More apologetics

In an earlier blog post, I collected some links to Christian apologists for the Bible. A recent discussion of Google Buzz had me exchanging ideas with a Christian apologist, an Islamic apologist, and a few others. The Islamic/Muslim apologist provided plenty of links to videos of Dr. Zakir Naik.

Apologetics and hermeneutics: defending the Bible

In a previous blog post, I point to Deuteronomy Chapter 13 as an example of the kind of literal Bible that somewhere between 25% and 35% of the US population believes, if the results of a Gallup poll can be taken at face value. Sophisticated Christians (of the Michael Novak variety) are not unaware of Deuteronomy Chapter 13, and other embarrassing parts of the Bible. They’ve developed several lines of defense, which I outline below. In a subsequent post (which may take some time) I will outline my objections to these lines of defense.

(Note: I link to Wikipedia entries in the beginning but later in the post provide links to the writings of Christian apologists as well).

Christian apologetics (Wikipedia entry) is basically a branch of Christian theology that seeks to defend the Bible in rational, historical, and philosophical terms. Practitioners of Christian apologetics are termed Christian apologists. “Apologetics” and “apologists” are not merely derogatory terms used by critics but rather a label that Christian apologists happily embrace.

A key weapon in the apologist arsenal is Biblical hermeneutics (Wikipedia entry), a collection of sophisticated tools that, together, allow one to “interpret” any Biblical passage to obtain a meaning in stark contrast with what the passage appears (to the naive, untrained eye) to clearly say.

One principle that some apologists use to defend Deuteronomy and similar embarrassments is the Covenant principle, which basically argues that God chose different ways to “relate” to his “subjects” in different eras, and “signed” different Covenants with his subjects in each era. A covenant that was suitable in the time and place where Deuteronomy was situated is not applicable today. In this telling, there is nothing per se wrong with killing people who worship other Gods, because these people (including those living in different cities) have all “signed” a covenant with God to worship him (of their own free will, perhaps?) so that it is justified to kill them for violation of “contract.”

Let’s consider Christian apologist Aaron Brake making a valiant effort to describe the relation between Old Testament law and what Christians should do today. Brake makes three points, which I quote here (preserving bold and emphasis):

First, it must be remembered that the Mosaic Law is a covenant and this covenant is a binding contract between two specific parties: Yahweh and Israel. Christians under the new covenant are not in view here. This means “we should assume… that none of its stipulations (laws) are binding on us unless they are renewed in the new covenant.”(5)

This leads to the second point: many (though not all) of the civil and ritual laws of the Old Testament are clearly not renewed in the New Testament. These laws served to govern the daily life of ancient Israel both in their relationship with God and their relationship with one another. Even though these laws are God’s self-revelation revealing the character of God, it must be remembered that no Christian today is a citizen of ancient Israel.(6) Furthermore, the ritual laws within Israelite worship and ceremony found their fulfillment in the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Finally, some laws and aspects of the old covenant are renewed in the new covenant and therefore are binding on Christians. These include the two great commandments found in Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 as well as the Ten Commandments.

In summary, while the Law may not be regulatory for Christians it continues to be revelatory.

An article on the Tektonics website titled The Law and The Christian considers three different kinds of laws:

• First, some laws are universal moral laws. This includes do not steal, do not kill, and others. There is no disagreement that these laws should indeed be continued to be obeyed today, so we need not discuss them further.
• Second, some laws are cultural universals. By this I mean laws geared to Israel’s culture that have a universal moral law behind them. As an example, some have suggested the prohibition on trimming your beard [Lev. 19:27] relates to pagan practices that cut facial hair for magical purposes. So the universal behind this cultural would be, don’t do the occult. But here is my favorite example, from Deut. 22:8-9: “When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof.” One Skeptic says, “One would be hard-pressed to find home builders” who follow this rule. But actually they do follow the modern equivalent. In ancient Israel, the flat roof of a house would be used for many purposes, such as sleeping, household chores, and entertaining. These chores included drying and storage of produce; even today the roof is used for such things in modern Arab nations. We don’t use our roof the same way — the modern equivalent is a balcony. Our builders certainly do make sure that they follow the point of this rule to the letter. At any rate, it would also be agreed that the universals behind these cultural applications should continue to be followed.
• Finally, there are ceremonial laws. Instructions for building the Ark of the Covenant, for example, are definitely in this, as are sacrificial laws. What else belongs in here? Most likely the dietary laws belong here, as their purpose was to make the Jews “different” and to serve as a testimony to their difference in the most intimate ancient setting, that of meal fellowship.

Another article on the Tektonics website, titled Deuteronomy and the JEDP thesis, considers the specific problem of interpreting Deuteronomy. A somewhat oblique passage considers the subtleties behind Yahweh’s crystal clear rules for killing apostates:

Chapter 13 contains a number of regulations concerning apostasy from the faith of Yahweh. Von Rad [VR.Dt, 15] supposes that these rules must have a late source because the chapter assumes that the apostasy is initiated by a prophet; and:

…(S)uch a suggestion can, after all, have come only from a class of prophets which was already seriously contaminated by Canaanite syncretism; moreover the nebiim (prophets) during Samuel’s time did not possess such a leading position in the people’s life.

Likewise, von Rad supposes that the misleading of an entire city is something that could only have happened under the monarchy.

