Re: [asa] Religious brainwashing

It's not "handwaiving." The point is simply that the notion of "wish
fulfillment" as materialists employ it proves either everything or nothing.
Either the justification for *every* basic belief can be rejected as
unreasonable on the grounds of wish fulfillment, or wish fulfillment *cannot
* be used to reject religious belief as per se unreasonable.

We all *want *to believe that there is an external reality, that reality is
to some degree stable, that human beings are capable of making reasonably
accurate observations of that reality, and that the human mind is capable of
drawing reasonably accurate inferences from those observations. (That is,
all of us who aren't radical postmodernists want to believe this.) But
these basic beliefs (a) cannot be proven with certainty; and (b) can easily
be deconstructed as wish fulfullment.

The truth, perhaps, is that we are *not* autonomous rational agents, but
that a *false* belief in our autonomy and rationality is a useful trait for
which evolution has selected. There is absolutely no way to disprove this
possibility with any certainty, because if it is true, all of the
observations and inferences with which we might try to defeat it are subject
to doubt. And, the fact that we desperately *want* the situation to be
otherwise -- that we crave certainty about our ability to perceive external
reality -- might show that, indeed, our doubts are right. Our presumptions
to justification for our beliefs about nature are merely wish fulfillment.

A counter to this line of argument is that many of our beliefs about nature
have been ratified by application to technology. We drive cars, fly planes,
etc., and they always work in accordance with what we believe the laws of
nature to be. But then, our construction of relatively stable, uniform laws
of nature from just 10,000 years or so of historical human experience might
also be wish fulfillment. The set of human empirical observations is not
even the tiniest speck of a blip, temporally and quantitatively, compared to
the entire history of the universe. We *want *to believe it's possible to
infer broader truths from this miniscule data set of human experience, but
perhaps that's another instance of wish fulfillment.

If the "wish fulfillment" meme is really so powerful, then, for all we
really know the "laws" of physics will change tomorrow and all human
pretenses to knowledge about anything will be wiped away.

As a critical realist of some sort, of course, I don't accept such a notion
as reasonable. I can't rule it out, but I have no real reason to accept
it. But this suggests I have no real reason to accept it as a complete
explanation of religious belief either. If human perception and cognition
evolved to interact with some degree of fidelity to an actual external
physical reality, then it seems reasonable to suggest that human religious
psychology also evolved to interact with some degree of fidelity to some
actual external reality -- that there actually is something spiritual behind
the human inclination towards spirituality. It seems to me that the only
reason to exclude this possibility *per se* is a prior commitment to
philosophical materialism.

(And yes, I have been working my way through Alister McGrath's treatment of
critical realism in his "Scientific Theology" -- really good stuff, which
I've probably butchered to some extent here).

On 9/21/07, mrb22667@kansas.net <mrb22667@kansas.net> wrote:
>
> I may not be understanding your entire objection below, but it seems to me
> that
> the "motivation accusation" can't be so easily dismissed with hand waving
> over
> the difficulty of how far it should be extended. What if it does turn
> out to
> be demonstrably true that there is a natural advantage conferred with
> belief in
> an afterlife? I would prefer that my faith endure that "suspicion of
> motivation" without denying it (if it actually does turn out to be true)
> which
> still leaves one with the logical possibility that the actual truth is not
> affected either way by our motivations. That is the atheist's answer to
> Paul
> as well --- even if belief was universal -- that still doesn't prove its
> truth.
> Just as demonstrating motivation does not prove the belief
> false. Widespread
> belief only demonstrates popularity (and possible evolutionary
> advantage). Let
> every man be a liar -- God would still be faithful. (Romans 3:4)
>
> I like your definition of religion, Paul. That makes good sense.
>
> --Merv
>
>
> Quoting David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>:
>
> > The whole "wish fulfillment" meme seems to collapse upon itself. Let's
> > grant for argument that belief in an afterlife is a sort of "wish
> > fulfillment" meme that has historically conferred some kind of survival
> > advantage. We should reasonably then ask, what other common beliefs are
> in
> > the same category? It seems very hard to find a stopping place. Why
> isn't
> > the optimistic belief that it is possible to separate "true" beliefs"
> from
> > mere "wish fulfillment" equally an exercise in wish fulfillment? It
> could
> > certainly confer a survival advantage to believe that one is able to
> make
> > some sort of autonomous, real, integrated judgments about an external
> > reality -- those who are able to construct a convincing picture of
> reality,
> > for example, tend to be able to control social structures such as
> politics
> > and religion. Broad judgements about the nature of reality, then --
> > including judgments about which broad beliefs are true and which are
> merely
> > wish fulfillment -- cannot be relied upon. The "wish fulfillment" meme
> > creates a reduction that ends up opening a gaping epistemic hole.
> >
> > On 9/21/07, rpaulmason@juno.com <rpaulmason@juno.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > EVERYONE has religious/metaphysical ideas that they live by and pass
> on to
> > > their children. You SHOULDN'T lie, or hit your sister, etc. Any moral
> > > instruction or information about the value, purpose and meaning of
> life -
> > is
> > > ultimately religious - even if it is that there is no soul or heaven.
> > > "Religions" are just a group of people with the same metaphysical
> ideas.
> > >
> > > Belief in an afterlife seems actually quite natural and universal - it
> > > actually takes some "brainwashing" to erase that belief.
> > >
> > > Paul
>

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Received on Fri Sep 21 14:35:43 2007