Stumbling and Mumbling

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."

Bush, religion and morality

Is religion a source of morality, or a substitute for it? This is one question raised by Bush's veto of a bill funding stem cell research. Bush says:

It would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others.

As a stand-alone statement, this is a tenable position, held by decent people. But it's inconsistent with other positions held by Bush - the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The moral argument for these wars is analogous to the case for stem cell research. In both, innocent life is sacrificed in order that others get benefits - liberty in one case, cures for illness in others. The principle difference is that embryos are options on human life, whilst the innocent Iraqis and Afghans are actual human life.
Now, if embryonic human life is inviolable, and not to be traded off against possible benefits, how can it be different for actual human life?*
Of course, I'm not the first to point this out. Here's the great Peter Singer:

When he focuses on human embryos, he speaks of his obligation to foster and encourage respect for life, but when respect for human life gets in the way of his wish to strike back at those he considers enemies of the United States, he is willing to bring about the deaths of thousands of innocent human beings. These are not the actions of a person of principle.

I mention this not to attack Bush alone. There's a bigger issue. It's that religion can be a substitute for morality, in two ways:
1. Religious people are often assumed to be moral. So they can get away with actions which we atheists can't. Give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep till noon.
2. If you draw your morality from some allegedly authoritative source, rather than think about it yourself, you can easily get into sloppy habits.   
* Of course, you could (with difficulty!) argue that the benefits of liberty in Iraq and Afghanistan are greater than the benefits of possible medical breakthroughs, so utilitarianism justifies the wars but not stem-cell research. But this is a point of accounting, not morality - and it doesn't seem to be the point Bush is making.

Islam, cricket and rationality: a dialogue

From the Sunday Times:

Before converting from Christianity to Islam last year [Mohammed Yousuf] averaged 48 in Test cricket; since he converted (and changed his name from Yousuf Youhana) he has scored more than 1,000 runs at 93.

Yousuf: This is proof of Allah's existence and greatness. He's made me a better cricketer.
Rationalist: Pish. If Allah cares so much about Pakistani cricket, why hasn't he taught your team-mates how to catch a ball?
Yousuf: You miss the point. Allah doesn't care especially about cricket. He cares about rewarding converts. And just look at the figures - he's rewarded this convert.
Rationalist: Come off it. Everyone knows a good batsman can average 93 over a short interval. It's just luck and form. Nothing to do with Allah.
Yousuf: You misdescribe the position. Sure, there's a good chance that a batsman with a career average of 48 will average 93 over short periods. But the chance of him doing so immediately after converting to Islam is much lower. So low that it's unlikely to be coincidence.
Rationalist: But coincidences happen sometimes. It's not as if your Allah has a magic wand to convert good players into great ones.
Yousuf: There's no magic involved. It's basic common sense. Since finding Allah, I've become more disciplined and contented in my life. And a disciplined and contented man makes a better sportsman. If you doubt me, just look at Zinedine Zidane. That's what happens when a man loses the religion of his forefathers.
Rationalist: Have you never read David Hume? He said:

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish.

Surely, it's more likely that you're just going through a run of good form than that Allah exists. So we shouldn't infer from your batting that Islam is the correct religion.
Yousuf: The ignorance here is not mine, but Hume's. He was unaware of his contemporary, Thomas Bayes. In a Bayesian framework, my belief in Islam is strengthened by my good form. This corroborates my Bayesian prior that Allah is benign and great.
Rationalist: Maybe. But it doesn't shake my prior that Islam is just gibberish.
Yousuf: That tells us about your prior, not about the evidence. By all means, continue in your infidel ways. Just don't pretend that rationality and evidence is all on your side.

Allah's fishy coincidence

From the Liverpool Echo:

Hundreds of Muslims are descending on a Liverpool house to witness what many are calling a miracle. Two fish are causing huge excitement among the faithful, who say they are each inscribed with holy names. Worshippers are convinced two Oscar fish bear the names of Allah and Mohammed in their scales....The fish were bought last week from a pet store in Speke by Ali AlWaqedi, 23.

Now, what else do we know about shops selling tropical fish in Liverpool? Truly, Allah moves in mysterious ways.

God and mammon

Here's a good bet for what Richard Dawkins won't tell us tonight - that religion can be good for us. Here's a recent paper (pdf) by Andrew Clark and Orsolya Lelkes:

The religious report higher life satisfaction. The estimated coefficients on the Roman Catholic and Protestant variables are both positive and significant...Religion tempers the impact of adverse life events; it has current, as opposed to after-life rewards. All denominations mitigate the negative effect [on happiness] of unemployment.

And here's an older one (pdf) by Luigi Zingales and colleagues:

Religious beliefs are associated with 'good' economic attitudes, where 'good' is defined as conducive to higher per capita income...On average religion is associated positively with attitudes that are conducive to free markets and better institutions. Religious people trust each other more, trust the government and legal system more, are less willing to break the law, and are more likely to believe that markets' outcomes are fair.

For me, this raises an interesting paradox. FWIW, I'm with Dawkins in believing that religion is irrational in the sense that it's inconsistent with the evidence. But it seems rational in the sense that it can, in average cases, promote mental and economic well-being.
More stuff: See also Tom, Shuggy and Norm.

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.

Evolution and irrationality

Owen points out this survey, showing that only 15% of Americans believe the theory of evolution. I don't think we European secularists should laugh at them. There's only a small difference between lay believers in evolution and creationists.
Put it this way. I couldn't persuade a reasonably open-minded person that evolution was true. I could tell a story, but when it came to producing hard evidence - dating fossil records and suchlike - I'd fail. I'd just have to point them towards experts.
My belief in evolution - and for that matter in most scientific ideas - rests, therefore, upon trust. The difference between me and the average lay creationist isn't that I'm more scientific and rational than him; I suspect many believers in intelligent design could run rings around me. It's that I trust scientists whereas he trusts priests. The basic foundation of our beliefs is the same: "I believe x because y, whom I trust, says so." Both of us rely on the heuristic of social proof.
This is the natural result of the division of labour. There just aren't enough hours in the day for us to verify (non-falsify?) every claim scientists make.
That said, there is a difference.  Scientists could prove their results to me (and to my hypothetical open-minded interlocutor) using methods we could mutally approve. Priests could not do this.
But how big is this difference? From the point of view of the priests and scientists themselves, it's enormous; they use completely different methods.
But from my point of view, the difference is smaller. I'm trusting that scientists do use "scientific" methods - that they don't fiddle their results, that peer review actually works, and so on. I'm using faith, just as religious people do.
This, I think, helps explain why so much science reporting is so bad. Journalists put their faith in scientists as other put their faith in priests - and invite their readers to do the same. Worse still, sometimes they shop around for the faith they  find most convenient.
The bottom line, then, is that we get many of our beliefs from socialization, faith and wishful thinking - not from rational "scientific" inspection of evidence.
In the case of science, this doesn't much matter in one sense; evolution is true (or not), whether or not anyone believes it.
In the case of political and moral views, though, it does matter. These determine the society we live in and the government we get. 
How worrying is this?

A place for religion

Jonathan Derbyshire sets us a challenge. Liberals, he says should “revisit some fundamental questions concerning the place of religious commitment in modern democracies.”

So, here’s my tuppenceworth. There is a limited but important place in politics for Christian religious commitment. This place exists not because such commitment is right or rational, but precisely because it is irrational.