Should atheism be suppressed?

It's a strange road we're heading down where 'faith based communities' are putting aside their differences to fight the common enemy of 'atheism'. By any definition of the word, most religious believers are atheists to some Gods, yet those who view atheism as a bad thing must be a subjecting themselves form of cognitive dissonance.

If they were being honest about it then a Christian doesn't believe in a Hindu's gods and vice versa.

At the heart of this seems to be a form of agreement between religious institutions not to criticise each other's beliefs. When was the last time you heard a Christian leader trying to tell Jews that they are completely wrong, the Messiah has already returned and they all missed him, and how often to we hear senior Rabbis trying to tell us that Jesus was just a man and that Christians have fallen off the path and need to stop following a false prophet.

It amazes me that 2 religious people with completely different beliefs can tolerate each other (and even respect the other's beliefs) yet find total non-belief so hard to accept.

In her heart a devoted follower of Jesus *must* know that a Sikh is worshipping false Gods, yet somehow she accepts this as OK - I fail to see how a Christian can tolerate the beliefs of a Sikh (who must believe in a non-existent God from the Xians perspective) yet has a problem with an atheist - both of whom from a Christian's perspective are damned and in exactly the same boat. Surely the Sikh is in fact a little worse compounding their sins by worshipping false idols as it were.

empirically, I think it's safe to say he's wrong. Aren't standards of living higher in scandanavian countries where secularism and atheism are prevalent?

A healthy balance is need and a respect between both points of view, but that would mean the eradication of institutions like the Catholic Church unless they change what they're are fundamentally built on/fundamental message is which has as much to do with Christianity as my bollox and more to do with power, of course in my very humble opinion.
http://www.thesecret.tv/

DublinWriter wrote:

Plato Schmato. He also thought the eating of beans was morally repugnant.

Of course! One wonders, though, why this interesting fact has failed to persuade people down the millenia that Plato wasn't really much of a thinker...

karen3212 wrote:

Schuhart wrote:

In his view, the general population needs to get its morality delivered to it in the form of an unquestioned myth.

I'm pretty sure it has been shown that the General population have constantly reinterpreted the morals being handed down by many good books, and in the end have looked at experience for their morals. I think they can handle the truth, and they don't need to be educated to do it, just be able to deduce from their own experience.

Good points, backed up by:

Fallen Seraph wrote:

empirically, I think it's safe to say he's wrong. Aren't standards of living higher in scandanavian countries where secularism and atheism are prevalent?

That is the case - see here for details (graphs at bottom). However, remember that the paper shows correlation, not causation - lower living standards may lead to theism, rather than the reverse, or there may well be a two-way causation.

Plato was thinking, of course, of an entirely different type of society, with a much more limited, but much more direct, form of democracy, and lacking the structure of laws/courts/police/prisons that we now have.

I find it hard not to agree with Plato theoretically. The majority of any population probably do need to receive their 'morality' (or the code by which they are expected to act) from somewhere else. Without some form of sanction attached to morality, I would tend to agree that a significant part of the population can be expected to be less moral than is desirable.

On the other hand, I (a) don't agree that the majority of people will be entirely amoral in the absence of some form of obviously external moral constraint, and (b) don't consider what Plato says to be applicable to modern societies.

Consider - the vast bulk of people live in communities of some kind, and their lives are defined by social interaction. They are always, therefore, susceptible to the socially defined "contractual" morality of their group. Further, each group interacts with others, to a far greater degree than in Plato's day, so in turn each group is susceptible to pressure from the greater society to conform to generally acceptable norms.

This mechanism is not totally effective - witness the cultures of deceit and/or corruption that have occurred within companies (Enron, Arthur Andersen), where each individual excuses him/herself with the claim that everyone else was doing it. Similarly, I think we are all aware in an Irish context of the degree to which certain forms of corruption are both endemic, and acceptable, within Irish political life.

However, we have what Plato did not foresee - mechanisms of detection and correction that outstrip by orders of magnitude those available to his society, an accepted corpus of law that has its own gravitas, and a policing system that is startlingly ubiquitous and effective. In the final analysis, the powers of coercion available to the state are overwhelming compared to the powers of resistance available to the citizen - yet democracy keeps those powers from being exercised against the wishes of the majority of citizens.

In such a context, atheists are no longer the spreaders of social disorder that they might have been. Indeed, the boot is likely to be on the other foot - those who resist the common morality, and are willing to pay the "supreme sacrifice" of defending their deviance with their lives, are far more likely in this day and age to be theists. The cultists at Waco, Heaven's Gate, the Manson Family - all religiously motivated. Or rather, all in the thrall of charismatic individuals who redefined morality to suit themselves, and who used religion as the vehicle for that redefinition.

