In Defense Of Religion?

Lately I have been catching up on back episodes of The Infidel Guy. As I was listening to an episode from back in February, Episode 515 – A Defense Of Religion with Bruce Sheiman, I wanted to agree with the guest and at the start I did. However a number of things he said struck me as wrong and I felt he missed a few major aspects that any serious defense of religion has to acknowledge.

However, before I get into my problems with his views, I’d like to commend Bruce for two things. First of all, it’s very much true that we as atheists, far too often, criticize religion while ignoring any positive aspects of it. I’m as guilty of this as anybody, and he makes a very good point that to only focus on the negatives while ignoring the positives is being just as close minded as those on the other side who do the reverse. The other compliment I’d like to give him is related to him mentioning that his book has managed to be attacked by both christians and atheists alike. There is an old saying, that you know you’ve done something right if you manage to piss off both sides of an argument; and by this standard this book has done something right by making both believers and non-believers think about something they find uncomfortable.

Now that I’ve spent 150 words on what’s good about his views expressed in the interview, I’ll spend the next 1150 words going into detail about where he got it wrong.

Bruce is right that religion has done much good for the world and society, but he states, without any evidence, that this good could not have been done without religion as the catalyst. Historical precedent seems to contradict this view, as there have been plenty of completely secular movements that have pushed forward positive ideas. To claim that in the absence of religion that no secular motives for the good that religion has done would have taken over seems to be underestimating mankind. Looking at societies today we can compare very religious ones (like the US) vs very non-religious one (such as Sweden and Denmark). When we look at these societies, we actually see that the non religious countries rank better in typical Standard of Living Indexes such as Human Poverty Index, UN Human Development Index, etc.

His next claim is that he believes the good done by religion outweighs the bad. While this point is clearly debatable, it is based on a faulty foundation. This would only be true if the original assumption, that the good done by religion could only have come through religion, could be shown to be valid. As I’ve already shown, at best this is an unproven idea, and quite likely it’s actually an idea which has already been disproven. If the good works done by religion today can also been done through secular means, then all it takes in one negative of religious belief to tip the scales towards the conclusion that religion, on the whole, in a negative influence on society today. This is not to say it did not have benefits in the past, but that perhaps as a culture we’ve outgrown the need for religion and now it is a detriment to society.

He also counters the claim of Sam Harris and others that religious moderates create an environment for the fundamentalists to thrive and recruit. He makes the counter claim that “the moderates actually cushion the world from the extremists” and “keep the extremists from doing real extreme things”. This seems to ignore pesky little facts like suicide bombers, religious wars, jihads, terrorism, etc which are all done today in the name of religion. If one is to claim that the moderates are acting as a cushion, it would seem as if we’re talking about a single pillow cushioning a fall from ta ten story building. Sure it might technically make the impact upon landing some measurable amount less, but the end result is you’re still dead. In this argument he also states that he’d much prefer the moderate religious people over the extremists, which is a fair statement, although it is a statement with no grounding in reality. We don’t get to choose which type of religious believers inhabit the world with us. Clearly if we had a choice, every rational person would choose moderates. But we don’t have that choice, we have to figure out how best to deal with the situation we have currently in the world, which is dealing with moderates and extremists together.

The next point brought up is that religion allows, and makes acceptable, for people to believe things that are not coherent with reality. The host brings up the idea of a person having a dream and telling their co-workers the next day that god told them to do good works compared with telling the co-workers that Papa Smurf told them to do good works. In one case the person would be praised and applauded, while in the other their sanity would likely be called into question. Unfortunately Bruce never responds to the question, and instead turns it around to be a question about any generic thing that is accepted by large numbers of people, and that secular organizations don’t have the same size membership. While this is true, it completely fails to answer the question at hand.

The guest then seems to contradict something he said earlier. Essentially in one breath he makes the claim that the extremists of religion would be extremists of some other ideology if religion was not around. However he has already tried to make the claim that the good done by religion would not be done through secular means if not for religion. Well to be blunt, you can’t fucking have it both ways. Either actions (both positive and negative) can in some cases be attributed to one specific ideology, or they can’t. You can not claim only the moral actions are as their base religious, but the immoral ones are independent of the ideology. Granted at times atheists are guilty of doing the same thing, in reverse; but two wrongs does not make a right.

His next point seems to get into the concept of religious people having an absolute morality, and that this is somehow “better” than humanistic morality which is not absolute. But again he seems to ignore historical precedent that religious morality is far from absolute. One needs look no further than slavery, which for much of human civilization has been an accepted practice, even (perhaps especially) among religious believers. Those in favor of slavery used the bible to confirm and bolster their arguments for slavery as being part of god’s law. However today if you walk into any christian church and ask random people if they feel slavery is moral, you’d be hard pressed to find people who will say yes.

But none of what Bruce touched on, deals with the primary flaw of religious belief: that by holding and making acceptable to hold false beliefs (or at the very least unsupported by evidence), we create an irrational and dangerous environment; where things like homeopathy and healing touch and crystal power are being used in place of science based medicine. We create an environment where some people feel it’s okay to fly planes into building or shoot a doctor or allow their child to die, because of how they read a “holy text”. We create an environment where instead of looking for evidence, many people see blind faith as a virtue. This is an environment that can not sustain itself, and one that must be corrected.

While I wanted to agree with Bruce Sheiman’s thoughts In Defense Of Religion, in the end I found the defense, despite making some good points, was not nearly good enough and just not convincing.