Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Atheists are Irrational
Study after study shows that religious Jews and Christians are happier, more stable, more charitable, have happier families and children… the list goes on. In my case, religion gives me enormous confidence, a strong purpose and a sense of fulfillment when I work toward that purpose.
So if Atheists really were interested in the best outcomes, shouldn’t they choose religion based solely on the results regardless of whether or not there is underlying proof of the existence of a deity? After all, a truly hard-data-driven approach leads to a seemingly-inevitable conclusion. Or do atheists not really care about empirical results?
Note, of course, that religious people often shy away from my argument as well. Believers, like atheists, like to wallow in the well-trodden and fruitless muck, trying to prove or disprove the existence of a god. Yet most of our lives are occupied doing things for practical, utilitarian reasons, like “Does it work better if I do it this way?” When we choose to wear clothes or use table manners or treat other people with respect, we are not doing so out of a deep conviction about The Truth, but because we get better results when we act that way.
Well, we clearly get better results when people act as if they believed in religion, even if, when pressed, they may well admit that they have profound doubts. So if we really want better lives, then why not act accordingly and follow the data?
Published in General
edit: Self deleted. I just don’t want to go there today.
I’ve been thinking the same thing.
You’re moving the goal posts.
Your analogy was of an instance in which one can prove that the claim made by the thermometers is false, and that’s why it’s a bad analogy in this context.
Metaphysical claims of faith are, by their very nature, unfalsifiable. They aren’t claims that can be tested and disproved.
I have more respect for the misguided people known as Young Earth Creationists, who attempt to use the tools of science to prove that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, than I do for the hard-core scientific atheist who pretends that those same tools disprove the believers’ claims. Both are using the tools wrong: science should have no truck with metaphysics. But I can excuse ignorance of that fact on the part of layman; men of science should know better.
There’s a fundamental difference between “I know it isn’t so” and “I don’t know that it’s so — and I very seriously doubt that it is.”
Your example of Columbia is wrong. Venezuelans are moving into Columbia at the moment. Communists have always created societies that people flee from.
As for Denmark, France and the rest of the Western World. It is based on Christianity. It took a long while for Christianity to be enlightened for sure but it is based on Christianity nonetheless. Furthermore, atheists don’t breed while religious people breed alot. Europe might become Muslim because it ceased to be Christian.
That is because you have the conceit that you are, in fact, rational. It makes you defensive if someone suggests that you are irrational.
I don’t have this hangup. Heinlein had it right: “Man is not a rational creature; he is a rationalizing creature.”
Besides, I was clearly advancing a thesis to test it: I am very well aware that most decisions are not rational. I don’t mind this feature of humanity at all – but I know that people who think they are rational would rightly attack a thesis that suggested otherwise.
How can I test something unless y’all are willing to attack it? Mission Accomplished.
I’ve long agreed with you about this, that people are far less rational than we generally believe. I’ve come to believe that rationality is a specialized tool that allows us to solve a particular set of problems that just happen to have enormous survival value, but that most of our decision making goes on at a lower level — and that, even at our rational best, that lower level often exerts enormous influence over what we erroneously believe to be rigid and meticulous reasoning.
None of which suggests that we are less irrational because we do or do not believe in a deity. ;)
False dichotomy alert. Man is sometimes irrational. But that does not mean that man is incapable of being rational.
Rationally, I know that when I buy that candy bar for lunch that it will not help my aging body get thin again. I might still buy that candy bar (actually, I know I will). But that doesn’t mean that I can’t do calculus or develop a legal argument. To say that because man is not rational at all times does not mean he is incapable of logic at any time.
Civilization depends on us being more rational than not.
I’m going to assume that’s a response to our excessively pronoun-laden friend’s comment, and not to my own, since I was careful to avoid absolutes in my comment.
Logic and reason are tools – tools that can be deployed in the service of any system. They are not truths in themselves, which is why most questions and answers depend on the language being chosen. Biologists and physicists and doctors and engineers and historians all use reason, but only within their respective systems. The choice of that system, and the rules that govern it, are not necessarily rational at all.
Example: post hoc ergo propter hoc is a logical fallacy – but it is nevertheless a primary tool for measuring the efficacy of drugs in drug studies.
Yes they are.
This sounds a bit like “Non-Overlapping Magisteria” (NOMA) as explained by professor Stephen Jay Gould.
Gould, in his 1999 book “Rocks of Ages” believed:
But Gould’s (NOMA) received a lot of criticism from both “people of faith” and scientists because if a religious person says, “God created human beings out of garlic cloves and God created birds out of basil leaves,” an evolutionary biologist is well within his rights to say, “This is incorrect,” while explaining evolution.
At this point, the religious person might say, “I reject evolution” or “I accept micro-evolution but I reject macro-evolution.” That’s okay. But the religious person is rejecting the scientific consensus.
Some claims are harder to debunk than others. Take the Brett Kavanaugh example and suppose that Kavanaugh had never stepped foot in the continental United States until 1990. Then Ms Ford’s claim of being raped by Kavanaugh would have been an easier target.
Similarly, when someone says, “There is some ‘higher power’ out there,” that’s harder to debunk than “God created man out of garlic cloves; birds out of basil leaves.”
You have to draw the line somewhere.
I’m going to come to the defense of religion. There is no conflict between Catholicism and science. The simple reasoning is that Catholics believe that god created science along with the rest of the universe.
That quote from Gould is asinine.
I agree.
If some man in the year 250 AD claimed that God appeared to him and told him that tomatoes are poisonous to human beings and this man wrote this alleged discussion between himself and God into a Holy Book, scientists aren’t going to say, “Well, we can offer no opinion as to whether tomatoes are actually harmful to human beings when eaten because that’s an area reserved for religion.“
No. Scientists will look at what happens to human beings when they eat tomatoes. Do they die within hours?
