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.