, church affiliation has been decreasing in the US

^{Oct 17, 2019 · In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace
Dec 14, 2021 · About Three-in-Ten U.S. Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated}

and in some other places

^{Apr 05, 2017 · Christians remain world’s largest religious group, but they are declining in Europe
Jun 13, 2018 · 2. Young adults around the world are less religious by several measures
Jun 13, 2018 · 3. How religious commitment varies by country among people of all ages}

The US has been and is an outlier if you will

^{Jun 13, 2018 · 1. Why do levels of religious observance vary by age and country?}

I doubt it's because they've been reading "Divine Evil" and such, though. :)
But, anyway, what Pew calls "the religious landscape" has been changing some.

If you're a member of a gang, you are accountable for what another gang member does. Even if you were nowhere near when he committed the crime, even if you knew nothing about the crime being planned. Simply by being a member of the gang, you make yourself accountable. — baker

That doesn't sound reasonable to me. You're responsible for what you do. That's it.

The idea is like privately holding a prejudice vs acting on it, some peoples intuitions are that so long as someone keeps their prejudice quiet and doesn't discriminate it doesn't matter. — fdrake

I distinguish between bias and prejudice, with bias being something you cannot just choose not to have, may not even know you have, and prejudice, which is bias you have reflected on and approved. As a ‘view’ you hold, know you hold, and approve of holding, the reasons for not acting on prejudice would be only practical. Bias you’re likely to act on if you are unaware of it, but if you’re aware of it and don’t approve of it, you can at least attempt to be scrupulous, and you can take steps you believe could lead to the weakening of your bias.

Is any of that business relevant? Maybe. Bias, as I conceive it, is a bit like faith in that it’s not something you just choose to have or not have. I’m tempted to say that puts theology in the space of prejudice, the reflected on shaping and filling out of the underlying belief. But I don’t really know how to make such an analogy work: the ‘content’ of a bias is pretty robust and identifiable — that is, it’s a tractable topic even without being further conceptualized as prejudice; religious experience is not so clear at all. Without being conceptualized as an experience in line with some particular creed, people only have very vague and mystical things to say about it. (The oceanic feeling, and all that.) A casual glance at the world’s religious landscape would suggest that the underlying experience type, if there is one, can be initialized conceptualized in a great number of ways. (Has anyone ever said, “I’m a Lutheran, but last night when I was praying, the Presbyterian God answered”? Why not? This is such a messy area to talk about conceptualization. I’m not getting it right, and maybe the whole approach is useless.)

In short, bias looks pretty simple by comparison, and way more tractable to analysis.

But the question of remedy is interesting, because it looks like @Banno wants to treat ‘Christian’ as the moral equivalent of ‘racist’ or ‘Nazi’, something we don’t have to put up with, something we might, for instance, add to the Site Guidelines as grounds for summary banishment. On my approach above, ‘being a racist’ means reflectively choosing to endorse the bias you find you have and acting on it. So the answer to “How can you be mistrustful of Black people?” is “I can’t help that, not much anyway, but I’m working on it; I can be aware of my bias, and try not to let it influence what I say and how I act.” Having that ‘gut reaction’ makes you biased, and a racist in one sense but not in another.

Is there a similar remedy available to the Christian?

All of this analysis feels pretty shallow, but there’s still so much to get out of the way before we can get to the nature of worship, which looks more and more like the key issue here.

I want to address your Mengele analogy, but I’m late for work!

That doesn't sound reasonable to me. You're responsible for what you do. That's it. — frank

Not if you claim membership in a group and demand to get special, preferential, or lenient treatment on account of such membership.

There seem to be a number of common threads in the responses I've had (plus some of the posts not directed to me), so I'm going to try and sum them up rather than repeat myself to each poster.

I'm making the argument that it is fair to interrogate the beliefs of Christians in the same way we interrogate the beliefs of non-Christians, we do not need to 'stand in their shoes', nor understand their faith, nor give special dispensation - that if we find something apparently contradictory, incoherent, or morally objectionable, we can legitimately point that out and expect some justifications in return (normal discussion methods - exchange of justifications).

Some points of contention have been..