It is possible to see how a charismatic individual could use atheism to persuade his followers to lay down their lives - but it's not option A. Only by persuading people that their lives were brief meaningless farts of existence could you persuade your followers that they should lay them down - and in a group setting, that's pretty difficult, since by and large, most of us derive our meaning from membership of groups. The best attempts have been those, like socialism, which try to persuade the individual that his or her life has no meaning individually, but only in the context of the group - hence the socialist attempts to "liberate" the individual from any other group membership - be it church, village, social class or family.

The message that there is no reward waiting, no Heaven for the dutiful, no virgins for the suicide bomber, no glorious dead, but only a full stop - is not one I would choose to motivate followers. The best result is likely to be a stable of unstable individuals, who are as likely to kill themselves, or me, or another group member, as anyone I might point them at. Far better to use religion, with the promise of another life for the blessed, and no comeback if that's not the case. The dead do not return to say "he lied" - they lie still, and tell no tales.

What of those who do not have to lay down their lives to struggle against the commonly accepted morality? Here too, we find theists of various stripes in the clear majority. While there are atheists who will kick against what is empirically established as 'good' or 'bad', they do so individually. Offend one theist, and you've offended thousands, so that a single individual of personal force or official position can act as a spokesperson for multitudes - offend one atheist, and other atheists will nitpick his arguments to death, because no two atheists have to sing from the same score.

Bear in mind that Plato was talking about what were, by and large, state religions - so that atheism constituted a rejection of state-sanctioned morality. We cannot apply his arguments to personal religions like Christianity, where atheism may include an acceptance of a state-sanctioned morality that the theist would reject.

My conclusion, then, is that what Plato said needs to be stood on its head. The majority of citizens are already receiving their morality from an external, sanction-backed source - the law of the land and the general social contract, enforced by policing, regulation, and communication. The followers of organised religion, because it may oppose what is empirically shown to be good for the majority purely on the basis of doctrine, are more likely to be the social danger he describes. Atheists, on the other hand, have no reason to oppose what is empirically shown to be good, and when they do, they do so out of purely personal unreasons.

The real question is - should theism be suppressed?

somewhat orotundly,
Scofflaw

DublinWriter wrote:

Dunno, all I can say is that I never fancied following the herd myself. Too much bleeting for my liking.

Well, chacun a son gout, as they say.

DublinWriter wrote:

Suppressing something always makes it underground and popular. Christianity is a shining example.

That's fundamentally a question of method. Repression certainly is very good for Christianity, so it's not the method I would choose.

DublinWriter wrote:

The real question is: Theism, why?

Ask a theist!

cordially,
Scofflaw

PDN wrote:

It's been many years since I read Russell's A History of Western Philosophy - but I distinctly remember Pythagoras, rather than Plato, as being the guy with the bean phobia.

You're right, I think - and, strangely, the square of the hypotenuse still equals the sum of the other two squares...

Hmm. A point which reminds me that I meant to ask you whether you thought Lewis' Trilemma was valid? Possibly on another thread, of course.

cordially,
Scofflaw

PDN wrote:

Or, "One man's fish is another man's poisson."

Mercifully, I'd forgotten that one. Thanks ever so much for reminding me. Anyway, the people in question are usually French, so we can ignore them.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Schuhart wrote:

Is it fair to say that the basis for refuting Plato is Scandanavia, on the basis that these are secular societies that are quite stable despite quite a high proportion of the population not subscribing to any faith. I take it, even if we were to argue that those societies were probably stable before people left religion behind, we’d still have to accept that atheism hasn’t caused a breakdown in order.

However, does the very opulence of those societies not provoke pause? Fine, atheism causes no problems in a successful, wealthy society where everyone feels there’s something worth protecting. But does this not underline that those people don’t really face any pressing moral choices? All that saves us is that people at the end of their tether may be naturally drawn to religion, hence neutralising themselves as a source of discontent.

Hmm. I think the point is that it is a result inconsistent with Plato's claim, as Fallen Seraph pointed out.

Schuhart wrote:

Put another way, could we empty Mountjoy by converting prisoners to atheism?I've never seen any religious breakdown of people involved in the various Irish crime gang feuds that we see reported. But is it fair to suggest that this is a potential threat to social order, not because of any coherent alternative ideology, but simply as an effect of people realising that public morality has no basis other than what people happen to agree on. Hence, if you cannot be caught and jailed, there's simply no reason not to shoot someone for a few bucks.

I think that's a fair point. However, in the absence of a breakdown of the religious persuasion of criminals, it certainly can't suggest that the majority are atheists.

Statistics from prisons (there's a reference on some thread or other), as far as I know, suggest that atheists are under-represented in prisons - whether this is because they are less likely to turn to crime, or because they are less likely to be caught, I can't say.

