Can satirising religious beliefs be respectful?

The right to freedom of speech is one of the fundamental principles of democracy, and it is one which democratic societies are rightly very proud of. The right to freedom of speech includes the right, within limits, to say and write whatever we like about any subject. Putting aside the chances of being accused of slander, libel, or incitement to racial or religious hatred, the right to freedom of speech ensures that we are free to express ourselves and our opinions.

The right to free speech found its original justification in protecting people from authoritarian oppression because the concept enabled people to speak out against governments without fear of punishment. In addition to this and as a fundamental principle of liberalism, freedom of speech falls in line with other liberal rights as enabling the individual to do and say whatever they like as long as they don't harm others. In other words, individual freedom is paramount. Furthermore, J. S. Mill thought that freedom of expression did not just ensure an individual's freedom and happiness but that it might actually contribute to society by revealing better ways of living.

What is interesting about freedom of speech is that it is defended as being an important right of the person doing the speaking, writing or drawing. (Although Mill thought that free expression would eventually benefit society, this was arguably an added bonus and definitely came second to the idea of the right of the individual to be free.) Is there another side to free speech? Can it be defended not only as a right of the speaker, but perhaps as a right of the listener also? If I have a right to say and write what I like, does it make sense to say I also have a right to hear and read what others say?

This sounds like a strange suggestion, but it may well turn out that free speech is not only important because of what I can express, but because of what it forces me to hear as well. Consider the idea of religious offence. Some religious believers find it incredibly offensive to hear criticisms of their beliefs, especially if these critiques take satirical or mocking forms. Think for example of the Danish cartoon saga, or of Jerry Springer: The Opera. Many people, both Muslims and atheists, found the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad deeply offensive, insulting and even racist. There was outcry on both sides of the debate, one side championed free speech and the other championed religious respect.

What was largely ignored in the debate however, was the possibility that satirical cartoons of a religious figure could be defended, not only on the principle of the individual's right to express themselves, but because such drawing actually demonstrated respect for the religious believer. This is not as bizarre as it sounds, although it does require a little more work than the simple free speech defence of satirical religious expressions.

The case for this position can be made by understanding what "respect" means. There are many subtleties in the concept of respect but it can be striped down to the fairly simple (and not so simple) idea that respecting something or someone means recognising what that object is, and recognising what characteristics make that object worthy of whatever we discern respectful treatment to be. So to respect a human being, I must recognise a 'thing' as belonging to the group 'human being', then I must acknowledge what feature of being a human being makes it worthy of being treated of respect. Then I must decide what respectful treatment actually entails, and crucially, the treatment we decide upon must make reference to the feature we found so respect worthy. Phew.

So, what does that mean? Why do we think humans deserve this 'respect'? Arguably, what marks humans out as beings worthy of the kind of respectful treatment we don't think we owe to animals (few would claim it is equally disrespectful to mock a dog for example), is our rationality and our autonomy. This is the Kantian idea that what makes us worthy of certain treatment is our powers of reasoning and the ability to adopt and follow our own rules. It is true that many of our other features demand specific treatments or attitudes from others, for example our ability to feel pain means others are morally required to avoid ( and protect us from) injury, but it is our features of rationality and autonomy that require other to treat us with what we call 'respect'.

Deciding what respectful treatment of human beings actually entails must therefore recognise them as reasoning and autonomous beings. Respectful treatment does therefore NOT entail protection from views (speech, writing or pictures) that in fact directly recognises those respect-worthy features. This is actually disrespectful because it avoids acknowledging the rational and autonomous powers people have. For example, when I express the view that belief in God is 'stupid', I am directly challenging God-believers to use those powers of rationality and autonomy to either challenge me in return or assess and alter their own views. I am recognising they have those powers and asking them to fulfil them. That is real respect.

Satirising religious views, as in the Danish cartoons, can therefore be defended not only because the cartoonists had a right to express themselves, but because the believers had a right to have their powers of rationality and autonomy respected by those who disagreed with their beliefs. They had a right to see pictures which recognised, and brought to the fore, the very features that qualify them as human beings.

