I spent a while today thinking about this recent post from Hemant Mehta’s Friendly Atheist blog. It summarizes the story of a college student who felt she was discriminated against by her philosophy professor, who had asked her to critically examine her religious beliefs. Hemant quotes press releases from the American Center of Law and Justice, which acted on behalf of the student, and from the Center for Inquiry, which is on the side of the professor but doesn’t seem to have been directly involved. Each side tells a pretty different story of what happened, and I don’t claim to know who’s right, but the incident raises some interesting issues about the status of religion in American society.
In the interest of full (yet unsurprising) disclosure, I should say up front that I am an atheist myself. One of the reasons I don’t personally buy into religious doctrines is that, when viewed with a critical lens, I find they come out looking pretty unbelievable. That doesn’t mean I hate religion — just that I haven’t seen any compelling reason to ascribe to one at this time. I think the religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment are of extreme importance, I support the idea of separation of church and state, and I generally try to live out these principles of religious tolerance in my everyday life. Just as the government shouldn’t get to tell me what to believe, I don’t think we should discriminate against each other because of religion.
That sort of platitude about tolerance sounds intuitively right and moral (to the extent that you aren’t caught up in ideas about heathens and/or eternal damnation). Yet the more I think about it, I wonder why exactly we tend to believe in this sort of tolerance in the first place. I mean, as a society we do also generally believe that education, knowledge, and critical thinking are virtuous things — it’s perceived as better to go to college than it is to drop out of high school, to vote based on informed political opinions rather than on the attractiveness of the candidates, and so on. If someone you were casually chatting with in a coffee shop happened to confess to you her belief in a host of invisible fairies who sprinkled fairy dust on her while she slept to make sure she remembered to pay her utility bills on time, you would presumably think less of her for this exact reason. She can’t possibly have her wits about her, you might think to yourself. Anyone who was the least bit rational would realize that idea was absurd. Change the line to one about bread and wine changing into a man’s (or a god’s) flesh and blood, though, and all of a sudden you have a religious belief that must be respected.
We shouldn’t discriminate against people on the basis of things they can’t change about themselves, like ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. It’s my understanding that that’s the basis for the immorality of discrimination like that — if the person can’t help having that characteristic, it’s unfair to treat them differently because of it. This isn’t true about what you believe about the world, though, and we as a society embrace the fact that it isn’t true. If you believe that aliens are bombarding your house with mind control rays and the only way to stop them is to cover everything in aluminum foil, your friends and family will intervene and get you at the very least some therapy, and the conventional wisdom will be that they did a good thing. Most of the time, if you think crazy, irrational things, we don’t have any problem treating you differently.
We also shouldn’t discriminate on the basis of personal decisions that have no bearing on others and no reflection on the merits of an individual. It would be silly if I refused to be friends with anyone who wore flip-flops, for example. That would be arbitrary and unfair. Let’s say I was conducting a job interview, though, and the applicant came in wearing flip-flops. Assuming I’m not trying to hire a lifeguard, flip-flops are generally considered too casual for business attire, so I might fairly make the assumption that the applicant didn’t have a serious enough attitude about the job and weigh this against her when making my hiring decision. Similarly, if the applicant came to my job interview with a fresh roll of aluminum foil for my office to protect me from the aliens, I’d weigh that against her as well.
How is it appropriate to respond, then, when your new friend in the coffeeshop — or your prospective hire, or your neighbor, or whoever — happens to believe that evil exists in the world because a woman ate a magic fruit given to her by a talking snake? I’m not talking about having some vague deist beliefs or a general sense of a benevolent spirit watching over us; I mean adhering literally to religious dogma that directly contradicts, or at least seems wholly absurd in the face of, observations we can make today. If you share my opinion that it’s best to approach life from a rational and logical viewpoint, you’ll probably also reach the conclusion that an atheist or agnostic perspective is the most sensible one. Given that, should I really respect someone who tells me he’s a young-earth creationist, even in the face of all the evidence astrophysicists have accumulated about our universe since the Big Bang and all the evidence biologists have found for evolution by natural selection?
It seems to me that the answer is no, at least in contexts where those specific beliefs are relevant. It’s still unfair to always choose the creationist last when you’re picking kickball teams. But I think it’s perfectly fine to pass over the creationist when you’re looking for a biology teacher (an opinion I’ve already made clear in an earlier post). What about cases where the specific belief isn’t relevant but, say, logical thinking is? We wouldn’t hire our aluminum-foil-crazed friend to be a lawyer or a hedge fund manager, because those occupations require the capability for rational, analytical thinking, and that whole alien issue seems like good evidence that she’s not the most rational, analytical person we can find. Is it unreasonable, then, to treat a dogmatically religious person in the same way? I’m not sure of the answer to this question, but I do think it’s much less obvious than we as a society generally assume.
July 1st, 2008 at 10:07 am
One of the reasons why religious beliefs are so hard to eradicate is because people are so good at compartmentalization. People can hold the most irrational beliefs about reality and still function perfectly fine in daily life. It’s what makes me wonder if religious people really and truly believe the things their faith tells them. They sure don’t act like it. They still know they better pay their taxes, stop at red lights, and go to the doctor if they get sick. God’s not gonna heal that diabetes; a doctor will. They don’t realize that prayers works as good as chance events (i.e., God “heals” self-healing diseases like cancer, say, but not amputated limbs). Maybe some day these people will realize they live safe and sane lives without thinking invisible entities that supposedly look over them, but I wouldn’t bet on it happening any time soon. Should we discriminate against religious belief? Only to the extent that it infringes upon someone else’s rights.
July 1st, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I’ve been thinking about this since Z wrote the post. I don’t believe discrimination is ok, but I don’t disagree with anything she wrote. Maybe I’m just rationalizing a dumb position, but I think I have two main reasons why we don’t allow discrimination on religious beliefs.
One is this compartmentalization that Will mentions. It’s incredibly common for people who are generally intelligent to still be religious. I think some people who are really at the top of the bell curve might have vague spiritual feelings, belief in God, religious practices because of cultural value, etc. — but not the kind of literal, obviously absurd beliefs that Z was talking about. I think, however, that the vast majority of the population, including people who are above average intelligence, can compartmentalize like this. That means that the variation in religiousness is probably explained much more by their family and other circumstances than their intelligence. Therefore for most people, religiousness is not a very good proxy for rationality, so it’d be only a very minor consideration if you were to consider it fairly (though Z’s logic still does imply you should consider it that small amount).
The other reason is more practical. If we were to allow discrimination based on religious beliefs, most of what would occur isn’t this slight mark against someone’s intelligence for believing extreme religious beliefs. More often, it’d be very religious people enacting drastic discrimination against those who don’t share their beliefs. Even if some slight consideration of religion would be rational and productive, we gain a lot more than we lose as a society by banning it.
August 21st, 2008 at 9:02 pm
[...] “biology” or “history.” I found this personally interesting in light of my earlier comments on how far it’s appropriate to extend religious tolerance. Even though it has upset some [...]