Mick Hartley

I wasn’t going to respond to Norm’s post here. Fair enough and all that: we disagree, and I can understand the objection to the Steven Weinberg quote. Certainly most (well OK, all) of the commenters on my post disagreed with me. But then, not happy with his first effort, he has another go:

The statement is so obviously, so demonstrably, false that it’s hard to understand how anyone could have made it, let alone why people keep repeating it as though it were something wise.

Hmm. Did I say that my choice of phrase “taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut”, about Norm’s earlier post, was unhappy? I take that back. Weinberg is indulging in some rhetoric here, for pity’s sake. No, I know, rhetoric shouldn’t be immune from criticism, but this is overkill. Two posts labouring the same point, only this second time not only is Weinberg wrong, but his statement is so obviously, demonstrably false that only idiots could possibly even think of repeating it.

OK, let’s mount some kind of defence.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

The point is, here – do I really need to spell this out? – that religion can be a particularly powerful force for getting people to commit atrocities while feeling proud of the fact that they are actually behaving with great moral rectitude. It claims to be the source of ethics, and is therefore uniquely well-placed to present, as ethical, behaviours which would by normal standards (a loose formulation, I know, but if we want to get away from religiously-derived ethics we have to argue from the basis of some generally assumed moral standards) be considered evil. Slicing the heads off unbelievers, for example.

Norm:

It doesn’t take religion to get a good person do a small wrong. She can be led to it in any number of other ways: through some bad impulse getting the better of her, temptation, miscalculation, a political commitment that has led her astray. In just the same way, it doesn’t take religion to get a good person to do something really evil. He may be swayed by political doctrine, or patriotism, momentary anger, a failure to understand the implications of a policy he has been persuaded to help implement, and so forth.

What I take Weinberg to be saying is that only with religion do people do evil, and believe that they’re doing good. So as far as small wrongs go, well, these don’t make people feel particularly proud of themselves, do they? That’s not what we’re talking about at all. What about those examples of doing something really evil, then? Momentary anger? Hardly something that one feels good about in oneself. You might possibly think you were justified in running over that pathetic useless bastard who had the nerve to cut you up in his BMW, but you’re unlikely to feel that you were acting with exemplary rectitude, especially if we’re assuming you’re a “good person”.

It’s when we get to political doctrine or patriotism that the argument has some force. Yes, they’re common enough reasons why people do nasty things to other people. Nazism and communism, for example, both justified barbarous behaviour. Can we make a distinction with religion? Possibly. I’m not sure. If I were to try and make that case, I’d argue along the lines that religion has that special propensity to take what we would normally regard as immoral actions and, using its power to define morality in its own image, redefine them to be actively good. The kidnappers of Alan Johnston were keen on beheading him not simply for the propaganda value, but as an action good in itself, which would help secure them favours in paradise. Nazi and Soviet functionaries would not, I think, have felt quite such enthusiasm for their barbarity: the sadists among them were to be regretfully indulged because it was all necessary for a higher cause.

Not convinced by that last paragraph? Consider who you’d rather have in possession of nuclear weapons: the Soviet Union or Iran under Ahmedinejad. With the Soviets, you knew you were dealing with rational opponents. Cunning and unprincipled no doubt, but rational. With someone like Ahmadinejad – or the various assorted Islamist groups his regime supports – talk of the glories of martyrdom is no idle chatter. These people would happily blow half the world up, and let Allah sort out those who deserved paradise from the rest of us. And they’d be secure in the knowledge that they were doing Allah’s will – that they were good people. It’s that twisting of the moral compass in the name of religion which is so chilling, and which gives the force to Weingold’s remark. Yes, we can argue about the extent to which other secular ideologies perform the same function, but religion was there first, and still does it best.

When I first read Weinberg’s quote, I thought it stated something important about religion which I hadn’t seen quite in that light before. I’ve now read all the criticisms, both Norm’s and those commenters to my posts on the subject, and I still feel it says something important about religion, even though I can perfectly well see their points of view. It’s a polemical statement, to return to my earlier argument. In the Wikipedia entry on Weinberg the quotation is given in a fuller form:

“Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

You might take that first sentence as a grotesque and offensive simplification. Norm could no doubt spend much effort in a detailed repudiation of this caricatured view. An insult to human dignity? Religion’s inspired some of history’s finest minds, produced some of the most uplifting and moving works of art, motivated acts of selfless courage….you know the kind of thing. I still think it’s a liberating thought, though. What it captures – what the whole quotation captures – is the way that religion, by claiming a transcendent source for ethics, strips us of our dignity by reducing our morality to a matter of obeying laws handed down to us, as though we’re no more than naughty children trying to avoid punishment.

I also think that Weinberg was quite happy to be contentious here: even – oh no! – offensive. It’s a remark that has rhetorical force rather than philosophical rigour.

Norm thinks, though, that not merely is it “obviously, demonstrably false”: it’s worse than that.

It is a well-known form of religious bigotry to hold that people of no religion lack any basis for moral conduct. The suggestion that religious people, as a generality, might be especially inclined towards the suppression of their good impulses rather neatly reverses this. It doesn’t escape being a piece of prejudice in its own right by doing so.

It’s a common criticism of Dawkins et al, that it’s fine when they criticise religion, but they go too far when they belittle the religious. Maybe there’s some force in that, but clearly in some sense any criticism of religion can be taken as a criticism of the religious. Norm seems to me to be exploiting that here. Weinberg is talking about religion. He says it’s a powerful force for getting normally good people to do evil. I’d have thought there was ample historical evidence to support this. Note that we’re not talking now about what is clearly Weinberg’s weak spot, as it were – the idea that it’s only religion that can do that. No, the simple assertion that religion can cause good people to do evil now becomes a suggestion that “religious people, as a generality, might be especially inclined towards the suppression of their good impulses”, which is “a piece of prejudice”.

What can I say? Perhaps Norm would prefer it if we gave up criticism of religion altogether.