Why was a “class” of prophets necessary? Did the position of “prophet” not exist before this time? Did not the Egyptians and the Canaanites and others well before Moses have alleged “prophets”? (Cf. Gen. 20:7 – the role of the prophet is “abundantly attested” in the ANE as one who was an “ambassador of the gods” – Merr.Dt, 230) Are not the social roles of the charismatic and the dupes one that has existed since time immemorial? Does syncretism wait for evolution? (Not according to the way modern cults operate!)

Sophisticated Christian theologian William Lane Craig makes the case for divinely ordered genocide, while speaking out against humanly decided genocide in this blog post:

Think of it! God stays His judgement of the Canaanite clans 400 years because their wickedness had not reached the point of intolerability! This is the long-suffering God we know in the Hebrew Scriptures. He even allows his own chosen people to languish in slavery for four centuries before determining that the Canaanite peoples are ripe for judgement and calling His people forth from Egypt.

By the time of their destruction, Canaanite culture was, in fact, debauched and cruel, embracing such practices as ritual prostitution and even child sacrifice. The Canaanites are to be destroyed “that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God” (Deut. 20.18). God had morally sufficient reasons for His judgement upon Canaan, and Israel was merely the instrument of His justice, just as centuries later God would use the pagan nations of Assyria and Babylon to judge Israel.

But why take the lives of innocent children? The terrible totality of the destruction was undoubtedly related to the prohibition of assimilation to pagan nations on Israel’s part. In commanding complete destruction of the Canaanites, the Lord says, “You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods” (Deut 7.3-4). This command is part and parcel of the whole fabric of complex Jewish ritual law distinguishing clean and unclean practices. To the contemporary Western mind many of the regulations in Old Testament law seem absolutely bizarre and pointless: not to mix linen with wool, not to use the same vessels for meat and for milk products, etc. The overriding thrust of these regulations is to prohibit various kinds of mixing. Clear lines of distinction are being drawn: this and not that. These serve as daily, tangible reminders that Israel is a special people set apart for God Himself.

In a subsequent post, I will discuss some of my objections to Christian apologetics (many of which will also apply to apologetics for other religious doctrines).

Deuteronomy Chapter 13

As I buzzed recently, Deuteronomy Chapter 13 is one of the most fascinating parts of the Judeo-Christio-Islamic tradition. Among other things, Yahweh (i.e., God), speaking directly, says the following in crystal clear language:

• Ignore all future prophets, for they are false prophets. You know, like Jesus or Mohammad.

• If any of your relatives urge you to worship “other Gods” then kill them and make sure everybody else hears about it so that all may fear. The instructions for dealing with atheists and agnostics are a little unclear, though the general tone suggests that even atheists are not to be spared.

• If you hear about other Gods emerging in any city, then investigate the matter. If it turns out to be true, destroy the city entirely.

While much of the violence in the Old Testament is more of the “show, don’t tell” variety, with Biblical heroes engaging in inspirational forms of violence, Deuteronomy Chapter 13 is one of the starkest examples of clear explicit unambiguous instructions to kill individuals and destroy cities if they don’t share a belief in and a desire to worship Yahweh.

This is the Bible that, according to Gallup polls over the last 20 years, somewhere between 25% and 35% of the US population claim to believe is the actual word of God and is meant to be taken literally (as I buzzed recently, and have reiterated in many previous blog posts). This is in contrast to about 45-50% of the US population that believes that the Bible is “inspired” by the word of God, and about 20% of the population that believes that the Bible is a collection of ancient fables, legends, and history recorded by Man. Other polls, such as a 2005 Rasmussen poll find a higher percentage of literal belief in the Bible — 63% — but this may partly be due to the absence of an attractive intermediate option.

So here is the logic:

• About 25% — or more– of people in the US claim to believe that the Bible is the actual word of God, meant to be taken literally. In sophisticated theological terms, they believe in the inerrancy of the Bible.

• Translations of the Bible into English and almost all other widely spoken languages are available for free online (here, here, here, here, and here, for starters) and in a wide variety of print formats readily accessible throughout the United States. Most people is the US, even if functionally illiterate, can understand spoken English or some other language spoken. Read-aloud versions and recordings of the Bible are also available (here and here, for instance). Thus, the people who claim to believe that the Bible are in a position to access the Bible.

• Deuteronomy Chapter 13 unequivocally commands people to kill those among their relatives who worship other Gods, and destroy entire cities if the worship of other Gods is found there.

Assuming the Gallup poll is correct, the implications are clear: these people either stand behind Deuteronomy Chapter 13, or they don’t know what is in the Bible despite claiming that it is the actual word of God and being able to readily access it, or they’re just lying to pollsters. None of these options seems particularly flattering.

In a subsequent blog post, I will mention some attempts by sophisticated Christians (of the Michael Novak type) to defend the Bible.

Libertarianism incompatible with atheism? Not by a long shot

As an atheist who holds libertarian/classical liberal views, I’m a bit puzzled at the claim that atheism is fundamentally incompatible with ideals of individual liberty, free markets, and limited government. Going over the rationales behind libertarianism and atheism would take a lot of effort, but a number of prominent examples here poke holes in the empirical assertion that libertarianism and atheism are incompatible.

