On causes and religion
Alan Jacobs of The American Scene has a piece in The Wall Street Journal titled Too Much Faith in Faith (also see Ross Douthat). He starts:
If there is one agreed-upon point in the current war of words about religion, it is that religion is a very powerful force. Perhaps you believe, with that vigorous atheist Christopher Hitchens, that “religion poisons everything”; or, with the Christian historian and sociologist Rodney Stark, that religion created modern science and ended slavery. Or, like a significant majority of the British public recently polled by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, that religion is a “social evil,” a “cause of conflict and confusion.” But in any case you’re likely to think that, for good or ill, the sheer impact of religion is enormous.Is it, though?….
As they say, read the whole thing. Alan, as a Christian, place particular focus on the New Atheists who wish to leave at religion’s feet all evil done it in its name but explain away as incidental all the good whose motivation was putatively supernatural. But he does note there are those such as Rodney Stark, an extremely pro-Christian sociologist, who would ascribe to religion all the good in the world while staying relatively silent on the evil enacted in the name of God (or, the usual special pleading that “that’s not the real fill-in-the-blank-religion”). Below are a few general responses I have to Alan’s piece.
1) Religion means different things at different times and different contexts, and it means a lot. That’s a mouthful, but what I mean by this is that there is a lot of debate on what exactly religion entails on the margins. There are particular core traits which people recognize as religious, but the fact that almost every random functionally unrecognizable material remain has been classified as a “religious cult object” by archaeologists illustrates the catchall nature of religion. Additionally, different religions have different emphases; some are more focused on “orthopraxy,” and some are more fixated on “orthodoxy.”
The distinction is important in Christian cultures because I think it can be argued that Christian religiosity in the modern West, especially the Protestant West, is highly focused on doxy, belief, as opposed to praxy, practice. In most other major world religions one may make a point that praxy is much more emphasized on a relative scale. This contrast lay at the heart of the book The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, where the author makes the case that American legal structures are designed to accommodate Protestantesque religions (I think one can make the case that Reform Judaism is Protestantized, and one can also argue that American Catholicism has a fundamentally Protestant character in terms of how believers relate to their church despite what Church teaching might be). These structures are not well prepared to deal with the different needs of orthopraxic traditions. This is not to say that all major religions do not have both dimensions, but I think it is clear that profession of a precise belief plays an outsized role in terms of identity for an evangelical Christian in comparison to those who consider themselves Hindus or Jews.
Multi-dimensionality is also important, religion as a phenomenon bleeds into many aspects of life and draws from a multitude of human propensities. One major failing, in my opinion, of militant atheism is its tendency to overestimate the religiousness of any particular act which is claimed to be religious. I’ve made this sort of argument most explicitly about Christmas; for some people the season has obvious religious intent and meaning, but it is clear that the main features of Christmas as a cultural festival were co-opted from pre-Christian and non-Christian practices. The Christmas tree, yule log and ginger cookie making all have explicit pre-Christian antecedents and pagan religious significance (the latter is clear when you note that the Christian Church often banned many of these practices). This does not mean that these practices are anti-Christian, or even that they can not be given Christian significance (e.g., the Star of Bethlehem at the top of many Christmas trees), but rather that the religiosity, or lack thereof, of any particular practice is a very complicated issue to ascertain.
If you evaluated a sample space of human characteristics, and then tabulated the number of those characteristics which contribute in some manner to religiosity or the religious phenomenon I would daresay one might note that a substantial subset of the former are contained in the latter. The intersection is most clear in what some scholars might term a political religion, mass social movements often spearheaded by a charismatic figure which posit an eschatology. Obviously political religion intersects substantially with supernatural religion in terms of its parameters. In fact, on many occasions political religion starts to mimic supernatural religion; e.g., the bizarre legends which Kim Jong-Il’s regime in North Korea promotes about the miracles attendant upon the day of his birth, such as flowers blooming in winter! The power of political religion is clear to us today in the modern world, but we can see that it lacks the temporal robusticity that supernatural religion has. The god of political religion is a material figure who dies, and the only way to maintain the charisma around his person is to engage in apotheosis and supernaturalize him (note the peculiar preservation of the body of Lenin). Supernatural religions on the other hand persevere beyond the death of their founders and can connect the generations of the past to those of the future through the mediating power of supernatural agents, whose concrete existence is irrelevant to their affect on human cognitive states.
What does this have to do with Alan’s post? Obviously men such as Richard Dawkins are opposed to the evils of religion, but they are often accused of not paying proper attention to atheistic Communism and Nazism. Let’s sidestep the fact that Nazism had at least a Deistic core, Communism was avowedly an atheist ideology. The New Atheists might claim that the evil of Communism was not committed in the name of, or because of, atheism, but rather due to collectivist and totalitarian political ideology. But, I would hold that these are exactly the aspects of religion which the New Atheists use as a cudgel against religion! If you read Dawkins’ The God Delusion he obviously has contempt for the hypothesis of God itself as infantile, but his most trenchant critiques hinge upon the material consequences of religion, the irrationality of behavior and policy (from his perspective) which are rooted in religious ideology. But the homophobia, patriarchy and Puritanism which were extant in the former Communist countries strongly suggests that social characteristics which secular liberal elites decry because of their associations with religion will not be mysteriously banished with the death of the gods. It is to me somewhat ironic that the New Atheists often invert the concepts of religionists, whereas the latter might posit a utopia under the aegis of their god the former seem to project a godless future where the dark hand of the divine has been removed and so the lion may now lay with the lamb! It seems they forgot to remember that His Dark Materials was fiction.
2) The previous point attempted to emphasize that because religion is so broad, and so interconnected with various other aspects of human sociality, it is very difficult to adduce that religion as such is the causal factor underlying a particular dynamic. I think that the missteps by scholars such as Max Weber in overemphasizing the importance of religious ideas in driving the nature of a society or culture illustrate this. Weber famously suggested that a Calvinist ethic drive the rise of modern capitalism, using Germany as an example. Though there are debates as to the validity of Weber’s assertions (the majority seem to believe the idea falsified, though there is a revisionist minority), his assumption that East Asian societies would never modernize economically because of their Confucian/Buddhist religious sensibilities shows the weakness of this sort of black-box approach to religion.
One point which Alan suggests is that those who accept the claims of religionists in terms of their rationale for a given behavior needs to be treated with skepticism. Humans are incredibly fluent fabulists, and not only can we lie to others with relative ease, that ease comes more easily when we lie to ourselves. This is a general observation; in extreme cases one would assume that those who destroy the lives of others in their own self-interest engage in self-deception as to assuage their own guilt. Obviously a woman who kills her own child because she believes that he is Satan incarnate is insane and delusional, that’s not the sort of normal cognition which I’m talking about. Rather, humans have a tendency to attribute cause to the random, virtuous ultimate intent behind short term gratification via vice. Consider the psychology of a serial killer such as Jeffery Dahmer who converted to Christianity before his death. Dahmer may sincerely have believed his conversion was due to his personal experience with God, but I assume many would wonder if part of his mind was very intent on absolving himself of his sins, and that the Christian God was the avenue toward such absolution. These dynamics are not limited to religion, consider a man who cheats on his wife because such behavior is “natural,” or a capitalist who exploits his employees and cheats his consumers justifying it somehow via the natural workings of a free market. Human psychology is complex, and our decision making process is not driven by a unitary rational agent. Most importantly, we do not have easy access to our own subconscious mental processes which shape the course of our decisions, though we freely manufacture explanations which give us a sense of the reasoning behind our decisions.
3) In point #1 I tried to suggested that religion is such an expansive phenomenon, intercalated with other social processes, that we need to be very careful in ascribing any particular good or evil to religion as such. In point #2 I try to point out that the psychology of religion is also rather complex, and how people relate to their religion, and the explanations they offer about how they relate, should be taken with a grain of salt. These are generally negative points, expressions of skepticism and agnosticism about the assertions which religionists and anti-religionists regularly make. In The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason Sam Harris naively explores the irrationality of religion by taking at face value the assertions of religionists. To me this is like making inferences about mantle geophysics by examining what you see from satellite photographs in terms of surface topography.
But this negation of positive assertions does not mean that one can not make generalizations about religion. Muslims tend not to drink alcohol, Jews tend not to eat pork, and Christians tend not make distinctions of kind among believers. These are generalizations which capture particular trends. Jews who adhere to halakah and Muslims who follow sharia, or Hindus who follow prescribed customs & traditions deviate from expectation unless you know their religious identity. But does this make a difference in the shape of the world around us? To some extent, yes. On the other hand, how much does it matter?
