I’m continuing my reporting on the next installment from Conservative Estimate, the recently founded website that is devoted to demolishing Conservatism.
Yesterday, Alfred George completed his consideration of the the Myth of Independence by showing how that Myth corrupts the sense of justice in society and violates the central tenet of American justice, namely, that all men are created equal.
He went on to say that believers in the Myth of Independence, having decided that they can do without others and don’t need the support of society, take up Religion as a substitute for the security offered by society. And they thereby generate a new Major Myth: the Myth of Religion.
Today Mr. George begins his consideration of the Myth of Religion, discussing how Religion does not really contribute to decent behavior in society, and how it actually weakens character, thus leading to immoral behavior.
Let us cross the bifurcated orange separator for an account of today’s installment.
Mr. George begins today’s post by pointing out that no society can exist without the expectation that the people in it will act in good faith. Obviously, no society can survive if no one in it could trust anyone else to fulfill promises. This is where the Myth of Religion comes in. Myther’s believe that it is Religion that guarantees the good behavior of the members of society.
The Myth of Religion is this: Morality and decency depend on religion. This Myth asserts that Religion is the only effective assurance that people will behave honorably. Those who believe this Myth usually provide two possible reasons for its effectiveness. One is that people will act well out of love of God. The other is that people will act well out of fear of God’s wrath and punishment.
He goes on to say the the first of the two reasons doesn’t really address the problem of ethics at all, since those who love God will always act well to the best of their abilities. The problem of ethics is how to restrain those who don’t try to act well. It is the second of two reasons that addresses this problem. Hence Mythers
believe that a society that promotes Religion will be able to use the force of divine retribution to control the wicked tendencies of those who are not already good people.
Unfortunately, as with all the other Myths, this belief is wishful thinking. It does not actually work, except at the margins.
Mr. George continues to show why Religion cannot effectively restrain those who are willing to behave badly.
Trying to enforce good behavior by means of Religion doesn’t work because it tries to use fear to control people. . . . And fear, as we have seen, produces a timid and uncreative person. These are not the sort of people who are very helpful to society. The timider the person, the less likely they are to do the right thing in a difficult situation, when the wrong thing may well seem less painful to them.
Then he shows why the attempt to control misbehavior through fear fails.
The fearful person, the one who restrains himself from wickedness for fear of punishment, is divided in his soul; he has one part that would be happy to do the wicked act if he could escape punishment for it, and another part that holds the future pain of punishment up to the first part in an attempt to dissuade it from to the wicked thing. As we saw in our discussion of the Myth of Competition, these internal dissentions weaken a person, and make it impossible for him to act with full force.
A soul that is divided like this cannot attain its true power, which comes from integrity, from a whole soul acting in accordance with one principle—the principle of reason.
You can read the whole post
here.
The conclusion of today’s post leads naturally to the topic of the next installment: why Religion is unnecessary for guarding against bad behavior in society, and why Religion cannot create virtue in society.
I’ll be reporting back each day as a new installment appears.