I know so many religious people who don't practice what they preach; their religions (organized religions, usually) must therefore be pointless or useless or false.
I wanted to go on record as saying, I have never understood this argument. It rests on several fallacies, and the fallacies are, well, fallacious:
Fallacy #1: People practice their beliefs.
Got people? The gap between practice and belief is a fundamental truth of human nature from parents who smoke but tell their kids not to all the way to environmentalists who inform you about the earth's dwindling resources with one of their 2 million pamphlets (recycle, schmycled: it's still paper). These are, perhaps, obvious hypocrisies. There are still the usual gaps between private and public acts/beliefs and between private and public faces. Yes, ideally (see 2), people should be the same everywhere they go though I'm not even sure about that. I'm politically libertarian and religiously conservative. That is, I support certain actions politically that I don't practice personally. However, I don't pretend about it to anyone, so maybe that's the point.
The problem with this argument--which is obviously problematic but lots of people buy into it--is its corollary: If people do practice their beliefs, those beliefs must be true (martyrdom is often seen in this light). Most people will reject the latter statement as erroneous but accept the prior statement as true.
If I'm right, and people are flawed, then #2 is a non-starter. If I drive over the speed limit, that doesn't mean there is no speed limit. It could mean that the speed limit is unfairly low. But that is arguably an entirely different matter from whether or not a speed limit exists, which is a separate matter from whether a speed limit is a good idea.
A thing can be true. It can be untrue. How people react to that truth is an independent and personal matter.
Arguably, in the long run, bad beliefs will consistently result in bad outcomes and good beliefs will consistently result in good outcomes ("fruit of the tree") but those experiments rest on people trying out the beliefs in the first place.
Fallacy #3: People should practice their beliefs, but if they only
practice part of them, that's as good as them not practicing any of
them.
This argument isn't too different from that bumper sticker I hate:
"No one is free if others are oppressed." And it is so fundamentally
inaccurate (and nihilistic), it's hard to know how reasonable/perceptive people can
believe it. A man may be nice to his wife and kids but not so nice to
his neighbors. It doesn't follow that his inability to be nice to
everyone means that he is an entire failure at his religion (though it does depend on the religion) or that he should stop being nice to everyone entirely.
Of course, he probably should be nice to his neighbors. But it isn't an either/or proposition. Flaws do not indicate complete failure. I
suppose there is a point where the equation tips, and the flaws
outweigh the average person's ability to be perceived as good and kind.
But from my perspective, that equation had better be pretty generous. I
think many an academic argument has failed to understand an event or
individual because the equation was not generous enough. I'm reading The Magician's Book
by Laura Miller right now in which Miller attempts to balance what
she perceives as C.S. Lewis's flaws with his talents in order to reach a
balanced appreciation of books (the Narnia Chronicles) she loved as a
child. I don't completely agree with her analysis or her arguments (or
even her form of criticism since I put more weight on performance than I
do on reading-between-the-lines), but I can read her book because of
her generous perspective.
Deciding that someone's failure to live up to an ideal is the sum total
of someone's personality is not an accurate, or charitable,
assessment.
 |
| All groups are strange. |
The truth is, the first part of the above statement appears to be part of the human condition: groups are nasty to outsiders.
Back when I lived in Washington State, I listen to a lot of talk radio.
One day, I was listening to a discussion of "whether gays can be
Republican." I don't really understand these types of arguments. I
figure people can do whatever they want. But the guest speaker, a gay
writer about economics, was talking, and I
started listening, and okay, I'll admit, economics mostly bore me but he had a fantastic voice: Bing
Crosby meets James Earl Jones. Golden honey.
So he got done talking, and people started calling in, and a lot of the
callers said things like, "Hi, I'm a fundamentalist conservative, and I
think what you have to say is great!"
Any guesses on the angriest callers? Yep, those who thought the man had
"betrayed" the Democratic Party by being a fiscal conservative.
I think my disillusionment about so-called liberal/left "tolerance"
started about then. Actually, I was never really "disillusioned" because
I've never really believed liberals were automatically more tolerant
than anyone else, but my belief that similar types of human reactions
can be found within any group received serious support on that day.
Unfortunately that reaction--"Traitor!"--isn't atypical. Humans are social animals
and tend to act accordingly. We shouldn't (says the libertarian in me),
but we do.
What bothers me about the claim, "All groups are nasty to outsiders,
thus all groups are bad, so all dissatisfaction by the
individual must be due to the group" is how seldom that claim allows for
nuance and complication: that is, a group behaves a certain way, and
everyone assumes that the group is behaving according to the cliché
without examining the underlying, individual causes or variations.
Writers, such as Diane Purkiss, have pointed out that the witches
weren't always angelic or midwives. In fact, often midwives testified
against witches. Writers, such as Dan
Burton and David Grandy, have pointed out that most witch accusations
were made in small communities with long-standing grudges (not
exactly systematic) and that in the few cases where accusations were
systematic, men and boys were often executed as well.
The cliché tells a generalized truth: generally, women were accused and
executed more than men, and generally, they tended to be marginalized
members of their communities. Plus burning witches isn't nice. But it
misses all the real-life realities: all the interesting stuff about
actual trials and cases and individuals.
The exact nature of the relationship between grace and energy or desire or improvement is a difficult one--and not one I will attempt to solve here. Suffice to say:
It is a possible one.
