Hitchens' Morality Challenge

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You missed the essential part of my argument. I now put it in bold font in the quote. I was not arguing that only someone religious could torture. I argue that torturing someone in the belief that, on the whole, the victim will benefit because then God provides a better afterlife depends on believing in God and an afterlife. By your own claim that Stalin was atheist, his mass murder is irrelevant to my argument.

I am also not playing a numbers game. The challenge is about what is possible or not. If nothing like the inquisition had ever existed, but you agreed that torturing people to save their souls is 1) immoral, 2) depends on religious belief and 3) is possible, I would say I have a valid answer to the first part of the challenge.


I still think the "Spanish Inquisition crap" is an example. I see only two ways to refute it. Either show that torturing people to save their souls does not depend on religious beliefs. Or show that it is not immoral.

To prevent another misunderstanding, I am not discussing a motive to torture some people for the greater good. That would have been the belief of someone who fell for Stalinist propaganda. I also don't argue generally about torturing someone for their own good. I'm sure if you searched thoroughly enough you could find someone who believes that, for example, "reeducation through labour" is not only for the greater good of society but also for the victim's own good. I argue that a belief that, even if there are no benefits to the victims in this life, the victim still benefits because God will provide a better afterlife, that depends on a religious belief.

If you want to change the terms of the debate and claim that religious people are not inherently or on average less moral than non-believers, don't waste your effort, I already agree.

Ok, if two people are thinking about killing a dictator, one because they think it will serve a greater moral good, the other because he feels it is demanded by the dictates of his faith, then they are both thinking of committing the same act, & the consequences will be the same regardless of their motivation.

But there are immoral actions that religious people perform that do not serve any greater good, not even an imaginary greater moral good, & that would not occur to someone to do if they were merely motivated by their instincts or their self interest or ideology, & it certainly wouldn't occur to them that they were righteous & ought to be admired for doing them.

When a Catholic Bishop in Africa tells his flock that they will go to hell if they use condoms, regardless of the situation or the threat to their health, he is performing an action of this type - he is immorally adhering to an arbitrary superstition. There is no greater moral good I can imagine that is being served.

When an American Christian affirms that the President was right to try & stop the doctors turning off the life-support machine of a woman who had been brain dead for 3 years, against the wishes of her family & all medical advice - he is immorally adhering to an arbitrary superstition.

When anyone advocates that doctors not be allowed to use 3 day old human embryos - a collection of only 100 cells smaller than a pinhead & no more a full human than a flake of my skin - for the purposes of stem cell research, they are advocating something immoral, & again, not in the service of even an imaginary moral good, but only in adherence to an arbitrary superstition.

I'm not arguing that when the religious person does something immoral it is qualitatively worse than when a secular person does something immoral. I am arguing that there are particular immoral actions that are not in anyone's interest, that could not be said to have any practical beneficial effect, that don't serve the purposes of any non-religious ideology, but that the religious person will proudly do & expect to be praised because of it. These are actions for which there has never been any other than a religious justification, & I would be hard put to come up with a plausible secular justification of them.

Please cite them. I would like to see them.

All right. I am asking whether the type of benefit is only possible if the belief is religious. Let's say the benefit of dying for a belief is that it encourages others to think this belief is something good, and let's also say that this is true, that you can show by whatever your definition of benefit is that adoption of the belief benefits people. There is nothing in this description that says the belief has to be religious. Whether the belief is religious or not is an irrelevant detail. Can you show that there is a kind of benefit that is only possible if the belief someone dies for is religious?

In any situation each of the choices will have different results. The choice that results in the greatest increase of human wellbeing and/or the greatest reduction in human suffering is the moral choice. These are objective categories, they are just not easily susceptible to measurement. It may be the case that in many situations we cannot know what the results of our actions will be, & in these cases we may be obliged to rely on generally applicable rules-of-thumb which we know have had moral results in the past (for example: do unto others as you would have them do unto you).

If one gets one's morality from religion, then one is obliged to treat these humane rules of thumb (assuming one has picked a generally humane religion, & has granted oneself enough wriggle-room to ignore any obviously inhumane injunctions) as immutable laws that if broken will result in an eternity of torture, regardless of the circumstances. That is not the basis of an absolute morality, that is merely claiming a particular group of rules has the status of absolute morality.

