Economics can help understand two conflicting aspects of religion: its potential usefulness in a free society and the incentives of some believers for extreme intolerance.
The social usefulness of religion has been noticed by many thinkers, including Friedrich Hayek (see Chapter 9 of The Fatal Conceit). Religion or at least some religions can provide the proper incentives for the moral behavior that is necessary for the maintenance of an autoregulated order. In their seminal The Calculus of Consent, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock went in the same direction, but with a caveat (pp. 300-301):
A widespread adoption of Judeo-Christian morality may be a necessary condition to the operation of any genuinely free society of individuals. …
Christian idealism, to be effective in leading to a more harmonious social order, must be tempered by an acceptance of the moral imperative of individualism, the rule of equal freedom. The acceptance of the right of the individual to do as he desires so long as his action does not infringe on the freedom of other individuals to do likewise must be a characteristic trait in any “good” society. The precept “Love thy neighbor, but also let him alone when he desires to be let alone” may, in one sense, be said to be the overriding ethical principle for Western liberal society.
As much as religion can generate useful incentives for life in society, it can also lead believers to behavior more conducive to intolerance, social strife, and violence. An extraordinary example of this was provided by Ismail Haniyeh, who ran the Quatar-based political bureau of Hamas. Three adults among his thirteen children, who were reportedly also involved in Hamas terrorism, were targeted and killed in Gaza by an air strike attributed to the Israeli government. Four of his grandchildren also died in the strike. Haniyeh declared (“Israeli Airstrike Kills Three Sons of Hamas Political Leader,” Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2024):
I thank God for this honor that he bestowed upon us with the martyrdom of my three sons and some grandchildren.
It is difficult to counter the incentives of individuals who believe that their savagery and the sacrifice of their children (and “some grandchildren”) will be rewarded with blissful eternal life. A blissful eternal life has, by definition, an infinite value. The greedy incentive to get there has led to wars of religion, and alas still does.
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Apr 13 2024 at 9:20pm
“An extraordinary example of this was provided by Ismail Haniyeh, who ran the Quatar-based political bureau of Hamas. Three adults among his thirteen children, who were reportedly also involved in Hamas terrorism, were targeted and killed in Gaza by an air strike attributed to the Israeli government. Four of his grandchildren also died in the strike.”
Lest we forget that every victim of war, whether non-combatant or combatant, likely has a mother who will be very sad. One might find it difficult to relate to a person belonging to Hamas and apparently high enough in the organization to be in Qatar, notwithstanding, he is still a father who lost his children and on that level and that level alone I hope that we can empathize with him.
Brings to mind a scene in Three Kings where Mark Wahlberg’s character is being tortured by an Iraqi soldier who recounts how his son was killed by a US air strike. Wahlberg spares the Iraqi.
Ismail Haniyeh seems difficult to relate to given the quote attributed to him, but I would suggest he’s trying to answer the age old question of why God ‘lets bad things happen to good people’ and to try to attribute some greater meaning to the deaths of his children and grandchildren while at the same time being unable to find his own actions in support of Hamas to be in any way shape or form complicit in the death of his family members.
Tough situation….
#peace
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 13 2024 at 10:11pm
Craig: You raise a disquieting issue, which passed through my mind as I was writing my post. I dismissed it (too lightly?) because my point was incentives: Haniyeh is so persuaded that killing infidels will buy him eternal life that he is motivated to spill as much infidel blood as he can. Moreover, his three sons must now be happy to have been blown up.
You are right that we should try to empathize at some level with any human being. It would be easier to empathize with Haniyeh if he had himself borrowed your words mutatis mutandis:
The empathy I would feel for him would be more focussed on the unfortunate circumstance that he has presumably been born and has lived in crummy environments that did not encourage him (to say the least) to ask himself those questions. Which does not imply any moral equivalence. (Another troubling question: Wouldn’t his opportunities have been better if he had lived in a British or French colony?)
Craig
Apr 13 2024 at 10:30pm
“(Another troubling question: Wouldn’t his opportunities have been better if he had lived in a British or French colony?)”
Or perhaps a province of the Ottoman Empire?
