Religion: The Deuce

[morriswalters]

guenther, some questions. Is it ever possible for the Religious to encapsulate their views so that I don't need to be bound to their will on things we differ on which are a matter of their faith? This is the expression of fact in two separate debates in Society. Abortion and Creationism. I accept that the Faithful choose not to practice reproductive practices as I do, can they accept my right to do so according to my conscience even if it means that I will practice abortions? Can they accept that in the common association of Society that we teach to those who participate in the Common Society only those things based in the best fact available and not those cloaked as Science that are instead faith. If we can't accept those two opposing positions isn't this a metric of harm. If I take from you the practice of your Faith, applied to yourself you would be diminished. If you take from me the right to practice my Faith, on me, am I not diminished? But when we speak of this separation of Church and State, do we mean the absolute separation? That means the right to practice your faith without interference. And I mine. Are either of us willing to accept what that implies? Given that how do we define the commonalities which we need as a Society, and those things that we only want as groups, without diminishing either? Just thinking in print.

[Earl Grey]

I just want to ask for clarification on one point before we proceed.

Guenther, with regards to "shaping the process", what does this mean for you? I'm just looking for a more explicit detailing of what the process is, what shaping it means, and how faith does this.

Thank you.

[guenther]

guenther, some questions. Is it ever possible for the Religious to encapsulate their views so that I don't need to be bound to their will on things we differ on which are a matter of their faith? This is the expression of fact in two separate debates in Society. Abortion and Creationism. I accept that the Faithful choose not to practice reproductive practices as I do, can they accept my right to do so according to my conscience even if it means that I will practice abortions? Can they accept that in the common association of Society that we teach to those who participate in the Common Society only those things based in the best fact available and not those cloaked as Science that are instead faith. If we can't accept those two opposing positions isn't this a metric of harm. If I take from you the practice of your Faith, applied to yourself you would be diminished. If you take from me the right to practice my Faith, on me, am I not diminished? But when we speak of this separation of Church and State, do we mean the absolute separation? That means the right to practice your faith without interference. And I mine. Are either of us willing to accept what that implies? Given that how do we define the commonalities which we need as a Society, and those things that we only want as groups, without diminishing either? Just thinking in print.

What are you saying that an absolute separation of church and state implies? That people have to turn off their religious parts of their brain when deciding on issues like abortion? I'm no legal expert, but my understanding is that the freedom of religion clause is about the government establishing a religion or restricting your right to practice your religion. If abortion was a religious activity for you, then maybe there's something to that. But people voting based on their religion-based conscious does not mean that the government is endorsing any religion. (People with more legal knowledge feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)

Also, abortion deals with weighing the balance of two potential harms. When does an unborn baby gain a right to life that trumps the rights of the mom? Conception? Birth? Sometime in the middle? Sometime after birth? The answer is undefined, or rather it's subjectively defined. So morally assessing abortion is inherently a subjective issue. How do we define commonalities? There's no solution that everyone will like. But a dysfunctional environment of solving policy issues will make this process harder, and it will make solving other important areas harder. So finding a way to work together despite difference is important.

Guenther, with regards to "shaping the process", what does this mean for you? I'm just looking for a more explicit detailing of what the process is, what shaping it means, and how faith does this.

The idea is that when groups pass down explicit expressions of faith, it keeps the group narrative tied to these. It controls how the narrative changes over time. Of course, there's a lot of wiggle room and thus the interpretation does change over time. But without the expression of faith, the narrative would be open to a much larger space of permutations. Also, it could be that this sort of consistency might help different groups bridge differences. We become acutely aware when two groups have horrible clashes over differences, but maybe a lot of the instances of peaceful reconciliation went unnoticed. Anyway, that's just a guess.

Also, I have spent most of my time dealing with the biases of the group, but we as individuals have lots of biases as well. When people disconnect themselves from the group biases, are they free to become better thinkers? Or do the individual biases simply have more control? My guess is the latter. As individuals we can just keep our questionable or poorly thought-out ideas to ourself. Within the group people openly communicate more and thus their beliefs get exposed to more scrutiny. And the group members also have access to the writings of great thinkers who are good at organizing ideas in ways that are more accessible. Of course, no one is purely alone and no one is purely hive mind. So we all embody various aspects of this. But my unprofessional theory on this is that groups help people minimize their individual biases at the expense of a group bias. And this process is what allows groups to function better than the sum of the individual members.

A lot of what I'm putting out there is speculation into a space in which I'm not well trained. So there's certainly problems with my position and my guesses. But what's really underlying it all is the lack of testable data to show that religious people are somehow limited in their thinking compared to everyone else. And further, data showing that methods to improve thinking skills are somehow diminished if people are brought up to value and live by faith. This last point is really the key for me, as I mentioned before. This is where rubber hits the road and we can really measure truth.

[morriswalters]

I don't ask that you to turn off anything. But by framing the issue on the basis of your Faith and asking the Government to Codify the issue based on your Faith, you essentially are forcing the Government to establish your Religion as the arbiter of my beliefs be they Religious or not. I don't judge that, it may be impossible to avoid, I ask you only to consider that point of view. The salient question is how much should either of us have to give up so that neither of us are diminished? That is my metric of harm. I'll frame the question in this manner. Is it possible for you to accept the potential harm that may come to a unborn child to allow me to live as freely of you as I can?

The absolute separation of Church and State implies Warren Jeffs and similar situations. This does not mean that I judge Faith on the Basis of him, but an absolute Separation would imply that he could exist, unchecked. This question was aimed at you but not specifically meant for you. It applies to the metric I mentioned above. Forbidding Government from establishing a State Religion implies that you can separate the processes cleanly. Is that true? The point is that Reason can paint you into a corner unless you have defined in an unambiguous manner what you are trying to achieve with it. Is that removal of ambiguity possible in this case?

[guenther]

I don't ask that you to turn off anything. But by framing the issue on the basis of your Faith and asking the Government to Codify the issue based on your Faith, you essentially are forcing the Government to establish your Religion as the arbiter of my beliefs be they Religious or not. I don't judge that, it may be impossible to avoid, I ask you only to consider that point of view. The salient question is how much should either of us have to give up so that neither of us are diminished? That is my metric of harm. I'll frame the question in this manner. Is it possible for you to accept the potential harm that may come to a unborn child to allow me to live as freely of you as I can?

Your metric of harm is considering you and the anti-abortionist, but it is not considering the unborn baby. How much can you diminish that life such that you can be as free as possible? I'd argue that this is the salient point on abortion. It's not simply about people imposing on each other how to live (like in gay marriage).

And does this question get clearer when people don't frame it in terms of faith? What is the secular way to decide this conflict of rights? To be free of what you see as the government arbitrating on religion, how should religious people participate without just giving up their voice to secular folks?

[jules.LT]

And does this question get clearer when people don't frame it in terms of faith? What is the secular way to decide this conflict of rights? To be free of what you see as the government arbitrating on religion, how should religious people participate without just giving up their voice to secular folks?

The way we do it in France is by excluding all religious talk from politics. People can push for family values and the rights of the unborn as much as they like, as long as they don't mention "God". And if they do, there's a public outcry. One of those reasons why I love my country

[morriswalters]

Your metric of harm is considering you and the anti-abortionist, but it is not considering the unborn baby. How much can you diminish that life such that you can be as free as possible? I'd argue that this is the salient point on abortion. It's not simply about people imposing on each other how to live (like in gay marriage).

And does this question get clearer when people don't frame it in terms of faith? What is the secular way to decide this conflict of rights? To be free of what you see as the government arbitrating on religion, how should religious people participate without just giving up their voice to secular folks?

I don't argue that abortion is moral or immoral, or that we should or should not allow it. But can it ever be put to rest? Can there be a point where we say together we agree to disagree and move forward? Does one or the other have to be wrong? This question cuts both ways.
Faith, Religious or otherwise, is not separable from who we are. I have Faith in what I believe, it colors everything that I do. The issue to me is not, can you accept my practices, but rather, can you accept my faith in them? The unborn, for instance, is not the center of the question. We have come to different conclusions about the importance of the unborn based on our respective Faiths. We both have certainty in our beliefs, can we reconcile the two Faiths in a manner where neither is diminished any more than we need be? How do we know the minimum amount of acceptance that we must each bring to the table? Can we truly be tolerant? The use of the word secular obscures this point. Just like the word Religious. We codify the process in law, this conflict between certainty of belief. We attempt to find the middle ground.