1. That Christian faith is different from more ordinary belief and so not a proper subject for the same kind of interrogation (or that the grounds - coherence, consitency etc. - are different) - this mostly from @Srap Tasmaner. I think this is plausible but I don't see much by way of a clear line at religion. I can see the idea that not all beliefs are of similar kind (we already have such a notion with hinge propositions), maybe some beliefs are 'revelational' such that they're not subject to sensible interrogation. The thing is, how would we go about identifying such beliefs. I've raised the problem of us not having unfiltered access to the causes of our beliefs. I think this gets in the way of a good category of 'revelational' belief. A second issue I see with this is the generally vague nature of 'revelational' belief. It may be my limited experience, but I don't know of many such beliefs that we should not eat chicken on Wednesdays, they're usually so vague as to need interpreting anyway...and it's the interpretation that can then be interrogated. Which leads to...

2. How do we judge people's beliefs if we're admitting that their beliefs cannot make sense as a whole? If someone believes that we should both torture (in the afterlife), and be kind to (in this life), sinners, then do we hold them accountable for the former and assume the latter to be something they 'don't really believe because it's inconsistent', or vice versa. Judging them for both seems odd, since they can't coherently hold both. I know not everyone agrees with this, but... the overwhelming majority of our beliefs are justified post hoc. The justification isn't to arrive at the belief, it's to check it. We don't start with a blank slate and work through an algorithm to fill it. So the fact that two of the Christian's beliefs don't match doesn't mean we have to pick which one to judge, it means that we interrogate the post hoc rationalisation that results from the two.

3. That the power of God somehow renders judgement of those who worship him either redundant or even unfair - he's God after all, whatcha gonna do? Well - Have you ever read The Lord of the Rings? That's what I personally expect. Sauron was a God, and a good deal more obvious a one at that. Bad is bad - we fight it. Our myths are full of people fighting the Gods, it seems more than a little weak-chinned to say "well, he's a God, we'd better do as we're told".

4. That many Christians don't hold to whole 'torturer' thing anyway. If one takes some parts of the Bible literally and other parts allegorically, then one is not following a creed. I think this is unarguable, because you could create any set of beliefs at all from the bible by doing so. We could say that that God's smiting of unbelievers is literal, but Jesus's kindness to the poor was only allegorical and didn't really mean the we ought to be kind to the poor. Once you personally (or some other group) are in charge of what's to be taken literally and what isn't, you no longer have a religion (from ligāre - to bind). You pick and choose which bits really mean what they say and which bits are just adding a bit of colour to a more generic message.

I also don't see how deciding (even arbitrarily) which interpretation is under this particular microscope makes any difference at all to the power of the argument - (mis)labelling a group is not excluding them, they're still welcome to argue the case. No-one is saying that Christians (or those who identify as Christians) are not welcome to talk about this conflict. If Lewis takes aim at all Christians, yet his accusation applies only to a subset, then it's on those to whom it doesn't apply to make their case - I don't think an assumption that Christianity necessitates a belief in a God, Heaven, and Hell is an unreasonable assumption to use as a starting point. The idea that sinners go to hell is hardly a fringe Christian sect that Lewis has dug up from the ruins of Alexandria to use as a straw man, if some Christians don't hold to it, then I think the integrity of their doing so (and remaining Christian) is fair game.

:100:

Am I really alone here in this? — frank

Well, no. (In my case anyway.) In practical terms ...

People don't often say they assent to neverending damnation, that I know of; seems almost comically embarrassing.
(Though some indoctrinate children so.)

If they admit assenting to neverending damnation, then we may express repugnance, and maybe vote them off "the ethics board".
Outside of that, they (or most anyone) remain "innocent until proven guilty" if you will.

As an aside, I know a few people whose moral judgment often derive from the Bible or the Quran.
They often evaluate moral matters so-and-so because their religious text says this-and-that.
To me, that's forfeiture of autonomous moral agency, to have their text define morals for them.
In principle at least, autonomous moral agency is a prerequisite for (would-be) autonomous actors.



Whatever rules they pick up from their text doesn't somehow absolve them.
In any given situation they still have to figure out if going by their text is the right thing to do.
Fortunately, when probing a bit, most still have (some) autonomous moral agency, and that's kind of reassuring.

Lewis' case is strong enough that it can't just be dismissed with a hand wave.

