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Brillyant comments on "3 Reasons It’s Irrational to Demand ‘Rationalism’ in Social Justice Activism" - Less Wrong
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No.
There is a perfectly rational reason why a Christian might be more inclined than a non-Christian to help a stranger if that Christian believes they will be rewarded for their actions.
There is a clear incentive in their mind.
The Christian who acts only in order to receive the reward ceases to act altruistically. In this sense, they are no "better" than a non-Christian who doesn't help.
But to a sincere believer in a certain interpretation of Christianity, the future heavenly rewards attached to good deeds like helping strangers are just as real and motivating as immediate cash rewards. There is no good reason to suspect this wouldn't motivate them to do more good deeds than a non-believer. It's just simple economics.
Heh. I think you just proposed an argument why spherical cows in vacuum who are "sincere believer[s] in a certain interpretation" will give more milk than other not-that spherical cows.
However as a matter of empirical reality, are you willing to assert that a bleeding person standing over a broken bike by the side of road will have more random strangers stop to help him in, say, Honduras than in, say, Japan? And that difference will be pronounced and noticeable?
Let me offer some useful terms. One is "social cohesion". Another is "high-trust society". Yet another is "collectivism". Note how none of them refers to religious beliefs or to rewards in the afterlife.
Imagine two people approach the bloodied biker. Person A sincerely believes they will receive a future $100 cash reward for engaging in an act of kindness on that day. Person B holds no such belief.
If our scenario takes place in a collectivist, high-trust society with strong social cohesion, which person do you believe is more likely to act to help the bloodied biker? A or B? Why?
I believe both will help and the $100 will make no difference. Homo economicus is a fictional creature.
More to the point, if bloody biker X stands by the side of the road in a Christian but low-trust low-cohesion country, and bloody biker Y stands by the side of the road in a heathen high-trust high-cohesion country, I think Y's chances are better than X's.
It doesn't follow that humans don't ever act based on incentives. What if the $100 was $1,000? Or $1,000,000? The amount is arbitrary. In reality, Christians of a certain ilk believe the rewards they can reap in heaven dwarf any conceivable monetary amount. (Like 3^^^3 times better than $1,000,000...)
In other words, if you place two spherical cows in vastly different scenarios with remarkably different variables, then you can produce an outcome that supports your argument. Fascinating.
They will certainly say they do. However, they don't generally behave as if they really truly deep down believe that. In particular, I can think of very few occasions when I have seen Christians acting more motivated by the prospect of heavenly rewards than they would have been by an offer of $1M in a year's time.
Note also that a typical Christian facing an injured biker probably doesn't believe that he will be saved if he helps and damned if he doesn't, Matthew 25:31ff notwithstanding. Quite right, too; after all, he will be faced with plenty of other opportunities to help or not help, and it can't possibly be true that each of them determines whether he's saved or damned.
And note also-also that this isn't really about Christians versus everyone else; it's about people who believe in huge post-mortem rewards and punishments versus everyone else. E.g., Muslims' beliefs on this score are broadly similar to Christians'.
A certain ilk of Christians do behave in ways that indicate they are very motivated by heavenly rewards. Some do not. Some believe a divine tally sheet doesn't exist. Some believe it is very real and act accordingly. Some say they believe in rewards but there is no evidence indicating that stated belief is sincere. I've met all kinds.
True, except I have met Christians who believe that unrepentant sin could lead to hell, and that Matt 25:31 will describe the fate of many, many of the alleged "saved". In this way, the bold is not necessarily true, as God may rapture at an inopportune time and leave a Christian who has recently turned up her nose at a bloodied biker deserving of hell.
Noted.
And did anyone claim that?
Yes, and in the case of both A and B helping the bloody biker, the amount doesn't matter, even if it's arbitrary.
First, no, they are not spherical cows. Bloody people actually do stand by the side of the road from time to time. Strangers stop and help them. It's an empirical phenomenon which you can empirically investigate.
