Hey, I said I didn't want to start an argument! But now I have to respond. ;)
I think these "extreme atheists" you're referring to are atheists only as a kind of side detail. What they really are at core is "lost sheep looking for a flock", and when they think they've found their flock, they try overly hard to demonstrate their belonging. Basically, they're console fanboys who happen to have chosen Atheism as their totem rather than the PS3, or whatever. Plenty of "extreme christians" in this category, too. I can't just hand-wave them away, but hope you can agree that their behaviour most likely descends from causes outside the putative core of their argumentative focus.
"Everyone has some ridiculous/irrational beliefs. I believe that everyone is entitled to their irrational beliefs – whatever they may be."
They most certainly are. However, when they graduate from privately harbouring whatever beliefs they have to trying to change the world and others to suit, that's when I, and a great many others, start to have a problem with it, and tend to see the belief as the cause.
This is so common I probably don't need to give one, but a great example was the constitutional amendment last year to ban gay marriage in California. What a stupid, pointless, hateful thing to do. And all because of these "ridiculous/irrational" beliefs. Don't seem so harmless now, do they?
"My point is that the CC did and still do some very good work for people"
I know the Catholics have built their share of schools and hospitals. I'm a pragmatist, outcomes are what matters, and the truth that if we absolutely had to choose a religion, any religion, we could certainly choose worse than Catholicism.
However, making such points is kind of useless. We have no way to know how many hospitals would be in Africa absent the CC. If the whole world had moved to enlightened atheism in the 1950s, would there be more or less schools in Africa? If the scourge of religion had been scrubbed from Africa decades ago, would it even need us to be building its hospitals for them?
All interesting but unanswerable questions. Yes, the CC has done positive things. Maybe even as many good things as bad things. So? Doesn't make their Interdimensional Space God any more findable, and their attitudes towards eg. Third World contraception remain utterly comtemptible. Would the world be a better place, on balance, without the Catholic Church? I suspect
"Let everyone believe in their own irrational beliefs. My father does not believe in evolution – yet he is one of the nicest people I know. My sister believes that Jesus wants her to work with orphans. What harm does this do to anyone?"
I wish you hadn't written about your family, since it makes arguing with you akin to insulting your loved ones. However, now I have no choice.
Superficially, there's nothing wrong with the situation as you describe it. The problem is that there is irrationality and mysticism embedded in this system and it can quickly go off the rails. Your sister might be helping orphans today because "Jesus wants her to", but tomorrow "Jesus" might tell her to persecute gays or bomb an abortion clinic. Once you accept that taking orders from imaginary friends - or their supposed representatives on earth - is OK and valid, how can you argue when those orders swing to an activity you don't agree with?
And if your father really, truly believes that evolution is false and wrong, he must be very angry about the malicious lies being propogated at this very moment to innocent children in schools all around the world. Is he campaigning against that, then? If not, why not? Maybe his level of conviction will go up one day, and then he'll start? What will you think about his "harmless" beliefs then?
If you accept, even encourage, magical thinking at times when it seems to be doing no harm, it makes it very difficult to reject later on when the activities of the "faithful" turn counter to what you know to be the best interests of society and humanity. This is folly. Logic, reason and evidence-based thinking are the only valid means to reach any decision, take any action, form any belief. Magical thinking is the sworn enemy of reason and logic, and must be defeated whereever it exists. If your father and sister experience a rude awakening as part of that wholly correct process, well - as adults, equipped with brains capable of thinking just as well as anyone else - they should have known better.
“This is so common I probably don't need to give one, but a great example was the constitutional amendment last year to ban gay marriage in California. What a stupid, pointless, hateful thing to do. And all because of these "ridiculous/irrational" beliefs. Don't seem so harmless now, do they?”
What is marriage more than a label? Would there be a difference between rights of people who have a marriage or who have a civil union? In some countries the government does not know (and does not care) who marries or civil unions who.
I suspect this debate has two sides – Christians who want to “protect” marriage and gays who want to “force” acceptance. Preferably the state should declare everything as civil unions.
“However, making such points is kind of useless. We have no way to know how many hospitals would be in Africa absent the CC.”
The point is exactly that the CC is the highest non-governmental donor of aid. You can criticise than, but per person the Catholic church gives more aid than most secular and humanist NGOs.
“Doesn't make their Interdimensional Space God any more findable,”
It is not about the findability of their god. It is what happens here and now – and Catholics are pretty positive influence.
