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.

My Beef With Boghossian

Does religion make people behave maliciously? Does religion make people evil? Do we need to rid the world of religion because it makes people malicious and evil? The answer to these questions is a resounding “yes,” or at least that is the answer rather strongly implied by the work of Portland State University’s Dr. Peter Boghossian. Boghossian’s new book, A Manual for Creating Atheists, is a rallying cry to what Boghossian calls “street epistemology;” basically atheist evangelicalism that seeks to divorce theists from their supernatural beliefs by attacking a theist’s theory of knowledge. In being a rational person, Boghossian says that there should not only be evidence to support beliefs but a proper chain of reasoning to come to certain conclusions. I certainly agree with Boghossian that faith is a failure of epistemology and I agree that the more outrageous a belief claim the more extraordinary evidence is required to make certain inferences. The problem is that if there should be evidence to support beliefs, whatever they may be, then Boghossian and his merry band of followers do not appear to be playing by their own rules. 

[Before going any further, I must disclose that I have never met, taken a class with, or otherwise talked to Dr. Boghossian. So, I cannot say how much of his beliefs or the beliefs of the presumably rational atheist community that I will now discredit they have personally examined or what rationalizing – different from rationale – they have used to come to certain conclusions.]

First, we have to understand what motivates the Boghossian and the current nu-atheist movement. (Hint: It’s the same as the old motivation.) What motivates a pseudo-militant atheist* like Boghossian is their belief that the world suffers, and has suffered throughout history, from the theistic beliefs that are rampant in almost every culture on Earth. Boghossian and his followers believe that if only people could be cured of their “faith virus” and turned towards atheism (which by-golly must be, by default, rational) the world would be a much better place. I know this is the premise these presumably rational atheists are working from because I used to think exactly the same thing a few years ago. And then I grew up.

[*A pseudo-militant atheist seeks to engage you in conversation with a measure of compassion but has an ulterior motive. But, hey, theists do the same thing, so why not?]

As a true, bona-fide philosopher who is not a Scotsman – philosophical humor; move along – I had a belief that was open to revision. (All beliefs must be so, according to Boghossian, or you’re not rational; agreed.) I found that the more people I met throughout life, I would come to categorize an individual as a good person by about a 4-to-1 margin regardless of whether they were theistic or atheistic. [Meaning, for every 4 good theists or atheists I met, there was 1 bad theist or atheist. Certainly, we could argue over my criteria for what makes for a good or bad person, but let’s focus on the subject at hand right now.] I found that in dealing with people, religion or lack thereof seemingly had no bearing on whether or not someone was nice to me. Of course, my personal experiences with people are anecdotal evidence that religion plays no part in what makes a human moral, and anecdotal evidence is generally frowned upon in philosophy. (Nevermind that it is often admissible in a court of law, but, whatever.) So, in order to tear down the premise from which presumably rational atheists are working from, perhaps we should examine history.

The presumably rational atheist works from the premise that historically speaking, religion has been the spark for untold amounts of suffering. Problem is, is that if we examine, say, the deaths caused by religion throughout recorded history, what presumably rational atheists say about religion simply isn’t true. For example, noted historian and chronicler of atrocities, Matthew White, concludes in his latest book The Great Big Book of Horrible Things that of the worst 100 atrocities in recorded history, only 13 of them are the direct result of (or assumed to be the direct result of) one religious ideology pitted against another. If we do the math, that leaves 87 atrocities in which religion played a secondary or little to no role in armed conflict. Obviously then, the presumably rational atheist is wrong about religion in terms of the amount of violence theists inflict upon others due to their theistic beliefs, so what do they mean when they say religion is the cause of untold amounts of suffering? (More on that in a moment.) Quickly, a question arises: Why aren’t presumably rational atheists examining the evidence for their own beliefs? A lack of evidence is the point Boghossian is hammering theists on, but why isn’t he applying his methodology to the beliefs of the members of his own community? Isn’t the premise presumably rational atheists are working from “something they are pretending to know,” as Boghossian would put it?

It may be the case that the presumably rational atheist senses there is an amount of harm done by religion that is psychological. Although they rarely cite this as the meaning behind their basic assumption about religion, they still have no evidence that the psychological manipulations perpetrated by theists upon other people (shaming, for example) is caused by the theist’s religious beliefs as opposed to, say, Nietzsche’s Will to Power. Is there perhaps a biological imperative that drives people to try and control others through any means available? Where is the evidence pointing one way or the other? Despite the lack of evidence – which is required to rationally believe something – the presumably rational atheist typically clings to the premise they began with, that religion is bad and that a world full of rational atheists would be better. Even if this were true, look what happens when we take the second part of their premise to its logical conclusion.

Let’s imagine for a moment that the presumably rational atheist is right (because there is supporting evidence) and the world would be better if it were full of rational people, given that rational people are less violent and not quite the psychological terrorist theists are. If it is concluded that rational people are morally superior, might there be sub-categories of rational people who are less violent and less psychologically manipulative than the group as a whole? Woman are often regarded as less violent than men and rightly so because that’s what all available evidence indicates. Moreover, evidence indicates that homosexuals as a group are less violent than women. If we take the presumably rational atheist’s original premise to its logical conclusion, the world would be a whole lot better off not under the direction of rational people, but under the direction of rational, atheistic lesbians. But you’ll never hear the presumably rational atheist come to such a conclusion because they haven’t looked at the evidence. They haven’t played by their own rules. 

Nor do they apparently want to. I cannot relate to you how many times I walked the halls of Portland State University as a student and saw flyers for the latest meeting extoling the virtues of Communism. This, despite the fact that all historical evidence indicates that Communism is a complete failure in practice.

This is not so much an attack on Boghossian as it is an attack on the beliefs of the latest, growing crop of atheists in general. After all, although I noticed the failure of theistic epistemology over two decades ago, Boghossian has pointed out this flaw in theism with more wit and flair than I ever could. And I would fully support his endeavor to de-convert people from their faith if only the evidence indicated that religion corrupts individuals and has been a detriment throughout history. But the evidence isn’t there. And therein lies my beef; don’t require of others evidence for their beliefs if you’re not going to apply the same standards to your own.

I'd like to believe that no one likes a hypocrite. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests otherwise.