The comforting lie

"Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth." - Abraham Maslow

In the many great debates about religion, the argument that it provides valuable comfort to believers is often put forward. It is argued that belief in a supernatural all-powerful being who rules over the heavens has the power to provide the believer with comfort during trying times. This may be the death of a loved one, the quest for 'meaning', or a fear for your own soul after death. There are two directions to take this argument. The first route is to argue that the comfort provided does not change the truth or falsity of the belief. The second route is to discuss the effect this 'comfort value' has whether we should encourage or discourage these beliefs. There are three responses to this second route. First, it is claimed that it doesn't really matter if a belief in God is really 'True', if believing it is true has such comforting benefits then the non-believing should not work so hard to expose what they consider to be a falsehood.  The second response is to argue that due to the damaging and harmful effects of religion, even moderate or seemingly innocent beliefs should be challenged. The third response is to argue that even without all the harmful impacts of moderate and 'comforting' religious belief, an untrue belief should never be encouraged and unchallenged due to the ultimate value of Truth per se.


Dawkins argues successfully that the benefits of a certain belief  are completely unrelated to the truth or falsity of the belief, and it seems so obvious that I won't say any more about it. In The God Delusion Dawkins also argues against comfort as a 'defence' of religion by noting it is actually immensely condescending to say that although intelligent atheists don't need the comfort of religion, those of lesser intellectual powers need this comfort and so we should just let them have it. I agree that this view is insulting and patronising. 

So lets expand on the other route; the 'value of comfort' argument. Take the fictional example of George. George grew up in a moderate catholic family. As an adult he goes to church on special occasions with his family, but when asked if he believes in God, he replies with a shrug. Catholicism plays no major part in his life and he spends very little time contemplating God's existence. Yet when it comes to the subject of the death of his father, George seeks comfort in the idea of God and continuing souls. George believes when he dies he will be reunited with his father. He feels no need to worry about the details or how this fits in with the other views he has about the universe, he just has a feeling about it, and it comforts him to think it. 


There are three responses to this story (each one will assume that God and the afterlife does not exist, for that is not the question here). The first response is to say that George's belief is important to him, it provides emotional comfort and essentially helps him cope with the death of his father. If we push him to analyse his beliefs and try to show him the errors in his belief, we are only harming him. He may be believing in a lie, but so what, it works for him so who cares?


The second response is a counter argument to the first response. We have to attempt to show him the errors in his beliefs because it matters very much if he believes in this lie. We care about George's false belief because religion has such power to harm us. Although George's belief is not bombing abortion clinics, stoning homosexuals, blowing up buses, resisting important scientific and medical advances or contributing to the spread of HIV, allowing beliefs such as Georges to go unchallenged is a hindrance to the fight against the more harmful aspects of religion. Allowing beliefs to go unchallenged because they bestow some benefit to the believer is a worrying path to tread as other religious beliefs could fall under this protection, and these beliefs and their corresponding benefits may not be so innocent. The defence that moderate religious belief receives can only help defend fundamentalism as well.


The third response argues that even if George's belief was not part of a wider and much more dangerous belief system, it would still be worth trying to persuade him of his errors. This argument claims that we must persuade George to look more closely at the belief he will see his father again, not because this belief is dangerous to society in any way, but because it is an Untruth. Simply put, Truth matters.


When I say that truth matters, it is truth with a capital 'T'. I am not saying we should always tell the truth, sometimes lies are necessary. When my friend has a bad haircut, I lie to spare her feelings. Unlike Kant, if a murderer came to my door looking for the person who was hiding in my house, I would lie about my knowledge of their whereabouts. White lies, and even fairly big lies, are sometimes the lesser evil. Yet when it comes to truths about the world, the really big truths that define who we are as humans and the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of our existence, the Truth matters. So if George hears of his fathers death and is suicidal, I may agree with him that he will see his father again. But years later when this lie no longer serves to save his life, I would not encourage his belief. 