[guenther]

The way we do it in France is by excluding all religious talk from politics. People can push for family values and the rights of the unborn as much as they like, as long as they don't mention "God". And if they do, there's a public outcry. One of those reasons why I love my country

Is there any legal restriction on mentioning God when defending that issue? Or is this public outcry just an expression of popular opinion on how the debate should be handled? I'm just curious since I don't know much about the French system.

The use of the word secular obscures this point. Just like the word Religious. We codify the process in law, this conflict between certainty of belief. We attempt to find the middle ground.

Your interpretation of Separation of Church and State binds the religious in a way that it doesn't for the areligious. The areligious are not in danger of forcing the government to arbitrate based on their religion because they have no religion. You said the use of "religious" obscures the issue, but that is precisely the issue I'm raising since the Establishment Clause is about religion, not faith. Under your interpretation, how can the religious participate as freely as the areligious in the system of government without being required to abandon their religion? Are you imagining something like what jules.LT mentioned where the religious simply need to stop referencing God as part of their argument?

The unborn, for instance, is not the center of the question. We have come to different conclusions about the importance of the unborn based on our respective Faiths.

People have extended the abortion argument past birth arguing about the morality of infanticide. At some point we all have to agree that the diminishment of this new life becomes very relevant or else child abuse would get dealt with in a very different way. For abortion, you don't have to give weight to the unborn life, but it most definitely is part of the conversation if other people do put it forth as something that we need to consider. I don't think we'll ever settle this issue in the same way we settle questions in science, and that's because the right answer is subjectively defined. The question might effectively get settled one day if popular opinion on the issue converges.

In the meantime, as you point out, we have to deal with disagreement. But in my mind, true tolerance isn't about finding agreeable solutions to everything. Rather the meat of tolerance is how we deal with others when we can't agree. So we can promote tolerance with others even when the policies we promote are in direct conflict with the policies they promote. Of course, in practice I think this sort of thing is not politically advantageous, so I don't hold out much hope for this happening. If there were an agreeable middle ground, then promoting an extreme position is less likely to rally people to lend their support with money and votes.

[morriswalters]

More later, but, I'm suggesting that asking people to not act on their beliefs puts to much of a burden on them, no matter their belief. Be it you or me. My question, in that light, is how far do we go to make each other as whole as we can be. Can we recognize that in the public domain that it exists to let as many different Faiths as there are to exist together. Rather then setting ceilings we should set floors. Is there a minimum statement of law that would provide us, together, something, even if it is not everything we want?

[jules.LT]

The way we do it in France is by excluding all religious talk from politics. People can push for family values and the rights of the unborn as much as they like, as long as they don't mention "God". And if they do, there's a public outcry. One of those reasons why I love my country

Is there any legal restriction on mentioning God when defending that issue? Or is this public outcry just an expression of popular opinion on how the debate should be handled? I'm just curious since I don't know much about the French system.

No legal issue, just popular contempt for religion as an argument for policy (and attachment to secularity)
On second thought, nobody pushes for the rights of the unborn here. Family values is where it stops.

[guenther]

More later, but, I'm suggesting that asking people to not act on their beliefs puts to much of a burden on them, no matter their belief. Be it you or me. My question, in that light, is how far do we go to make each other as whole as we can be. Can we recognize that in the public domain that it exists to let as many different Faiths as there are to exist together. Rather then setting ceilings we should set floors. Is there a minimum statement of law that would provide us, together, something, even if it is not everything we want?

You might find agreement on the notion of building a minimal government, yet still not find common ground on what the floors should be, e.g. whether to legally protect the lives of the unborn. To come up with a minimum picture, there has to be some objective as to what government should be doing (something with more concreteness than simply trying to keep people whole). But then, people would likely decide objectives based on what agendas they are promoting. So it's just the same debate but dressed up differently. The minimal government idea is conceptually interesting, but I don't think it helps us solve complicated topics like abortion.

No legal issue, just popular contempt for religion as an argument for policy (and attachment to secularity)
On second thought, nobody pushes for the rights of the unborn here. Family values is where it stops.

Interesting. Thanks for the info!

[morriswalters]

I'm not pointing to solutions, I'm exploring the notion of tolerance. Regardless of the core values of either side, the situation can be stated clearly. The value of the unborn is a direct reflection of the underlying Faith which drives us both. My Faith is not of a Religious nature, l none the less, I hold to it much as you do yours. It forms the core of my principles, defines my ethics. My Faith tells me that the value of the unborn is relative to the value of the mother. So we both hew to a line driven by our Faith. My position would be that the Government on the whole should be mute on the issue. Some of the Religious on the other hand believe that Government should codify their Faith, their belief that aborting the unborn is immoral.

Fundamentally the core of the issue revolves exclusively on how we view the Fetus, a article of our respective faiths. We can both agree that murder is immoral, that assault is immoral. We each understand that in relationship to how we would react if we were the target. This is shared truth, driven by self interest. How you feel about abortion is quantitatively different. The truth that we see is not shared, it is a product of our respective Faiths. The fetus has no viewpoint.

I chose abortion to highlight the problem, not to argue the fact of abortion. It highlights the core of the problem with tolerance. It is the one issue where tolerance is most needed and seldom found. It also represents the purest distillation of problem. The Government should protect us each from the other, but not choose a position in this debate. The fetus can't be separated from the women who carries it. It is her. At some point it may be different and then the argument would shift because then the child would have a voice in the argument, but until it can survive apart from the mother and have a voice, its voice is that of the Mother. I don't hold this as a viewpoint you should share, and it is different than other viewpoints of the people who I stand with, but it illuminates how we come to the issue. We are not speaking out of self interest, we are speaking from our Faith. We are each looking to the child and speaking for the child, a matter of our separate Faiths, how we look at the unborn child.

So when we talk of tolerance, we are talking of accepting that some wrongs are statements of our Faith rather than our common self interest. To be truly tolerant we must accept that.
Edit

[LaserGuy]

What are you saying that an absolute separation of church and state implies? That people have to turn off their religious parts of their brain when deciding on issues like abortion? I'm no legal expert, but my understanding is that the freedom of religion clause is about the government establishing a religion or restricting your right to practice your religion. If abortion was a religious activity for you, then maybe there's something to that. But people voting based on their religion-based conscious does not mean that the government is endorsing any religion. (People with more legal knowledge feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)

Religious people certainly have the right to use their religion, or whatever else that they want, as guiding principles for decision-making in their lives. The problem is that religious people are trying to decide for everybody else what the standard on abortion should be, irrespective of the interests or values of all of the people who don't agree with their worldview. Abortion is a complex and nuanced issue, why does it have to be absolutely "decided" as legal/illegal, rather than keeping it purely as an issue of conscience ("I will not have an abortion" versus "I will have an abortion"), and accepting that other people may feel differently about the issue? (I might also add that, what is particularly disheartening about a lot of these issues, is that they often pit a powerful, privileged, majority group, Christians, against historically oppressed minorities (women, gays))

Consider an inverted case: under my atheistic worldview, I might reasonably consider the practice of circumcision to be abhorrent and abusive to children. Should I then lobby the government in order to ban the practice, even though it would adversely affect many religious communities*, as was the case in California (I think)? Or should I accept that, while circumcision is a cultural practice that I find personally repulsive, that other people have differing opinions on the subject, and that I should not attempt to impose my value system on them, even though I believe that banning the practice would be correct and moral to do? To my mind, separation of church and state implies the latter opinion: Since the religious and irreligious agree on the vast majority of morality anyway, we should not attempt to force our values upon each other for these marginal cases, but rather, should try to reach a consensus position between the groups through informed discussion and debate.

[*]I will add that freedom of religion is not an absolute right. One could probably convincingly make the case that the child's right to security of person overwhelmingly trumps the parent's right to practice their religion in this instance.

[jules.LT]

Well, tolerance has to stop somewhere: excision and infibulation are illegal in most Western countries, as they should be...
Abortion happens to be at the tipping point, and the religious majority in the US does not accept that it should be tolerated

[Drumheller769]

It's because its a religious view combined with a (majority of people) view of murder being bad. The religious view being that the fetus is a person, thus abortion = murder. Other than changing the religious view, which for most probably wont happen, I don't really see a way around the problem.