Orwell, are you saying a longer life expectancy is a consequence of praising a deity? If you do, are you saying the benefit goes to the person who is praising a deity? All studies of the efficacy of prayer I have seen looked at whether praying for someone else benefited the person prayed for. The life expectancy of the people who pray is not relevant to that. I also commented before on social exclusion of atheists in the USA. If your data come from US studies, that is a confounding factor that you must control for before you can make claims about cause and effect.

actually, since religion has been common throughout history and culture... my definition is more accurate.

And at the very least, prayer benefits the prayer as a placebo.
You are determining morality only as it benefits other people. When in fact, morality is only concerned with the distinction between right and wrong. Not entirely on what benefits others... though the sacrifice of self could be considered moral. However, morality so vastly differs between religions and between societies that this discussion is rather silly.

in that instance, religion, or more vaguely... the religious belief in an afterlife can remove stress and fear from a person who would normally be concerned about dying or death. This will in turn, prolong the duration and increase the enjoyment of their life. A benefit (prolonging of duration and increase of enjoyment of life brought on by the belief that death is not to be feared because it is not the "end").

now I want to eat omelets.

The wording of this is very unclear. Maybe intentionally so, like those Quebec Referendum questions ...

Gromit, your argument is stupid. The question was about moral or immoral actions taken by religious or secular people. Their motives for performing the actions are not relevant. I mean, Twoshots and I already analyzed your line of reasoning a few pages back and found it to be pretty much BS, so I don't see why I have to rehash it again. It's rather pointless to give, as an example of an immoral act that can only be religiously motivated, "any immoral act performed for religious motives" as that by definition excludes similar acts performed by atheists. To be honest, you have to focus simply on committed acts, and frankly, the person being tortured likely doesn't give a damn as to their torturer's motives but rather what the actual acts are. So torture by the Stalinist regime demonstrates that torture is not something that can only be carried out because of religious motives.


No, you don't. We are focusing on actions committed, and which actions can only have a religious motive. You are saying, "X action, but only when performed out of a religious motive." That's nonsense, because X actions is also performed for non-religious motives, so you have yet to find a decent answer to the challenge.


Or I could show that you're being a complete asshat by trying to artificially divide torture for religious motives and torture for secular motives as different actions. Torture is torture.



The point is that no one has yet come up with an example of a single concrete action that can only be justified by religion. I am not denying that people have tortured for religious motives, but people have also tortured for secular motives. What evil action can only be motivated by religion? Answer: There is none.

Quote:
If you want to change the terms of the debate and claim that religious people are not inherently or on average less moral than non-believers, don't waste your effort, I already agree.

The point is that no one has yet come up with an example of a single concrete action that can only be justified by religion. I am not denying that people have tortured for religious motives, but people have also tortured for secular motives. What evil action can only be motivated by religion? Answer: There is none.
_______________What about the restrictions against condoms that causes widespread HIV?

It's only Catholics who are opposed to birth control, and Catholics generally are not in HIV-infested areas. In Africa, where HIV is epidemic, there are a variety of conspiracy theories floating about that condoms are part of a Western plot against Africans and this is why they are not used. Also, for purposes of population growth many people are opposed to condoms.

Try again.

I interpreted the original question as implying that motive does matter. There are other examples. If something I do causes someone's death, how a jury interprets my motives determines whether my action is classified as accident, manslaughter or murder. I didn't see that you treated act and motive as totally separate. With that premise, there could only be a difference in the actions believers and nonbelievers can take if religious belief changed what people are physically or psychologically capable of doing. I don't see how that could be possible. If I accept your premises, I also accept your conclusions.


The only post by twoshots I have seen that quoted my post was a response not to my argument, but one from AtheistAspieAlly. His argument is different.

Let me get this straight. Are we talking about actions or motivations for actions?

Kissing the Pope's ring is an action.

Kissing the Pope's ring due to one's being devoutly Catholic is a motivation.

It was asking for an immoral action that can only be taken by a religious person. Religious and non-religious people have both tortured historically, so the only motive for torture is plainly not religion. I'm not asking you to accept my premises, I'm asking you to develop basic reasoning skills and reading comprehension. That may be too much to ask, though.


Right then, I'll help you out.

That's on page 2. There were then a couple more posts between myself and Twoshots on the subject, and we concluded that the question is ridiculous, as is your approach to answering it by saying "X action done out of religious reasons."