Mactoul
Apr 14 2024 at 12:26am
This percept conflicts with another liberal imperative of individual dignity. You can see it in action when the liberals were not content with freedom of homosexual acts but wanted the society to recognize the dignity of homosexuals and homosexual acts by the social recognition of homosexual relationship as marriage.
Jon Murphy
Apr 14 2024 at 7:10am
I don’t see the conflict. Indeed, your example of homosexuality seems like quite the evidence that leaving people alone affirms individual dignity.
Jose Pablo
Apr 14 2024 at 6:46pm
homosexual acts but wanted the society to recognize the dignity of homosexuals and homosexual acts by the social recognition of homosexual relationship as marriage.
I don’t know what “social recognition” means here. I always have a hard time with “social whatsoevers”.
What homosexuals want in this regard is to have the same legal (and tax) rights as heterosexual couples.
Your individual “recognition” bears zero value for them (except if you are a parent, brother, or friend with any of them). Trust me. You are completely free to “recognize” whatever you want to “recognize”.
Ahmed Fares
Apr 14 2024 at 7:12pm
re: tolerance versus acceptance
The Difference Between Tolerance and Acceptance
Having achieved tolerance, the homosexual community is now striving for acceptance, which often takes the form of trying to influence children at the elementary school level. This often backfires and makes people intolerant of homosexuals again.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 14 2024 at 8:39pm
Ahmed: I am not sure how to read you, but if your purpose is (as it seems to be) to criticize the Brynn Tannehil piece you link to, I am with you. If I don’t read you correctly, I would say, with due respect, that the cited piece is pure nonsense. The social problem is how different individuals can live free in society–the problem that was addressed by classical liberals. Tannehil’s piece has the same deepness as the slogan repeated in Huxley’s Brave New World, notably by Lenina, who was not an Einstein:
Ahmed Fares
Apr 14 2024 at 10:18pm
Tolerance without acceptance means social exclusion.
I see what gay people are trying to do by moving from tolerance to acceptance. I don’t agree with how they’re doing it, but I understand why they are doing it.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 15 2024 at 9:02pm
Ahmed: Is choosing a nice-looking girlfriend “social exclusion”? See https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-american-philosophical-association/article/is-it-bad-to-prefer-attractive-partners/474E8BE49F985EB897B05255159689EE. What is “social exclusion”?
nobody.really
Apr 15 2024 at 10:39pm
Adam Smith, The Theory of the Moral Sentiments (1759), iii. 2. 33.
Friedrich A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 3 (1979), “Epilogue: The Three Sources of Human Values,” at 528-29.
Jose Pablo
Pierre Lemieux
Various people speculate about the relationship between philosophers and autism. Both Jeremy Bentham (arguable founder of utilitarianism) and Immanuel Kant (arguable founder of deontology) seemed to have exhibited autistic behaviors. I think of Leonard from The Big Bang Theory, who casually acts in ways that people find repellant—but since he does not need much social interaction, this poses little problem for him (though it often poses a problem for his few friends).
I hadn’t considered that libertarians might also tend in this direction.
This comes to mind because I find the idea that people crave acceptance to be so self-evident as to warrant no explanation. If you don’t share that feeling, perhaps you have never lived in an environment where you had to doubt the acceptance of your peers, and lack the ability to imagine what that would be like. Or, like Leonard, perhaps you honestly have no sensitivity to social acceptance; this variable simply receives a weight of 0 in your utility function.
I question how much public policy can do to promote acceptance—but it never occurred to me to doubt that people crave it.
Winnie Holzman, Wicked (script)
Jose Pablo
Apr 16 2024 at 11:08am
Nobody,
the fact that individuals (what you call “people”) crave acceptance (in all different valid sorts of intensities, by the way) doesn’t imply, by any means, that homosexual individuals crave Mactoul’s acceptance in particular.
Given Mactoul’s stand on this matter, my point was that, very likely, only homosexual individuals who were, at the same time, Mactoul’s close relatives or friends would be in that position (craving his attention).
When you have an organic collectivist mindset, wherein “people” can only be conceived as possessing a singular organic collective consciousness, such subtleties inevitably elude comprehension.