I approach issues from the perspective of an atheist. I don’t think there are transcendent supernatural truths in the universe, or, more precisely I don’t know what terms like “transcendent supernatural truths” are supposed to mean, nor do I feel that the claims made by any religion I’ve encountered are coherent. For most religionists this is not true, claims of a supernatural grounding to the universe are plausible to them. I suspect this is in large part a function of human propensity toward detecting and assuming agency in the universe around us. The world has purpose, and behind purpose must be agency, and an intelligent agent. The baroque theologies and institutional scaffolding which we attribute to religion are built upon this foundation, and no matter the cathedral that you construct with your mortar the necessary precondition and ultimate constraint are resident within the essence of your building material.
Therefore, I believe laws that are presumed to emanate from God on High have more power and hold on human psychology than laws which are derived from man. But the reality is also that by and large gods don’t walk amongst us, and believers must rely upon priesthoods or personal judgement to interpret the will of God. And this is a critical point: the power of divine law lay in its origins on the ultimate Ground of Being, but how we implement the law is highly contingent upon personal circumstance. For me the clearest example was of a Muslim ruler in Africa who had enslaved all non-Muslims within his domains and so perceived a deficit of revenue. His solution was simple, he imposed a very high tax upon his Muslim subjects, and when they were not able to pay the tax he obtained from a religious scholar a ruling that those who disobey their ruler are apostates and non-Muslims, and since his subjects could no longer pay their tax they were now available for enslavement. This is an extreme case, but I mention it to show the ingenuity of human interpretation. Islamic banking is a more prosaic illustration of how one can satisfy the letter of the law to one’s own sincere satisfaction and yet remain transparently self-interested to outside observers.
This is not to deny that a particular religious dispensation might ensure and encourage particular changes, but the rationales for those changes, and their permanence, should be questioned. For example, in parts of Southeast Asia some individuals in pagan communities have converted to Islam or Christianity and praised the frugality which their new religion enabled. The explanation is that particular feasts which the village would throw to placate ancestors and tribal gods were a severe economic burden, and those who converted to a world religion would obviously have opted out of the collections for these pagan events. Over time these communities will almost certainly become uniformly Christian or Muslim. At that point does one suppose that the economic expenditures of the community would be reduced permanently because of the lack of servicing of tribal gods and ancestors? I doubt it, rather, the extant evidence from Christian and Muslim communities suggests that these religious traditions have festivals and institutions which require funds from all believers who are capable of paying (i.e., those who are not destitute). Early converts of course would receive a windfall benefit during the transition between the old and new religion, because they would have opted out of the institutional system of the old before that of the new had arisen. I use the above example to show how one must focus on dynamics and epiphenomenal details when examining social and historical questions. The early Protestants accused the Roman Catholic church of being debased and pagan, and looked back to the primitive Christians as their exemplars, but I suspect that the nature of the Roman Catholic church resembled Roman state paganism because universal religions which depend upon state patronage develop particular characteristics. Additionally, sectarian dissenters as a self-selected minority have their own peculiar characteristics which might make some critiques inevitable byproducts of the structural relations of the social and political system.
4) Though I do think it is likely that there are differences between the world religions on the margins in terms of how they habituate their believers, I think we need to be cautious of generalizations because there is often a sharp deviation between ideals and practice, and humans are given toward conflating their own circumstance with broad causes. It maybe that Islam is by its nature or historical development a more masculine religion than Christianity in terms of its appeal and methods, but I believe a more fruitful and easy to establish pattern is the general importance of religion in generating outgroup vs. ingroup dynamics. In other words, the sharp ritualistic differences between Rabbinical Jews and high caste Hindus in Kerala were less important in their judgement of each other than the fact that both adhered to strict rules in regards to ritual purity. To me the fundamental importance of obligate vegetarianism among many high caste Hindus is not the functional role this might play in terms of shifting nutritional intakes, but the fact that those on nutritional margins could not emulate this “costly signaller.” It is notable that some low caste groups are scavengers upon meat because if they did not engage in these practices they might starve. The details of the hundreds of commandments which Orthodox Jews follow and the multitudinous interpretations of the implementation of these commandments is less important than the fact that the ritual lifestyle entails separation from those who do not adhere to said rituals. The details of the Nicene Creed are less important than the fact that some accept it, and some do not.
The ingroup-outgroup dynamics in world religions lead to the emergence of fictive kinship. Anthropologists and sociologists have done a great deal of work about the functional importance of religious groups for individuals in terms of generating social networks and undergirding civil society. Social networks and the emergence of civil society are not necessarily features of religion, but religion is sufficient to generate both, so its utility is rather clear. Japan is a society where religious belief and practice are far less salient features of mass culture than the United States, and yet it seems to have a robust civil society. So what’s going on? Well, the Japanese are an extremely homogeneous people, their fictive kinship is based upon national identity. When New Atheists assert that the Japanese do not need religion to create a society which is characterized by low levels of social pathology as defined by little interpersonal violence they do not elucidate exactly the mechanisms and parameters which exist in the vacuum of powerful institutional religion.
I think that’s about it for now. I think Alan’s piece was a serious attempt to grapple with a lived reality which both the New Atheists and many religious thinkers don’t seem to acknowledge. One would assume that if you were an empiricist that this would matter, but that doesn’t sell books does it?
Labels: Religion
If I can try my hand at a summary: theism is not a useful antigen.
I actually like Dawkins’ immunological approach to rationalism. But it is stuck on square one. The bugs are a lot smarter.
I agree that, for a rationalist, any cell which expresses theism is non-self. But it may well be a harmless symbiote, or even a necessary one. Call me again when everyone in the world is as smart as you.
Worse, the most dangerous bugs in recent history have not expresssed the theism antigen. Nazism and Communism never, ever claimed to be “religions.” In fact, they claimed the exact opposite: that they were something different. And they used this claim to persecute the remnants of older mental regimes.
By going after “religion,” the antitheist thinks he is activating his immune system. Actually, he is turning it off. His response is targeted against an old strain of the virus, which he perceives as active only because he has turned up his gain control well into the paranoid range. It might be dangerous if (a) there was no massive herd immunity to it, and (b) it was the only bug in your system.
In the Western world in 2008, theism is basically a lower-class phenomenon. The Western governing class is not theist. It is secularist. It is all very well to have an immune response, but it is impossible to think on anyone else’s behalf. If secularists want to think critically, they should consider the set of irrational beliefs that they themselves may hold.
The fact that this set has no intersections with theistic doctrines does not prove (a) that it is the empty set, (b) that if it is not the empty set, the delusions it contains are not transmitted culturally and generationally in just the same way as theistic doctrines, (c) that the delusions that propagate among secularists are not in fact mutated versions of old theistic doctrines, or (d) that they are not every bit as dangerous to a free and healthy society.
In plain English: as razib sort of points out, except for the irrelevant matter of theism, what we call “secularism” is basically what anyone in the 17th century would have called “Protestantism.” Nor does it follow that the absence of theism implies an absence of either virulence or morbidity. Quite the contrary – any Protestant sect that has progressed all the way to atheism is quite extreme by historical standards. And extreme Protestant sects have demonstrated very high morbidity.
Religions are very good at getting people to do things for irrational reasons.
Although religion can therefore be responsible for all sorts of consequences, it necessarily results in that undesirable outcome, and is fundamentally incapable of leading to one very desirable goal.
Furthermore, if you apply the principle that ends do not justify means, any ‘good’ that may result from religion is irrelevant. That line of argument doesn’t negate the ‘bad’, though. The net effect is that religion is a source of wrongness.
Nazism and Communism never, ever claimed to be “religions.” In fact, they claimed the exact opposite: that they were something different. And they used this claim to persecute the remnants of older mental regimes.
as a factual matter i think this assertion is more true for communism than nazism. in any case, i’m not sure if it is that relevant if they claimed to be religions or not. there are some evangelicals who claim that they oppose religion and even christianity, but rather they believe in jesus and follow jesus. this is semantic sleight of hand, as they’re just expressing distaste for institutional and formal christianity, but are fundamentally not all that different at the end of the day (a lot of parachurch organizations have life cycles and do end up mainstreamed).
In the Western world in 2008, theism is basically a lower-class phenomenon. The Western governing class is not theist. It is secularist. It is all very well to have an immune response, but it is impossible to think on anyone else’s behalf. If secularists want to think critically, they should consider the set of irrational beliefs that they themselves may hold.
if class is defined as education to a great extent, yes, it is lower class. but economically this is far less so (think haute bourgeois’ attachment to established religions).
if you apply the principle that ends do not justify means
yes. a big if.
The problem, of course, is that the wonderful people who bring us “leftist creationism” don’t think of themselves as fanatical Christians. But they are. “Political correctness” is a belief system that is an almost perfect match for several strains of historical Christianity, most notably Quakerism. When you accuse someone of “racism,” for example, you’re basically accusing him of denying the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light.
(The Quaker denomination proper has not expanded much, but over the last two centuries the entire mainline Protestant complex has become more or less Quakerized – as have many people (such as Professor Dawkins) who don’t think of themselves as “religious” at all.)
