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February 04, 2007

What's special about religion?

The problem is not what people believe, but the strength with which they believe it.
The wisdom of this saying struck me whilst thinking of Richard's question: can religions have special rights?
For this to be possible, there has to be something different about religious belief from, say, political belief.
The obvious candidate here is that religious beliefs - more even than political beliefs - are held so strongly that they are constitutive of identity. People don't say: "I have Catholic beliefs". They say they: "I am a Catholic." What's more they privilege this identity over others. Few say: "I'm a social democrat first and a Catholic second."
This means insults to religious belief are often construed as insults to people.
But this strikes me as irrational.
Now, all of us have beliefs that are controversial and not wholly consistent with all the evidence. In this respect, the religious are the same as the non-religious.
However, most of us recognize the shakiness of such beliefs and hold them lightly, contingently. As A.J.P Taylor said, they're strong views, but they are weakly held. This is a basic principle of rationality; we hold beliefs as strongly as the evidence warrants.
Many religious people, though, don't do this.
Giving special status to religious beliefs - either in law or in just the custom of respecting religious sensibilities - amounts, therefore, to giving a special status to irrationality.
This is surely bizarre. It's all the more so because rationality, in the weak sense I mean here, is a virtue. It encourages toleration of others, self-reflection and self-awareness. There's something attractive about Rortyan irony. 
There are (at least) two possible replies to this.
One is that rationality is not the only virtue. True. But it's not obvious which genuine virtues incompatible with liberal egalitarianism are promoted by giving religions special rights.
The other is that, like it or not, attacks on religious beliefs are attacks upon people's feelings.
This generates an argument that polite people should be cautious in criticizing religion. But no more than that. Civilization is only possible if we restrain our feelings; I often feel like kicking someone to death, but civility requires that I curb the impulse. To privilege the feelings of the religious - when we know them to be irrational - is the politics of infantilization, pandering to childlike impulses rather than treating people as adults capable of restraining feelings and thinking rationally and critically.
For these reasons, I agree - for once! - with Oliver Kamm: "government should protect the free exercise of religion but not the sensibilities of the faithful."

February 04, 2007 in Religion |

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Comments

james higham

...when we know them to be irrational...

Oh what assumptions lie behind this lightly inserted statement of 'fact'.

Know? Specifically which views?

Posted by: james higham | February 04, 2007 at 03:30 PM

Sunny

Chris, I'm afraid you're lumping all the 'faithful' together as many atheists are liable to do. Faith and religious belief are not necessarily held for the same reasons, and they don't necessarily mean the same thing to people. Even within my family even though we largely believe in the same religion, we hold very different ideas on how the faith relates to us. This point is ALWAYS missed out.

I sort of made this point here:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sunny_hundal/2006/12/a_new_approach_to_religion.html

Posted by: Sunny | February 04, 2007 at 04:00 PM

Marcin Tustin

I think your thinking on the nature of religion is fundamentally flawed. This is because you assume that religious belief is on the same level as any belief about an uncertain factual scenario. Instead, religious belief is about who the believer is and what they ought to do (the two are not distinct). These are not in your sense beliefs, but rather preferences. Now, the purpose of a liberal society is to allow people to live their lives as they choose, as long as they do not trespass on the rights of others, and to compromise where ways of life would conflict. Thus, religion is special because when we abrogate the rights of the religious that is a sign that we are either being illiberal, or resolving a conflict, and if the latter, we ought to be able to point to what the conflict is, who is harming whom, and how changing the law will resolve that. This needs to be done carefully, because even if there is a conflict, if it is resolved in the wring way, it will stop a section of our society from living within our society, or from participating in it to any great extent, while complying with the law and the demands of their own conscience. This is particularly urgent if we want to consistent, and also lionise people like Nelson Mandela, whom out of conscience took up arms against the state. It is not clear that the Bishop of Westminster can change who he is, any more than Nelson Mandela could.

Now, I'd like to know why you think the beliefs of the religious are irrational.

Posted by: Marcin Tustin | February 04, 2007 at 04:50 PM

dearieme

When Christians, for instance, say that Christianity is essentially a matter of faith, then that is surely a way of saying that it is not based on rational assessment of evidence, but rather, as they say, on faith. Hell, they even call it a Faith.

Posted by: dearieme | February 04, 2007 at 08:35 PM

emmanuel goldstein

[This is a basic principle of rationality; we hold beliefs as strongly as the evidence warrants.]

1. Belief is not purely voluntary.
2. For the strength of one's evidence to guide one's belief, one has to be *aware* of one's evidence. But it is not always (or even often) the case that one is aware of one's evidence for anything, let alone the strength of one's evidence.

Posted by: emmanuel goldstein | February 04, 2007 at 10:36 PM

Laban Tall

"government should protect the free exercise of religion"

but what when this free excercise - like setting up a Catholic adoption agency - cuts across another govt imperative ?

Posted by: Laban Tall | February 04, 2007 at 11:22 PM

dearieme

Governments have too many bloody "imperatives", Laban.

Posted by: dearieme | February 05, 2007 at 12:56 AM

Maynard Handley

Oh for crying out loud, all you twits complaining that "religious belief is fundamentally irrational". If you're so convinced otherwise, stop pussyfooting around with this bland talk of "religion".
Tell us, in public, just which religious belief it is that you think is rational, and, by implication, admit that you think the rest are irrational. You are aware, are you not, that they are not mutually compatible? You don't get to say "I honestly believe in the monotheistic truth of christianity but heck, if those hindus want to believe in a billion gods, well they have their own truth" without revealing that you may be a decent person but you're a lousy christian.

Posted by: Maynard Handley | February 05, 2007 at 03:03 AM

Marcin Tustin

Maynard Handley - if that is your real name - you deliberately or otherwise misapprehend the point: religious belief is neither irrational nor rational, in point of any religion, whether Catholicism, Hinduism, or Islam, because it does not for the most part deal with propositions. Clearly, they have a certain core of historical beliefs (e.g. that a man named Jesus, coming from Nazareth, preached a radical religious message some 2000 years ago), but these are not the beliefs that most people criticise as "irrational," because they're mostly not, instead being good history.

Posted by: Marcin Tustin | February 05, 2007 at 01:13 PM

Ian Bennett

The supreme irrationality, shared by all religions, is the belief that there exists a being / force / entity for which there is no objective evidence. The entire basis of faith is that it exists in the absence of supporting evidence, and often in the face of contradictory evidence.

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