Probably the most complete and thorough account of the history of libertarian thought and movement in 20th century USA is the book Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement by Brian Doherty. In the book, Doherty, currently a senior editor at Reason Magazine and himself a libertarian, identifies five leading lights of the libertarian movement: novelist and “Objectivist” Ayn Rand, free market economist and libertarian thinker Milton Friedman, anarcho-capitalistic economist Murray Rothbard, his mentor Ludwig von Mises (founder of the Austrian school), and economist and social theorist Friedrich Hayek. Let’s see what we can gather about the religious beliefs of each of these:

• Ayn Rand was not merely an atheist, she was a fiery (if not always coherent or convincing) advocate of atheism — here’s just one video and here’s the Ayn Rand Institute’s take on the subject with a quote from one of Rand’s novels. As Doherty describes, Ayn Rand often provided “proofs” of the non-existence of God and refused to talk to people who weren’t immediately convinced by those proofs; one of these people was Murray Rothbard’s wife.

• Milton Friedman was an agnostic (see also this), and specifically claimed that the values that motivated him did not arise from religious belief. In a discussion, he claimed that his religion was “freedom” — further stating that he didn’t know why he felt so passionately about freedom, but he did. Friedman did not spend any of his energies on advocating for or against religion.

• Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises were also agnostic. See here.

• I don’t have any information on Murray Rothbard’s religious views, but his arguments and framework was largely secular. Nonetheless, Rothbard also considered libertarian principles to be compatible with and derivable from religion — see here, for instance.

Other prominent people with significant libertarian-cum-agnostic/atheistic leanings include: satirist H. L. Mencken, satirist P. J. O’Rourke, libertarian thinker and activist Tom G. Palmer, economist Bryan Caplan, David Friedman, a law and economics professor (and also the son of Milton Friedman), Reason’s award-winning science correspondent Ronald Bailey, columnist David Harsanyi, skeptic Michael Shermer, comedian Penn Jillette, and blogger-cum-writer Amit Varma. Among the rich, there’s the example of the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who have donated significantly to free market think tanks and advocacy groups such as the Cato Institute and the Institute for Humane Studies — but David Koch at any rate seems to be nonreligious though he hasn’t said so openly.

More importantly, almost all the intellectual work done at libertarian think tanks and institutions (such as Cato, the IHS, Reason Foundation, the Independent Institute, and the Institute for Justice) has an explicitly secular, non-religious flavor, being (in general) neither pro-religion nor anti-religion. Thus, libertarians have opposed faith-based initiatives while supporting (at least to some extent) voucher programs to attend religious schools.

Novak’s sophisticated theology

As an atheist who regularly writes blog posts on religion, one of the things I find most frustrating is the enormous amount of effort devoted to “sophisticated” arguments for and against the existence of God. My main purpose in writing about religion is not so much to conclusively settle the question of whether God exists and what the physics or metaphysics of such a God might be, but rather to relentlessly point out that the metaphysics subscribed to by the adherents of the world’s largest religions is false and misleading. Thoughtful people on both sides of the theism/atheism divide would do well to acknowledge that whatever the range of possibilities for the existence of the “supernatural”, the visions espoused by the Bible and Koran are way outside the range.

It requires some understanding of biology and many other subjects to determine whether intelligent design offers a plausible account for the origin of life. It would certainly be possible for somebody who has not studied evolution (and even for somebody who has) to come to the conclusion that intelligent design, rather than evolution, explains the origin of life. A conclusion favoring intelligent design of biological organisms is, in my view (and that of the vast majority of scientists and scientifically informed people) false — but it is not obviously false. On the other hand, acceptance of these theories lends little credence to any specific religious doctrine. In particular, accepting the broad contours of the intelligent design argument lends little concrete support for the Virgin birth of Jesus, Immaculate Conception, Transubstantiation, Armageddon or any of the common flood myths.

It also requires a considerable understanding of physics to even comment intelligently on the question of whether the current understanding of cosmological constants provides evidence for or against a cosmic designer of some sort. But whether or not you believe that it does, this provides little evidence for biblical, Koranic, or Hindu conceptions of the origins of the universe. In fact, even agreeing to enter this debate would entail giving up on a literal interpretation of all religious accounts of human origins.

Novak’s sophisticated theology versus religion on the ground

One of the proponents of sophisticated theology is Michael Novak, a self-described Roman Catholic. In a lengthy review of recent “New Atheism” books by Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, Novak lays out the viewpoint of “serious Christians” and argues that the “New Atheism” books caricature these views.

Novak pokes fun at the New Atheists and rural Georgians for being so stupid as to actually believe that the Bible is to be interpreted literally:

It was, then, a huge disappointment to me to find that Dennett, Harris, and especially Dawkins paid no attention to the actual conversion experiences and narratives of fidelity, which are so common in the prison literature of our time. Moreover, none of them ever put their weak, confused, and unplumbed ideas about God under scrutiny. Their natural habit of mind is anthropomorphic. They tend to think of God as if He were a human being, bound to human limitations. They are almost as literal in their readings of the Bible as the least educated, most literal-minded fundamentalist in Flannery O’Connor’s rural Georgia. They regale themselves with finding contradictions and impossibilities in these literal readings of theirs, but the full force of their ridicule depends on misreading the literary form of the Biblical passages at stake, whether they be allegorical, metaphorical, poetic, or resonant with many meanings, for the nourishment of a soul under stress. The Bible almost never pretends to be science, or strictly literal history.

