This is not true for me though. Hence my fears.
The ethics of challenging the religious - given that they might be neurotic etc.
- Thread starter greenberg
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This is not true for me though. Hence my fears.
Depends how you look at it
There are reasons
If their religious outlook was theirs and nothing more, that would be fine.
But, as an American, I'm hard-pressed to think of a year among the last, oh, say, seventeen, at least, when religious people weren't screwing with something that affects my life. And before that, hell, one person's religious outlook helped shape a freakin' epidemic in this country.
I remember standing in my living room with my jaw open, staring at the television. I used to have this habit of watching Christian television from time to time, in part because Bob Tilton's program used to run on the regular stations in the Seattle area (KSTW? KTZZ?), but also because Christians had declared war against a number of things I held dear: books, music, enlightenment, &c. And on this occasion, I was literally listening to a man describe his "miraculous" conversion and salvation in Jesus. Apparently, he had been grief-stricken since his son's suicide. And then one day, he saw his son's ghost at a random bus stop in the city. And his son told him to open his heart to Jesus, so he did.
Now, if this had been anything other than Christianity, psychologists would apply one of a few terms to describe the process. The problem, of course, is that Christianity is the dominant religious influence in our society, so all it really takes is one freaky preacher yelling about oppression, and suddenly the culture believes that equality is only fulfilled if Christians are superior. So people don't make the point as strenuously when it's Christianity, but the point still remains: my life is affected by their mental illness. I'm happy to do what I can to help, but I'm not a professional, and I tend to run out of options if I can't inspire these people to look at the world through rational eyes for a few minutes.
So to take a banner issue as an example: If you are a heterosexual Christian, gay marriage isn't going to affect you significantly. Gays getting married has zero effect on the status of het marriage. To the other, I'm not married. And, for the record, I probably won't ever get married. To be honest, I have a very poor view of what marriage is worth. However, if someday someone convinces me otherwise, and that person happens to be a man, I resent the notion that I should have to tell him, "I can't marry you because you're the wrong sex."
Perhaps more poignantly: In 2003, it became no longer acceptable to make illegal certain sexual acts that I had performed with other consenting adults. One cannot claim that Lawrence v. Texas had no effect on heterosexuals: hets, too, can bang a willing partner in the ass or go down without fear of prosecution. They can buy dildos and pocket-pussies without fear of arrest. But in striking down the laws against sodomy, the courts had zero effect on people who don't practice it. In other words, if you're a good heterosexual Christian who has just enough vanilla sex with your spouse to call your relationship "healthy", the Lawrence decision affected you none.
The moralistic prohibitions overturned by Lawrence, however, affected a great many people whose only crime was having good sex with a willing partner. And those prohibitions existed to satisfy the needs of a delusion.
You know, I'll grant people's right to be religious. I'm accustomed to it. Freedom of religion is part of my heritage. But here's an irony: I didn't have it. Big deal, right? What kid really has rights? But it turns out that a legal condition of my upbringing is that I was required to be subject to religious instruction. Don't get me wrong, it's not a general rule that a lot of people are subject to. But, yes, it apparently applied to me. As a result, I'm a confirmed Lutheran. There seemed nothing strange to me about going to a Jesuit school. And it has taken the whole time since to unknit those ideas and come to realize that certain things I knew even then were right really are right. So much conflict, so many lingering resentments. And all so that a delusion could be passed on to the next generation.
People are welcome to their religion. It's no business of mine. Except that certain religious people have made it my business.
Hence my sympathy to Greenberg's question. But I haven't much of an answer. We owe the sick our compassion, our help. But that obligation is demanding. It took me a long time to understand that framework, and I'll never figure entirely the range of implications.
Life goes on. We do our best, hopefully.
Turduckin said:
If their religious outlook was theirs and nothing more, that would be fine.
But, as an American, I'm hard-pressed to think of a year among the last, oh, say, seventeen, at least, when religious people weren't screwing with something that affects my life. And before that, hell, one person's religious outlook helped shape a freakin' epidemic in this country.
