I was at the library this afternoon, picking up Robert Frost and Edgar Allen Poe for my folklore class--thanks to everyone who has sent me suggestions for my folklore class!
I came across a book about a man losing his faith. I flipped it open and immediately come across this argument (which I've encountered before):
I know so many religious people who don't practice what they preach; their religions (organized religions, usually) must therefore be pointless or useless or false.
I wanted to go on record as saying, I have never understood this argument.
I was raised Mormon, and I'm still active. I was raised Mormon by incredibly decent people, and I grew up around some of the nicest people in the world (sure, my family is opinionated, and I'm hardly suggesting we're perfect, but my siblings and parents are seriously nice), and I still don't understand this argument.
In other words, I have every reason in the world to think that religious people (or people raised in religions) do practice their beliefs, thereby justifying my upbringing and belief system . . .
And I still have never understood this argument.
The argument rests on one or more fallacies, and the fallacies are, well, fallacious:
Fallacy #1: People practice their beliefs.
Got people? The gap between practice and belief is a fundamental truth of human nature from parents who smoke but tell their kids not to all the way to environmentalists who inform you about the earth's dewindling resources with one of their 2 million pamphlets (recycle, schmycled; it's still paper). And these are, perhaps, obvious hypocrisies. There are still the gaps between private and public acts/beliefs and private and public faces. Yes, ideally (see 2), people should be the same everywhere they go although I'm not even sure about that. I'm politically libertarian and religiously conservative. That is, I support certain actions politically that I don't practice personally. However, I don't pretend about it to anyone, so maybe that's the point.
Fallacy #2: People should practice their beliefs, and if they don't, there is something wrong with their beliefs.
The problem with this argument--which is obviously problematic but lots of people buy into it--is its corollary: If people do practice their beliefs, those beliefs must be true. Most people will reject this latter statement as erroneous but accept the prior statement as true.
If I'm right, and people are flawed (and I am, by the way: flawed and right), then #2 is a non-starter. I can act like my town doesn't have traffic laws, but it won't stop the police from pulling me over. However, "truth" in this case is big UNIVERSAL TRUTH, not little-law-bending truth. Still, I don't see why my actions or feelings should automatically substantiate or negate a universal truth to anyone other than myself. "Only your parents and your friends have reason to believe you," I tell my students. I can teach them about European witchcraft trials and mention that over a span of 300 years, the chances of a woman being accused of witchcraft were astronomically less than her dying in childbirth or, speaking in terms of modern statistics, being murdered, but that doesn't mean my students will believe me or care. (My next job, as an academician, would be to give them proof.)
In other words, a thing can be true, or not true, without any emotional involvement or particular personal investment by the people facing that thing. To segue into House, House needs assistants who can afford to be wrong--because there is a right answer, but they might not always get it. They have to be prepared to be wrong about the right answer since the answer isn't relative, and how nice or good or wonderful or well-meaning they are won't necessarily get them that answer. Something can be true, even if nobody acts as if it is true.
Fallacy #3: People should practice their beliefs, but if they only practice part of them, that's as good as them not practicing any of them.
This isn't too different from that bumper sticker I hate: "No one is free if others are oppressed." And it is so fundamentally inaccurate, it's hard to know how reasonable/perceptive people can believe it. A man may be nice to his wife and kids but not so nice to his neighbors. It doesn't follow that his inability to be nice to everyone means that he is an entire failure at his religion.
That doesn't mean he shouldn't be nice to his neighbors; it just isn't an either/or proposition. Flaws do not indicate complete failure. I suppose there is a point where the equation tips, and the flaws outweigh the average person's ability to be perceived as good and kind. But from my perspective, that equation had better be pretty generous. I think many an academic argument has failed to understand an event or individual because the equation was not generous enough. I'm reading The Magician's Book by Laura Miller right now in which Ms Miller attempts to balance what she perceives as C.S. Lewis's flaws with his talents in order to reach a balanced appreciation of books (the Narnia Chronicles) she loved as a child. I don't completely agree with her analysis or her arguments (or even her form of criticism since I put more weight on performance than I do on reading-between-the-lines), but I can read her book because of her generous perspective.
Deciding that someone's failure to live up to an ideal is the sum total of that someone's personality is not an accurate, or charitable, assessment.
