You think that nazism is always bad and you can deduce that when a nazi does something good they do it ‘despite’ being nazi. Then you claim the same for religious people. Do you really think the two cases are the same? I will now list a bunch or religious people who mean a great deal to me, and whose work can not be disengaged from being religious: Ferdinand Ebner, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenczweig, Franz Kafka, Jakob Böhme, Endre Ady, Béla Tábor, and I could go on and on. I could not mention one single nazi who means a great deal to me and for somewhat respectable but still somewhat racist people I can always disengage their racism from why they are important to me. So clearly for me the two cases are not paralell. I wonder if you are truly sure that they are parallel for you.
I accept your proposition to make bigoted a technical word. I am too intolerant towards nazis. And I am also intolerant towards various forms of religious zeals.
I think the biggest trickiness of this whole topic comes from the fact that it is indeed not so black and white. To clarify my stance, I cannot deny that there are people who did good acts in a way that can only be attributed to religion, and that they would not have done without religion. We have the following qualities: (good person, bad person) and how they’re done (independently of religion/lack of religion, because of religion, because of lack of religion), and thus 6 total classes of people to investigate.
Just to quickly clarify an ambiguity here, I guess we could have more classes for “good ONLY because of religion” vs “good because of religion in reality, but hypothetically we expect they would have been good without it”. But for the sake of simplicity it seems like we can lump that second type in with the “independently of religion” quality.
Definitely anyone who argues that the class of “Good Person Only Because Of Religion” is empty is being totally insane. There’s a hefty amount of people in this category. I don’t know all the people you listed, but I’m fine saying for sake of argument that they are all in it - although I imagine you’d agree some of them may have been good people and some things even if religion didn’t exist? But I’d like to go in whatever direction you think makes your argument strongest.
Likewise, anyone who argues that the “Bad Person Only Because Of Lack Of Religion” category is empty is also being really biased. I’m sure there are plenty of people who have committed atrocities because “God doesn’t exist so I can do whatever I can get away with”, etc.
I think what’s at stake here is, firstly, the relative sizes of these classes, and secondly, whether their relative size is a historical coincidence or an intrinsic result of something about religiosity.
If the stakes are right, I’m not really sure how to proceed “rigorously”. It’s really a job for sociological studies, since there are enough humans that we could both list individual examples for a very long time - I’m sure we both agree that all 6 classes of people I described have at least a million members alive even just right now. It seems like the best we can do is make persuasive type arguments.
I can think of a few directions of arguments to make, so forgive me in advance if I’m scatterbrained. I’ll just write an idea of one:
Your examples of Good Because Of Religion people are outstanding, “great” people. Such people are not representative of the population as a whole. Perhaps for very outstanding people, religion is more likely to be beneficial. But when we look at how “the masses” (to use an elitist term) use religion to justify things, I usually see it for much more petty things like controlling one’s children, as a justification for condemning groups they just don’t like, as a justification for violence, etc. The role religion plays in the current American social situation is undoubtedly an example of this, and the same goes for the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and much of the perpetual conflict in the Middle East in general. I am not aware of similar situations in the world right now that are not largely based on religious zealotry. Even from historical concepts, it seems religion is often used as a tool to manufacture mass consent for these things.
You think that nazism is always bad and you can deduce that when a nazi does something good they do it ‘despite’ being nazi. Then you claim the same for religious people. Do you really think the two cases are the same? I will now list a bunch or religious people who mean a great deal to me, and whose work can not be disengaged from being religious: Ferdinand Ebner, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenczweig, Franz Kafka, Jakob Böhme, Endre Ady, Béla Tábor, and I could go on and on. I could not mention one single nazi who means a great deal to me and for somewhat respectable but still somewhat racist people I can always disengage their racism from why they are important to me. So clearly for me the two cases are not paralell. I wonder if you are truly sure that they are parallel for you.
I accept your proposition to make bigoted a technical word. I am too intolerant towards nazis. And I am also intolerant towards various forms of religious zeals.
I think the biggest trickiness of this whole topic comes from the fact that it is indeed not so black and white. To clarify my stance, I cannot deny that there are people who did good acts in a way that can only be attributed to religion, and that they would not have done without religion. We have the following qualities: (good person, bad person) and how they’re done (independently of religion/lack of religion, because of religion, because of lack of religion), and thus 6 total classes of people to investigate.
Just to quickly clarify an ambiguity here, I guess we could have more classes for “good ONLY because of religion” vs “good because of religion in reality, but hypothetically we expect they would have been good without it”. But for the sake of simplicity it seems like we can lump that second type in with the “independently of religion” quality.
Definitely anyone who argues that the class of “Good Person Only Because Of Religion” is empty is being totally insane. There’s a hefty amount of people in this category. I don’t know all the people you listed, but I’m fine saying for sake of argument that they are all in it - although I imagine you’d agree some of them may have been good people and some things even if religion didn’t exist? But I’d like to go in whatever direction you think makes your argument strongest.
Likewise, anyone who argues that the “Bad Person Only Because Of Lack Of Religion” category is empty is also being really biased. I’m sure there are plenty of people who have committed atrocities because “God doesn’t exist so I can do whatever I can get away with”, etc.
I think what’s at stake here is, firstly, the relative sizes of these classes, and secondly, whether their relative size is a historical coincidence or an intrinsic result of something about religiosity.
If the stakes are right, I’m not really sure how to proceed “rigorously”. It’s really a job for sociological studies, since there are enough humans that we could both list individual examples for a very long time - I’m sure we both agree that all 6 classes of people I described have at least a million members alive even just right now. It seems like the best we can do is make persuasive type arguments.
I can think of a few directions of arguments to make, so forgive me in advance if I’m scatterbrained. I’ll just write an idea of one:
Your examples of Good Because Of Religion people are outstanding, “great” people. Such people are not representative of the population as a whole. Perhaps for very outstanding people, religion is more likely to be beneficial. But when we look at how “the masses” (to use an elitist term) use religion to justify things, I usually see it for much more petty things like controlling one’s children, as a justification for condemning groups they just don’t like, as a justification for violence, etc. The role religion plays in the current American social situation is undoubtedly an example of this, and the same goes for the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and much of the perpetual conflict in the Middle East in general. I am not aware of similar situations in the world right now that are not largely based on religious zealotry. Even from historical concepts, it seems religion is often used as a tool to manufacture mass consent for these things.