Mark Isaak has opened a discussion on The Panda’s Thumb about The Larger Issue of Bad Religion. It’s good to discuss the problem of religion, but my main complaint is the attempt to separate ‘good religion’ from ‘bad religion’, and suggesting that we should be lauding those ‘good religionists’ to win them over to our side. Unfortunately, we don’t have a criterion to distinguish the two, and I fear that if we did define them, those practitioners of ‘good religion’ would be vanishingly small, and not particularly strongly associated with any particular sect.
I’d suggest that ‘good religion’ is merely something called a religion, which has stripped away everything relating to superstition and any concrete concept of a deity, but then everyone would call them godless atheists anyway and we’d be right back where we started.
Meh. I think it isn’t all that hard really. At the very least, it seems refreshingly easy to distinguish bad religion from the rest of religion. It may be hard to pin down a precise reason, but some groups give off a sense of assholery and some don’t.
The simplest rule of thumb I can think of is that a good religion is one that does not try to actively convert you, or kill you. For example, mainstream UK christianity is pretty much like that. The church of ID, with its grandiose plots against secular civilisation, certainly is not.
At the very least, there are grades of horribleness – it would be crazy to equate Phelps with the Dalai Lama. There is religion that can be debated and discussed over tea, and then there’s religion that must be fought in the courts and elsewhere.
Fred Phelps=***BAD*** religion.
Mainstream American Christianity is not like that. Evangelism is a term of praise, is considered the raison d’etre of many churches, and if you dare to criticize it, you will get very strange looks — like it never occurred to them that maybe they shouldn’t push their beliefs on someone. One of the major denominations around here, for instance, is ELCA — the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Go ahead, try to tell them that the first word in the name of their church denotes a deplorable vice.
PZ, it looks like your definition of “good religion” is also the only religion compatible with evolution… at least according Greg Gaffin who did a PhD on the subject (www.cornellevolutionproject.org) and coincidentally happens to be the lead singer in Bad Religion.
Well, think about it. If you are convinced you know the Truth, wouldn’t you want to spread the knowledge? Non-evangelical churches like the Church of England may seem more pleasant to us, but that’s only because even many of their clergy are agnostics, whether or not they want to admit it. And that’s why those churches are dying and the evangelicals are gaining.
I am the one who, over at The Thumb, asked for a definition of “good religion”, a term which Isaak used in his opening post without defining it first. I don’t think it’s necessarily an either-or categorization, so we can’t just say good religion is religion that is not bad. Religion could (presumably) be mediocre.
A couple other people there made the attempt to define “good religion”, but Isaak failed to do so in his later posts to the thread. This is as close as he came:
Comment #111224
That’s rather shaky for a definition that is critical to his argument.
Later, Isaak offers as an example(Comment #111254) (rather than a definition), someone who is religious and good.
That science can explain everything is as much as superstition as is the Deity.
speaking of evolution, the most fascinating discovery i’ve seen lately is that very early humans, after having initially evolved apart from chimpanzees for many years, resumed breeding with chimpanzees for awhile & thus engendered the line that led to us today — it shocked me that the nyt article didn’t reach the list of the nyt’s most e-mailed articles at that time: maybe it shows that even nyt readers are unwilling to face the truth
i’m new to this site, PZ, so even if you’ve already commented on that discovery, i’d enjoy hearing your thoughts because the reporter who wrote the article failed to explain why a long time supposedly passed before very early humans found love with chimpanzees again — at least that’s what the article said
Do you have a link or can you paste the reference for us to read?
I don’t know that one can discuss Bad Religion without also discussing Greg Graffin’s solo work regarding which I have to add: Cold as the Clay is pretty good.
i read about it in the nyt & in nature magazine but have no link right now, although i’ll google it & let you know
Arun: That science can explain everything is as much as superstition as is the Deity.
Who says science can explain everything? I don’t see that statement made by PZ or anybody else in this thread or in Isaak’s article at PT.