[LaserGuy]

It's because its a religious view combined with a (majority of people) view of murder being bad. The religious view being that the fetus is a person, thus abortion = murder. Other than changing the religious view, which for most probably wont happen, I don't really see a way around the problem.

I think most people would agree that mutilating your children's genitals is bad, too. The secular view is that it's bad even if God told you to, thus circumcision = child abuse.

[morriswalters]

It's because its a religious view combined with a (majority of people) view of murder being bad. The religious view being that the fetus is a person, thus abortion = murder. Other than changing the religious view, which for most probably wont happen, I don't really see a way around the problem.

There is, but we probably won't. The problem is the assertion of your view, or mine, on a third person. The problem arises from the ambiguity of our meaning of being a person. The Mississippi vote took place precisely on this point. How we arrive at that definition is the problem. The Religious arrive from the point of their Faith as does an Atheist. Tolerant law would come from the perspective of "It's wrong to do this to me." The Religious might say that a person is there at conception, an Atheist might say a person becomes a person at birth. These two points of view are are diametrically opposed. And neither is in fact able to be settled absolutely. The Supreme Court reasoned to the middle ground. Effectively picking a point where the fetus could have a voice, and could say, "It's wrong to do this to me." It satisfies neither position but is the only place where they can meet. Tolerance is finding that point and living with it. So if you assert that you can be tolerant of the Faith of another you must first answer this question. Can you accept living at that point?

[guenther]

My position would be that the Government on the whole should be mute on the issue. Some of the Religious on the other hand believe that Government should codify their Faith, their belief that aborting the unborn is immoral.

First, if the government says abortion is legal, then it is not mute on the issue. Second, I think part of the problem of no middle ground comes from people capturing the issue as if there's precisely two sides: abortion legal, abortion illegal. But the morning after pill and partial-birth abortion are very different, and many people have different moral feelings about each. (I'm not sure if the morning after pill actually counts as abortion, but hopefully my point is clear nonetheless.)

Also, you mention "codifying their Faith" again. Your interpretation of the Establishment Clause makes religious people less free in how they participate in policy debates. If you wanted to have your faith codified into law, the government is not in any danger of establishing a religion since you don't have one. So how do religious people gain that same freedom without giving up their religion?

I had a response to your point on tolerance, but it basically got absorbed into what I say to jules.LT below.

Well, tolerance has to stop somewhere: excision and infibulation are illegal in most Western countries, as they should be...
Abortion happens to be at the tipping point, and the religious majority in the US does not accept that it should be tolerated

This is about legally tolerating behavior. And we all should agree that we can't legally tolerate everything. But I think a more critical type of tolerance is about how we treat people even though we hold different opinions on what should be legally permissible. It's this latter type of tolerance that I think we need more of.

Abortion is a complex and nuanced issue, why does it have to be absolutely "decided" as legal/illegal, rather than keeping it purely as an issue of conscience ("I will not have an abortion" versus "I will have an abortion"), and accepting that other people may feel differently about the issue?

Are you saying that keeping abortion is some legally murky area is better? Having the law be clear is a very good thing.

Your bigger argument is a good one for the case of gay marriage, where the anti position is about legislating what a moral marriage looks like, and is not about protection in any way. Abortion can be thought of as legislating morality, but it can also be viewed as protecting life in the same way that child abuse laws protect children.

Consider an inverted case: under my atheistic worldview, I might reasonably consider the practice of circumcision to be abhorrent and abusive to children. Should I then lobby the government in order to ban the practice, even though it would adversely affect many religious communities*, as was the case in California (I think)? Or should I accept that, while circumcision is a cultural practice that I find personally repulsive, that other people have differing opinions on the subject, and that I should not attempt to impose my value system on them, even though I believe that banning the practice would be correct and moral to do? To my mind, separation of church and state implies the latter opinion: Since the religious and irreligious agree on the vast majority of morality anyway, we should not attempt to force our values upon each other for these marginal cases, but rather, should try to reach a consensus position between the groups through informed discussion and debate.

Circumcision is a religious practice, and thus banning it does restrict religious rights. Restricting abortion does not trampling any religious rights since no one uses that as part of a religious ceremony (as far as I know). And further, such a restriction is not establishing a religion any more than any law protecting people establishes a religion. In my non-expert opinion, separation of church and state is not an issue here. But maybe I'm wrong. Can someone point to a case where this argument has gained legal traction?

But even granting the Establisment Clause, I do think you have just as much legal right to petition for a ban on circumcision, and such a position should be treated with respect even by those who disagree. But even here the analogy isn't quite perfect. We all agree that babies should be protected, we just disagree on whether circumcision is harmful (or should even be considered mutilation). Abortion is without question harmful since it is killing life, but we differ on whether such a life should be legally protected.

[LaserGuy]

Abortion is a complex and nuanced issue, why does it have to be absolutely "decided" as legal/illegal, rather than keeping it purely as an issue of conscience ("I will not have an abortion" versus "I will have an abortion"), and accepting that other people may feel differently about the issue?

Are you saying that keeping abortion is some legally murky area is better? Having the law be clear is a very good thing.

Here in Canada, the only law we have about abortion is "You must be a licensed medical practitioner in order to provide one", as far as I know. Medical decisions are made between the patient and their doctor; the state's involvement is neither required nor appreciated.

Consider an inverted case: under my atheistic worldview, I might reasonably consider the practice of circumcision to be abhorrent and abusive to children. Should I then lobby the government in order to ban the practice, even though it would adversely affect many religious communities*, as was the case in California (I think)? Or should I accept that, while circumcision is a cultural practice that I find personally repulsive, that other people have differing opinions on the subject, and that I should not attempt to impose my value system on them, even though I believe that banning the practice would be correct and moral to do? To my mind, separation of church and state implies the latter opinion: Since the religious and irreligious agree on the vast majority of morality anyway, we should not attempt to force our values upon each other for these marginal cases, but rather, should try to reach a consensus position between the groups through informed discussion and debate.

Circumcision is a religious practice, and thus banning it does restrict religious rights. Restricting abortion does not trampling any religious rights since no one uses that as part of a religious ceremony (as far as I know). And further, such a restriction is not establishing a religion any more than any law protecting people establishes a religion. In my non-expert opinion, separation of church and state is not an issue here. But maybe I'm wrong. Can someone point to a case where this argument has gained legal traction?

Restricting abortion certainly tramples other rights. Many of the rights that it restricts (eg. security of person) are normally much higher on the relative hierarchy of importance than religion. While circumcision is a religious ceremony, so are the virgin sacrifices to Pelee that we discussed earlier. Clearly we have no problem restricting religious practices when they are a severe detriment of the common good. The comparison between abortion and circumcision is actually pretty apt, I think. From your point of view, in abortion a woman is exercising her right to the detriment of the fetus-person's right to live; from my point of view, in circumcision, parents are exercising their religious freedom to the detriment of their child's right to bodily autonomy. In both cases, the afflicted party is non-consenting.

But even granting the Establisment Clause, I do think you have just as much legal right to petition for a ban on circumcision, and such a position should be treated with respect even by those who disagree. But even here the analogy isn't quite perfect. We all agree that babies should be protected, we just disagree on whether circumcision is harmful (or should even be considered mutilation). Abortion is without question harmful since it is killing life, but we differ on whether such a life should be legally protected.

Well, yes, I agree that I should have the legal right to petition for a ban on circumcision. I strongly disagree that I should ever exercise such a right. From the secular viewpoint I am attempting (perhaps unsuccessfully) to describe, it is in the best interests of everyone to only legislate the common morality, and allow each person to follow their conscience on issues where there are significant differences of opinion.

As an aside, while it is true that abortion is killing a life, so too, technically speaking, is circumcision. Both the foreskin and the embryo are alive, as in that they are made of living cells. The difference of opinion arises due to when something should be considered a person.

[morriswalters]

First, if the government says abortion is legal, then it is not mute on the issue. Second, I think part of the problem of no middle ground comes from people capturing the issue as if there's precisely two sides: abortion legal, abortion illegal. But the morning after pill and partial-birth abortion are very different, and many people have different moral feelings about each. (I'm not sure if the morning after pill actually counts as abortion, but hopefully my point is clear nonetheless.)