I'm making the argument that it is fair to interrogate the beliefs of Christians in the same way we interrogate the beliefs of non-Christians, we do not need to 'stand in their shoes', nor understand their faith, nor give special dispensation - that if we find something apparently contradictory, incoherent, or morally objectionable, we can legitimately point that out and expect some justifications in return (normal discussion methods - exchange of justifications). — Isaac

It's not clear how this is the case.

For one, the secular constitution protects religion, but it doesn't protect philosophy. Religious people can always fall back on the secular constitution and demand respect (which includes not demanding justifications from them). Discussing religion is pretty much a matter of walking on the edge of attacking another person's constitutionally given human rights.

For two, in practice, Christians and other religious/spiritual people not rarely act exactly that way. Ask them for a justification of a belief of theirs because it doesn't make sense to you, and chances are they will accuse you of being disrespectful toward them (and who do you think you are to even dare talk about that with them).

The bottomline is that as a matter of principle, religious/spiritual people don't consider outsiders to be their epistemic or ethical peers, but necessarily lesser than them, and that's why they don't discuss their beliefs with them (at least not in any depth or in a way that would satify the outsider's standards).

Whatever rules they pick up from their text doesn't somehow absolve them. — jorndoe

In their eyes, it does. Just like the Nazis didn't consider the Nuremberg tribunal to be a valid judicial authority, so religious/spiritual people don't consider outsiders to be people with whom to have a straightforward discussion of their religion/spirituality.

You probably do the same: Just because someone comes to judge you doesn't mean you are obligated to accept them as a judicial authority over yourself.

It's not clear how this is the case. — baker

My argument is about what's fair, not about what's the case.

What use is illusory fairness?

, yet the Holocaust was wrong, really bad.

(don't want to veer off on a side-track though)

yet the Holocaust was wrong, really bad. — jorndoe

The Nazis didn't think so, obviously.

Anyway, the point is that you're setting yourself up as the epistemic and moral authority over Christians when you expect them to justify their beliefs to you. Why should they submit to you?

The Nazis didn't think so, obviously. — baker

That's too bad, especially for the victims.

4. That many Christians don't hold to whole 'torturer' thing anyway. If one takes some parts of the Bible literally and other parts allegorically, then one is not following a creed. I think this is unarguable, because you could create any set of beliefs at all from the bible by doing so. We could say that that God's smiting of unbelievers is literal, but Jesus's kindness to the poor was only allegorical and didn't really mean the we ought to be kind to the poor. Once you personally (or some other group) are in charge of what's to be taken literally and what isn't, you no longer have a religion (from ligāre - to bind). You pick and choose which bits really mean what they say and which bits are just adding a bit of colour to a more generic message. — Isaac

This bit is a huge failing of people unstudied in religion and I'm not sure why it keeps being repeated here. If Christianity (love it or leave it) is our model for what a religion looks like, then features of Christianity are features of religion. It is unarguable both that Christianity has seen major changes from 50 C.E. to the present and that Christian understanding/dogma/creed was not limited to some naive literalist interpretation of the Bible. Imposing a literalist requirement on religions is simply a fiction of the modern day atheist and Christian fundamentalists (which, by the by, exclude Catholics). If religion is X as defined by Isaac (or any other person) and Christianity does not meet those criteria, then Christianity writ large isn't even a religion and so shouldn't be discussed in religious terms.

This attitude of fundamentalism (founding document to be understood literally as the only source of religious authority/authenticity) is precisely the problem with people like Lewis - actual people are being judged for having beliefs that they do not have based upon a facially incorrect understanding of what religion is/says/etc. Lewis, however, at least does the courtesy of saying that he has to ask a person before judging them. Writing off a class of people without specific knowledge of what that person believes is NOT what Lewis advocates, and in that way extending his argument to group judgment is an error. Taking issue with Lewis' definition of Christianity is secondary to his main point - what do we do with people that admirer a torturer? Can we hold them in esteem or must we cease our admiration of them?

Your third number misses the thrust of the argument, I think. The argument around worship is that what makes god worshipful is not inherently what makes god admirable (if at all). Lewis critiques those that admire. If someone worships a god that tortures people for fun, are they in the same boat of moral repugnance as someone that admires a god that tortures people for fun?