If only! Novak ignores both current polling data and historical facts. Gallup polls over the last 20 years consistently demonstrate that between 25% and 35% of Americans claim to believe that the Bible is the “actual word of God, to be taken literally.” Sam Harris mentions these polls repeatedly in the book that Novak has reviewed, so Novak should be aware of these polls. In the poll linked to, 31% claim that the Bible is the “actual word of God, to be taken literally” while a (disjoint) 47% claim that the Bible is “inspired by the word of God.” Since the people subscribing to the Judeo-Christian tradition constitute about 90% of the American population, this means that about one-third of people in this tradition claim to believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. This isn’t an absolute majority, but it is not a minority either, and it certainly is not just a couple of uneducated rural Georgians.

Further, other polls that do not include the intermediate response option “inspired by the word of God” report much higher percentages of people who claim the Bible to be literally true. This suggests that many who don’t believe that the Bible is literally true still find it closer to “literally true” than the opposite, so the Gallup estimates of 30% are, if anything an underestimate. Consider a 2005 Rasmussen poll that found that 63% of Americans believe the Bible to be literally true, as opposed to 24% who categorically disagree. A 2006 poll found the proportion of literal believers in the Bible to be as high as 75% in Alabama and Arkansas.

Moreover, specific Biblical predictions fare just as well in the popular American imagination. A Pew poll finds 41% of respondents believing that the Second come of Jesus will probably happen over the next fifty years. This isn’t merely a function of people believing that strange events are highly probable (though that’s part of the story) — only 31% believe that an asteroid probably will destroy the earth. Another Pew poll indicates that 36% of Americans, 51% of Black Americans, and 63% of Evangelical White Americans, believe that Israel fulfills the Biblical prophecy about the Second Coming.

If the ordinary masses are just too ignorant of real religion, perhaps their holy books fare better? Actually, no: the Bible (as well as the Koran) condone violence, misogyny, and mass murder.

So what about the current religious leaders? The movers and shakers of religious opinion? In the recent past, the Pope has claimed that Hell is to be taken literally (though there have also been some instances of repudiation of such claims — like most politicians, the Pope needs to satisfy the needs of multiple constituencies), and religious leaders in the United States have helpfully created a video primer on Hell. Exorcism conferences continue to be organized by Catholic bishops. Fringe subsects of Christianity fare no better: here is the Jehovah’s Witnesses website explaining that God’s Kingdom is literal and awaits us, and the Mormon FAQ on God (where people explain that God is literal, human, and loving). And who can forget Timothy LaHaye’s apocalyptic end-of-the-world Left Behind (see also the Wikipedia entry), which has sold well north of 50 million copies?

So here we have: statistical evidence on what people (claim to) believe, the contents of religious texts, and the words and actions of a large number of religious “leaders” and movers and shakers of religious opinion. I obviously don’t claim that an absolute majority of self-identified Christians believe in the literal truth of the Bible. But all the strands of evidence suggest that at least a third of Christians come pretty close to taking the Bible literally, or at least claiming to do so.

I cannot locate polls about the Bible in European, African, or Asian countries that have significant Christian populations. However, making the not unreasonable assumption (backed by cross-state comparisons within the US) that a literal interpretation of the Bible correlates generally with a lower degree of knowledge and understanding of science and less exposure to modern technology, it seems unlikely, at least prima facie, that Christians in, say, Nigeria are less likely to take the Bible literally than Christians in the United States.

If Novak has issues with the Gallup, Rasmussen, or Pew polls (many of which Sam Harris references), the violent tone of the Bible, or with the statements emanating from religious leaders, he does not raise them in his long essay. Rather, he tacitly assumes that his own sophisticated serious version of Christianity (whose adherents he calls “serious Christians”) is shared by almost everybody else who identifies as Christian:

All this taken into account, it strikes me that the only way to proceed is to lay out, on one side, the way in which young questioning minds in American universities are repelled by the atheism that is the lingua franca of nearly all classrooms and academic discussions, and, on the other side, a very brief confession of what exactly that Christianity is that Dennett, Harris, and Dawkins find distasteful, evil, dangerous, and disgusting. Despite their disrespect, Christianity manages somehow to be highly attractive to approximately one-third of the population of the world (just over two billion persons), and is still today the fastest growing of all religions. It is important to explain that attraction before addressing their specific objections.

After being so dismissive of at least a third of his co-religious compatriots to the extent of treating their views as non-serious, Novak then turns around and accuses Sam Harris of being arrogant in his book Letter To a Christian Nation:

The letter that Harris claims is intended for a Christian nation is in fact wholly uninterested in Christianity on any level, is hugely ignorant, and essentially represents his own love letter to himself, on account of his being superior to the stupid citizens among whom he lives.

Actually, no, Sam Harris penned his short book as a response to the large number of letters that Harris has received from people of all faiths, some of whom have also sent him death threats due to which he needs bodyguards.

Let’s look a little more closely at Novak’s own theology.

The Arthur Brooks case for religion

In a previous blog post, I considered two decent arguments for religion. When I say “argument for religion” I do not mean an argument for the existence of God or the epistemological truth of religious doctrine, but rather, argument for its social utility, leaving aside questions of truth.

These arguments were theoretical arguments, and, in fact, they were adaptations of arguments from a non-religious context. In that blog post, I showed that the arguments (i) did lend some support to the case for a positive influence of religion, and (ii) could also be reframed in a manner that lent support for a negative influence of religion. At any rate, they are not as compelling as some pro-religion proponents may make them out to be.