Also, you mention "codifying their Faith" again. Your interpretation of the Establishment Clause makes religious people less free in how they participate in policy debates. If you wanted to have your faith codified into law, the government is not in any danger of establishing a religion since you don't have one. So how do religious people gain that same freedom without giving up their religion?

I had a response to your point on tolerance, but it basically got absorbed into what I say to jules.LT below.

Look at the bolded text. You speak of what I don't have, as if I have no beliefs at all! Religion itself is meaningless without people, it is people, people held together by a common Faith. I have beliefs and things I hold true and important, and I have Faith in them, just like you! It's no different than your Faith in your God. You think that your Faith is something different than mine in some special way, that you have something I don't and that I am trying to take it from you. That's not true, by any metric you choose to measure it against. There are only two sides if we don't take the one dictated by your Faith. Your Faith puts in the third side. The whole argument is framed from your point of view.

Religious people give nothing up in policy debates. How do I force you to give up your Religion? Separate what you believe and how you practice that, from the debate which takes place, I don't want you to give up anything. In the discussion we are having look at what you ask me to give up. You ask me to bend to you, accept your definition of when a person comes to be. All I ask of you is to find a middle ground, a place where we can come together. I would state it this way. I don't ask you to give up your practice of your faith and in return I ask you to not ask me to give up mine. Govern your life, let me Govern mine. Let us find the place where we each lose as little as possible of what we are. I'm done.

[guenther]

Restricting abortion certainly tramples other rights. Many of the rights that it restricts (eg. security of person) are normally much higher on the relative hierarchy of importance than religion. While circumcision is a religious ceremony, so are the virgin sacrifices to Pelee that we discussed earlier. Clearly we have no problem restricting religious practices when they are a severe detriment of the common good. The comparison between abortion and circumcision is actually pretty apt, I think. From your point of view, in abortion a woman is exercising her right to the detriment of the fetus-person's right to live; from my point of view, in circumcision, parents are exercising their religious freedom to the detriment of their child's right to bodily autonomy. In both cases, the afflicted party is non-consenting.

My main point of difference was the relevance of freedom of religion and abortion, which is where I'm saying the analogy breaks down. I also pointed out some small differences, but otherwise I don't think it's an unfair analogy. If you feel circumcision is wrong in the same way that many feel abortion is wrong, then I think it's completely valid (not just legal) to fight to have it banned.

Well, yes, I agree that I should have the legal right to petition for a ban on circumcision. I strongly disagree that I should ever exercise such a right. From the secular viewpoint I am attempting (perhaps unsuccessfully) to describe, it is in the best interests of everyone to only legislate the common morality, and allow each person to follow their conscience on issues where there are significant differences of opinion.

In the best interest of everyone except perhaps the afflicted, non-consenting parties that have no voice. And if people with a voice want to take up the cause of protecting those without, then it's no longer in their best interest. But, I personally have no problem with your pitch. I just don't think it's all that effective to tell people what is in their best interest. But if you do find that such a pitch is effective, then go for it. I'm all for finding greater common ground.

----------

@morriswalters
Clearly I struck a nerve, and I apologize. I don't even know how to respond to most of what you said; it seems so off from anything that I was trying to say. Basically I was just making a legal point about the relevance of religious freedom and abortion. I recognize that you were going beyond simply the legal interpration, and I'm happy to find common ground with you. Sorry if that didn't come across. Also, I promote respect for differing opinions when that common ground is hard to come by.

Overall I've avoided detailing out my specific position on abortion because I'm trying to keep it general and related to religion, rather than having it become an abortion debate. But I suspect we have a lot of common ground on our positions even if we don't completely see eye to eye.

[morriswalters]

guenther, the emphasis is for you. Abortion will never be an issue for me. If my family needs one they will get it. I was trying to get you to see that I can't take your religion away from you. In the US it could never happen. This is about looking where the problem lies. When you ban abortions who loses their rights. The Mother, and if you lose the battle what do you lose? Nothing except the right to manage the mothers beliefs so as to make them like yours. Your Religion says your right, My Atheism says your wrong. You demand to speak for the baby with only the assurance that it might be a person because the Bible says so. And you dismiss my beliefs as worthless compared to yours. Can you interpret it another way?

Tell me why my beliefs are not as important as yours.
Tell me what you lose.
Tell me how you know that a baby is a person.
Tell me that you can't see a difference between practicing your Faith, and and writing laws which reflect it.

I should be honest and tell you that I chose the ground to highlight the differences purposefully. If you are going to be open an tolerant this is where you need to look. You find the limit of your tolerance when someone pushes at a boundary which you don't want them to cross. It's easy to be friendly when there is nothing to be unfriendly about.

[guenther]

A) Tell me why my beliefs are not as important as yours.
B) Tell me what you lose.
C) Tell me how you know that a baby is a person.
D) Tell me that you can't see a difference between practicing your Faith, and and writing laws which reflect it.

A) I can't think of a reason. But I don't claim that they are.
B) I don't lose anything personally.
C) I presume you mean fetus or unborn baby, and I don't make such a claim. I don't worry about the personhood debate since it's really just a proxy for granting the right to life.
D) I see laws and the practice of faith as very different. I go to church, but I don't want a law mandating church attendence.

I should be honest and tell you that I chose the ground to highlight the differences purposefully. If you are going to be open an tolerant this is where you need to look. You find the limit of your tolerance when someone pushes at a boundary which you don't want them to cross. It's easy to be friendly when there is nothing to be unfriendly about.

What boundary do you think I don't want you to cross? Where do you think I'm not being open and tolerant? It's hard for me to respond to you because it just feels like we're having different conversations.

[Soralin]

I don't worry about the personhood debate since it's really just a proxy for granting the right to life.

I don't think it is just a proxy. I mean, if religious people think that minds come from souls, and non-religious people think that minds come from brains, it seems like that could be a huge point of disagreement in what people think is a person. And another example of how you can't confine a belief in a box, can't restrict your faith to certain things and expect it to go no further.

[morriswalters]

Your interpretation of the Establishment Clause makes religious people less free in how they participate in policy debates.
If you wanted to have your faith codified into law, the government is not in any danger of establishing a religion since you don't have one. So how do religious people gain that same freedom without giving up their religion?

How should I interpret this then? Having my faith codified into law. What have I asked of the law. I have asked nothing. My preference would be a minimum law, if at all. I wish no code of law on abortion, none. I have yet to see a sign at a clinic saying force Christians to have abortions or one asking to anyone to stop the practice of their Religion. How does this interfere with the practice of your Religion?

You constantly claim I am asking you to surrender something. What? How do you define the practice of your Religion? Abortion is a moral debate, not policy. I've given you a metric for law. I'll even use words you might, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Right to Life, Personhood, it's the same thing warmed over, what is your basis for supporting or not supporting abortion? What practical basis do you offer to have any law other than Roe v Wade?

I'll close with this

The Religious head butts with Atheists have never been over taking anything away from the private practice of Faith. School prayer. the Ten Commandments in the Classroom, Christmas displays on public property, abortion, do any of these things represent the private practice of your faith? Do they threaten your faith? How are you diminished by not having them. These are where the rubber hits the road. They are simple and straightforward questions. No grand themes. If we are talking past each other so be it. But I don't know how to understand what tolerance means to you if you can't answer these questions.

[guenther]

I don't think it is just a proxy. I mean, if religious people think that minds come from souls, and non-religious people think that minds come from brains, it seems like that could be a huge point of disagreement in what people think is a person. And another example of how you can't confine a belief in a box, can't restrict your faith to certain things and expect it to go no further.

I don't disagree with this. And similarly when people refer to unborn babies as worms or parasites, I suspect that this also gets intertwined in a bigger perspective. Beliefs with or without faith can't easily be confined to a box.

But my point is that talking about personhood doesn't really illuminate anything in the debate. It's undefined how to evaluate personhood, so using that notion to justify restrictions on abortion doesn't make anything clearer.

Your interpretation of the Establishment Clause makes religious people less free in how they participate in policy debates.
If you wanted to have your faith codified into law, the government is not in any danger of establishing a religion since you don't have one. So how do religious people gain that same freedom without giving up their religion?

How should I interpret this then? Having my faith codified into law. What have I asked of the law. I have asked nothing.

