fulfilled, then the bargain is broken. If the people knew that the bargain would be broken, they may have chosen not to belong to that religion.
I think you have to define the terms so that everyone will follow. Its no use defining religion to include something like AGW disbelief (jj has got it wrong here, belief in AGW has the evidence, disbelief is more like the religion). Whatever argument you use must be applicable to the mainstream ones. However, you could use religions that have been very mainstream in the past, such as Greek, Roman and Norse pantheons or the Egyptians. Just because they are not believed today does not affect the fact that they have had many, many followers, and were very infuential. It could be a good way to develop the arguments, as it does not risk offending anyone. Re-phrase the question as Did Roman religion make the Roman world a better place? Whatever conclusions were applicable then should be so now.
As most commenters have noted, it will be helpful to settle on some definitions before the debate starts. the definition of “religion” is an obvious issue; so is the definition of “better” (What’s the standard? Reported happiness, GDP, body counts, a combination of standards?).
The argumentation involved will be stickier – how do you draw clear correlations between behavior and religion? Sconzey expressed this well above: “The problems of religion: dogmatism, hatred of apostasy, etc. are very human traits. Sometimes I think we have a religion-center in our brain that we fill with whatever is to hand: environmentalism, socialism, islam, christianity, libertarianism.” Much evil (if I may use a religious term) has been done throughout the centuries in the name of a god or gods, but how much of that is a product of sincere belief, and how much of it is evil rulers finding a religious justification for what they were going to do anyway? And will the same sort of bad people find similar secular excuses for their actions if a religious reason doesn’t present itself? The cause-effect chain certainly isn’t a simple one.
Just because someone who did something awful had a certain job, a certain childhood, a certain political affiliation, a certain set of beliefs, etc. doesn’t mean any one of those things was automatically responsible for his actions. People and their motivations are complex, and we should be careful not to make blind generalizations.
Patrick said: “Religion is believing without evidence. (I think that’s the best we can get to a consensus).” That may be a consensus among many non-believers, but most of us humble believers like to think that we have some logical basis for our faith. In my opinion the debate will stick to the topic better if you accept an intuitive definition that both sides can agree on, rather than making the definition of “religion” a point of offense or controversy.
Interesting to me, if slightly tangential to your point, is the question of whether Christians should (or would) agree with D’Souza’s position. After all, Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt. 10.34). In context, though, His war is a spiritual war of good vs. evil rather than a physical war of any kind. And He was killed in the name of religion (on charges of blasphemy), although the motives of the religious leaders seem to have been primarily to maintain the status quo rather than to uphold teachings of the Law….
“Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.” Gal. 5.19-26.
I also hope to see video of the debate!
Use your advantage as an economist to do a real cost-benefit analysis. Religion makes people happy: this is a benefit, count it. Religion induces charity: this is a benefit, count it.
And when you’ve counted things like that, remember: differences in religion make people unhappy. Count it as a cost. The destruction of familial cohesion (through changes of religion, come out as gay, etc.) probably hurt a lot more than the destruction of societal cohesion. Count it as a cost.
In fact, I think you need to axe the “societal cohesion” argument as brutally as you can. Robin Hanson recently posted on this, the lesson being that social cohesion and cooperation are actually quite dangerous and often very bad things: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/04/the-dark-side-of-cooperation-2.html
There will probably be an argument that morality comes from religion, and therefore all good social order comes from religion. Skim through David Eller’s Atheism Advanced to rebut arguments that religion necessarily entails standards of morality, etc. Hammer out the worst of religious “morality” if it gets to this: find the most callous examples from the Bible and the Koran.
Harold: “Coupon Clipper – I agree that this may have been part of th origin of religions, but there is a very long history of wars between Christain nations.”
Ok, good point.
How’s this? Religion is good b/c it keeps people from spreading religious-like movements, e.g. environmental hysteria.
Sometimes it’s hard to figure out whether religion caused something bad or whether something bad within people (or unfortunate restraints…such as land rights) caused negative-effect religious activity to arise. Plenty of examples abound. Religion just seems too complicated to debate whether it in general is good or bad. I still don’t like most of it.
It may or may not serve your purpose to explicitly add a dimension to this question. The question is “does religion make the world a better place?” But you can actually address, for each t, “Is religion making the world a better place at time t?” The question as stated seems to suggest that both sides should answer it by summing up the past, and maybe that’s where you want it to stay for now. But the past is done with! Aren’t you really more interested in the question, “Would we like to see more religion today, or less? More in the future, or less?” Who cares if some cavemen used religion to do bad things in the stone age? The most interesting question is, where do we go from here?