The cultural and political influence of traditionalist or theist Christianity today is overstated to a degree that would be comical if it wasn’t so paranoid. Its true homologue is anti-Catholicism, but I really don’t think a comparison to anti-Semitism is out of bounds. Meanwhile, progressive Christianity can end a Nobel Prize winner’s career for a single act of blasphemy. Poland is always invading Germany.
National Socialism certainly never called itself a religion or invented deities, prophets, etc. Not even the Thule Society thought of itself as a religion, and it was far-out even in Nazi Germany. Nazism was in many ways more atheistic than Western societies today, whose humanism is extremely Christian. And of course the Nazis had many ugly fights with the churches, both Catholic and Protestant.
I define class as social status – caste, really. The idea that this has anything to do with one’s tax bracket is a little piece of Marxist linguistic revision. Class was always about social networks before the Marxists got involved. Now that they have said goodbye, I’d like to think we could use the word again in a context that doesn’t involve C++.
Nazism was in many ways more atheistic than Western societies today, whose humanism is extremely Christian.
no. if pantheism is atheism, yes. i generally, as you know, deny your willy-nilly mixing & matching of categories to prove your arguments.
Razib gives a clear account of how religion can be explained using psychological and sociological theories. The problem is that the assumptions of this analysis excludes the possibility of religion being true – the conclusions only vary according to how much observed variation can be explained by the psycho/ socilogical theory under consideration.
What about the alternative hypothesis – which I got from Rodney Stark – of assuming that there is an essential truth to _some_ religions? How might this assumption be implemented?
This leads to the idea of evlaluating the validity of religion/s by observing their perfomance over time (by specific criteria) as social systems – contrasted with other alternative social systems.
But you need to compare whole systems – not bits of one systems with bits of another – since it is whole systems that survive and thrive or go extinct – not bits and pieces. (qv. In biology it is organisms – a system – that are selected – not genes.)
I think this religion can be conceptualized and analyzed using a perspective from Niklaus Luhmann’s systems theory – that the ‘truth’ of a theory is measured by its survival and growth in comparison with other religious theories; and that specific facts and observations only have meaning within the context of a theory.
So, one would need to compare – say – atheism and some type of Christianity overall, and over time, in terms relating to the adaptiveness of adherents such as their wealth, altruism, happiness, reproduction, or whatever. (The institutions could also be compared in this way.)
This procedure would involve defining atheism as a system of specific styles communications processed in specific ways; and studying the system of atheism, including but not confined to the people who define themselves as atheists.
On this basis it could be argued that Mormonism is the best candidate for the truest religion – on the grounds of the long-term growth and socio-economic and reproductive success of Mromons as a group (in many domians) – and it is completely irrelevant that many specific assertions of Mormonism are ‘false’ (or bizarre) from a perspective of science, history, mainstream mass media or whatetever.
In sum, I think we should evaluate religion not so much by the specific contents of beliefs and practices, which can only legitimately be validated by internal criteria, but more by criteria of adaptiveness of the religion as a system, compared with other systems.
Note that one system can only be evaluated by contrast with rival systems – there is no absolute scale of validity, only greater or lesser validity. The analogy is with science where no theory is true absolutely and their is no percentage measure of absolute truth, but only better or worse (overall, using certain criteria, over a certain time frame) than another theory.
But the first requirement of any system is survival and growth. A social system that is tending towards extinction is ‘wrong’.
The problem is that the assumptions of this analysis excludes the possibility of religion being true
as i told you via email, some of the psychological researchers are themselves religious! (i assume you picked up this lie from stark, who is quite clearly propagating this fallacy in his most recent book by selective quotation and misrepresentation) so that obviously isn’t a correct assertion in terms of the facts, as i already offered earlier (you can i suppose explain to those religious psychologists who study religion why they really can’t believe in god). methodological naturalism isn’t atheism. explaining the material processes by which perception occurs doesn’t entail that one reject the reality of a physical world that is preceived. the nature of the physical world isn’t the primary focus.
What about the alternative hypothesis – which I got from Rodney Stark – of assuming that there is an essential truth to _some_ religions? How might this assumption be implemented?
as i told you via email, stark is a hack at this point. your admiration for him may continue unabated, but other readers should be aware of this so that they can ascertain the quality of his contemporary arguments if they value the worth of my contempt and disgust. alan jacobs also pointed out to me that stark converted to christianity in the late 1990s, exactly when he started producing books which “proved” just how great christianity was :-) (i’ve read all of starks’ books and a substantial proportion of his monographs, i know whereof i speak, there’s a lot of good stuff but the hackish axe-grinding aspect has been increasing a lot over the last 10 years)
On this basis it could be argued that Mormonism is the best candidate for the truest religion – on the grounds of the long-term growth and socio-economic and reproductive success of Mromons as a group (in many domians) – and it is completely irrelevant that many specific assertions of Mormonism are ‘false’ (or bizarre) from a perspective of science, history, mainstream mass media or whatetever.
unless you have prophetic powers you can’t extrapolate the growth parameters indefinitely into the future. there’s actually a fair amount of social science research with falsifies some of the assumptions stark makes in projecting his numbers for mormonism, and their socioeconomic vitals are above average but not stellar. we’ve discussed it on the blog. at least thanks to the fortuitous discovery of the new world by the iberian powers by your lights catholicism is the “truest” religion, and thanks to high TFR’s in africa will continue to be for a while longer. though i’m skeptical of long term projection islam will be the “truest” religion at some point in the next few centuries, and around the year 3000 the older order amish will be the “truest.” or perhaps the hasidic jews will beat them out because they start out from a higher base/principle.
But the first requirement of any system is survival and growth. A social system that is tending towards extinction is ‘wrong’.
you can’t control variables very well for this if you want the generality that you and stark want. when stark isn’t being a propagandist his model of cult formation and growth and rational choice model of denominations works in very specific american circumstances. its applicability to other contexts seems mixed at best. in any case, most people would probably find it irrelevant to conflate is with ought. steven pinker’s explanation of why he accepts the logic of evolution but doesn’t reproduce himself should be a good introduction for anyone interested in that.
p.s. remember that Coke is the closest product to true nature of soft drinkness because it is the most popular! :-)
A very thoughtful response, razib, and a significant step forward in the discussion. One point I had wanted to make in my column but couldn’t — the WSJ just gives you 900 words for something like this, which is ludicrous — is that I am not convinced that the term “religion” (as in “religion poisons everything”) is a helpful one. I can’t remember who said that the only thing that all religions have in common i that they all use candles, but whoever it was is probably right. Many forms of Buddhism, for instance, have no concept of God. So instead of talking about how dangerous “religion” is, we would be much better off if people tried to make some of the sociological distinctions you employ here. That would bring us much closer to an ability to understand how deep commitments become pathological, and also how all-encompassing ideologies like Soviet communism and Nazism resemble and do not resemble traditional religions.
Yikes! – I wasn’t expecting such a nuclear response from Razib. Still, it’s his blog, and if he doesn’t want to discuss Luhmann’s systems theory in relation to religion, then I shall politely refrain from commenting on this topic in future.
Only now having read with care the debate between razib and BGC, I would just say that BGC’s conflation of success and truth means that it would be impossible for the majority of people (within a given society) over an extended period of time (though how long?) to have false beliefs. Either that or you have to say that widely held beliefs (e.g., geocentrism) are true as long as they are widely held but then cease to be true once they are no longer widely held.
Either that or you have to say that widely held beliefs (e.g., geocentrism) are true as long as they are widely held but then cease to be true once they are no longer widely held.
Sounds like something out of Conversations with God. :)
razib,
If you are interested in the intellectual contents of Nazism I urge you to go posthaste to your nearest library and pick up a copy of Hitler’s Table Talk, wherein you will find Mr. Hitler dissing Christianity, and in specific the Christian humanist tradition, on an uncannily regular basis.
There was nothing even remotely pantheistic about Nazism. Again, I think you are thinking of the Thule Society. The Third Reich did not actually try to revive the worship of Odin et al – this is more or less a historical urban legend.
i generally, as you know, deny your willy-nilly mixing & matching of categories to prove your arguments.
Do I know? No, I don’t think I know. Perhaps you could deny it in somewhat more detail.
My point is that your categories are leading you to think unclearly and ineffectively. That they happen to be the categories that are built in to the English language that we all understand is not an excuse, because we all know how easily language can corrupt thought. A clear perception of historical reality is well worth the effort of restructuring any classification system one may hold, however time-honored or linguistically ingrained.
In particular, the category “religion” in our society is like “diversity.” It is not a term which can be simply explained in terms of its literal meaning. It is a reference to a piece of the American legal code. Just as “diversity” is a reference to Bakke, “religion” is a reference to the First Amendment, and to the vast body of legal precedent that has grown up around it. If you say, “X is a religion,” the effective content of your words is “X should be treated in a certain way under American law.”
Obviously, this has nothing to do with your argument above. But the legal meaning intrudes for any modern reader. Also, there is another Empsonian ambiguity in the word “religion:” it refers both to specific theistic or supernatural beliefs, and to the much wider complex of folkways that surround them. Thus in my opinion one can speak simply and more clearly by avoiding the word “religion,” and its synonyms. Of course this is an aesthetic judgment, and you are free to disagree.
