philosophyDaily we are exposed to judgmental statements that make categorizations by subjective, moral, or generalized views. For instance- “Religion is full of idiots” or “The Bible has some good things to say”. This question is about the utility of these judgmental expressions (positive or negative) about religion. As such- I am also interested in the perceived effect of such judgement on a potential deconvert.
Do positive judgements lead to uncertainty in a potential deconvert and possibly open atheists to unwanted attempts at conversion?
Do negative judgements lead to a continuous strife- lessening the potential of deconverts; also resulting in a characterization of atheism, by the religious, as a negative emotional reaction to religion?
Don’t both forms of judgement arise from emotional thinking- the same character of thought that leads humans to religion?
Regarding generalized views, I think they’re crap by nature, so I won’t defend them.
On the subjectivity of moral judgments, I don’t know that’s a valid criticism of making judgments. While it’s true that morality is a 50% + 1 sort of environment, that doesn’t mean that violations of morality aren’t immoral, it just means morality is a bit weaker of a term than we feel like it should be.
So, for example, saying that the leaders of the Catholic Church, including the current Pope, were evil for protecting their income at the expense of the victims of child rape is an objectively true statement, even though “evil” is defined subjectively by society.
Likewise (though slightly muddier), killing someone for money is murder because that’s what we as a society (normatively) have decided, but if you add a uniform and some circumstance, that equation changes—which is another subjective judgement. The latter doesn’t make the former OK, and though I think the former makes the latter immoral (if rarely necessary), the rest of the world disagrees.
Moral pronouncements are emotionally charged by nature, but presuming we’ve agreed on the morals, the judgments aren’t any less valid or sound because of the subjective nature of the standards.
Now, there may be other reasons to avoid pronouncing judgments, but I know from my own experience that I gave up the weak/agnostic theism I’d been clinging to since university based on The God Delusion, with the following caveats:
Most of the other negative judgments I’d heard about religion were simply transparent attempts by philosophy undergrads to goad the weak/agnostic theist version of me having drinks and a good time into a debate on religion—they did make me avoid those conversations with atheists, which I suppose could have had an effect on the timeline of my deconversion, but I imagine that has more to do with the method in which the judgment was presented, and less to do with the judgment itself.
And yes, as an atheist I don’t think there’s a lot of propaganda benefit to be had by proclaiming a positive judgement for religion either, unless it’s heavily qualified and turned into an attack before the end of the sentence, though it’s tough to pull that off without sounding mealy-mouthed fairly quickly.
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