Abstract
Criticism against religions and religious beliefs has taken many forms [1]. Some of the criticism is in a broad sense pragmatic, while other objections are epistemic or metaphysical. Famous critics such as Richard Dawkins and D.C. Dennett have presented a whole range of arguments against religious convictions. A special form of criticism is the idea that religious beliefs or “avowals” are actually results of self-deception [2]. Since self-deception is a form of irrationality, having religious beliefs is irrational, at least in the epistemic sense. This claim has been defended, among others, by Georges Rey and Adèle Mercier.
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References
I would like to thank Marko Ahteensuu, Zümrüt Alpinar, Carla Bagnoli, Lars Binderup, Olli Koistinen, Elijah Millgram, Patrizia Pedrini, Susanne Uusitalo, and Jukka Varelius for their helpful comments.
Religion and self-deception, see for instance Brinton, A.: St. Augustine and the Problem of Deception in Religious Persuasion. Religious Studies 19, 437–450 (1983); Alton, B.S.: The Christian and the Self-Deceiver. Toronto Journal of Theology 1, 60–79 (1985); Leak, G.K., Fish, S.: Religious Orientation, Impression Management, and Self-Deception. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 28, 355–359 (1989); Gurrey, C.S.: Kierkegaard: Faith and Self-Deceit. Theology 92, 187–190 (1989); Mullen, J.D.: Kierkegaard’s Philosophy: Self-Deception and Cowardice in the Present Age. New American Library, New York (1988); Cua, A.S.: A Confucian Perspective on Self-Deception. In: Ames, R.T., Dissanayake, W. (eds.) Self-Deception: A Cross-Cultural Philosophical Enquiry, pp. 177–199. State University of New York Press, Albany (1996); Neville, R.C.: A Confucian Construction of Self-Deceivable Self. In: Ames, R.T., Dissanayake, W. (eds.) Self-Deception: A Cross-Cultural Philosophical Enquiry, pp. 201–217. State University of New York Press, Albany (1996).
Recent work on self-deception, see for instance Mele, A.R.: Self-Deception Unmasked. Princeton University Press, Princeton (2001); Noordhof, P.: Self-Deception, Interpretation and Consciousness. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67, 75–100 (2003); Scott-Kakures, D.: High Anxiety: Barnes on What Moves Unwelcome Believer. Philosophical Psychology 14, 313–326 (2001); Borge, S.: The Myth of Self-Deception. The Southern Journal of Philosophy 41, 1–28 (2003); Pedrini, P.: What Does the Self-Deceiver Want? Humana Mente Journal of Philosophical Studies 20, 141–157 (2012); Mele, A.R.: Emotion and Desire in Self-Deception. In: Hatzimoysis, A. (ed.) Philosophy and the Emotions, pp. 163–179. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2003); Mele, A.R.: When Are We Self-Deceived? Humana Mente Journal of Philosophical Studies 20, 1–15 (2012). See also Magnani, L.: Morality in a Technological World: Knowledge as Duty, ch. 5. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2007). Morality and self-deception, see e.g. Martin, M.: Self-Deception and Morality. University of Kansas Press, Lawrence (1986); Barnes, A.: Seeing Through Self-Deception. pp. 158–175. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1997); Levy, N.: Self-Deception and Moral Responsibility. Ratio ns 17, 294–311 (2004); Bagnoli, C.: Self-Deception and Agential Authority: A Constituvist Account. Humana Mente Journal of Philosophical Studies 20, 99–116 (2012).
For a discussion, see e.g. Taylor J.S. (ed.) The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death. Oxford University Press, New York (2013).
Nietzsche, F.: The Antichrist. Great Literature Online (1997-2013), (November 20, 2013), http://nietzsche.classicauthors.net/antichrist/
Notice that most people who believe in an afterlife usually do not question their beliefs. Perhaps they are not one hundred percent sure that there will be an afterlife, but they are still relatively confident that they will live after this life. This is not an issue on which they ponder very often. Self-deceivers, however, may have serious doubts about their self-deceptive beliefs. A person who deceives herself may “know”, at least at some level, that she is wrong or that the available evidence warrants the undesirable proposition more than the desirable one. According to Michael Losonsky, this may cause a “nagging doubt that typically does not occur when people fix their beliefs”. Losonsky, M.: Self-Deceivers’ Intentions and Possessions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20, 121–122 (1997), esp. 122. Similarly, in Mike Martin’s view, “although self-deception does not involve fully conscious contradictory beliefs, typically it does involve a cognitive conflict, for example, suspecting p and believing not-p”. Martin, M.W.: Self-Deceiving Intentions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20, 122–123 (1997), esp. 123. This suggests that a belief in an afterlife is not a typical belief that is based on self-deception. However, as Alfred Mele has argued, “nagging doubt” or “tension” is not conceptually necessary for self-deception and in many cases self-deceivers do not doubt their wrong beliefs. (Mele: Self-Deception Unmasked, 52–53.) We would certainly say that a person who believes against obvious evidence that her husband is faithful to her is a self-deceiver, even if she were absolutely assured of this thought. She would not become a self-deceiver only if she begins to doubt her thought. Therefore, people who believe in an afterlife may well be typical self-deceivers, even if they do not have doubts and suspicions about this thought.
