Dealing with Religious Pests

I just had a pleasant experience dealing with a couple of Mormon "missionaries" who knocked on my door this evening.  It was the second instance within the last few days of someone knocking on my door with a religious message.  The first one was not persistent.  He was willing to take a quick "no" for an answer.  But a feature of modern society is the all too common situation where someone wants to convert you.  And like the Mormons and unlike the other guy it is often hard to get rid of them.  I have been musing for some time on the general subject of religion.  I think I have come up with some original thinking on the subject.  I used my thoughts on the Mormons.  Judging by my success I recommend them to others.  I think they are a useful contribution to the discussion of religion in general.  So I thank the Mormon visitation for giving me an excuse to lay them out.  Even if you don't want to accept them as your own personal belief feel free to trot them out as an aid in dealing with Mormons or other religious types that are bothering you.

What I have come up with is a general argument against most religions.  The beauty of it is that many parts of it do not depend on the specific beliefs of any specific religion.  There is a part that has to be customized to fit a specific religion.  But even that part does not require you to know a lot about whichever specific religion you are dealing with at the moment.  Most people would think that a general argument is a weak argument that can be dodged using something like "my religion does not have that problem".  But, as I will demonstrate, the argument depends on an almost universal attribute of religions.  And any religion that doesn't have that attribute is also the kind of religion that doesn't send people out to pester you.  To see what I am talking about let me sketch out the bare bones of the argument.

1. A religion is created by God to achieve a purpose.
2. That purpose is behavior modification.  The objective of the religion is to increase the amount of "good" behavior and/or decrease the amount of "bad" behavior relative to the amount that would occur in the absence of the existence of God's religion.
3. God is "all knowing" or, at least, very smart.
4. Your religion (here's where we get specific) does a poor job of achieving its objective and is therefore false.  It is not the true religion.

I think your response now is "interesting, but what's the point".  It turns out that the point is a very powerful one.  But first let's examine each of these ideas in more detail and ask ourselves if religionists can object.  And right off there is an obvious objection.  What if there is no God?  I'm an Atheist so I actually believe there is no God.  But people who approach you and ask "Have you heard the word about Jesus?"  (or a variation appropriate to their religious beliefs) all believe in God.  They may not believe in a Christian God but the whole point of their religion is that they believe in a specific God.  You could argue with them that there is no God or that their God does not exist but another one does but this is an argument they are prepared for.  You get better results by bypassing the issue entirely.

Another objection is that there are some religions that are not behavior modification oriented.  Good for them.  But none of the adherents of these religions accost you as you are going about your daily life.  So I am going to ignore these religions.  All of the popular western religions and many eastern ones definitely fall into the "behavior modification" category.  They all have rules for "right behavior" and "wrong behavior".  The details change as to what behaviors fall into the "right", "wrong", and "theologically unimportant" categories.  But these are details we can ignore for the moment.  Each religion gets to do its own categorization.  With these two general observations out of the way let me proceed to the specifics.

I think most religious people would find it reasonable to say that their religion originates with God.  It may be that a religion was created by an inspired individual.  But this is more about the details of how the religion God has created are transmitted to us mortals than it is about where the tenets of the religion originate.  Surely God is competent enough to make sure that the inspired individual does a good job.  So we can again ignore the details.  It doesn't matter how the religion got created or how it got transmitted.,  The key is that it is God's creation. 

And if a specific religion is not God's creation why are we supposed to buy into it?  If religion A is God's creation and religion B is not why do we want to have anything to do with religion B?  Religions inevitably contradict each other.  If they didn't they would be the same religion.  In the areas where the two religions agree there is no advantage to paying attention to the "B" position.  And in the areas where they disagree we are risking engaging in bad behavior by going with B.  And, by the way, most religions agree that God only created one religion so all the other religions are wrong to a greater or lesser extent.

So we have a specific religion namely the religion of the person in front of us.  Adherents are usually uncomfortable characterizing the objective of their religion as behavior modification.  But assume for a moment that the overriding objective of their religion was not behavior modification.  Then what's the point of all the rules?  You are supposed to believe certain things.  You are supposed to act in a certain way.  Why?  If it is entirely ok to reject the beliefs and it is ok to act inappropriately then the belief system and the rules are unimportant.  If this is so then adhering to the tenets of that religion is unimportant.  If this is so then shouldn't we go looking for an important religion?