Again, though, I think "public morality has no basis other than what people happen to agree on" is incorrect. People worldwide agree on the same things far too often for your phrasing, which suggests a random collection of arbitrary rules.

Schuhart wrote:

But presumbly they are not receiving their morality from the law. It simply tries to regulate their social interactions. If people took their morality from the law there would be no lucrative drug trade. And the only way of getting people away from drugs is to programme them with moral restraint. What better way than telling them there's a God who sees everything they do and will hold them to account for it?

Well, yes. There's a lot of tension between morality and the law. A law that is considered immoral by a sufficiently large number of people is a serious problem. Drugs law is a good example - far too many people think that drugs are not immoral, and that therefore persecuting users is immoral. As far as democracy can tell us, though, the people who think this do not constitute a majority of voters.

That's an example of where the social contract is in opposition to the law of the land. The result is not one where "the only way of getting people away from drugs is to programme them with moral restraint", but to abandon a law that wastes time and effort.

Programming an offender with God-backed morality makes a difference, if, at the same time, the offender chooses to leave his/her old social circles. While there are a few who are temperamentally strong enough to maintain their new way in their old circles, the majority are not, and will rapidly trend back to the morality of their group.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Schuhart wrote:

Certainly, it’s not providing support for Plato’s contention and refutes it to the extent that an immediate breakdown of social order doesn’t accompany a large proportion of the population leaving religion behind. But I’d suggest that two things might be said. Firstly, presumably the wholesale departure from religion is quite recent. Hence, the old moral ‘myths’ are still imprinted in people’s minds, and they can be trusted to follow them out of habit. Secondly, (as already said) the societies in question are generally successful, and hence can depend on the general population having a stake in the social order. That might (might) suggest that if religion vanishes, it is necessary to make sure that society is organised in such a way that everyone feels they have a stake.

I think that those societies that remain religious, and are prosperous, yet have high levels of crime, strongly suggests that this is not the case.

The US is certainly religious, certainly homicidal, and certainly prosperous. The Nordic countries (and Japan) are certainly irreligious, certainly low-crime, and certainly prosperous.

If prosperity allowed atheism as you suggest, while theism reduced crime, then prosperous religious countries should have even less crime than prosperous atheistic ones. This is not so.

Schuhart wrote:

Let’s assume that, even across different human societies, that there’s enough common experience to mean that pretty much everyone ends up with a mindset that makes them agree ‘that’s morality’. That means that ‘random’ and ‘arbitrary’ take on a similar meaning to when they might be used by, say, creationists in relation to evolution – taking that line well made by Dawkins (I think he’s fluent on the science stuff) that absence of a grand designer doesn’t mean random. In the same kind of spirit, public morality having no basis other than what people happen to agree on doesn’t necessarily mean that its random and arbitrary. But it does mean that it has no more force than 'what everyone else would tell me to do, and they're never going to know'.

Actually, most people wish to think of themselves as good people. Again, were your suggestion correct, we would find that all people always act immorally when there is no chance of getting caught. If you have ever tried to persuade someone else into an act of immorality where there is no chance of being caught, you will know that this is not the case. Not only that, but most people will not do abroad what is regarded as immoral at home, even with no chance of penalty.

Schuhart wrote:

That’s a potential result, if we deem drugs to be harmless. But presumably there’s any amount of crimes that are hard to stamp out but still need to have the time and effort invested in doing that. Human trafficking, for the sake of argument, also depends on there being a lucrative market. Presumably there’s plenty of men out there willing to sleep with prostitutes without asking exactly how free she is in deciding to follow that profession. Do we just say ‘oh, conflict between social contract and law – time to change the law’?

Ah. Not in general, because the majority of crimes are regarded as immoral by the majority. It is only in certain cases, where a sufficiently large group regards the law as 'wrong', that it becomes impossible to actually enforce it.

If, for example, most people regard tax evasion as legal, then the tax authorities are in for a rough ride. That does not suggest that the law be repealed, merely that enforcement will be difficult - it remains a fair law, because those who evade taxes benefit from the taxes of others, and are effectively stealing from them. In the case of drugs, it seems ridiculous to claim that they are 'immoral', unless one can prove that the use of drugs harms others in the absence of criminalisation. As far as I am aware, all the evidence points firmly the other way.

Schuhart wrote:

This seems like a detailed statement. Do I take it this is based on some kind of reasonable study that you’ve seen?

It's mostly a remark from observation, but I seem to recall having seen some studies, although not, afair, in respect of religious conversion - more a question of susceptibility to group norms.

I'm sure the theists could tell us - particularly those that have a pastoral role.

cordially,
Scofflaw