This post is a follow up to a Twitter conversation. I believe that it is important that us non-theists do not fall for the fallacy claiming that no good ever comes from religion.
To @Meandillar1: I’m not referring to your true kindness statement. I was referring to this statement from @AtheistSensei:
…your religion removes selflessness and everything that is good from humanity
That’s the statement that I felt was over-the-top. Not the part about removing selflessness. I understand that doing good because you are expecting a reward is inherently less moral than doing good because it is the right thing to do. I’m referring to the generalization regarding religion supposedly removing “everything that is good”.
While I’m not a fan of religion, I do believe that we unnecessarily hamper constructive dialog if we suggest that no good ever comes from any religion ever.
Do I believe that all the good in Usman Khan comes exclusively from Islam, his religion? No. I don’t even believe that Usman Khan thinks that or has ever intimated that. Such an assertion would be a straw man. I would like us all to get beyond straw men.
I do believe that our goodness comes from our innate sense of morality. Sam Harris explores these concepts well in his book, The Moral Landscape.
Just because I don’t believe any claimants to revealed religion are true does not mean that I believe no religion is capable of motivating people. It can be both a motivator — for good and for evil, as well as an amplifier — for good and for evil.
Having been religious myself, I do know that that there are some things that the social constructs of religion push some of us to do, or to do more of.
I imagine that Usman Khan does many wonderful acts of kindness and service which he may not have had a reason or motivation to do to the same degree had he not been a practicing Ahmadi Muslim.
I’d attribute some of this to an expectation of reward. I’d attribute some of it to the fact that with organized religion, we have organized communities. You can more easily inculcate doing good as part of your community’s culture. Finally, if you’re really devout and you read in your holy book that doing such-and-such an act of charity pleases your Creator, that can be a motivating force too.
Do these facts make religion true? I don’t believe so. Do they make some religions useful in some ways? Absolutely. Should we all drop reason and rationality in favor of the least objectionable religion we can find? No.
I believe the answer is for us to model the positive aspects of religion. But that’s an article for another day.
I’m sure that my fellow non-theists as well as Usman Khan would see Mormonism as not true. Yet none of us should deny that it has under its banner, caused people to get organized and go out into the world to do good things. Here, I’m speaking of charity work; not the two-year proselytization mission.
Religious claims and the religions that build up around them can be both false and the source of positive, constructive actions on the part of their adherents.
There isn’t an ideological hierarchy and tight-knit community among non-theists. So perhaps many are not familiar with how people can be indoctrinated towards constructive and charitable action.
Organized communities, such as organized religions, can bring both positive benefits and negative outcomes. We in the non-theist spectrum often like to highlight the negative effects, the scriptural absurdities and the indoctrination process against questioning beliefs.
There is something to be said however, of how religion can be an organizing force for amplifying positive and constructive action.
If you’re at all familiar with my work, you’ll know that I’m not suggesting the world needs classical theism for happiness or moral progress. In fact, in the same thread as the original discussion that spurred on this post, the idea of religious morality came up. Myself and several others pointed out that if you are anticipating a reward, acts of kindness or virtue or not truly rooted in morality.
@ibne_khalid @Meandillar1 The non religious would differ. We look at the morality banking on future rewards as not true, selfless morality.
— Reason on Faith (@ReasonOnFaith)
I do believe that the future of humanity without religion will be one that prospers because us non-theists eventually organize into hundred or thousands of communities that emulate the best of what religion offered, minus the unsubstantiated truth claims. We’ll all rally around different philosophies that build community to rival the best of what religion had to offer.
That we haven’t done that yet is not evidence of atheists, agnostics and deists being “wrong”.
I believe it’s just a function of being so affected by religion that our current focus is on the debunking phase of this process. In the years and decades to come, I believe we’ll actually model some aspects of religion to reclaim that positive sense of community, and some (modest) structure. Such communities will provide for a normalized, amplifying positive moral suasion without traditional religious baggage.
In a small way, some of this has already begun, with organizations like the Ethical Culture Movement.
In the here an now however, if we believe that religion can motivate people to fly planes into buildings or trucks into crowds, we must also acknowledge that it can motivate people to seek out ways to feed the hungry, clothe the needy and to show forbearance in the face of adversity or abuse.