The answer really need not be time-invariant. And ooh! Now we get to ask the really fun question: What _about_ the future? We are as gods, or, we are asymptoting to something that resembles godliness. Immortality on earth, for example, may soon be approximately possible. And what I want to know is, how does religion look, conditional on immortality actually being possible. If religion promises a better kind of immortality, but it’s actually a lie, then maybe you wouldn’t want people letting themselves “go to heaven”, throwing away their only real shot at immortality. This blows the issue wide open. It becomes absolutely necessary to evaluate the likelihood of religious claims being correct; there is no hiding from it. This debate is probably not the place for that. But I would be satisfied if people came away from this debate with a very CONDITIONAL answer to the question. It depends on a great many things.
As I said, it may or may not serve your present purpose to go in this direction (although you’re going against a seasoned debater of this topic so novel arguments carry a serious premium). But in seeking the truth on this matter more generally, you might ask the question: under a variety of possible future circumstances, what would be the role of religion, and would I want it around?
As a closing thought, I wish debaters would start by submitting for the record their belief probabilities about being correct. And then again, afterwards.
I came to the belief that religion is good in this world because most of the people with whom I disagree with on nearly everything have a near universal condescension for religion and thinking it nearly universally evil. I figured if they were so clearly wrong on so many other issues, they are probably wrong about the evils of religion.
First and foremost, if you are going to debate the goodness or badness of having a culture mostly atheistic or theistic, I think you have to deal with D’Souza’s claim that while there have been many barbaric incidents in the past in the name of religion, such as the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, and 9/11, the number of people killed were measured in the 1000’s. The number of people killed under communism, fascism, and nazism, ideologies created with the explicit purpose of throwing off the shackles of traditional religion and morality, including theism, are in the 10,000,000’s.
Comparing the 10,000’s killed in the name of god, to the 100,000,000’s (http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.TAB1.GIF)0 killed in the name of atheism seems to be almost an open and shut case about the goodness and badness of theism vs. the goodness and badness of atheism.
Additionally, the incredibly devout Christian nations have single-handedly created the back bone of the wealth engine driving the world’s economy. While the atheistic nations of Russia, Germany, and China devoted themselves to the destruction of most of the wealth of those countries. Note that China is becoming more productive and wealthy as it becomes more Christian.
Theism seems to give people a reason to be good to strangers and be stewards of the earth. Theism seems to promote selfishness and pettiness. The reason is that most if not all theists believe in something larger and more important than themselves and basic human affairs. There is much inspiration in religion, while there is very little in atheism.
As an atheist, I am jealous of the inner joy of many people I know who take true and lasting comfort in the certitude of everlasting reward for being the truly good people they are. I see meanness in many who use religion as justification for their meanness, but I think this is overwhelmed by those who are truly good. My atheism started as simple skepticism of religion and as I got older any sort of belief in religion was totally destroyed. My skepticism keeps me in a near constant, though low grade, anxiety about the purpose of the universe and life. But as I’ve gotten older still, I’ve realized that just because the Bible may not be literal truth, these stories have survived millennia for a reason.
I don’t find many of D’Souza’s other arguments persuasive. Although, most of what I saw in his debate with Bennett that I viewed as weak, was his arguments for the existence of god, not for the goodness of religion. The only way that I can see you making in roads into the argument about the number of dead under theist regimes compared to atheist regimes is to delve into the percentage of the population killed under those regimes. After all, much of the barbarism Christianity accounts for occurred long ago, when thousands then might translate to millions today. For example, if you have a population of 100,000 and 1000 are killed, this is close to China with population of 1,000,000,000, with a death toll above 35,000,000.
But then you have to account for Pol Pot who killed between 25% and 33% of the population of Cambodia. And who knows the horrors of North Korea.
Chuck E. Interesting point, religion is good because it prevents the spread of “pseudo religion”. There are many examples of extremists being “radicalised” from a position of uninterest in religion. They have no arguments from the mainstream “moderates” to combat the extremist. Lots of “new ageism” is non-theistic, but of a distinctly religious nature. A good dose of Catholicism innoculates against this. This is to argue that mankind has in its nature a requirement for belief, so it is better to fill it with a tried and tested religion than to leave it empty to be filled with possibly dangerous new beliefs. I think you have to group pseudo religious in with the religious to avoid getting stuck in a backwater.
