But religion doesn't lead people to come to their senses, it doesn't appeal to compassion, it doesn't appeal to ethical principles through reason. Religion is authoritarian. "Do this or you'll go to hell." The analogy would be something like me telling my friend I'd beat the shit out of him if he doesn't do as I tell him, that thing being something I think is ethical. And would my ethical friend really do what I tell him to do if I decided to order him around? Seems more likely he'd feel aggravated and tell me to fuck off, making the situation even worse.
I think you're over-simplifying things. It's not always a case of fearing eternal torment because you farted in church or whatever. Might be in some extreme versions of some religions, but that's just the real nutters. There are a lot of things you can do in quite a few religions that, while not being approved of, wont supposedly land you in hell. They're regarded more as misdemeanours rather than capital crimes, in effect. So, as long as you have the basics sorted you're off to heaven anyway, meaning there's no real threat involved if you screw up some of the trivia.
And you can't just say, as a blanket statement, that religion doesn't appeal to compassion. The Christians are bonkers about the stuff, or at least quite a lot of them are. Buddhists are into it too. It's not as simple as you're trying to make out.
So no, it isn't necessarily like you threatening to beat the crap out of your friend.
Threatening to punish someone doesn't work to make them more ethical. What works, as you drew in your analogy, is appealing to compassion.
Well, it can work to make them behave more ethically, which is useful for the rest of society even if it doesn't improve the actual person. But yeah, that's a side issue. And appealing to compassion wont always work.
This brought something to mind though. TBH I'm not sure about the proposition that acting ethically from an emotional response is more ethical than (or ethically superior to) acting ethically out of a sense of duty even when you don't really want to. Seems to me that you could just as well argue it the other way around: that acting ethically out of a sense of duty, even when you don't feel a damned thing for the person concerned, could be more ethical than only acting ethically when you happen to feel some emotion.
And even if threatening violence worked, is it ethical to do that? Is it ethical for someone to tell their friend they're going to beat the shit out of them if they don't give money to charity? Or is that not a "practical" question?
It's a practical question, but as I'm trying to point out it's not directly relevant here, because there are often no threats of violence/eternal torment/whatever directly attached to the giving or not giving of charity.
What you're arguing is that the ends justify the means, which I think is unethical.
No, I'm not arguing that at all. What I'm saying is that your presentation of religion and religious people is over-simplified and that the choices they make aren't as constrained as you seem to think. Also, that although I don't agree with their beliefs I don't see the need to slag them when they do good things anyway. I'm only concerned about the bad effects of religion. Neutral or beneficial effects don't bother me so I'm generally happy to let that sort of thing slide. It's not like religious people are going to suddenly all get raptured up to their respective heavens next Saturday. We're stuck with them for quite some time, so to my mind it makes sense to only worry about the really important stuff.
There are ethical as well as unethical ways to get people to do ethical acts. And yes, the acts themselves would be ethical, regardless of the way the person doing them was made to do them, i.e. whether someone appealed to their compassion or threatened them with violence, but the person would not be ethical. An ethical person is not only someone who does an ethical act, but rather someone who does an ethical act by the use of their own ethical reasoning.
I'm not arguing with any of that.
If you think that means I'm putting myself higher than others, so be it. I don't see it as such, but I have no desire to get into that argument because it really is irrelevant. Making me out to be some smug guy with a holier-than-thou attitude is not going to detract from my argument, and is a logical fallacy.
I think some of the attitudes expressed are, shall we say, somewhat uncharitable.
You can decide for yourself whether this is relevant.
Topic: Highly religious people are less motivated by compassion than are non-believers