Once you personally (or some other group) are in charge of what's to be taken literally and what isn't, you no longer have a religion (from ligāre - to bind). — Isaac

Then there are probably no religions at all. This argument is clearly overbroad.

Isn't the main topic (assent to) neverending damnation?
It has been, and is, upheld by some.
And the topic has moral implications (whether upheld by one or billions).

What use is illusory fairness? — baker

None. You argued that the situation I described as 'fair' was not, in fact, the case. What's 'fair's and what's 'the case' are two different things. So the 'fairness' of x is not made illusory by showing that x is not the case. If you want to argue that x is not fair (ie, it's apparent fairness is merely illusory), then the matter of whether x is the case is immaterial.

I've raised the problem of us not having unfiltered access to the causes of our beliefs. I think this gets in the way of a good category of 'revelational' belief. — Isaac

It does indeed, but if you just rule out revelation, you're ruling out Christianity tout court. Which is fine, but then there's just no point in nitpicking about theology. It's a two-pronged attack: "What you believe is bullshit, and you ought not believe it, but this particular bullshit is bad bullshit, and you also ought not believe it because it's also bad." What are you asking of Christians? "I'd prefer you believed some different bullshit. Make up something else"? How are they supposed to respond?

The Nazis didn't think so, obviously. — baker

This part is off for a number of reasons, but the most obvious in this context is that Lewis is addressing whether he (and those like him) ought admire a person that has horrid beliefs. There isn't even a question of whether the beliefs are horrid or whether the person that believes them thinks it good - indeed, a part of his criticism is that those who admire the evil god also believe that the god is good. Moral relativism has zero relevance to our judgment about the moral worth of others, it simply reminds us that people's moral judgments do not all occur in the same moral system.

Christians, or anyone else, have to justify themselves to whatever extent the situation requires. If you put up a sign and say, "I only admire people that don't admire an evil god," and a Christian walks over to your table and says, "I want you to admire me, but I worship an evil god," then the Christian is obliged to justify themselves as qualifying under your criteria. If, however, you are selling oranges and a Christian comes to buy one, they don't have to justify themselves for your admiration, they merely have to pay the price. People operate in a social sphere and are subject to all of the same conditions as anyone else. When discussing social interactions and the negotiation of power, justification is a basic means by which one person attempts to accomplish their purpose. You can't just exempt yourself from justification to another because you think some claim of yours is sacrosanct - the other person dictates the rules for what is required for them to cooperate.

Discussing your own personal conduct (which is what both Lewis and Banno do) is not the same as establishing what governments can or should do. A "human right" to religion is a claim made against states, not individuals. Anti-discrimination laws are things that states impose upon individuals. Conflating individual judgments with governmental judgments serves no purpose but to obfuscate the distinction between what justifies individual action and what justifies state action. You are capable of acting and making moral judgments independent of the state and in opposition to that state, be it secular or not. Indeed, groups of people acting as individuals (rather than state actors) can do a host of things and pass any number of moral judgments that would be considered inappropriate for the state.

It would be great if you could talk about your judgment rather than hypothesizing about the judgment of some nondescript moral agent cum state actor.

If Christianity (love it or leave it) is our model for what a religion looks like, then features of Christianity are features of religion. — Ennui Elucidator

I agree. Why would Christianity be our model for what a religion looks like?

This attitude of fundamentalism (founding document to be understood literally as the only source of religious authority/authenticity) is precisely the problem with people like Lewis - actual people are being judged for having beliefs that they do not have based upon a facially incorrect understanding of what religion is/says/etc. — Ennui Elucidator

I'm not arguing that people must take the Bible literally. I'm arguing that if they do not do so then they have reasons for choosing what to take literally and what to not. Those reasons must, necessarily, come from outside the text (otherwise they're subject to the same problem). As such, they can be interrogated.

The argument around worship is that what makes god worshipful is not inherently what makes god admirable (if at all). Lewis critiques those that admire. If someone worships a god that tortures people for fun, are they in the same boat of moral repugnance as someone that admires a god that tortures people for fun? — Ennui Elucidator

Well, yes. I think the case has been made quite clearly for people (if worshipped Hitler I would be morally repugnant). I'm simply saying that there's nothing inherent about a God which changes that.

