Quite a lot has been written about whether religion as a whole has brought good things to history, culture and modernity. Indeed, since the Enlightenment, a whole body of work has been developed regarding this question.
Bertrand Russell had quite a bit to say about it, and more recently Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and the late Christopher Hitchens, whose book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, took a mighty swing with the cudgel of a polemic at the notion that religion has, overall, benefited mankind.
More recently, on the other side of the debate, Canadian academic psychologist Jordan Peterson argues that religion – regardless of whether gods are real or not – is and has been beneficial (and perhaps necessary) for the development of humankind. (A Hitchens v. Peterson debate would have been one of the greatest public events of all time.)
I have little doubt that this issue will never be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. For full disclosure, I fall (almost) squarely within Hitchens’ camp, and my attempt to be dispassionate about it will be inevitably colored by my conviction that religions, in general, hobble human progress, but I will give an unbiased analysis of the highly abridged arguments a college try. Below is my highly abridged attempt at a dialectic arguing both sides.
ARGUMENT FOR RELIGION AS A POSITIVE FORCE
We can’t hide the facts. Religion has been, if not the progenitor of great evils over the course of human history, certainly a ravenous one. The god of the Christian bible, after all, took a keen interest in local tribal wars, slavery, and demanded complete fealty at the risk of eternal damnation for those with the temerity to disagree.
Then there were the Crusades, the Inquisition, the burning of imagined witches, and religious wars too numerous to count. Incalculable human suffering at the hands of those who believed it to be the will of a particular god.
But, a couple of important caveats cannot be ignored. First, we are dealing with believers, who are human and are quite capable of getting things wrong, thinking they are doing the will of the gods, mistakenly. We shouldn’t blame the gods for that.
Second, plenty of atrocities have been committed for a plenitude of reasons that have nothing to do with religious belief, and indeed, many religions preach against socially disruptive aspects of our human nature, such as greed, power, violence, immorality (however that may be defined) and many other sins.
Holding believers to higher standards of human behavior than non-believers hardly seems fair. After all, regardless of our belief or non-belief, we must agree that we are all human and thus all subject to the foibles of the human condition.
Beyond this, religion has quite demonstrably brought enormous benefits to world civilization. One must stand in awe at the beautiful works of art and music produced by religious movements from even before the Renaissance.
Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel is only one example of beautiful art. And the architecture too. And science and philosophy and mathematics, particularly works produced with the support of the Catholic Church, and to a lesser extent, Islam.
Religion gives us our morality as well – religions tell us that we should not murder, or covet our neighbor’s wife, or steal; how we should work hard and be thrifty, how we should respect our elders, and many more things beneficial to developing egalitarian and equitable societies.
It doesn’t really matter in any significant way whether a particular religious belief is true (pace Peterson), it rather only matters if a religious belief is beneficial to the individual and her occupancy within a society.
Not surprisingly, recent studies indicate that people of faith claim higher life satisfaction (one could translate this as “happiness”) than people with no religious affiliation.
Religion gives people comfort and fellowship and belonging; it guides them through difficult times, it sets standards of decent and moral behavior, and gives them the solace that a higher power has their best interests in mind.
Belief in a higher power – true or not – gives positive meaning to people’s lives and often fosters the better nature of our spirits. It is a stalwart against loneliness and existential angst and provides people with a sense of community and solidarity.
Then, of course there’s the very measurable effect of religious giving to important social causes. Many religious organizations give billions of dollars every year to feed the hungry, to house the homeless, to rehabilitate drug addicts, to provide counseling services to prisoners, to protect political refugees, among many other admirable charitable causes.
Despite its warts, religion is, for the lack of a better word, good. To require it to be perfect is simply unreasonable.
ARGUMENT FOR RELIGION AS A NEGATIVE FORCE
It is true that religion has been the animating factor for much violence and intolerance, and it is equally true that non-believers have also been responsible for much violence and intolerance. But the comparison is false. People often argue, for example, that evil dictators such as Stalin (among many others), committed horrific acts of genocide and were atheists.
But the relevant question is whether they committed these acts because of or in the name of atheism. The answer is quite obviously no. That cannot be said of the crimes against humanity committed by religious leaders and movements. Humans often tend toward bad behavior without the aid of believing they are doing the work of the gods, so it would make sense to eliminate this animus if we could.
Is it fair to hold people of faith to a higher standard of moral behavior? Of course! You cannot claim that your religion promotes and is the very umbilicus of morality and then claim when you commit an immoral act that you’re just human. Indeed, studies suggest that atheists are more law-abiding and less violent than people of faith.
But there’s a further problem as well. It seems to be a complete cop out to claim that the word of God is perfect, and human fallibility has led to its misinterpretation, leading to violence and mayhem.
Every religion and every denomination or sect within that religion thinks that they are the ones who have gotten it right. Yet, basic logic informs us that they cannot all be right at the same time. God, being our perfect creator, couldn’t have been just a bit clearer? Why obfuscate with parables, metaphors, internal contradictions, and historical inaccuracies? Religious texts are quite obviously the products of men, not gods.
Religion has quite obviously influenced world civilizations. With respect to Western civilization, it has been foundational in the production of great music, art, poetry, philosophy, and science; indeed, it is so ingrained in the operation of society and our values, it is easy to miss it.
It has indubitably been a positive influence, at least since the Enlightenment. Must religion, then, be given its due? Well, no. Artists, musicians, poets, philosophers, and scientists go where the patronage is, where the commissions are to be had. The Church had the money, and that, not surprisingly, is where the talent was employed.
If there existed a powerful and wealthy society of marine biologists commissioning works of art, we might have a very different and equally beautiful pantheon of creative works. Besides that, the idea that religion teaches morality seems quite silly.
Leaving aside the patently immoral teachings of many religious texts (slavery, the stoning of adulterers and the murder of apostates, etc.), moral principles are things humans seem to innately understand. Did God, for example, really need to write down that murder and thievery were bad ideas? Before the Ten Commandments, did people really think that these were perfectly acceptable day-to-day activities?
There are conflicting studies about the comfort religions ostensibly provide, but let’s not be captious. Let us assume that people of faith in general, enjoy a higher level of life satisfaction and that correlation also has a causative element. What are the costs of false comfort? Is happiness more important than truth? I am of the opinion that no good end can come from blindly following any infallible dogma, religious or otherwise.
It is true that religions are often at the forefront of charitable giving and contributing to humanitarian causes. This also often comes with the price of proselytizing and claiming new converts, or at the very least, social engineering. But let’s be gracious and assume that this was never the case, and the good deeds come with no strings attached.
There are many secular charities that perform the same functions. As far as I know, Hitchens’ challenge has never been met: name one good deed done in the name of religion that could have been done without religion.
CONCLUSIONS
The positive contributions of religion to history, culture and modernity is undeniable. (I depart from Hitchens that religion poisons everything.) But so are the negative effects. It represents the proverbial double-edged sword. On balance then, has it been more positive than negative? I don’t think it is possible to quantify.
My instinct tells me both that humankind would have been better off had religions never been invented, and it would have been impossible that religions were not invented.
It is in our very biological nature – a gift from evolution by natural selection – to want to explain things, whether there is good evidence for them or not. Before science, the primary way that was accomplished was through supernatural mysticism – humans simply had no other purchase on any other methodology to explain things.
As Hitchens has said, because religion was our first attempt at understanding the universe, it was necessarily our worst. I believe as a species we have outgrown our need for it. I also believe that it will always be with us.
