What's my responsibility?

What is my responsibility (if I even have one) in spreading rationality or fighting bad ideas that may be more harmful than helpful? With religion, for example, the idea of faith has become a major obstacle to human progress. I’m sure there was a time in history when faith served a beneficial role in creating the social cohesion necessary to build the foundations of culture. But recently with issues such as stem cell research, nuclear weapons, and climate change we need to let go of the false certainty offered by faith in order to see the facts of our world.

So having come to this conclusion, should I engage this subject anymore? If I do, I feel as though engagement might be with the intention of telling believers that they are wrong. Do I simply want to reassert my intellectual dominance over them and regain control? Or can I learn enough about myself and the situation in general to let others fight this battle and be content to engage in my own life? Can I be secure enough in myself to let other believe what they will? I think that as long as I remain aware that as a human I will always have a tendency to want to be in control, I can engage others in this topic without the aim of gaining some kind of power. I must remain always mindful of my motives.

But beyond that, is there some imperative to engage believers and try to open their eyes to what I see as the truth? Can I do this with compassion and not out of the need to feel superior to them? I really feel as though this sort of engagement falls under the category of education. It should be an attempt to educate people about an alternative, and more productive, view of the world and the accompanying mind set. I think that most people in the world (including myself) would agree that there is a moral imperative to educate those who are unaware of alternatives. This philosophy is the centerpiece of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave which is widely used in support of education. After I engage someone then they are still free to decide how they want to live their life.

If I truly do believe that I have a moral imperative to educate others for the sole purpose of spreading truth, then it would seem clear that I should engage as many believers as possible. However, this line of reasoning strays dangerously close to an ideology and ideologies are the hallmark of religion. But is an ideology of education possible? Aren’t the ideas of ideology and education incompatible? I am not completely sure that I am capable of answering that question but when I think through the problem there does seem to be a logical conclusion. Education is primarily concerned with presenting facts and it is a fact that there is very, very, very little evidence (I only leave the door open a little because I am aware that I don’t know everything) to support the logical existence of a god. In fact I would argue that what people call evidence of the existence of god is simply the lack of evidence of anything else (e.g. the origins of the universe and the laws that govern it). It is certainly very easy to come up with reasons (which some people would call evidence) to support a belief in god but very had to produce evidence of god itself. On the other hand, ideology rests entirely on the unprovable. An idea does not need to be good or bad, just thought up and spewed into the world. Some ideas are obviously better than others, but the strength of an ideology is fundamentally groundless and as such is completely at odds with education. The strength of an ideology actually rests in its ability to create a place for itself in the mind of a person and then create some action from them. The ideas of education and ideology do appear to be incompatible.

I also feel that transcending a need for belief in god would enable people to avoid the kind of manipulation so common throughout religious history, and as a result would create a better society. It would not avoid manipulation all together, but would be a very large step in the right direction. It would give peoples a powerful tool to start truly thinking for themselves, which is the basis of free will (even though I don’t really believe in free will except as a matter of semantics that can be practical when discussing the human thought process, but that is a topic for another day).

But just working from personal observations, it doesn’t appear that many people want free will or (perhaps to be a little more generous) they have never been able to understand the true implications that free will holds. Free will means the ability to decide what you think. I ask myself why so many people question their faith and then end up going right back to believing anyway. No doubt there are many interconnected answers but there does seem to be one very powerful explanation.

I believe that most people do not want as much free will as they are capable of having. I believe that most people do not want to slosh around in the murky waters of moral reasoning long enough to come to a concrete understanding (understanding, not knowledge) of their belief structures. It is much easier and faster to have one person do the thinking and then take that person’s word that a certain set of actions is moral and acceptable for living ones life by. This is especially true for those who do not possess an aptitude for abstract thinking, and I think we can agree that some folks just aren’t cut out for that. Accepting certain morality structures without questioning every square inch of it leaves one much more time to work and play and raise a family. Is this kind of shortcut “wrong?” It is probably not wrong in the absolute sense, but at very least it is lazy. Is telling your child that they are not allowed to question your shortcut wrong? Some, including myself, would say yes. Is it wrong to kill or enslave another human being for taking a different shortcut? Absolutely!

The other reason I believe that those who question ultimately return to their faith is the social pressure to have a faith. I know from personal experience that it is very difficult to always have to define your own belief structure outside of the social norm (although some studies indicate that as many as 30 million Americans do not identify with a particular faith).
These people who take the shortcut seem to be in the majority. Would this majority still hold if most people ever thought to get outside their belief structure and truly question it? I think that most people are unaware that they are allowed to dive into that murky water and take the long way around to a truly ethical philosophy of the world that is independent of unsupportable dogma. This long way to the truth is in my opinion infinitely more rewarding as well as practical in a way that dogma can never be. It is practical because it is flexible and can change with the world. There is nothing as beautiful to me as true understanding. To others maybe it is beautiful to live a simple life of black and white decisions where rules are absolute and everyone knows their part in the act.

But even with shortcuts in place many folks cannot make heads or tales of their life. Do I honestly hope to make these peoples’ lives better by destroying their ideological crutch? I will say up front that this is a question that no one can claim to answer. No doubt this period of change or fall from grace would be very painful for some if I were to successfully change their mind. Some might decide that life is not worth living if a god truly does not exist and they might commit suicide or become severely depressed. Some would no doubt go on a crime spree or binge on sex, drugs, materialism, etc. This would be the result of the unfounded idea that without a god there is no morality. But I have confidence that most would adapt. After this initial period of transition, subsequent generations should have no problem accepting the idea. I believe that the human mind is more flexible than we can possibly know. I also believe that a good deal of the people would feel liberated and begin to see life for the first time.

The most important thing they would begin to see is that an absolute human ethical system does exist. Ironically the people who would come to this conclusion first would probably be those who reacted to their new “freedom” by binging on sex, drugs, materialism, etc. I have no doubt that they would not get the satisfaction from these indulgences that they expected. They would also begin to experience that true fulfillment comes from connection to other human beings and to their own consciousness. ALL HAPPINESS AND ALL ETHICAL SYSTEMS ARE CONTINGENT UPON ONES RELATIONSHIP TO OTHERS AND TO ONESELF. Without fully understanding the dynamics involved with this statement, most people attempt to describe certain aspects of these relationships by invoking a supernatural entity who either understands it or who is responsible for creating it. I readily admit that without the proper tools and perspective, these relationships can seem mysterious, arbitrary, and just too good to be an accident. So what is the correct perspective for viewing relationships? That’s probably a question that each person needs to answer for themselves.