Once you personally (or some other group) are in charge of what's to be taken literally and what isn't, you no longer have a religion (from ligāre - to bind). — Isaac


Then there are probably no religions at all. This argument is clearly overbroad. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. I see @Ennui Elucidator has interpret it this way too, so I guess that's my bad. I'm not attempting a redefinition of the word 'religion' (given my fanaticism for meaning from use I hardly think such a position would be tenable for me). I'm saying that the distinction one might want to make for religious beliefs doesn't seem to apply if those beliefs are ultimately derived in the same way as any other belief.

It does indeed, but if you just rule out revelation, you're ruling out Christianity tout court. Which is fine, but then there's just no point in nitpicking about theology. It's a two-pronged attack: "What you believe is bullshit, and you ought not believe it, but this particular bullshit is bad bullshit, and you also ought not believe it because it's also bad." What are you asking of Christians? "I'd prefer you believed some different bullshit. Make up something else"? How are they supposed to respond? — Srap Tasmaner

Again, my argument is simply that religious belief is no special category - supporting the 'special pleading' complaint made earlier. If I'm asking anything of Christians it's that they take part in the usual social game of post hoc rationalisation that everyone else plays.

Again, my argument is simply that religious belief is no special category - supporting the 'special pleading' complaint made earlier. If I'm asking anything of Christians it's that they take part in the usual social game of post hoc rationalisation that everyone else plays. — Isaac

Absolutely. There is no privileged class of belief.

my argument is simply that religious belief is no special category — Isaac

But if it's not 'special' in the sense indicated, then it's not true. Revelation can't be part of our usual game of justifying beliefs, so anything relying on it fails at the first hurdle.

What I have to justify is saying such an approach is fine for some purposes ("God told me to" doesn't excuse you from murder) but useless if our intention is to understand and judge how Christians believe and what they believe.

the distinction one might want to make for religious beliefs doesn't seem to apply if those beliefs are ultimately derived in the same way as any other belief. — Isaac

Your argument is that the voice of God has the same role in belief formation as the hidden unknowns we model, as the outside cause of whatever we do to end up with something identifiable as a belief -- is that it?

From 30,000 feet, that's kinda reasonable, but you can't add any detail to this picture at all. God doesn't even bother with your brain; He speaks directly to your soul. Or so I've heard.

Absolutely. There is no privileged class of belief. — Ennui Elucidator

But I think one might be being created nonetheless, by invoking a 'special language' in which religious texts are written. If I read in Mein Kampf that "the Jews should be exterminated" (Not a direct quote, I've never read it, it's just an example), and then say "I worship Hitler, we should act according to Mein Kampf", then I don't think it would normally be held to be unreasonable for someone to argue that "the Jews should be exterminated" is an awful thing to say and so worshipping Hitler is an awful thing to do. There's no special class of 'Nazi', that requires one, in advance, to assume the words don't literally mean that the Jews should be exterminated, to assume that most Nazis don't believe it literally and have some much more generic allegorical meaning. So treating Christians differently would be special pleading.

And if, after this first round of take-things-at-face-value, the Nazi explains that they don't take "the Jews should be exterminated" (but do take other similar instruction) seriously, then I don't think it's unreasonable to ask why, and expect some justification. So treating Christians differently would be special pleading.

I grant that Lewis's method might be a bit ham-fisted but at the end of the day, the words (of the bible) are still there to be explained one way or another. It's either 'why do you worship one who acts that way?' or 'why to you treat that as merely allegorical and not this?'

Maybe that second question is somewhat out of the scope here. But to me, the answer is exactly what Lewis is driving at, because I'd hazard the answer would be "well that's obviously allegorical because if it wasn't, it'd be awful"

But if it's not 'special' in the sense indicated, then it's not true. — Srap Tasmaner

As I believe the kids say 'well, duh!'. Yes. I think you're right, but I don't see such exclusion as z problem, rather the opposite, that if we don't exclude it thus, all interrogation of belief becomes meaningless.

What I have to justify is saying such an approach is fine for some purposes ("God told me to" doesn't excuse you from murder) but useless if our intention is to understand and judge how Christians believe and what they believe. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I believe so. Difficult.

