Bad reasons to believe.

Bad and wrong beliefs

Let's say a belief is bad if people who hold that belief are likely to do more bad things. This is quite different to the belief being wrong, or factually incorrect, but the two can often be confused. For example, one of the contentions of the new atheist movement is that religious beliefs are bad, and in sloppy argumentation this can often be mixed up with the idea that religious belief is also wrong. The same argument is also made the other way.

Presented with such a poor argument, it is simple to turn it aside by pointing out the sloppiness. For example, in this post the blogger Thrasymachus painstakingly points out that this flaw is present in any attempt to refute a belief by pointing to all the nasty people who have held that belief. 

This is rhetorically very satisfying: suppose someone shows that one of your beliefs is bad, and argues on that basis that it is wrong. Their argument doesn't work, and it is easy to point this out and move on. But wait a minute - they showed that one of your beliefs is bad! So you are more likely to do bad things. You probably would prefer to do good things, right? So this isn't an issue you can just ignore, after all.

This is just the principle of intellectual charity - if you are challenged by an argument that has a small flaw, and you can see a way to get rid of the flaw and keep the challenge, then it isn't enough to just point out the flaw and move on. You have to be ready to face the argument in its strongest form.

An illustrative argument
The post by Thrasymachus set me thinking along these lines, and I realised that I have usually fallen into the trap given above - I have habitually dismissed arguments that nontheism is wrong which tried to jump to that conclusion on the basis of a claim that it is bad, and have not considered deeply whether they show that it is bad, or what the implications would be if they did. So I set about constructing the strongest argument I could along these lines, such that the argument is a challenge to my own worldview. I'll want to give a bit of explanation in a minute, but first of all here is the argument:

There is decent evidence that religious folk are likely to donate more to charity. Charities can use resources effectively enough that a moderately well-off person can do more good by charitable giving than in almost any other way. Thus well-off religious folk should strive to preserve their beliefs by engaging in apologetics.

This argument is directed towards a particular sort of action (namely apologetics - please follow the link to see the sense in which I am using this word), rather than a belief (theism). This is because we can choose our actions, but we can't directly choose our beliefs.

It is directed to the theist, rather than the nontheist (though of course a similar argument could be made that nontheists should strive to become theists by taking advantage, if possible, of cognitive biases). The reason is that the argument is stronger in the form given, because the investment needed by the theist to fortify their belief is less than that needed by the nontheist to change theirs, and they have a greater chance of success.

Nevertheless, I wanted the argument to be a challenge to my worldview - and it is. I don't, after all, think apologetics is a good thing. I would encourage theists to avoid it. This is also the reason I phrased the argument in terms of something we can all agree is good (charitable giving) rather than something only theists would recognise as good (such as the preservation of their souls).

Lording it over Pascal
The argument is similar, in a sense, to Pascal's wager, which can also be seen as arguing that nontheism  is bad (or at least imprudent). Nevertheless, many of the standard arguments deployed against the wager will not work against the argument I have given above. Since this also nicely illustrates some of the good features of the argument itself, I'll give two examples.

1. Doxastic involuntarism: the idea that our beliefs are not subject to willed change. So even if we accept that theism is more prudent, there isn't much we can do about it. This doesn't work in this case because the argument is directed to an action rather than a belief. To be fair, Pascal was also aware of this issue, and dealt with it as follows:

   Endeavour, then, to convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God, but by the abatement of your passions. You would like to attain faith and do not know the way; you would like to cure yourself of unbelief and ask the remedy for it. Learn of those who have been bound like you, and who now stake all their possessions. These are people who know the way which you would follow, and who are cured of an ill of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc. Even this will naturally make you believe, and deaden your acuteness.

2. Examination of the range of options: Pascal has the nontheist say `I know only that, in leaving this world, I fall for ever either into annihilation or into the hands of an angry God,' whereas there is no reason to expect that this is the full (or even a representative) range of options. What if the Buddhists were right all along? Or what if God is very keen on intellectual integrity and will reward nontheists who stick to their guns but punish those who convert because of the wager? Terry Pratchett imagines a scenario like this in the novel Small Gods: `Upon his death, the philosopher in question found himself surrounded by a group of angry gods with clubs. The last thing he heard was "We're going to show you how we deal with Mister Clever Dick around here"...' This isn't an issue for the argument above, because the theist already has a particular belief, which is therefore favoured by the ease with which it can be preserved.

What's wrong with the argument?

I tried to give the argument in as strong a form as I could, and I was relieved to find that it still fails. This is for two linked reasons. The first is that it suggests a particularly inefficient means to the end of charitable giving. To illustrate this, consider the following argument:

People who support Manchester United are statistically more likely to wear red shirts. So if you wish to wear a red shirt more often, you should become a Manchester United supporter.

There's a much simpler way: just buy yourself lots of red shirts. You don't need an excuse to wear them. Similarly, if you recognise that charitable giving is a good idea, then you can go ahead and do it. It may be, of course, that you aren't very motivated to give to charity and that the idea is that theism will help provide motivation. But again, there are far easier ways to achieve this end. Ask a trusted friend to regularly nag you about how much you are giving to charity. Make a pledge at a website like this. 

The only way an argument like the one above could evade this difficulty would be if it promised a systematic package of goodness that couldn't be achieved more efficiently some other way. As Thrasymachus points out in his comments, there is good reason to doubt that theism provides any such systematic increase in goodness (he addresses Christianity in particular):

We’d have to weigh up all plausibly operative associations: I gather there is a strong association between Christian belief and negative attitudes towards homosexuals, which would seem to ‘count against’ Christian belief being a good thing; there are also the old standbys about religion and war/violence etc. which would need to be considered.

Assessing the plausibility of these various concerns and their ‘weights’ strikes me as a lot of work. Moreover, it is likely these will be coloured by your beliefs about whether Theism is true or not: I don’t fancy my chances of persuading a Christian that Christianity is prudentially bad even if it was by the preponderance of evidence. So these concerns seem generally a bit of a detour instead of just considering the truth of the beliefs in question: rightly or wrongly, are minds are much more interested in that.

The second paragraph of this quote touches on the other big problem with the argument: intellectual integrity is a greater priority, even for the specified end, than the motivation that might be preserved by intellectual self-manipulation.

If you are keen to maximise the effectiveness of your charitable giving, then your choice of charity will depend on your religious beliefs. For example, if Christianity is right, the most good you can do will be converting people to Christianity - they then get the benefit of an eternity in Heaven. So you would want to give a decent chunk of your cash to charities which have that high on the agenda. If Christianity turns out to be wrong, that money is wasted. So getting that belief right is very important, and you should follow the usual best cognitive practice and strive to make your beliefs conform to the truth.

A note on cynicism
Some of what I have said above is cynical in tone - cost/benefit analysis of manipulating your beliefs. This is because the argument I was evaluating is pretty cynical. That doesn't mean that arguments like this shouldn't be taken seriously, but it is reassuring that we come to the wholesome conclusion that trying to cynically manipulate yourself is silly and misguided. Indeed, although I have admitted to indulging in a little belief-suppression here, I am extremely wary of this practice except in certain clearly-demarcated special cases.