Science is fallible and incomplete, but is so far, better than any other way we know to learn about the world, or any part of it, including religions. All of our explanations are tentative and provisional, which is exactly the opposite variety of explanations provided by religions nearly across the board.
Religions like Buddhism or Unitarianism or Taoism reduce to something like philosophy with colorful traditions, places to congregate with customary songs, chants, group obsessive/compulsive behavior and secret handshakes that define membership in their club, while encouraging the use of reason and methods of science. At that point, the only reason I can think to be called a religion at all is for the tax deduction, which turns it into a bad one, by Benjamin Franklin’s definition:
So, in America at least, all tax exempt religions are bad.
Anything else I can clear up for you?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051702158_pf.html
the above is among many links to the discovery — in keeping with our religious theme, i’m wondering whether adam or eve was the chimpanzee
How about adam and eve were a figment of a myth writer’s imagination in order to explain how man came to exist.
Eve was made from a rib… freaky! A hairless chimp’s rib, who lived in an apple tree with a talking snake no less!
a question i have is if the very early humans who initially evolved apart from chimpanzees then died out, excepting those who found love with chimpanzees again, may we say that those very early humans were more human than we are?
“Good” religion:
1. Recognises that the state must be secular and also recognises this to be a good thing.
2. Interacts with the rest of society according to the laws of the government.
Atlest this is my opinion. Yes i’m a blody liberal.
those very early humans who died out because they failed to reconnect with their chimpanzee cousins may have been the gods & goddesses that our folk memory preserves — our own ancestors, chimp-humans that they were, may well have looked up to the non-chimps as superior beings — that may have been part of how our various religions started
Jason Rosenhouse at EvolutionBlog linked a couple articles on that, but I can’t locate the one by Carl Zimmer, since he moved “The Loom” to ScienceBlogs since then. Here’s the other:
john hawks weblog
thank you, quork
Good religion would be one that helped everyone and did no harm to anyone.
In general, I tend to be on PZ’s side of the fence, and have a deep sense of scepticism that there is any such thing as “good” religion. All interested in this discussion should run, not walk, but run directly to your nearest locally-owned bookstore and buy Sam Harris’ “The End of Faith”. I am only a quarter of the way through it, but so far, he makes a very strong argument that “moderate” Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc. are actually a very dangerous part of our modern culture that is leading (along with all their fundamentalists brethren) to our self-destruction.
Also, remember, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” W. Shakespeare, Hamlet.
Actually, I really like Markus’s definition.
It’s an operational definition that still leaves people to believe whatever foolishness they want, in the privacy of their homes and churches.
Next question: what religions actually practice that principle?
The strange lovefest between Allen “Carl Sagan Who?” McNeill and his li’l creationist-promotin’ lyin’ sack of shite, “Hannah”, continues over at
http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/
After a meltdown last week in which Allen weeped and apologized for suggesting that a IDiot must either be stupid or a liar, a new “Code of Conduct” was drafted which is — whether McNeill realizes it or not — designed to favor the creationist propaganda platform. Why? Just read it. It’s all about the “science”, see?
Having successfully reduced Dawkins to a curious outcast and atheist creep on the fringes of modern evolutionary biology, McNeill wastes no time comparing Pharyngula to Uncommon Descent: For example, if we were debating the kind of “self-organization” that Stuart Kaufman has proposed were the focus of debate, or the “thermodynamics far from equilibrium” of Ilya Prigogine, we might have some really interesting insights and come up with some fascinating hypotheses for field and lab folk to investigate. Instead, the debate degenerates into ATHEISM!!!!! no CHRISTIANITY!!!!! (just take a look at almost any thread at Uncommon Descent or Pharyngula for examples).
The great irony, of course, is that the threads you see on Allen’s website represent a compromised sanitized version of “reality” where any comment deemed “inappropriate” by Allen or Hannah is immediately deleted.
Sound like Pharyngula? Nope.
