[Mb-civic] Religion: good and bad

[Jef Bek]

THE AGE
http://theage.com.au

Governments should not be promoting or favouring religion in schools, writes
Pamela Bone.

'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,"
said Voltaire. The books of the major religions contain passages that are
absurd and worse than absurd. What are today's kindly Christians to make of
this instruction to genocide in the Bible: "Now kill all the boys. And kill
every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who
has never slept with a man." (Numbers 31:17-18)?

What are modern-thinking Muslim men to make of the list in the Koran of
women who are forbidden to them, which includes (quite rightly!) their
mothers, daughters, mothers-in-law, daughters-in-law, and also married
women, "except those whom you own as slaves"?

It's become obligatory when commenting on Islamic terrorism to say that this
is a distortion of Islam, that Islam is a religion of peace. In fact, as
some reformist Muslims acknowledge, the Koran also contains what Christian
reformers say the Bible contains: "sins of scripture". In the Koran can be
found passages that promote peace and passages that urge killing. Like the
Bible, it is contradictory and confusing. An impartial reader might wonder
why God couldn't have made his intentions more easily understandable.

So, what do most religious believers do about the "sins of scripture"?
Fortunately for the rest of us, they politely ignore them. Religious
extremists might believe in the absurdities, but most people do not.

Karl Marx described religion as "the sigh of the oppressed creature . . .
the opiate of the people". If he was right it would imply that when people
were not poor and oppressed they wouldn't need the "opiate" (the painkiller)
of religion. Yet while societies grow richer and freer, religion persists.
Atheism is dead and belief in God has won, it has been proclaimed.

But what sort of belief? In numerical terms, religious belief is growing
because it is strong in highly populated poor countries. But it is weak in
most modern democracies. In Britain the proportion of those stating "no
religion" has grown from 31 per cent to 44 per cent in the past 20 years and
only 5 per cent of young people go to church regularly. In most of northern
Europe about 40 per cent of the population belongs to a religion. In
Australia about 30 per cent have no religion.

What about America then? One doesn't quite know what to make of America.
Only 9 per cent of Americans don't believe in God, while a further 12 per
cent are not sure. Forty-five per cent of Americans say they believe in the
Book of Genesis. Yet even there, if the sincerity of belief can be judged by
church attendance, religion may not be very strong in people's lives. Only
38 per cent of Americans go to a religious service at least once a month and
only a quarter go every week, according to a Harris poll.

The same poll showed some other interesting results: religious believers are
more likely to be older, to be female, to vote Republican and to live in the
Midwest or South. African Americans are more likely to believe in God than
Hispanics and whites. Those with no college education are more likely to
believe in God than those with postgraduate education. People brought up as
Protestants are more likely to believe than Catholics and much more likely
than Jews. Only 48 per cent of American Jews believe in God and only 16 per
cent go to synagogues at least once a month.

Perhaps then, if we keep working to improve the lives of all the people of
the world, educate them and make them prosperous, might religion not
quietly, gradually disappear? (I don't mean to imply that religious people
are uneducated or unintelligent because this is clearly not true.) And, I
was going to say, what a good thing that would be, the end of this force
that has caused so much misery and violence throughout the ages.

But then - the other day I saw the new British film Millions, and in it
school children were performing a nativity play and singing The Little
Drummer Boy. And I thought, no, you can't say this is bad. It is, in fact,
lovely. It is part of my culture. And I understand that Muslims, Jews,
Hindus and others have religious traditions they find lovely, whether or not
they really believe in the religion.

So much art, architecture, music and poetry throughout the ages has been
inspired by religion. So much beauty in the name of religion. And it does
concern me a little that my grandchildren learn nothing about religion at
their state school, because without knowing those old stories they will not
be able to see the connections in literature and art.

Without religion there would still be art. Without religion there is still
beauty and goodness. And without religion, mankind will find reasons to go
to war. Yet it remains the case that the best societies in the world are
secular societies. And given that some people's religious certainties are
putting everyone in danger, governments have a responsibility to keep
religion low-key. Our government should not be promoting and favouring
religion in the way it does.

Let religion be taught in schools, but have it taught as "this is what some
people believe", not "this is fact". Let education be the way its founders
intended - free, compulsory and secular. It remains the best hope there is
for the future.

No, religion will probably never disappear; because some people simply
believe, and that is their right (some people simply don't believe and that
is our right, too; more religious people need to acknowledge that). Let
people believe what they want. But be grateful most people don't believe too
fiercely.

Pamela Bone is an associate editor.