This is about following through on your legal interpretation of the Establishment Clause. It's not meant to be about what you're doing or what you believe nor the quality of your beliefs. And it's not about the current balance of power between religion and the secular. It's a theoretical legal argument, and my point is that your interpretation leads to something silly, therefore something is probably wrong with it. And further this was part of a bigger argument about how abortion and freedom of religion are unrelated.

You constantly claim I am asking you to surrender something. What? How do you define the practice of your Religion? Abortion is a moral debate, not policy. I've given you a metric for law. I'll even use words you might, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Right to Life, Personhood, it's the same thing warmed over, what is your basis for supporting or not supporting abortion? What practical basis do you offer to have any law other than Roe v Wade?

My position in this thread has been about abortion and the Establishment Clause. I've also addressed the idea expressed by a few people about how it would be nice if the people with differing opinions on the matter would just keep it to themselves. Well, sadly we can't control what other people do. You've brought up tolerance a number of times, and part of that is how we deal with people when they don't do what we want them to do. (I'm not pointing any fingers at anyone here, I'm just speaking generally.)

I have intentionally tried to keep my own personal position out of this, but since you asked I can share it. I believe that killing a baby one day before birth is morally the same thing as killing it one day after birth. They're basically they same creature, and thus I morally regard them the same. This argument gets weaker the earlier in pregnancy we look, and within the first trimester I have no real problem with abortion. Somewhere between that and the day before birth I believe the unborn baby deserves protection. I don't have a precise place in mind where that line should be drawn, but I'd want it to be informed by practical matters like it being late enough so that women can know and have some time to deliberate over whether they want to have a baby. None of my position is based on religion or the Bible any more than my view that a newborn baby deserves to have their life protected.

[LaserGuy]

None of my position is based on religion or the Bible any more than my view that a newborn baby deserves to have their life protected.

Let me run with this for a moment. Suppose that your position on abortion was based exclusively on your religion. You believe that abortion is murder/immoral/whatever because that is what your religion preaches, and that it is a stated belief and practice of your religion that abortion should be made illegal, and opposition to such a position would put you in the disfavour of your chosen deity and/or the religious authorities responsible for carrying out your chosen deity's will on Earth. If the state were to pass legislation at the behest of such a group banning abortion, would that be in violation of the Establishment Clause? I think conceivably it might--I would venture that it might fail either of "The government's action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion;" or "The government's action must not result in an "excessive government entanglement" with religion" cases of the Lemon Test.

[morriswalters]

Thank you. The point is not to take issue to what you believe about abortion. The point was to find the ground where we have to coexist at. Your belief is yours, and I make no comment on it as long as it is confined to how you manage your life for yourself.

This is about following through on your legal interpretation of the Establishment Clause. It's not meant to be about what you're doing or what you believe nor the quality of your beliefs. And it's not about the current balance of power between religion and the secular. It's a theoretical legal argument, and my point is that your interpretation leads to something silly, therefore something is probably wrong with it. And further this was part of a bigger argument about how abortion and freedom of religion are unrelated.

It would be my opinion that you can't separate abortion and freedom of Religion. Religion is the name but Faith and belief are what that name means. Does what you believe not match what you Faith demands? It does for me. Where I stand on abortion is a product of what I believe about the nature of life. I don't like abortion at any period during pregnancy. But I do care about the mother and feel her rights are greater than the child's up to a point. What I don't want to do is codify any beliefs about this into law. What I try to do is what the court did. Find the point where I can tolerate it. The reason is, that it is a given that everyone won't agree with the point that we choose, but everyone must live at that point. Law should happen when I say I don't want you to do something to me. The law on abortion should play to that point. The moment the fetus can exist outside the womb, then it can have a point of view and is able to say I don't want you to do something to me. In other words the child gains no legal rights until that point. That point is arbitrary and is the lowest common denominator, where we can all say this is the place where we lose doubt and know, not at the place we believe we know. This is how I define tolerance. But understand the qualitative difference here. This point is not where my belief in the sanctity of life takes me, it's the point where I don't need belief any longer to guide me, I have certain knowledge. This minimum law is the point of tolerance. What you practice for yourself hasn't changed. Whatever that might be. We agree on this point as the minimum that what we each need to exist together. I highlight the I and We statements.

Ultimately what I want to show is how little Atheism differs from Religion. They differ on in how we come to believe. But you can't, in my opinion, separate me from my belief. I have beliefs, I live by them. I let them guide me. Where I differ from other Atheists is in what I believe about the nature of my belief. I don't assume that Reason plays a major role, as much as the value system that you are raised with. The die is cast by your family. They teach you how to live. They may teach you that God is their guide or they may teach you Reason is their guide, but in the end it is what they show you that is important.

[guenther]

Let me run with this for a moment. Suppose that your position on abortion was based exclusively on your religion. You believe that abortion is murder/immoral/whatever because that is what your religion preaches, and that it is a stated belief and practice of your religion that abortion should be made illegal, and opposition to such a position would put you in the disfavour of your chosen deity and/or the religious authorities responsible for carrying out your chosen deity's will on Earth. If the state were to pass legislation at the behest of such a group banning abortion, would that be in violation of the Establishment Clause? I think conceivably it might--I would venture that it might fail either of "The government's action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion;" or "The government's action must not result in an "excessive government entanglement" with religion" cases of the Lemon Test.

Do you see the conflict coming from how the ban is promoted, i.e. framing the argument in a religious way? Or is it based more fundamentally on what people believe? If it's the former, then the issue is really about speech and stripping away our ability to verbally reference God when promoting policy. If it's the latter, then how do the courts make this assessment? Do they request formal statements from various people? Do they monitor the public speech of prominent supporters? What percentage is too much? Also, this interpretation puts religious people who derive their whole moral system from religion at a disadvantage in policy debates. Anything they promote could be seen as entangling their view with government. But a secular person is not so disadvantaged, no matter what position they take, even if they agree to the exact same policy. The secular voice is stronger.

To directly respond to your question, I don't think it is in violation of the Establishment Clause. My non-expert opinion is that courts should be looking at the text and implications of the law, not at who is supporting or why they're supporting it. Banning abortion certainly isn't inhibiting religion. And I don't see how it's advancing religion if the policy simply lines up with the agenda of a religious group. It's not promoting the Christian message any more than promoting charity promotes Christianity. If the law required that you consult with a priest before having an abortion, then this would be problematic with both this prong and the entanglement one.

Law should happen when I say I don't want you to do something to me. The law on abortion should play to that point. The moment the fetus can exist outside the womb, then it can have a point of view and is able to say I don't want you to do something to me. In other words the child gains no legal rights until that point. That point is arbitrary and is the lowest common denominator, where we can all say this is the place where we lose doubt and know, not at the place we believe we know. This is how I define tolerance.

I mentioned this before, but Peter Singer puts forward an argument where abortion should be considered valid past birth, right up to when the kid gains self-consciousness, around 1-2 years old. Here's a quote (where "replaceability" is aborting and having another kid):

When death occurs before birth, replaceability does not conflict with generally accepted moral convictions. That a fetus is known to be disabled is widely accepted as a ground for abortion. Yet in discussing abortion, we saw that birth does not mark a morally significant dividing line. I cannot see how one could defend the view that fetuses may be 'replaced' before birth, but newborn infants may not be. Nor is there any other point, such as viability, that does a better job of dividing the fetus from the infant. Self-consciousness, which could provide a basis for holding that it is wrong to kill one being and replace it with another, is not to be found in either the fetus or the newborn infant. Neither the fetus nor the newborn infant is an individual capable of regarding itself as a distinct entity with a life of its own to lead, and it is only for newborn infants, or for still earlier stages of human life, that replaceability should be considered to be an ethically acceptable option.

So birth is not the least common denominator. Your support of banning post-birth abortion is intolerant of the beliefs of Singer and those that agree with him. Is this a case where you will defend your view of the sanctity of life? Or do you stick to what you describe as the point of tolerance, the minimum law?