Between McNeill and the ivory billed woodpecker hucksters, Cornell is quickly flushing its diminishing reputation down the toilet bowl.
good grief
Bad Religion: home schoolers, have lot of kids; taliban, have a lot of kids; superstitious Hindus, have a lot of kids; Africans of any number of types, have a lot of kids; Hispanics here in the US, and esp in the rest of the Americas, Have a lot of kids;
Secular Humanists, so called good religions, Atheists etc: Italy, Spain, Japan, Russia, no kids, nation disappearing; US Secular anglo-euro type, no kids, that part of the nation disappearing; rest of Europe population declining but slower.
Hmm. Does evolution have anything to say about all of this?
glad i read john hawks’ article — what worries me about religion is how the many unthinking types need to believe in their being special & how our leaders exploit that — thus to me all religion is based in filth & savagery
Awww, I’m a big fan of Stu Kauffman. Alas, I don’t think that site will ever get into it: their bias is too obvious, and you know any mention of Kauffman will get hijacked by the likes of Hannah and Salvador into a bunch of noise about his support for ID (which, of course, he doesn’t: his hypotheses are entirely naturalistic).
After their whining about Dawkins, though, it’ll be interesting to see how they handle that fallacious tripe in Behe’s book. I predict reserved praise and comments to the effect that he’s providing interesting insights.
@PZ Myers
…I’ll better quit while I’m ahead.
Supposedly one could say unorganised personal religion, but that feels like cheating.
After their whining about Dawkins, though, it’ll be interesting to see how they handle that fallacious tripe in Behe’s book. I predict reserved praise and comments to the effect that he’s providing interesting insights.
You’d have to be insane to bet against that prediction. ;)
I also expect some comments re his “bravery” to take on the Darwinist hordes and “throw down the gauntlet.” And if Behe’s ideas aren’t interesting, then why are the Darwinist so upset by them? Blah blah blah blah nothing to do with my religious beliefs blah blah blah.
For me good religion is anything resembling modern day religion where you can walk up to a person, talk to them for hours on end, listen to them discuss politics and their neighbors who are of a different race and/or nationality, see their kids get off a public school bus, meet their family and after all this never suspect for a moment they were either neoconservative jews, christians or muslims.
If you can get through all that without discovering they were deeply religious then we’ve found the ‘good’ religion cause it’s obviously the kind we want. People who keep their religion to themselves and do not impose it on others through force of law or community standards.
MYOB’
.
“2. Interacts with the rest of society according to the laws of the government.”
What about “faith-based initiatives”? Technically legal. Churches not only don’t have to pay taxes, the government actually gives them money. So where do I sign up to be ordained?
Rob,
You come close to asking social darwinist questions in your post. I would ask you to examine the racism inherent in talking about “hispanics” or “Africans” as religious groups, making a lump of assumptions about how many children are considered acceptable in what comprises a wide variety of cultures, and then judging these as “good” or “bad.” That really doesn’t pass my smell test.
PZ:
I would say ‘good’ religion regards curiousity and individual freedom as healthy, whereas ‘bad’ religion doesn’t. I absolutely agree that religion as a formal matter tends to be ‘bad’ in that sense. I’ve also noticed, however, that in many faiths (not just my own) there is a strain that honors question-asking, risk-taking, etc.
I would also say that authentic faith (while it might be misguided) is neither blind, uninformed or mindless. It simply proceeds from a different set of assumptions. Some of these assumptions could be held provisionally. I was much criticized for asserting this in an early post, but based on my experience it seems to me that this mindset is not an all-or-nothing thing, but proceeds by degrees. Else why would the apostle say, “I believe, Lord, help thou my unbelief?”