I remember standing in my living room with my jaw open, staring at the television. I used to have this habit of watching Christian television from time to time, in part because Bob Tilton's program used to run on the regular stations in the Seattle area (KSTW? KTZZ?), but also because Christians had declared war against a number of things I held dear: books, music, enlightenment, &c. And on this occasion, I was literally listening to a man describe his "miraculous" conversion and salvation in Jesus. Apparently, he had been grief-stricken since his son's suicide. And then one day, he saw his son's ghost at a random bus stop in the city. And his son told him to open his heart to Jesus, so he did.
Now, if this had been anything other than Christianity, psychologists would apply one of a few terms to describe the process. The problem, of course, is that Christianity is the dominant religious influence in our society, so all it really takes is one freaky preacher yelling about oppression, and suddenly the culture believes that equality is only fulfilled if Christians are superior. So people don't make the point as strenuously when it's Christianity, but the point still remains: my life is affected by their mental illness. I'm happy to do what I can to help, but I'm not a professional, and I tend to run out of options if I can't inspire these people to look at the world through rational eyes for a few minutes.
So to take a banner issue as an example: If you are a heterosexual Christian, gay marriage isn't going to affect you significantly. Gays getting married has zero effect on the status of het marriage. To the other, I'm not married. And, for the record, I probably won't ever get married. To be honest, I have a very poor view of what marriage is worth. However, if someday someone convinces me otherwise, and that person happens to be a man, I resent the notion that I should have to tell him, "I can't marry you because you're the wrong sex."
Perhaps more poignantly: In 2003, it became no longer acceptable to make illegal certain sexual acts that I had performed with other consenting adults. One cannot claim that Lawrence v. Texas had no effect on heterosexuals: hets, too, can bang a willing partner in the ass or go down without fear of prosecution. They can buy dildos and pocket-pussies without fear of arrest. But in striking down the laws against sodomy, the courts had zero effect on people who don't practice it. In other words, if you're a good heterosexual Christian who has just enough vanilla sex with your spouse to call your relationship "healthy", the Lawrence decision affected you none.
The moralistic prohibitions overturned by Lawrence, however, affected a great many people whose only crime was having good sex with a willing partner. And those prohibitions existed to satisfy the needs of a delusion.
You know, I'll grant people's right to be religious. I'm accustomed to it. Freedom of religion is part of my heritage. But here's an irony: I didn't have it. Big deal, right? What kid really has rights? But it turns out that a legal condition of my upbringing is that I was required to be subject to religious instruction. Don't get me wrong, it's not a general rule that a lot of people are subject to. But, yes, it apparently applied to me. As a result, I'm a confirmed Lutheran. There seemed nothing strange to me about going to a Jesuit school. And it has taken the whole time since to unknit those ideas and come to realize that certain things I knew even then were right really are right. So much conflict, so many lingering resentments. And all so that a delusion could be passed on to the next generation.
People are welcome to their religion. It's no business of mine. Except that certain religious people have made it my business.
Hence my sympathy to Greenberg's question. But I haven't much of an answer. We owe the sick our compassion, our help. But that obligation is demanding. It took me a long time to understand that framework, and I'll never figure entirely the range of implications.
Life goes on. We do our best, hopefully.
If such people have intention to spread their delusion or make decisions based on the delusion that affect other people then their belief should be exposed for what it is.
So for you, it would, in some circumstances, be ethical to ask the religious something like:
Show me that your faith in Jesus is not simply something that you guilt-tripped yourself into believing because you couldn't handle the despair over having been abused as a child/having had an abortion/being an alcoholic/committing a crime/...!
-?
I was being deliberately blunt and personal in formulating this request. Perhaps there are other ways to put it.
I would ask for evidence that the paranormal exists, demonstrate the biological function of delusional belief, and ask questions that show a 1:1 correspondence between the individual's belief and biological function.
How can I judge them, there is no way to know if what they claim is true. The appearance of the Earth revolving around the Sun, for example, could be an optical illusion. God could have hidden His actions as natural processes in order to fool the unfaithful- it's a test.
Would you say that as soon someone puts themselves out into the public, promoting a particular view, they (1) lose the right to say "I'm just stating my opinion, you should respect that", and (2) are to be considered as having agreed to have their statements scrutinized and criticized -?
Delusion is a double bind. A delusional person, per definition, cannot know whether they are delusional or not, or whether others are delusional or not.
To request of someone, whom one suspects to be delusional, to prove that they either are or are not delusional, is nonsensical. It cannot be done.
