One peg of religion

Atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Javed Akthar say that “people are good despite their religion and not because of it”. It must be their overall conclusion seeing both good and bad consequences of religious faith. I think there is not enough quantified data to support it. It must be studied.

They claim that religious faith does not impose morality, indicating that the most religious countries are the most violent countries in the present world. Richard and Javed claim that religion makes people commit atrocities who are otherwise good people. True. Religious extremists are possibly good people, otherwise. But in my view religious faith make people act morality more often than not.

Religion has been a great source of morality over at least a few millennia. I recall a personal experience. I had travelled to the famous Tiruppathi temple when I was young and religious. It is in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. I travelled from the state of Tamil Nadu. When crossing the border of the states, police checks vehicles and collect toll. For a commercial taxi service, higher toll was collected than a non-commercial car. I, with my relatives without paying attention, travelled in a non-commercial car, however, it was a commercial service given by the driver whom we didn’t know before. My family was blissfully unaware that the driver is cheating the government. The police inquired with the driver about the nature of the trip, seeking clarification on whether it was a personal outing with family or friends or if it involved a commercial service. It is common practice of car owners with a noncommercial vehicle to offer commercial trips to earn extra income. When police asked, the driver obviously lied saying that it was a personal outing. Then the police took out a photo of the deity of the temple where we were heading to. They asked the driver to swear on the god, showing the photo.  The driver got scared and accepted that it is a commercial trip. Definitely the religious faith forced him to be truthful. This is a typical example of the opposite of what Richard and Javed say. This is an incident where people are good because of religion. There can be numerous examples like this that everyone might have seen in their life. The great charities of religion can not be ignored at all. The conclusion is this. In a world where we have people of wide spectrum of levels of education, IQ, life style, religious intensities of families, growing-up atmospheres, monetary status, etc., it is difficult for everyone to get philosophically as refined as atheists. Atheists who have the ultimate reverence for the truth, can intellectually work out their morality. But, truth doesn’t matter to many people compared to the other things they want in life.  Therefore, it is a good weapon to keep people exercise morality due to fear. Carl Sagan says that the one who is moral only because of fear of god, is actually not a moral person. Just a scared one. However, if morality is the need of the hour, I take it, whichever way it comes. A level of religious faith is good, I call this ‘one peg of religion’. It gets bad when it increases beyond a level, when people start committing atrocities in its name. i.e., more pegs have gone in.

Javed Akthar eloquently puts the reasons for religious extremism. He says that it happens due to three types of people. 1. Ones who think that the belief of their parents must be true because it is believed by his/her parents. 2. Ones who get failed in one/several important aspects of life and wants to vent out the venom and feel great and even holy about it. 3. One who is a pure opportunist who wants to exploit a situation for his/her own benefit. These three categories are not water tight. One may be partly here and there. But these three are the reasons.

There is one more strong reason for religious atrocities, which is said by Yuval Harari. To make people believe in something, let them make a sacrifice. Make a man gift a costly ring to his girl friend. His belief that he loves her will grow in his mind. Make people revere a god with severe rituals like doing long hours of fasting, praying multiple times a day, travelling to far flung places of worship, and so on. One day even if they understand the absurdity of their faith, they would not want to reject it. They sacrificed so much that they will not want to accept that all of it is for a lie. And of course, never forget one more important reason. The comfort given by the religion. The sense that there is a watching entity is such a comforting feeling which people find extremely difficult to leave. Eventually they go to a stage of building an identity for themselves with the religion and raise to the level of committing atrocities. This level of religiosity is definitely bad.

There is an interesting category of people who are well educated, who don’t do atrocities in the name of religion but have intense identification with the religion. They try to defend their faith trying to bring some evidences, say, scientific reasons behind their rituals and even lack of evidence or studies in science in certain regimes of human thought. Javed Akthar says that he finds such acts rather cute 😊. Absolutely.

In a world where true inclusiveness exists, religious people should have their place.  It is only fair to expect that religion and superstition cannot leave the place where education and material well-being doesn’t reach. To all the atheists, rationalists, agnostics etc., who revere truth over everything else, please find the believers rather cute and move on. Keep spreading your knowledge so that 1. they don’t become extreme, 2. they wither off certain stupid customs that causes a net suffering. 3. possibly they understand and open for change. Till then one peg of religion is good.