[morriswalters]

I'm not taking an ethical position, as I have already said I don't like abortion at all. The why of that is irrelevant. It's part of my personal belief system. He arguing a point which he can't know to be true, unless I'm mistaken, we don't have a really good idea of what self awareness or consciousness is. I offered a known point, where no theoretical tap dancing need be done. At the age of viability a baby could be born alive. It doesn't matter if is has consciousness or self awareness. We have never made that a requirement for not killing babies. We require a court order for pulling the plug on someone in a vegetative state. It's an arbitrary point where we can say this is a reason to put a limit here. SCOTUS settled there for a reason, it's the only point you can reach by an act of Reason that requires no belief, only a statement of fact. I'm not interested in what Philosophers believe, what the pope believes, or what my next door neighbor believes. I'm only bound by fact and by and what I believe. It's called the age of viability because that is a fact. And I accept that at that point it is as good as it can be, given the differences in beliefs. I'm intolerant of everyone, but I can't escape them, so I am required to live with them. And I can live with that. What I want to know is can the Religious? If they can't then we are left with a fight, pure and simple. This has nothing to do with the practice of our beliefs, it has to do with recognizing belief as different then facts. As I said earlier it's easy to be tolerant when you agree, it's only when you look at areas where there is friction that you can see if it works. Now I've said enough about abortion, that's not the point of the thread, it's about Religion. The point was to stress test the idea of tolerance.

[Jave D]

It's an arbitrary point where we can say this is a reason to put a limit here. SCOTUS settled there for a reason, it's the only point you can reach by an act of Reason that requires no belief, only a statement of fact. I'm not interested in what Philosophers believe, what the pope believes, or what my next door neighbor believes. I'm only bound by fact and by and what I believe.

You are bound by what you believe to be fact, and what you believe yourself to be bound by. In this you are no different from anyone else. Reason is not separate from belief and opinion in this context - all reason requires belief in reason in order for it to be accepted. It's not, I hate to say, some pure and sacred concept unfettered by human beliefs, opinions, or failings.

It's called the age of viability because that is a fact. And I accept that at that point it is as good as it can be, given the differences in beliefs. I'm intolerant of everyone, but I can't escape them, so I am required to live with them. And I can live with that. What I want to know is can the Religious? If they can't then we are left with a fight, pure and simple. This has nothing to do with the practice of our beliefs, it has to do with recognizing belief as different then facts.

You have given many facts about your beliefs, but I fail to see where the facts alone, divorced [somehow?] of beliefs, are going to resolve this issue as we might like. I hope you don't look forward to a "fight, pure and simple," yet to make an assumption based on your "intolerance of everyone," it kinda sorta seems like you do.

I have to admit that beliefs such as "if [the Religious] can't live with [my intolerance], then we are left with a fight" seem to be placing all the responsibility for "tolerance" on the part of everybody other than yourself. I shouldn't have to point out that the so-called Religious can (and do) hold that exact same [intolerant] viewpoint - and that this is a reason why people have fights. Both sides blame the other, and hold to a position of hostility, while giving some lip service to the idea of tolerance. Nothing gets solved from this "we're right, you're wrong, and that's that" paradigm.

[guenther]

That point is arbitrary and is the lowest common denominator, where we can all say this is the place where we lose doubt and know, not at the place we believe we know.
...
I'm not interested in what Philosophers believe, what the pope believes, or what my next door neighbor believes. I'm only bound by fact and by and what I believe.

These seem in conflict. At first you say you want a point where we can all say that we lose doubt. But then you say you don't care what anyone else says, it's just about what you believe. Birth is not a place where we can all say that we lose doubt, and thus it's not the lowest common demoninator. You have decided to not defend the point of tolerance as you described it. I'm OK with that. In fact, I don't think there's anything ideal about that legal point. In some cases it's great to appease to most liberal voice, but certainly not in every case.

I'm intolerant of everyone, but I can't escape them, so I am required to live with them. And I can live with that. What I want to know is can the Religious? If they can't then we are left with a fight, pure and simple.

Can the religious live with the people they disagree with? Do you mean can they function in the same society? I think we have a strong demonstration that they can. Of course, this doesn't mean that we don't have political fights, but that just comes with the territory of politics. Many in the religious camp and the areligious camp are quite ready to put up a fight there.

[morriswalters]

guenther that's a simple way of saying that I will practice what I believe and I will agree to any to any law that can be stated as a matter of fact. I'll try an analogy. I'm walk down the road and I see a guy at a high bridge. He says that the Big Oyster revealed to him that he can jump off and not be hurt. He tells me I should jump with him. I would say to him, hey go ahead and jump but I'm not going to. You may believe that you can and maybe you can, but I don't believe I can, I'll walk down and see you at the bottom to see if Big Oyster can do it. I'll let him jump, but I need facts to jump with him. As to your second I would agree, at this point in time.

Jave D I offered just one fact, that at 22 or so weeks a baby can be born alive. That is the only fact in the debate. And that is a fact of convenience, it's not what I want, it's what I can live with. The belief is where each of us think a thing that is important to us happens at, when a baby becomes human or has a soul or whatever metric you might choose.. I don't care what I believe, it's not important, and neither is what you believe or geunther, or DSenette or Zcorp or Azreal or anybody. If we can't find a place were we all can say, we can live with this, then what outcome would you expect. Recorded history has more examples than you can shake a stick at when we have fought over much less.

[LaserGuy]

Let me run with this for a moment. Suppose that your position on abortion was based exclusively on your religion. You believe that abortion is murder/immoral/whatever because that is what your religion preaches, and that it is a stated belief and practice of your religion that abortion should be made illegal, and opposition to such a position would put you in the disfavour of your chosen deity and/or the religious authorities responsible for carrying out your chosen deity's will on Earth.

Do you see the conflict coming from how the ban is promoted, i.e. framing the argument in a religious way?

No, I'm talking about a (somewhat) hypothetical religion where opposition to abortion is a fundamental tenant of that faith. It isn't, in this example, an issue of framing the abortion debate in religious language or not; it is a core belief that all of their adherents are required to adopt in order to maintain membership with said religious group.

Also, this interpretation puts religious people who derive their whole moral system from religion at a disadvantage in policy debates. Anything they promote could be seen as entangling their view with government. But a secular person is not so disadvantaged, no matter what position they take, even if they agree to the exact same policy. The secular voice is stronger.

If they are so morally destitute that they are incapable of making moral decisions for themselves, I have no problem with them not being part of public policy debates. I don't see any reason to give someone with an informed opinion about someone equal weight to someone with an uninformed opinion. The problem in this instance is not that the state is not giving equal voice to religious people (which, of course, is nonsense anyway, at least as far as Christians are concerned).

[Earl Grey]

I took some time to put some serious thought into this latest response, and do a fair amount of editing to make the mess of ideas about the faith and critical thinking conversation guenther and I have been having into something... well, less messy. As I don't want to detract from where the thread has branched off into since then, I'll put this latest response to guenther in spoiler so anyone not wishing to follow that can more easily scroll past. Guenther, I'm sorry for the length, but I figured a detailed picture of my position would be worthwhile to lay out.

Spoiler:

Thank you for your clarifications, guenther. I feel like I'm on page with you enough to continue productively.

Guenther, at one point earlier in this thread* (when the conversation was more explicitly about Christianity instead of religion and faith in general, which I think is our more recent focus) you argued that non-religious groups are more diverse in belief and less organized than religious groups, which have particular advantages to this end. I agree that religious organizations have advantages in shaping the behavior of their groups, and in maintaining influence even at large group sizes. This, however, seems to contrast with your more recent ideas around the crux of our differences:

Let me put out my counter idea. Faith is not the problem. The "problem" is the bias of the group (the quotes are because I don't think it's always a problem) [...] My prediction is that faith is not making this group biasing effect stronger, rather it's just a way of shaping that process.

(I assume that the word 'factor' would fit better than 'problem' for you here. It would read better if it said "Faith is not the factor. The factor is the bias of the group.")

What makes religious groups distinct from non-religious ones? As we already discussed, it's faith in super-natural, or extra-natural (outside nature) premises. Religious faith is unique in what kinds of things it's about. It is not unique, however, in terms of cognition. In the Venn diagram of bias, faith is inside that circle. It is voluntary bias. Cognitively, it is the suspension of critical thought. People can be good critical thinkers and exercise faith, but they cannot do both at the same time about the same thing.

You're right when you say any group has bias. I think you're wrong when you say that faith isn't a strengthening factor. Faith is a tool which codifies common biases into the group to a purpose, which gives it an organizational advantage. Why is this true? To answer this we have to look at the levels where faith operates: as part of a social structure, and ultimately as a process in an individual's brain.