SH
Mandolin – I could be offended about your ‘almost’ accusations of racism, social darwinism, cultural insensitivities, but I won’t. Rather you seem to have a diminished sense of irony. And it is a fascinating question that post-industrial information and technology cultures are almost universally characterized by low birth rates. Immigrants from the ‘bad religion’ paragraph, and be assured I used the words good and bad ironically, generally conform to anglo-euro standards of child bearing after a generation or too. Address the issue. Why do us post industrial folks generally not reproduce ourselves? I cannot think of a statement which is more germain in asking what evolutinary studies would say. Rob
Nope, sorry Rob, they weren’t “almost” accusations of racism. When talking about a religious issue, you condensed religion with race, and then started painting in once case an entire continent (!) based on a stereotype.
That’d be racism.
From the Bad Religion post: A person is practicing bad religion if he or she, uninvited, attempts to impose any of their religious beliefs on another.
Aren’t parents who takes their children/child to a worship service imposing their beliefs, uninvited? Lot’s of kids and teens will be happy to hear this. Spread the word:
Mom, Dad, you were BAD religionists.
Yes, religious practices vary from good to bad, but religion is make-believe no matter how it is practiced. People should ask themselves the more fundamental question, “do I want to go through life believing in something that doesn’t exist except in my head?”
Well, certainly a *person* can be religious and also good. But that doesn’t say much. Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder and also did good. That doesn’t make slaveholding good. Contrariwise, Hitler liked opera and mass murder, but that doesn’t make opera a crime against humanity. Thus, the Inquisition, by itself, does not make religion evil.
Can a religion, itself, be good? Well, don’t we first have to decide what we mean by good? Welcome back to the epistemological abyss. If you don’t know how to decide what is good or evil, or what is true or false, then you can’t discuss anything. And if two people have different standards of what is good or evil, or how to distinguish true from false, then they can never truly be reconciled. Each can prove – according to his own standards of proof – that the other is wrong.
If “we” – whoever that is – can’t even agree on what “good religion” *is*, let alone how to recognize it, how can “we” possibly formulate or adhere to any consistent policy towards it, or justify a claim that we should do so?
Furthermore, do you even believe that “good religion” is better than no religion, and if so, why? If not, don’t you really mean “less-bad religion”, and why not be honest about it? Because you can get more votes by dishonesty?
You mean like the Church of England?!
This thread consists of a bunch of people arguing about their conceptions of an ideal. We should know better. How about arguing about religion from an evolutionary point of view? In other words, let’s discuss (how or if) religious belief is a productive strategy to ensure that ones genes get passed on.
Here are some phenotypes:
1. Proscribed and prescribed sexual behavior (especially female) so nobody else’s genes get in the mix = good
2. Headman gets as many girls as he wants. Jim Bakker = good; Pope=bad (except for the medieval Italians)
3. Selfless love (agape’) Good if you preach but don’t practice (a Green beard cheating strategy); otherwise according to laws of kin selection.
4. Blessed are the peacemakers = Good, I think
5. Human equality = Good (again, I think)
6. We should start wars with unbelievers, kill their males and rape their females = Good, but only if we win.
Lots of other examples, I’m sure.
“which has stripped away everything relating to superstition and any concrete concept of a deity”
Well, there is also Theravada Buddhism, which basically says maybe there are gods, maybe there aren’t, but in either case they are irrelevant and not to be particularly worried about.
I think Bad Religion was one of the best bands to come out of the early-80s California hardcore scene….Wait, what were we talking about?
The thing that gets me when someone brings up Buddhism is that part about reincarnation, souls, and nirvana. From what I have learned of Buddhism, it is dualist through and through, which is not quite superstition but just as hard to justify.
George — I agree. Although Dawkins’s “child abuse” rhetoric is certainly not tactically sound, he is more or less right. I second the notion of parents bringing up children in their religion as “bad”.
The difference between good religion and bad religion is like the difference between Slave and servant.
I’ve written a 7-page essay on this, which I’m not going to append here …
But the principles are quite simple.
Here they are:
1. God is not detectable
( OR No “god” is detectable, even if that “god” exists – think Albert E. and the “Luminiferous Aether” )
2. All religions have been made by men.
3. Prayer has no effect on third parties.
Corollary: 3a ] There is no such thing as “Psi”.
