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May 24, 2007
Religious organisations and altruism
Altruism is one of the common arguments that seems to be made in support of religion, or more precisely, religious organisations such as churches, charities.
The point the god botherers try to make (and this became very evident to me on the death of that vicious, mean-spirited, bigoted, hate-mongerer Jerry Falwell) is that religious people 'do good works' (by this I mean altruism rather than proselytising) that without the structure of a religious organisation these 'good works' would never be undertaken and society would quickly tumble into chaos.
I agree with them, to a point. There are lots of people doing very good work, some of them are even religious. There are, however, many non-believers, apostates and even 'infidel' doing the same thing.
The reasoning that the god botherers use is flawed and leads them into a logic trap. They posit that the loss of religious institutions would lead to a reduction or cessation of 'good works'. If you follow the logic of that then you realise that what these god-botherers are failing to realise is that without religion they would not perform 'good work'.
It could be argued that an organisation for rallying altruistic members is a great benefit. That's true enough. But what about those altrustic members? Remember we are not talking about banning altruistic organisations here, just the hypothetical disappearance of RELIGIOUS organisations. The absence of religious belief in a persons life does not lead to selfishness - actually usually quite the opposite as they realise we are all just humanm there is no hierarchy and some invisible father-figure will not make you 'luckier' because you fill yourself up with divisive smugness.
If the god-botherers are truly serious about their altruism and good works then surely, it would be no problem to reforge themselves into a new, non-religious organisation that would be all the better for being released form the shackles of preaching and the impractical and often cruel practice of suggesting to a poor unfortunate that perhaps 'god' doesn't like them very much or has some mysterious plan for them that currently involves a lot of pain, misery and humiliation.
If the god-botherers insist on suggesting that the dissolution of religious organisations would lead to a break down in society, then they are insisting that without either the moral superiority and smugness or without the whiff of brimstone to keep them on the straight and narrow, they would not indulge in altruism at all.
That's not very 'christian' now is it?
The next time some god-botherer tells you that removing religion from society would result in the collapse of altruism and ultimately lead society into chaos, point out the error of their ways and watch them squirm and hopefully, ultimately realise what they have just said makes no sense at all.
Either you want to help other people or you don't. The presence or lack of a specifically religious organisation does nothing to change that.
Posted by dottie at May 24, 2007 10:31 AM
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