More On Incentives

By Daniel Miessler on November 11th, 2006: Tagged as Culture | Education | Philosopy | Religion

In my last post I spoke about how tracking incentives can lead to the answers for why the world is in such bad shape. If you take that a bit further you can see that the role of a parent, a school, or a society should be to create good incentive systems in our children.

That made me think: if there are good incentive systems, what are the bad ones? Asking that question to myself immediately yielded the worst one:

Be good or you won’t go to heaven. Don’t be bad, or you’ll go to hell.
These are horrible systems because they don’t coincide with a reality that humans interact with. They see a world where the incentive is to be evil, not good. Those who take advantage of others are rewarded, so they emulate that — very logical, really.

This is exacerbated by the fact that God is supposed to be punishing those who do these things, but he isn’t. So essentially, the only reason not to be evil and live a life of luxury is because someone invisible, all-powerful, and supremely benevolent will damn you to eternal pain and suffering if you don’t.

That’s not a good reason to be good, and we shouldn’t teach people that it is. This is the reason so many Catholic school kids become the bane of society. It’s because upon seeing the real world and leaving the influence created by the school, the main reason for them not doing evil is lifted from them, i.e. fear of God. They come to say, “Wait a minute, nobody else believes that crap — those people were crazy. I’m not going to hell for this stuff, everyone’s doing it, and damn — it sure feels good…yeehah!”

In other words, once they stop believing to any major degree, in the all-powerful, invisible, God who will punish you eternally, every single reason to not cheat and steal is removed. You aren’t taught in religious school that it’s universally wrong to hurt others. There is no “universal”. There is only God. And without God there is no morality; hence, for many, if you stop believing in the extreme, Biblical God taught in religious schools there’s no longer any reason to be moral.

This is a horrible way to teach people to be good. Unless you’re a small child, you shouldn’t need a “reason” to be good to others. Be good because it’s “right” to be good, not because something bad will happen to you if you don’t. This is harder to teach than, “You’ll burn in hell”, but it’s the only path to a truly moral society.

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Viewing 12 Comments

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    You have nailed it. I know some people who are extremely religious and simply don't believe that it is possible to be motivated to be good if there is no God. Frankly, this attitude scares me.

    Also, there's another factor in the heaven or hell scenerio you painted. What if someone does believe that those are the options, but also believes that they have done something that lands them squarely in the "going to hell" group. They're ALREADY going to hell, so why bother being "good" any more?
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    Who says "Be good because it’s 'right' to be good"?

    Who says what's "right"?

    This post is a restatement of the ontological argument in favour of the existence of God, derived from the existence of Morality. [1]

    You appear to have posited a tautology, the denial of which supports the existence of God.

    [1] Well described in developed in C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity"
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_Christianity
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    I am in fact simply disagreeing with another, more specific argument, i.e. that no morality can exist without God. My position is that morality is a set of principles defined by logic and nature for the purpose of universally making life better for humanity, and that the concept itself is open for discussion among those who are interested. This is in stark contrast to the opposing theory, which is that the Bible defines morality by capturing the will of God. So again, I'm not saying what exactly morality *is*, per say, but rather what it isn't.
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    This would be the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic reward systems.

    Your argument also echoes the argument of "morality doesn't come from the Bible" which is currently being spouted by Dawkins every 2.3 seconds.

    steven
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    I took Daniel's post as sharing a disappointment with those who believe that goodness requires belief in a God. We tell children not to do something or they will be punished. This may well be a decent way to train children to behave in particular ways. Religion tells people not to do certain things or they will go to hell. This may well be a decent way to train people to behave in particular ways. BUT, it is by no means necessary. Furthermore, it takes away from the humanity of acting in humane ways. When a child acts well because he is afraid of punishment, it's OK during the training phase, but what we HOPE is that they develop an understanding that the good behavior is appropriate even when the threat of punishment is removed.

    When a child becomes an adult, he or she should (IMHO) make decisions based on logic (and I would hope based on what will benefit everyone the most). So, an adult can ignore the training that says "don't eat your dessert until you finish your vegetables" if they like. This does not hurt anyone. An adult cannot (or should not) ignore the training that says "don't steal." But they should not avoid stealing because they are afraid of punishment (from society or from God). They should avoid stealing because they understand that it is "wrong" to steal. (I know .. who am I to dictate what is WRONG?)

    An adult who believes that anarchy is bad, should conform to the laws of the society that they live in (even ones that they don't see the point of but don't find morally offensive). This conformity to societal rules should come because they understand that if everyone chose which laws to obey and which NOT to obey, it would lead to anarchy. If anarchy is bad, then each individual must decide to follow the laws. Threats of punishment are for those too stupid to realize this for themselves.

    People of many religions believe in the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." I have spoken to religious people that don't believe that you can really believe in the Golden Rule unless you believe in God. I find this absurd. The Golden Rule is absolutely logical. It is the most succinct way to summarize the "right move" in the game of life.

    Carl M
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    One other thing .. Daniel, you stated:

    "This is exacerbated by the fact that God is supposed to be punishing those who do these things, but he isn’t."

    This is obviously why (for the THREAT of God's punishment to work) the punishment is claimed (by most religious people) to be delayed until after death. Religious people who believe in God's punishment would argue that the punishment will come. It will simply come after the person being punished has died.
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    A most excellent post, Carl. And yes, I guess you pointed out a very cool "feature" of the system. "It only *looks* like evil wins, because you don't see the invisible part." ;)
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    Carl, Daniel,

    God does punish those who sin. Every time someone dies in an accident, look down his past, he probably did something wrong. If it's a day year old child, his parents did something wrong and he's punished for his ancestors' sins. If a man who is particularly evil is prosperous, then he must have done some good things to offset it. And besides who are you to judge who's good and who's bad, only God can.

    I can understand why you're afraid of these people, who need divine guidance in order not to jump at you and kill you. I can't understand why you find it strange - this has been a case for years, and for most people. Yeah most people need someone to tell them that killing is baaaad. Four legs gooood. Two legs baaaad.

    For comic relief watch http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6975029... - bonus points for a count of all the logical fallacies. It's an hour long.

    -- Arik
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    OMG ... that video is scary. I watched about 1 minute of it (it looks to be over 2 hours long). That 1 minute was plenty. Lies in the textbooks include: The Big Bang, The Age of the Earth, and Cave Men.

    lol ... I'm not sure if that's funny or scary, but I'm leaning to scary since the guy seems absolutely serious (as does the audience).

    Incredible.
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    Arik,

    Sorry, I believe God to be an all-loving God that does not judge us, only loves us unconditionally. We only judge ourselves at the end, and for that reason we do not have to judge others.
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    Sorry, meant to say that we do not have the RIGHT to judge others. It is better to understand where someone is coming from to understand his point of view, but we do not have the right to judge. That said, we do have the freedom to accept or disapprove certain behaviors by individuals.
    • ^
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    I haven't been up to much lately. Eh. I just don't have anything to say right now. I've pretty much been doing nothing worth mentioning. That's how it is. I haven't gotten anything done.
 

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