Jim Glass
Apr 16 2024 at 3:26pm
nobody.really wrote:
“Libertarians in personality are very much like liberals, just lower in compassion.” (laughter) — Jonathan Haidt explains the “autism” issue, as to “What Distinguishes Libertarians“, to a Libertarian audience, at NYC’s Museum of Sex. (Directly across the street from my former office. When working at night I could look up from my desk, out my window, in through theirs, and watch old porn, er, classic erotic films … but I digress.) Watch the whole thing from the start for the impact of evolutionary psychology on different political outlooks, especially the importance of the emotion of “disgust” in determining individuals’ political opinions.
At CATO he presented much more data and analysis on the personality differences between political groups…
On intelligence and reasoning libertarians score the highest … on almost every emotional measure we use they score the lowest. The sole exception is ‘reactance’, items such as: “I find contradicting others stimulating!” and “When something is prohibited, I think, that’s exactly what I’m going to do!” (laughter) …
David Seltzer
Apr 14 2024 at 9:38am
Pierre wrote; “because my point was incentives:” It seems each has given the other an incentive to strike and retaliate. A seven year old kid in Gaza is radicalized when he sees his family killed in an Israeli retaliatory strike. The seven year old kid in Sderot sees a rocket launched from Gaza, killing his family and he wants revenge. The tragedy of both asks for empathy. My hope is both will see the futility of this devastating conflagration and cease.
steve
Apr 14 2024 at 9:49am
Religion has the capability of great good and great evil. I think it is when it is joined with politics that it is most likely to commit evil. When religion and politics mix religion is usually the loser.
Steve
Ahmed Fares
Apr 14 2024 at 2:39pm
“Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you must hold your tongue.” —Franz Kafka
While evil people exist, they hold no power in this world. This is because there are no such things as human acts, only divine acts. Humans are only involved insofar as they are the channels through which divine acts flow.
This is best illustrated by the story of Joseph, where God first threw him in a well in order to be picked up by a caravan and thus find his way into Egypt. Then in Egypt, God threw him into prison. At the same time, God threw two of the servants of the king of Egypt into prison such that Joseph’s interpretation of dreams would serve its purpose.
Notice I didn’t mention Joseph’s brothers, the wife of Potiphar, etc… This is because these are the veils of secondary causation.
“Secondary causes are only a veil to occupy the common people. God’s elect see through the causes, to the Causer of causes.” —Rumi
Interestingly, the following poem appeared recently by a Jewish writer in the Times of Israel.
God Who hides Himself in the beauty of secrecy
His mind that is hidden from any thought
Cause of all causes, crowned with the supernal crown
A crown they give to You, O Lord.
(Abraham Maimin, 16th Century)
The God Who Hides
Jose Pablo
Apr 14 2024 at 4:48pm
This is because there are no such things as human acts, only divine acts
Ahmed, if this is true and everything that we see on TV and read in the newspapers is “divine acts”, we have to necessarily agree that “the divine” is extremely and utterly evil.
Women raped, children killed, entire races genocided, people starving to death, Dachau, Auschwitz, Bucha, My Lai, Hiroshima, the Dolphins not making it into the Superbowl, Thanksgiving dinners with my political family …
how can “the divine” be so cruel?!!
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 14 2024 at 8:54pm
Ahmed: Again I am not sure how to read you, but your approach seems to be an extreme quietism. Why then would Israelis take so much trouble organizing their self-defense? Even the acts of the Iranian rulers would be “divine acts.”
Moreover, the Scott Kahn piece that you cite seems to go in the opposite direction. The guy who died in a car accident was not the victim of a divine act. By the way, I found this piece quite interesting and of a very high spiritual wind. I am not sure I understand why the people who have given his crown to the God who now hides from them. The Jewish Good is not the god who’s the simplest to understand!
Ahmed Fares
Apr 14 2024 at 10:06pm
My former family doctor’s name is Verbeek, which a Google search shows to be of Dutch origin. He was a Christian because he had pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in all of his waiting rooms. On each picture, he had printed the following:
“I am but an instrument of God’s healing.”
He did all the things that any doctor does but put everything back to God.