4. All religions are blackmail, and are based on fear and superstition.
Corollary: 4a ] Marxism is a religion.
5. All religions kill, or enslave, or torture.
Corollary: 5a ] The bigots are the true believers.
All the above are testable, by both observation and experiment.
Unless and until they are shown to be false, they must be taken as true, or at least valid, statements.
Here is one way of dealing with bad religion. Spanish prime minister Zapatero didn’t justify Pope Ratzo’s agenda. He stayed away from the big Pope Show.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=JLK2A5IBSFF5VQFIQMFCFFWAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2006/07/10/wpope10.xml
More political leaders should follow his example.
But where did the church organize this holy-roller event?
“More than a million worshippers congregated at the city’s futuristic arts and science park, where the Pope gave a homily praising the traditional family founded on the “indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman”.”
The “futuristic arts and science park”! What a venue for superstitious hocus-pocus!
“Fernando Meraleda, a spokesman for the government, said that heads of state were not expected to attend such events.
However, this is the first time in Spanish history that a religious ceremony presided over by a visiting pope has not been attended by the country’s leader.
A spokesman for the conservative opposition Popular Party said: “The government should take care of the relationship with the Vatican.”
Local media reported that Mr Zapatero’s decision not to attend Mass had also caused a “certain irritation” in the papal entourage.”
Good for Zapatero.
4. All religions are blackmail, and are based on fear and superstition.
Corollary: 4a ] Marxism is a religion.
By the same logic homophobia and racism can be called religions.
As an athiest, I still find it strange to hear the words “my church” come out of my mouth on occasion.
My wife (having survived being brought up as a good Catholic) really wants our children to have a religious upbringing, but really can’t stand behind the tenets of any of the major religions either.
So we joined a “cult”. We’re now Unitarian Universalists. We give money to keep the church going, volunteer at church events, work on church committees, and teach religious education on Sundays.
I’m happy that my children will be growing up in a congregation which contains the following:
An active sub-group of Wiccan/Earth based worshippers;
A large percentage of openly gay members;
Several families of children with two mothers;
Several openly transsexual members;
I believe the church bumpersticker on the back of our minivan explains the situation quite well:
“Answers Questioned”
Rob: Mandolin’s right, you did randomly link religion and ‘race’ together in that post. It might still be telling about the situation. Why do we see high birthrates from African or Hispanic peoples? What other factors are involved? Is it all religious? Is it based on the economy of these regions? Is it purely based on the amount of education these people receive? You may be correct about the effect (I don’t have data at hand to say either way), but the cause needs some examination if you want to avoid being labeled as a racist.
Pete- that was just the cultural baggage of the Buddha’s time. He didn’t particularly care to emphazise any of it, and indeed stressed the far greater importance of learning how to live well in the here-and-now over worrying about such stuff (see the Arrow Parable). In many branches of the Buddhist tradition that supernatural baggage has unfortunately hardened into religious dogma, something there is every reason to believe would have appalled the Buddha himself. It’s quite possible to get great benefit from Buddhism as a guide to good mental habits and ethical living without treating it as a “religion”, and in so doing one is actually far more faithful to the original teachings. I find much about Buddhism to be of great value personally even though I have no use at all for chanting and prayer wheels, still less for nonsense about reincarnation.
P.S. Two excellent books I would strongly recommend are Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen and Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor.
There seems to be a trend here to describe a ‘good religion’ as one that doesn’t affect a person’s interactions with the general populace. The old “does not push faith onto others” cliche is coming out, but rather interestingly, it’s the label that’s being put on the concept that a good religion is one that’s culturally invisible.
An individual who acts ‘normally’ in public but ritually tortures and sacrifices animals in the privacy of his own home is acceptable, while a kind and empathetic person who wears distinctive dress as ordained by his faith is unacceptable.
Fascinating.
