Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion

Home > Other > Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion > Page 48
Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion Page 48

by John W. Loftus

been observed in an extraordinary variety of species, from birds to elephants to

  primates.

  As de Waal reminds us, social living depends on social "regularity," which he

  characterizes as a "set of expectations about the way in which oneself (or others)

  should be treated and how resources should be divided."24 Individuals without

  some sense of what to expect from others-and of what others expect of him or

  her-would not be properly "social." And this social regularity entails some

  method for handling exceptions and deviations: "Whenever reality deviates from

  these expectations to one's (or the other's) disadvantage, a negative reaction

  ensues, most commonly protest by subordinate individuals and punishment by

  dominant individuals."25

  Thus, a certain amount of regularity and predictability in behavior is a

  requisite for social coexistence and for the eventual formation of "morality"

  However, it is only one component. As in the case of religion, "morality" is not a

  single, monolithic thing or skill but a composite phenomenon of multiple skills

  and interests. To reach premoral behavior, and ultimately human morality, a

  variety of other pieces must be in place. One of the essential pieces is a certain

  degree of "intersubjectivity," the ability to understand (and therefore hopefully

  predict) the thoughts and feelings of others. Beyond the mere awareness of

  others' thoughts and feelings is the capacity to share them in some way, what de

  Waal calls "emotional contagion." As beings approach "moral" status, they

  develop the capacity to experience the experiences of others. Fortunately, some

  of the most fascinating recent work has identified a basis for this phenomenon in

  socalled mirror neurons in the brain. Mirror neurons, as the name suggests,

  imitate or mimic the activity of other parts of the brain-or of other brains.

  Experiments have shown that "neurons in the same area of the brain were

  activated whether the animals were performing a particular movement ... or

  simply observing another monkey-or a researcher-perform the same action."26

  This provides a literal biological foundation for empathy: individuals with mirror

  neurons, including humans and other primates, can actually feel what others feel.

  Other premoral habits and skills include the ability to inhibit one's own actions

  and to remember, which is crucial for preserving and learning from previous

  interactions with the same individuals. A third is the ability to detect and respond

  to "cheaters" or those who violate expectations. A fourth is "symbolic" thought,

  ultimately in the form of language and even quite abstract thought about "rules"

  and "principles." Few, if any, nonhuman animals meet all of these qualifications,

  but then neither do very young human children-proving that "morality" is a

  developmental achievement. However, many or most of these talents exist in

  nonhuman species, and by the time these talents all appear together in one

  species, namely humans, we have a patently unmysterious and unsupernatural

  "moral" sensibility. The fact that nonhumans do not have human morality, de

  Waal reminds us, is no reason to discount the natural, prehuman roots of

  "morality":

  To neglect the common ground of primates, and to deny the evolutionary

  roots of human morality, would be like arriving at the top of a tower to

  declare that the rest of the building is irrelevant, that the precious concept of

  "tower" ought to be reserved for its summit.

  Are animals moral? Let us simply conclude that they occupy several

  floors of the tower of morality. Rejection of even this modest proposal can

  only result in an impoverished view of the structure as a whole.'?

  CONCLUSION: WHAT'S RELIGION GOT TO Do WITH IT?

  We have proved that Christianity is not the only basis for morality, since religion

  of any kind is not required for morality nor is humanity even required. Let the

  silly and biased claim never be uttered again.

  But what is the relationship between Christianity and morality? There

  certainly appears to be a connection. The relationship is the same one as between

  any religion and its local morality system. It consists of two parts: first, the

  religion as a source of specific moral claims and second, the religion as a

  legitimation of those moral claims.

  We have seen that all religions contain behavioral instructions or norms of

  some sort or another; however, the details of these instructions vary wildly. Each

  religion advances its particular version of morality and backs it up with its own

  promises and threats (hell, reincarnation, bad karma, or whatever). To be sure,

  there are some commonalities across these religion-inspired moral systems, but

  what is specifically religious in moralities is not universal or important, and what

  is universal and important in moralities is not specifically religious. Humans,

  like all social beings, have codes and con sequences for behavior; religions add

  to that natural and nonreligious base a layer of diverse, trivial, irrational, and

  divisive-and as often as not, immoral, viewed from outside the religion-bits and

  pieces. Frankly, human morality would be better off without the religious

  additions.

  More critical, but regularly overlooked, is the legitimation effect of religion on

  morality (and on many other aspects of human life, like marriage or political

  institutions). The problem comes down to this: why this moral claim or moral

  system as opposed to some other? Why is this way of marrying or eating or

  dressing or living "moral" instead of that way? In a word, on what authority is

  this moral claim/system based? There are various possibilities: a moral (or

  social) system might be based on tradition or popular opinion or majority vote or

  some theory (like Marxism) or, in the end, force. None of these is a very

  adequate base, though, because (1) we could disagree and (2) we could be

  wrong.