Second, the "different scenarios" is the entire point. You asserted that Christians will be more likely to help than non-Christians with the implication that this distinction is important. Before that, Alia1d said she'd expect less help in a non-Christian country meaning there would be an observable difference in outcomes.
I think both these positions are wrong. Being a Christian or a heathen is NOT what determines the percentage of random strangers who turn out to be kind-hearted. Other factors, like the ones mentioned by me, are much more important. And similarly, whether you get help on the side of the road or not in a particular country is not driven by whether the population is Christian.
There are many, many variables. One obvious, empirical, demonstrable reason for why people choose to behave in certain ways is incentive.
If you control for all the other variables, a person given an incentive to act in a charitable way (cash, heavenly reward, status, etc.) will do so more often than a person given no other incentive besides collectivism. This is, I hope, obvious and uncontroversial.
Of course, how much (or how little) said incentive motivates a person to act depends on the significance of the incentive.
Certain interpretations of Christianity provide this incentive via the promise of rewards in the afterlife and escape from punishment in the afterlife.
It may be true that in Christian Country C a bloodied biker would be less likely to be helped than in Atheist Country A, but that would be because of a host of uncontrolled variables including but not limited to social cohesion, level of social trust, etc. But, if you control for all the other variables, a person given an incentive to act in a charitable way will do so more often than a person who does not receive that same incentive.
Or... Maybe you have some evidence to support the idea that Christians who sincerely believe in accumulating afterlife rewards in exchange for good deeds actually do fewer good deeds than people who have no such heavenly promise of incentive?
Can you provide any evidence?
Yes, that's why the spherical cows in vacuum made their appearance in this thread. "Everything else being equal" is an abstraction. In reality everything else is never equal.
The whole thing started because Alia1d said she expects less help in a non-Christian country. That is not an "everything else being equal" claim. We have a small, finite set of countries. They are all different. Alia1d is saying, in technical terms, that if we divide our small diverse set into two subsets using the Christian / non-Christian criterion, her expectations for help are higher in the Christian cluster than in the non-Christian cluster. I also read a causal implication in there: this is so not because of some random fluctuations, but because Christianity makes it so.
I do not believe this assertion to be true -- empirically true, on the ground. Discussions of what could possibly happen if one spherical cow floated in vacuum believing in a very particular version of Christianity and another spherical cow floated nearby but did not believe in this version (oh, wait, actually, did not believe in in posthumous rewards? or any incentives? or didn't expect to get $100? one of those...) don't look to be particularly useful.
You are not implying that only Christianity gives people incentives to act in a charitable way, are you?
Moot. There are real world scenarios where the variables could be controlled enough to get an idea of whether a given incentive impacts behavior.
It may be true, for instance, in a Christian country where there is great scarcity that an average citizen maybe less likely to help a bloodied biker than a citizen in an atheist country where there is plenty. But we have plenty of evidence to suggest religious conceptions of the afterlife do indeed influence behavior in many people.
And, as a simple, reasonable, non-spherical-cow thought experiment that uses a realistic model of our world, we could imagine a Christian and a non-Christian each approaching a bloodied biker and how they each may act in a case where the other conditions you mentioned (social cohesion, etc.) were generally equal.
I took issue with you saying there was a bias against non-Christians. That's where "this thing" started for me. I'm saying, to the contrary, there is a good reason to suspect religious people sincerely believing in the reality of a significant afterlife incentive structure will be motivated to behave in certain ways. I think there is plenty of evidence of this.
Based on what empirical evidence?
You're still floating in vacuum.
On the basis of what, do you think, she made this statement?
If you're lumping it all together under "religious people sincerely believing in the reality of a significant afterlife incentive structure", let's make a slight change: one should expect to be helped more in a Muslim country than in a non-Muslim country. Is that a true statement? I see no difference with a s/Muslim/Christian version.
Based on my perception of the world which includes personal experience.