As regards acts, this from Thomas Aquinas:
This also from Luther’s Large Catechism:
Mactoul
Apr 14 2024 at 10:17pm
If there are no evil acts then what are evil people?
Christian thought recognises human free will that’s why they can speak of evil men but if there are only divine acts then there doesn’t exist human evil.
Ahmed Fares
Apr 14 2024 at 10:39pm
Evil nature leads to acquisition of evil acts, in the same way good nature leads to acquisition of good acts. As such, people are still accountable. The quote by Thomas Aquinas in my other comment explains it. This from Islam:
kasb
Jose Pablo
Apr 14 2024 at 4:33pm
Religion or at least some religions can provide the proper incentives for the moral behavior that is necessary for the maintenance of an autoregulated order.
Yes, but religion can also, very easily, lead to a “cage of norms” being imposed upon individuals. Particularly so, in small rural societies.
The path between “cages of norms” and “immoral behavior of the kind avoided by religion” is, indeed, narrow. Most of the time, as your post points out, religion drives people from “immoral behavior” directly into a very strict and damaging “cage of norms”.
Mactoul
Apr 14 2024 at 10:27pm
So you are unfree even when nobody is bothering you, and you are being absolutely left alone — because of the iron cage of norms?
And this to be free you must destroy all the norms and the institutions that support these norms?
Jose Pablo
Apr 15 2024 at 2:01pm
Mactoul, you are not left alone with a cage of norms. Well, or you are, for instance, “left alone” in the middle of the Arctic if you eat seal and caribou together.
And no, you don’t need to destroy ALL the norms and institutions. But the problem with the cage of norms and religion is that they establish a very broad (way too broad) realm of “collective issues”. They do a horrible job at the Constitutional stage, to put it in Buchanan’s terms.
For instance, take the 10th commandment, “You shall not murder” and “You shall no steal”, belong to a completely different category than “You shall not commit adultery” or “honor your father and mother”.
That’s the problem with religion, it sure incentivizes the moral behavior that is necessary for the maintenance of an autoregulated order to put it in Pierre’s terms. But it goes well beyond that and incentivizes “radicals” (a type of personality religions are very well at creating) to intervene in aspects that should better be left to the individuals and are no matter of the collectivity.
That’s mitigated nowadays because religion is an individual choice. But it wasn’t like that in other times and other societies when/where religion was/is the only option.
Jose Pablo
Apr 14 2024 at 4:37pm
A blissful eternal life has, by definition, an infinite value
I don’t know Pierre. A significant number of people commit suicide even while living a non-eternal life. It could be argued that eternal life would drive us to a 100% suicide rate (if “suicide from eternal life” were allowed).
At the very least eternal life would drive us, and that’s for sure, to a 100% divorce rate.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 14 2024 at 7:49pm
Jose: I did write “blissful.” Moreover, remember that eternity is so long that twice eternity is no longer than eternity–just as twice the infinite is no more numerous than the infinite. So any individual would divorce and marry an infinite number of times, and would remarry any former lover an infinite number of times too, not to mention that he would be a cloistered monk for an infinite number of years. With infinite opportunities, it seems difficult to get bored. And I suppose that if somebody did manage to get bored (like a consumer bored by too many choices!), he could just lie down for an infinitely long nap, with a pill to that effect if needed.
This is why(except for the incentives of those who believe in eternal life), economics has nothing to say about eternity for there is no scarcity there.
Jose Pablo
Apr 14 2024 at 10:08pm
I guess “blissful eternal life” was too much of an oxymoron for me. Pretty much like “tasty English food”
Jay
Apr 14 2024 at 7:33pm
“It is difficult to counter the incentives of individuals who believe that their savagery and the sacrifice of their children (and “some grandchildren”) will be rewarded with blissful eternal life.”
My two cents:
While I totally agree with the point you’re trying to convey, I think that using the word “savagery” to describe the Palestinians without any mention of the Israeli government’s inhumane reprisals (which so far have garnered over 30,000 “terrorists”) is making your argument sound one-sided at best and biased at worst.