  What religion does for morality and for society in general is move the

  authority, the responsibility, for rules and institutions out of human hands. Each

  religion adds some idiosyncratic elements to the nonreligious human tendency to

  create and enforce behavioral norms and appraisals and then attributes the whole

  system to a nonhuman and superhuman source. Individually and collectively, our

  relationship to (putatively) religion-given morality is thus not creation or

  criticism but obligation: "the moral" is that which we as members of the group

  must do and which is the most praiseworthy to do and the most reprehensible not

  to do. This also solves the problem of the diversity of moral codes and

  commands: the moralities of different religions and societies have little in

  common except the fact that those behaviors are the most obligatory in their

  group. Other rules exist, but their seriousness is not as great: violating a lesser

  obligation might be impolite or childish or abnormal, but violating a big

  obligation is immoral. But what is a big and "moral" obligation in one religion/

  society may be a small one in another-or not a moral obligation or issue at all.

  In the end, the return of morality back to earth, to the natural world and
the

  human world, puts morality in the hands of the humans who create and sustain it

  in the first place. It does not "solve" the moral problems of humanity-since there

  is still no agreement on what the solution or what the very problems are-but it

  empowers us to be the ones to decide. It is humans and only humans who must

  struggle and negotiate and compete to arrange "moral" affairs, but then we were

  always alone on this mission, and religionas history plainly and painfully shows-

  was never much help anyhow.

  NOTES

  1. Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained The Evolutionary Origins of Religious

  Thought (New York: Basic Books, 2001).

  2. Scott Atran, In Gods We Trust-The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion

  (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

  3. Graham Harvey, Animism: Respecting the Living World (New York:

  Columbia University Press, 2006), p. xvii.

  4. Robin Horton, "A Definition of Religion, and Its Uses,".7ournal of the

  Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 90 (1960): 211.

  5. Michael Shermer, The Science of Good and Evil Why People Cheat,

  Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule (New York: Times Books,

  2004), p. 7.

  6. Kai Nielsen, Why Be Moral? (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1989), p.

  39.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid., p. 40.

  9. Shermer, Science of Good and Evil, p. 31.

  10. Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham, "When Morality Opposes Justice:

  Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that Liberals May Not Recognize," Social

  ,justice Research 20 (March 2007): 98.

  11. Alan Dershowitz, The Genesis of.7ustice.• Ten Stories of Biblical Injustice

  that Led to the Ten Commandments and Modern Law (New York: Warner

  Books, 2000).

  12. Deeteronomy 31:19. The analysis for these commandments (notes 12

  through 19) comes from "A List of the 613 Mitzvot" published on "Judaism

  101," http://www.jewfaq.org/613.htm. The published list, in turn, is explicitly

  derived from the writings of Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, also known as

  Maimonides, whom the list compiler regards as the most widely accepted of the

  mitzvah commentators. Readers may find that the original passages in scripture

  do not always appear to support these interpretations, which only goes to show

  how subjective such "moral" regulations are.

  13. Deuteronomy 6:8.

  14. Leviticus 19:9; Leviticus 23:22.

  15. Deuteronomy 24:5.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Leviticus 18:6.

  18. Deuteronomy 23:20.

  19. Exodus 21:2.

  20. CBS News, "Saudi's `Miss Beautiful Morals' Pageant," http://www

  .cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/07/world/main4998112.shtml?source=RSSattr

  =World 4998112.

  21. [Editor's note: Although Dr. Eller still finds them unconvincing, for two

  defenses of this kind of secular moral realism, see Richard Carrier, Sense and

  Goodness without God (Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse, 2005), pp. 291-

  348, and Gary Drescher, Good and Real (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006).] Sam

  Harris also defends this in his talk, "Can We Ever Be Right about Right and

  Wrong?" seen here: http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/can-we-ever-be-

  right-about-right -and-wrong/.

  22. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex,

  2nd ed. (London: John Murray: 1882 [1871]), p. 98.

  23. S. M. O'Connell, "Empathy in Chimpanzees: Evidence for Theory of

  Mind?" Primates 36 (1995).

  24. Frans de Waal, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved

  (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 44.

  25. Ibid., p. 44-45.

  26. Thomas S. May, "Terms of Empathy: Your Pain in My Pain-If You Play a

  Fair Game," Brain Work 16 (May June 2006): 3.

  27. De Waal, Primates and Philosophers, p. 181.

  n his remonstrance against the New Atheist's claims that religion has led

  to massive human slaughters, Dinesh D'Souza, the conservative commentator,

  assures us that "Nazism ... was a secular, antireligious philosophy that, strangely

  enough, had a lot in common with Communism."1 Thus, D'Souza is able to

  charge atheism in Nazi Germany with some 10 million deaths, including that of

  6 million Jews. Actually, for D'Souza, the atheist regimes of Joseph Stalin and

  Mao Zedong take the top two spots in the list of atheist violence. Altogether,

  D'Souza affirms that these big three atheist regimes have killed about 100

  million people.2

  D'Souza is typical of many Christian apologists whose best response to the

  genocides committed by self-described Christians is that atheists have killed

  even more. In fact, D'Souza calculates that "deaths caused by Christian rulers

  over a five-hundred year period amount to only 1 percent of the deaths caused by

  Stalin, Hitler, and Mao in the space of a few decades."3 Witches and Jews are

  some of the groups that D'Souza grudgingly concedes may have been killed due

  to Christian violence.