In general, the role of religion at an individual and community level in influencing social indicators seems to be fairly ambiguous. The anti-religion side likes to highlight evidence such as Gregory Paul’s comparison of religious and nonreligious societies which states that:

[18] In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

In a similar vein, those building the case against religion can point to the data indicating that religion is positively correlated with negative social indicators and negatively correlated with positive social indicators when comparing states of the USA (though this does nothing to establish causation), see also here (teen pregnancy) and here (divorce rates). And, of course, when considering religion worldwide, Islamic societies stand out as all too clear examples.

On the other hand, pro-religion people can point to studies indicating that greater religiosity at the individual level is correlated with many social positives. At the anecdotal evidence are all the stories of how regular church membership reforms ghetto kids in American inner cities and towns into responsible adults (see, for instance, the Manhattan Institute’s Jeremiah Project: 1, 2, 3). In another part of the world, African teenage males who hitherto whiled away their time in socially destructive behaviors are “saved” by the moral teachings of Islam and Christianity into becoming responsible and hardworking adults with strict moral standards. Many studies and journal articles confirm the positive impact that religion can have on the lives of people who were otherwise meandering into crime. From humanitarian atheists to stingy atheists, many acknowledge the role that religious institutions play in getting the wayward back on their feet.

Social science research fails to settle the effect of religiosity conclusively, but there are some interesting tentative conclusions: controlling for other factors, religiosity correlates positively with victimful crimes and negatively with victimless crimes (such as substance abuse), but few findings seem clear. See this paper, for instance.

Given all these ambiguities, I’ve decided to take up one pro-religion case that I consider more clearly argued and backed up with strong data than most: the case laid out by Arthur Brooks in his book Who Really Cares? The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism.

Brooks’ case

In this short but eminently readable book, Brooks deduces from surveys and data on giving that religiosity is a strong positive predictor of whether and how much people donate to private charities. Closely following (and also related with) religiosity is belief about the role of government. Brooks finds that religious people who regularly attend a house of worship are much more likely to give, and give much more in monetary terms, to both religious and secular charities.

Further, those who believe that it is the duty of government to reduce income differences are much less likely to donate to charity. Brooks considers religious conservatives, religious liberals, secular liberals and secular conservatives. He finds that religious conservatives and religious liberals are most likely to donate to charity, with religious conservatives donating somewhat more. Among the secular individuals (note here that secular doesn’t necessary mean atheistic, it just means that the person does not identify with a particular religion) liberals score somewhat higher on generosity and charity than conservatives.

Brooks argues that the clear lead of the religious extends after controlling for a number of other factors. Numerically, the “working poor” dominate the religious-cum-charitable category, so we are not talking about a few religious billionaires who donate huge fortunes. Further, this clear lead is reflected not just in monetary donations, but also in generosity, honesty, volunteering, and blood donations.

Brooks professes being surprised at the data himself. Much of his book focuses on the role of beliefs about the role of government and their relation with people’s charitable donations, but that part does not interest us here.

While I haven’t checked Brooks’ data in detail (all of which is based on analyses of many surveys done at different times by other parties, and all calculations are in the appendix of his book) but at least prima facie, it seems fairly convincing. Further, I have seen no convincing counter-arguments to the above broad conclusions (though there’s a list of concerns raised in this blog post).

Should I start believing in God?

If it is true that religious people are (on average) more charitable, generous, and honest than their secular counterparts, even after controlling for a variety of factors, is that a compelling reason to try to start believing in God? I argue not.

First, many of the things that religion enables people to do are not rocket science. If you think it is good to donate to charity, joining a church and attending Sunday sermons is not at all necessary to do so. It may be helpful if there were evidence that religious people had access to unique and hard-to-find information about which charities to donate to. But I’m not aware of any such evidence.

Even as an atheist, if you aren’t the militant types, and you believe that your local house of worship is doing things that deserve your support on purely secular grounds (such as feeding the poor, helping the wayward get back on track) you can cut a check of a few thousand dollars and offer it to the house of worship. Most probably, they would have no qualms about taking money from a non-believer.

You may be more convinced that problems in other parts of the world deserve your attention. It’s not hard to find websites where, in a matter of minutes, you can select a wide variety of charities from which to select one to make donations ranging from $25 to $10,000, as well as websites that review the state of the art in charity and philanthropy and compare the effectiveness of charities: GiveWell, Philanthropedia, Charity Navigator, American Institute of Philanthropy, BBB, Network for Good, etc. are just some examples. You could also make a personalized micro-donation through Global Giving which “matches donors and projects.” And more and more of that kind — it’s rather easy to donate money. Admittedly, it is somewhat harder to donate money to be used effectively, but it isn’t clear that religious teachings provide guidance on making these tough choices or that religious individuals who make donations are likely to receive more bang for the buck. The typical Sunday sermon at church or Friday prayer at the mosque is not usually devoted to Giving 101, let alone Giving 599.

Moreover, some of the richest and biggest donors do not seem to regularly attend houses of worship. Bill Gates of Gates Foundation fame claims that he does not believe in the Sermon of the Mount and thinks that attending church on Sunday is not the most efficient use of his time. Warren Buffett, a big donor to the Gates Foundation, also doesn’t seem to have attended any house of worship, and his assistant claims that he is agnostic. See here.

Billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch pushed the frontiers of philanthropy in many directions. David has given $100 million for a cancer institute at MIT, a sizable amount of money for the David Koch Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian Institute. The Koch brothers also donated money to kickstart a number of free market think tanks and advocacy groups such as the libertarian Cato Institute, Institute for Humane Studies, and Americans For Prosperity (earning the ire of the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer –see a response). Yet, the evidence indicates that David Koch is an atheist or at any rate nonreligious — see for instance this discussion between him and Suzan Mazur and deduce for yourself.

Of course, if you are pretty much certain that you do not want to donate money, then this rationale for joining a religious organization becomes an anti-rationale.

The other rationales fall even flatter. Yes, religious people may on average lead more generous and honest lives. But if you want to lead a more generous and honest life, it isn’t all that hard. Yes, leading an exemplary life may be hard, but there is little evidence here that religion pushes people to the extremes of virtue, whether measured in religious or nonreligious terms.

A further counter-argument

The main reason why I think that religious “faith” is not the best way to become virtuous is more mundane:much of religious truth is false, and fails even as a close approximation of the truth. The Biblical, Koranic, or Hindu accounts of the origins of humans, life and the universe, are certainly all wrong; and this distinguishes them from the currently accepted evolutionary theories as well as cosmological universe birth theories, which, while probably not completely correct (and offering only a partial answer to cosmological questions), offer a reasonable working approximation that generates useful testable predictions, which are being refined and improved.

Now, if you are interested in living an ordinary decent life, then the falsehood of religion’s factual claims may not matter much. However, if you are keen on living a life of excellence and virtue, devoted to doing the maximum good for the world, then it’s important to have reasonably good factual models. This is particularly important because a basic understanding of subjects as diverse as biology, economics, chemistry, psychology, history, and mathematics is necessary to have a good working model of the consequences and second order effects of one’s actions. I’m not suggesting here that scientific knowledge or understanding is anywhere near good enough to provide definitive answers to questions of ethics or virtue, but rather that they form an indispensable tool to thinking about these questions. The bulk of “faith-based” religion is opposed to this process, hence making morality highly dependent on the specifics that somehow got fixed as part of the faith. These specifics aren’t terrible (and those that are usually aren’t followed anyway — with some notable exceptions) but they aren’t great either.

The Brooks argument reduces the case for urgent militant atheism

Having argued that the data and arguments laid out by Arthur Brooks provide little encouragement to start believing in religion, they do weaken the general case for urgent advocacy of atheism or de-religion. Rather, for people who advocate a world free of religion, it is important to focus not merely on the ills of religion but also on how the manner in which religion encourages virtuous behavior can be emulated in a religion-free society, and why this is not happening as of now in the data collected by Brooks.

Much good work has been done on this in recent times and I will discuss this work in a subsequent blog post.

Why I write about religion

Why am I, an atheist, writing about religion? Here are some of the reasons:

• Arrogance and condescension: As a member of an intellectually arrogant elite, I look down at religion, with nothing but contempt, derision, and condescension for people’s simpleton belief in that guy in the sky who’s looking out for them.

• Atheist fundamentalism: Like the fundamentalists of all stripes, I am an evangelical atheist, preaching intolerance and lack of scientific openness, seeking converts to my “religion” cloaked with a false scientific-sounding certainty.

• Rebellion: Due to psychological defects caused perhaps by a poor relationship with my father, I espouse atheism as a signal of rebellion.

• Self-serving ethos: As a selfish individualist who wants to have selfish fun, I choose to elevate fickle human empathy over transcendental meaning, and choose not to believe in religious morality so that I can get on with the drinking, binging, and morally irresponsible behavior that corrupts and destroys society with its liberal agenda.

• Ignorance of real religion: Like a prototypical village atheist, I am ignorant of the fact that the violence, misogyny, and mass murder in the holy books of the world’s top two religions are not really believed by their adherents. Moreover, the violence of religious holy texts is not responsible for the violence carried out by adherents of the religion in its name.

More possible explanations here.

Religious violence: identity and doctrine

When it comes to violence carried out in the name of religion, there are two distinct schools of approaches to explain such violence. I describe both of them briefly and then explore them in more detail.

The first school, that I call the identity school, views religion as merely yet another form of group identity, with in-group love and intra-group sacrifice being exhibited just as for national, tribal, racial, and ethnic loyalties. In some cases, this in-group love is accompanied by a desire to actively harm out-groups, or to avenge out-groups for real or perceived damages to others in one’s in-group. The identity school naturally tends to underplay (though not entirely destroy) differences between religions, because any religion — even an inherently peaceful one — can be used to create in-group solidarity and out-group hatred. Thus, by this account, the fact that Muslim terrorists outnumber Jain terrorists is explained not so much by differences in the tenets of Islam and Jainism as by differences in geopolitical and inter-group dynamics.

The second school, that I call the doctrine school, views specific religious doctrines, such as those found in the Holy Books of the religion, as responsible for shaping the form and scope of religious violence.

The identity school

I’ve already described the identity school above. Some examples of the proponents of the identity school include:

• Robert Pape, in his book Dying To Win and elsewhere, argues that religious terrorists often have specific geopolitical objectives and their organizations strategically choose their targets to achieve those objectives. Religious doctrine may help support these objectives, but is not a prime motivator.