Now the religion gets to set the level of importance associated with any specific belief or action.  It can say that this belief is of major importance and that that act is of minor importance.  Again, they get to set the rules.  But it is important that the religion ascribe some importance to some beliefs.  And it is important that the religion ascribe some importance to members increasing the amount of "good" actions that its members take and/or decreasing the amount of "bad" actions that its members take.  And we can ignore beliefs and actions where the behavior is the same in the absence of the religion and focus on the cases where the religion changes behavior.  Religions are supposed to be important.  If the point is to make minor and trivial modifications to people's behavior then the benefit is not in line with the effort.  The religion is fatally flawed.

Most religions characterize their God as "all powerful" or "all knowing" or at least more powerful and/or important than other Gods.  That's the "religion" perspective.  Most religions also believe that their God created the world around us,  For contrast let us adopt the "science" perspective for a moment so we can do a thought experiment.  Imagine asking a scientist, any scientist, the following:

Assume for a moment that the parts of the world that you study were created by some outside entity.  Now, given what you know about how the parts of the world that you study, how smart do you think that outside entity is?

I think all or nearly all scientists would answer "extremely smart".  So religious people and scientific people would agree that what religious people call God is extremely smart.  So again our premises seems pretty much self evident.

The final point is where the disagreement should set in.  Proponents of most religions believe their particular religion is pretty wonderful.  But now you have changed the source of the disagreement away from its usual ground.  I have found that the people that want to talk religion with me are pretty dogmatic.  They have a script and they want to stay on script.  There are a number of objections that they are prepared to deal with but they are pretty much at sea when confronted with anything else.  In these situations where they have not prepared they tend to go to one of a small number of rote generic responses that usually don't address the objective you have raised.

But in response you just bring them back to the basics.  "Are you saying you disagree with the fact that God created your religion?"  "Are you saying you disagree with the fact that your religion has a purpose?"  "Are you saying you disagree with the fact that your religion is about behavior modification?"  "Are you disagreeing with the fact that your God is all knowing or at least very smart?"  They will try to fight you on the "behavior modification" part.  But it is pretty much impossible for them to have any problems with the others.  And, assuming you deal successfully with the "behavior modification" push back they are pretty much stuck.  So let me spend a moment on the behavior modification issue.

They don't like to admit it but it is easy to box them in.  Religions have beliefs their members are expected to subscribe to.  "Do you believe in God?"  "Do you believe that the Bible is the revealed word of God?"  "Do you believe Jesus died on the cross to wash away original sin?"  "Do you believe that the angel Maroni visited Joseph Smith?"  Religions have actions their members are expected to take and actions their members are expected to avoid.  "Do you believe you are supposed to be baptized?"  "Do you believe you are supposed to go to church once a week?"  "Do you believe you are supposed to tithe?"

The beliefs and actions are specific to the specific religion.  And you have to have at least a modest knowledge of the specific religion to come up with appropriate examples.  But in all fairness believers really can't get away from the behavior modification aspect of their religion.  So what they usually do is change the subject.  But just circle back.  Repeat the belief or action and invite them to deny the truth of your contention.  They really can't get away from it.  Now they may challenge some specific contention.  And they may be right.  If so then admit you got that specific contention wrong and move on to another.  But only do this if they make a credible objection.

Once the "behavior modification" issue is disposed of we are on the "how effective is your religion" issue.  This is not an issue any of them is prepared for.  And theoretically they have a response along the lines of "very effective".  But it is usually easy to find a way to counter this.  No religion has secured a majority of the world's population as adherents.  In fact, if we drill down to the various major and especially minor branches of any specific religion less than one percent of the world population are followers.  Many religions (Southern Baptists, Mormons, modern mega-churches) are very modern.  They date back less than 200 years.  Christianity dates back only two thousand years and Judaism perhaps 3,000.  That means that most of the people who live or have lived on this earth missed the boat.  That sounds like pretty inferior work.

Now we can dive into the specific tenants of the specific religion.  Where is the evidence that adherents actually believe what they are supposed to believe or do what they are supposed to do?  A classic example of this is Catholics and birth control.  The official position of the Catholic Church is that birth control as a no-no.  But something like 90% of Catholic women use birth control at some point in their lives.  My point is NOT that Catholics are hypocrites.  It is that the Catholic Church is poor at getting their own believers to adhere to their own teachings.  The general argument is "the church is inefficient".  You have to tailor the specifics of the inefficiency to the specifics of the church you are dealing with.   Once you have come up with reasons why a specific church is inefficient your can return to the general argument.  Is inefficiency a mark of smart designer?  A third rate engineer would toss a design this obviously defective into the trash and go back to the drawing board.  So your church is fatally deficient.

