This was kind of a devil’s advocate type of challenge.  I offered it at first to an atheist who was arguing the same argument that Dennett and others have made that religion is responsible for human harm and therefore, that all people of a specific religion are responsible for human harm exacted in the name of that religion.  It is an argument that bases ethical culpability on an epistemological claim.  A clear category error.  So I had offered this as a way out of that problem to tighten up the argument a bit.  My debate partner did not get what I was talking about or why his argument was seriously flawed.  I became very bored with the atheist debates after that as virtually all of the arguments, as I realized, simply parroted those of “The Four Horsemen“.

From August 2007

Would You Deny Your Faith To Save Lives and End Wars?

This is a logical problem that I would like to see how people of faith would address. One of those problems that I think helps us to clarify our theological reasoning because it offers a fundamentally rational premise for why people of faith should deny their faith to save lives. I will comment on the problems from the Christian perspective that are inherent in the premises a bit later. Nonetheless the grounds for the wager are quite evidently rational.

Faith is not grounded in a reality for which we can predict its behavior or action in the world to any reliable degree whatsoever. It is therefore unreasonable based on the grounds of probability or any “stuff” of verifiable experience that God or any non-contingent reality is real. That is to say the probability that a claim of faith is directly correspondent to a reality is either extremely low or undetermined.

A faith based ethic is therefore irrational since it is based on a fundamental reality with an inherently extremely low or undetermined probability that it even exists. Because this faith is fundamentally irrational any action that causes to any degree material harm in the environment or in any creature or life form as it were, is also irrational both on its grounds and on its effect of action. However, the grounds for any good action that encourages and helps prosper human flourishing, and any action that even may be in itself rational is yet on the same irrational ground.

The outcome of loss of faith may be psychological counseling, forming communities based on rational ideas of service and the like. The outcome of maintaining faith commitments is to maintain a direct and inevitable cause of irreparable human suffering, death, environmental catastrophe, and psychological harm.

Because the grounds for both outcomes of faith are fundamentally irrational it is a better bet to sacrifice the good action as an effect of faith claims by eradicating the grounds of faith altogether, than reforming causes of actions based on that irrational ground since it is nonetheless fundamentally irrational. To make the ground itself rational requires a significant increase in the probability that it is true or an eradication of that ground altogether in favor of more rational grounds.