“Myth 2: Religion Does More Harm Than Good”
I bring you a theologian who attempts to dispel the “myths” he sees atheists presenting. If you wish you can read the first installment of his series “Myth 1: Atheists are Smarter” before continuing. The second installment attempts to prove incorrect atheists who hold the opinion that religion does more harm than good.
Hitchens, for instance, in his book God Is Not Great, asks whether the net effect of religion is positive or negative. Does religion do more harm than good (p. 217)?
He answers with a resounding “Yes!”
Religion is the cause of all social woes. The provocative subtitle of his book — How Religion Poisons Everything — seems to imply that religion does nothing but harm.This may strike us as strange, since the common wisdom of humanity has always held that religion makes people better, not worse. Our own experience often backs this up.
I suppose that depends on who you are and what your perspective is. The Crusades and The Spanish Inquisition are just two events that make me question the notion that religion makes people better. In more recent times religion and the Bible were used to support slavery and segregation in America, and to oppose interracial marriage. Currently women seeking reproductive freedom and LGBTs certainly can speak to the problems visited upon them by those preaching in the name of Biblical Truth, God’s Word and the like.
So what possible reasons could the atheists have to make the extravagant claim that religious belief has a negative effect on people’s behavior? What evidence do they put forward?
On close examination, it turns out that the atheists’ real evidence is rather thin.
I’m not sure what “real evidence” Father Williams has been examining other than Hitchens’ God Is Not Great
Sally Kern goes on hateful homophobic rant for which she will neither apologize nor meet with protesters then has fellow haters stage a “free speech for Sally Rally”–as if she’s been censored or silenced in some way.
Mary Frances Forrester echoes Sally Kern.
State Senator Gary George goes on racist, homophobic rant.
Wiley S. Drake calls for people to pray for death of Americans United leaders.
Traditional Values Coalition violates the 9th Commandment to advance their anti-gay agenda.
Focus on the Family spreads lies and propaganda to keep marriage equality away from LGBTs.
Traditional Values Coalition tries to trick to senior citizens as part of its anti-gay agenda.
Christians post death threats and other hate-speech against atheists on message boards. (Their hatred and death threats against LGBTs can be found here. )
RW Christians try to prevent laws that would forbid discrimination against transgender students in MD schools, using propaganda and lies.
Concerned Women of America use lies and propaganda to attempt to keep LGBTs from being added to CA schools anti-discrimination policy.
I could keep going, but I believe I’ve made my point.
Hitchens, for example, prefers to offer anecdotal evidence for his claim. He begins his 13th chapter titled “Does Religion Make People Behave Better?” with a personal attack on Martin Luther King Jr.
Here Hitchens makes a clever, though absurd, assertion. He asks whether King’s Christianity made him a better person. His answer is that yes, Martin Luther King did all sorts of good things for society in the area of civil rights, but … here’s the kicker … he wasn’t a Christian. He may have said he was a Christian and thought he was a Christian, but he was mistaken, and Hitchens knows better.
…..
The only proof he puts forward to back up this thesis is that King didn’t advocate violence and didn’t threaten people with hell, so he must not have been a true Christian.
This is like saying that Hitchens couldn’t be a true atheist, since he is too nice a guy.
The notion that King couldn’t be a true Christian simply because he didn’t advocate violence or threaten people with hell is indeed faulty. But then again look at the countless Christians who claim atheists cannot ever be moral because they don’t believe in God. That’s just as flawed a perception, yet it is responsible for centuries of bigotry and oppression toward atheists .
In making their case, Hitchens and company refrain from considering the almost countless ways that Christianity has benefited the world as we know it today.
What of the hospitals? What of the orders of nuns established to care for the dying or educate young girls? What of the soup kitchens and orphanages? What of the preservation of classical culture? What of the artistic and literary treasures?
Atheists don’t ignore those things (though they don’t trumpet them either–the Church does that just fine on its own while sweeping all of the evils under the rug). Atheists merely point out the fact that, in general, people could be inspired to do good without the need for religion–and all the negatives it entails. The reality is that millions of people are inspired to do good without religion, which is a fact that many of the religious hate to acknowledge.
By the way, how often do the religious search out instances of atheist philanthropy, altruism and heroism? Not that often I suspect. But they’re quick to spread the news of any misstep we make, be it real or trumped up.
There is no doubt that religious people could do more, and Hitchens’ accusations, though mean-spirited, do oblige us to a serious examination of conscience and a renewed commitment to offer a more consistent witness.
Yet an impartial examination of the facts will lead any objective observer to the conclusion that religion, and Christianity in particular, has been and continues to be an overwhelming force for personal and social good.
It’s good that Father Williams admits more could be done, but I’d hardly consider him an objective observer. As I’ve been on the receiving end of much bigotry from Christians (though I was one for about 20 years) I don’t know if I’d be able to consider myself fully objective either, but I’d say Christianity is not, overall, an “overwhelming force for personal and social good”. While I have no particular beef with Liberal Christians (except their nasty tendency to not stand up against their RW brethren often enough) the RW Christians are pure evil in my book. I’ll close with a quote from Steven Weinberg that sums up my feelings on the matter. With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Addendum. A comment has arrived. Ebon said:
Weinberg makes a very good point but I don’t think he takes it far enough. To my mind, the personality of an individual affects how they approach their faith just as much as the faith affects the individual or, to put it another way, the a**hole will always practice his faith in a way that lets him remain an a**hole.The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was a great man but I suspect his greatness came from within himself. He may have been inspired by his Christianity but I think he would have still been a great man if he had been a Hindu, Jew, Muslim, athiest, whatever. The difference between his faith and that of, say, Fred Phelps isn’t in the doctrines they held, it is in the different emphasis each placed on particular parts of that doctrine. They took the same faith but viewed it very differently.
Incidently, I apologise for the plethora of comments recently but you keep posting thought-provoking stuff.
The personality and intentions of a person do indeed affect where they take religious belief. As Susan B. Anthony said, I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. While some are taught bigotry and evil by their religion (children in particular), others take their pre-existing hatreds and use religion to justify them. They search the Bible, the Koran or other holy texts to justify their beliefs and use the “Word of God/Allah” to try to make their hatred carry more significant weight. At the same time they ignore wholesale other portions of those same texts that are inconvenient or of no interest to them, making various justifications for their actions.
I agree fully about MLK Jr. (about whom I’ll be posting later tonight). He was an amazing man and as far as I’m concerned he would have done much good with or without religion, despite his position as a Baptist minister. He wanted equality and justice for blacks, for the poor and for people in general. That doesn’t require belief or religion. It simply requires compassion and empathy for one’s fellow humans.
I always return to the universality of the Golden Rule, which is found in nearly all religions, spiritualities and philosophies. It’s too bad that more people don’t follow this simple rule, for if they did life would be much better.
