The myth that religious people tend to be more altruistic than other people revolves around the belief that because religious people appear to act frequently out of compassion, love, and selflessness they will commit altruistic acts. Also, the myth gains further fuel from the impression that atheists and agnostics behave more selfishly, ungoverned by divine moral law. In Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism and Human Emotions, he describes one of religious people's common accusations towards atheists and identifies the false dichotomy that if one is godless amorality is inevitable.
“...if we reject God's commandments and the eternal verities, there no longer remains anything but pure caprice [impulse, mostly at desire], with everyone permitted to do as he pleases and incapable, from his own point of view, of condemning the points of view and acts of others.”
Furthermore, popular religions such as Christianity and Buddhism emphasize love, compassion, community, peace, meditation, and harmony. These themes can motivate followers towards altruistic behavior. Unfortunately, a staggering majority of those who claim to follow a religion practice their religion immaturely, sciolistically, and superficially. Genuine religion and spirituality must mature throughout life; ceaseless learning, discipline and praxis lay at the core of both. Thus, the myth also suffers from misleading wording because religious people actually tend not to be genuinely religious by any technical definition but rather practice some inauthentic facade in weak accordance with actual scripture and application.
A more accurate claim would be:
Genuinely religious people follow philosophies which can and do motivate altruistic behavior while atheists and agnostics can and do govern their lives by equally altruistic ethical principles of morality.
Avoid any categorical comparison between the two in the first place.
Source:
Sartre, J.P (1957). Existentialism and Human Emotions. New York, NY: Kensington Publishing Corp.
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I really liked this blog post. I agree with you that there are many themes in religious texts that can serve as a great source or guideline for an ethically "correct" way of living one's life, but it doesn't take away from the potential of agnostics or atheists to hold the same values as important. What I also find interesting is how religious fundamentalists can interpret religious texts completely differently than others who possibly take a more symbolic interpretation to a piece of literature. I wonder if there's been any studies done comparing fundamentalism in different religions.
ReplyDeleteCan we contribute a Representativeness error for people to skew the understanding on this myth? It appears as if maybe one who meets a person who is non religious will make comparisons to other people who are not religious and make a stereotype based on that one person that they meet.
ReplyDeleteKaitlin - Fundamentalism is a dangerous mentality to adopt for any belief. Fundamentalism for godlessness - militant atheism is a good example - often proves just as irrational as religious fundamentalism. Buddhism, arguing the oneness in the world, avoids fundamentalism by recognizing two truths: oneness encompasses all, and thus exclusivism is not apart of Buddhist philosophy and also Buddha said that no one should take his word for any of his ideas. To adhere unquestioningly to any religious scripture or belief, Buddha thought, is a terrible mistake.
ReplyDeleteDaniel - I believe we can. Furthermore, both atheists and religious folk commonly believe others to be of the same or similar beliefs to themselves if they don't know them. If an atheist were to see some altruistic action done out in the street, he would likely assume the man was an atheist like himself. In other words, representativeness could be skewed simply by the fallibility of assumption.
I actually remember reading an article that reminds me of your blog. It's a Newsweek article written by Meacham who states that the number of self identified Christians are decreasing. http://www.newsweek.com/2009/04/03/the-end-of-christian-america.html
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