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next planned revision: 2006-11 |
I have stated that I am an atheist and also that I use common sense and the scientific method.
The debates between believers, whatever their respective faiths, are often quite heated. Against atheism the most often used critique is that it leads to loss of respect for human beings.
In this page I would like to argue that there are links between beliefs and behaviours, but that they are not necessarily simple.
The problem is in the degree of dogmatism one applies. A dogmatic person has adopted a hard set of beliefs and values and does not want to spend time examining them: he/she goes through life using a neatly compartmentalised set of ideas that have been decided upon once and for all. These persons will have difficulties with people of other convictions and they will also incapable of making compromises: they are obviously right and everyone else is wrong.
Dogmatic people are dangerous, and they can be found in all belief systems: atheist communist dogmatics will set up gulags, catholic royalist dogmatics will commit genocide during wars of conquest, muslim dogmatics will destroy artworks of other cultures, jewish fundamentalists will invade the promised land no matter who lives there.
And I could have interchanged the faiths here: muslims have holy lands, christians have set up concentration camps, atheists have destroyed artworks, and so on.
It was the dogmatic approach that led to these excesses. Dogmatic behaviour is an inability to examine your beliefs in the face of facts, and the inability to change your beliefs according to the results of that reflection.
Being of a certain faith does not guarantee that you are compassionate, understanding, accommodating and curious to learn new things.
On the other hand there are some links between beliefs and behaviours: organised religion has waned considerably in most cultures where critical thinking and the scientific method are important in education. It is very difficult for me to believe in a god given what I know about the world around me through application of the scientific method. Likewise it is very difficult for a devout christian to accept the results of science, especially where it concerns biological evolution theory.
One thing we all seem to need as human beings is ritual. Ritual is a behaviour in the presence of other people aimed at expressing or reinforcing some internal convictions. In organised religions this is usually the attendance of prayer sessions and the like. But any association of members has some form of ritual: academics have rituals at conferences, football fanclubs have rituals.