The question remains however, why are these big truths so important? Why is knowledge of the 'real' and 'true' the ultimate goal? Why does it matter if we kid ourselves about seeing our lost loved ones again, or invent a meaning to human existence when there may not be one, or believe in a path our lives where meant to take, or that "everything happens for a reason"? 

The pragmatic answer is that Truth matters because seeing the world the way it really is, is surely better than concocting a view of the world which suits our preferences. The harms of religion are perfect proof that when we concoct views of the world according to our preferences (or the benefits we might derive from them), we end up in a really big mess. This however is not a defence of Truth per se, but only the instrumental value of Truth in that if we could find it, it could resolve conflicts. So what is the ultimate answer to why Truth is intrinsically valuable? 

Unfortunately I can't think of a good answer that doesn't beg the question (along the lines of "Truth is valuable because it is True!!!!) Having said that, I think a good (and fully fleshed-out) answer would make use of the idea that to live by Truth, rather than by comforting lies, is how to live up to all that humanity can be. To live happily in a created and imagined world is easy, to live happily in the world as it truly exists is a much greater achievement.

Here's a tip for you

The custom of tipping for service in restaurants is a complex one with several arguments for and against. I noticed recently that in these arguments there are some resemblances with the arguments for and against the benefit system, or social welfare.

In the U.K it is customary to tip approximately 10-12.5% in restaurants where service charge is not automatically added on. As a waitress of a good standard (but by no means exceptional) I can safely claim that approximately half of all customers ignore this custom. Some will tip 5%, some will leave a few pennies of change, and only a few actually tip 10-12.5%.

Leaving aside the cultural backgrounds of customers and the tipping customs of their own cultures, the overriding assumption among many restaurant goers seems to be that leaving a tip is completely up to them, their particular dining experience, and whether they are feeling flush that month.

An argument against tipping is that leaving a percentage means you tip more for an expensive meal, when the service may be the same as that of a cheaper meal. This seems unfair if what you are supposed to be tipping for is the quality of service. Another argument is that people do not tip according to the quality of service, but to other factors such as the race, gender and class of their server (and I can attest to the truth of this, as my manager jokingly suggested I try to be less 'middle-class'). The final argument often espoused by the customers themselves is that the price of the meal includes the wage of the waiter, and their job is to serve the food, therefore why should they be paid extra to do precisely what is in their job description?

Although (unsurprisingly) I strongly believe in tipping, it seems the first argument has some validity. Why should a waiter in a restaurant with an average spend-per-head of £20 take home more in tips than a waiter in a cheap pizza restaurant, when they are working equally as hard? As to the second argument, why should a person's pay packet (to which tips contribute to substantially) be dependant on their race, gender or class? Indeed, this amounts to a kind of discrimination which would be intolerable in any other job.

And so we come to the final argument: that the job of a waiter is to serve, and that therefore they should not get paid any more for fulfilling their job description. The answer is that without the tips, a waiter's salary is not enough to live on. Nearly every restaurant pays nothing more than the minimum wage, and especially in London that is not enough to live on. Therefore we rely on tips to make up our wages, and importantly, the restaurant owners know this. Owners know that they will always get people to work as waiters because customers will make up the difference between a minimum wage and a livable wage. As the other two arguments against tipping demonstrate, this is not a fair and just way to make a decent wage. It depends too much on the whim of certain customers, how much their bill comes to, and whether the waiter is white or black, male or female and 'posh' or 'chavvy'. So essentially customers are right, why should they pay a certain percentage to bump up a wage when the waiter is just fulfilling their assigned role. It should be the role of the restaurants to pay a decent wage in the first place.

Here we come to the similarity with the benefit system. In a recent discussion with some friends, I was faced with the old argument, "why should I pay so that some lazy couple and their million kids can live in a nicer house than me and not have to work?" The answer is that there are many factors that lead to that benefit-reliant lifestyle. What we need to do is understand what has lead someone to think that having no ambitions and living on handouts is preferable to getting a job and having a challenging and stimulating career which contributes to society? People are not born lazy and disinterested and unable to form goals and ambitions, it is poverty and inequality which gets them there.