• Amartya Sen, in his book Identity and Violence (see also this review in the Guardian) (Note: I haven’t read the book, but have read related work by the author), says that stereotyping people with identities (such as religious ones) creates divisions and foments violence.

• Martha Nussbaum, in her book The Clash Within (see also this article in Boston Review), argues that there is a clash within individuals and within communities between two impulses — an inclusive and liberal impulse with an expansive moral circle (GOOD), and a parochial impulse of in-group solidarity combined with out-group hatred (BAD). She sees this as the source of much religiously motivated violence. In particular, Nussbaum argues that recent incidents of violence in the name of Hinduism in India are an example of this, and Hindu criticisms of Islam as evil are motivated by the parochial impulse.

Viewing religious violence overwhelmingly as an identity issue leads to the following general conclusions:

• The specifics of religious doctrine are not very important. An inherently peaceful religion can be subverted by extremists and hate-mongers, while a religion that preaches violence … actually, no religion truly preaches violence — rather, invariably, the situation is of a peaceful religion hijacked by extremists.

• In particular, this means that an attack of religious doctrine per se is a dead end. It might even backfire, as the peaceful majority that adheres to the religion may take offense and jump into the extremist camp out of a sense of despair and siege.

• Building on the above, the difference between religions in their contribution to violence is largely an artifact of geopolitics, economics, and recent historical accidents rather than the contents of religious texts.

• Expanding people’s moral circle would involve helping find common ground between religions and embracing all religions and faiths rather than confronting religion.

Over and above its merits, the identity school also has a subtle message that resonates politically with many “liberals” —

Two decent arguments for religion

I am an unrepentant atheist and am not fond of treating religion with kid gloves. Nonetheless, on the big question: does religion, on balance, do more good than harm? I tend to be pretty agnostic. My main goal in the past has been to list the harmful effects of religion, which are often understated or elided in an attempt to appease the sentiments of the religious.

For a change, in this post, I consider some of the common positive arguments for religion. Note that I don’t even try to argue for the plausibility of Abrahamic conceptions of God, or even for any version of a man-in-the-sky (i.e., theism). Rather, I consider common arguments that are and can be formulated for religion in terms of its broader effects on people’s behavior and the conduct of society. For simplicity, I restrict myself to two arguments:

• Wisdom in tradition: This states that tradition often embodies wisdom that is acquired through several generations of trial and error, and religion offers a convenient way of encapsulating this wisdom and conveying it to people. Even if a full explicit rational basis for this wisdom is not articulated, religious teachings can provide useful heuristics for behavior that helps society conduct itself smoothly.

• Belief in belief: This states that even if religious beliefs are wrong in their specifics, if believing them makes people happy, then religious belief is good. In other words, the epistemological concern for truth may give way to the need for comfort and the sense of purpose in life, among other benefits that religion provides.

Some militant atheists tend to be dismissive of these arguments in a knee-jerk sense as somehow offensive. I think such a reaction is uncalled for. Both these arguments are important and, to an extent, valid arguments, and form part of the explanation why many people who lack personal religious conviction view religion as good for society.

In this post, I examine both these arguments in closer detail. This closer examination reveals that while both these arguments could be used to provide some support for religion, they could also offer arguments against religion. Weighing the overall balance of these arguments is tricky.

Wisdom in tradition

The importance of “tacit knowledge” embodied in “social processes” has been pointed out time and again. The famous classical liberal economist and social theorist Friedrich Hayek (author of The Road To Serfdom) in particular spoke out against the desire to achieve rapid change by designing the institutions of the society from the top down. Hayek lays out his view of the importance of tacit, distributed knowledge in this essay titled The Use of Knowledge in Society.

He also spoke about the importance of societal norms and rules as ways of storing and propagating the knowledge and wisdom acquired by people through past experiences, while having the kind of flexibility that allowed individuals to violate them. To quote from Hayek’s famous classic The Constitution of Liberty (Page 62-63):

We understand one another and get along with one another, are able to act successfully on our plans, because, most of the time, members of our civilization conform to unconscious patterns of conduct, show a regularity in their actions that is not the result of commands or coercion, often not even of any conscious adherence to known rules, but of firmly established habits and traditions. [...] In some instances it would be necessary, for the smooth running of society, to secure a similar uniformity by coercion, if such conventions or rules were not followed often enough. [...] There is an advantage in obedience to such rules not being coerced, not only because coercion as such is bad, but because it is, in fact, often desirable that rules should be observed only in most instances and that the individual should be able to transgress them when it seems worthwhile to incur the odium which this will cause. It is also important that the strength of the social pressure and of the force of habit which insures this observance is variable. It is this flexibility of voluntary rules which in the field of morals makes gradual evolution and spontaneous growth possible, which allows further experience to lead to modifications and improvements. Such an evolution is possible only with rules which are neither coercive nor deliberately imposed — rules which, though observing them is regarded as merit and though they will be observed by the majority, can be broken by individuals who feel they have strong enough reasons to brave the censure of their fellows. Unlike any deliberately imposed coercive rules, which can be changed only discontinuously and for all at the same time, rules of this kind allow for gradual and experimental change. The existence of individuals and groups simultaneously observing partially different rules provides the opportunity for the selection of the more efficient ones.

