The Upside of Hell
Faith and Philosophy
| November 30, 2009
| Tim
Atheists often charge that "man created God in his image." I can't address the beliefs of others, but, for myself, there are many things I would change about my own religious convictions, if I could, in intellectual honesty.
Genesis, for example, could use a rewrite to keep it popular and relevant. And what's with the redundant lists in Numbers? Geez. Edit that down. I'd put the Gospel of John first, and edit some of the verbiage. And I'd definitely get rid of the idea of Hell. Or at least shift it down to something more like the old Catholic notion of purgatory. I *hate* that concept, and don't really understand why God can't just zap people like Hitler out of existence. (Perhaps it has something to do with our having been made in his image, which is itself eternal?)
The Boston Globe has an interesting article about the economic impacts of belief in heaven — and particularly hell.
The two collected data from 59 countries where a majority of the population followed one of the four major religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism. They ran this data - which covered slices of years from 1981 to 2000, measuring things like levels of belief in God, afterlife beliefs, and worship attendance - through statistical models. Their results show a strong correlation between economic growth and certain shifts in beliefs, though only in developing countries. Most strikingly, if belief in hell jumps up sharply while actual church attendance stays flat, it correlates with economic growth. Belief in heaven also has a similar effect, though less pronounced. Mere belief in God has no effect one way or the other.
One of the things I've never understood about atheists — or perhaps, one of the things I do understand about atheists, but they are often loathe to admit about themselves — is their inability to understand how belief in a judgment after death can re-enforce ethical behavior.
Ara Norenzayan, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, and his graduate student Azim Shariff set up an experiment that would make it easy for people to cheat on a difficult math test. They found that people who believed in an omniscient, vengeful God typically chose short-term suffering — that is, facing the test without the crutch of cheating — over possible eternal suffering. "Those who believed in a punishing God cheated less," Norenzayan said in an e-mail.
The standard atheist responses I encounter are:
(1) "Society will keep me honest!" And of course, most of society's rules originate in religion. Which is a sad admission that atheism contributes nothing positive, morally, but instead that such an atheist relies upon the society around him to keep his morals in line.
(2) "Well, I can be good without fear of God. Doesn't that make me a better person than someone who is good because of fear of punishment?" Perhaps in some abstract sense — if being "good" for no reason is better, somehow, than being good for a reason. Of course almost all goodness originates in exactly such a cauldron anyway: first, children must be given rewards and punishments to re-enforce goodness, only later does this now-internalized goodness seem "natural."
But, speaking politically, I don't care why people are good — all I care about, from a societal point of view, is that they are good, and with what frequency. That particular atheist might indeed be good even when they know no-one is watching, but I'm not convinced the same will be true for the average person, once all fear of punishment is removed. (Indeed, if that were a reasonable expectation, we wouldn't even need laws!)
And of course, how can you argue for "goodness" if you don't even have some convincing basis for delineating it?
If religious belief does have important effects on prosperity, it raises a difficult question for anyone concerned with economic development: What should we do with that knowledge? Does it make sense to put up religious billboards in struggling countries, or to appoint a minister of belief? Probably not. For one thing, religion is just one among many factors that affect economies. And for another, it seems to take a long time for religious shifts to catalyze economies.
Ah, socialist thinking never dies, does it? If religion encourages economic growth, then shouldn't the government promote religion? I would also argue that eating encourages economic growth, but that it would never cross my mind to even ask whether the government should decide it should take responsibility for producing food.
Since most religious oppression becomes impossible without government support, why not simply oppose regimes — and stigmatize individuals — like China, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins — who imply the state should punish particular religious beliefs?
Barro and McCleary, for their part, think religion and policy are difficult to mix. McCleary says the lesson of their results isn't that governments should boost religion, but simply that they should recognize it has some value, and avoid regulating it too heavily.
Use our influence to promote religious freedom? What a radical idea.
I am not an atheist, but I am agnostic and I have a lot of atheist friends. I would like to answer the question you ask with this statement:
"One of the things I've never understood about atheists — or perhaps, one of the things I do understand about atheists, but they are often loathe to admit about themselves — is their inability to understand how belief in a judgment after death can re-enforce ethical behavior."
I for one understand that belief can re-enforce ethical behaviour, but I don't think lack of religion precludes ethical behaviour.
As for your statement that if (a big if really) encourages economic growth then the government should encourage religion I have to say that no the government should NOT encourage religion. Of course they shouldn't be discouraging it either (which I do agree does happen all to often).
Laws should not be passed based on religious views but on protecting citizens from harms. As such no law should be passed restricting the free worship of any religion that does no harm to the worshipers or others, just as no law should be passed forcing the worship of any one religion.
Greetings, 420-Guy!
I don't think lack of religion precludes ethical behaviour.
Neither do I, and I've never, to my knowledge, said anything of the sort. As I just wrote:
"That particular atheist might indeed be good even when they know no-one is watching..."
As for your statement that if (a big if really) [religion] encourages economic growth then the government should encourage religion...
First, the main evidence that religion encourages economic growth is provided in the Boston Globe article. Although I believe that also, it doesn't come from me. So it's not really "my statement" even though I agree. (It's a bit like someone else calling E=mc^2 "your theory" because I believe Einstein was right.)