“and their attitudes towards eg. Third World contraception remain utterly comtemptible.”
This again is debatable. The CC has had huge influence in the AIDS programs of Uganda and it is one of the few countries that reduced its HIV prevalence rate (with an ABC program). I live in a country that places a strong influence on contraception (South Africa) and AIDS ravages at a prevalence rate that is more than 20%.
“Once you accept that taking orders from imaginary friends - or their supposed representatives on earth - is OK and valid, how can you argue when those orders swing to an activity you don't agree with?”
Or if someone tells you to make peace? Religion has both positive and negative influences – just like any other ideology (e.g. communism). Religious people were fairly well persecuted in the name of state Atheism (e.g. ex-Soviet Union, China).
“it makes it very difficult to reject later on when the activities of the "faithful" turn counter to what you know to be the best interests of society and humanity. “
As I said, everyone has irrational beliefs (e.g. Humanism). Your moral basis is probably built on several irrational beliefs.
"What is marriage more than a label? Would there be a difference between rights of people who have a marriage or who have a civil union? In some countries the government does not know (and does not care) who marries or civil unions who."
And in some countries they do. There are legal differences, as you must know.
Either the two concepts should be completely merged, or one or the other abandoned. It is against conscience to single out one group as having less rights than another.
I favour keeping the word "marriage", since that is what everyone already knows. However, I don't have strong feelings one way or the other; marriage could be made into some kind of church thing like baptism and the legal institution of partnership replaced with civil unions; that would also be OK. What is not OK is the current state of affairs.
Anyway, I'm not trying to enter into a discussion about words and labels. I was simply presenting a recent example of one group of people basically persecuting another based upon their unsubstantiated "faith", as evidence that private beliefs are not always harmless.
"The point is exactly that the CC is the highest non-governmental donor of aid. You can criticise than, but per person the Catholic church gives more aid than most secular and humanist NGOs."
And my point is that this is not a valid argument, since there is no control scenario in which the Catholic Church does not exist so that we can compare whether the outcome absent their existence is better or worse.
Anyway I'm not trying to convince you that there's no good Christians - of course there are! And there are good Muslims too, and good atheists. People act altruistically because of basic tendency and social conditioning. There is no reason why this conditioning has to have a religious theme. In fact, I suspect the religious overtones of many charities actually hinder the aid they receive and deliver. However, I'm not an expert and that's kind of beyond the scope of what I am trying to say.
I can't really respond to your statements about the CC's influence in Uganda or whereever, as I'm not an expert. One doesn't need to be an expert, however, to recognise that insisting that contraception is evil can hardly help the AIDS situation in developing countries.
The CC might put in a lot of effort counteracting the effects of its dictats against contraception, and those efforts might indeed be somewhat successful. But why speak against contraception in the first place? If they really want to do good, encourage contraception and put in the work! But no, their strict "faith" comes first, before mere lives.
This kind of thing taints everything they do. The schools they build teach the bible. The hospitals have paintings of Mother Mary, as if to imply that God or his chosen ones are the reason some poor uneducated sap is being cured. All the "aid" has strings. And the problems in Africa have not been solved, or even helped, by any of this.
Yes, the Catholic Church has educated and healed, albeit tainted by an expansionist undercurrent of religious instruction, fueled by its prodigious wealth. So has the Wahhabist regime of Saudi Arabia, funded by its own oil riches. I can't deny the localised reductions in suffering. But I can assert that, long term, relying on expansionist religions to meet the needs of the poor while indoctrinating the natives is not the answer.
The secular world should do better.
"Or if someone tells you to make peace? Religion has both positive and negative influences – just like any other ideology (e.g. communism)."
Someone given divine power to preach for peace also has the ability to preach for war. Power should not be arbitrarily assigned like this.
But yes, religion is but a subset of blind idealogy. Plenty of evil has been done in the name of others, like you say.
"Religious people were fairly well persecuted in the name of state Atheism (e.g. ex-Soviet Union, China)."
And atheists have been persecuted in the name of other state idealogies. I don't see what this proves. Totalitarian states choose their "enemies of the people" according to what fits their needs, or that can whip up some cheap approval from segments of the population.
At least state atheism is defensible. A war on religion sounds to me like a war on illiteracy. State religion is much nastier. Ask a homosexual in Iran.