Inspired by Hayek, Thomas Sowell takes a similar view of systemic processes and knowledge, as described in his books Knowledge and Decisions and Conflict of Visions. In the latter book, he writes (pages 41-42):

Also implicit in the unconstrained vision is the view that the relevant comparison is between the beliefs of one sort of person and another — between x and y, rather than between (1) systemic processes working through successive generation of individual a through x, as expressed through the living generation x, versus (2) the articulated rationality of y in isolation. The rejection of the concept of collective wisdom leaves individual comparisons as the standard of judgment. Since the experiences of a through w no longer count, the issue reduces to the articulated rationality of x versus that of y. Therefore, the unconstrained vision necessarily favors the “cultivated mind” y, while the constrained vision necessarily favors the views expressed through x, seen as representative of the unarticulated experience of many others (a through w). The two visions thus lead to opposite conclusions as to which opinion should prevail, and why.

While he doesn’t do so in this book, Sowell later comes out strongly in favor of a constrained vision. In his later book The Vision of the Anointed, Sowell makes a whipping boy of the “unconstrained vision” which he rechristens as the “Utopian vision.”

Neither Hayek nor Sowell explicitly take religious worldviews or religious traditions as examples of wisdom accumulated over the centuries. Also, neither of them seems to be personally religious. Hayek appears to have been an agnostic. Sowell is an ex-Marxist and is thus likely to have been non-religious at at least some point in his life. Though he has never betrayed either religious or non-religious sentiments in his writings, he openly acknowledges the influence of Darwin and also pokes holes in the “animistic fallacy” (including creationist worldviews) and “proofs of the existence of God” in Knowledge and Decisions.

So, to what extent do these arguments clinch the case for religion? Not much, as we shall see.

Best articulated rationality

It is one thing to argue that every individual should be able to justify his or her heuristics using articulated rationality. This argument seems flawed to me, because individuals use cognitive shortcuts by relying on the wisdom and experience of others, as well as knowledge aggregated through other mechanisms (such as markets and voting).

It is another (and to me a much more reasonable) thing to argue that somebody should be able to justify broadly followed sets of heuristics using articulated rationality. Such a heuristic justification is not the same as a watertight proof, but could still give a feeling for why this particular set of heuristic norms is preferable to others that might have popped up.

To illustrate with some examples: if a high school geometry student is unable to justify the Pythagorean theorem, this does not mean that the Pythagorean theorem is false, or that the student should refuse to use the theorem until he or she can prove it. However, if a high school geometry student is using a result that nobody — not even a geometry expert — knows how to prove or is willing to defend as true, then that student is likely on the wrong track.

Or, to take another example, if a child washes his hands with antibacterial soap before eating a meal because his parents have told him to, this does not mean that he should stop doing so because he isn’t able to offer a rational explanation for it. But somebody can explain why washing hands before means is good for hygiene — even if that somebody is not the child and not the parents.

Thus, concerning the question of either the truth or the utility of religion, the way to judge it is not to look at the arguments that a random person of the religious faith makes for the religion — but to look at the best articulated arguments.

This also highlights a weakness of Sowell’s arguments applied to religion. Sowell argues that, in the contest between x (who is following tradition based on the experiences of a through w) and y (who has explicit rationality but no precedent), x gets the benefit of doubt. However, particularly in the case of religions supported by explicit doctrine, the doctrine has been around for quite some time in explicit form (perhaps not from the time of a, but well before the time of x) and any positive arguments in favor of it could and would have also been stated in explicit form, not necessarily by the randomly chosen individual x, but by somebody. Thus, an articulated debate can be conducted — not between x and y, but between x’ and y, where x’ is the best articulator of x‘s view.

Another related problem with Sowell’s approach is that both x and y have access to the accumulated wisdom of past generations — x is using that wisdom to follow along (roughly) the same path, and y is using that experience to make explicit articulated arguments against it. In the case of religion, the person who supports or opposes religion both have access (to roughly the same extent) to the experiences of all the past generations).

An even deeper problem with religion

Ironically, the constrained vision provides an argument against religion. For unarticulated rationality to trump over articulated rationality, it must build and modify itself based on experience. Not too quickly or hastily, because that would cause a loss of the wisdom accumulated so far, but not too slowly either. What overall system of meta-norms allow for the most robust growth of accumulated wisdom?

I argue that religious doctrines are a poor fit.

What category are you?

Categories, categories, categories. Fine-grained categories by religion, caste, and creed are the lifeblood of Indian politics (and politics at many other places), where such categories are used to create vote banks and offer goodies. Those who want to “opt out” of categories face an uphill struggle, because they threaten the whole edifice — an edifice that relies on in-group and out-group politics.

My friend Anirbit decided to wage just such an uphill battle: he decided to have “no religion” on his passport, rather than the “Hindu” religion which the passport office was eager to assign him. His experiences are briefly described in these three buzzes. This reminded me of a similar struggle that I read about in the TOI, where a couple sought to have no religious status for their new-born child in his birth certificate (the father was from a Muslim family and the mother was from a Hindu family). So it goes.

In the vein of categories, India’s upcoming 2011 census will be the first caste-based census in independent India — visit India’s Census India website to admire the slogan “We also count people in India” (emphasis mine).

On a related note, Amit Varma urges us not to think in categories, pokes fun at politicians who endorse unity while pushing divisive policies (see also here) and tongue-in-cheek suggests reservation for roads.