Your argument is that the voice of God has the same role in belief formation as the hidden unknowns we model, as the outside cause of whatever we do to end up with something identifiable as a belief -- is that it? — Srap Tasmaner

Spot on. Yes.

God doesn't even bother with your brain; He speaks directly to your soul. Or so I've heard. — Srap Tasmaner

Ahh yes, but the signals from your soul are hidden states are they not? We are not instructed by our souls directly, else what role for priests and Bibles?

I know not everyone agrees with this, but... the overwhelming majority of our beliefs are justified post hoc. The justification isn't to arrive at the belief, it's to check it. We don't start with a blank slate and work through an algorithm to fill it. So the fact that two of the Christian's beliefs don't match doesn't mean we have to pick which one to judge, it means that we interrogate the post hoc rationalisation that results from the two. — Isaac

How about looking at their actions to see if they believe that instead of worming our way to it via a logical argument? — frank

I'm saying that the distinction one might want to make for religious beliefs doesn't seem to apply if those beliefs are ultimately derived in the same way as any other belief. — Isaac

From 30,000 feet, that's kinda reasonable, but you can't add any detail to this picture at all. God doesn't even bother with your brain; He speaks directly to your soul. Or so I've heard. — Srap Tasmaner

Spicy take warning:

One thing which makes me believe that religious people ought not to be judged so harshly, or given some leeway, for what they believe (especially if it doesn't translate much into practice), is that you hear things like that. It's a special relationship with a private entity, inculcated usually from very young, embedded in people's childhood developmental contexts - some people have a religious temperament because they were tempered into it. So I have quite a lot of sympathy with your 'doxastic involuntarism' view Srap, but maybe not in a nice way. I want to exclude from discussion here people who've picked and chose a consistent story from the Bible, and focus entirely on those who are 'otherwise lovely' but believe in the rightness of eternal torture etc.

There are a few characteristics of faith based moral belief that make me quite suspicious of it:

( 1 ) Doctrines are internally inconsistent - people pick and choose.
( 2 ) Over and above ( 1 ), what people pick and choose is extremely hodge-podge and highly emotionally charged. You're really putting a dagger into someone if you criticise their faith. There's often combination of capriciousness in what people say they believe (emotive post-hoc) and what they say in other contexts.
( 3 ) That makes the domain of application of faith in someone's life seem compartmentalised.
( 4 ) Belief (or at least acting in accord with it) can be and often is tied to social inclusion and access to institutions while growing up, if you're in a religious community, if you're not religious in the right way you can have a real bad time.
( 5 ) Losing one's faith is extremely difficult, wrestling with the internal inconsistencies of doctrine can be actively painful - that seems to confirm that religious belief grows in minds that were encouraged to accept it. If you lose your faith, maybe your mind is in the wrong shape for the more secular thought it can have. Loss of self, community, identity etc.

To my mind, the above makes religious faith something like a symptom of trauma? Disordered, highly charged experiences, sufficient challenge can lead to perceptions of loss of identity and self, extreme touchiness about the issue, often the beliefs are tied up in how the person experiences attachment. Or if not traumatic, being able to have a faith maybe requires that one has been shaped in this way by one's environment, and it seems that rarely this can be something someone chooses.

Perhaps it does not reduce culpability for acting on horrible beliefs, or even for believing in them, but pragmatically it makes it somewhat understandable. Ergo, forms less of a mark on their character because they have a good excuse.

but the signals from your soul are hidden states are they not? — Isaac

That is a gigantic mess. (It hadn't even occurred to me -- probably my unconscious warding off the gigantic mess.) Since I can't help myself, I'll say that I think when you hear the voice of God, or are guided somehow by the Holy Spirit, that you need not model this 'input' at all. It's God and you know it is. Anyhow, I want to say that, but the Deceiver is also known to whisper in people's ears...

I just want a more neutral framework for having this discussion. I'm not comfortable beginning from a commitment to religion being bullshit. That's what I personally think, but I don't go around, ahem, pontificating about how believers ought to modify their bullshit religions.

To my mind, the above makes religious faith something like a symptom of trauma? — fdrake

Spicy take indeed! That's both a horrifying and plausible thought.

It's mildly surprising that we have somehow avoided doing much in this thread about the psychology of belief, probably for the best. (Wasn't there some promising research some years ago about the neurological substrate of faith?)