Religious types will try to distract you at this point.  My Mormon guys started talking about "perfection".  My response was that your church gets to decide how important or achievable perfection is.  The point is not whether this or that is or could be perfect.  The important point is how effective is the Mormon church in modifying behavior appropriately in response to their belief on perfection, whatever that belief is.

The question shifts from "what should the goal be" to "how good at achieving the goal is a particular religion".  The religion is free to set whatever goal they want except that the goal must be one that people would not move toward in the absence of the religion in question.  (If the goal is to "get people to do what they would otherwise do" then the goal has no value.)  But once the goal is set the important question becomes how effective the religion is at modifying behavior in the appropriate directions.  If they are bad at it then their religion is not legitimate.  God would have done a better job.

Most of what these people want to talk about is "what should the goal be".  Your answer is "the goal should be whatever your religion says it should be".  In other words, whatever they want to talk about is not in contention.  You concede it immediately.  Then you pivot to the question of "how effective is your religion at achieving the goal your religion has set".  The answer is usually that they are not very effective.  And, by the way, you immediately concede the usual "good versus evil" questions.  Whatever their particular religion decides is ok.  But you pivot to the question of how effective is their religion at increasing the good stuff and decreasing the evil stuff.

One of the standard arguments my Mormons trotted out on me was "how can you question our religion if you don't know all the details of our religious beliefs".  At this point you are supposed to accept a copy of "The Book of Mormon" from them and study it carefully.  I was initially unsuccessful in dealing with this argument.  I pointed out that there were many thousands of religions and asked if I was supposed to be familiar with all of them.  They dodged this question and went back to repeating their original argument.  But they could see that they weren't getting anywhere so they left.  But that conceded the argument to me.  "How can you argue that I should be familiar with your religious beliefs if you are unwilling to become familiar with mine?"  They are hypocrites.  I did give them points for neatness as they crossed the street in search of an easier mark.

I do actually believe my own argument.  I believe believers believe that their religious beliefs are "the word of God".  And I agree with them that if some entity created the world around us (they believe the entity is their God, I don't) then that entity was really smart.  But all the religions I know anything about seem dumb to me.  And I see no indication that leads me to believe that there is some religion out there I don't know about that is not dumb.  So I have a hard time believing that an entity that was as smart as the hypothetical "creator" would create or even support any of the "religions" I am familiar with.

I go even farther than that.  I don't know why such a hypothetical "creator" would actually care about what religions say it cares about.  Why would it care whether or not we congregate in a building of a specific shape once every seven days?  Why would it care whether or not we utter certain incantations?  Why would it care whether we treat each other badly?  And what would its definition of "badly" be?  Why would it confer a favor on one person in one situation and not another?  And why would it have an interest in assisting one specific group in slaughtering another specific group?

But some religions at some times have said we should congregate in cruciform churches every Sunday.  And religions say we should pray (and some religions at some times even tell us what language we should pray in as if God is incapable of translating).  And religions promise that prayers will be answered sometimes but they can't tell us which prayers will be answered and why or why not.  And most religions say "thou shall not kill" but then give us a long list of exceptions for when we are encouraged to kill (or let people the religion disapproves of die).  And as long as we have had written history we have had documented instances of army after army marching out on the field of battle each accompanied by its own set of religious figures who swear that "God is on our side".  This might make a small amount of sense if on a particular battlefield the various religious figures represented different religions.  Then you could argue that it was "God against God and may the best God win".  But in all too many cases we don't even have that fig leaf.  All the various religious representatives represent the same religion and, to hear them tell it, each can simultaneously authoritatively deliver the undivided affections of the same God but each to a different army.       

Why I am an Atheist

The title of this post in a variation on "Why I am a Catholic".  G.K. Chesterton published a short essay with this title in 1926.  I could pick out no coherent argument as to why Chesterton was specifically a Catholic as opposed to a member of any other possible religion.  Gary Wills published a book of the same title in 2002.  I read Mr. Wills' book.  Well, actually I read parts of his book.  I expected to find some coherent argument as to why he was a Catholic.  Mostly I got large chunks of personal history so I started skipping around looking for the core argument.  It turns out that he is a Catholic because his parents were Catholic and he was raised Catholic.  This is hardly a compelling argument.  Mr. Wills is well known for his disagreements with some aspects of Catholicism.  Some of this is on display in the book.  Again some kind of analysis as to why Catholicism, especially in view of his disagreements, instead of something else was lacking.  I will be addressing this issue further in other posts.  But for the purposes of this post I will follow in Mr. Wills footsteps and lay out a history of my path to Atheism.