> I’d suggest that ‘good religion’ is merely something called a religion, which has stripped away everything relating to superstition and any concrete concept of a deity,
Ahh – that’d be the UK Anglican clergy you’d be talking ’bout as a role model then?
http://www.progressiveboink.com/jon/images/calvinhobbes/bill4.gif
I think he gets it.
Oh boy did he get it.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-endtimes22jun22,1,7619771.story?track=crosspromo&coll=la-headlines-frontpage&ctrack=1&cset=true
How many of the religious posters believe in the end times?
“Good Religion” is one that is in complete concordance with known scientific laws. So if your religion’s timeline says the earth is 10,000 years old, it’s not a good religion. If your religion says there was a global flood that killed everyone except one family, but set up a convenient rationale for slavery in the process, it’s probably not a good religion.
I’ve given up looking for a “good religion.” I haven’t seen one yet that can survive its own creation myth. I haven’t seen any evidence of reincarnation. I haven’t seen one with anything like evidence of heaven or hell.
Does your religion’s manifest contradict itself in places? It’s probably not a good religion.
I can see a pretty good standup routine coming out of this, but not from me.
Religion clouds young minds. Help free minds of superstitious beliefs. The earlier, the better.
And “Hispanic” is still not a religion.
I ran across a great idea in, of all places, The Comics Curmudgeon. Check it out:
http://joshreads.com/?p=669
I sometimes think this website could use this.
As I remarked on PT, the problem with Mark’s proposal is that it seems to skirt around the issue of criticism of religion generally. I think in order to have an open and democratic society, any notion (except certain very basic canons of rationality) should be open for rational criticism. This includes mild religious beliefs and the virulent hatred of Phelps and everything in between.
As for Buddhism and Taoism, the historical record as far as I can tell makes it clear that both really began as philosophies which merged with folk beliefs and became religions. (Incidentally, this is parallel somewhat with Christianity which owes a lot to both Greek philosophy and Judaism.)
Well, aside from some quibbles about the precise meaning of “torture”, lots of people sponsor this type of activity; they just outsource it. Why is that different?
Although I don’t necessarily kill any living things *myself* in order to consume their corpses, I (indirectly) pay others to kill for me. This is because, as an animal myself, I must consume the corpses of other living beings or die.
Perhaps this is not quite what you meant, but on the other hand, I’m having trouble coming up with something a religious person could do in private, with his own property, that would make me consider his religion evil even if he kept it to himself. Building nuclear bombs? Storing poison gas in insecure tanks?
Oh, wait – his god could order him to kill his own child, or mutilate its genitals, or something like that. That’d do it. Your right to practice your religion ends where your child’s right to life, health and self-determination begins.
However, I think you are disingenuously attempting to link hostility to aggressive religion-pushing with (invented) hostility to personal displays of religion. Nobody that I know of – including Dawkins, PZ, or any other atheist – opposes the right of a religious person to display his religion on his own personal property or body, in a safe and non-hostile way.
We merely oppose their attempts to display it on *public* property, or to insist that others defer to their religious symbols or opinions in the way that they do themselves, or to claim that religious people are in some (unspecified and non-measurable) way better than non-religious people.
Re Markus’ definition:
Next question: what religions actually practice that principle?
Most old-line mainstream churches, in my experience. American Episcopalians, specifically, to name one group I have direct experience with (though I’m not a member.) Yes, there are some Episcopalian leaders that are jerks, but mostly on matters within the church.
Nearly everyone I grew up with went to church (I didn’t realize until much later that there was anything unusual about my family not going.) The fact that I can’t recall what denomination most of them are, even though I went to a few of their church picnics, says a lot about the lack of proseletyzing.
I would add another requirement:
3. Recognizes that sacred texts can be metaphorical, and may be a reflection of the culture and time that produced them.
If they’re willing to follow 1 and 2, this isn’t absolutely necessary, but I find this rule a much simpler way to distinguish good from bad. For some reason, those who do not believe their texts are absolute literal truth are less likely to impose their beliefs on the unwilling or to try to enlist government in doing so.