However, if you accept a requirement for belief then you are effectively conceding. But it is possible that the requirement for belief is at least in part created by the existence of religion. Most children in the world will be introduced to the idea of religion very young, and this could be the factor requiring some sort of belief in later life. You must get the point accross that many people do in fact carry on quite happily with no religious or pseudo religious beliefs, and without religion “contaminating” their minds, there is no reason why everyone should not also do so.
There is a distinction between the world we live in today with a paticular individual choosing not to believe in god (i.e. am I better off without religion?), and a world in which there was no religion (would the world be better off without religion?). We do not know what such a world would look like, but perhaps we could extrapolate from current countries to try to find out. Is there a correlation between % “believers” and other factors in countries? Trouble is, I think most countries have a very high % believers. Western Europe is probably the lowest. I think you can draw some very broad conclusions from this. The least religious countries tend to be the ones with the most developed social structures, greatest equality, greatest respect for “human rights” etc. etc. You could say these were the most ethical countries. Many of these qualities are those “claimed” by religion, so it seems that religion is not required for their promotion.
Mass murders. I think this area is best avoided, as it does not in my opinion say much either way. Atrocities have been perpetrated by the religious and the athiest. I think most athiest atrocities have not been done “in the name of atheism”, but eradicating religion was an aim of some atheist regimes, so it was a part of it.
On last point (for now at least). The population of the world is 61% Asian, 13% African, 12% European, 8.5% Latin American / Caribbean, 5.1% North American, and 0.5% Oceanian. America has the largest economy, so we tend to think it is most important. In terms of most people in the world, it is almost irrelevent. Do not get bogged down with discussion of America.
About the matter of definitions, I think that perhaps there are three kinds of arguments which deserve to be kept apart:
* Comparisons of people who go to church and people who don’t, in the same society. Here there is a serious causality problem, maybe the caring sort didn’t drop out of sunday school.
* Comparisons of societies with different levels of religious belief. Here the causality problem is this: should you pin the USSR’s sins on its atheism or should you include suppression of religion among the regime’s sins? And of course the other issue is whether you count Marxism as a form of religion.
* Comparisons with an imaginary society in which whatever quirk of the mind which causes people to invent religion is absent. This is the purest form, and it’s tempting for each side to imagine a world of people either free of the good irrationalities or free of the bad ones. But we know nothing at all about this, all existing societies have been made up of real people.
on Harold’s point about Western Europe:
I believe that much of Western Europe’s economic and social prosperity started a while before the percentage of religious believers started to decline. [Similar to how many semi-socialistic countries saw much of their economic growth during their relatively more free market periods].
This could mean that religion is more valuable when cultures lack stability, prosperity, opportunity and freedom, and not that religion is the root cause of that lack (though it could, of course, reinforce or encourage those societal failings).
I would recommend staying away from trying to find out which view is more ‘moral’. It’s a tricky arguement to defend and at best I think it would be a wash. For all their flaws, many religious people as a whole do alot of good works for others. Considering the crowd you are going to be debating in front of, I would stick to things like restrictions on personal freedoms, reduced upward mobility (The hindu caste system is the easiest example. if I remember correctly England actually encouraged it’s use during it’s colonization of India because it kept everyone in their place/complacent. All religons have variants of this same theme of everyone ‘knowing their place’ however.), and maybe make an arguement about how the belief in some kind of life after this one makes people live less fulfilled lives since they are essentially trading earthly goals for imaginary ones in the afterlife. They aren’t perfect arguements and can be rebutted, but they avoid the neverending ‘well, maybe my side did this, but your side did that!’ debate that you run into when you debate morality. Additionally, ideas like personal freedoms and upward modility both tend to be championed quite a bit in the US by virtually all demographics. Being a libertarian, you can, of course, make more of these arguements
Personally I think religion is mainly a neutral concept in regards to it’s cost/benefit. It’s not inherently evil, it just depends on the general movement and ideas of the culture at the time. If their culture is filled with violence and hatred then their religion will reflect that.
It turns out this is a harder one than the truth of religion. I find it entirely obvious that the details of most religious beliefs and religious practices through time must have been wrong, even if something called “God” does exist (which I personally do not believe). It is not quite so obvious to me that these practices have caused more harm than good.