For the history of the American Puritan tradition, I have more than once recommended George McKenna’s Puritan Origins of American Patriotism. I will do so again. If you are not interested in fusty tomes and weird neologisms, this was produced in 2007 by Yale University Press and it is exceptionally readable.
If you are interested in the intellectual contents of Nazism I urge you to go posthaste to your nearest library and pick up a copy of Hitler’s Table Talk, wherein you will find Mr. Hitler dissing Christianity, and in specific the Christian humanist tradition, on an uncannily regular basis.
The accuracy of the content in Hitler’s Table Talk is disputed. It should also be noted that Hitlers views aren’t the be all and end all of Nazism. Nazi intellectuals had varying views on issues related to religion, spiritualism, mysticism, occultism, etc. Some were very pro-Christian while others were very anti-Christian.
I’m a firm atheist, but I don’t see how anyone could deny the credit for the abolition of the slave trade, and then of slavery, to a bunch of Christians – Protestant and mainly, but not only, British. (Unless someone wanted to make a meal of the French Revolution’s abolishing and then reintoducing it?)
B.B.,
In my opinion, the article you link to displays a very minimal understanding of politics and society in the Third Reich. To be more exact, it misrepresents Nazi tolerance of the traditional religions in Germany as some kind of active endorsement.
I recommend Michael Burleigh’s treatment. Note that Burleigh analyzes the Nazis very much as a “political religion.” Theistic and other supernatural forces, however, were not a part of said “religion.”
In specific, many popular treatments of Nazi Germany greatly overemphasize the influence of the Thule Society man Alfred Rosenberg. Rosenberg was an early Nazi, true, but not an influential one. Hitler made fun of him on a regular basis.
Yikes! – I wasn’t expecting such a nuclear response from Razib. Still, it’s his blog, and if he doesn’t want to discuss Luhmann’s systems theory in relation to religion, then I shall politely refrain from commenting on this topic in future.
oh, don’t take it personally bruce :-) i *did* want to make clear my attitude toward stark’s current scholarship. even today there is a lot of good in it, but unfortunately you need to know a lot to separate the wheat from the chaff. i am totally not pleased by the misrepresentation that stark makes about pascal boyer in his latest book through sleight of hand. *most* unchristian.
Hitler made fun of him on a regular basis.
as b.b. indicate you empashize hitler too much. “nazism” was a very diverse ideology in regards to religion. i’ve read burleigh’s 2 books, they’re interesting, but i wouldn’t call them close scholarship about religion and the third reich. there is quantitative data from the SS officer corps and 90% were avowed unspecified “god believers” by 1940. i’ve also read a fair number of books about the occult orientation of some nazi party members. not only do they differ in opinions, they have an annoying tendency of saying different things in different contexts, so you can basically selection bias your argument for “what they believed” extremely easily.
Many forms of Buddhism, for instance, have no concept of God.
this is the theory. the reality though is that in terms of mass belief buddhism is theistic. so to me i think one should have a minimum definition that supernatural agents are the central aspects of *religion* (though obviously that is a debatable point, i’m an instrumentalist in regards to the terminology).
there is quantitative data from the SS officer corps and 90% were avowed unspecified “god believers” by 1940.
Ie, they were Gottglaubigers. In other words: hardcore Nazis. That means that the other 10% were traditional denominational Christians, which was probably not too easy in the SS.
As a brief trip to Google reveals, Hannah Arendt (for just one example) defines Gottglaubiger as “the Nazi term for those who had broken with Christianity.” Perhaps a little nuance could be added here, but the description is basically accurate. Obviously the National Socialists were not the first to make words mean the opposite of what they said, but I don’t think anyone should be taken in by LTI in 2008.
BTW, I linked to Burleigh’s history of the Third Reich, not the two books to which I think you’re referring (Earthly Powers and Sacred Causes). All three are good, but if I had to pick two I would skip Sacred Causes. And Burleigh is certainly a distinguished historian, not a popularizer as you seem to imply.
BTW, I linked to Burleigh’s history of the Third Reich, not the two books to which I think you’re referring (Earthly Powers and Sacred Causes). All three are good, but if I had to pick two I would skip Sacred Causes. And Burleigh is certainly a distinguished historian, not a popularizer as you seem to imply.
fair enough.
BTW, I agree on the word “religion” – if it means anything, it implies theism.
I am not suggesting that “religion” should be redefined to include Nazis. I am suggesting that, since to a nontheist such as myself theism is not a terribly relevant attribute, categorizations which are not affected by theism or its absence (eg, “tradition”) are more useful.
So, for example, while the Puritan religion has more or less died out among the American ruling class, the Puritan tradition may be as dominant as it’s ever been. But because it is a tradition rather than a religion, Washington feels perfectly free to funnel gazillions of dollars in its direction, enforce its concept of blasphemy in court, teach it to four-year-olds, etc, etc. Such are the fruits of anticlericalism. With friends like Dawkins, do rationalists need enemies?
mencius, you are not the only one obviously to draw the line between militant protestantism and militant secularism. i think there’s something to it. but i haven’t finished my thoughts so i won’t say much more than that.
yes. a big if. It’s really not that tremendous an assumption. The alternative is extraordinarily problematic.
I clicked on the Arendt link. The next page quotes Gottglaubiger Eichmann in a personal letter saying “In my conceptions, God, because of his almightiness, is not a punisher, not an angry God, but rather an all embracing God in whose order I have been placed. And his order regulates everything. All being and becoming – including me – is subject to that order”. It sounds like he really believed in God and was not an atheist. Isaac Newton was certainly not a typical Christian, but it would be ridiculous to consider him an atheist. I would echo Razib’s point on the distinction between Hitler’s beliefs and those of the Nazi movement.
Thanks for an intelligent and substantial analysis of points often taken for granted.
It seems odd in this context (even though a complete overview was obviously not intended) that the social function of religion as a form of control gets such short shrift.
The present US regime has clearly shown that the mental habit of accepting statements from authority figures on faith provides an important handle on the collective political organism. Numerous other religion-inculcated conditioned reflexes are also exploited regularly, mostly by those preferring greater governmental domination of social dynamics.
Nothing to add to the conversation, but did want to thank you for a really valuable post. Good food for thought.
Per the “new” atheists, one of the things that the “old” atheists got right about atheism that the new atheists don’t, is that one cannot do the whole judging men or their behavior as “good” and “bad”, given that atheism, properly understood, doesn’t recognize any standard of judgement to measure men against.
Afew posts ago, Razib posited what some people think of as the “good life”. The “good life” doesn’t really work on it’s own, a “good life” will differ depending on if one is a lion or a cockroach or a man. A “good life” per humans will be the sort of life a “good man” will at least attempt to lead when not under any form of compulsion, i.e. naturally.
One of the things religions do is provide an ideal man, or the standard of judgement that men are measured against in order to pronounce goodness or badness on them. Atheims precludes any sort of standard of judgement beyond the likes/dislikes of individual men, the most an atheist like Dawkins can coherently say is that when he pronounces so and so or his actions good and so and so or his actions bad, is that he likes or dislikes what so and so does. Dawkins, or especially Hitchens think that there is something more to the whole good/bad thing so whatever one can say about their critiques of whatever brand of theism they make, one might expect them to get a better handle on atheism first, if they want to say something intelligent on the subject.
Successful religions give people something to DO.
If atheism could find some engaging ceremonies*, it might have a future.
*panel discussions ain’t it.
Per the “new” atheists, one of the things that the “old” atheists got right about atheism that the new atheists don’t, is that one cannot do the whole judging men or their behavior as “good” and “bad”, given that atheism, properly understood, doesn’t recognize any standard of judgement to measure men against.
no, this is wrong.
TGGP, I’m certainly not suggesting that all Gottglaubiger were atheists in the literal sense of the word, although many certainly were.
But there is a basic problem in this New Atheist misreading of the Third Reich, which is typical of drive-by history: when a Nazi says he believes in God, which is the result you want your research to produce, you tend to believe him. Even to the point of considering Eichmann a credible witness.
There’s a reason so much ink has been invested in “Hitler studies.” As a genuinely non-liberal 20th-century civilization, the Third Reich is fascinating in many respects. Its general tendency was to accept the side of Christianity that its enemies – us – rejected. And, of course, the converse. It takes a little practice to learn how to use the mirror, but in a sense the Third Reich is a genuinely independent inverse representation of the liberal tradition. The features of Christianity that Hitler despised were mostly the same ones we have clung to.
So literally, yes, to be a Gottglaubiger was to be a theist. Bertrand Russell was on one side and Hitler was on the other. But I am confident that if the liberal tradition had not already claimed the rationalist high ground of atheism, the Nazis would have had no qualms in seizing it.
