Atheism evangelism followup

[dougo]

I posted a comment on hahathor's post about evangelical atheists, and since I never followed up on my post about it here, I figured I'd repost part of the comment here.

The thing that spurred me into asking [whether atheist evangelism was any better than religious evangelism] was this: I saw a documentary about evangelists where someone explained that, if you truly believe that someone you love will go to Hell because they are not a Christian, then shouldn't you do everything you can to prevent that loved one from going to Hell? It does make logical sense, if you accept the assumptions of Sin and Hell. And it made me think, hypothetically speaking, if I truly believe that someone I love is doing damage to themselves because of their religion, then shouldn't I do everything I can to convince them otherwise? For instance, suppose I knew a Christian Scientist who was suffering from a treatable illness, but who refused medical treatment in favor of prayer. If I cared about this person, shouldn't I try to convince them that medical treatment is far more likely to be effective than just prayer? Maybe this doesn't count as evangelism, since I'm not trying to convert them completely to atheism, just away from a particularly egregious corollary of their religion. But it falls into the category of "disabusing others of their beliefs". This is an extreme example, but I think this is the kind of motivation that spurs people to talk someone out of a religious belief: the stereotype is that religious people do some irrational things based on their religious belief that can sometimes be harmful to themselves or others, and if you think that this might happen, then in theory it's socially responsible to try to change their mind. But, yeah, in practice it's usually just rude.

To be clear, I personally think evangelism of any sort is usually a bad idea, not just because it's rude, but also because in general it's dangerous to assume that you know better than someone else what's good for them. But I think the motivations of atheist evangelists can be as virtuously-intended as religious evangelists who want to save your soul from eternal damnation.

Comments

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

that analysis is at the personal level.

however, religions do collective harm - ala inquisitions, crusades, jihad, sectarian wars, etc. religious institutions have provided "justifications" for numerous atrocities. the particular nature of religious "justifications" that they are unassailable through empirical modes of evaluation.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

religions do collective harm

All religions?

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Potential is different than what was said, though.

It was stated as an objective fact that religions do collective harm.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

i'm discussing religions as social institutions. not as idealized schools of thought.

the main point i'm making is that religions have the particular problem of falling back on "ultimate" authority when their positions are examined as illogical and irrational.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

i can't think of one that hasn't.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Absence of evidence (that you can't think of one) does not mean evidence of absence (that there are religions which have not caused collective harm).

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

What harm has been done (collectively as a religion, not by individual members acting alone) by Quakers? Unitarian Universalists? Baha'i?

[flourish.livejournal.com]

OK, so:

Do you have a problem with the actions of people who are religious practitioners in extremely small groups, or solo?

I'm thinking about, say, reconstructionist Pagan circles of 4 people. Or a person who is a theist and performs some Jewish ritual but does not take part in Jewish religious life. Or a person who prays to Jesus and asks their friend to baptize them, but doesn't take part in a church or tithe.

If you have a problem with these people's beliefs, what about people who are theists but not religious? Deists?

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

the question you ask here is related to whether or not people are free of the institutions that shape them.

and i don't have a simple answer for that. in most ways people are not. poetically stated, "no man is an island."

so relating that to your question, i'd have to answer, "are solitary practitioners independent of religious institutions?" however, i cannot give a simple yes or no answer.

sorry for the non-answer here.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

that analysis is at the personal level.

Yes, the topic I wanted to discuss was on the level of person-to-person interaction, but so much for that idea. :)

Or was your point about religions doing collective harm meant to provide another reason to convert someone away from religion? That is, even if a person does not seem to be doing anything personally harmful, would you still want to change their mind about their religion based on the collective harm that the religion has done? I think I disagree with this motivation; I wouldn't try to persuade someone to renounce their national citizenship because of the collective harm that their nation's government has done. But maybe that's not a useful analogy.

[flourish.livejournal.com]

Ha, I just made that analogy in my comment too!

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

i don't see what you wrote as person-to-person. i see it as singularly personal - only affecting one person.

i can't think of any singularly personal reason to evangelize someone else.

however, when it becomes person-to-person, and particularly when it becomes collective-to-person, i see a reason to get people to reconsider how their (wrong) beliefs affect other people.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

I think I disagree with this motivation; I wouldn't try to persuade someone to renounce their national citizenship because of the collective harm that their nation's government has done. But maybe that's not a useful analogy.

you change a nation's policies, does it's nationhood change?

if you change a religion's tenets, does it keep it's identity as a religion?