Feinberg, J.: Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty: Essays in Social Philosophy, p. 60. Princeton University Press, Princeton (1980). Notice that many people who believe in life after death are not happy at all that they will never die. Indeed, some people fear death exactly because they are convinced that they will not “really” die. Either they think that they will end up in Hell or they fear that they are unable to withdraw from the eternal chain of being and born into this miserable world again and again. As argued by F. M. Kamm, many “people think that death is bad because [...] it suggests the possibility of a bad afterlife”. Kamm, F.M.: Morality, Mortality: Death and Whom to Save from It, p. 13. Oxford University Press, New York (1993). According to her, it “is incorrect to say that it is fear of the unknown per se that is involved in the fear of death; it is rather fear that the unknown will be bad”. (Kamm: Morality, Mortality: Death and Whom to Save from It, 22.) This kind of fear may be perfectly rational. Douglas Walton points out that if a person believes that “there is a reasonable chance of eternal suffering and torture in death, then given this belief it would seem eminently reasonable, if fear is ever reasonable, to fear death”. Walton, D.N.: On Defining Death: An Analytic Study of the Concept of Death in Philosophy and Medical Ethics, p. 88. McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal (1979). In ordinary cases, self-deception provides a psychological reward to self-deceivers, but some people who believe in afterlife suffer because of their belief.
Poe, E.A.: Collected Poems, p. 108. Lowe & B. Hould Publishers, Ann Arbor (1998).
Swinburne, R.: The Future of the Soul. In: Stump, E., Murray, M.J. (eds.) Philosophy of Religion: The Big Questions, pp. 367–375. Blackwell, Oxford (1999), esp. 372.
Cf. Fischer, J.M. (ed.) The Metaphysics of Death. Stanford University Press, Stanford (1993); Almeder, R.: Beyond Death: Evidence for Life After Death. Charles C. Thomas Publisher, Springfield (1987).
Cf. Peterson, M., et al.: Reason & Religious Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, 2nd edn., p. 222. Oxford University Press, New York (1998); Badham, L.: Problems with Accounts of Life after Death. In: Peterson, M., et al. (eds.) Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, pp. 443–452. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1996).
For a discussion, see Alston, W.P.: Perceiving God. The Journal of Philosophy 83, 655–666 (1986); Alston, W.P.: The Perception of God. Philosophical Topics 16, 23–52 (1988).
Mercier, A.: Religious Belief and Self-Deception. In: Blackford, R., Schüklenk, U. (eds.) 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists, pp. 41–47. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford (2009).
Ibid., 42.
Ibid., 43. Mercier’s example is a person who sincerely says that there is a t-sound in the word butter, but who pronounces it with a flapped d-sound (although she could say it with t-sound). What the person believes then is that the normal pronunciation has a d-sound in it, although she believes that she believes that the normal pronunciation has a t-sound (p. 42).
Ibid., 43. The assumption here seems to be that newborns are pure and innocent even if they are not yet moral agents. (We do not think that rocks or trees are pure and innocent, probably because they are not and will never be moral agents.) An interesting question is whether a person can compensate for her bad actions such as suicide or murder by good actions. Mercier’s argument is also based on the assumption that if a person really believed in an afterlife, she would be clever enough to see what she should do. Still another assumption is that usual “loving parents” think that reaching Heaven is difficult. (I would like to thank Olli Koistinen for helpful discussion.)
Ibid., 47.
Ibid., 43.
Rey, G.: Does Anyone Really Believe in God? In: Kolak, D., Martin, R. (eds.) Experience of Philosophy, 6th edn., pp. 335–353. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2006); Rey, G.: Meta-Atheism: Religious Avowal as Self-Deception. In: Antony, L.M. (ed.) Philosophers without Gods. pp. 243–265. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2007).
