I could go on, and on, and on. But I think you get the idea.
Now, many believers will argue that the harm done by religion isn’t religion’s fault. Many believers will point out all the wars, bigotry, fraud, oppression, quashing of science and medicine, and terrorizing of children done for reasons other than religion. Many will argue that, even when this horrible stuff is done in the name of religion, it isn’t inspired by religion at all. It’s inspired by greed, fear, selfishness, the hunger for power, the desire for control… all the things that lead people to do evil. And many will point out that not all religions are the extremist variety that leads people to commit atrocities and deny reality.
And again I’ll say: Yes, you have a point. It would be simplistic to argue that religion is the root of all evil, or to deny the role that money and power and tribalism and other human tendencies play in religious hatred and conflict. I know that the impulses driving evil are deeply rooted in human nature, and religion is far from the only thing to inspire it.
I’m saying that religion provides a uniquely stubborn justification for evil. I’m saying that religion is uniquely armored against criticism, questioning, and self-correction… and that this armor protects it against the reality checks that act, to a limited degree and in the long run, to keep evil in check. I’m saying that religion takes the human impulses towards evil, and cuts the brake line, and sends them careening down a hill and into the center of town.
Without religion, we would still have community. Charity. Social responsibility. Philosophy. Ethics. Comfort. Solace. Art. In countries where less than half the population believes in God, these qualities and activities are all flourishing. In fact, they’re flourishing far more than they are in countries with high rates of religious belief.
We don’t need religion to have any of these things.
And we’d be better off without it.
CHAPTER FOUR
Yes, This Means You: Moderate and Progressive Religion
“But surely you don’t mean progressive and moderate religion! You’re talking about the fundamentalists, the extremists, the Taliban, the hard-core Religious Right. But that’s not true Christianity, true Judaism, true Islam, true whatever. Of course you’re angry about that stuff. But I’m a progressive believer! I support gay rights! I support separation of church and state! I support science — I don’t think it has to be in conflict with religion! I’m tolerant and accepting of other religions! When you talk about what makes atheists mad about religion… surely you don’t mean me?”
Actually — yes, I do mean you.
Okay. I’ll modify that a bit. I’m not as angry about progressive and moderate religion as I am about the extremist varieties. If all religion were moderate, ecumenical, separate from government, supportive of science, and accepting of non-belief… well, atheists would still disagree with it, but most of us wouldn’t much care.
But moderate and progressive religion still does harm. And it still pisses me off.
Moderate and progressive religion still encourages people to believe in invisible beings, inaudible voices, intangible entities, undetectable forces, and events and judgments that happen after we die. And therefore, it still disables reality checks… making people more vulnerable to oppression, fraud, and abuse.
And moderate and progressive religion still encourages the basic idea of faith: the idea that it’s acceptable, and even virtuous, to believe things you have no good reason to think are true. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard moderate and progressive believers say how wonderful it is to think with your heart and not your head; how we need religion to preserve the mystery of life; how an excessive concern with reason and evidence closes you off to the grander truths of the Universe. Moderate and progressive religion encourages the idea that it’s acceptable, even virtuous, to prioritize wishful thinking over reality. It encourages the idea that it’s acceptable, even virtuous, to give greater importance to the world inside your head than you do to the vast world outside of it. It encourages the idea that it’s acceptable, even virtuous, to ignore reality when we’re making important decisions that affect ourselves and others.
And that, in and of itself, is a disturbing and dangerous idea.
Let’s make an analogy. Let’s pretend there are people who are convinced that they get instructions on how to live, not from God, but from their hair dryer. Let’s say that Person 1 thinks their hair dryer is telling them to shoot every redhead who gets on the 9:04 train. And let’s say Person 2 thinks their hair dryer is telling them to volunteer twice a week at a homeless shelter.
Is it better to volunteer at a homeless shelter than it is to shoot every redhead who gets on the 9:04 train? Of course it is.
But you still have a basic problem — which is that you think your hair dryer is talking to you.
You are still getting your ethics from a hair dryer. You are still getting your perception of reality and your ideas about how to live your life, not from the core moral values that most human beings seem to share, not from any solid evidence about what decreases suffering and increases fairness and happiness, not from your own experience of what makes the world a better place… but from a household appliance.
And that’s a problem. It’s a problem for what I hope is an obvious reason: Hair dryers don’t talk to us. Thinking that they do is out of touch with reality. And I hope I don’t have to explain why we should care about reality, and about whether the things we believe are true.
But it’s also a problem because, if you think your hair dryer is a valid source of moral guidance… what do you do if it starts telling you something different? Something less noble than “volunteer at the homeless shelter twice a week”? Something absurd (and not in a good way); something self-destructive; something grossly immoral?
What do you do if your hair dryer starts telling you to go to your blind date wearing a wedding dress and a hat made from a rubber chicken? What do you do if your hair dryer starts telling you, not just to volunteer at the homeless shelter twice a week, but to donate your entire paycheck to the homeless shelter, every week, to the point where you become homeless yourself? What do you do if your hair dryer starts telling you to shoot every redhead who gets on the 9:04 train?