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

I call myself an atheism-oriented agnostic. Although I accept that there is no way to KNOW, a lack of supreme being seems most likely to me.

Whenever evangelical atheists give the "teakettle in orbit" or "invisible pink unicorns" argument, I think, "Well, I may not BELIEVE in an orbiting teakettle, but I am not certain that there is not one either, sorry."

[luckylefty.livejournal.com]

If you believe there is no God, just as strongly as you don't believe in the orbiting teakettle, I think you're more accurately characterized as an atheist than as an agnostic.

I think an atheist is someone who believes there is no God, and by that standard it sounds to me like you're an atheist. If you instead use the definition "An atheist is someone who KNOWs with an absolute perfect unshakeable unfalsifiable certainty (of a sort that I do not have about any statement about the existence of entities in the world (except possibly myself) or about any other statement about my environment or the universe at large) that there is no God", then you're an agnostic, and so am I, and so are all of the atheists I've discussed this with. I don't think this is a particularly useful way to use the words. I think it makes sense to use the word "belief" in "an atheist is someone who believes there is no God" in the same way people use the word "belief" in other contexts, rather than in some different sense.

To relate this to the thread subject of evangelism, I find I don't do much evangelism of the sort "Persuade people that they are wrong in their beliefs about the existence of God". And almost all the evangelism I do is a fairly subtle and IMNSFHO unobjectionable form, of asking them questions about their own religious beliefs, choosing the questions so as to focus on aspects of their beliefs that I think they themselves will find inconsistent or irrational. But I do find that I do the sort of label-evangelism I'm doing in this post, encouraging people to label themselves as atheist when I think it's an accurate description. I went through a brief period where I considered myself a pantheist, because the properties of God (omnipresence, omnipotence, existing for all time) were held by the totality of things in the universe as a whole. But then I decided this was a cop-out; If I didn't believe in any other entities other than the ones an atheist believed in, I was better described as atheist.

ot

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

i am greatly disturbed by the fractal teddybear.

[luagha.livejournal.com]

I see a lot of neglect for the good that religions do, and for any sort of balancing test.

If we're measuring and judging all the evils done by people inspired by the beliefs of the religion of (say) Christianity, how do we measure all the good done by people inspired by the beliefs of the religion of Christianity?

Plus, as we go forwards in time, the economic power of Western Christian thoughts and beliefs has increased, so they have the power to (for example) rescue at least tens of thousands of lives from the Indonesia tsunami. No other religion has that power on a purely physical level.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I think there's a big difference between religious beliefs about factual issues, like the age of the Earth or the efficacy of medicine, versus religious beliefs about morality, like whether one should rescue tsunami victims or allow gay marriage. I am much more likely to want to change one's mind about the former than the latter.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

see above comment balancing test.

Religion as a mental virus

[taskboy3000.livejournal.com]

I know this comment isn't going to help, but here it is.

All religions encourage magical thinking. That is, they all insist that you believe something that cannot be proven through a rational investigation. The suppression of rational thinking what makes religions generally dangerous.

Can we find a religion that historically has caused more good than harm? Surely we can. Indeed, all religions do at least comfort their followers and that's got to count for something.

Unfortunately, the comfort given is a lie, albeit a small one. That benign lie often leads to more malicious ones and soon you end up with an entrenched clergy that harbors pedophiles or promotes genocide or exhorts xenophobia.

As far as I can see, religions to take the sting out of our mortality. If instead of running from this horrible fact, we embraced this one life of ours, perhaps we'd all be a little less crappy to each other.

(And no, religion isn't any more a basis for morality than another literature.)

Re: Religion as a mental virus

[luagha.livejournal.com]

Ah, but religions are also used as carriers for learning moral judgments. (Not as a basis.)

We learn well in 'story format' and religions group, hold, and maintain stories with multiple lessons at different depths. Within the stories may be counterfactuals (like the 'four corners of the earth') but there are also proven moral lessons (like say, that of the Good Samaritan which has no miracles or faith-related issues).

Isn't this of value?

Re: Religion as a mental virus

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I think this is one of the motivations behind The Jefferson Bible, which removed all the counterfactuals and kept the moral lessons. Isn't this of more value than religions with both?

Re: Religion as a mental virus

[cnoocy]

I don't think your understanding about why religions exist and how they deal with the existence of suffering is as universal as you think it is. I also don't think it's accurate to call statements like "there is an afterlife" a lie, even from an atheist point of view. A lie is a deliberate falsehood, and religions (with some possible exceptions) are not built around deliberate falsehoods.