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Driving down a country road this morning, on our way to a local park for a walk in the woods, my wife and I (and Siegfried) passed a church (Baptist, probably) with one of those large, ubiquitous glass-enclosed sign boxes identifying the church and the pastor and displaying a pithy saying intended to woo converts, if not make you feel guilty for forsaking religion (or both, I guess). The saying in this box was more "with it" than most:Download your troublesMy wife and I discussed the metaphor and couldn't decide whether the pastor (or his publicist) was only semi-computer literate or had a new brand of theology. I mean, why would you want to download worries onto yourself from "up there" (on the Internet)? Wouldn't you upload them, give them up to God (in prayer, supposedly)? Or does the saying mean to suggest that by "going online with God," you ascend to Him somehow, so that in downloading your worries you'd be sending them back down (or leaving them down) there where you no longer have to deal with them?
Go online with God
Fortunately, it doesn't make any difference.
The pithy saying in the graphic I found on the Internet is more interesting. It addresses a serious, real problem in the world today, in America especially because of the way the First Amendment is usually characterized, as guaranteeing "freedom of religion." The actual text of the amendment is:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.While outlawing laws "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" does seem to guarantee freedom of religion, outlawing "establishment of religion" equally seems to guarantee freedom from religion. It would certainly be strange otherwise, given that some of our leading founding fathers were hardly religious.
On Earth today, freedom from is in more need of protection than freedom of, what with false advertising like that being downloadable from the Internet. If atheists are currently more active than they have been, I'd say it's because they feel they need to push back. The harder, the more they buy Sam Harris's warning that religion is a menace:
In the best case, faith leaves otherwise well-intentioned people incapable of thinking rationally about many of their deepest concerns; at worst, it is a continuous source of human violence. Even now, many of us are motivated not by what we know but by what we are content to imagine. Many are still eager to sacrifice happiness, compassion, and justice in this world, for a fantasy of a world to come. These and other degradations await us along the well-worn path of piety. Whatever our religious differences may mean for the next life, they have only one terminus in this one—a future of ignorance and slaughter. [p. 223, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, 2004]
The Harris quote is worth dwelling on, especially the part about "many of us are motivated not by what we know." I take issue with that. I think we are almost always motivated by what we know. The catch is what we mean by knowing. Harris probably had logic or science in mind as a basis for knowledge. That's, er... logical, but it isn't behaviorally true. My view is that all knowledge is visceral. I'm sure of that in my gut.
ReplyDeleteKen, why can't it be "behaviorally true" that we are almost always motivated by what we believe [much of which we don't know scientifically/logically], which can be as visceral as you like? That would remove some of the issue you take with Harris, wouldn't it?
ReplyDeleteNo, it wouldn't. Not unless you can draw a clear line between belief and knowledge. I don't think it's possible unless you create a narrow definition of what knowledge is.
ReplyDeleteKen, I think it's true that we don't know much, but clear line or not between "to know" and "to believe," believe is the more accurate word to use in talk about "what motivates us."
ReplyDeleteMy own concern is that both to know and to believe imply conscious motivation. I think that much (perhaps most) motivation is unconscious, with the person motivated often having little idea why. I think it might be counterproductive to refer to such unconscious agency as knowledge (or even belief). It's rather the "way we're wired," both genetically and memetically. That is, both biologically and culturally.
I agree, but the "unconscious agency" is programmed by knowledge-beliefs, many of which are conscious and regularly written or spoken. Your blog is evidence of this.
ReplyDeleteMy problem with the Harris quote is that he denigrates people who are not motivated "by what we know." His statement is absurd and pompous. My view is that people are motivated by their convictions. Harris might agree but add that his convictions are based only on knowledge. Then it again comes down to what "knowledge" is. I'm pretty sure that his answer and mine would be different.
If you feel like continuing the dialog, email would be OK. Blog comments really don't work for an extended exchange.
I'm okay with just leaving it here, at least for now, thanks.
ReplyDelete