Faith as a social tool

'In-group loyalty' is one of the five moral categories endemic to human cultures (along with care, fairness, respect for authority, and purity). It is part of the brain's blueprints for advantageous behavior in groups. Group co-operation helps individuals survive, and lack of co-operation leads to less effective groups, or no groups at all. Identifying the 'inside' and differentiating it from 'outside' are a key part of this, and as you've pointed out, faith can and does play a role here:

Guenther, with regards to "shaping the process", what does this mean for you? I'm just looking for a more explicit detailing of what the process is, what shaping it means, and how faith does this.

The idea is that when groups pass down explicit expressions of faith, it keeps the group narrative tied to these.

I agree that faith plays this role in religious narratives. In the most basic (but far from only) sense, subscribing to a particular narrative functions like team jerseys in sports. Subscribing to the group narrative marks you as 'in' a particular group. Simple examples of faith-narratives include things like the Nicene and Apostle's Creeds in Christianity, or the Shahada in Islam. Complex examples include things like the entirety of a holy text, and ongoing narrative generation through practicing the religion. But for believers, these narratives are not arbitrary like colored jerseys. For believers, they are rife with meaning. Also, they inspire certain moods and motivations, or to clarify Geertz's language, elicit certain states of being and exhort certain responses.

Narratives are not only used to define group lines, but also to justify why one group is superior to another. If you want the biggest group which has the most power to help it's individual members, you can't just classify into A and B. You have to show why the difference is morally charged, or classifiable into Good and Bad, otherwise you have a hard time inspiring unity and diminish your power/effectiveness. This happens anytime groups compete, but religions are the only category of groups which do it at the supernatural level. This difference is significant.

Any person or group can base feelings and/or actions on false claims. Any person or group can deny facts. This is not exclusively religious territory. What is exclusively religious territory is basing feelings and/or actions on unprovable and un-falsifiable claims, and requiring belief in such claims in order to identify with the group. Because we are neurologically wired to justify beliefs that we hold, this situation creates fertile conditions for cultivating more bias.

Faith in the Brain

In a 2008 study using fMri data, results showed that believing that something is true is associated with the brain's pleasure response while perceiving something as false or uncertain is associated with pain response (specifically that which also responds to foul tastes and odors). Also, when subjects believed in a statement, they responded faster than when they did not believe it or were uncertain. In 2009 members of that team did a second study that focused specifically on the differences between religious and nonreligious belief. An important finding is that belief for both religious and non-religious statements triggered responses in the same part of the brain (the ventromedial prefrontal cortex). In other words, the 'truth' of ordinary facts and theological ideas are evaluated and 'felt' in the same brain structures. What this means is that at the level of the brain there aren't multiple ways of believing things. Belief arrived at through gullibility and a belief arrived at skeptically are neurologically the same. Another important finding was that "the evaluation of religious statements would more fully engage regions of the brain responsive to emotional salience, both positive and negative." So religious statements were more emotionally charged, for both believers and non-believers.

The first study shows that belief and skepticism really are very opposite processes even in the brain. It also helps explain why our brains are prone to false-positives over false-negatives - your brain marking something as true has a pleasure response, while uncertainty almost literally tastes bad. The second study shows that regardless of how a belief is arrived at, the feeling of conviction is the same (paraphrasing a comment from Harris' about his study: 'torture is wrong' and '2+2=4' are importantly similar in the brain. This "further erodes the spurious distinction between facts and values"**.

Psychology has also identified a number of cognitive heuristics which we naturally employ in decision making and problem solving (also known as "rules of thumb"). These are evolved, automatic reasoning responses rather than careful deliberate ones, so they often result in cognitive bias. They are literally the unconscious mind substituting false representations of a problem so they are more easily solved. This is why intuition and feelings are extremely risky tools for analyzing problems - they actually naturally distort our perception of things, and as the fMri studies showed, the brain then can't tell the difference.

Religion, Faith and Critical Thinking

Religions put unprovable and un-falsifiable premises at the center of their worldviews (God is real, Jesus performed miracles, Muhammad received revelation directly from God, etc.) and require cognitive commitment to these ideas as truths for membership (we won't deal with 'lip-service belief' yet). Once accepted, there is good evidence that the accepting brain will further invest in and make efforts to preserve that belief in the face of contradictory information. Religions don't just provide the initial premises, though, they promote methods for strengthening your belief: Read scriptures (taking advantage of authority bias, confirmation bias amongst others), prayer (scientifically ineffective but possibly convincing through cognitive heuristics), surround yourself with other believers (groupthink), in some traditions fasting is encouraged (stressing the body to induce 'spiritual' experiences), and of course the insistence that the 'truth' can only be accessed through faith, which the mentioned fMri data has shown is just a convincing feeling of truth once a cognitive commitment has been made, but is functionally the same as factual truths for the believer. The necessity of faith is really a genius policy, because once the initial commitment is made our neurobiology means it's self-reinforcing. Given this policy and the fact of our neurobiology, critical thinking faces significant hurdles in religious settings.

The advantage of religious 'truths' are also its disadvantage: their nature is such that they are very good at exploiting cognitive heuristics and promoting in-group unity. Unfortunately this also means that if another group derives a contradictory position using the same methods, there is no objective standard for settling the conflict. The result is multiple, separate in-groups who are equally convinced of their interpretations, which are equally (in)valid, which elicit heightened emotional responses, and all with no easy way of bridging the interpretive gap. Also, when the fallibility of heuristics is exposed and methods developed to overcome them, the entire system cannot stand up to application of these methods. Unfortunately, these heuristics are such that they can and do sometimes just cause the brain to utterly reject the methods which point out these mistakes.

It controls how the narrative changes over time. Of course, there's a lot of wiggle room and thus the interpretation does change over time. But without the expression of faith, the narrative would be open to a much larger space of permutations. Also, it could be that this sort of consistency might help different groups bridge differences.

This is how theologians deal with challenges to the system. The existence of such "wiggle room" allows people to retain key beliefs necessary to preserve religious identity while still addressing the need for change (but as we've pointed out, it's also the reason people have 'pushed each other off of bridges', and continue to do so). This is the closest theology gets to being 'self-correcting' and I do not wish to understate the importance of this process and the good it does in the world. However, because the fundamentals of a theological system are outside nature, true consensus is all but impossible, and conflicts can be significant. You can't dismiss thousands of years of history replete with examples of religiously motivated conflict by saying there were other factors, and faith wasn't really one of them. That's absurd. Theology's goal is not necessarily truth, but maintaining group identity. Because faith is used in this way, theology cannot afford critical examination at the deepest levels if it is to serve both functions.

Conclusion: Faith as Anachronism

Group co-operation was once the most important factor in the advancement of our species, and religion does excel in aiding this. While it is still very important, objective knowledge has now become the more important factor. Since the scientific method was widely proliferated, the benefits to humanity have been unprecedented. It's central tenet, that nothing is true until unequivocally demonstrated to be so, is actually the exact opposite belief to what our brains are programmed to do naturally. Critical thinking, science... they are neurologically difficult to do, but are the only reliable way of winnowing out the objective truth from the vast field of errors we are so prone to. This being the case, we need less certainty, more doubt, more critical thinking. This means less use of faith. Not necessarily less religion (though that may be a side effect), but less certainty in religion, and everywhere. This being said, many religious groups do embrace science. I would even argue most religious people compartmentalize their faith quite responsibly. I don't think faith will ever disappear (not anytime soon anyway), but improved compartmentalization should continue. What religions ought to do is craft more theologies that promote the sacredness of doubt and legitimize challenging beliefs in general (this is happening in small pockets, but it should be spread). This will mean the loss of a lot of adherence to tradition, but this is a sacrifice worth making.

*

Spoiler:

The non-religious are less organized and the beliefs are more diverse. The problems have less potential to show up in trends, but so do potential benefits. People find happiness in the Christian communities, and they are very powerful at organizing themselves to provide real benefits to those in need. Of course, secular groups do have power and do form large groups, but they're organized around things that people enjoy and things that have an economic utility. But once you try to make a system that calls on people to improve themselves, to make painful choices in their lives, participation rates go down. Fortunately there are people out there that have natural inclinations to be better educated and join the scholarly world, but how do you get the other people interested in continued learning? It's hard work. I don't think groups like Humanists know how to actually build communities like how the religious do. (Of course, as you've mentioned, the religious cheat a little bit by tending to have acceptance be about labels not about learning and growing. But the churches that I've been to try hard every week to deliver a powerful message that makes people care about their values for more than an hour on Sunday, and they provide tools like small groups that help with accountability.)

