Christopher Hitchens - Tony Blair debate Religion

Lann

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*quality

siftbot

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Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by Lann.

VoodooV

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I hate questions like that "Is religion a force for good?"

you can't answer that rationally with just a y/n. I would just paraphrase the old addage: "There are no bad religious members, just bad religious leaders."

if we actually held our leaders to higher standards instead of the opposite, maybe shit wouldn't be so bad/polarizing?

Gallowflak

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It just seems strange. Blair makes the necessary admission that religion has no monopoly on human solidarity, but that itself means that this argument for religion as a force for good disintegrates... Second, the suggestion that religion has solved problems - but almost always problems that religion has designed. That can't be part of any argument for the good of a thing. Third, that the true spirit and purpose of religion is actually contrary to a literal interpretation of religious texts? If it requires selective reading, selective interpretation, how can you possibly determine which is divine and which isn't? Is the entire thing metaphorical for Blair's type of believer? It either is or is not the word of god. Either way, it can be nothing other than immoral.

Enzoblue

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PRE-DEBATE
PRO: 22% CON:57%
UNDECIDED:21%

POST-DEBATE
PRO: 32% CON: 68%

Raaagh

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>> ^VoodooV:

I hate questions like that "Is religion a force for good?"
you can't answer that rationally with just a y/n. I would just paraphrase the old addage: "There are no bad religious members, just bad religious leaders."
if we actually held our leaders to higher standards instead of the opposite, maybe shit wouldn't be so bad/polarizing?

I completely disagree - its the perfect candidate for a reasoned debate.

And polarised does not equate to bad.

Bidouleroux says...

>> ^VoodooV:

I hate questions like that "Is religion a force for good?"
you can't answer that rationally with just a y/n. I would just paraphrase the old addage: "There are no bad religious members, just bad religious leaders."
if we actually held our leaders to higher standards instead of the opposite, maybe shit wouldn't be so bad/polarizing?

If you knew the extent of the philosophical debates that surround the whole issue of defining what "good" means -or more generally what moral values are- you would like that kind of questions even less, but for a whole 'nother lot of reasons. For example, ask someone if he thinks the word "unicorn" refers to something real (and not just an image). Most sane people will answer "no". Now ask if they think "good" refers to something real. They will either answer an uneasy "yes" or won't be able to respond. A small minority will venture a categoric "no"; then you just have to ask why they think killing is "bad" (or "not good") and they'll be at a loss for words, unless they're philosophers. Of course, "God did it" is not an appropriate answer to any of these questions: you should be able to say what "good" is whether or not God did it, just like we can say what a tree, or even a unicorn, is.

So a better, less confusing, starting point would be: "Is religion useful to mankind?". But the obvious answer is "it depends on the circumstances". Just like you can say that straw can be useful to build a house out of, you can say religion can be useful as a psychological aide. But normally, in our day and age, you would not use straw to build your house but wood or concrete or steel or brick, etc. Your straw building may stand for a long time depending on where you live, even resist some earthquakes better than other buildings, but come a big storm or a very cold climate and you won't stand a chance. The same with religion: if you have science and the scientific method you do not need to go out of your way to build your psyche out of the less adaptable religious concepts.

The unfortunate truth is, of course, that most religious people do not give their children the choice of either religious concepts or scientific ones. And when they do, it's because they've loaded the dice (e.g. the Jehovah's witness). So I ask, how can we hold our leaders to higher standards when we can't even see the benefits of these higher standards? (Here I assume science is a higher standard of thinking in general than religion, but even if we consider science purely as an amoral pursuit, can we let people that cling to belief systems thousand of years old dictate the standards of the leaders that are supposed to guide us in the future?)