Household Debate

[willtruncheon]

Sandy and I have been having a religious argument in our house this morning, which I want to reproduce here in the hopes that others might want to comment on it. I asked her to reproduce her side here, but she's a little too busy right now, so I'll just try to objectively boil down our respective statements here

Comments

[ironrat]

Technically, you are both correct: your assertion is that there is no evidence for the soul and that mainstream acceptance of an idea does not make it true (this is all correct); Sandy's argument is that there are benefits to belief in the soul (which is also true). "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they can make everyone happy."

But more to the point, I think I would emphasise is that religion is not just cultural repetition, and is much more than a cultural phenomenon. Belief in the religious is seen in the very poor and the very rich; people who can't read and people with multiple advanced degrees in the sciences; and in tribal people who have never seen electricity and haven't developed/aquired written language. It's a human phenomenon: people want to beleive in something greater than themselves. Religion fulfills that need (at the moment). Certainly, specific religions are cultural repetition (funny how I practice the same faith as my parents...), but religion itself is far beyond that. So what it comes down to is that humanity might be living a lie, but it's one that humanity wants to live (and changing human nature is not as simple as telling people there's a better way).

Also, belief without evidence is central to faith. If the soul could be disproven, it would be irrational to continue to believe in it; if the soul could be proven, it would be irrational not to believe in it*. I think that there's a reason religion is this way, whether imparted by a divine being or as a sociological phenomenon that evolved next to language and higher reasoning. It's so that people have a mechanism that can't be disproven for comforting themselves, controlling others, and accomplishing human things, because having that gets around the simple calculations of life, death, suffering, and happiness that otherwise plague human society.

(* Speaking of religious belief and rational behavior: no, religious belief is not inherently irrational; there are benefits to belief, both personal and social/cultural. And even if it is irrational, it's certainly no worse than countless other irrational human behaviors.)

(Sorry to comment semi-randomly, but I love geeking about religion...)

[willtruncheon]

Please comment any time! I love geeking about religion, too. I'm one of the lucky ones who has friends who can handle it.

I agree that there are benefits to having faith, but I feel that the point is moot. It's like saying that filling your shoes with helium will help you run faster. Well... it might, a little, possibly. But what would really, demonstrably help you run faster would be cross-training and a proper diet. You believe that lighting a candle and saying a prayer will make the world a better place? It might, but the evidence suggests that you'd be better spending your time by volunteering for community service.

[ironrat]

Well, a lot of the people who light a candle and say a prayer are also people who are doing social work like helping in soup kitchens, shelters, etc. Why is funding for faith-based institutions so controversial? It's not just because of the separation of church and state. It's also because these institutions are often really good at providing social services where the government is inefficient and ineffective. If the faith-based initiatives weren't good at it, there would be more backlack against funding. There's a correlation between lighting-a-candle-and-saying-a-prayer and giving money and time to help people who need it. Some people will be charitable without the prayer, and some people pray without being charitable, but if you aren't going to give your time or money to helping people, isn't it better to at least hold hope that things get better?

As an aside and possibly a tangent, if you believe that putting helium in your shoes will make you faster, it will. There have been interesting studies on the whole mind-over-body thing, with interesting results that show cases of people performing in a certain way even though they shouldn't have. My favorite is a study where athletes trained with morphine (which I think they said was a common practice, though it is illegal in competition), and then were given saline but told that it was morphine. Unlike whether or not they have a soul, you can prove what was injected. Despite the fact that they were not getting any chemical benefits from the saline, they performed as if they were on morphine. So putting helium in your shoes can only make you faster if you believe it will. (And serious training helps, too, I hear...)

[willtruncheon]

"...It's also because these institutions are often really good at providing social services where the government is inefficient and ineffective."

My gut is to disagree with you there, although I freely admit I don't have statistics to look at. The government-funded charities don't provide Bibles to people dying of protein deficiencies, or withhold aid dependent on religious beliefs. I feel the muted backlash against the faith-based initiatives is more due to general apathy, people's priorities, and the American tendency to tiptoe around or embrace issues of religious faith.

Also, I agree that it's important to hold hope for the future. Isn't hope based on fact and a plan of action a far stronger and reliable thing than hope based on an unprovable hypothesis?

[ironrat]

As for faith-based organziations, they have rules they are supposed to follow for doing good works that are designed to make sure that federal money is not spent on religious activities. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06616.pdf may or may not answer the question of whether or not the faith-based programs perform better (I skimmed it, but didn't give it any close look), but will give you an idea of a lot of the work that goes into making sure the programs are accountable and that funds aren't being spent to give Bibles to people dying of protein deficiencies or withholding aid based on religious belief. (Warning: that document, while full of information, was written by the government, so do not read it while operating machinery or vehicles, and if you have low blood pressure, you may fall into a coma.) I'll look for a better citation on the performance of faith-based initiatives. But there are serious considerations being made about how these things operate.

And here's some of the Brookings Institution's stuff on faith-based initiatives (which I also haven't read): http://www.brookings.edu/topics/faith-based-initiatives.aspx

I agree that hope based on fact is much, much better than basing it on unprovable hypotheses. Unfortunately, fact is a luxury that we don't usually have. Most of the time, life is limited-information game. Sometimes there's no information at all. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have hope. Are best guesses good enough to base hope on? When you're talking about science, or things that behave by consistent rules and laws, facts are great (mostly because they exist in those areas), but there are few facts when it comes to people, and we tend to ignore facts when they're inconvenient. Hope in spite of the facts is also a powerful motivator, becuase we can hope to be a statistical anomoly that bucks the trend. The fact that you have a 1 in 84 chance of dying in a motor vehicle accident over the course of your life (based on 2004 statistics) means that relatively young people with a lot of living yet to do should never be near cars if we want to live, but we drive anyway. The fact is that abstinence is the only way to prevent STDs and pregnancy, but people still have sex.

So I agree that facts are good things, but I don't think that they are abundant enough (sadly) to be the basis of human action. Which is unfortunate and sad, but also more interesting.