[Mb-civic] Is religion the root of all evil?

[Jef Bek]

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/features/story.jsp?story=674933

Is religion the root of all evil?


Professor Richard Dawkins
 06 January 2006

Known as Œ Darwin¹s Rottweiler¹, Professor Richard Dawkins relishes
controversy. In his new TV series he explains how religion is a form of
abuse ­ and why God is man¹s most destructive invention ++ Why do you
believe in your God? Because he talks to you inside your head? The Yorkshire
Ripper claimed his murders were ordered by Jesus

Imagine, sang John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide
bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no
Kashmir dispute, no Indian partition, no Israel/Palestine war, no
Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no Northern Ireland ³troubles². Imagine no
Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of blasphemers, no
flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it. Imagine no
persecutions of the Jews ­ no Jews to persecute indeed, for, without
religious taboos against marrying out, the Diaspora would long ago have
merged into Europe.

Hitler invoked ³My feelings as a Christian² to justify his anti-Semitism,
and he wrote in Mein Kampf: ³I believe that I am acting in accordance with
the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am
fighting for the work of the Lord.² Nevertheless, most such atrocities are
not directly motivated by religion. IRA gunmen didn¹t kill Protestants (or
vice versa) over disagreements about transubstantiation or such theological
niceties. The motive was more likely to be tribal vengeance. One of ³them²
killed one of ³us². ³They² drove ³our² great-grandfathers out of ancestral
lands. Grievances are economic and political, not religious; and vendettas
stretch ³unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me². Quoting
Exodus reminds me, incidentally, that humanists prefer Gandhi¹s version: ³An
eye for an eye make the whole world blind.²

But if tribal wars are not about religion, the fact that there are separate
tribes at all frequently is. Some tribes may divide along racial or
linguistic lines, but in Northern Ireland what else is there but religion?
The same applies to Indo-Pakistan, Serbo-Croatia, and various regions of
Indonesia and Africa. Religion is today¹s most divisive label of group
identity and hostility. If a social engineer set out to devise a system for
perpetuating our most vicious enmities, he could find no better formula than
sectarian education. The main point of faith schools is that the children of
³our² tribe must be taught ³their own² religion. Since the children of the
other tribe are simultaneously being taught the rival religion with, of
course, the rival version of the vendetta-riven history, the prognosis is
all too predictable.

But what can it mean to speak of a child¹s ³own² religion? Imagine a world
in which it was normal to speak of a Keynesian child, a Hayekian child, or a
Marxist child. Or imagine a proposal to pour government money into separate
primary schools for Labour children, Tory children and Lib Dem children.
Everyone agrees that small children are too young to know whether they are
Keynesian or Monetarist, Labour or Tory: too young to bear the burden of
heavy parental labels. Why, then, is almost our entire society happy to
privilege religion, and slap a lab like Catholic or Protestant, Muslim or
Jew, on a tiny child? Isn¹t that a form of mental child abuse?a I once made
that poiint in a broadcast debate with a Roman Catholic spokeswoman. I¹ve
forgotten her name but I she was some kind of agony aunt, and a stalwart of
the Today programme¹s ³Thought f the Day². When I said that a primary school
child was too young to know whether it was a CCatholic child, she bristled:
³Just come and talk to some of the children in our local Catholic school! I
can assure you they know very well that they are Catholic children.² I
believe it. The Jesuit boast ­ ³Give me the child for his first seven years,
and I¹ll give you the man²­ is no less sinister for being familiar to the
point of cliché.

But what if religion is true? Surely sectarian indoctrination wouldn¹t be
child abuse if it saved the child¹s immortal soul? Despite the smug
presumptuousness of that, I can almost sympathise, if you sincerely believe
your religion is the absolute truth. Let me, then, be ambitious if not
presumptuous, and try to shake your belief.

Why do you believe in your God? Because he talks to you inside your head?
Alas, the Yorkshire Ripper¹s murders were ordered by the perceived voice of
Jesus inside his head. The human brain is a consummate hallucinator, and
hallucinations are a poor basis for real world beliefs. Or perhaps you
believe in God because life would be intolerable without him. That¹s an even
weaker argument. Lots of things are intolerable and it doesn¹t make them
untrue. It may be intolerable that you are starving, but you can¹t eat a
stone by believing ­ no matter how passionately and sincerely ­ that it is
made of cheese.

By far the favourite reason for believing in God is the argument from
improbability. Eyes and skeletons, hearts and nerve cells are too improbable
to have come about by chance. Man-made machines are improbable too, and
designed by engineers for a purpose. Surely any fool can see that eyes and
kidneys, wings and blood corpuscles must also be designed for a purpose, by
a master Engineer? Well, maybe any fool can see it, but let¹s stop playing
the fool and grow up. It is 146 years since Charles Darwin gave us what is
arguably the cleverest idea ever to occur to a human mind. He demonstrated a
beautiful, working process whereby natural forces, by gradual degrees and
with no deliberate purpose, forge an elegant illusion of design, to almost
limitless levels of complexity.

I have written books on the subject and obviously can¹t repeat the whole
argument in a short article. Let me give just two guidelines to
understanding. First, the commonest fallacy about natural selection is that
it is a theory of chance. If it were, it is entirely obvious that it
couldn¹t explain the illusion of design. But natural selection, properly
understood, is the antithesis of chance. Second, it is often said that
natural selection makes God unnecessary, but leaves his existence an open
plausibility. I think we can do better than that. When you think it through,
the argument from improbability, which traditionally is deployed in God¹s
favour, turns out to be the strongest argument against him.

The beauty of Darwinian evolution is that it explains the very improbable,
by gradual degrees. It starts from primeval simplicity (relatively easy to
understand) and works up, by plausibly small steps, to complex entities
whose genesis, by any non-gradual process, would be too improbable for
serious contemplation. Design is a real alternative, but only if the
designer is himself the product of an escalatory process such as evolution
by natural selection, either on this planet or elsewhere. There may be alien
life forms so advanced that we would worship them as gods. But they too must
ultimately be explained by gradual escalation. Gods that exist ab initio are
ruled out by the argument from improbability, even more surely than are
spontaneously erupting eyes or elbow joints.

Religion may not be the root of all evil, but it is a serious contender.
Even so it could be justified, if only its claims were true. But they are
undermined by science and reason. Imagine a world where nobody is
intimidated against following reason, wherever it leads. ³You may say I¹m a
dreamer. But I¹m not the only one.²

 

Professor Richard Dawkins is the Chair of the Public Understanding of
Science at Oxford University. The Root of All Evil?, Professor Dawkins¹
series looking at religion, is on 9 and 16 January at 8pm on Channel 4