Religion gives people meaning and consolation in the face of suffering

The argument

This argument concerns what religion does for people at the hardest points of their lives. Everyone faces bereavement, serious illness, injustice they cannot correct, and their own death. Proponents argue that religion addresses these directly: it offers a framework in which suffering has a place and is not merely absurd, rituals that give grief a shape and a schedule, and a community obliged to show up. Whatever one concludes about the truth of the doctrines, they argue, this work is real and it is done. Proponents press that the need is not optional or peculiar to the credulous. A person who has lost a child requires something to do and somewhere to put the loss, and the alternatives on offer are thin by comparison. Funeral rites, mourning periods, prayers for the dead and the expectation that the bereaved will be visited and fed are practical technologies developed over a very long time for carrying people through what cannot be fixed. Proponents also note the consolation of believing that wrongs will ultimately be answered, which has sustained people with no prospect of justice in their own lifetimes. Beyond consolation, proponents argue that religion supplies meaning in ordinary life: a reason to regard one's existence as purposeful, one's choices as mattering, and one's obligations to others as binding rather than optional. People who hold that their lives have a significance given from outside themselves report more durable wellbeing and cope better with adversity. Because religion provides a framework for meaning and a practised means of consolation that human beings demonstrably need, this argument concludes, it has been a force for good.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that consolation obtained through claims that may not be true is a poor defence of an institution, and that the same frameworks have added suffering of their own: fear of damnation, guilt attached to ordinary desire, and the teaching that misfortune is deserved or divinely ordained. They argue that it also discourages remedy, since suffering presented as meaningful or as a trial is less likely to be treated as something to be ended by human action.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The universal need is granted and nothing in it favours religion. Secular traditions, families and friendships also carry people through bereavement and injustice, and the premise does not show that the need requires a religious answer. [Rejecting P2] Giving suffering a shape can also mean giving it a false shape - as deserved, as a test, as a trial not to be escaped - which can discourage treatment, redress or departure. The premise counts the consolation and not its content. [Rejecting C] The conclusion moves from meeting a need to being a force for good, which requires that the benefit not be outweighed. Meeting a real human need is compatible with imposing costs the premises do not consider.