Does Religion Cause Violence?

“Does religion cause violence? Yes!” This is the starting point of the atheist narrative that seeks to indict religion on the ground of its (allegedly) great potential to harm. It has been repeated by atheists so many times that the so-called New Atheists who claim to put reason, logic and evidence before all else have abandoned reason, logic and evidence in order to make their accusation about religion. But as I have said in the past and have to say again because I actually care about reason, logic and evidence, it is not religion that causes violence.

In order to determine if religion actually causes violence, it is worth asking if there are ever instances in which religion has nothing to do with violence. Well, yes, such examples would be too numerous to mention. But, let’s mention some anyway: Does a man ever attack another man over an insult? Yes. Does a man ever hit a woman in order to have power over her? Yes. Do people ever trample each other on Black Friday in order to be the first to get a deal? Yes. Do sports fans ever riot after their team wins a championship? Yes. Do neighboring territories or countries ever go to war over land or some other resource? Yes. And most importantly, has any atheist ever harmed another atheist? I’m betting on ‘yes.’

Even if New Atheists want to assert that religion is the cause of most harm in the world, they are still wrong. Many of the armed conflicts in the world today have nothing to do with religion; while Boko Haram and the Islamic State (ISIS) may be making headline news, any number of ethnic and civil wars are actually piling up more bodies than the Islamic extremists. Even historically, 87 of the world’s greatest atrocities had little to nothing to do with religion (according to scholar Matthew White). In the 20^th Century, WWI and WWII racked up a higher body count than any religious war and both wars had nothing to do with religion. So why aren’t New Atheists acknowledging the evidence contrary to their claims? Is it because they have an agenda? Probably. How can we tell?

For one thing, you’ll never hear a New Atheist assert that religion makes people commit decent acts, like feed the homeless. If you then ask a New Atheist why a religious person would feed the homeless, you’ll be given an answer that has anything to do with it BUT religion, most likely that the given person is a decent person to begin with. Hmm, okay, but if that’s the case isn’t it possible that a religious person could act indecently or even violently for reasons that actually have nothing to do with their religious beliefs? And, even in cases where people claim God told them to kill other people, isn’t it at all possible that such people are indecent or have violent tendencies to begin with? Because if not, what New Atheists are asserting is that religion can compel someone who is otherwise a pacifist to commit terrible deeds. Problem is, there is no evidence whatsoever to back up this claim. Even the famous Stanford prison experiment, if pointed to by New Atheists as evidence – which would be ridiculous – merely implies that when people are given the chance to have power over others, they take it. Why? Because this desire is ingrained in our biology (at least, this appears to be the case, generally speaking). Human beings are still ‘wired’ for violence as well, as the billions worldwide viewing the Super Bowl and Hollywood shoot-em-ups every year can attest to.

When religious people become violent, it seems to me (and this is admittedly armchair psychology) that what is actually taking place is this: They are trying to control or suppress another person or group for the sake of their own survival, even if such a threat is incorrectly perceived, this is not a behavior unique to the religiously inclined. Religion then simply becomes a social acceptable excuse to commit violence (socially acceptable to members of the perpetrator’s group). If religion were abolished, then some other excuse for violence would take its place.

Claiming religion causes violence is akin to claiming that something like alcohol can turn a happy-go-lucky average Joe into an angry drunk. Only, angry drunks are already angry people to begin with who suppress their anger in order to operate within the confines of the prevailing social contract.

In much the same way that guns don’t kill people, religion doesn’t cause violence. People cause violence. Granted, some tools make it easier to rise to violence, but indecent people will always find a way to act indecently. Religion isn’t the problem; biology is.

People Have Rights Ideas Do Not

“Why won’t you die?”

“Beneath this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea...and ideas are bulletproof.” – V in V for Vendetta

I’ve been coming across a recurring theme when perusing the social media of New Atheist who are desperately trying to seem compassionate while dismissing the foolhardy beliefs of theists; the theme that people deserve rights or respect but that their beliefs or ideas do not. I seem to keep hearing, “People have rights. Ideas do not.”

My first question is this: How do you divorce beliefs or ideas from the people that hold them particularly when beliefs or ideas make up the core of a person’s identity? Many people identify themselves along the lines of their beliefs, such as being Christian, Jew or Muslim but also along national, ethnic or social lines. If you give no rights to ideas or have no respect for the ideas a person holds, exactly who or what are you extending rights or respect to? Should we have extended rights or respect to Adolph Hitler the being as divorced from his genocidal tendencies? ‘Cause that’s where the argument winds up going.

