we have people saying that the personal belief that "God exists" results in carnage (genocide, war, etc.), poverty, widespread mental anguish, etc. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

As of January 2010, the English version of The God Delusion had sold over 2 million copies.[70] As of September 2014, it increased to 3 million copies.[71] It was ranked second on the Amazon.com best-sellers' list in November 2006.[72][73] It remained on the list for 51 weeks until 30 September 2007.[74] The German version, entitled Der Gotteswahn, had sold over 260,000 copies as of 28 January 2010.[75] The God Delusion has been translated into 35 languages.[6]

We find an initial idealised state, an evil intrusion, a present dreadful state caused by the intrusion, the promise of a future idealised state assured by the elimination of the intrusion. There is a glorious leader and even a sort of New Man. The message is pitched both at the level of humanity and at that of the individual.

Dawkins's message is basically that we are social animals on an evolutionary trajectory to ever more rational and therefore higher moral standards, but that the process has been derailed somewhere along the line by the appearance of religion. It had looked until recently as though we were shaking off religion and entering an Age of Reason. But now, with the rise of religious fundamentalism, there is a relapse which accounts for the world's present troubles. Nevertheless, thanks to the enlightenment Science brings, we can root out religion and get back on track. 1

What if, instead of saying your beliefs caused your actions, I said only that you had acted on your beliefs, or acted with your beliefs in mind? Would you still object?... — Srap Tasmaner

I can think of a bunch of other ways to put this too. Suppose I believe you are an armed and dangerous intruder in my home, and I shoot you. I could say I shot you because I believed that you were ..., that my belief was a or the reason I shot you, that it was a contributing factor in my shooting you. I think we would only say it was a or the cause of my shooting you or that the belief caused me to shoot you if we were speaking very loosely indeed. — Srap Tasmaner

1.) It is one thing to say "I had this belief, B, and B caused me to do action A".

2.). It is another thing to say, "I had this belief, B. I had to decide what to do. I decided, based on B, to respond with action A".


1.) is passive.

2.) is active. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

If science has investigated it, such investigations and their findings are never presented. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Right. I think folk psychology endorses (2) and (1) is just a sloppy attempt to express (2) in most cases.

I couldn't tell you what the scientific support for (2) is. Certainly there are studies that address how people's attitudes and choices vary depending on the information you provide them. There are also studies that show reasons aren't everything, that people make choices that differ from what you'd predict given their self-identified reasons. — Srap Tasmaner

Which branch of science do you think ought to be in the business of investigating the causal power of belief? — Wayfarer

Conclusive evidence that all variables have been controlled and it was in fact belief that caused the action is never presented. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

There are a zillion other variables in play besides belief. Mood. Reflexes. Outlook. Goals. Pleasure and pain. Empathy or lack of empathy. Etc. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Anthropology, neuroscience, political science, psychology and sociology — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Anthropology, neuroscience, political science, psychology and sociology could be used to investigate it. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Are you familiar with Max Weber? His Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is a classic study of just these questions. — Wayfarer

Look at the current political debate about health cover in the USA. I would say 'belief' plays a huge role in that. The hardline conservatives believe that individuals ought to look after themselves and that government interference in the marketplace is comparable to socialism and communism. The democrats believe that society has a responsibility to provide a baseline of care for any citizen. I don't want to debate the issue in its own right, other than to observe that these are very much matters of belief...[/b]




Does anybody really "believe" those things?

Or are they just using them as rationalizations for their positions and actions?

How do we know if a person really has a "belief" or what his/her response to that "belief" is? Rather than accepting a belief as corresponding with external reality, a person could have strong doubts about a belief.

And how can we isolate and compare beliefs? I believe the concept I need is reductionism. We can reduce material to an enzyme and any further reduction makes it something other than an enzyme. We can compare one enzyme to another and see, I suppose, that they are almost completely identical (I don't know; I could be wrong; somebody might say something like, "Wrong! Scientists say that no two atoms are alike!). Those enzymes, I supposed, would be interchangeable. We could replace one with another and it would behave the same. But can we say any of this about beliefs? Is it scientifically possible to demonstrate this about beliefs? Can we transplant one person's belief that God exists in place of another person's belief that God exists and not change anything about the former person?



— Wayfarer

Also there's a very porous boundary between belief systems and ideologies. If you look at some of the notably destructive political and terrorists movements, such as Pol Pot, Al Queda, and many communist movements, I don't see how you can claim that belief doesn't form a strong component of those movements... — Wayfarer

That is the so-called 'new atheist' polemics - Dawkins and his various acolytes.