This is all besides the point, though, really. Arguing about the details is a waste of time. The fact is, convincing large numbers of people that Santa Claus exists and is judging their actions so they better be good might well have some positive effects, but it's still completely fucking wrong and the world should have moved on by now.
"As I said, everyone has irrational beliefs (e.g. Humanism). Your moral basis is probably built on several irrational beliefs."
The difference is that if you can identify a logical hole in any of my beliefs, I'll not only welcome the discussion, but congratulate you for correcting me. Good luck doing that for anyone who has purposefully abandoned all logic and reason and instead thrown themselves at the mercy of a phantom god they read about in a mistranslated 2,000 year old book written by and for uneducated sheep herders in Palestine.
And if we accept that indoctrinating the lower classes in fake idealogies in order to control them and make them behave better is in fact a good thing, then perhaps we need to design a new, improved religion, without any of the problems from the past.
Anyway, look, this conversation is going nowhere. You are never, ever going to convince me that religion is a Good Thing and I probably won't convince you otherwise either. I've given up on trying to "turn" people, and writing a decent argument takes an awful lot of time. Let's leave it there.
I think these "extreme atheists" you're referring to are atheists only as a kind of side detail. What they really are at core is "lost sheep looking for a flock", and when they think they've found their flock, they try overly hard to demonstrate their belonging. Basically, they're console fanboys who happen to have chosen Atheism as their totem rather than the PS3, or whatever. Plenty of "extreme christians" in this category, too. I can't just hand-wave them away, but hope you can agree that their behaviour most likely descends from causes outside the putative core of their argumentative focus.
"Everyone has some ridiculous/irrational beliefs. I believe that everyone is entitled to their irrational beliefs – whatever they may be."
They most certainly are. However, when they graduate from privately harbouring whatever beliefs they have to trying to change the world and others to suit, that's when I, and a great many others, start to have a problem with it, and tend to see the belief as the cause.
This is so common I probably don't need to give one, but a great example was the constitutional amendment last year to ban gay marriage in California. What a stupid, pointless, hateful thing to do. And all because of these "ridiculous/irrational" beliefs. Don't seem so harmless now, do they?
"My point is that the CC did and still do some very good work for people"
I know the Catholics have built their share of schools and hospitals. I'm a pragmatist, outcomes are what matters, and the truth that if we absolutely had to choose a religion, any religion, we could certainly choose worse than Catholicism.
However, making such points is kind of useless. We have no way to know how many hospitals would be in Africa absent the CC. If the whole world had moved to enlightened atheism in the 1950s, would there be more or less schools in Africa? If the scourge of religion had been scrubbed from Africa decades ago, would it even need us to be building its hospitals for them?
All interesting but unanswerable questions. Yes, the CC has done positive things. Maybe even as many good things as bad things. So? Doesn't make their Interdimensional Space God any more findable, and their attitudes towards eg. Third World contraception remain utterly comtemptible. Would the world be a better place, on balance, without the Catholic Church? I suspect
"Let everyone believe in their own irrational beliefs. My father does not believe in evolution – yet he is one of the nicest people I know. My sister believes that Jesus wants her to work with orphans. What harm does this do to anyone?"
I wish you hadn't written about your family, since it makes arguing with you akin to insulting your loved ones. However, now I have no choice.
Superficially, there's nothing wrong with the situation as you describe it. The problem is that there is irrationality and mysticism embedded in this system and it can quickly go off the rails. Your sister might be helping orphans today because "Jesus wants her to", but tomorrow "Jesus" might tell her to persecute gays or bomb an abortion clinic. Once you accept that taking orders from imaginary friends - or their supposed representatives on earth - is OK and valid, how can you argue when those orders swing to an activity you don't agree with?
And if your father really, truly believes that evolution is false and wrong, he must be very angry about the malicious lies being propogated at this very moment to innocent children in schools all around the world. Is he campaigning against that, then? If not, why not? Maybe his level of conviction will go up one day, and then he'll start? What will you think about his "harmless" beliefs then?
If you accept, even encourage, magical thinking at times when it seems to be doing no harm, it makes it very difficult to reject later on when the activities of the "faithful" turn counter to what you know to be the best interests of society and humanity. This is folly. Logic, reason and evidence-based thinking are the only valid means to reach any decision, take any action, form any belief. Magical thinking is the sworn enemy of reason and logic, and must be defeated whereever it exists. If your father and sister experience a rude awakening as part of that wholly correct process, well - as adults, equipped with brains capable of thinking just as well as anyone else - they should have known better.