Oh, also, I am not sure that Dinesh will use the argument that Christianity created scientific progress, but be prepared for these kinds of tricks. Richard Carrier has a solid post on the relationship between science and Christianity.
http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2010/01/flynns-pile-of-boners.html
And I am sure you can also use creationists and other things to argue how religion has hurt scientific progress. Even bringing up that these are matters of truth, such as bringing up the obvious conflict between Adam and Eve and evolution, and how Adam and Eve are needed for the Christian doctrine of Original Sin, and how that is needed for the need for an atoning sacrifice. (as well as how Christ is a “second Adam” according to Paul)
You could argue as well that religion generally rewards bad thinking, because so many justifications of religion are just subjective but religions are themselves either true or false and should be regarded with more rigor, rigor that often they seem absurd in relationship to. (bring up issues such as the problem of evil, penal substitution, and other religious things that seem absurd to most people)
Also, you might find valuable a game theoretic analysis of suicide bombers and invoking the story of Abraham and Isaac, to show that religion has never been this simple, easy, and cuddly thing. Using a lot of very ugly sounding Bible verses is also a good idea, because it is the Christian religion and it is that “cuddly” religion that people are going to look at for themselves. So, things like Deut 28:16-68 and other things to argue that religion is a barbaric relic, and present negative elements of fundamentalism as reasonable responses to such barbarism, and in particular, focus on how these efforts substitute real ethical thinking for the holy book, when real ethical thinking is what makes the world a better place.
I’d hit Christianity the hardest, and use the negative elements of other religions where it is helpful. If you can play Christianity against other religions, and divide people between Christian sympathies and religious sympathies, then that could really help. (after all, Christianity is a truth claim that opposes other religions and where many people interpret Jesus as claiming that non-Christians are going to hell, they can’t claim that these misleading religions are a good thing if they are causing people to burn forever)
But right, if you don’t debate often in a formal setting, then practice. Find somebody with experience and continually practice this so you can knock Dinesh out. Also, you should use Michael Shermer as much as reasonable, he’s an expert on the history of science, on psychology, and even has delved into ethics.
Additional note, you can bring up issues with Catholics and the Eucharist incident with Webster Cook, and how this conflicts with a civilized society.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/its_a_goddamned_cracker.php
I definitely think bringing up alot of historical religious violence such as the Crusades, the inquisition, the warring of Catholics and protestants (especially in Ireland), and all the warring in the middle east and its effects on western society, would probably the strongest arguments!
To my knowledge, the web’s biggest database on Christianity v. non-religious debates is here: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=50
It has links to 15 of Dinesh’s debates, some of which have a topic label. I suspect reviewing most or all of them would be time very well spent.
I think many if not all of your arguments can be organized around how believing a religion is true effects your incentives. In most religions, heaven or hell is more a factor of which religion you belong to than good works. Not that there is no incentive for works, but less time in purgatory or god being a bit happier when you get to heaven is absolutely nothing compared to the heaven/hell toggle. Given these incentives, religious extremists are not extremists. They are simply the ones who act rationally, given their beliefs. An argument like this makes a direct connection between the damage and the religion, and shows the correlation to be other than an accident of a history.
This can also be a bad argument filter, both for you and for rebuttals. Can you make an argument that the Crusades were rational, given religious beliefs? If not, then don’t make this argument. If you hold yourself to this, you can consistently parry, say, communism, with “but it was irrational, even given atheism” which puts the burden on him to show how atheism actually led to communism.
I bet he makes this link via, “if God is not, then all things are permissible.” Stalin wanted to be in charge, god wasn’t stopping him, so why not? Furthermore, what basis do *you* have for saying it was wrong? Make sure you’re really, really, really ready for this one, and more generally, the idea that without religion you have no basis for morality. These are ubiquitous among Christian apologists.
I kept reading more links buried in the link I posted…
Lukeprog wrote an extremely valuable review of Dinesh’s debate with Daniel Dennett, and in the process, answers your request for arguments to practice against. Dinesh’s actual arguments, in fact: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=281
“[Dennett] points out that America is more religious than Western Europe, but Western Europe has better “family values.”
* America has a higher homicide rate than Western Europe.
* And a higher rate of STDs.
* And a higher rate of teen pregnancy.
* And a higher abortion rate.
That’s all true. Dinesh won’t like that.”
“But we shouldn’t just teach religions, [Dinesh] says. We should also teach Darwinism, and how it influenced Social Darwinism and Nazism.”
“Dinesh points out that the Christian inquisition, crusades, and witch burnings didn’t kill nearly as many people as atheists. He is right.”
“Dinesh says the principles of science itself – that nature is lawful – is a Christian idea. False, of course. It is an ancient Greek idea.”
