Reviews for Outline of Religion

The average rating for Outline of Religion based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-02-10 00:00:00 Daniel Robinson An interesting, and an undeservedly unknown, collection of essays by John Stuart Mill on the subject of religion. The book itself holds three essays by Mill; the first two essays On Nature and The Utility of Religion were written shortly before On Liberty (1859) and they form part of Mill's most productive period (which saw the publication of On Representative Government, The Subjection of Women and - perhaps his most famous work - Utilitarianism. Safe to say, Mill was a sharp mind and perhaps experienced his most sharpest period during 1855-1861. Nevertheless, both On Nature and The Utility of Religion were never officially published. Shortly before Mill's death in 1874, he had written a third essay on religion, called On Theism, which was finished in 1873. His step-daughter published the three unpublished essays on religious posthumously, and I think we should thank her for this. The essays themselves are pretty straightforward and a delight to read. Mill clarifies concepts, makes sharp distinctions and lays out his arguments in his peculiar witty style. After Bertrand Russell, John Stuart Mill - who was Russell's godfather, by the way - is my favorite philosopher, and I count these essays among his finest work. In On Nature, Mill argues against the concept of natural law as a principle of ethics and law. According to him, Nature can mean either (1) the system of natural things and their properties or (2) the natural state of things, independent of human intervention (i.e. as in the dichotomy natural-artificial). When moralists and legislators claim that we should conform to nature or that nature should be the principle of a body of law or ethics, they are wrong. If they mean nature in the sense of (1) their words are meaningless. If we should conform to nature; and nature being the system of natural things and their properties; then the world is deterministic, and there is no room for voluntary action - sweeping away natural law as an ethical-juridical measure. If they mean nature in the sense of (2) their words are irrational and immoral. By definition, any human action changes the natural state of things, so any human action will be a breach of nature's ethical-juridical principle - this would lead to very short and apathetic lives... Also, in most of our lives holding nature as the principle to be imitated would lead to very immoral lives - it is exactly the possibility to transcend nature which distinguishes us from more primitive organisms and which allows us to ask ethical question to begin with. In short (my interpretation) nature is no model to map our behaviour onto or to use as a measuring rod to evaluate the behaviour of others. At best, it is a necessary condition, in the sense that 'ought' implies 'can' - demaning things of ourselves and others which are naturally impossible is meaningless. The role of human beings is to bring justice and goodness in the world, through our sympathy with our fellow human beings - i.e. transcending the natural state of things (whether you are a religious believer or not). The second essay sees Mill asking the intriguing - and mostly unnoticed - question about the use of religion. Right from the start, Mill notices that the distinction between questions of truth and questions of utility - a religion can be true but be unuseful or even detrimental to human well-being; a religion can be untrue yet useful to believe; or religion can both be true and useful or untrue and useless. Mill wittingly remarks that questions of utility pop up in times when religious believers feel threatened on the question of truth - which is, of course, absolutely right, emphasizing the need of essays like Mill's. Next, Mill distinguishes between individual and social utility. To start with the latter, he claimes religion has been used as a social instrument for ages. Moral principles - justice, veracity, goodness - are necessary for any society to function properly and promote the well-being of its members. According to Mill, there are three factors determining human social behaviour: 1. The power of authority over the human mind in following authority of proof - proportional to the number of people holding the particular belief; 2. The power of education (as in teaching and cultivating) in teaching us convictions and habits, taming our instincts and controlling our emotions; 3. The power of public opinion in the approval or disapproval of others. This is the main factor shaping our conscience - yet due to us being familiar with our conscience we tend to forget the role of public opinion in shaping it. When it comes to authority and education, religion has played its role - but to claim religion is responsible for those factors is ridiculous. There simply was no alternative, religion had the monoply on education and authority (an interesting exception was Ancient Greece). If the only form of education is christian, the effects of education tend to be christian... which says nothing about the effects of education as such. In the case of public opinion, religion was a strengthening force of an already existing natural phenomenon. People need each other and are dependent on the social status others convey on them (except in times when a military chaos erupts) in order to fulfil their needs and satisfy their desires. Following Jeremy Bentham, Mill observes that religion is superfluous in enforcing social norms. For example, swearing under oath is only taken serious for those cases which public opinion weighs important. Also, duelling is forbidden by (the christian) religion, yet was and is very prevalent in christian countries. Lastly, in sexual relationships, women are punished for promiscuity while the man almost always walks away, yet this is not what Scripture teaches. In short: religion has no social use. At best it's a strengthening force of an already existing moral code, which is enforced through public opinion. In most cases a religious sanction - like eternal punishment - is hardly effective in warding of Earthly crimes. More importantly, ascribing a religious status to moral prescriptions is highly dangerous: it protects these moral codes against (legitimate) criticism and prevents any discussion about them. When morality is given a supernatural origin, morality is stereotyped (sort of like law in Islam). So, has religion individual uses? Mill is rather short on this. Human life is incomplete and short, our ambitions and hopes aren't. Religion can satisfy us with this life and feeling exalted. Another argument for the use of religion is that its essence consists in making us aim our emotions and desires at ideal goals. We transcend short-term, personal goals for the benefit of something greather and more important than us. But these functions are perfectly served by a secular morality - a religion of humanity, so to speak. Ideal morality aimst at universal good and individual spontaneity - the balance between duty and freedom - and is driven by our sympathy, natural goodness and our craving for (ideal) perfection. For lesser minds, shame can help in keeping them on the right track. The religion of humanity is more suited (compared to supernatural religions) to promote justice, veracity and goodness in both an individual and his or her society. Why? Because - It is a disinterested morality (as