The Mafia doesn’t give Easter sermons
Sholto Byrnes, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, doesn’t entirely buy Peter Hitchens’s line on atheism.
For while Stalin’s atheism may have been a necessary condition for the atrocities he committed — I completely agree with Hitchens that “without God, many more things are possible than are permitted in a Godly order” — it is not a sufficient one. I part company with him when he claims that his preceding sentence proves that which follows it: “Atheism is a licence for ruthlessness, and appeals to the ruthless.”
Good about parting company, but I part company earlier than that. Atheism is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for committing atrocities, and it isn’t necessarily the case that ‘without God, many more things are possible than are permitted in a Godly order.’ Given holy wars, the inquisition, religious massacres, the revolting ubiquitous cruelty of the Irish church, it just isn’t obvious that atheism permits atrocities any more than theism does. It’s clear that atheism doesn’t rule out horrendous savage murderous violence – but it’s clear that religion doesn’t either. It’s clear that religion doesn’t necessarily make people more compassionate or generous or fair or kind – just as atheism doesn’t. It could be that one or the other tends to do better, but it’s simply not possible to argue that either one reliably prevents – makes not ‘possible’ – any extreme of human brutality.
In as much as the absence of God leaves any system of morality floundering when it comes to unarguable proof of its truth, Hitchens is on to something. An atheist society does not have the in-built defences against the will of a tyrannous majority that religion would supply, for instance.
Would, if what? Would, when? The trouble with that thought is that there have (to put it mildly) been theist societies that had no built-in defences against the will of a tyrannous majority, at least none that worked. This is a massive stumbling block for the whole ‘belief in God makes people good’ idea. If belief in God really did make people good – good in the sense that people tend to mean it nowadays: compassionate, non-violent, kind – then there wouldn’t have been so many Christian supporters of slavery in the 19th century US. If belief in God made people good then sharia wouldn’t include so many savage punishments and such relentless limitation of women’s rights and freedom. (Sharia as practiced in the real world. People like to point out that various nasty things are not really part of sharia. Maybe they’re not, but that’s not much help when the relevant people think they are.)
Atheism too, of course, has no in-built defences against the will of a tyrannous majority. In truth nothing does, apart from constitutions and bills of rights. That’s why such things are needed. Depending on the good will or the religious or atheist conscience of millions of people is a terrible idea. Neither religion nor atheism reliably makes people good, or bad either. On the other hand, religion does give a gloss of pseudo-goodness to bad actions, in the minds of people who have been raised on harsh religious beliefs. Atheism can’t put that kind of gloss on things.
I was thinking all this earlier today while I read the piece, and then I suddenly bumped into my own name. That’s an odd experience!
Last summer, I found myself in the middle of a minor fuss after I wrote a scathing review of Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom’s Does God Hate Women? for the Independent on Sunday. Put simply, my objection was that they detailed terrible barbarities perpetrated against women by religious people, chiefly Muslims, and then pretty much laid the blame on religion, again, chiefly Islam, for those crimes.
Actually it wasn’t the analysis we disagreed with, it was the wild inaccuracy of many of the factual claims, but never mind. Let’s consider the analysis now. I’ll just say what I said there:
We do lay the blame for certain kinds of barbarities perpetrated against women by religious people on religion, for the reason that the perpetrators of the crimes themselves cite religion as the justification for the crimes. We take them at their word. We quoted people saying things like “We will do what Allah has instructed us” (p 174). Without that, a bunch of men stoning a young girl to death in front of a crowd of people would be universally seen as a criminal act; with it, it is seen by some as pious, and not only permitted but mandated. This fact really does make a difference. It makes the same difference that the phrase “church teachings” makes when the pope and bishops fight equality legislation in the UK.
We don’t claim that all religion always makes people act like that, or that some religion makes all its adherents act like that. We do claim that religion makes brutalities that would otherwise be obviously unacceptable into pious acts, and that that fact makes a major difference.
That’s what I said there. Well it’s undeniable, surely. It’s not an all or nothing claim, it’s a something claim. That ‘something’ is not an invention or a fantasy. Just look at the self-righteous way the Vatican hierarchy is carrying on. You don’t see the Mafia acting that way! They don’t give sermons in huge churches saying all this fuss about child rape is just ‘petty gossip.’ They just shoot their way out, or bribe everyone in sight, or both. At least with them there’s no confusion.
Unfortunately the Mafia tends to be intimately involved with the Catholic Church, which somewhat tarnishes their otherwise spotless image.
Regular church attendance is hardly unknown among ‘made men’; in fact it grants gangsters a degree of legitimacy.
Byrnes says: ‘An atheist society does not have the in-built defences against the will of a tyrannous majority that religion would supply…’
Leave aside the tyranny that has operated in nearly every godlful (as distinct from godless) society known to history. Stalinism and Nazism were both religions in their own right: the traditional God in the form conceived by Christianity or any other major religion does not have to come into it.