So what we need to do is eradicate the circumstances that make people so benefit reliant, this means increasing equality and providing real opportunities. Importantly however, in the mean time, these people still need the benefits that our taxes provide. Similarly, in the case of tipping, we need to eradicate the need for tipping by paying waiters a decent wage. Importantly however, in the mean time, waiters still need tips to survive. The point then is remove the circumstances that essentially  mean some people must rely on the handouts of others. Providing a better minimum wage would go along way to doing this.

The problem is that while customers are tipping, and while taxes pay out to the perpetually benefit-dependant, restaurant owners and the government respectively have little incentive to change the system. It is a chicken and egg situation, but what should come first? Should we stop the tips/benefits so that the people in charge are forced to deal with the underlying causes of the need for restaurant tips and social benefits? If we do that, an untold number of people in that crossover period will suffer greatly. This is unacceptable and it should not take that amount of suffering to cause the decision-makers to take action. So society must keep giving, we must give in tips and we must give in benefits, but at the same time, we must demand the changes that will hopefully make such giving unnecessary.

How to be good?

If there's one person who makes me feel really bad about myself, it's Peter Singer. As an undergraduate I learnt that I should be a vegetarian. Simply put, Singer convinced me that non-human animals have a capacity for pain, just as humans do. Killing animals for my consumption obviously causes animals avoidable pain, therefore I should not eat them. Its also no good to argue that by the time the meat gets into the supermarket its already dead so I may as well eat it, because we all know that is a terrible argument. There is no completely suffering-free way to kill animals so Singer therefore concludes we should all be vegetarians. I can't see any major problems with his argument. Humans don't need to eat meat to survive, we eat it because we like it, not out of necessity. Eating meat therefore makes me not quite as moral as I should be. So I am a vegetarian. Oh, er...actually, I'm not.

As if that wasn't enough, I also became aware of a website called  Giving What We Can which is where people pledge to give away a substantial portion of their incomes. The founder of this website Toby Ord, gave a lecture at King's College London where I was convinced that yes, me and everyone else should be giving away A LOT more of our incomes. The argument I was convinced by is Singer's example in Famine, Affluence, and Morality. He says that “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.” The example he gives is that if he is walking past a shallow pond where he sees a child drowning, he ought to wade in and pull the child out. Although this will mean that his clothes will get muddy, this is insignificant, as the death of the child is obviously considerably worse than muddy clothes. It is hard to argue against this, it seems simple and true. If I can do something to save a life, I should do it. To add insult to the injury that Singer is causing me, he also says that saving lives by giving aid should not be considered generous, or even praiseworthy. It is simply our duty as moral human beings. Therefore, I give away 10% of my income to this website. Oh, er...actually, I don't.

I should be a vegetarian, and I'm not. I should give away 10% of my income and I don't. I do try though, I don't eat non-free range meat or eggs, and every couple of months I donate about 30 pounds to a different charity. When I turn down cheap chicken, or press the 'donate now' button I feel good about myself, yet I know that this doesn't make me moral. I am not fulfilling my duty. I am not as 'good' as I could be, I know this, and yet I'm doing very little about it. I feel bad, but obviously not bad enough.

One reason why I let myself off the hook is that I know that however little I'm doing, there are still people doing less than me. While most people are not giving any money to charity, I can feel good that I am giving at least a little. While this might alleviate some psychological stress, philosophically I know that other people's actions cannot make my actions more or less moral. If a group I belong steals 1000 pounds each, and I only steal 100 pounds, that does not make me good.

It is therefore morally arbitrary how much other people are giving. It is also arbitrary how far away these 'needy' people are, and it is arbitrary how much 'like' me they are. All these factors may be morally arbitrary but it can't be denied that they are impacting on my choices. If I knew everyone was giving away 10%, or that those that needed saving were my next door neighbours, I would undoubtedly be giving more. Similarly, if I knew that I was the only meat-eater in the world, I would feel much worse about eating meat. So these factors make a difference to how bad I feel, and how much impetus I feel to do something about it. But that doesn't change the fact that these feelings are morally irrelevant.

