Two rationalities

What exactly is rationality? This is another issue raised by this post by Will Wilkinson.

Put it this way. Religion is rational, in the sense that it promotes well-being. Religious people tend to be happier than others, and suffer fewer misery-inducing divorces. Religion also insures (pdf) people’s income and happiness against shocks to their income. And religion can, arguably, promote economic growth (pdf), by encouraging people to work harder or trust each other.

In these ways, religion is rational.

But we secularists would argue that religion is irrational, in the sense that a belief in God is inconsistent with the evidence.

From my secular standpoint, then, there’s a clash of rationalities. Beliefs that are rational in the sense of promoting important human goals are not necessarily rational in the sense of being consistent with the evidence.

Charles Taylor’s essay, “Rationality” (in Hollis and Lukes, Rationality and Relativism) makes this point. He contrasts modern science with primitive magic. The former has greatly enhanced our understanding of the universe – and delivered huge technological goods. But it’s destroyed the comforting belief that mankind has a special place in the universe, and cultivated the unpleasant (if true) notion that we are alone in a cold indifferent world.

Robert Nozick has presented this conflict between rationalities in a different but acute way:

A mother is presented with courtroom evidence that her son has committed a grave crime, evidence that convinces everyone else but, were she to believe this, that would make her life miserable thereafter. Is it rational for her to believe her son is guilty? (The Nature of Rationality p69)

Obviously, I’ve no solution to this trade-off. I’ll just offer two thoughts.

1. Anti-religious people – like Richard Dawkins – would deny there’s a conflict between these two rationalities. They point to the evil effects of religion – the Inquisition, 9/11, the oppression of women – and the aesthetic merits of science. Is this a true solution? Or just a comfortable one?

2. People have considerable capacity for self-deception, for holding beliefs that make them happy rather than are consistent with the evidence. So why has religion become less prominent within our preferred* forms of self-deception in the modern age – especially in western Europe?

* By “preferred” I do not mean consciously chosen.

Comments

[Blimpish]

Dawkins' argument is about as reasonable as damning all secularism by association with Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. He's also hilariously inconsistent, in asserting his own morals even as he denies that anything outside of cause and effect has any value.

I wouldn't agree that "belief in God is inconsistent with the evidence," although I guess that's kinda' the point. I've never seen any evidence that refutes the existence of God, and there's enough beyond our understanding to make space for that existence perfectly tenable. The fact that it can't be proven does not mean it's untrue; it's a bit of a category mistake to start demanding physical evidence of the metaphysical, surely?

The last point you make is the most telling; to listen to some secularists, the death of religion is simply because we are becoming more enlightened... But any time spent watching the TV, whether news or 'reality' shows, points to new sanctifying symbols we use to hide from reality. The fact that these are comically incoherent, philosophically speaking, might lead us to wonder whether we've missed something on the way...

[Phil Hunt]

Blimpish: """I've never seen any evidence that refutes the existence of God"""

And I've never seen any evidence that refutes the existance of the invisible pink unicorn; therefore he must exist :-)

"""The fact that it can't be proven does not mean it's untrue"""

That's true. But the fact that the existance of God cannot be verified, i.e. that there are no experiments we can construct that show God exists, shows that either (1) God doesn't exist, or (2) if God does exist, he doesn't interact with the universe in any way we can detect, so he might as well not exist.

"""it's a bit of a category mistake to start demanding physical evidence of the metaphysical, surely?"""

If by metaphysical you mean outside of the physical world, then I'd point out that anything outside the physical world is non-existant by definition; because there is no way in principle that it can ever affect us.

[Blimpish]

And indeed Phil, there's no thing called love, either, except as a hormonal eruption. See through everything, and you see nothing.

[dearieme]

"Beliefs that are rational in the sense of promoting important human goals": but that's not a sensible meaning to attribute to "rational" is it? You're using "rational" to mean "self-serving". Still, it it sells books....

[Phil Hunt]

Blimpish: """And indeed Phil, there's no thing called love, either, except as a hormonal eruption."""

Oh, rubbish. It's possible to observe when people are in love by their behaviour. (And has been for millenia, before anyone knew anything about hormones).

It isn't possible to observe God, any more than it is possible to observe invisible pink unicorns. Occam's razor tells us the simplest explanation is that god doesn't exist.

[Robert Schwartz]

"It isn't possible to observe God, any more than it is possible to observe invisible pink unicorns. Occam's razor tells us the simplest explanation is that god doesn't exist."

There are no more blind, than those who will not see.

[Phil Hunt]

Robert Schwartz: """There are no more blind, than those who will not see."""

So can you see the invisible pink unicorns, then?

[Paddy Carter]

"see through everything, and you see nonthing"

blimpish that's quite an aphorism. I like it.

[stu]

i do not see the rational trade off in religious belief. You state that belief in Religion has benefits and so it would be rational to subscribe to such a belief.

Is this not prescribing secular rational motives to a religious belief? The person who believes in religion does not do so because of the rational economic etc. benefits you mention. To do so would be dishonest to themselves.

I am sure there are those who do take the rational (Pascal's wager) approach to religious belief but i think those who do truly believe in God, believe for the very reasons that we secularists consider are irrational.

[Blimpish]

Phil: Re love - no, all you see in materialist terms are the effect of hormonal imbalances that we call 'love'. But it doesn't have any meaning to it, besides the playing out of our urge to reproduce. I assume that if you go out with a woman, you tell her "I've come to the conclusion that my body would wish to produce children with yours, and so I now feel a certain attachment to you." Something missing, maybe...?

I also assume that you are in posession of a Theory of Everything, fully evidenced, as there is nothing left unexplained to you. Please share the Theory, even if it does require the existence of invisible pink unicorns...

Paddy: I'd like to claim paternity, but it's stolen from C S Lewis.

[Blimpish]

Phil: forgot to add, about love - people's knowledge about hormones hardly means they weren't driving their behaviour. After all, on your rule:

"Oh, rubbish. It's possible to observe when people are in love by their behaviour. (And has been for millenia, before anyone knew anything about hormones)."

...you could believe that large chunks of the Old Testament was literally true, because there was no knowledge of scientific cause and effect. But I'm guessing you're not a Creationist...

[Robert Schwartz]

"So can you see the invisible pink unicorns, then?"

Of course not they are invisible.