As of January 2010, the English version of The God Delusion had sold over 2 million copies.[70] As of September 2014, it increased to 3 million copies.[71] It was ranked second on the Amazon.com best-sellers' list in November 2006.[72][73] It remained on the list for 51 weeks until 30 September 2007.[74] The German version, entitled Der Gotteswahn, had sold over 260,000 copies as of 28 January 2010.[75] The God Delusion has been translated into 35 languages.[6]

This in turn is grounded in the 'enlightenment narrative' that religions are oppressive, reactionary powers that try to preserve their own power and work to suppress freedom of expression and individual conscience. In a way, it is itself a quasi-religious narrative, but it puts man in the place of God, and science in the place of religion. Dawkins' view has been described as:



We find an initial idealised state, an evil intrusion, a present dreadful state caused by the intrusion, the promise of a future idealised state assured by the elimination of the intrusion. There is a glorious leader and even a sort of New Man. The message is pitched both at the level of humanity and at that of the individual.

Dawkins's message is basically that we are social animals on an evolutionary trajectory to ever more rational and therefore higher moral standards, but that the process has been derailed somewhere along the line by the appearance of religion. It had looked until recently as though we were shaking off religion and entering an Age of Reason. But now, with the rise of religious fundamentalism, there is a relapse which accounts for the world's present troubles. Nevertheless, thanks to the enlightenment Science brings, we can root out religion and get back on track. 1

You can certainly make the case, but on the other hand, the very idea of 'freedom of conscience' and many other principles of liberal politics, were derived in the framework of the Christian idea of the sanctity of the individual. That case has been put by many of Dawkins' critics.

But I think the argument is basically irresolvable either way. It's a matter of belief. — Wayfarer

I have never seen them or any of their disciples present conclusive, scientific evidence of "beliefs" determining behavior. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Maybe there isn't any! — Wayfarer

While I think the point in the original post is reasonable to an extent, I also think it is reasonable, to an extent, to make judgments about how someone's beliefs motivated their actions based on their own explanations. Is it unfair to conclude that 9/11 was motivated by a belief in a specific form of Islamist fundamentalism (a belief system)? Bin Laden explicitly explained it to be part of a holy war. I suppose we could psychologize him, and try to determine proximate vs ultimate causes, but for most practical purposes, can't we just say that his belief, and the beliefs of those who took part in the attack were a significant, even primary, motivating factor?

I'll agree that some people play this hand too strongly, saying that all wars through history have been caused by religious belief. But the overstatement or poor formulation of an idea doesn't mean we should dismiss every formulation of that idea. I would suggest that we should concern ourselves with determining motivation instead of cause, and figuring out to what degree various beliefs or cultural/social institutions help to motivate positive and negative behaviors. Surely it isn't unreasonable to suggest that the various dogma of the social institutions of religion have historically been a large motivating factor in various violent incidents, including many wars and genocides? The Spanish inquisition, the Crusades, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the Indian/Pakistani conflicts,etc. Surely that's not controversial? — Reformed Nihilist

But we are talking about a specific context here: evidentialism, epistemic justification, and the assertion that it is morally wrong to have a belief if certain conditions are not met. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I touched on all of this in another discussion, but I will say it again: we are supposed to believe that there is a causal relationship​ between an individual holding a belief and horrible phenomena like genocide, war, ecological collapse, etc. Yet, no conclusive evidence of this relationship is ever presented. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Aye, and there's the rub. Justification, in real life, is a post hoc process, unlike how it is regularly viewed in philosophy as being the reason for, or cause of behavior. In any sufficiently complex scenario, multiple rationally defensible but mutually exclusionary justifications are possible. I would submit that it makes more sense to explore under which circumstances people are more likely, or less likely to behave in ways that lead to such things as wars and genocides. I think that there is a case to be made that religions are for the most part exclusionary in principle (heresy is a sin in every religion), if not always in practice, and that this buttresses in-group thinking. There's a great deal of research on in group/out group dynamics, and the social discord that come from it, which include wars and genocide. Again, I think some people overstate this connection as a direct causal chain, but I don't think it's unreasonable to draw some lines. Here's a very reasonable take on the matter:

http://bev.berkeley.edu/Ethnic%20Religious%20Conflict/Ethnic%20and%20Religious%20Conflict/1%20Identity/Journal%20of%20Peace%20Research-1999-Seul-553-69.pdf

I also don't think that it's unreasonable, given those sorts of associations, to conclude that it is more prudent to reject religion. In a sort of a reverse Pascal's wager, I would suggest that religion offers little of value that can't be acquired otherwise, and there is at least some reason to believe that it underpins some of the worst parts of our nature, so it is the most moral choice to both reject it for oneself, and to speak out about it's possible ills. — Reformed Nihilist

You might also want to check out Timothy Snyder's Black Earth which repeatedly explains the events of the Holocaust in terms of the local political situation instead of attributing everything to anti-Semitism. — Srap Tasmaner

I think there was something that historians (and maybe anthropologists) used to call the "intellectual fallacy," which was supposed to be overstating the importance of culture and beliefs relative to the material conditions of life. There's the stuff Marvin Harris did in anthropology, for instance. (I had forgotten this one, but Wikipedia says he argued that Aztec cannibalism can be explained by protein deficiency instead of religion!) — Srap Tasmaner

You might also want to check out Timothy Snyder's Black Earth which repeatedly explains the events of the Holocaust in terms of the local political situation instead of attributing everything to anti-Semitism. — Srap Tasmaner