See Rey: Meta-Atheism: Religious Avowal as Self-Deception, 244.
Ibid., 243–244.
Ibid., 244.
Ibid., 245. The belief in an afterlife is often a coherent part of a religious world view, not a particularly strange belief from the point of view of the believer.
Cf. Mercier: Religious Belief and Self-Deception, 45. She agrees that, religious commitments aside, religious people are “otherwise normal”.
Rey: Meta-Atheism: Religious Avowal as Self-Deception, 244.
Ibid.
Notice that some people who do not take themselves to be religious attend service and so on, but this does not imply that in fact they are religious. For a discussion, see e.g. Hales, S.D.: Self-Deception and Belief Attribution. Synthese 101, 273–289 (1994).
Rey: Meta-Atheism: Religious Avowal as Self-Deception, 245. Rey confesses that “lots of people [...] seem to live and sometimes die for their religious views” (p. 244).
Ibid., 259.
Ibid., 248. John Hick warns us “not to confuse absence of knowledge with knowledge of absence”. See his Philosophy of Religion, p. 57. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1963).
Rey: Meta-Atheism: Religious Avowal as Self-Deception, 248.
Ibid.
Ibid., 247.
Self-deception is a process. Cf. Mele A.R.: Approaching Self-Deception: How Robert Audi and I Part Company. Consciousness and Cognition 19, 745–750 (2010), esp. 748. According to Mele, “being in self-deception has an essential historical feature: one is not in self-deception unless one deceived oneself, and deceiving oneself takes time”.
Gardiner, P.: Error, Faith and Self-Deception. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 70, 221–243 (1970), esp. 237.
Zimmerman, D.: Sour Grapes, Self-Abnegation and Character Building: Non-Responsibility and Responsibility for Self-Induced Preferences. The Monist 86, 220–241 (2003), esp 222.
Rey: Meta-Atheism: Religious Avowal as Self-Deception, 244–245. A person deceives herself “ideologically” when she refuses to accept beliefs that conflict with her ideology even if the evidence available for her supports those beliefs.
If religious people lack self-knowledge, they are not alone. People who defend solipsism, for instance, do not seem to believe in solipsism, judging from their behavior.
See e.g. Nelkin, D.K.: Self-Deception, Motivation, and the Desire to Believe. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83, 384–406 (2002); Funkhouser, E.: Do the Self-Deceived Get What They Want? Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 86, 295–312 (2005). For a discussion, see Pedrini, What Does the Self-Deceiver Want?, 141–157.
Alfred Mele’s examples of usual self-deception.
An alcoholic who suddenly begins to believe in God may be a more complicated case.
Arguably, if S really believes that p, then she must also believe that there is adequate evidence for p. Jonathan E. Adler argues in his Belief’s Own Ethics that there “are close neighbours of belief (e.g., belief in, faith, opinion) that are liable to be confused with it”. Belief’s Own Ethics, pp. 10–11. The MIT Press, Cambridge (2002). See also 30–31.
Rey: Meta-Atheism: Religious Avowal as Self-Deception, 260–261. Bruce S. Alton argues that “Tertullian’s famous rejection of the standards of rationality and logicality also indicate[s] that a type of self-deception may be equivalent of faith” (Alton: The Christian and the Self-Deceiver, 76). Alton has in mind Tertullian’s (c. 160 – c. 230) phrase that the “Son of God died; just because it is absurd it is to be believed; and he was buried and rose again; it is certain, because it is impossible”. (Cited in Alton: The Christian and the Self-Deceiver, 76.) However, to believe something one considers irrational – if it is really possible – is not to enter into self-deception in a normal sense.
Cf. Rey: Meta-Atheism: Religious Avowal as Self-Deception, 262.
See Leak and Fish: Religious Orientation, Impression Management, and Self-Deception, 358.
Mercier: Religious Belief and Self-Deception, 46.
Rey: Meta-Atheism: Religious Avowal as Self-Deception, 262 and 245. Rey makes it clear that people who he calls religious self-deceivers have also psychological (and not only sociological) motivations for the self-deception.
Cf. note 16 above.
Of course, one need not be a believer in order to deceive oneself in the similar manner. But one may deceive herself precisely because of her religion.
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Räikkä, J. (2014). Self-Deception and Religious Beliefs. In: Social Justice in Practice. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04633-4_12
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