“Dinesh says Dennett is like a cave man, who believes there is nothing else out there because his little instruments can’t see them.” – keep this in mind. As John Loftus was advised after his debate with Dinesh, he’s not out to have a conversation with you and search for truth with you. He’s out to make you look like a fool.
“Dinesh rages against Dennett’s special pleading about atheist genocides, and he’s quite right.”
“Dinesh closes with a brand new argument. What a fucked up debate.”
Some more musings, nothing terribly original. I wonder if Dinesh is watching?
How about a sort of “behind the veil” argument. If you were going to be someone and you didn’t know who, would you choose to take the religion option? Do the benefits of religion outweigh the costs? You can easily come up with several groups where religion results in a worse outcome, at least in the eyes of most Western observers. Islamic women in Afganistan or Saudi Arabia, anyone who’s life has been shortened significantly because of religion. Interestingly, this applies even if they were killed by atheists, if it was religion that caused it. Anyone who has been persecuted based on religion. If you thought you would end up as one of these, then you might well chose “no religion” The bulk of the people will be somewhere in the middle, the direct effects of their religion being a moderate cost and a moderate benefit. These people will suffer indirect costs, in that they will not benefit from what might have been the productive thinking of clerics who spent their time thinking about theology. On the other hand, they benefit from the non-theological thoughts of clerics who might otherwise not had the time for thinking at all. On the positive side for religion are all those who’s life has been significantly lengthened because of religion. This includes all those who would have been massacred, were it not for the moderating effects of religion. This is a bit more difficult to quantify, as we are looking at a couterfactual again. Needless to say, massacres do happen with religion – Rwanda for example. Religion was not the principle factor, rather ethnicity or tribalism, but religion did not prevent it either.
If you take the origin of modern man to be about 50,000 yrs ago, then approximately 6% of everyone that ever lived is alive today ( http://www.prb.org/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx ). About 20% have been alive since 1750 or so. If you are to be incarnated as one of these humans that have already existed, you have about 70% chance of being born before 1600, and nearly 50% chance of being born before Christ. The chances of being a Christian are quite small, but not vanishingly so. But what of the prospect of being born in the future? There are many more people alive now than have ever been alive before (at one time), so if things continue for a while longer, soon the future people will outnumber the past and present. Quite soon the post-technological age people will outnumber the pre-technological age (using say an arbitrary 1700 date). This is due almost entirely to developments in science and technology, on which they depend for their very existence. Looking at it this way, what becomes an absolutely key question is – did religion promote or hinder the development of science and technology? If you can demonstrate that it hinders (which I think has been argued by Christians for all religions other than Christianity), then it becomes clear that the effects of religion are negative. If it can be demonstrated that religion helps, then religion becomes a net positive. The same argument applies for todays world, without looking into the past or the future. Depending on how the arguments are constructed, this could be the main battleground.
There is another argument, that even if religion was once useful, it is no longer. All discussion of the past then es irrelevent.
I am sure it will be a fascinating debate. I hope it can stear clear of the old cliches about does God exist, none of which seem to justify any particular religion.
Before you can answer whether religion makes the world a better place, you first should define what exactly “making the world a better place” means. Pick some value – human progress, wealth, happiness, truth, etc. – and frame the entire debate around that value. It would also be useful to have a value criterion – some standard that you can use to measure the extent to which your value is being achieved.
As an example – suppose your value is human progress. A natural way value criterion would be the state of science and technology. It should be easy to argue that based on the nature of religion – that it is the acceptance of belief without evidence – and the history of the Catholic Church killing/suppressing scientists, that religion is pretty antithetical to science, and thus progress.
JLA: I think there are arguments that Christianity promotes science, by encouraging exploration of God’s creation. Mendel and his genetics experiments are an example of clerics producing good science.
Rebutal to “Religion is neccesary for absoulte morality” argument:
“This argument implicitly assumes God’s likes and dislikes are absolute, in a way people’s aren’t. If so, killing people for having gay sex would be good if God wanted it. Considering the Judeo-Christian religions, God gives a standing order to kill people who have gay sex in Leviticus 20:13…’If a man lies with another man as with a woman, it is an abomination. They shall surely be killed.’* If you believe God’s likes are absolute truth, you believe murdering people for having gay sex used to be the right thing to do. If you don’t believe killing people for having gay sex was ever right, you don’t think all of God’s likes and dislikes were moral. Thus, putting God in charge of morality does not solve the problem of moral relativism in any way. Of course, most people who credit God with absolute morality don’t believe killing people for gay sex used to be right–but that’s precisely the point: no one gets their morals from religion anyway.
