What should we value?
There’s been a long-running series of threads over on PZ Myers’ blog Pharyngula about the compromisers, atheists who think we should just live and let live and not criticize theism because, of course, we expect them to stop criticizing us. First off, we know they never will and secondly, reality isn’t up for a vote. Reality is what is, no matter how strongly you might believe otherwise. Someone needs to defend reality, as strange as that might seem, because it is under attack today by groups who want us to all accept what they wish was true over what actually is true.
Recently though, over on Evolutionary Middleman, Evo put up a series of YouTube videos where he addressed, first the view that religion was a delusion and then, retracted it. Okay, granted I called him a pussy for the second video and that’s not to insult Evo who I have a lot of respect for on most things, but his reasons for not wanting to call theists insane really don’t pan out.
In his first article, he put up links to a bunch of YouTube videos, the first to a Christian who was clearly out of her rational mind and two defending the view that religion is a mental illness. Perhaps my favorite video of the series that Evo originally put up was this one, where the classical description of “delusion” from two different scholarly sources is presented and damn, but if it doesn’t describe theism, I don’t know what does.
Evo raises a couple of issues which, at first glance, might seem valid, but upon further examination really don’t stand up. The first is that homosexuals were abused under the DSM for many years because homosexuality was classified as a mental illness and therefore, by having religion classified as a similar mental illness, this might lead to the abuse of theists. Now ignoring for the moment the fact that no western society is ever going to declare 85% of their citizens insane, it’s really not much of an argument. It falls under the fallacy from consequences, that we shouldn’t do or believe something because of the consequences thereof. When considering the possibility that religion represents insanity or delusion, what might come of that declaration is irrelevant to the declaration itself. Religion is either delusion or it is not. According to the above video, and I agree with it wholeheartedly as seemingly does Evo, religion most certainly is a delusional state. Since I rather doubt that posting on a blog or putting a video on YouTube is going to cause the men in white coats to descend en masse on churches nationwide, it seems a bit silly to backpedal on that regard. Beyond that, we have to realize that the reason homosexuality was placed in the DSM in the first place was because of religious views that homosexuality was wrong. This is something I point out to people again and again when they try to claim that authoratative sources prove things objectively. The authors have their own particular biases, just like everyone else. Just because a dictionary writer defines “atheism” in a particular way doesn’t mean that’s the sole, or even correct meaning of the word. It’s supposed to be an unbiased source, but I don’t think there’s any such thing as a human-written unbiased source. Our biases and beliefs, no matter how hard we try not to allow them to, will creep into everything that we do and that goes for both atheists and theists. Just because someone writes something down doesn’t mean we ought to adopt it without critical examination.
Secondly, his point that people are able to give up religion and thus, it cannot be a mental disorder doesn’t hold water either. We’re not talking, by and large, about a biological disorder here, but a failure of critical thinking, rationality and intellectual integrity. Religion is a delusion. In some of the most extreme cases, the people who hear voices, the people who do bizarre things, those might actually be chemical imbalances in the brain, but for the most part, theists are perfectly healthy people who have adopted some truly asinine ideas as factual truth. There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with pointing that out and in fact, we all ought to be making a point of it as often as possible. Pretending that nutty delusions are fine, just so you don’t dare offend anyone, is a piss-poor reason for quivering in your boots and hiding from reality.
Ultimately, and this has been a point I’ve made over and over, we do need to raise a generation or two of people who are taught, from the earliest age, to think critically and rationally and to reject those things that cannot be supported objectively. If we could do that, religion would vanish in a few generations. But while that’s one part of the solution, the other has to be challenging current theists on the validity of their beliefs. It might convince some of the less delusional just how nutty their beliefs have actually been, but if nothing else, it will demonstrate to the world just how insane these people really are. Even if we did start raising children with good critical thinking skills, do you think they’re not going to be influenced by the religious people in their lives, especially if those people are left to be deluded out of some misguided attempt at compromise and peace? Their crazy ideas have to be outted publically and we have to do it over and over and over, not just for the complete whackaloons like the Phelps family, but even for the most liberal theists who really aren’t hurting anyone directly, but their ideas can cause social harm in the long run. The Religious Horror Show has tons of examples of how even the most minor of beliefs, if allowed to run rampant, can be twisted and perverted to result in immeasurable harm.
It’s time to take a stand for reality. Pretending otherwise gets us absolutely nowhere.
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