Exactly. But life in the society still needs to be organized and managed somehow, if we are to survive.
And if we are to be unconditionally goodwilled and unconditionally honest (which, among other things, means also that we accept we might be delusional or fooled by God), then the theists will be free to take the upper hand and reign society, no?
I see where you're coming from.
But some adults cleave to their religion 'just because', and that's a different matter.
But some adults cleave to their religion 'just because', and that's a different matter.
All people are delusional about something and they have the capability to recognize it. If 'shown' truth that contradicts a delusion but the person rejects the truth then they graduate from delusion to lying.
This is a statement of faith, not of fact.
I think this is too simplistic to be applicable.
You are arguing along the same lines as many theists do, the agenda behind that line of reasoning being to feel justified to condemn the other party.
At worst, it's a ridiculously well supported theory; however, there aren't any known exceptions. Animorphism and anthropomorphism for example are psychological phenomena existing in all humans that directly lead to delusional belief at one or more points throughout the life of a human.
It's intended to be simplistic and condemning. If someone's delusional about something, doesn't know it, and might negatively impact me because of the delusion then I am going to show the delusion for what it is. If the person continues the behavior then I will condemn them for lying to me. If they change their behavior then they get praise and support.
This has the benefit of reducing the influence that person might have over others and polarizing people against the delusion; thus, making people "on the border" more resistant to it.
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Not automatically
Not automatically. Context and form are important. If someone doesn't want to join me for a drink because their religion says "no alcohol", that's fine. My error; I'll make the note and not invite them out for a drink again. If that person wants to prevent me from having a drink, or give me grief because I consume alcohol, then they've opened themselves up to specific scrutiny and potential criticism.
Greenberg said:
Not automatically. Context and form are important. If someone doesn't want to join me for a drink because their religion says "no alcohol", that's fine. My error; I'll make the note and not invite them out for a drink again. If that person wants to prevent me from having a drink, or give me grief because I consume alcohol, then they've opened themselves up to specific scrutiny and potential criticism.
Does everyone have the ability to recognize delusion?
While I might agree that all people are delusional about something, I disagree that all have the ability to recognize delusion - plenty of people die in mental institutions or commit suicide. Perhaps they were unable to recognize delusion?
Moreover, it might take years of intense study and practice to recognize a delusion. If you simply tell someone a "truth" and they don't change their mind immediately, this does not necessarily mean that they are deliberately lying. That would be too simplistic. Some "truths", in order to be recognized as such, need the person to prepare a mental context for it - which can take years.
For example, if you tell me that the half-life of uranium-238 is about 4.47 billion years - how am I supposed to know whether this is true or not? And if I don't immediately accept it, am I therefore lying?
It might take me years of intense chemistry study to be able to accept this as a truth, or to reject it.
So you are playing the same card as many Christian proselytizers.
You assume at least this (although for you, they are not assumptions, but indisputable facts): everyone is basically the same with potentially the same abilities; there exists objective reality and it can be humanly known, adequately and accurately.
- I don't share these assumptions, nor do many others.
Unfortunately for all of us, that would not change if another religion, or no religion, were dominant. One humanist/evolutionary view would locate the source of the problem with species Homo being at once a social/solitary. We want to be with others, and we want to be left alone. Social intercourse neccessarily involves conflict, which requires rules to resolve conflict, a system for creating/modifying those rules, a system for enforcing those rules, and rules to regulate the systems that create/modify/enforce the rules. We call our system democracy. Whether that's an accurate description is another topic.
In America, in the abstract - when one group thinks something is wrong and another group doesn't, the conflict is worked out in the political arena (often as a zero-sum game). That's the way it is-for better or worse. If the religious people are more effective in that arena right now, it's because they are more effective on the social side of things. In practical terms, 'fusion' of christians and politics seems more like transference/counter-transference between neurotics who want control and neurotics conditioned to cede personal authority while believing they are retaining it.
So they won. Tough. Either live with it or learn how to fight it effectively. But whining about it accomplishes nothing.
No more delusional then your potentially drug-induced feeling that the universe created life to experience itself... ( a beautiful post by the way, I'm glad you resurrected it.)
Deal with it, or move to a deserted island.
I still don't have much of an answer, but I'm leaning toward challenging the neurotic (with passion, compassion, but without 'heat') if they are in your face.
Amen, brother!