The Poison of Hope?
12 April 2007 by Gil
Another week, another cover story highlighting the ongoing atheistic revival. It appears that each of these stories raises the bar, beginning with musings on the conflict between God and Science and religion’s role in opposing progress to the latest hypothesis (floated in Macleans magazine) that the idea of God is a poison that has produced most of the major problems that we face. To me, these arguments seem to be directed against crude caricatures of religious faith but the unfortunate reality is that many ‘faith-heads’ (as they are affectionately termed in this article) make the caricatures a little more plausible than they should be.
This latest article, however, introduced an objection to God that was new for me. Christopher Hitchens, author of an upcoming book called “God is not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything,” argues that the religious response to death (and by extension pain and suffering) is immoral because of its offer of false hope. According to Hitchens,
“Being told you’re not really going to die is simply contemptible… Those who offer false consolation are false friends.”
I’m intrigued by the idea of the offer of hope being immoral. Hitchens may be reacting against the tendency within some corners of Christendom to disengage from life here and now because of a ‘hanging on for heaven’ mentality. If this is the case then I would heartily agree. But there also seems to be some kind of basic opposition to the alleged ‘dishonesty’ of a position that holds to a hope that extends beyond this life. I’m not sure I understand this opposition but it may be a good springboard to clarify what exactly a ‘religious response to death’ ought to look like.
An interesting side note: I find it odd that both sides seem to view the ‘bad guys’ as winning the war and feel it necessary to crusade against them. ‘Faith-heads’ see the imminent moral demise of Western society and attribute it to the godless atheists. Dawkins and company fear that the priceless gains of secular liberalism (presumably freedom of conscience and behaviour) are genuinely threatened by a resurgent religious fundamentalism. With both of these villainous ideologies ‘winning’ it may be that the real losers are those stuck in the middle.
I wonder if people like Hitchens would have a problem with someone who was genuinely committed to living a socially engaged life, contributing to the general good, helping the less fortunate, embracing learning etc., and IN ADDITION to all of that happened to believe in some sort of future hope.
Hitchens, Dawkins, Onfray, Dennett, Harris etc seem to load up on the really extreme examples of religious lunacy which are motivated by future hope, i.e., it’s how these beliefs are ACTED upon that makes them problematic. However if someone were to pursue goals that were ROUGHLY consonant with those of a modern liberal democracy, and happened to see their activity as participating in what will one day be a divinely instituted reality, the cognitive beliefs motivating their actions shouldn’t really make much of a difference to the atheist should they?
I don’t see how there’s anything about the actual cognitive content of future hope, however delusional it may be, that makes it “poisonous” or “immoral” unless the further claim is made that holding factually incorrect beliefs about the world is poisonous or immoral (I think we’d all be in trouble if that were the case…).
You know what is true poison of Hope…cheering for the flames, Detroit in 5
Have you guys ever talked/thought about whether hope of eternal/extra life after death is necessary to our choice to ‘love’ (yeah i sort of read your last post too) God? I think the purest dedication I could give Him would be the one where i was not biased by the hope of salvation - but rather because he first loved me. Is this possible?
If you are interesting in listening to the debate mentioned in the article Gil linked to then you can go here and also hear Hitchens on a related topic of
blasphemy
I found both debates/lectures very interesting. They are worth a listen.
Hi Everett! In response to your question, I guess I would want to know how God’s love is made known to us. If he just looked at us and the state of the world, said “I love you,” and then didn’t do anything to alter our circumstances or offer us hope, in what sense would that “love” be genuine?
I don’t think our hope for salvation (properly defined) makes us “biased.” I think it’s something that reflects that we have some idea what we were created for, and that our present situation falls short of the mark.
Anyone have an interpretation on why the vote went the way it did at that debate? The results were 1,205 to 778 for believing that humans would be better off without religion after hearing arguments from both sides? Was it that most of the audience were out to hear three famouse atheists so that it would have caused a vote in their favor? Or are these sort of arguments starting to strike a chord in people? Or were those on the side of God making weak arguments? Another explanation?
“I don’t think our hope for salvation (properly defined) makes us “biased.” I think it’s something that reflects that we have some idea what we were created for, and that our present situation falls short of the mark.”
To me this statement seems to be showing how a Christian worldview ultimately does devalue our present life and raises the value of an afterlife.
I’m not too sure why the vote went the way it did. I suspect that the names attracted a certain kind of audience but that’s just speculation.
If I can pull your thought on Ryan’s quote apart a bit, can you explain to me how the idea the limitations of this life and the hope of a reality beyond death devalues life? I think it’s a false distinction to say ‘either you believe this life is all there is and value it or you believe in an afterlife and therefore devalue the here and now.’
To me the Christian idea of a future consummation of the world implies purpose and direction for life here and now. It would seem to me that life would be profoundly ‘devalued’ if that purpose was absent or left to our own personal whims. If this was the case, the only ‘value’ that we could ascribe to life would be the desire to survive.
To me ‘value’ has to be a function of purpose. So if the objection to Christianity is that it ‘devalues’ life then it is the responsibility of the critic to demonstrate what the proper ground for valuing life ought to be.
This is how I see it right now… It seems to me that Christians often place the afterlife as the highest value. This current life is often subject to what a Christian theology might require of a person to make it to an optimal position in the afterlife. In other words it is possible that religious people will have two separate values. The values that correspond to whatever supernatural reality they believe exist supercedes the values that they might hold for the natural realm. So instead of having values that objectively correspond to having a good life in this reality… one might see Christianity as replacing some of those values with the values of arbitrary commands of a God. A lot of the values contained in the Christian faith do seem to be objectively good such as the family values that are promoted, but as Hitchens points out some of them seem to be destructive. I think that is the problem because some claim have knowledge that God does not want condoms passed out in AIDS ridden Africa or doesn’t want them to use birth control. Consider the command to turn the other cheek or love your enemies. Should one obey this command even at the peril of losing one’s life or letting their loved one’s be killed or abused? Some Christians would say yes and the result would be that they sacrificed some values that are required to sustain life on earth for values that were prescribed by a religion.
“I think it’s a false distinction to say ‘either you believe this life is all there is and value it or you believe in an afterlife and therefore devalue the here and now.” Yes possibly, but I think where objectively good value contradicts an arbitrary value prescribed by religion then one is probably devaluing their life here and now for a future life.
I agree with your speculation on the audience.
“I think where objectively good value contradicts an arbitrary value prescribed by religion then one is probably devaluing their life here and now for a future life.”
By what criteria are you distinguishing between what you consider an “objectively good value” and “an arbitrary value prescribed by religion?” It seems to me that you are just defining objective value in such a way as to rule out the possibility of a future life a priori.
You still haven’t provided a theory of value which by which the judgments “arbitrary” and “objective” reflect anything other than your own opinion. That’s not to say that Christianity offers a non-circular definition of value, only that I don’t think that such a thing exists.
“It seems to me that Christians often place the afterlife as the highest value. This current life is often subject to what a Christian theology might require of a person to make it to an optimal position in the afterlife.”
I still don’t think that holding firm beliefs about the future entails a necessary devaluation of the present. Rather than seeing future values and present values as two completely different things, with the former taking precedence over the latter, I see it as the future life validating everything good and true about the present. Seen in this way, the present life is not about believing and acting in such a way as to “make it to an optimal position in the afterlife” but living right now according to what is believed will one day be a permanent reality.