The problem is this: Once you try to divorce people from their beliefs and ideas, the rights and respect left to bestow are upon the shell of a human being. As long as more than one person is around, there exists a social construct from which people set themselves apart from the other person (that is, identity). If that ability to form an identity is removed, all that is left is a biological human being who for all intents and purposes might as well be an empty shell. In trying to deny identity – or at least an identity New Atheists do not like – is to deny an aspect of humanity that people often use to position themselves in a special place within the animal kingdom. I find it peculiar that (liberal) New Atheists want to bestow rights and grant respect to the biological entities that people are while at the same time denying that a fetus is a person or that it is okay to terminate a brain-dead patient. What is a person? we are inclined to ask New Atheists. There appears to be an inconsistency in the New Atheist line of reasoning regarding rights and respect (at least when the reasoning is taken to its fullest extent).

I contend that beliefs and ideas are equally important if not more important than the people who hold them.* First, because as I’ve implied, people are their beliefs and ideas so long as there are social interactions. Moreover, when people put their beliefs and ideas into action, beliefs and ideas exit the realm of abstraction and into the realm of recorded history. We also tend to remember people for their beliefs and their ideas instead of the people as mere biological entities.

[*But not by necessity since people are not important by necessity. Refer to my blog Why I Am Not A Humanist for clarification.]

Second, I have to wonder, where would the world be without beliefs and ideas? The answer to that question is a double-edged sword, of course, as without beliefs or ideas, human beings would have never invented the wheel or religion. In the case of religion, look at what happens when some people, such as ISIS, with particular beliefs or ideas do not afford any rights or respect to the beliefs of others; personhood is withheld from a victim and a beheading or sexual slavery is the consequence. It is easy for New Atheists to say that they don’t have to grant rights to or respect theistic beliefs and ideas, but granting a person rights and respect is surely a difficult thing to do when the theist’s beliefs and ideas are dismissed. Kindly reference pretty much all of recorded history if you don’t believe me.

Granted, it seems obvious that some beliefs or ideas are more valid than others but how do we choose which are important and which are not? We can easily say that freedom is a good idea that should be granted some rights or respect, but most of us are saying that from the position of relatively free people with no one to club us for agreeing. Naturally, we also have to ask exactly how free we are supposed to be to retain any hope that freedom is indeed a good idea. But, you never see New Atheists – or anyone else for that matter – getting down to these kinds of nitty-gritty details. If there are any difficulties in the New Atheist assertion that beliefs and ideas should be formed only when there is suitable evidence for them, they are such that beliefs must always be open to revision (easier said than done) to say nothing of the difficulties in trying to determine exactly when an inference based upon evidence is deemed justifiable. I would also challenge any New Atheist to prove that all the beliefs they hold are warranted by evidence. To this New Atheists will likely reply that most of the beliefs or ideas people hold are harmless until certain – particularly theistic – beliefs or ideas are put into action. But as I’ve said many times before, there is no historical evidence that indicates a global community of atheists would be any better than the world such as it is now. So why is this belief being held onto to fiercely by New Atheists? But I digress.

I’m not saying rights or respect should be granted to ideas out of hand; certainly ideas – all ideas – should be open to examination and criticism. But New Atheists need to concede that when they criticize ideas, they are criticizing a person. That person may become offended, which is fine since there is no legislation or unwritten societal rule that prohibits all offensive criticism. People don’t have a right to not be offended.* Oh, so I guess sometimes people don’t have rights. Hmph!

[*At least not in the U.S.; the EU is working on it, though.]

“People have rights. Ideas do not,” is in itself an idea which in no way need be granted any rights or respect. It’s one of quips that looks cute at first glance but loses meaning if you think about it for more than a second. There certainly isn’t any evidence for what New Atheists are trying to assert here. Better luck next time, gang.

Does Religion Make People Bad?

The latest wave of atheism – New Atheism – has come together as a functional unit within the last few years to actively promote reason and science (but mostly science because there must be evidence for scientific beliefs) over superstition. New Atheists seek to eradicate religion based on the assertion that people who hold religious beliefs are essentially harmful to society, if not themselves. Ask any militant atheist why they would like to see religion abolished and you’re likely to get an answer to the effect, “Just look at all the wars that religion has started!” or “Religion is just a means by which people control one another.” To these charges I say first of all, the evidence is not there that most wars are religious in nature. That is a positively false assertion. Second, religion is no more a means to control people than most forms of government. There is also the unwritten social contract; is that not a mean by which to control people? Just because one doesn’t like the form of control in their given culture (Christianity in the U.S. for example) doesn’t lend any weight to assertions about religion being used to control people. Take away religion and people will surely think of other ways to control each other. That much is obvious.

