I was looking for background related to this article when I came across this from Patricia Churchland. (Churchland is a strictly naturalistic philosopher of mind at the University of California, San Diego.)
the axiom that values come from reason or religion is wrong… There are better ways of ensuring moral motivation than scaring the crap out of people.
It makes me sad. From where did she get the idea that religious moral motivation is about “scaring the crap out of people”? She has rejected religion, probably for many reasons. One of them—I’m just guessing, but it seems likely—is probably that the religion she knows about is something very different than the genuine relationship with a loving God that Christianity offers.
And chances are she got that distorted picture of Christianity from some religious person who taught it that way. We are in many ways our own worst enemies.
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Why do intelligent people suddenly get soft in the head when it comes to thinking about morality? Scaring the crap out of people has nothing to with moral realism. However, the irony is that if moral realism isn’t true then scaring the crap out of people with threats is about all you’ve got.
Scaring the crap out of people, eh?
She probably got it from the classical Christian notion that if you don’t accept Christ you will burn in hell for an eternity, with no post-death possibilities for salvation. This, in fact, is a very real scare tactic that many Christians use, even in its more sophisticated form in Pascal’s Wager, and it’s not very uncommon.
While there is a deep morality involved in worshipping the creator God as He has revealed Himself to us, Pascal’s Wager is not about morality. Right behaviour is offered in loving thanksgiving, not to avoid Hell.
Kevin,
If the statements of Christ are true statements about reality, then there are no scare tactics involved because they are simply statements of fact. No doubt that people do employ scare tactics in order to manipulate others. The tactics serve only to distort reality by making it seem like reality is dependent on a particular belief about reality. Of course, we know that is not true. This belief=reality mentality can be found in various forms of relativism and pragmatism.
Ms. Churchland believes “There are better ways of ensuring moral motivation than scaring the crap out of people”. And she seems ready to fight if anyone wants “…to impose their own beliefs on her life”.
So just what does she think that her brand of “ensuring moral motivation” is if it’s not an imposition of her beliefs on someone else’s life? Shouldn’t they be as outraged as she seems to be?
And Kevin wants to drag out that old chestnut of claiming that Christianity threatens people with eternal damnation. The reality however is that Christianity threatens no one. Christianity simply explains the reality of living without God in this life and the next one.
Ms. Churchland and her husband are determinists who do not believe in free will and so the idea of “moral culpability” is irrational. I suspect what she means when she writes “the axiom that values come from reason or religion is wrong… There are better ways of ensuring moral motivation than scaring the crap out of people.” you will note that she dismisses both reason and religion. I suspect she would endorse the strategy Cas Sunstein elucidated in his book “Nudge”
Translation: You people are too stupid to know what is good for you and so we, The Enlightened OnesTM will use subterfuge, propaganda, and the full force of the LAW to “NudgeTM” into making the “choices” (as if you really have a choice 8^) that we deem apropriate. “Keep on livin’ in the free world…”
She probably got it from the classical Christian notion that if you don’t accept Christ…
At least with Christianity the church recognizes that you are a free moral agent capable of making real choices and, ultimately, responsible for the chioices you make. In the high church of Churchland et al you are a cipher to be manipulated by an elite through sophisticated and, I would suggest, unethical behavioral strategies. Which one do you really prefer?
Tom had asked where she got the scare tactic notion and I gave one example. I’m not saying (and did not say anywhere) that it was the only approach Christians take, but it is no mystery that such occurs and that, most likely, is where Churchland got the notion. Also, the Wager doesn’t have anything directly to do with ethics, but it is a tactic that can easily be used in a fear-based way, so it is another possible source of Churchland’s understanding.
Kevin, I think you’re right but that it’s wrong. That is, Christians have used scare tactics to promote morality, but they have erred in doing so.
There is certainly a scare message in the Bible. Jesus spoke of “the outer darkness, where men weep and gnash their teeth;” and he spoke of hell. Eternal judgment is all over the NT. But it’s not focused primarily on how we behave. It’s not about “do good or else God’s gonna get you.” It’s about “Come to God, love him and live in his love, enjoy fellowship with him; or else reject him and reject his love and his fellowship.” Those who reject relationship with him reject his love and goodness, and to you reject the ultimate personal source of love and goodness is ultimately to reject love and goodness.