If you don’t have a better reason for what you do than, “The hair dryer told me to,” you’re in trouble. You have no reality check on your perceptions or ideas or decisions. And if you do have a better reason for what you do than, “The hair dryer told me to”… then why do you need the hair dryer?
So yes. If you’re volunteering at a homeless shelter twice a week, you’re doing better than the person who shoots every redhead on the 9:04 train. But if you’re getting your ideas about reality and morality from a household appliance… then you’ve got a problem.
And if you’re getting your ideas about reality and morality from an invisible being who nobody can agree about and who you have no good reason to think even exists… then you’ve got a problem.
Faith without evidence is a bad idea. It’s a bad idea to believe things you have no good reason to think are true. Even if it sometimes leads to good conclusions; even if it’s moderate and tolerant… it’s still a bad idea. Period.
What’s more: Moderate religion is in the minority. The oppressive, intolerant, reality-denying forms of religion are far more common, and far better at perpetuating themselves. And moderate religion gives these ugly forms credibility. It gives credibility to the idea that faith — i.e., believing in things you have no good reason to think are true — is valid, and indeed virtuous. It gives credibility to the idea that invisible worlds are real: not only real, but more real, and more important, than the visible world. It gives credibility to the idea that our profoundly biased intuition is more trustworthy than logic or verifiable evidence. It gives credibility to the idea that religious beliefs, alone among all other ideas, should be beyond criticism, and that the very act of questioning religion is inherently intolerant. (And when questioned ev
en a little by non-believers, its adherents tend to get decidedly hostile and un-moderate.)
As for that whole “they’re not true Christians” thing…
Progressive Christians love to say that extremist bigotry and hateful hellfire isn’t Christian. “The true message of Jesus is compassion and tolerance,” they’ll say. “The true message of Jesus is loving your neighbor. What the Christian Right does and says — that’s not true Christianity.”
And they’re just as full of it as the Christian Right.
I obviously agree with them about the actual issues. Bigoted theocracy — boo. Love and tolerance and being nice to gay people — yay. The progressive view of Christ’s message is a better one. It’s just not a more Christian one.
Of course the progressives and moderates can quote chapter and verse to support their flavor of Christianity. But the Christian Right can do that, too. It’s easy to find hellfire and intolerant judgment in the Bible, even in the Gospels. There are, by my count, thirty-seven places in the Gospels where the Jesus character explicitly refers to the concept of Hell. And that doesn’t count the more indirect implications and allusions. The references aren’t out of context, either: they’re woven throughout the text, with several consistent themes emerging, such as people being damned to Hell for hearing Jesus and still not believing. It’s not a tangential concept — it’s front and center.
And yes, the Christian Right cherry-picks the parts of Scripture that support their vision, and ignores the parts that don’t. Which is exactly what progressive Christians do when they ignore the “wrath and damnation” stuff. Both sides have Scriptural support for their version of Christianity. And neither side has any better evidence for why the cherries they picked are the ones Jesus wants us to eat. When Christians of any stripe look at other Christians and say, “They’re not true Christians,” the question I always want to ask is, “How do you know?”
I’ll tell you how they know. They don’t. When you ask progressive Christians why they believe their Christianity is the true one, all they can ultimately say is, “That’s just what I believe,” or, “I feel it in my heart.” Like all believers, their belief that they’re accurately perceiving God’s message comes down to the conviction of faith. But the Christian Right has just as much conviction. They feel it in their hearts just as powerfully. Their faith in a pissy, bigoted, judgmental Christ who’s obsessed with who’s fucking who and how… it’s every bit as strong as liberal Christians’ faith in a gentle, forgiving Christ who wants us to treat one another with compassion.
And it’s not like the Christian Right is some obscure sect that believes Jesus is a space alien or something. They’re the largest, most politically powerful religious group in the United States. The hellfire version of Christianity is a huge part of the reality and history of the faith.
This whole “they’re not true Christians” thing is what atheists and rationalists call the “no true Scotsman” fallacy. Imagine that Angus McTavish reads about a grisly murder committed in London, and says to himself, “No Scotsman would commit such a terrible crime.” Then the next day, he reads about an equally grisly murder committed in Glasgow… and says to himself, “No true Scotsman would commit such a terrible crime.” But Angus McTavish doesn’t get to decide that a grisly murderer can’t be a true Scotsman. And progressive Christians don’t get to decide that right-wing fundamentalists can’t be true Christians.
By all means, say that the Christian Right is wrong. Say that their vision of the world is hateful and bigoted and out of touch with reality. Say that their version of Christianity isn’t the only one, even. I’ll stand by you. But don’t say that they’re not true Christians. They are Christians, by any reasonable definition of the word. You don’t have the one true version of the faith, any more than they do.
The hair dryer analogy comes from “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris. The extrapolation of the analogy into “why nice religion is still problematic” belongs to a comment by Brownian at Pharyngula. The “no true Scotsman” analogy was originally developed by Anthony Flew, in his book “Thinking About Thinking: Do I sincerely want to be right?”