If you have counter-evidence, or even just a verbal explanation as to why you think the evidence for that is all wrong, you could certainly mention it. Otherwise, it doesn't seem to be a "big if", but rather a modest proposition, one which is well-supported by both common sense and the available empirical evidence.
You, yourself, for example, just said: "I for one understand that belief can re-enforce ethical behaviour." Okay, if belief re-enforces ethical behavior, then why wouldn't re-enforcing ethical behavior lead to higher economic productivity?
Second, I'm also not saying the government should promote religion. Again, it is the article which proposed the idea, and I immediately disagreed:
"I would also argue that eating encourages economic growth, but that it would never cross my mind to even ask whether the government should decide it should take responsibility for producing food."
That doesn't mean I think the government should be in charge of producing food -- even though food is, of course, vital for economic growth. Similarly, I wouldn't say the government should produce or promote any particular religion.
That, plus my suggestion that we only encourage religious freedom, means I am NOT at all encouraging the government to promote any particular kind of religious beliefs.
I can understand how my second statement might be unclear (I relied on an analogy), but sometimes it seems to me there's something almost seemingly magical about my writings, something which causes even the simplest of statements — something like:
"An atheist might indeed be good even when they know no-one is watching..."
To be read as the exact opposite:
"It is not possible for an atheist to be ethical, ever."
When you say you "don't really understand why God can't just zap people like Hitler out of existence", I get the sense you're being sarcastic, especially given the subsequent parenthesis.
One key thing about Hell is that, as it is presented 99% of the time, it's not just for people like Hitler. It is also for people like me, many of the people I love, and -- funny, this one -- all the Jews (and Catholics and atheists and other non-whatever-your-Protestant-denomination-is-ists) who died at Hitler's orders. What, were they saved just because their deaths were so high-profile? C'mon.
Putting that matter aside… so many defenses of the Christian Heaven/Hell system treat it as the obvious form that post-mortal justice should take -- that if I don't think I, a flawed human being, deserve to go to Hell, than I must think I deserve a pampered afterlife with zero hardship. But Hell is not merely synonymous with "judgement." Hell is INFINITE TORMENT, in both time and degree. Why can't a test-watching "vengeful God" deliver proportional punishment? Why a punishment so severe few beings (some would say none) could ever merit it? If I truly believed in that sort of God, I might decide to cheat on every test I could, out of spite — in terms of its effect on the degree of my already-eternal punishment, it would make absolutely no difference. Even if I was honest, I would, being human, still screw up something else, then -- whoops -- to the flames I go. (It's my understanding that Hell-focused religions have developed means of erasing minor sins without penalty, so it's not logically clear why Hell belief would prevent any of them anyway.) So a finding that Hell-belief reinforces ethical behavior makes sense to me only psychologically, not philosophically. Hell belief as it exists makes how one approaches a test completely irrelevant.
When God made our souls immortal, was He simply unable to forsee the possible consequences for some non-infinitely-evil persons?
If God had set things up differently -- say, allowing some of the more decent non-believing souls to perish after a couple hundred years -- would you be disappointed in his lax stance on law and order?
Lenoxus -
1. Tim once made the comment that 'Hell' was originally indefinite in duration, not infinite. I don't know enough about greek to say. In Judiasm, 'Sheol' seems equivalent with outright destruction.
2. I don't think that the orthodox view is that "God sends people to Hell" whatever and wherever that might be, but that people send themselves there.
My personal belief is a bit unorthodox but along those lines, a little closer in some ways to a monist view than the standard religious view. Look at human society once it moved away from hunter gatherer society. What did it look like? Many people were slaves, abused without protection. THAT setup, in my mind, is 'Hell.' And it seems to be the default state for humanity after a certain point in development. Empires like Rome crushed those who didn't toe the line. It seems pretty proportional and pretty brutal and pretty self-sustaining without something to drag it off the rails. The slave revolts that tried to find freedom through violence were typically failures.
Any religious or philosophical system that allows people to move away from the kind of society which features constant conflict, slavery and laws with different standards for different people and helps them cooperate productively with one another, I'm willing to consider as having 'redemptive power.'
Which philosophical or religious systems seem best at doing this, relatively speaking? That seems a fair discussion to have.
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I am not an atheist, but I am agnostic and I have a lot of atheist friends. I would like to answer the question you ask with this statement:
"One of the things I've never understood about atheists — or perhaps, one of the things I do understand about atheists, but they are often loathe to admit about themselves — is their inability to understand how belief in a judgment after death can re-enforce ethical behavior."
I for one understand that belief can re-enforce ethical behaviour, but I don't think lack of religion precludes ethical behaviour.
As for your statement that if (a big if really) encourages economic growth then the government should encourage religion I have to say that no the government should NOT encourage religion. Of course they shouldn't be discouraging it either (which I do agree does happen all to often).
Laws should not be passed based on religious views but on protecting citizens from harms. As such no law should be passed restricting the free worship of any religion that does no harm to the worshipers or others, just as no law should be passed forcing the worship of any one religion.
Posted by: 420-Guy on December 1, 2009 11:30 AM