I sometimes feel sorry for religious people when it comes to making choices about ethics and morality. All I have to do is ask “which course of action seems to lead to the least pain or most benefit?” whereas religious people have to engage in a course of attempting to recall the appropriate components of an often long, not hugely well indexed or chaptered religious text (wouldn't it be good if the Bible had a book entitled “the end line on morals” explaining what is bad and good and why. I know it's not like that, and I'm sure the editorial decision was made for a reason but it'd clear stuff up). Once the textual search is done, no small amount of prayer must be undertaken, especially for hard decisions. Then they have to ask their pastors or priests or generic religious leader what their interpretation is. If none of those satisfy, they then have to ask the question I do. In fairness in hard decisions I ask advice also, normally of people whose judgement I trust and I know well enough that they'll listen, consider and understand.
For religious people though, their source of advice is divinely ordained, so it's harder to ignore. Also the whole issue of prayer; the answer turns up there, spontaneously formed in your head as if by magic and that's good enough to go on? But that is a whole separate issue, and one that even when I was religious I struggled – how do you tell the difference between God and strong desires? But the plus side it means that people don't have to take as much responsibility for their actions, it's nice to have someone to blame when it all goes wrong, and someone who says they'll make it all work out for the best, even if it is after you're buried.
I do wonder how religious people resolve the conflict between something being forbidden by their church and it appearing to not actually harm anyone by any reasonable measure. The clearest example of this is homosexuality, which in a faithful, monogamous relationship is near enough as safe as heterosexuality, and even if it isn't, both parties are consenting and know the risks. Oddly, I can't remember how I resolved it. Probably by not thinking too hard, but that doesn't sound like me. Perhaps it never seemed that important, I never quite got past basics in my head - the concept of hell, which I'll come back to, but seemed rather unnecessary for doing what I could really relate to and not believing the whole thing, given the evidence is based on revealed truth which seems fairly close to “trusting your gut”. Doesn't work a lot of the time, the gut gets it wrong.
Of course, the whole “least harm, most benefit” one is a difficult one. Even least harm, the golden rule, is difficult – someone is acting in a way that harms their self. You inform the person of this, and they continue. Perhaps stop them once, but they perpetuate in the action. Stop them again? Or allow them the suffering that will hopefully stop the action from repeating? Negative feedback is a good way of breaking a loop in many cases. A similar example of this difficulty I can across; there was a guy, severely disabled, who was forcing himself on a social group I was part of. The problem was that the disability was an intellectual one, one aspect being he had no idea about social mores, when he was irritating people or being offensive, he seemed utterly unreceptive to social feedback changing his actions. And because of this he was really offensive and irritating. Someone lacking the disability, you'd just tell to leave (though probably in harsher or less harsh words), but because of his disability, the dominant characters in the group allowed him to continue, including him in the group.
But they all strongly disliked him and held very little respect for him. It seemly patronising and deceitful, sourced from a compassion. This wasn't a guy that seemed amenable to positive or negative feedback changing his behaviour, it really seemed like a medical thing was needed – a clever psychologist explaining how to interact with people using intellect to observe negative and positive feedback instead of instinct, which was really beyond my (or their) skill or responsibility. It irritated me too much so much I hung out with different people, but I'm still unsure as to the correct action. Compassion verses honesty, perhaps – I suspect religious thought would have encouraged compassion and long suffering. I was never really good at the latter, I like things getting done and often have the attention span of a small child. Maybe that's why I get on with them.
This thinking things through is also a hindrance – I have been known to take no action because there were too many factors on the balance of things I couldn't see with any certainty who would be harmed or by how much, and I wasn't sure others involved in my choices knew about and understood the associated risks and problems. I suspect some of that is cowardice, although you could reframe it as sensible caution – clearly the overall likely costs and benefits are low enough that action or inaction isn't the end of the world, so throw caution to the wind! Or maybe the payoff is large but the likelihood of it working so low that it isn't worth the likely small damage.
And doing the most benefit is a bitch, because I really don't. I probably shouldn't be sitting here of an evening typing in a room all on my own listening to recordings of the proms, I should be going out administering first aid or learning to be a doctor. And I picked my career because I didn't want to have to learn totally new skills, I knew I'd enjoy it and do it well and it's likely to kick me out in a strong position in the job market in 3 years time. Any goodness or otherwise was largely ancillary.
It's also about the person, though. I like thinking these things through, it's a hobby I enjoy; understanding things, having the shape and reason in my head. Which inclines me to trying to figure out what I think is right or wrong in a situation by understanding and applying the arguments, however well. I also get this isn't everybody's favourite way of passing the time. And it's also probably a bit of a straw man I started with – no religious person really does all that. We all do the same thing, look up some reference memory, make an on-the-fly decision and justify it or apologise afterwards with more or less understanding of why we did it.
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What brought this all up was watching the full IQ debate on “the Catholic Church is a force for good”, in which the guys against it basically stood up and read a list of all the bad stuff the Catholic Church does and perpetuates in. The strong implication, and often said, was that there were much better ways to respond and the Catholic Church took a seriously damaging way. Anne Widdecombe was on the supporting side and said things like “what would happen if the Catholic Church wasn't supplying aid to Africa and developing it?” I don't know, if you taught everyone to assess evidence they might be doing better, perhaps? It might be worse, might be better, that's an argument in itself. Apparently they (the priests) didn't use their influence in Rwanda to stop the genocide, in the run up to it reinforced the social divides and hatreds from the pulpit. Don't know if it's true, Stephen Fry is usually good at fact checking, but it sounds insane. Unfortunately, well within my experience and knowledge of religious people.
Anne Widdecombe also complained that it always came back to sex. Well, yes. Every major religious body and lots of wider world views make offers of salvation, most people share the basic tenants of morality; don't steal, murder, rape, commit adultery, the golden rule, do have loyalty, honesty, faithfulness, integrity, be forgiving, patient, and many more. In fact, the common ground on morality is staggering and the church has no patent on that. The main differences are sexual, and many of worst offences of Church, or at least the most publicised ones, are related to frankly odd views of sex.
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All this talk of morality and my past religious belief reminds me of something that periodically came up in talking about belief. People would often ask that if they were going to loose their faith, that God would “take them home” (murder is okay if it's God?). Was a sensible choice in the context of their beliefs – slightly less time on earth versus an eternity in heaven, or more time on earth and endless torture.
I mention this because I used to be religious. If the God-botherers are right, then I have not just been condemned to an eternity in hell, but I've also been condemned because God couldn't be bothered to top me when I still made the grade. Which seems rather harsh of him, given his infinite resources. I get that I'm one in a few billion and a tiny rock in the arse end of the universe, but infinite is really big. Maybe Gods infinite is fairly close to the infinite of the universe, so he's stretching himself to take it all in.
Or maybe God is a logarithmic or linear infinity and it's been recently shown the universe is accelerating, which means God, although infinite, is having his resources stretched already. Which would explain the difference in attention he pays to the human race and the apparent decrease since the garden of eden. 1 on 1 contact, running with everyone, doing miracles, scattering people, running with the Jews, doing miracles, helping them out, then Jesus came and outsourced all the proof to the church.
(I was never very good at being religious. And this has been a really long post on religion. I have another one brewing about what I use science for, it might get written up)
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