*Instead of this line, you might say “tying someone up and throwing rocks at them till they died” used to be the morally appropriate way to deal with people who gathered firewood on the Sabbath.
I would expect you to make an argument about what religion does to the marginal actor. Does it push people who are marginally moral to be more or less moral? If someone is just barely tolerant of his strange neighbors, does religion nudge them towards the “ethnically cleanse them” solution or the “forgive them and tolerate their differences” solution? Does it nudge people toward being more charitable, or nudge them toward meaningless charities (like subsidizing a church/state institution)? I don’t have a fully formed argument to give, just an outline of the kind of argument I’d give.
(From “The God Delusion”) Apparently religion has no impact at all on an individual’s answers to the trolley problem. So any argument about religious people having better moral intuitions is probably wrong.
Are you going to blog your Freedom Fest talks? Will there be video/audio of it available?
Why don’t you (somehow) estimate and compare migration rates? Among adults (say, 20+ years old) what are rates of switching from atheism to religion and vice versa?
If possible, could you have them video tape the debate and post it on youtube?
Thanks!
Here is the best argument in favor of religion that I have heard:
http://paulgraham.com/lies.html
The money quote:
“You can’t distinguish your group by doing things that are rational, and believing things that are true. If you want to set yourself apart from other people, you have to do things that are arbitrary, and believe things that are false.”
The core idea is bundling. You create a bundle of attributes, some of them good things we can all agree on, and the rest religious nonsense. You tell your children “We are X’s, and X’s are hard-working, and honest, and go to [place of worship], and pray, and go to [heaven or whatever] when we die.” It’s the hard-working and honest bits that you WANT to instill, but they have to piggyback on the worship, prayer, and afterlife bits in order to stick, because it’s easier to form a group identity through false belief and arbitrary action.
If you look at the Judeo-Christian Bible in this light, it makes a lot more sense. And if you look at the history of Christianity, you can see that while the fantasy parts of its belief structure have done immeasurable harm, the other parts have done a lot of good. If it’s truly not feasible to have one without the other, then it’s possible that religion makes us better off, for certain bundles of true and false beliefs. “Certain bundles” being the key, because on the other hand you have faiths like fundamentalist Islam, which bundle few if any positive beliefs or behaviors together with their poisonous dogma.
If religion makes the world better, then one would expect the most religious parts of the world to be better off. One might, for example, in the US, try to determine if the Bible Belt states have greater economic prosperity, lower crime rates, or whatever other measures of “better world” one might wish to consider.
As an economist I am not very happy with the use of “world”, but rather think in terms of individual (maximizers). I think religion definitely makes individuals (that have it) better off. People prefer to diversify, and religious belief gives individuals the satisfaction of insurance against death or misfortune, which are otherwise systematic. I would speculate that religion could result in complacency and self-righteousness or self-sacrifice and good works. It could also promote self-sacrifice for the greater good. In any case, religion should be distinguished from the bureaucracy (church) which controls or attempts to control believers for purposes both laudable and evil, but always self-serving. Certainly there have been episodes of positive influence as well as negative, and of course one might judge religions differently. The difficult part of the question is in the implicit assumption that a world without religion (for better or worse) might exist. It is one of those institutions — family, government, markets — that emerge at all times everywhere, even when slightly disguised — Environmentalism, Marxism, Keynesianism.
Religion is the belief in nonsense. Nonsense that has no basis in fact, and more often than not contradicts fact. There is no way belief in nonsense can make the believer better off, except in the fairy tale sense of word. It is like saying the heroin user is better off in his heroin heaven. If rationalists cannot best nonsense in head to head combat, we’re done for.
If you have not already done so, consult Jerry Coyne’s blog for hundreds of good reasons why religion is a pile of crap.
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/
“There is no way belief in nonsense can make the believer better off”. I don’t think that is logically valid. If I have 1 of 2 passages to pass down, one leads to death, the other life. I pick passage A because I believe passge B contains dragons. Dragons may be nonsense, but passage A could stil bethe right one.
An interesting idea i heard from a colleague. Religion teaches basic ethics and morals. More strongly, without religion, it would be near impossible to correctly instill in the general population the necessary morals and ethics required for a society to function seamlessly.
Social people are happy people, religion is a necessity for most people to be social and civil, for societies to work etc…
Morals/Ethics outside of belief without evidence, considered under a framework of logic requires a decent mathematical competence and a strong curiosity for quite an esoteric subject.
Not so accessible to the general public.
Anything outside of this might as well be considered a form of religion.