 

Where does Sam Harris go irrational?

 

Despite being labeled as one of the four horsemen of atheism, Sam Harris stands out by extending his future course of action to individuals whose belief has withered off or never existed. The highly rational individual that he is, Sam Harris explores two areas where ultra-rationalism might find compromise for the better. In the first instance, he meticulously presents arguments to rationalize a practice—meditation. Harris contends that the mindfulness technique he advocates, promoting a life of awareness and reduced suffering, can be likened to mental training, analogous to the physical training undertaken by athletes. Notably, there is a mounting body of scientific evidence supporting the rationality of his stance.

In the second instance, he goes into irrationality, addressing the question of life's meaning, specifically what individuals ought to do with their lives. In fact, that is the biggest problem with science. It does not offer answers to "what one ought to do?", the question answered by religion all along. Harris proposes that determining what one ought to do, both individually and as a human race, becomes possible by accepting a foundational principle. Namely, the shared desire to avoid a state of absolute hell—maximum suffering for everyone, at every moment—and to move towards well-being. While there is no scientific proof mandating this direction, it aligns with rational and common-sense thinking for any reasonable person. Although this sounds reasonable, it is his deeply honest reverence towards the scientific method that makes him admit that it is still an irrational principle since it has no scientific proof. However, if one accepts the premise of steering away from hell and pursuing a better world, there are numerous rational pathways to achieve this goal.

Celebrating a by-product?

 

There is nothing more real to a human being than the consciousness. One may never read a book, listen to any ideas, or learn anything, but even for that person, the real thing is his/her consciousness. How to define it? It is “the subjective experience of our feelings and thoughts” or “simply awareness of our own existing self and presence in the world”¹. Sam Harris gives a beautiful metaphor for the consciousness as “lights on”². 

Where does it come from? Even today it is one of the most fascinating frontiers of science. Undeniably, complex neurological activities correlate to all feelings, emotions, thoughts and actions³. For example, seeing a real predator in the eye creates a cascade of electrochemical changes in the brain and the body to make us run away. The entire process is a mere automated process for an evolutionary advantage: see the animal, run and ensure survival. Then what is the need of the feeling of fear here? Why is that subjective experience is coming while seeing the predator and running? If it is true that the entire process is a mere automated process, then it is almost equivalent to the falling of dominos⁴. What is the need for a subjective experience while dominoes are falling?

Even more complex and even long-term actions are again an elaborate cascade of electrochemical changes in the brain cells. However, a plethora of subjective experiences are also available with them, making the human life so-called ‘rich’ in experiences.

Then what is consciousness? The best explanation available today is that all the subjective experiences are unnecessary. Consciousness is a mere by-product that is unnecessary for the intended purpose of a primary event⁵. It is just like the sound energy created by the engines, while the intended purpose of the engines is to convert heat energy to mechanical energy. But many processes do not create sound such as dissolving sugar in water. In fact, almost 99% of things happening in our body, like regulation of heartbeat, kidney functions and digestion, do not create any subjective experience but only a few processes, like fleeing from a predator, do it.

However, we keep celebrating our feelings, emotions, subjective experiences and ‘conscious’ decisions vis-à-vis our free will as the driver of all our life. The realization that it may be an unnecessary by-product may deprive us of our cherished everything. But it keeps us humble and open-minded.

 

¹Libet, B. (1988). Consciousness: Conscious, Subjective Experience. In: States of Brain and Mind. Readings from the Encyclopedia of Neuroscience . Birkhäuser, Boston

²https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dC_nRYIDZU

³Arciniegas, David B., C. Alan Anderson, and Christopher M. Filley, eds. Behavioral neurology & neuropsychiatry. Cambridge University Press, 2013.

⁴Harari, Yuval Noah. Homo Deus: A brief history of tomorrow. random house, 2016.

⁵Morgado-Bernal, I. (2019). Is Consciousness an Epiphenomenon?. In: Matthews, M.R. (eds) Mario Bunge: A Centenary Festschrift. Springer, Cham.