In the video below, Richard Dawkins interviews Derren Brown as part of his "Enemies of Reason" series.
One of the key questions he is trying to get at is (to paraphrase): if a lot of stuff such as Fortune Tellers, Mystics and Astrology is simply not true, at what point should the leaders/"spreaders of falsity" take accountability for simply lying? Put differently, how many of them know that what they are doing/saying is false or misleading, but do it anyway?
A lot of people use the, 'it does no harm' logic to accept crazy beliefs. In some cases, the false beliefs may actually do good. Does it matter if something is wrong but leads to a good conclusion? The age old question of is lying about the Jews in your basement to the Nazis wrong? Clearly it is not. So, is a person all dressed up as a fortune teller who is just cold reading doing good or harm if someone believes it to be true? What if it gives them comfort and does no harm?
I think the case for dispelling falsity where it is doing harm is very compelling. This would be Dawkin's logic for essentially being an 'evangelical athiest'. Post 9/11, he has been on a crusade of sorts to de-stigmatise Athiesm with the belief that many of the world's problems are caused by fanatical beliefs that have no founding.
The counter argument is that religion (even if false) can give hope, comfort, and a sense of community.
I guess there is no clear answer and all this is rather murky.
3 comments:
Hmmm... if I blogged I might just write a long unclear post about this, but I don't so this comment will have to do.
Religion seems to have a lot of benefits for believers. I think religious people are happier and do better along other dimensions too. I think religions are commited to flase stuff, so how should I feel about it? Maybe I should feel good about it and sad that I can't/don't believe but I have a bias against that view.
I'm tempted to go down the road that claims something like religion may be good for "proper" believers but is on net bad for people on the outside. Gays, people from other religions atheists, whatever.
The thing I find a little odd, is that I think its quite common for people to defend some beliefs when they're under attack on the grounds that its comforting or has good consequences and downplay the issue of its actual truth. But my impression is that if we're talking about truth in general people defend it, including people who promote these views.
I don't get the sense that people want to directly argue that truth or acurate beliefs aren't important. We go first from the claim that these beliefs really are true and then later under pressure the topic chnges to how nice it is to believe these things.
But I'm not sure that this impression is accurate or on point or anything.
I also think the issue of holding people responsible for promoting false beliefs is a lot murkier than many people would think.
My impression is that if some charlatan promises to cure cancer with some bullshit gizmo and that person dies partly because she didn't get chemo that many people are ready to be pretty angry about that, especially if the crank knows that he's a crank.
But if the crank sincerely believes his bullshit then, and again it's just my impression, we're inclined to be more forgiving.
But then the message seems to be, "Don't make any effort to actually find anything out but feel free to do whatever you want. Ignorance is your defence"
But I don't see why we're more demanding that people aren't conciously deceptive than people actually need to take some actual responsibility for the content of their beliefs.
It doesn't matter to the people plummeting from a badly built bridge if the engineer was a con artist or if the engineer was simply incompetent.
The comment won't have to do. You should blog about it.
I don't think most people who believe (as a generalization) have thought about it in a way other than looking for ways to bolster their belief. Where there are tentative stabs at the things that make them feel uncomfortable, they will likely look for a way to explain the concerns away. I think part of this is because it is very very difficult to throw away the bits and pieces that come with the belief because they have value. Given the choice, even if subconsciously, supporting reasons will be made up or if 'under pressure' as you put it the subject can be changed.
On the second point, I think we should be judged on the outcomes. Even if wrong, but sincerely so, you are accountable for your actions. We can be more 'forgiving' if the intentions were sincere IF the outcomes are positive.
The difficulty is we don't have perfect knowledge about future outcomes.
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