My basic point is that Gottglaubiger-ism was a much sharper deviation from the main course of the Western Christian tradition than anything Professor Dawkins could conceivably imagine. Liberalism feels evolved. Nazism feels designed.
And I am not fond of either, but if I had to pick one I would pick liberalism, as would I think most people here. Perhaps this is a Burkean caution for the hardcore rationalist. Design ab ovo as you please, but the job is harder than it looks – try and do better than Hitler.
I have always felt that the one serious problem generally found in the arguments and thinking of non-theists (whether anti-theists, moderates, or those sympathetic to theism as a social practice) is the tendency to see religions and religious belief as all part of one general phenomenon.
Clearly, those of us who are religious (and we aren’t all lower class or dullards, despite the absurd claims of some) don’t hold the same perspective.
I understand that such generalized thinking about religion becomes a logical necessity when religion is viewed from a primarily genetic or social standpoint (that is a general social phenomenon with many different strands) but it is as flawed and self-contradictory as suggesting that non-theism is only a similar phenomenon.
No matter how thoughtful or gentle these criticisms or analyses are, the moment they fail to treat religion as something serious, a collection of ideas forming a worldview that is held be a group of people for various reasons both experiential and rational (as well as irrational and/or traditional), rather than a generalized phenomenon with various developed/evolved strands, they will fail to meaningfully penetrate the idea of why people are religious.
Certainly there are people who fall into religion because it provides them comfort or makes them feel superior, just as there are people who view religion skeptically for the same reasons, despite their general lack of knowledge about specific religious beliefs (and we live in an age where this is quite common, particularly in Europe.) There are however, also many people who hold religious beliefs because the transcendent ideas, truths, if you will, for the believer (and this makes Razib’s comment regarding transcendent truths somewhat self-explanatory – given that faith in the existence of such truths is a necessary precursor to comprehension of and faith in a specific set of them) for logical, rational, reasons, regardless of the claims of Dawkins. There are many people who have rejected skepticism and disbelief because they found them wanting in view of the evidence.
One can certainly claim that these are subjective experiences, but their rational basis, in so much as humans have a claim to rationality, cannot be dismissed.
I’m not arguing that is what Razib is specifically doing, but what I do see strong signs of are the conflation of general human psychological traits with religion.
One must recognize that, where transcendent belief systems are concerned, that humans are flawed and imperfect in their adaptation of them. Consequently, humans tend to behave like humans, even in the face of these transcendent truths. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans about doing things that he does not want to do and not doing the things he wants to do. This straightforward confession of weakness is far more revealing of the gap between human nature and divine, transcendent revelation than any biological or sociological analysis, mainly because it treats humans and the consequences of human encounters with the divine for what they are: a meeting of the finite and imperfect with the infinite and holy.
All of human history, whether religious or secular, is the story of the finite and imperfect and the fresh hell we’ve created for ourselves. Where religion has contributed to that hell, is where humans have traded transcendent truth for their own schemes and prejudices. It is also the same place where secular ideas that diverge from truth have led.
but what I do see strong signs of are the conflation of general human psychological traits with religion.
i do hold that most religious cognition (by most, more than 99%) can be explained through recourse to modal human psychology. neurotheology explores the other 1%.
also, i am interested in modeling religion precisely so as to have predictive power more than “understanding” it. that’s a critical difference, since the former is a relatively modest and clear goal compared to the latter.
Razib,
“i do hold that most religious cognition (by most, more than 99%) can be explained through recourse to modal human psychology. neurotheology explores the other 1%.”
I think you misunderstand me, but let me be clear about your quote – if you believe that of religious cognition but not of skeptical cognition I would argue that there is a distinct logical imbalance in your assertion, one that is perhaps uninformed by the experience of the believer. If on the other hand you do hold that other forms of cognition that lead to worldviews and concepts of truth (or the unavailabilty of it), such as non-theism, philosophy, etc. are similarly influenced, then this would lead us to necessarily question skepticism with the same assumptions as religion.
In either case, your statement may be factual of what you hold (the word “believe” is more accurate) but beyond that, there are some great challenges. Mind you, I make the observation taking the perspective of uncertainty.
As a Christian, I hold that there are universal, transcendent truths and I can accept on those grounds that there are necessarily certain social and psychological forces that draw some individuals to some religious experience and cognition. This is of no comfort to the non-theist though, for I would argue the same is necessarily true of any skeptical or other position that is not in line with whatever the truths there really are (and I hold as philosphically self-evident that there are necessarily truths, whether or not one believes that they are accessible).
All in all though, the idea that 99% of religious cognition is explainable from human psychology, whether in individuals or as a percentage of individuals, strikes me as a bit condescending. It may not be meant that way, but the perspective underlying such a view seems clear enough. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what you mean by this.
As for what I think is your misunderstanding, by psychological traits I am referring to the vast tapestry of behavior of human beings as human beings. Nothing troubles me so much as when someone comes along and lays the Crusades or some similar atrocity at the feet of “Christianity.” I would argue that the basis for the Crusades is nowhere to be found in Christ’s words nor in the specific tenets of Christianity. One can certainly point to violence and warfare in the Old Testament, but in a far different context. Other similar offences laid at the feet of Christianity (and to some extent other religions – not to mention the tendency to generalize religion as a whole based on the offences of a single religious body) confuse cause and effect.
Human psychology is obviously capable of division, prejudice, murder, hatred, genocide, etc., regardless of the underlying creed espoused by those who commit such acts. The problem with laying such behavior at the feet of the creed espoused is drawing clear lines of cause and effect between the offender and the religious creed. While in some cases this is relatively easy to do, in others it is not.
The assumption that some make is that because people of a certain time and religious creed committed some grievious offense is a method for treating religions as a social and psychological phenomenon and thus a way to not take the specific religion seriously in and of itself, on the basis of its precepts and philosophy.
So, the Crusaders were either literally following their “faith” or were perhaps instead “hypocrites,” for those who prefer to challenge religious faith on the basis of the consistency of its leadership.
Both approaches fail to recognize religious beliefs for what they are. In the case of Christianity, it is a belief system whose founding documents not only recognize the immense difficulty of living within the requirements of holy, ethical behavior, but the great likelihood of human beings resorting to instinct and turning to atrocity.
The recognition of this in Christianity is not only an astute observation of human nature/psychology, but it severly complicates the work of those who wish to boil down religious cognition to the psychological (whether impulse, tendency, or a complex series of reactions). Christianity is a self-reflexive religious philosophy, wherein the believer is confronted with their own imperfection, the likelihood of their weakness, and the absolute necessity of the good.
The conflict inherent in such a system and the cognition required to embrace it require a respect for the ideas and challenges that face every sincere and dedicated believer. Such respect is not to be found from generalizations of religious behavior derived from assumptions that all religions are myth and the product of human imagination.
The non-believer gains no more from such assumptions than the believer does from the assumptions that the non-theist is simply a worldly person seeking freedom to act without the restraint of religious or organized precepts of morality outside the body politic.
if you believe that of religious cognition but not of skeptical cognition I would argue that there is a distinct logical imbalance in your assertion, one that is perhaps uninformed by the experience of the believer. If on the other hand you do hold that other forms of cognition that lead to worldviews and concepts of truth (or the unavailabilty of it), such as non-theism, philosophy, etc. are similarly influenced, then this would lead us to necessarily question skepticism with the same assumptions as religion.
i don’t think religious is mostly about truth arrived via reflection. when i say that religion is derived from normal cognition i am asserting that the germ of religious sensibility is the normal human state. for some atheists atheism is normal because they’re not normal psychologically (as evidenced by the low penetrance of atheism cross culturally). but even most atheists exhibit the same ticks and sensibilites even if they don’t believe in gods on a conscious level. the intuitions which make religious truth claims persuasive are the default state. philosophy, skepticism, etc. are abnormal acitivities by abnormal people. normal people can arrive at the practice of philosophy or skepticism through a lot of discipline, and some abnormal people find these sorts of cognition relatively normal.
Christianity is a self-reflexive religious philosophy, wherein the believer is confronted with their own imperfection, the likelihood of their weakness, and the absolute necessity of the good.
this is just not true for most christians. the empirical data for this can be found in this book. christianity is defined by its elite practioners as such, but most people are not capable of, or interested in, philospophical reflection. religious identity and orientation for most people is not derived from existential angst, it is normal and taken in with the mother’s milk.
i think adherence to particular religious claims are mostly determined by custom & tradition for most people. in the USA, where religious identity is very fluid in a broader context of history switching is only something that 20% of adults do in relation to their natal faith. there are some people, who have outsized influence on religious literature, who grapple with issues of “but is it true?” but i don’t think this is normal, just like dong calculus for fun isn’t normal.
Razib,
You write:
“also, i am interested in modeling religion precisely so as to have predictive power more than ‘understanding’ it. that’s a critical difference, since the former is a relatively modest and clear goal compared to the latter.”
