COMMENTARY: Would the World Be Better Without Religion?

c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Wouldn’t the world be better off without religion? This sentiment is perhaps most famously associated with ex-Beatle John Lennon (remember “Imagine”?), but it has also been suggested by more formidible intellectual figures. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, two celebrated popularizers of Darwinism have publicly asserted that the […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Wouldn’t the world be better off without religion?

This sentiment is perhaps most famously associated with ex-Beatle John Lennon (remember “Imagine”?), but it has also been suggested by more formidible intellectual figures.


Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, two celebrated popularizers of Darwinism have publicly asserted that the world would be a less violent and more tolerant place if we abandoned religious belief. While their position may get a fresh hearing in the violent aftermath of the Muhammad-cartoon controversy, we should exercise extreme caution before heeding their call to jettison religion in the pursuit of perfect peace.

Steven Pinker, author of “The Blank Slate,” has argued that a materialistic account of the brain is less morally dangerous than religion itself, since “9/11 is only the most recent example of a case where morality derived from religion leads to horrible atrocities.”

Similarly, Richard Dawkins, best known for “The Selfish Gene,” has claimed that without religion we would have “a much better chance of no more war,” and “nothing like 9/11, because that’s clearly motivated by religion.”

Such arguments are strangely selective and ultimately self-defeating.

They are strangely selective because they unfairly single out religion as a cause of bloodshed. There are, in fact, many things in life over which people kill each other in large numbers _ ethnic differences and ideological disagreements on the larger level, sexual jealousy and family loyalty on the individual level, to name a few.

What Pinker and Dawkins fail to address is the wonderful world that would exist if we were to surrender our ethnic identification, our ideas of just society, or our commitment to spouses and family. Of course, it is perfectly sensible not to apply their argument to such sources of conflict. After all, anyone can see the foolishness of giving up these good things simply because some people have killed out of a disordered attachment to them.

To surrender everything that bad people have killed for is to surrender everything that good people live for, and this does not seem a smart bargain.

This argument, moreover, also applies to religion. The weight of history suggests that commitment to religious beliefs is just as deeply rooted in human nature as commitment to ethnic group, family or ideology. Giving up religion to preserve ourselves is nonsense, for it means giving up ourselves to preserve ourselves.

The position espoused by Pinker and Dawkins is self-defeating because it threatens to cut off the source of knowledge from which we learned to deplore acts like 9/11. From the beginning, humans have ruthlessly killed those defined as outsiders, either out of cold self-interest of hot-blooded hatred. How did we come to learn that this is wrong? Surely considerable credit must go to religious traditions that teach that all human beings, as created in the image of God, are entitled to a certain minimum of respect.


By inviting us to jettison religion, Pinker and Dawkins implicitly encourage us to seek moral guidance from a sort of moral Darwinism _ the idea that human nature evolved through small bands who cooperated against outsiders. Such an environment fosters solidarity with our kin and hatred for outsiders.

Whatever its scientific merits, this account on its own provides us with no justification for universal morality that insists on just treatment of all human beings. As a result, an action like 9/11 _ one tribe lashing out violently at another _ is seen as reasonable, perhaps even more reasonable than a commitment to universal justice and tolerance.

Whatever Darwinism’s achievements in explaining our origins, religion remains essential to explaining our highest aspirations.

(Carson Holloway, a visiting fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University, is author of “The Right Darwin: Evolution, Religion, and the Future of Democracy” (Spence Publishing).

KRE/PH END HOLLOWAY

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