Swords Against Boredom

I just finished God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens.

Relax. This is not another diatribe from a morally outraged zealot who wants to stomp all over Hitchens without ever having read his book. In fact, I agree with a great many of his observations and think he’s written an important work. Like The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, the Hitchens book is a long-overdue reaction to the blatant hostility toward reason that is becoming ever-stronger in the United States and elsewhere. Basically, these guys are pissed and they’re fighting back. I root them on.

But I take issue with Hitchens on his subtitle. I can’t agree that religion poisons everything.

Here are my reasons:

• I know good faithful people who are equally horrified at the historical atrocities performed in the name of religion as cited by Hitchens. I know people of faith who are equally horrified at the turns our U.S. government is taking, and at the religious zealotry that permeates the whole of Middle East relations.
• I know good faithful people who are capable of fully understanding the scientific method and accepting its implications — and yet their faith is not shattered in the least. These people do not pretend that science never happened; instead, they embrace learning and seem to find it adds to their faith rather than detract from it. And they don’t view the scientific community as a gigantic anti-God conspiracy. They know how science works, and realize that truth will win out.
• I know good faithful people who do not cover their eyes and plug their ears when presented with evidence contrary to the teachings of their religion. They do not sing “La-dee-da-dee-da — I can’t hear you!” They listen, consider, then think for themselves to figure out what they believe.
• I know good faithful people who are not sheep, blindly accepting whatever the clergy says and voting however the clergy insists they should vote. These people of faith insist on stubbornly thinking for themselves — and they still come out on the side of God.
• I know good faithful people who do not wield their religion like some sort of weapon against the rest of the world, smiling happily at the thought that they will attain salvation whilst all the poor stupid heathens burn.
• I know good faithful people who seem to have no trouble at all realizing that other people might feel differently, and that it’s OK. They do not look for ways to squeeze their religious views into our laws and into our schools, and they look upon such attempts with dread.
• I know people of good faith who do not cherry-pick history to try to prove that our Founding Fathers wanted to set up a theocracy. I know people of good faith who do not insist that we had a perfectly good Christian nation with Christian laws and Christian morality until those damned liberal heathens came along and wrested it away.
• I know good faithful people who do not seem to regard people of other faiths — or of no faith — as some sort of not-quite-human. They do not work to deny other Americans — for instance, homosexuals — their basic rights on the grounds of religion, nor do they just sit back and watch it happen.
• I know people of faith who lean toward believing in the Intelligent Design theory, or even embrace it whole-heartedly, yet realize that so far there is no science backing it up. These people would rather see scientific work done to prove or disprove the theory and are willing to allow time for that, rather than skip the scientific work altogether and go straight into using our schools to indoctrinate kids into Christianity.
• I know people of faith who realize that in a nation with freedom of religion, it is a bad idea to introduce organized prayer into our public schools. They feel faith is important, but they recognize the schools’ role as an arm of the government. They are perfectly capable of realizing we have churches all over the place, and that parents are the ones best suited to guiding the moral and religious growth of their children anyway, so there is no need to put it in our public schools, too.
• I know good people of faith who have no inclination toward proselytizing whatsoever. They strive to be decent, and moral, and to treat others kindly — regardless of differing opinions regarding the Almighty. They don’t insist that you should believe as they do or get the hell out of the country.
• By the way, I know agnostics and atheists who also strive to be decent, and moral, and to treat others kindly — regardless of differing opinions and with no inclination toward proselytizing whatsoever. They don’t insist that you should believe as they do or get the hell out of the country.

In sum, it seems to me one can make a case for religion poisoning a lot of things. History and current politics are rife with examples, and Hitchens sheds light on these in a convincing way. But experience tells me some believers are immune to the poison.

So there. Religion does not poison everything.

– Steve

P.S. I found the Hitchens book more entertaining and absorbing than the Dawkins book, but I liked them both. Go with Hitchens if you are more into the socio-political thing, but definitely go with Dawkins if science is your ilk.