I think this is a reductionalist point of view. The predictive power involved will likely have no more power than modeling most associative groups based on worldview-shaping ideologies (Marxism and certain variants of the Green movement come to mind as ready examples). Indeed, I would expect to find correlations between certain types of psychological behavior among groups of this sort, but I would hold that this kind of predictablity is relatively useless as far as “religions” go for the same reasons: It’s likely possible to generalize these behaviors to any system founded on cognitions which lead to faith. Indeed, as been alluded here, certain aspects of this behavior can be ascribed to non-theists with a certain cosmological viewpoint.
Understanding is harder, but it also admits something that is vital to this subject, the variance of beliefs and the possibility of truth in some revealed religion (either in part or in whole in a single faith).
Without holding open this possibility, the question is limited by its own “religious” limitations.
Razib,
You write: “i don’t think religious is mostly about truth arrived via reflection.”
The same can be argued for the average layperson’s view of science, whether in accordance with the literature or not. Humans rely a great deal on the testimony of others, a phenomenon that is as rational as it is psychological.
Reflection is also a personal phenomenon. I might level the simple charge at you that you have not reached a point of unbelief (or, more accurately IMHO, belief in a universe without God)
through any rational cognition, but there is no way for me to verify that in you as an individual, save through generalization or condescension.
The assumption that the general masses of people have viewpoints that do not hold in accordance with what they believe or the tenets they profess to believe is no more revelatory than finding someone who believes in a scientist worldview who utters the phrase “Thank God!” or a similar religiously inspired comment.
Again, I am not disputing the power of psychology to mold human behavior in some regards. Indeed, as a Christian, I believe that human frailty has a powerful hold on us, thus the quote from Paul in Romans earlier. Rather, I believe that this hold is limited and that at some level we have the cognitive ability to reflect and choose our belief based on reason and reflection. If not, then this argument is meaningless – two infections battling for an advantage.
Above all, the idea that normal people have to maintain a kind of discipline to maintain cognitive skepticism is to me a kind of rationalization. Quite frankly, that normal people behave as skeptics in a behavioral (and generally moral) sense is not news to any one of a theological bent. That people profess belief is out of the cognitive reality that skepticism is generally a negative viewpoint (we die and are wormfood versus some future hope.) Theism is seen as containing potentiality in that case. In other cases it’s seen as freedom from consequence, whether Hell or Purgatory (or Samsara, or even wormfood in a more general sense). So, there’s the psychological address of the tension of uncertainty that some people have, but there’s also the struggle with human weakness, between animal instinct and the spiritual. All normal people have at least some sense of guilt or shame (sociopaths aside) but categorizing these as psychologically intrinsic or external is finedishly difficult.
I have little confidence in those who claim to have worked it all out and then dismiss religion as “those other people.” (Not that I find you particularly dismissive in general, from a personal perspective. We wouldn’t be having this conversation otherwise – for both of us, I suspect.)
Razib,
You also write:
“this is just not true for most christians. the empirical data for this can be found in this book. “
Maybe. Let’s just say that I’m not optimistic that a book that conflates casual superstition with religious unorthodoxy/confusion in light of general human psychology (both cognitive and social) will be of much lasting value to anyone outside the group of those who are generally or “naturally” skeptical of religion.
You are, I would argue, pardon the expression, taking some things on faith.
You also might want to talk to more sincere, believing Christians before making a judgment on the self-reflexive quality of Christianity. While I should note, that I have in part been speaking of Christianity in terms of the values and tenets contained within it, the self-reflexive quality is something I have personally found in most sincere Christians, people who struggle daily with the gap between who they are as physical beings (their instinct, worldly desires, etc.) and who they recognize they should be, or be like: the image of Christ, a gap that is physically insurmouontable in this world.
You may feel free to call this anecdotal evidence, but I have reams of it and personal experience as well.
However, my central point has not been that Christians behave consistently in terms of tenets or reason, but that we are inconsistent because of the tension between the spiritual values and mental values of holiness and the worldly impulse of the physical world.
The point is not that psychology doesn’t have a hold on people, but that by reducing religious cognition to a large extent (the numbers you gave anyway) you are limiting your capacity to distinguish it in any meaningful way from the general psychological impulses of the human heart – if I may mix my metaphors. :) It does not matter if the bulk of people who call themselves Christians do not regularly participate in such self-reflection (though I have learned over the years that such presumptiousness is full of pitfalls, both spiritual and rational.) What matters is that many do and the kind of predicitablity you seek cannot be inclusive of them.
I should add that the tenets of Christianity wonderfully recognize the tension of the world and the spirit (and I am not speaking of mind/body dualism here, per se), even that many people have a tendency towards unreflectiveness. Indeed, all do at certain times, but reflectiveness is not a constant in any human person, and this is an important detail worth noting.
I think this is a reductionalist point of view.
yes. it is. not really interested in anything more.
The same can be argued for the average layperson’s view of science, whether in accordance with the literature or not.
yes. science is abnormal psychology. and i’ve argued that most people have take science on faith…though science has engineering to validate its modeling power* (one could assume there is a vast conspiracy to validate science via engineering of course!).
Above all, the idea that normal people have to maintain a kind of discipline to maintain cognitive skepticism is to me a kind of rationalization. Quite frankly, that normal people behave as skeptics in a behavioral (and generally moral) sense is not news to any one of a theological bent.
the two sentences seem contradictory. people aren’t skeptics, they’re gullible. that’s what i said above. most people aren’t fools, they believe in god because their heart makes clear god’s reality. the details of the nature of that god are by and large determined by the culture/family in which one is born into for the vast majority of people. on the marigns there are those who take the reflective and philosphical aspects of their religion seriously, but most of the study of religion has focused on these people to the neglect of the majority who couldn’t tell you athanasius from arius. i know enough about theology to be aware that there is speculation that maronites might have been monothelite or that the church of the east denies that their theology is nestorian, but that’s not the focus of this sort of post.
* though you can confirm something like newtonian mechanics in an afternoon through a set of experiments.
btw, ME, i kind of feel like i’m a cosmologist talking about the parameters which define the cosmos, and you’re heidegger elucidating the nature of being. i don’t think that one necessarily has much to say to the other despite their fundamentally similar subject matter.
Nazism was in many ways more atheistic than Western societies today, whose humanism is extremely Christian.
That is incorrect. The nazis were christians. Read Hitler’s speeches or look at the crosses in nazi graveyards. The SS wore crosses as belt buckles.
I’m a firm atheist, but I don’t see how anyone could deny the credit for the abolition of the slave trade, and then of slavery, to a bunch of Christians
Slavery was justified by the Bible. The South used christianity to justify its slavery. Eighteen centuries of christianity did not end slavery but a few decades of post-christian Enlightenment did.
That the nazis were christians is an undeniable fact. It was their arch enemies the communists who were the atheists:
My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice…. And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people…. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited.
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922
as i made clear above, quote mining is exceedingly easy with the nazis. some could throw back martin bormann’s internal memorandom. my own *personal* view is that the committed nazis were neither christians nor atheistic materialists. in our polarized american debate that option is so marginalized that i think it’s easy to ignore (i.e., christians portray anti-christian comments as atheism and atheists portray theistic comments as christian). but then again, here in the USA paganism is left-wing while in europe is decidedly more mixed in political associations, with a likely right-wing connotation outside of the british isles.
let’s not go there.
King,
In any other context, would you take evidence that Hitler said X as evidence that X was Hitler’s deep, heartfelt opinion? If so, I believe you’ll find that he was a man of peace, as well. Complicated fellow, that Hitler.
I am really fascinated by this Hitler-was-a-man-of-Christ meme, which seems to have very recent origins in the New Atheist department. It certainly does not have its source in “Hitler studies.” The mechanism seems to be as follows: if John McCain was overheard saying nice things about Hitler, then John McCain is a Nazi. Ergo, if Hitler is overheard saying nice things about Jesus, then Hitler must have been a Christian.
The first statement follows whereas the second does not. The difference is that none of John McCain’s fans want to hear that he’s a Nazi, whereas many of Hitler’s fans wanted to hear that he was a Christian.
razib, I agree – “atheist materialist” certainly isn’t the term for the Nazis. There was of course a strong mystical streak in National Socialism. At the risk of being facile, one can say that a good Nazi attached much the same mysterious halo to the “German race” that most people these days do for the “human race.”
The New Atheists haven’t advanced beyond the positions of Bertrand Russell as expressed in his debates with Father Copleston sixty years ago. As I read with interest the transcripts, a task that took just a few hours, I came to this summary conclusion: Russell had the better of the philosophical argument, but he could give no principled reason for saying that what Adolph Hitler did was bad.
Bottom line, Russell was an atheist because he chose to be one, not because God is contrary to reason. I may misread what the man said, but fuether conclude that he made this decision sitting in his grandfather’s libtary, because he wanted to please his dead father.