CHAPTER FIVE
Yes, This Means You: New Age Religion
“But surely you don’t mean New Age religion! You’re talking about conventional religion, organized religion, religion with dogma and authority and a power structure. I understand being angry about that. But New Age religion and spirituality doesn’t have any of that! It’s transcendent, and healing, and fluid, and connected with nature and stuff! When you talk about what makes atheists mad about religion… surely you don’t mean me?”
Actually — yes, I do mean you.
It’s true that when I write about religion and religious belief, I tend to write about the Big Ones. The famous ones, the powerful ones, the well-organized ones with millions of followers or more. (Christianity, mostly, since as an American, it’s the one I’m most familiar with, and the one that’s most in my face.)
But it isn’t just the power structure of religion that’s a problem. It’s the spiritual belief itself.
So I want to talk about New Age religion. Or, as it’s sometimes called, “woo.” Neo-paganism. Wicca. Goddess worship. Astrology. Telepathy. Visualization. Psychic healing. The hodgepodge of Eastern and pre-modern religious beliefs imported into modern America — reincarnation, karma, chakras, shamanism etc. — that have been jumbled together and made palatable to a Western audience. Channeling. Tarot cards. Etc.
And I want to talk about why I have a problem with it.
I said this about progressive religion, and I’ll say it here: While I do think woo is harmful, I don’t think it’s as harmful as mainstream religion. Mostly because it’s not as powerful. It’s not as widespread, as wealthy, as symbiotically intertwined with governments, as the big religions. There’s a difference of degree, and it’s significant.
But the fact that it’s not as harmful doesn’t mean it’s not harmful at all.
There’s an obvious, practical, direct way that woo can do harm. And that’s the fact that false premises lead to bad decisions. Woo beliefs are untested and untestable at best; tested and demonstrably false at worst. And basing your life on a false premise is going to lead you to bad decisions. Garbage in, garbage out, as the data processors say. And this shows up most obviously when it comes to medicine.
When I was working as a counselor for a birth control clinic, we had a client who had come in for a cervical cap. I asked her what birth control method she was currently using, and she answered, “Visualization.” Really. She and her partner protected themselves from unwanted pregnancy by visualizing a protective barrier of white light over her cervix, shielding it from the sperm. She had decided to switch to the cervical cap, not because she’d decided that visualization was bullshit, but because she was concerned that she unconsciously wanted to get pregnant, and feared that this unconscious desire would make the visualization ineffective. Poke holes in the white light diaphragm, I guess. (Talk about an unfalsifiable hypothesis. If she didn’t get pregnant, visualization worked; if she did get pregnant, it’s because she wasn’t doing it right.)
So that’s part of what I’m talking about. If you believe in the visualization method of birth control, you’re a lot more likely to get pregnant when you don’t want to. If you believe in psychic healing or the manipulation of the chi energy or whatever, you’re a lot less likely to seek tested medical help for your injured leg or your cancer or whatever. (And you’re more likely to give up on conventional medicine if it takes longer than you want it to, or takes more work and trial and error than you’re willing to give it, or is partly effective but not completely.) That’s real, practical, physical harm done by woo.
But this principle doesn’t just apply to medical woo.
I once worked in an office with cats (no, this isn’t a tangent, bear with me), one of whom was pathologically shy and terrified of most people, but had come to trust me and be very attache
d to me, pretty much to the exclusion of everyone else. When I left that job (I’d been there for several years), I was worried that he would freak out without me, and asked my boss if I could take the cat home with me. Rather than consider the question on its own merits, my boss called an animal psychic… who did a consultation over the phone, and told her the cat wanted to stay in the office. My boss explained this to me, as if it had the force of complete authority. As if the psychic’s verdict completely and inarguably settled the question.
I’m not saying this was an easy decision to make. It wasn’t. I’m saying that it should have been made by me and my boss, who knew the cat and knew the situation. It should not have been made by a pet psychic, who never met any of us in person, and who made the decision over the phone.
(Slight tangent, although it is in fact relevant: If you want to read one of the funniest things ever about telephone animal psychics, read “Friend’s Best Man” by Harmon Leon, a.k.a. The Infiltrator, who called several pet psychics and asked them to do readings on his dog… a dog who did not, in fact, exist.)
I could give example after example of this. If you believe that your horoscopes and Tarot readings are all pointing to “serious love relationship coming soon,” you’re not going to make smart or careful decisions about your dating life. If you believe in reincarnation, you’re going to be more careless about taking advantage of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and experiences. If you believe that the Tarot is telling you to weather the rough spots in your relationship and that there’s light at the end of the tunnel, you’re going to stay in a destructive, hopeless relationship for a lot longer than you should. You might even marry the guy. (All examples from my own life, by the way.)
So that’s the most direct, immediate way that woo can do harm. False premises lead to bad decisions. And untestable hypotheses make it impossible to evaluate your decision-making process and adjust it. Garbage in, garbage out.
Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless Page 7
