Rationalists should attempt to destroy religion.

Pro has the burden of proof to show that "Rationalists should attempt to destroy religion." My alternative is that rationalists should oppose whatever irrational beliefs are most harmful. The goal of "destroying religion" is all encompassing. It doesn't say "destroy religion, except maybe we can leave certain Buddhists and Quakers alone, and focus mainly on jihadists and others that are really obnoxious." There is something wrong with the all-encompassing "destroy religion," and Pro admits it when he carves exceptions. What he is admitting is that it is irrational to set "destroy religion" as the goal when what one really means is "destroy irrational beliefs that pose a threat." Some irrational beliefs are harmless. For example, modern astrology is irrational but mostly harmless. Horoscopes say things like "Capricorns: Today is a bad day to annoy a rottweiler." While the astrological reasoning is unsound, the advice is harmless. Therefore, "rationalists should destroy astrology" presents the same wrong emphasis of what the problem is. The problem is not irrationality in general, it is harmful irrationality. If Pro meant to resolve, "Rationalists should attempt to destroy harmful religious extremism," then he should have asserted that resolution, and we wouldn't be having this debate. But that is not the resolution he asserted. He asserted that rationalists should attempt to destroy not only jihadist Islam, but Buddhists, Quakers, Jainists, and the Salvation Army. Pro restated his list of reasons for destroying religion. I have granted that harmful irrationality, including harmful irrationality cloaked as religion, ought to be opposed (or "destroyed" as Pro likes to say.) Pro should have used the space to respond to my argument that if one replaced "religion" with "pseudo-religion" (meaning "irrational secular ideology.") then Pro's reasons would be just as valid. I challenged, "Pro gives examples of bad religion and then claims a generality. How is that claim different from citing bad atheists and then claiming a generality?" Pro did not respond. Do the examples of Stalin and Mao therefore affirm, "Religious people should attempt to destroy atheism." I claim it does not, because examples do not prove the inherent nature of atheism. Nor do examples prove the inherent nature of religious belief. Pro has the burden of proof in this debate. Pro must show that if religion is destroyed, including all those Buddhists and Salvation Army people, that the world will be a better place. Clearly there is something about human nature that seeks ideological answers. It is a void that has to be filled, but the trend over time is that there are fewer religious wars and more secular wars. 1. Con: "Do people have the needs and tendencies I have supposed? Pro: "Maybe, but it doesn't logically follow that religion is the optimal outlet for these tendencies and it doesn't prove that these tendencies cant be reigned in." Why just "maybe"? Can people figure out every important moral and social question in the context of each situation from scratch, without a set of overarching principles? For example, Pro's resolution for this debate is a simple overarching principle; it says if x is a religion, then x should be destroyed. An overarching principle is a simple rule or guideline, like the Golden Rule. How exactly does one "reign in" the necessity of not analyzing every situation from scratch. If a person had no simple rules, he would be paralyzed, turning every situation into a mammoth episode of introspection and research. Suppose someone says something ambiguous, should I take offense? One simple rule to resolve that is, "Give people the benefit of the doubt." Another simple rule is, "People are usually out to get you." It isn't practical to think, "To figure this out, I will first need to analyze the semantics, then I'll need to understand the speaker's background, recall the nature of our previous interactions, ..." and so on, trying not to take any shortcuts. What a rational person ought to do is to be willing to do the deep analysis when the situation demands it, but no one can operate without principles that expedite decision making. What we should seek for society is the general adoption of reasonable principles, and the objection of principles that harm society. We should not care about irrationality that poses no harm. 2. Pro grants that religion is a mechanism for social evolution, as I have claimed. He argues that it does not work fast enough. So what is the track record for the modern pseudo-religions: communism, fascism, and socialism? How about nationalism and racism? There is no way to count the numbers that makes the modern better. 3. Pro says that "maybe" pseudo-religion is more imposing on my life than religion, but he argues, "I don't see what this has to do with jihadism, which is what I focus on." The relevance is that Pro's resolution says I should attempt to destroy religion, not that I should attempt to destroy jihadism. It's comparable to posing "Atheism should be destroyed," then saying that one wants to focus on Stalinism, and that anything else is irrelevant to the resolution. 4. "Are time-tested social rules a better starting point than new ideologies?" Pro: "NO! They often amount to little more than irrational appeals to tradition. I think you would agree." I absolutely do not agree. Modern Judeo-Christian society is far more rational than the preposterous rules of political correctness, nature worship, and supposed devils that have been ginned up by nuvo-fanatics. The modern alternative is fueled on hatred and intolerance. The traditional alternative was not designed to be rational, is evolved to be reasonable as a consequence of many irrationalities having been proved unsuited to society. Surely Pro can appreciate the principle of evolution; the eyeball is not a product of intelligent design, it is a product of nature selecting what works best. Evolution has certainly not perfected human design, and social evolution has certainly not perfected society. However, the idea that a conceited elite can redesign society to make it better is implausible. 5. "Religion is one of very few modes of conversation humans engage in where people seem to think intellectual honesty and evidence are not required." Have you ever tried to debate global warming with a true believer? Global warming true believers are more dogmatic than Christian fundamentalists. Their vision is extremely harmful, especially to the poorest people of the world. They seethe with hatred and intolerance. It isn't an intellectual discussion, it has every bad aspect of an extremist religious discussion. Here in California, a dam is needed to prevent the city of Sacramento from being destroyed in a flood worse than New Orleans. It cannot be built because the hard-headed minnow might be inconvenienced, not destroyed, just inconvenienced. I won't divert into the long list of such nonsense, but the list of unquestionable and unchallengeable beliefs is vast. Pro claims of me, "Indeed, his seclusion in a country that separates church and state has blinkered him to the needless suffering caused by religion." Pro used China as a sterling example of how it was possible to destroy religion. Pro sees only religious extremism and ignores non-religious extremism, and he urges me to be equally blind. I'm not in either China or Saudi Arabia, but where I am, my freedom and well-being is threatened by secular ideology. The resolution supposes I should ignore the non-religious threat and instead go after Catholics or the Salvation Army or whatever religion is around. That's irrational. Pro accuses me of defeatism. That's ridiculous. I think society is much better off today than it was a hundred years ago, and that what rationalists should do to advance society is to oppose irrational extremism in any form. It'll work.