All the above discussion, it seems to me,tends to disregard the central question: What is man? More, to overlook something even more central: It is the man, not the scientist who attempts to answer the question.
it seems to me,tends to disregard the central question: What is man? More, to overlook something even more central: It is the man, not the scientist who attempts to answer the question.
let me be frank, you seem to think that asking a question such as “what is man” is bound to stump. such an open-ended and undefined question does entail some wrestling. but a word game where i assert something like “man is an expression of the Ultimate,” and therefore have now filled some vacuum of understanding by appeal to this Ultimate, whatever that may be, is totally specious from where i stand.
the theist believes he knows of the ultimate ground of being, so the arguments of the atheist seem entirely unsatisfying. but invert the perspective and you see that the atheist perceives the theist as reasoning from nothing but a word and a dream, a nothing.
to say that the atheist has no ultimate principle or meaning in life is like saying no great scientist can sincerely be a theist. you might satisfy yourself that this is so but the facts damn your rational inferences. from your own perspective you might contend that the atheist who believes that there is principle and meaning in his life is living a contradiction in terms, but the argument is still to be made and not asserted as if it is fact. similarly, atheists who assert that all great scientists who believe in god must be engaging in cognitive compartmentalization as a matter of necessity have still to make the case and explain the reality that it remains a fact that some great scientists do believe in god.*
many of these arguments, in particular the long stream of “exchanges” by j mct and i over the years founder on the fact that i simply refuse to acede to his premises from which he can reason. i don’t engage in the game because i can see that the rules are rigged for a particular outcome. but j mct obviously believes that the rules of the game are no construction but the reality which we both accept. obviously i think there is something to quibble about in terms of these rules which we presumably both accept.
* some scientists, such as freeman dyson, seem to believe in a god of such indefiniteness that one can object as to whether dyson even believes that the word he acedes to has any substance, but some great scientists clearly believe in a personal god, the god of abraham, the god of isaac and the god of jacob (e.g., blaise pascal).
Eighteen centuries of christianity did not end slavery but a few decades of post-christian Enlightenment did.
St. Paul can be used to justify slavery as he thought the world was ending, but slavery by and large died out in the West after the Empire collapsed. Maybe it needed an empire? It was certainly more common in Islam. The few decades of post-Christian Enlightenment is a bit dubious too, the late 18th century was the time of high enlightenment – at least amongst the elites – and yet some of it’s proponents were slave holders, no matter how guilty feeling. You would not excuse Jefferson were he a radical pro-Christian, his slave holding would be proof of the evilness of Christianity, and the hypocrisy of it’s bishops. The enlightenment was influenced by christianity, of course ( how could it not be) in part in ideas of equality, and the enlightenment may have influenced later Christianity, but whatever – the anti-slavery movement in the North was a predominantly religious movement, part of the great awakening.
John Brown, on being sentenced:
“This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to “remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them.” I endeavored to act up to that instruction. …!”"
no reference to the Enlightenment there.
“I believe a more fruitful and easy to establish pattern is the general importance of religion in generating outgroup vs. ingroup dynamics.”
I would just like to point out (lest readers make the wrong inference) that the so-call New Atheists have all discussed this unfortunately widespread pattern at some point in their recently bestselling books, often citing to contemporary quasi-religious political struggles.
Here is a representative sample from Dawkins:
“When an Ulster Protestant paramilitary murders a Catholic, he is not muttering to himself, ‘Take that, transubstantiationist, mariolatrous, incense-reeking bastard!’ … Religion is a label of in-group/out-group enmity and vendetta, not necessarily worse than other labels such as skin colour, language or preferred football team, but often available when other labels are not.”
The God Delusion, pg. 259
Of course, in the absence of religion, other (faith-based) -ism’s may rush in to fill the void, such as Communism or Fascism, where people may also be singled out and even murdered for holding the wrong worldview. Only classical liberalism (and its philosophical progeny) with its emphasis on an open marketplace of ideas, seems relatively immune to this tendency to take in-group thinking to extremes.
no reference to the Enlightenment there.
re: john brown, i read a few biographies of the man. i was surprised to find out that of the gang who went to harper’s ferry and gave their lives he was the only orthodox christian (his son, who was with him, was a free thinker). so i think we need to look closely at details before making generalizations (william lloyd garrison was also a free thinker).
this is not to deny the role of radical religion in abolitionism, but the biggest variable was *radicalism*. e.g., in john kerryesque fashion the french revolution was against slavery before napoleon was for it. i would hold that the vast majority of abolitions were sincerely religious and made sincere religious arguments. but, it would be interested to compare their religiosity to the general population.
Personally, I think it’s mostly a misrepresentation and a straw man to insist that the core point of the New Atheists is simply that religion is bad, full stop, with nothing more than a litany of bodies to establish the fact. The main, consistent, and most important point made by all of them is that the core religious claims are unjustified, and that the promotion of the use of faith to overcome the limitations of reason in matters of fact is unreliable and even dangerous for a society, which has led to all sorts of bad things. None of them has argued that religion is the only source of evil in the world, or even that the world would be perfect without it.
And yes, the Nazis were not “atheists.” The only revisionism in evidence is the claim that they were atheists. Hitler was most assuredly a Christian in his early period, and his movement appealed to, and was so successful because of, a heady combination of god and country rhetoric. The rank and file Germans were and remained religious.
Hitlers own religious beliefs did, however, change over time, to the point where he became more convinced by some of his more paganite and esoteric pals that Christianity in specific was an obstacle to true greatness and power, and it would have to be ultimately disposed of or transformed into Nazism. But he still never became an atheist: in fact, what he basically did come to believe, apparently, was that he himself was chosen by god to save Germany.
In any case, it’s all pretty much irrelevant, because even if Hitler was a believing Christian, that doesn’t mean that any other Christian necessarily shares his same beliefs or values or behaviors.
The rank and file Germans were and remained religious.
in 1940 about 95% of germans had a confession (they paid tax to the catholic or protestant churches). that is why it was significant that at the same time 90% of the officer corps of the SS had withdrawn from confessional identity.
Razib, you know perfectly well that religion is just tribalism with supernatural value-added.
We are hardwired for it.
And Marxism, Communism, Naziism, etc, are just “atheist religions” == tribalism without supernaturalism.
Exactly the same biological basis for behavior.
Are you a theocon panderer now?
Razib,
onsistently.
“btw, ME, i kind of feel like i’m a cosmologist talking about the parameters which define the cosmos, and you’re heidegger elucidating the nature of being. i don’t think that one necessarily has much to say to the other despite their fundamentally similar subject matter.”
After much thought, I’d have to argue that you are speaking of the cosmos from a state of being. Indeed, being and experience and cognition are all parts of this discussion. Understanding being then is part of understanding the forces that shape it.
That is one reason why I think reductionalism is unhelpful in this case. Even though I agree it is possible to generally chart social trends in groups to a limited extent, to do so without an understanding of the intrinsic motivators that the ideology generates, limits the predictablity of several key aspects of religious or ideological action, such as the capacity for revolutionary or transformational action, both individual and social, of which there are numerous historical examples.
Sticking to the cosmology then leaves one in the position of a weather forecaster, aware of general possibilities (violent action, honesty or self-deceit, etc.) and able to recognize trends, but far less able to spot the minute variations which may transform the greater reality.
Moreso, such reductionism, while in your case clearly respectful of the immense complexity of human psychology and social organization, still tends to reduce human action to reaction, whether psychological, social, or both. Whether or not this boils down to the concept of free will (and it may) or we are simply talking past each other in regards to the line where such choices exist, to diminish the capacity for human choice, in my view, diminishes humans in general. I assume, from the tenor of the post and comments, that this is in no way meant disrespectfully, but I find that most analyses that point to a generalization of human behavior tend to conflate organization (based on commonalities – whether traditional/social or ideological) with causation. There then appears a seeming lack of respect for the power of human choice to shape events and human action.
I am reminded that Christianity, seen now by many as a social phenomenon (or a collection of social phenomena) was the result of a small band of “common” individuals invested with the transformational belief that they had encountered God. The social and intellectual transformation that occurred as a result could hardly be said to be relatively predictable.
That human psychology and fraility has had an impact on the history of this faith, as it has on every other, does not detract from the nature of the underlying ideas that drove such transformation. Indeed, contemporary Christian movements of a transformational nature have evidenced a determination to return to those central ideas and beliefs, stripping away the artifice, just as Christ challenged the artifice of Pharisee law upon the Mosiac foundations.
Underestimating the individual sincerity of believers may then find confirmation from the inconsistency of human psychology, but it will always underestimate the power of sincere reflection *where* it occurs, and this is an important point because while human behavior may be relatively inconsistent with ideology, reflection need not necessarily be a consistent factor to evidence change that defiles the basic psychological assumptions, so long as that reflection is either transformational or claritive in the cognition of the individual.
