My Family and I Always Argue Over Religious Beliefs
Are you lot an atheist who has religious friends or family members? Or maybe you're a lapsed laic surrounded by the more devout?
Few topics cause every bit much drama as arguments over religion. Simply it should be possible to talk to one another, and even question someone'due south behavior, without resorting to disrespect or yelling.
So how exactly do you talk to someone respectfully who has a different value fix based on the word of a God — or gods — you lot don't believe in?
Every fortnight ABC Everyday'southward resident ethicist Dr Matt Bristles tackles your thorny, everyday moral dilemmas in our series Hairy Questions. Let'south get into information technology!
How do I talk respectfully about religion with true believers without doubting their religion?
Dear Matt,
I grew up with most no religious instruction as my parents weren't very religious. I discovered Jesus when I was about 10 years old, and loved going to church every Sunday.
I honey singing songs and being in the company of very good, caring people. But I am only a one-half believer, and cannot partake in much of the service.
Reading philosophy led me to question my religious behavior. My dilemma is wanting to talk about this with full believers, but cannot equally I exercise non want to put doubt into anyone'south mind nearly their beliefs. Should I keep my doubts to myself?
— Rob
This question has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Dr Beard's response
At the core of your question is a wonderful and respectful attitude toward other people's faith. You're and so concerned with not spoiling someone's theological party that you're putting your ain intellectual journeying on hold.
The respect you're showing deserves kudos (though I exercise have 1 thought on respect I'll come back to), then kudos!
Kudos bated, though, you need to exist careful not to slip from respect into something that's a bit more patronising.
Respect ways more than being sensitive to the beliefs of others. It besides means recognising that people are smart, resilient and competent agents. Have y'all e'er had someone talk downwards to yous? Or felt like someone was trying to protect your feelings? It'due south insulting, right?
I'm a bit concerned that you're underestimating the believers with whom you want to chat. Information technology sounds like you're concerned that by expressing your doubts to them, you'll be destroying their faith.
Only for that to happen y'all'd have to be selling a particularly contagious and persuasive make of scepticism.
The questions you've posed of your own beliefs aren't new — they've been around for thousands of years. Odds are, most of the believers you know have at least heard of them and kept their faith intact thus far. Your doubt may non be as devastating as you think.
Exist careful not to dismiss people's genuine behavior
I'd also be careful not to trivialise your thought of what religious belief is for many people.
You seem to take concluded that a bunch of the theological claims people believe in are wrong. But you're besides worried that at that place's something special nigh religious beliefs that mean we should let believers be happy in their wrongfulness.
In that location's something to say in support of this, but you lot should also bear in heed that it'south a loaded merits.
On 1 hand, it gives off a vibe that the only way religious belief can survive is if it's protected from criticism. On the other, it suggests we — or some people — should adopt comfortable falsehoods to hard truths.
Permit'due south deal with each of these claims in turn. Start, the intellectual fragility of religious conventionalities. You've noted that you remain fond of the aesthetics of organized religion — the songs, stories and role information technology had in your life — but retrieve the theology is hokum. And you're also worried that telling other people you think this way will intermission their organized religion.
For this to work, it would accept to be true that in that location are no good answers to the challenges yous've identified. As well, we'd demand to assume that all it takes to destroy simulated behavior are skillful rational arguments.
It's not clear to me either is the instance.
While some religious behavior are harder to swallow than others, there'due south no shortage of defensible, well-argued believers and beliefs out there. You lot don't need to find them persuasive to accept that others might.
While your loss of faith was a instance of caput leading heart, yous're the exception, not the dominion. More often than not our beliefs are closely connected to our relationships, identity and emotion. That means it's unlikely your expression of dubiety is going to shatter anyone's faith in the way you lot fright.
Merely let's presume you lot could cause people to dubiousness their faith. Why wouldn't yous? Afterwards all, you lot've decided the beliefs aren't backed up by reality — wouldn't you be doing a service past making people doubt?
Sometimes hard truths are amend than comfortable falsehoods
Let me introduce you to Immanuel Kant. He was a German philosopher who was well known for being a massive stick in the mud. Also, his work has divers an entire school of thought inside moral philosophy.
Kant believed that what fabricated ethics possible is our power to human action autonomously — nosotros can recall and fabricated choices for ourselves.
Kant reached a whole agglomeration of different conclusions nearly the significance of autonomy. One that seems relevant hither is that you lot should never, ever lie.
Say there's a murderer at the door, request where your buddy is (so they tin murder him). Kant argued that you lot shouldn't lie about your friend's location (yes, Kant wrote an essay nigh this absurd scenario).
He abhorred lying because we cannot act autonomously if we don't have a clear motion picture of the world. The more than we know, the better we are able to navigate our choices and arrange our lives in a fashion that maps to reality.
This gives us some pretty compelling reasons to think we should adopt hard truths to comfortable falsehoods. That might give you cause to pursue the chat, even if it does cause incertitude.
But be careful: those who tend to like telling "hard truths" tend to like doing and so in ways that resemble being a massive dick.
How you accept the conversation matters, so don't exist a jerk
Many non-believers today (hi, New Atheists) consider themselves to exist the swell rational liberators of false beliefs.
They hit the speaking excursion and YouTube, using their mighty reason to bear witness how religious behavior are illogical, improbable or downright immoral. Only in doing so, they tend to intermission the very rules of rationality they claim to uphold.
They create straw man versions of organized religion, beg the question and neglect to subject their own beliefs to the same rigour they do their opponents. In short, even if their goal — intellectual liberation — is noble, their methods (and sometimes their arguments) suck.
If your goal is to better understand your own uncertainty, that's going to go a long fashion toward a meaningful give-and-take. It's going to brand you humble, open to other views and respectful of the people you chat with.
But if your goal is to change minds, proceed with caution. That'southward where you tin can start to patronise and infantilise the views of the people you're debating. Plus, it probably won't work.
Even though respect is important, we don't have to respect every single belief
Sometimes I worry nosotros spend as well much fourth dimension worrying virtually the importance of respecting other people and their beliefs.
Nosotros also spend a lot of time working out which views are non worthy of respect (run across: Nazis, misogynists, climate deniers). But in among all this, we've lost a articulate sense of what it means to respect a view.
We tin can have a big debate about how high a standard we have to achieve before we dismiss a view, but I think we can all hold we don't need to respect views that are obviously wrong, dumb or unethical.
My view is the source of these views — faith, politics, moral corruption or whatever — matters less than the view itself.
Information technology's too my view that the conventionalities matters less than the person who holds information technology. If we intendance about people — and we should — we should want them to know what'southward truthful and what's correct.
This means we might exist especially obliged to reply to ideas nosotros don't respect. But not because the ideas should be taken seriously; because the people — both those who hold the beliefs and those who might be harmed by them — exercise.
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Source: https://www.abc.net.au/everyday/arguing-about-religion-beliefs-is-possible-heres-how/11119324
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