Emile Durkheim’s brilliant idea was that the group in worship of its deity is actually in worship of itself. Hitler and Stalin both removed the middle step and made the process more direct, with their national populations hailed by both as being in a process of completing a march towards an historic destiny, and with Hitler and Stalin as those respective populations’ clairvoyant and infallible prophets.
Byrnes and Hitchens both seem headed in the direction of saying we need God even if we do not believe in him; which if memory serves me correctly was an idea first broached by Plato in the Republic.
(IMHO it is only the light of Durkheim that saves the most important prayer in Christianity from being a self-contradictory and tautological mess, and makes any sense of it at all.)
There’s a nice little equivocation going on there, I think, between the rules of a religion, on the one hand, and the actual behavioural effects of religion, on the other. The entire argument seems to me to involve hopping between the two as convenient.
So the first claim – that atheism is necessary for Stalinesque acts, tyranny – involves the idea that religious rules are effective in constraining people’s behaviour, and that atheism removes these constraints, thereby making certain acts ‘permissible’.
We point out in reply that religious people throughout history have committed all kinds of atrocities, implying that they found it easy to disregard these constraints, appeared unaware of their existence, or positively believed themselves to be under a contrary religious mandate to perform the atrocious acts.
And their reply is to complain that we shouldn’t take atrocities committed by believers to imply that religions encourage or recommend committing atrocities.
But even assuming the *ahem* dubious claim that religions don’t encourage some rather nasty behaviours, this complaint requires them to give up the original claim – that religion provides effective constraints against monstrous conduct – since this is now false by their own admission. Instead they have to substitute the rather lamer claim that religion has rules against monstrous conduct, which are very often disregarded or overlooked even by its most devoted followers.
And then, of course, it’s hard to see how religion is doing anything useful, since (a) it’s not effective in stopping people from doing horrible things; and (b) it would be pretty silly to say that atheists have no rules against monstrous conduct.
Also, how is it possible that every single one of these people needs to be acquainted with the basics of the Euthyphro Dilemma? I am shocked, shocked, that they demonstrate such ignorance of the thing they are critiquing.
Jennie Louise, your shock is duly noted, with an amused chuckle.
As for Sholto Byrnes – I know he’s a religious apologist, so one must expect him to do a certain amount of glossing and equivocating and general dodging of facts. But even as blatant an apologist as he should have more shame than to write, “An atheist society does not have the in-built defences against the will of a tyrannous majority that religion would supply, for instance.” Really? When have these vaunted defenses against tyranny EVER BEEN IN EVIDENCE in a society where a substantial majority share a common faith – and here I refer not to a majority who might adhere to some generically common faith like Christianity which in actuality is split into hundreds of denominations, but where a majority share common religious beliefs and institutions. Even if we limit ourselves to actual political tyranny instead of just the sort of social tyranny J.S. Mill identified and argued against so clearly in On Liberty, I can think of many, many examples of tyrannical religious majorities. More importantly, I can think of exactly ZERO examples of societies characterized by genuine religious majorities where those majorities have NOT engaged in systematic oppression of some segment of the populace, oppression springing directly from their religious beliefs.
Given the choice: I’d much prefer the Morals of the Mafia, or the Conscientious Notions of the Cosa Nostra, over the Immorality of the Inquisition.
I am racking my brain to think of ONE historical example where religious morality has thwarted a tyrannous majority. I can’t.
I can think of examples of where widely accepted cultural norms have protected minorities, and usually those norms are influenced by religion, but that’s not quite the faith-based morality Byrnes is talking about.
Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to
examine the laws of heat.
— Christopher Morley
No, unfortunately, they don’t either. Think of the Christian groups in the US who want to reinterpret the US constitution so that it says the US is a Christian nation. Or that freedom of religion doesn’t include freedom from religion.
It’s still up to people to interpret and enforce constitutions and bill of rights.
Yes but much of what the Christian groups want to do is in fact blocked by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, even with this (mostly Catholic) Supreme Court. That’s not to say that minority rights are protected enough but it is to say they are protected a good deal more than zero.
@OB: I agree, it’s much better than nothing. But it is not impossible (just highly unlikely) that these religious groups can get enough members voted into office to get a majority. They could then stack the courts with judges who share their crazy interpretation of the Constitution. Kind of like how they have already stacked the Texas Board Of Education, hoping the next generation will be even more agreeable to their goals.
But clearly religion is doing a much worse job of protecting freedom than the Constitution is. After all, the people who want to reinterpret the constitution clearly all have religious reasons to do so.
Deen, sure, and the Constitution could be amended, too. It could have had a shiny new amendment banning gay marriage. But it’s very difficult, so the more whacked the amendment is, the less likely it is to succeed. When the theocrats reach 2/3 of the population…well, it’s time for the little cyanide pill.
@OB: yes, but how are you going to trick them into taking that pill? ;)
:- )