opposed to prudential calculations on how to reach the afterlife); - It is morally consistent (as opposed to moral implications of religion such as hell, predestination, etc.); - It is perfectly compatable with and unharmful to human reason (as opposed to religions where inquiry leads to contradiction and thus to hypocisy and a ban on inquiry); - It is consistent with scientific knowledge (as opposed to moral dualism, like Manicheism, which itself is more consistent with science than monotheism). This leaves the obvious remark that a secular morality - a religion of humanity - can't offer an afterlife. Of course not, but - according to Mill - with increasing well-being and satisfaction (through the application of science and technology) the desire for an afterlife will diminish ever more. What is horrifying about death is not death itself, but the gruesome dying (with all its psychological and physical pains). Facts don't care about our feelings, a contemporary political commentator would say. Also, an afterlife is historically contingent and thus not necessary - many cultures (among whom the Ancient Greeks and the buddhists) postulate a primarily negative afterlife or aren't familiar with the concept at all. The third and final essay sees Mill arguing against all the arguments of religious believers in favour of their God. For millennia, theism has been a satisfactory answer to many of life's questions. It is a natural result of two fundamental human assumptions: (1) all states follow from earlier states, and (2) every state follows from a multiplicity of earlier states (multi-causality). From this it follows that there has to be one (final) cause which caused all the causal series of the world - a legislative coordinator, so to speak. The question thus becomes: What is this supernatural/transcendental cause of the totality? - A question which started philosophy. Mill tries to answer to questions: Is the theory of Creation consistent with scientific results? Are the proofs of the theory of Creation scientific? The first question is easily answered. The only Creation theory which is consistent with science is the one that postulate that God is the Creator of Natural Laws - which were and are continuously observed and vindicated. In other words: a God that obeys his own laws, either as a fallible clockmaker that keeps on adjusting the springs (Newton) or as a perfect clockmaker (Leibniz). This rules out most of the religions that humanity has ever known. The second question is harder, since it asks for a detailed analysis of the different kinds of theological arguments. Mill starts with the simple remark that all science is, ultimately, reducable to individual experience. This means that all scientific arguments should be (able to be) deduced from experience. This observation rules out any a priori arguments that are not a posteriori arguments in disguise. A priori arguments claim that God's existence can be (or must be) proven from something which is independent of existence. These arguments don't deal with experience, hence they're unscientific. Some a priori arguments - e.g. proving the existence of God from the fact that we have an idea of him which is (supposedly) impossible to experience - are really a posteriori argument. The fact that I have an idea of God is still an empirical statement. Mill retorts that most a priori arguments start from experience but claim transcendental things. It is too much to lay out all of Mill's refutations of the religious arguments. Suffice to state his conclusions: 1. Arguments from revelation are not reliable, unverifiable, in most cases explainable in natural terms, and thus ultimately useless. 2. Arguments from nature - really only the argument from Design (which is based on induction, i.e. probable at best) - point to a limited Creator, possibly omniscient, to a certain extent interested in the well-being of sentient creatures. 3. An afterlife is possible, on the condition that God has sufficient power to create this - we really cannot say anything about it. According to Mill - and perfectly in line with his second essay - hope is a very important element of human well-being. What gives us hope? The possible government of our universe, and our possible afterlife. This hope requires a cultived mind, in which reason sets the limits to hopeful speculations. Next, a moral standard - outside of human nature - is useful. God as moral principle has led to contradictions and horrors. The model for the religion of humanity is Jesus Christ, as described in the gospels. That is, Jesus' original sayings, teachings and acts - not the mystics of John. I think we can distil a very general moral precept from Mill's analyses. Try to act, within the limits of your own life, in such a way that you can help God (if you choose to believe in Him) in bringing this imperfect universe one small step closer to perfection - make it a finer place to live for human beings and other sentient creatures. Mill's morality seems a strange concoction of Jesus, Marcus Aurelius and Epicurus. What to think of it all? I think Mill's analyses, clarifications and arguments are both honest and clever. I fully agree with his rejection of nature as ethical or legislative standard. It just seems to be a negative argument: fine, you've done away with traditional conceptions, but what's to replace it. I guess since the essay was written around 1858, and Utilitarianism published in 1861, Mill's utilitarian theory of ethics ought to replace natural law. But for clearing up the mess of tradition, Mill's essay is useful. His essay on the utility of religion is the best one of this bundle. It is concise, clear and sharp. his distinctions and refutations are convincing to me. It helps that I already thought along the lines of Mill's argument, so perhaps my mind is more convinced of the need for a secular 'religion of humanity' to fulfill all the functions religion has served. Also, anno 2020 in The Netherlands, most of Mill's claims seem to be vindicated and well developed. For example, human rights can be viewed as Mill's 'religion of humanity' while science, technology and capitalism have improved human well-being tremendously - nevermind all the pessimists. His third essay was the least interesting. It was not edited due to Mill's death, and this shows in the longwindedness and the huge amount of chapters. Then again, I was already familiar with the religious arguments from earlier studies, so the best I could get from Mill's essay was a satisfaction of watching a brilliant mind go over these religious chestnuts. And this I got. The essays are classic Mill and are perfectly in line with the Anglosaxon analytic tradition (short, clear and precise works). Also, they're perfectly in line with empiricist ideals - Mill was a radical empiricist who even viewed mathematics as an empirical science. I love this way of thinking and writing - it makes you appreciate clarity and precision so much more! For anyone interested in the subject of religion: these essays are definitely a recommendation!

Review # 2 was written on 2015-08-01 00:00:00 David O'donoghue One of the most challenging books I've read on the subject; not as immediately accessible as was his book, On Liberty. Mills did not treat this subject lightly, but gave considerable thought to his nuanced conclusions. You might not agree with his opinions, but you will know you have been treated to the musings of a first rate mind. Highly recommended.