Mactoul
Apr 14 2024 at 10:11pm
Private people and bodies have been coerced in the name of equal dignity of designated groups. And this coercion has been instigated by liberals and cheered on by libertarians.
Just one example where the liberal rhetoric of letting alone doesn’t match the action is the Masterpiece cakeshop vs Colorado civil rights Commission.
And the pronouns for transgendered? Only couple of days ago a post appeared right here at EconLog citing Adam Smith and equal dignity in the crusade to force third parties to use pronouns preferred by transgendered.
To liberals, equal dignity of homosexuals will not be achieved all religions and churches celebrate homosexual marriage.
Analogous equal dignity of minorities such as American blacks was violated by the private acts of discrimination performed by third parties.
All these cheered by 100 percent of liberals and 99 percent of libertarians.
So how can it be maintained that there is no tension between equal dignity and non-coersion.
Jon Murphy
Apr 15 2024 at 3:30am
I’m not sure how to read you. Your comments hinge on a definition of “coercion,” but the definition varies from example to example, so its not clear what you mean.
For example, your Colorado cake shop example is an example of government coercion, where active behavior is compelled under the threat of force by the government. That is an example of coercion, but you’ll find most liberals opposed that government decision.
But in your other examples, you seem to merely refer to social norms. That’s not coercion in any meaningful sense; if it were than there is no such thing as freedom at all. Everything is coercive, including language, food, clothing, social relationships. If everything is coercive, then your comment explains nothing.
(You “pronoun” example I cannot verify. I did just do a quick look but I cannot find an Econlog blog post that matches your description. Could you link?)
To reiterate my point in my first comment, you claim of conflict is not clear. I think you need to clarify exactly what you mean, rather than make vague references
Mactoul
Apr 15 2024 at 5:35am
All examples involve state coercion. And as to liberals being aghast at campaign against Master cakeshop , I have not found such a liberal.
The Civil right act is an act of state coercion, I suppose, and it prescribes acts of private discrimination. Any such prescription vitiates the claim of letting alone.
That equal dignity is a big driver behind liberalism is explored last week by Kevin Lavery in his post Wisdom on Worth and Work.
I merely point out that there is an obvious tension between letting alone and equal dignity.
Jon Murphy
Apr 15 2024 at 7:02am
No, just the one. And I don’t see where you see coercion in Kevin’s post.
It seems like there are some underlying assumptions in your comments. I just can’t tease them out.
Pierre Lemieux
Apr 15 2024 at 10:58am
Jon: I suspect that Mactoul echoes the intuition that everything an individual does in his private sphere is coercion because there is somebody else who does not like it. Conversely, a coercive act is not coercion if it is a virtuous act as defined by some philosopher-king or some majority of some group. In this extreme perspective, like in 1984, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength,” and liberty is coercion. That is not a tension, but a contradiction.
nobody.really
Apr 15 2024 at 8:07pm
I concur.
First, the Masterpiece Cakeshop case merely sought to apply Colorado’s version of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, arguing that a private store discriminated against a protected class. SCOTUS contrieved to get rid of the case by claiming that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission acted with malice towards the store owner. (Sotomajor noted in dissent that SCOTUS declined to find that Trump acted with malice towards a protected class when he repeatedly declared his intention to ban Muslims–a much more egregious example of express malice.)
So, yes, civil rights laws DO entail coersion of private actors, and people have sought to apply them for the benefit of various protected classes–including blacks and gays. And courts have not been very consistent. Does anything think that if the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop were a member of the KKK, SCOTUS would have affirmed his right to refuse to serve black people based on his religious beliefs?
More generally, I concur that the desire to use law to defend the dignity of members of protected classes conflicts with free speech/free exercise of religion. I find the desire to affirm people’s dignity to be laudable–and, I fear, simply beyond the legitimate power of the law.
Monte
Apr 17 2024 at 11:21pm
Indeed! Weber, in his book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, asserts that “Protestant ethics and values, along with the Calvinist doctrines of asceticism and predestination, enabled the rise and spread of capitalism.” In fact, the protestant work ethic contributed significantly to American prosperity, what George Washington called “the last great experiment for promoting human happiness.”
One might even argue that faith is more important to the future of mankind than economics…
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