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The Most Powerful Argument Against Religious Faith Ever?
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5 responses to “The Most Powerful Argument Against Religious Faith Ever?”
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Bill, I agree that the line from Hobbes is not an argument but just a series of assertions. I suppose one might suggest that there is an argument hanging around the corner, such as:
Religious belief is motivated by fear. Therefore, religious belief is false. It’s superstition propped up by the sovereign.
This is a bad argument. Even if the premise is true for some people, the conclusion doesn’t follow. For one thing, the argument is weakened by the genetic fallacy. -
Hi Elliot.
Timor domini initium sapientiae. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. In this sense, fear has something to do with religion.
But as you point out by reference to the genetic fallacy, whatever the source of the belief in God, whether or not God exists is a separate question. -
As an argument against religion it’s clearly buncombe. But that’s because it’s not intended to be one. The full quote is: ‘Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed, religion; not allowed, superstition. And when the power imagined is truly such as we imagine, true religion.’
A quick google shows up this quote, in the form used by Wolff omitting that key sentence, originates from internet propaganda by the ‘Freedom from Religion Foundation’. But it misrepresents what Hobbes is saying here.
The wider context: this is from Chapter 6 in Leviathian in which Hobbes outlines the psychological origins and types of ‘passions’. Hobbes is trying to answer the question ‘what is the difference between superstition and religion as social and psychological phenonmena?’ The sociological/anthropological/psychological distinction between religion and superstition he’s making I don’t think holds water either, but is intellectually less contemptible (perhaps especially in the context of 17th century thought).
The fault here lies with Wolff not Hobbes. -
Hector and Bill,
I had suspected that the line from Hobbes might have been taken out of context. It’s unlikely that a philosopher of Hobbes’ stature would offer that line as an argument.
Regarding the distinction between religion and superstition, I like what Kant has to say in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Part Four (Concerning Service and Counterfeit Service …) is astute.
Kant writes that a religion of pure reason (of which Christianity as espoused by Jesus is an example) is a matter of properly motivated good life-conduct on the basis of reason and duty to serve God. Such religion is accessible by reason and thus available to all human beings, and does not require special revelation, though it allows for it. This is called “moral religion” or “rational religion.”
Superstition is counterfeit religion according to which various rituals are practiced which have no intrinsic moral value but are done merely as means to gain God’s favor in order to get what one wants.
Here is how Kant characterizes superstition:
“The delusion that through religious acts of cult we can achieve anything in the way of justification before God is religious superstition.”
—Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, and Other Writings, Revised Edition, Translated by Allen Wood and George Di Giovanni, Introduction by Robert Adams, Cambridge University Press, 2018, p. 200
Kant is referring to acts which in themselves have no moral significance or are otherwise matters of indifference or even disapprobation to God, such as mere attendance at religious services, the thoughtless profession of religious propositions, apathetic observance of ritualistic practices, etc.* He associates such things with “sorcery” and “fetishism” (202) and “conjuring up” (203) because they are attempts to gain God’s favor through entirely naturalistic practices with no intrinsic moral significance and to use God as a means to get what one wants, which is “absurd.” (203)
Whoever prioritizes such rituals over moral service to God “transforms the service of God into mere fetishism; he engages in a counterfeit service.” (204)
*Kant grants that one may practice some rituals properly if one is antecedently committed to the moral service of God as taking precedence over ritual. -
Elliott,
Quite so. It’s also highly unlikely a philosopher of Hobbes’s time would offer that as an argument – proposing outright atheism in the middle of the English Civil War wasn’t likely to be a good policy if one wanted to live a long life!
Hobbes’s religious views have long been a matter of dispute. Explicitly, Hobbes claimed God was corporeal and material – which eccentric notion prefigures that of the Mormons(!).
Incidentally, today I am off to the Peak District, an area of England which Hobbes described in his Latin poem-cum-guide book ‘De Mirabilibus Pecci: Being The Wonders of the Peak in Darby-shire, Commonly called The Devil’s Arse of Peak’ – an excellent title! Text with translation here: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eebo;idno=A43981.0001.001
Always reassuring to know one is translated into English by a ‘Person of Quality’.
I’ll try to reply this evening about Kant!
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