That’s my best understanding of what is meant by “the outer darkness.” It is a place where love and goodness have been rejected. It’s awful, it’s real, but it’s also a choice to be made.
Dave, I think you’re right on the money with your comments about reason and so on. I would have liked to get the whole context of that quote, but I didn’t have time to watch/listen to the talk in which she gave it. Based on her other work I think your interpretation is a likely one. If reason and religion are not the source of moral values, then there is no reasoned source, and there is no transcendent source. Pretty scary to think of what that leaves as other alternatives.
Which is what Tom already said in the OP.
I suspect there is a little more than a misapprehension about what constitutes a “scare tactic” as well. The implication that Christians use “scare tactics” when they speak of hell has always puzzled me. If you don’t believe in God then hell is nothing more than a fantasy, on par with suggesting that if you eat too much puff pastry you will float away like a balloon. Hardly a scary thought. However, if your companion is walking along the edge of a cliff and you warn him to be careful or he will fall over then you could hardly be accused of using a “scare tactic”. If your comapanion replies that there is no edge, that what think is the edge of a cliff is merely a trick of perspective, then you might be tempted to think him mad, but your warning still doesn’t constitute a “scare tactic”.
If your companion’s belief that there is no cliff encourages him to prove it to you by jumping over the edge, or worse yet by throwing you over the edge, then you might be forgiven for reiterating your warning more emphatically. That still doesn’t make it a “scare tactic”. Since, along the edge of the cliff of life there is no means of testing the hypothesis without one or the other going over the edge to see, we may have arrived at an impasse, but the edge remains. The real question is what is over the edge.
Me too. I understand why the negative feelings come about though, however it’s warranted just as some level of fear is warranted in your example of falling off the cliff. Both converstations ought to generate some degree of fear and trepidation inside. It’s entirely appropriate.
Maybe a scare tactic is best described as being overly dramatic, given the situation. You can be overly dramatic by repeatedly warning someone that breathing the air of the inner city will kill you because it is polluted. That’s more of a scare tactic in my opinion. Yeah, it’s best to avoid the dirty air, but it won’t kill you unless you have a medical condition of some kind.
We all have a “medical condition” of some kind. It is called sin. The naturalist answers the question of sin with the myth of progress, as we progress through time we get better and better. Eventually we will build our heaven on earth. Even so, we will still die
The Christian answers the question of sin with Jesus Christ. We are not progressing through time and getting better and better, we live in a fallen world, a world in which our end is inevitable death. No matter how much we improve the world, how close to heaven we make the earth, and we are called to pursue this goal, we still die. Redemption is the revocation of death, when we are resurrected to life in a new earth, with imperishable bodies.
In the immortal words of Monty Python, “Nudge nudge, wink wink” more from the “Nudge” review.
http://www.slate.com/id/2191156/
As far as the “scaring the crap of of people” perspective on Hell sometimes espressed by non-christians, I believe it isn’t excusively a reaction to something they have heard from Christians themselves. Based on disussions with other non-christians, I think this has become part of the anti-religion sentiment espoused by liberal educators and the “new athiests” as part of an overall objection to Christianity.
Basically, it goes like this. “How vaild can Christianity be if they have to “scare the crap of of people” to convince them to believe”. It ignores what has been said here about the nature of Christian thought about Hell and the reality it describes. It’s a smear tactic that follows many others like it from the anti-religion crowd. And that’s not to say that Christians have never been guilty of this but that doesn’t explain all of what we hear.
Hi Bill
It’s a smear tactic that follows many others like it from the anti-religion crowd.
I hadn’t quite thought of it that way, but it makes sense. In my days as an atheist I relied mostly on the “That’s so stupid…” argument and never concerned myself about hell. When I thought the premises were stupid it followed that the idea of hell was just as stupid and not worth worrying about, never mind letting it scare the crap out of me. Placing it in that context can undermine the assurance of someone who did subscribe to the premises of Christianity without substantively addressing actual evidence which support the premises.
Hi Dave,
As Tom says, Christians are often “our own worst enemies”. However, there is also an increasing amount of misinformation, disinformation and fabrication concerning religion and religious truths. The “new athiests” have made a cottage industry of it and even a brief conversation with anyone who took a “religion” class in college will prove that true. I seriously doubt Ms. Churchland ever felt anyone was trying to scare her with visions of hell. It’s simply convenient rhetoric to throw into a conversation.