Religion's smart-people problem

[turoldus]

The counter to Clifford’s evidentialism has been captured by thinkers like Blaise Pascal, William James, and Miguel de Unamuno. Pascal’s famous dictum expresses: “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.” William James claimed that reason can’t resolve all issues and so we are sometimes justified believing ideas that work for us. Unamuno searched for answers to existential questions, counseling us to abandon rationalism and embrace faith. Such proposals are probably the best the religious can muster, but if reason can’t resolve our questions then agnosticism, not faith, is required.

Besides, faith without reason doesn’t satisfy most of us, hence our willingness to seek reasons to believe. If those reasons are not convincing, if you conclude that religious beliefs are untrue, then religious answers to life’s questions are worthless. You might comfort yourself by believing that little green dogs in the sky care for you but this is just nonsense, as are any answers attached to such nonsense. Religion may help us in the way that whisky helps a drunk, but we don’t want to go through life drunk. If religious beliefs are just vulgar superstitions, then we are basing our lives on delusions. And who would want to do that?

Why is all this important? Because human beings need their childhood to end; they need to face life with all its bleakness and beauty, its lust and its love, its war and its peace. They need to make the world better. No one else will.

www.salon.com/2014/12/21/religions_smart_people_problem_the_shaky_intellectual_foundations_of_absolute_faith/

[James Hannam]

Jan 1, 2015 20:02:17 GMT turoldus said:

Why is all this important? Because human beings need their childhood to end; they need to face life with all its bleakness and beauty, its lust and its love, its war and its peace. They need to make the world better. No one else will.

www.salon.com/2014/12/21/religions_smart_people_problem_the_shaky_intellectual_foundations_of_absolute_faith/

As is often the case with articles like this, the unexamined assumptions behind it are the most interesting point.

Philosophically, what is the point of life? Our author seems to believe the highest good is truth. If religion makes the world better (and, on balance, it does), it would still be a bad thing if it is false.

Plato says the highest good is virtue. The epicureans thought we should aim for happiness while Stoics were more preoccupied with justice. Non theists like Hobbes and Hume would probably agree with the epicureans. For libertarians, it is freedom.

It seems to me that any article like this one is launched from an assumption about the highest good which is rarely stated and almost never argued for. If the author claims to be a philosopher, that is just plain sloppy. But if Hume and Jonathan Haidt are right, this is hardly surprising since reason (and ethics) are the servant of the passions (or instincts). Our author is probably the same as the rest of us in this respect - he decides instinctively what he thinks is right and then uses reason to persuade himself.

Best wishes and happy new year

James

[bjorn]

christthetao.blogspot.no/2014/12/john-messerly-plays-blindmans-bluff.html