That’s what we would expect of scientists. To put claims, whether they are made by a religious sect or not, to the test.
Really? So which “logic language” do you view as an absolute truth in itself?
And once you pick one, can you tell me how you know it is true, as opposed to merely being internally consistent – and can you make that argument using only the same logic without being circular?
I think that once you try to “prove” logic using empirical data, the gig is up. And any system that uses itself to prove that it is true is indistinguishable from religion. There is no falsifiability.
Logic is. Truth is. There is not other qualifier.
Our understanding may be flawed, but logic and truth are what they are.
The conceit of some bad philosophers is to imagine that this is not the case. The fool, Descartes claims he can’t prove he exists, yet at the same time claimed to prove god does (with very flawed proofs). When you deny identity, when you deny that there is truth, you go down absurd paths that only please bad philosophers.
I thought Descartes was the one who said, “I think, therefore, I am.” In other words, I thought that Descartes believed that one could prove that one exists simply by being able to think about the topic of identity.
Descartes idiotically concluded that he couldn’t know if he existed, but such a conclusion is not helpful. He decided that a philosophy that says nothing is useless. He couldn’t earn his retainer as the Tsar’s resident philosopher if he didn’t come up with something to write about. To remedy his foolish predicament he decided to make an assumption. His assumption was, cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am.
Best not bring up Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and its implications. I can’t be sure that his tenuous grip on reality would survive.
I live in AZ. We have Summer and then Indian Summer.
No one can know if God exists or if He cares. Religion has no monopoly on what is good or what is moral.
A corrupt religious person does not mean that God doesn’t exist. But quite often one will hear from certain religious people (though not all) that you really can’t be a moral person unless you believe in religion X. When a leader of religion X turns out to be abusive to his wife or a drunkard and then one meets an atheist who is kind to his wife and generous to others, one might think, “You know, maybe religion X isn’t the only source of morality. Maybe there is a way to be moral without God. Maybe if I become an atheist or agnostic I won’t end up as a drug dealer or a depressed person.”
Of course, the opposite experience can work too. Meeting kind and generous Christians can make someone take a second look at Christianity (or Hinduism or Islam or whatever).
I wish you had done so without being insulting.
I am sorry that you felt insulted.
I have been here for a long time, and, I am proud to say, I have been pretty successful at not insulting people. Your reaction, starting with the initial misreading of my words, is unfortunate and unintended. Your feedback reminded me that many people, yourself included, are instinctively defensive about being considered irrational or otherwise inconsistent.
My post taught me something new, and so I am pleased that I wrote it: the comment on post hoc ergo propter hoc attacked my argument nicely.
If you had meant to say, “Human beings are irrational,” you could have made that your title.
But instead the title was, “Atheists are irrational,” presumably because believing in God (any version of God?) is a ticket to happiness.
I do think that when a relative dies, it is comforting to say, “Aunt Lucy isn’t with us any more. She is in a better place. She’s with God, in heaven.” Even if it isn’t true, it makes one feel better.
To say to someone grieving over the death of a relative, “There is no heaven. Your Aunt Lucy isn’t in heaven. She’s just gone. That’s it,” would be impolite.
So, even an agnostic-atheist like me isn’t going to argue with someone grieving over a relative and tell them, “Well, I’m not sure there is such a place as heaven or hell. It’s not like there is any emperical evidene that these places actually exist. And if they exist, we don’t know who resides there, though we would like to think that Hitler and Stalin are in hell, not in heaven.”
So, I would argue that atheists can be a bit too rational, not irrational. They can be, at times, too willing to be impolite when religious people are using their religious beliefs as a means of coping with a harsh world.
Maybe religion softens the blow of living in a tough world and maybe that’s why in places like Africa and Latin America belief in Christianity is strong while in places like Denmark and Canada belief in Christianity is weak.
If you live in Denmark or Canada there is less reason to try to find some religion to soften the blow of living in a harsh world because the world is pretty darn good.
Where is the fun in that? I have written variations of that post for years and years. I guess it amuses me that atheists somehow consider themselves smarter and better than other people.
At least in terms of corollation, the data is strong. Believing in G-d leads to better measurable results.
When someone causes pain (like telling someone that Auntie Joe is not in heaven), that is not rational. It is simply cruel and rude.
This could be. Religion certainly helps one cope, by adding structure and ritual and purpose.
It makes sense. Though for me, religion is more than coping; it allows me to strive and achieve much more than I otherwise would. But again, YMMV. I am well aware that for too many people, religion is a crutch instead of a ladder.
You forgot “better looking.”
I liked your argument at first, iWe, until I thought about it a little more. I think I am happy (content, with peace of mind is a better description) because I believe that, regardless of what political system or political leaders I live under, I am ultimately in the hands of God. My relatives who don’t believe in God are far more worried about who our political leaders will be than I am. It’s the only hope they have.
I do think belief is required for (what we believers feel is) our greater “happiness.”
I think you are at least mostly right in this.
Even among my fellow Torah-observant Jews, there is a strong instinct to try to eliminate uncertainty, to basically take the reliance on G-d out of the equation. People who try to eliminate risk are not able to have faith.
All of this said, I think there is still real benefit from having routines and rituals – fake it until you make it. I know lots of atheists who are, nevertheless, quite superstitious (from crossing fingers to black cats, etc.) – which is itself a form of religious faith.
This is a terrifying condemnation of theism. You seem to accept evil because you’re more concerned with your belief in an afterlife. This is another symptom of Christianity’s cult of death and helps explain why some people allow evil to go unchecked.