(page 43)

**

Spoiler:

Shermer, Michael, The Believing Brain, 2011, page 137

[guenther]

guenther that's a simple way of saying that I will practice what I believe and I will agree to any to any law that can be stated as a matter of fact. I'll try an analogy. I'm walk down the road and I see a guy at a high bridge. He says that the Big Oyster revealed to him that he can jump off and not be hurt. He tells me I should jump with him. I would say to him, hey go ahead and jump but I'm not going to. You may believe that you can and maybe you can, but I don't believe I can, I'll walk down and see you at the bottom to see if Big Oyster can do it. I'll let him jump, but I need facts to jump with him. As to your second I would agree, at this point in time.

The problem with the analogy is that we can sit back and observe if that guy will be hurt or not. This is objectively verifiable. But we can't observe when fetus/baby develops papers granting them the right to life. This is a subjectively defined line. And a line where the least common denominator exists in a very uncomfortable spot for most people.

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No, I'm talking about a (somewhat) hypothetical religion where opposition to abortion is a fundamental tenant of that faith. It isn't, in this example, an issue of framing the abortion debate in religious language or not; it is a core belief that all of their adherents are required to adopt in order to maintain membership with said religious group.

It's not hypothetical. There are groups that do this. And there are more groups that will hold you in disfavor even if they don't revoke your membership. And you seem to think it's a win by legally disenfranchising their voice. Let me just say that I'm glad such legal hypotheticals are just the stuff of internet chat rooms and are not (as far as I know) in any way gaining legal traction.

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@Earl Grey: No problem on the length. It reminds me of back when I used to write these huge posts with section headings and everything. But somewhere between then and now I got more lazy.

You're right when you say any group has bias. I think you're wrong when you say that faith isn't a strengthening factor.

I'm just guessing there. I do think faith is a strengthening tool, but it's just one of many. My point is that faith is not what's causing the problem with poor thinking. If it is causing the problem, then we'd need to get rid of it to improve performance. So this is where I'm predicting, where I'm putting out a testable claim.

You wrote a big section about faith and critical thinking, and I think you detail out how faith can corrupt this process. But I'm challenging if in practice faith is corrupting this process. Like if the church had a looser policy on faith or if the person was areligious, would they be better at thinking critically (presuming we control for things like training)? If we were inherently good at this skill, then faith would likely be trouble. But we aren't inherently good at it, and thus I say such a claim of faith causing problems needs to be tested. (And let me say that if I'm wrong on the outcome, it's not a complete loss for my position, but it would certainly do some damage.)

What is exclusively religious territory is basing feelings and/or actions on unprovable and un-falsifiable claims, and requiring belief in such claims in order to identify with the group.

I don't agree here. In fact morality, as you point out with Sam Harris's quote, is often built on unfalsifiable claims that get treated as factually true. And there are certain moral positions that if you challenge, you will get treated as someone bad. And I think you get similar things in politics. I've found that challenging the group narrative (even when you share a similar policy position) will raise more ire than simply coming in with a contrary position. It can be a short road to becoming a douchefuck around here.

Open expressions of faith are not required for this stuff to happen. My thought is that such exclusionary behavior comes from people creating dividing lines, not from promoting faith. Of course faith can be caught up in the creation of dividing lines, but that's using faith as a tool, not a problem coming directly from faith. Faith is not required for this problem to occur, and we can fix the problem without eliminating faith.

Group co-operation was once the most important factor in the advancement of our species, and religion does excel in aiding this. While it is still very important, objective knowledge has now become the more important factor. Since the scientific method was widely proliferated, the benefits to humanity have been unprecedented. It's central tenet, that nothing is true until unequivocally demonstrated to be so, is actually the exact opposite belief to what our brains are programmed to do naturally. Critical thinking, science... they are neurologically difficult to do, but are the only reliable way of winnowing out the objective truth from the vast field of errors we are so prone to. This being the case, we need less certainty, more doubt, more critical thinking. This means less use of faith. Not necessarily less religion (though that may be a side effect), but less certainty in religion, and everywhere. This being said, many religious groups do embrace science. I would even argue most religious people compartmentalize their faith quite responsibly. I don't think faith will ever disappear (not anytime soon anyway), but improved compartmentalization should continue. What religions ought to do is craft more theologies that promote the sacredness of doubt and legitimize challenging beliefs in general (this is happening in small pockets, but it should be spread). This will mean the loss of a lot of adherence to tradition, but this is a sacrifice worth making.

In general I don't have any problem with this paragraph. And I like that your position is about how churches can do better, now how they are fundamentally in conflict with what you promote. But where I mainly differ is that I don't think that faith is the limiting factor in critical thinking, and thus if churches do what you say, I don't think that will have much effect on bringing about better thinking. We could train people to be better at it, and again, I don't think faith is a limiting factor in how well we can train people here. So while I generally share your opinion on what would be nice, I don't think that bringing this about is critically important. What I do think is critically important is being aware of how we emotionally regard each other, and promoting a greater urgency for caring, especially across sharp dividing lines.

[morriswalters]

The problem with the analogy is that we can sit back and observe if that guy will be hurt or not. This is objectively verifiable. But we can't observe when fetus/baby develops papers granting them the right to life. This is a subjectively defined line. And a line where the least common denominator exists in a very uncomfortable spot for most people.

But determining if a child gets those papers is a matter of what you believe. Picking that point wasn't meant to make anyone comfortable. It's arbitrary. But it's value lies in the fact that it is no longer a question of what we believe, it's a question of what we know. If the law takes any other position then it is taking the point of view of some ones beliefs. You state this in the section I bolded. When you state that something is subjective your are saying it is a matter of belief, not fact. This is inescapable. If I said that red headed people are more beautiful than blond people you might say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. How we look at this issue is in the eye of the beholder. But I don't behold it in the same way you do. How do you come to an agreement with me, so that we can both live with each other? I don't say that that can be done, but if it can it represents tolerance.

[guenther]

But determining if a child gets those papers is a matter of what you believe. Picking that point wasn't meant to make anyone comfortable. It's arbitrary. But it's value lies in the fact that it is no longer a question of what we believe, it's a question of what we know. If the law takes any other position then it is taking the point of view of some ones beliefs. You state this in the section I bolded.

Let me see if I understand your position. When you say "picking that point", you mean birth, correct? And when you say "what we know", you're saying that we all have consensus that at birth a baby needs to be granted the right to life, correct? Where I'm confused is that you say we all know this, as if it's a fact. I'm saying that even if we all agree, then it's still an opinion, we just have consensus on that opinion. So I read "what we know" as "where we agree". If you really mean that we know something, what do we know?

So here's my concise reading of what you're saying based on the assumptions I made above: We don't all agree that the unborn baby should have the right to live, but from birth forwards we all agree, and thus this is the point of tolerance in the law.

[LaserGuy]

No, I'm talking about a (somewhat) hypothetical religion where opposition to abortion is a fundamental tenant of that faith. It isn't, in this example, an issue of framing the abortion debate in religious language or not; it is a core belief that all of their adherents are required to adopt in order to maintain membership with said religious group.

It's not hypothetical. There are groups that do this. And there are more groups that will hold you in disfavor even if they don't revoke your membership. And you seem to think it's a win by legally disenfranchising their voice. Let me just say that I'm glad such legal hypotheticals are just the stuff of internet chat rooms and are not (as far as I know) in any way gaining legal traction.

No, I think that there should be separation between Church and State. If some Church is pushing to make their core religious beliefs as law, that is a violation of that principle, and laws to that effect should be struck down. I don't care what the specific belief is; it's irrelevant. It is no longer a question of conscience, but is a question of religious practice.

[morriswalters]

We don't all agree that the unborn baby should have the right to live, but from birth forwards we all agree, and thus this is the point of tolerance in the law.

Change "but from birth forwards we all agree" to "but from the point where we know a fetus could be born alive, we can all agree that it is alive," and you have it. As I said, a unsatisfying point where we all can agree.