Like Mr. Wills I was born a Catholic and had two Catholic parents.  My father was a Catholic to his death.  My mother is still alive and still a Catholic.  So, unlike Mr. Wills, my choice of religion has changed over my lifetime.  This is the result of some effort on my behalf to figure out what is right and true.   "Right and true" are the core of what religion is supposed to be about.  It makes no sense to me to hold to a religion which is either wrong or false.  So I am completely perplexed as to why Mr. Wills holds to a religious belief that he finds flawed in important ways.  In any case, . . .

I went to Parochial School for 8 years and then to public schools for the rest of my education.  During High School I went to 4 years of CCD (religion school).  So I have the standard religious upbringing for a Catholic.  I began to have doubts in High School.  One reason for this was exposure to history.  It turned out that my public school history books covered events of profound significance to a Catholic that were completely absent from my extensive Catholic education.  These events were those leading up to and including the Protestant Reformation.   These events did not show the Catholic Church in a good light, and justifiably so.  The Church behaved shabbily.

I went off to college at a state university.  Initially, I was ambivalent.  My approach was "keep your options open".  Even if it does not seem true, why take the chance.  This went on for a couple of years.  I eventually decided this approach was dishonest as I no longer believed.  So I quit.  I became what is called a "lapsed Catholic".  But my thinking continued to evolve.  One influence was the book "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein.  It is a work of Science Fiction and in it the main character literally invents a religion.  The events in the book parallel in important ways the life of Christ.  This experience led me to the conclusion that it was not that hard to invent a religion.

This book was not even the only Heinlein book to deal with the invention of religions for political reasons.  Modern Science Fiction is now replete with invented religions.  The recent "Battlestar Galactica" TV series deals extensively with a made up religion within the context of its continuing story arcs.  And, most famously, another Science Fiction author, L. Ron Hubbard, has invented an actual religion, Scientology.  Scientology is no different in its general structure from other religions.  The details of its rituals and belief system are not the same as any other religion but it falls well within the range for a typical religion.  But this is like saying Dashiell Hammett wrote different detective fiction than Raymond Chandler did.  It's still detective fiction.

This exposure to made up religions in Science Fiction was part of the process I went through at this time.  For the obvious question was:  Well if there is a problem with Catholicism then what about other religions.  I quickly discarded other christian religions.  One way of looking at the Protestant Reformation was as an attempt to fix Catholicism.  The initiating event was Martin Luther's identification of a problem with Catholic practise, namely selling indulgences.  I certainly agreed with Luther's criticism.  But what happened afterward was that many other problems were identified and Christianity quickly splintered into many factions and wings.  I concluded that there was no core truth.  From my perspective, Catholicism was the best of the lot but the whole lot was bad.

I will confess to have not made an exhaustive survey of religions.  I have spent a little time looking into a small number of alternatives.  We are all exposed to a little Judaism in the western world.  I have read one small book on Islam and another book on Confucianism.  That's it.  That is less than a serious attempt.  But another thing I have done is generally observe religious practise around the world.  I am looking for evidence of "right and true".  Does the religion have a fundamental commitment to truth?  What I find is that the commitment is to dogma and truth is denied if it conflicts with dogma.  There is also supposed to be a moral aspect to religion.  What I find is that most religions are immoral.  They encourage ignorance and bigotry.  They frequently support and encourage wars and other forms of bad behavior like slavery and torture.

Finally, Catholics make a distinction between Agnosticism and Atheism.  Can I absolutely prove that "there is no God"?  No!  But this is a case of asking the wrong question.  In the U.S.A. "God" means a christian god not some kind of super smart space alien.  I absolutely believe there is no christian god.  So I am an Atheist.

My fundamental observation about religions is that they are essentially political.  Religions follow all the rules of politics.  Politics is an inherently human endeavor.  Religions are the invention of humans and subject to the failings of humans.  Once you adopt this perspective religions make perfect sense.  The way to analyze religions is not with the tools of theology but with the tools of political science.