Ron said: We may question and criticize all we like, personally I have never been successful with changing someone else's viewpoint about faith and religion. I became well read in Christian doctrine just for the reason of appealing to them from their own viewpoint. Soon as you start parting ways in theory you lose them, you forget that the reason that they adhere so stringently to faith is because they do not wish to think. Faith is easy, thinking requires effort.
dmb says: It's true. We almost never see a case where somebody is instantly convinced by reason to adopt a new perspective but that's just due to the fact that new perspectives grow gradually and are hardly ever experienced as a sudden shift. In other words, it takes time to change a mind. Some beliefs are central to a person's worldview. They're attached to so many related beliefs that giving up that central belief entails giving up a whole web of beliefs. In such a case, it is simply too expensive to give it up. It costs the believer too much, cognitively speaking. I've found also, that there are usually emotional reasons for clinging to a belief. It helps to distinguish between the emotional need and the particular belief which seems to address that need. You know, if they say they believe in God because that belief provides a sense of meaning and purpose in life, talk about the meaning and purpose in life without having to hold that particular belief. For this reason, maybe it is b est to be very specific about what is being criticized. Maybe this means we should start with the propositions that are both lacking in intellectual quality and lacking in its centrality to the believer. Anyway, Steve raised one of the biggest issues, as far as the majority of regular people are concerned. There is a sociological survey, and an article about it recently linked here, that shows he's quite right... Steve said: Since reading The End of Faith I have felt very motivated to do something about the problem, but I haven't been able to figure out what. ...The other side of the issue besides convincing people that religion is destroying civilization is to attack SOM. I think the yeastless factuality of value free SOM is what makes atheism so scary for believers. It's why they cling to their religious beliefs in spite of their own recognition of these belief's low intellectual quality. dmb says: To put it in Pirsigian terms, we're seeing an anti-modern reactionary movement back toward religion because people are terrified by the amorality of the scientific worldview. These reactionaries are anti-intellectual because they equate "godless" humanism with everything that is immoral. Millions of people believe that there is no morality except by way of God. From this perspective, giving up theism is giving up morality. To them, atheism MEANS there are no morals. We can sympathize with the believer's concern about morality and, obviously, the MOQ addresses this in a big way. Pirsig puts this concern in the mouth of Richard Rigel, who accuses the author of being a relativist. "Quality is whatever you like?! That's just relativism", he says. Or something like that. Pirsig's answer to him is the MOQ itself, where the moral issues in this debate are of only one kind. They're church morals, social level morals that are designed to tame our animal nature. They are not handed dow n from god or written in stone. They evolved as we did and they're good to the extent that they work. And being able to see it that way is itself based on a more evolved, even higher sort of morality. Intellect, unlike the Victorians described by Pirsig, can re-examine those social level moral codes, understand their origins and purpose and try to lend support where it is warranted. If some of these codes seem obsolete or even ridiculous in light of this reexamination, then we should be able to say so and to treat them accordingly. Another good place to start is with fanaticism itself. Nobody thinks they're fanatical or at least wouldn't like to admit it in those terms. We should maybe talk about the problems that follow from giving any kind of belief that much power or allegiance. Doesn't matter if its Islamic terrorists, Neonazi punks or Scottish soccer hooligans. Assholes come in all flavors, if you'll pardon the expression. It's hard to argue with divine sanction or metaphysical authority, let alone racial theories of superiority or sports fan loyalty. And if the guy thinks eternity, his people or his civilization is at stake, you're probably not going to be able to match his intensity. But at a certain point you're dealing with lunatic, not just a believer. In that case, just talk about the weather, or something, and back away slowly. (But don't mention global warming or he'll just start telling you rapture stories.) But most people think they have reasons. They think they are reasonable and logical and just as smart as the next guy. And usually they're right about that. Reasonable discussions with people about their beliefs don't instantly transform anyone, but they work eventually. And most people wonder about these things, I think, usually silently. People sort of light up when the discussion turns to these questions. I've do not recall a single negative experience but I've been thanked for it a few times. It's not because they were persuaded to abandon any beliefs. Its more like they were charged up about some relatively latent belief they already had. But all that is just anecdotal evidence for a common sense observation about Americans. People like to talk about their beliefs, especially the so-called "deep" issues. For tons of people, their religion didn't answer the questions as well as it asked them. Not by a long shot. And it didn't even ask them all that well. Be nice if such d isaffected people had some real, living options. You know, besides Joseph Campbell on PBS. _________________________________________________________________ Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