  I have already discussed at length the fallacies of viewing Stalinist violence

  just in terms of atheism.4 Most of Stalinist violence resulted from forced

  collectivization, and recently published documents show the complicity of

  church authorities in the Stalinist agenda.' D'Souza does not provide a single

  document or statement by Stalin that shows that he was collectivizing or killing

  for atheist reasons.

  Moreover, communism, in the sense of a system of collectivized property, is a

  biblical notion found already in Acts 4:32-27. That Christian communist system

  also results in the killing of a married couple (Acts 5:1-11) that reneged on their

  promise to surrender their property. Thus, the principle of killing those who did

  not conform to collectivization of property is already a biblical one. The defense

  that it was simply lying about turning over property that was the motive for the

  deaths of Ananias and Sapphira overlooks the brute fact that the value of life was

  put below handing over all their property. For instead of just being expelled, they

  were killed. Stalin or Mao probably would have done the same thing. Since

  communism is advocated by some biblical authors, then Maoist and Stalinist

  deaths cannot simply be attributed to atheism, as enforcing collectivization can

  be deadly in both atheist or Christian forms.

  In addition, D'Souza does not have the competence to evaluate claims of

  Maoist violence because it requires extensive training in Chinese language and

  documents to check the accuracy of the information provided in English sources.

  Since I also do not have the expertise in Chinese to evaluate Maoist violence, I

  will not address Maoism here. What I do know is that D'Souza does not provide

  a single quote from Mao or even a translated Chinese document for his

  assertions that Mao killed because of atheism.

  In any case, this chapter will analyze in greater depth the argument that the

  deaths caused by Hitler should be attributed to some form of Darwinist atheism,

  something especially argued by Richard Weikart in his book, From Darwin to

  Hitler (2004).6 Weikart's book is one of the sources for D'Souza's

&n
bsp; pronouncements. In fact, I shall argue that:

  • Hitler's holocaust, rather than the result of some form of Darwinist

  atheism, is actually the most tragic consequence of a long history of

  Christian anti Judaism and racism.

  • Nazism follows principles of killing people for their ethnicity or religion

  enunciated in the Bible.

  In addition, I will show that many of D'Souza's claims rely on poor research

  techniques and a superficial knowledge of Christian anti Judaism.

  ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND NUMBERS

  According to the United Nations Convention against Genocide (also called the

  first Geneva Convention), genocide describes "acts committed with the intent to

  destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." 7 There

  is no ethical distinction between killing a religious group or an ethnic group.

  There is no ethical distinction between killing a racial or a national group. All

  are equally banned by the United Nations standards. This is important because

  D'Souza often tries to mitigate religious violence by claiming, usually without

  documentation, that some acts attributed to religious violence are really cases of

  ethnic/racial violence.

  Moreover, D'Souza often leaves unexplained what it is about warring ethnic

  groups that makes them so opprobrious to each other. D'Souza fails to see that

  ethnicity can be created and/or exacerbated by religious differences. For

  instance, according to biblical accounts, the creation of the Hebrew ethnic group

  is traced to the calling of Abraham to form his own separate lineage (Genesis

  12:1-7), even though he was not different "ethnically" at that point from the rest

  of his kinship group.8 Abraham's lineage was further differentiated by adhering

  to monotheism and adding some religiously mandated practices (e.g., endogamy,

  circumcision) that set them apart from their neighbors (see Genesis 17:12, 24:3-

  4).

  A similar phenomenon occurred between Christians and Jews. The initial

  conflict was between Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah and Jews who did

  not (SeeJohn 5:18, Acts 17:2-5, Galatians 2:11-16). SuchJews really did not

  differ "ethnically" from each other. While it is clear that some persons in the

  New Testament (NT) regarded themselves as Jewish and Christian, eventually

  "Jews" became those who retained the traditional religion of their ancestors, and

  did not accept Jesus as the Christ. The Catholic Church then reinforced the

  separate religious identity of Jews through marriage laws, professional

  restrictions, spatial separation in ghettos, and distinctive garb, which made Jews

  even more different and even more identifiable targets .9 Yet it was a perceived

  Jewish antagonism to Christ that was often the stated initial reason for such

  actions. Thus, when Pope Paul IV issued his bull, Cum nimis (1555), which

  established a ghetto for Jews, his introductory rationale was that the Jews' "own

  guilt has consigned them to perpetual servitude."10 Thus, one cannot divorce

  ethnicity and religion as easily as D'Souza attempts to do.

  D'Souza also focuses on numbers more than on the ethical principle that it is

  wrong to kill groups of human beings based on their race, ethnicity, nationality,

  or religion. But if, as D'Souza seems to think, genocide is always evil, then the

  numbers don't matter as much as does the principle. If D'Souza does not think

  genocide is always evil, then he is no less a moral relativist than atheists, and

  now we would have only his arbitrary reasons for justifying it.

  So, let's suppose that two genocidal groups, X and Y, were following the same

  principle of killing all members of some group that they had targeted for ethnic

  or religious reasons. We will label the victims of Group X as Target 1 and the

 

‹ Prev