Fallacy #4: All groups are nasty to outsiders, thus all groups are bad; if someone is dissatisfied with a group (i.e. organized religion), it must mean that group has treated that person badly and behaved intolerantly (no other reason).
Actually, there's some truth to the first part of this argument. Here's an example:
Back when I lived in Washington State, I listen to a lot of talk radio. One day, I was listening to a discussion of "whether gays can be Republican." I don't really understand these types of arguments. I figure people can do whatever they want. But the guest speaker, a gay writer about economics (no, the three things have no automatic relationship, but that's how he was presented) was talking, and I started listening, and okay, I'll admit it, it wasn't really what he was saying because frankly, economics bore me, it was his voice: Bing Crosby meets James Earl Jones. Golden honey.
So he gets done talking, and people start calling in, and a lot of the callers say things like, "Hi, I'm a fundamentalist conservative, and I think what you have to say is great!"
Any guesses on the angriest callers? Yep, those who thought the man had "betrayed" the Democratic Party by being a fiscal conservative.
I think my disillusionment about so-called liberal/left "tolerance" started about then. Well, I was never really "disillusioned" because I've never really believed liberals were automatically more tolerant than anyone else, but my belief that similar types of human reactions can be found within any group received serious support on that day.
And that reaction--"Traitor!"--isn't atypical. Humans are social animals and tend to act accordingly. We shouldn't (says the libertarian in me), but we do, and it isn't all bad; it just isn't all good (I'm not an anarchist, just a libertarian).
What bothers me about the claim, "All groups are nasty to outsiders, thus all groups are bad, so (to paraphrase) all dissatisfaction by the individual must rest with the group" is how seldom that claim allows for nuance and complication: that is, a group behaves a certain way, and everyone assumes that the group is behaving according to the cliché without examining the underlying, individual causes or variations.
Example #1: Burning witches is nasty; however, the cliché states that sweet, angelic, herb-planting midwives were scampering about their beautiful gardens worshipping earth-goddesses when the mean patriarchy (organized group) came along and burned them. For no reason at all!
Writers, such as Diane Purkiss, have pointed out that the witches weren't always angelic or midwives (in fact, often midwives testified against witches) or even automatically pagan. Writers, such as Dan Burton and David Grandy, have pointed out that most witch accusations were made in small communities that contained long-standing grudges (not exactly systematic) and that in the few cases where accusations were systematic, men and boys were often executed as well.
The cliché tells a generalized truth: generally, women were accused and executed more than men, and generally, they tended to be marginalized members of their communities. Plus burning witches isn't nice. But it misses all the real-life realities: all the interesting stuff about actual trials and cases and individuals.
Example #2: When I first moved to Maine, I worked as a secretary in a law school. It was one of the most ideologically diverse places I've ever worked. We were all white but religiously and politically speaking, we had a representative for just about every position: mainstream, fundamentalist, atheist, agnostic, Democratic, liberal, Republican, conservative, Marxist . . .
Everyone got along okay, but ideologically-speaking, I was just about the only person there who didn't think someone was out to get me: big business, liberals, crazy religious people, diehard right-wingers, etc. etc. etc.
I figured they couldn't all be right--at least, not all right in the same place at the same time: Southern Maine wasn't going to become, in the next ten years, a left-leaning, fascist nightmare filled with godless, God-fearing fundamentalist Donald Trumps. I mean, sure, Maine taxes people to death, but I'm not sure one could blame that on a left-leaning-fascist-godless-God-fearing-fundamentalist-Donald-Trump. One could try, I suppose. But it would be kind of hard. I don't think even I could do it, and I believe that people are complicated and don't come all-of-a-piece.
This is the problem with saying (to condense the fallacy), "Oh, the group is to blame; the group is making me unhappy." It could be true. The people where I worked believed it was true, but that didn't automatically make it true or even probable. In fact, they'd each created an image of an anti-group and then become frightened by the image. (Who are all these conspiring people? Where are they?) I was more impressed by the fact that everyone got along okay, no matter how paranoid.
In other words, groups can behave badly, but they also usually behave complexly, so blaming the group (rather than the individual) may be correct, but it also may not, especially since the group--or the image of the group--may not even exist. In any case, "the group as bad guy" is not a given.
My conclusion: Give me the particulars first. I want to know the people before I judge the situation. Whatever the situation.
Disclaimer: Yes, I know, I don't always do this as thoroughly as I should--see #3 above.
No comments:
Post a Comment