Understanding how this happens means understanding human psychology but also understanding the ideas that humans encounter and believe, and why they may accept these things, in part or whole, consistently or (more often than not in practice)inc
I think you have a handle on how human psychology informs the inconsistency of human behavior where the religious (or ideological) is concerned, but I think that underestimating the power of the specifically ideological in and of itself to transform or clarify human action is an error that will seriously limit the predictive value of any analyses about behavior or the motivations thereof.
Razib,
I should add (after all that) that I think we’re not all that far apart in recognizing that human motivation and action are far more complex than more serious reductionalists would hold, and that human psychology is a key influence, regarding religious action.
Considering that religions with claims to excluvisity, such as my own faith Christianity, necessarily hold that other religions lack consistent truth, not to mention the Thomist concepts of the natural world as related to the spiritual, I think our basic disagreement is where the influence of ideas, faith, etc. begins and how pervasive it is.
Although I would add that in recognizing the influence of human psychological tendencies on religious action, and that such tendencies and action can be found in secular action as well, as you note in your post, understanding the relationship between human action and belief seems a necessary element to derive any predictive value. It would seem arguable then that understanding the nature of different belief systems, at least generally and as far as underlying rationale are concerned is an important piece of any such analyses.
but I think that underestimating the power of the specifically ideological in and of itself to transform or clarify human action is an error that will seriously limit the predictive value of any analyses about behavior or the motivations thereof
this is fair enough. i am curious about this question but unfortunately scientific examination of this issue (as opposed to introspective speculations) are in a deficit….
Razib, you know perfectly well that religion is just tribalism with supernatural value-added.
invert the order.
“The main, consistent, and most important point made by all of them is that the core religious claims are unjustified, and that the promotion of the use of faith to overcome the limitations of reason in matters of fact is unreliable and even dangerous for a society, which has led to all sorts of bad things.”
Obviously many of us on the religious side would disagree about the “core claims” comment, in so much as our specific faith is concerned. However, the dilemma occurs where religion is treated as a single phenomenon, rather than a collection of very different ideas and beliefs, with different claims as to the nature of reality.
In such a case, we are discussing competing ideas, some of which many “religionists” would agree have less value as consistent explanations of truth/fact than others. It should also be notd that scientism is among these, relying on the faith that material/natural explanations are in most, if not all cases superior to all others.
The jury’s still out on that one.
“Razib, you know perfectly well that religion is just tribalism with supernatural value-added.
We are hardwired for it.
And Marxism, Communism, Naziism, etc, are just “atheist religions” == tribalism without supernaturalism.
Exactly the same biological basis for behavior.”
But scientism or materialism are arrived at completely by reason? There is of course an inconsistency in the idea that all other forms of systems relying on some kind of faith are hardwired “tribalism,” but one’s own faith is the product of pure reason (mor or less).
I am speaking of materialism, naturalism, scientism – the various ideas that all metaphysical explanations or even concepts are unreliable, if not false. I am not speaking of the scientific method itself, which is a demonstrably reliable method for interrogating nature, in and of itself.
If people are biologically wired to accept metaphysical ideas as truths does it not stand to reason that some people are hardwired not to? And if that is the case, what then makes that competing “faith” superior? Arguing that material investigation is more reliable than metaphysical inquiry is simply base-stealing, since there is a difference between a determined natural inquiry in the scientific method and the assertion that the universe is limited to the natural world in so much as we understand it.
I should add that questions of what constitutes the material or other complexities of theoretical physics don’t offer an out here for the dedicated anti-metaphysicist. Rather, they complicate the situation and limit the value of reductive thinking.
“this is fair enough. i am curious about this question but unfortunately scientific examination of this issue (as opposed to introspective speculations) are in a deficit….”
Agreed, though I would distinguish the objective application of philosophical reason and logic from introspective speculation, though the two do overlap sometimes. ;)
Cheers.
If people are biologically wired to accept metaphysical ideas as truths does it not stand to reason that some people are hardwired not to?
just be clear, i think people have biological rooted propensities. i suspect there are norms of reaction on many traits like “how religious” you are, or, how likely you are to be an atheist. i think that some people do find atheism more naturally plausible than others because of differences in intuitive perception of agency in the universe, but, in a society like saudi arabia this won’t make a difference since atheism isn’t an option and people will conform to the options on hand.
(and agency detection isn’t the only parameter)
Underestimating the individual sincerity of believers may then find confirmation from the inconsistency of human psychology, but it will always underestimate the power of sincere reflection *where* it occurs, and this is an important point because while human behavior may be relatively inconsistent with ideology, reflection need not necessarily be a consistent factor to evidence change that defiles the basic psychological assumptions, so long as that reflection is either transformational or claritive in the cognition of the individual.
also, to be clear, i don’t doubt peoples’ genuine sincerity. i doubt their cognitive coherency. i believe people can sincerely hold contradictory thoughts because of the fractured nature of cognition. so, one should be cautious about extrapolating from what mental subunit 1 asserts to the reflexive response of mental subunit 2.
No.
I have the order correct.
Religion and government are both just codified social mores and taboos that arose from consangiunous tribal kinship relationships in the EEA.
Razib, your mindblindedness is devolving.
You are becoming persuasive.
It should also be notd that scientism is among these, relying on the faith that material/natural explanations are in most, if not all cases superior to all others.
It’s not a faith. It’s something that has been learnt through experience.
Initially, many phenomena were thought to require some “non-materialistic” guiding principle (especially in biology). Aristotle and Co. believed that “the soul” guided the growth and functioning of the body. Some people (Atomists) tried to come up with materialistic explanations. They were ridiculed, and rightly so, because their explanations did not fit the obvious facts as they were then known. For example, Galen’s devastating attacks on materialistic explanations are based on thorough experimentation. As strange as it may seem to us moderns, “vitalism” was the scientifically correct position right until the 19th century, given the facts as they were then known.
Then, slowly, we began to realise that all of those supposedly irreducible phenomena could actually be explained by materialistic causes after all (i.e. by the blind interactions of brute matter). It began with metabolism, that was reduced to chemistry (Liebig, Bernard, Pasteur). This did not tell us, however, how these impossibly complicated chemical reactions had come to occur in the first place. Fortunately, Darwin solved that problem too.
Given this history, we now assume materialism. That is, we assume that every natural phenomena is caused by the blind interactions of brute matter, rather than by some sentient, guiding force. Importantly, this principle can be discarded if we ever encounter something that simply cannot be explained in this manner. It’s just that so far we haven’t found any, and previous experience leads us to a strong bias against it.
In short: Science (the idea that experiment and careful reasoning are the sole judges of truth) does not fundamentally imply materialism (the assumption that nature emerges entirely out of the blind interactions of brute matter). It just turned out to be the experimentally derived position. If someone ever comes up with an experimental or logical proof to the contrary, science will drop materialism like an overused sock.
Frankly, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Toto writes:
“In short: Science (the idea that experiment and careful reasoning are the sole judges of truth) does not fundamentally imply materialism (the assumption that nature emerges entirely out of the blind interactions of brute matter). It just turned out to be the experimentally derived position.”
I think Toto is confusing science, which is a discpline/method/practice for investigating the material universe, with scientism/materialism, the philosophical contention that there is only the material/natural universe and that metaphyscial considerations are either illusory or mental correspondents to physical reality.
Because it relies upon experiment, falsifiability, and replication, the scientific method is necessarily a discipline of material inquiry. Science, in and of itself, therefore can reach a point where it may have nothing more to say on an issue because all the possible material investigative avenues have been exhausted. Science can address metaphysical/non-material questions only at the periphery, that is to say any material phenomena or outcomes connected to the metaphysical question. In other words, in science, as a matter of practice, the assumption of the material only exists in so much as that is what the scientific method is designed to investigate.
Scientism or materialism however assumes that there will only be material answers to the many questions that science itself struggles to get at (the existence of God, the existence of universal abstract concepts – such as mathematics, certain questions of mind, and many others). This is a philosophical assertion, not a practice of science in and of itself.
Science in and of itself cannot assume material answers to all the many gaps in knowledge that exists. Rather, science investigates those gaps from a material perspective, which is what it is designed to do. In science, there can be no assumption that the gaps will be filled with a materialistic answers (or that they will be filled at all, for that matter). The only assumption is that if science can fill the gaps, it will do so with material answers.
Thus arguing that science necessarily leads to phiolsophical materialism* because it verifies material explanations is a tautology of sorts and one that the practice of science itself does not require (demonstrated by the fact that a number of scientists are religious in a non-materialist sense). Using science when one means “scientism” or “materialism” (and I realize some have qualms with this particular use of both terms, for various reasons) confuses the matter.
Science has not experimentally or observationally** “proven” materialism. Toto would be ill-advised to hold their breath waiting for that momentous occurrance.
*Notwithstanding the theory that metaphysical/non-material exist in “material” ways that we are not yet or cannot investigate using the scientific method…for example, the idea that God is “material” in some sense, but in a form or dimension that is currently theoretical.
**I leave careful reasoning out because that is not the solely the province of science.