So what can be done about this? How can we make people like me ignore the feelings that let them off the hook, and get them to do something about it? How can we make those who 'want to be good ' actually fulfil the duties that would make them 'good'? I don''t know, I wish I did because I would apply it to myself and I'd be giving away 10%. I suppose I can least feel better that I at least fell guilty about it. There are people who don't even feel bad that they aren't being as 'good' as they could be. Oh dear, that sounds like letting myself off the hook again by comparing to the actions of others. Guilt, however, is the fist step to action, so I propose we make people feel really guilty.... at best maybe people will start fulfilling their duties, and at worst I'll have some company in feeling pretty disappointed in myself.

The problem with spirituality

Recently my sister and I have been discussing the subject of spirituality. It all began after a stressful day at work when she suggested I do an hour of yoga with her. After ten minutes it became clear I was not in her words “taking this seriously.” I began to laugh at the point where the video instructor informed me that by breathing in a certain way, I was 'connecting' to all the other people doing yoga around the world. My response sparked a debate on what spirituality actually is and whether I am closed-minded in being suspicious of it.

I admit I have little knowledge of yoga, or understand the tenets of certain Eastern traditions which go back thousands of years, nor have I extensively researched 'chakras'. My thoughts here are based purely on discussions I've had with people who endorse the idea that yoga (and similar 'spiritual' activities) can 'change your life'. I therefore apologise if I have misrepresented certain ideas and would welcome correction.

My problem is with the kind of spirituality which claims that by reaching this certain mystical state - a state where thought is suspended, where one is simply 'existing', neither doing or thinking - I am somehow 'connecting' to something in a real ontological sense. The claim seems to be not only that in this state I can experience a connection to the universe, but that I actually am connecting to the universe. I asked my sister what this 'connecting' means. She replied that it is simply being a part of the universe, where you become less conscious of your ego and simply experience the absoluteness of a timeless and infinite universe.

This is a problem because I have yet to find a satisfactory answer to the question, What is this connection? If I am experiencing something real when I enter this spiritual state, what precisely is it? If the spiritualists want to claim this is more than my imagination, more than complex brain processes, then they must show how it is more than that.

It appears therefore, that a spiritual state of 'connectedness', or a sense of the 'Absolute' is actually no different from many other human experiences. These experiences are real in the subjective sense that the statement, “I am experiencing the feeling of such and such” is true, but they do not correspond to anything objectively real in this world, or any other world.

An example of this could be Love. When I love someone, I experience a variety of feelings and thoughts. These feelings are real in the sense that they exist in my brain. I can experience love, and it is real in the sense that it is true that I am experiencing love. Yet this experience is purely subjective, it cannot be said to exist in any objective way. There is not a transcendent place I need to access where the love between me and another exists, yet where our actual experience of love is not yet present. My experience of it is all that there is.

Spirituality is arguably no different from this. I can feel and experience moments of intense tranquillity, a sense of my own smallness, the removal of my ego, no concept of past or future, or any other way in which spiritualists describes this state, yet I remain unconvinced I am 'accessing' anything other than a part of my imagination and the corresponding feeling this imagined state creates in my mind. I am certainly not 'accessing' another realm of spirits, souls, chakras or energies. Just as my experience of love cannot exist somewhere before I actually experience it, the spiritual world cannot be 'experienced' prior to my imagination of it. By imagining it we create it in the only way it can be said to exist: in our imagination.

The spiritualists have two choices: Either they claim that the spiritual world is real in an objective sense and is not simply created in my mind by my imagination, in which case I would kindly ask them to provide some evidence. Or they can claim that they do not deny that spiritual experiences are subjective imaginative experiences, in which case I would ask them how they think they can teach it through yoga lessons and the like. Spiritual gurus claim to be able to teach the way to these spiritual experiences, but if they are merely subjective imaginative experiences, how can they? Can you teach someone to dream a particular dream, can you teach someone to love a particular person in a particular way, and can you teach someone to imagine another world exactly the way you do? I don't think so, and I wouldn't even want someone to try.