You may also hear words such as these from Portland State University’s Dr. Peter Boghossian on why religion is bad, “Faith is pretending to know something you don’t know,” meaning, there is no evidence for religious beliefs and we shouldn’t hold any belief without evidence. I’d surely agree with Dr. Boghossian except that people – including Dr. Boghossian – hold beliefs without evidence all the time; this is another assertion that isn’t exclusive to religious beliefs. At any rate, Dr. Boghossian believes being religious means you cannot reason correctly and if one cannot reason correctly, one is likely to visit their irrationality on the rest of society. Essential, he is saying that religious beliefs make for bad people. 

Is that true, does holding religious beliefs make people behave in a way that is harmful to society? It may be true that countries that are less religious appear to score higher on surveys about happiness, but is this actually due to the fact that such countries are less religious or are there other factors at work? The U.S., for example, is often cited as the most religious industrialized country and scores somewhere in the middle of countries surveyed on happiness levels. However, there is great economic disparity in the U.S. as well as political divisions and racial tensions, to name several factors that may be contributing to the country’s mediocre happiness level. Thus, one cannot simply state that the U.S. is an unhappy country because most of its citizens are religious; that’s absurd. Of course, New Atheists will be quick to say religious beliefs are the primary contributor to political divisions and racial tension in the U.S. (even though religion would once again not be the sole contributing factor and cannot be shown to be the primary cause). Even if such a defense were true, religion doesn’t explain the U.S.’s incredible economic disparity.

Moreover, it would be reasonable to assume that if everyone in any given culture or country believed and followed the tenets of one single religion where that religion dominated the culture or country both socially and economically, the culture or country would score reasonably high when their happiness level was surveyed. (Granted, it is possible some people may answer they are happy when they are not out of fear, but we cannot possibly know they are lying without brain scanning/imaging.) The people insisting that religion is harmful to society are the people who do not want to be subjected to or live by the tenets of religions because said religious beliefs conflict with the way they want to behave. The struggle for New Atheists is to gain individual freedom by abolishing the beliefs that stand in their way. (Theists do have a point when charging atheists with wanting to behave in whatever manner pleases them, but we must note that such a charge is not a defense since theists likewise want to behave in a way that suits themselves.) I do believe New Atheists are correct to raise such an issue when states like Texas are explicit in their charters that atheists are not allowed to hold office. However, is religion really to blame for Texas’ law or do Texans simply fear people too much unlike themselves? Fearing people outside our circle, group, clan, etc. is again something that is not particular to religious belief. Non-U.S. citizens cannot hold the U.S. presidency; that’s not a matter of religious belief. 

I can see how people with religious beliefs can come off as bad people based upon observing them bluntly insist that their religion is the one true religion and if you don’t believe it you’re going to Hell. (That or they insist you must believe because they believe it.) Once again, again, shouting at people that the belief you hold is the one true belief is not particular to religion; conspiracy theorists come to mind. Religious people can also seem particularly horrible if you grew up with them and your individual freedoms were infringed for a good part of your life. We get it; you’re bitter. Fair enough. But I must insist that religion is not what made such parents or siblings control another family member. If I may cite my own childhood experience, my father certainly tried to control me but he never used religion to do it. It’s not religion at work. Religion is not what makes people want to control each other or what makes them irrational. The desire for control, whether over the world or over other people, and the ability to be irrational is as old as the human race. Our species pre-dates religion. There is no “chicken or the egg” riddle here. People have to already be irrational on some level prior to accepting religion.

If New Atheists want to be respected on the basis of having evidence for their beliefs, they should try actually analyzing their evidence, asking questions that do not simply confirm their bias, and give up their beliefs where the evidence is lacking. Religion is obviously not what makes people bad; if you took away religion people would still treat each other with contempt, if not something worse. A recent article in Time magazine (Dec 2013) highlights something of a gender war in the happy, non-religious country of Sweden, where gender pronouns are being done away with while male-bashing is becoming a cultural norm. Is it too early to tell if this is good or bad for society? The point is, in this instance, religion isn’t responsible for the suppression of a group of people. 

I don’t like being the bearer of bad news for New Atheists, not since their primal instincts will drive them to insist I am wrong and drive me out of town for not believing what they believe. They can believe it all they want, but being free of religious beliefs doesn’t make someone any better for society than anyone else.  All evidence suggests that multiple factors are responsible for whether a person behaves beneficially for society or not. Leave it to so-called “smart people” to oversimplify the issue.