A CHRISTIAN'S FEEBLE ANSWERS TO HOW RELIGION MANIPULATES PEOPLE INTO VIOLENCE
Keith Ward wrote Is Religion Irrational? Written from a Christian viewpoint, it says that one sign of irrationality would be religious violence being caused by faith. He denies religion leads to violence.
Ward tells us on page 129, that atheists and unbelievers understand religion
as a major force for evil in the world and according to them it breeds
division and conflict and that the surer the religion is that it is the
truth the more intolerant and vicious it can be. He says he does not believe
that religion is necessarily that bad. To say it is not necessarily that bad
implies that it can be that bad.
Religion means to bind or to obligate people to believe in certain things.
The religious person, though he or she may dialogue with other religions, is
not allowed to be open to the possibility of admitting the other religion is
right and not allowed to consider converting. True tolerance recognises the
right and freedom of a person to cross over from one faith to another.
Religion is intrinsically intolerant.
When I do evil, I am attracted by the good I see in it. If I am a religious
person, I will see this good as part of God. We all disagree on what is good
or not. Thus my God will differ from yours in the most important matters -
good and evil. It is not true that Catholics have one religion. Each person
is his or her own religion and they all pretend to be one religion.
Ward rejects the view that even if a Christian is not mad, his or her
beliefs certainly are mad (page 130). Even from this study alone we can see
that the beliefs are crazy.
Ward claims he does not mind being told his beliefs are false and that the
evidence is weak but he does mind being told they are ridiculous and
gruesome (page 131). But if the evidence is weak then what else can they be
but ridiculous? And the Christian notion of a God writing a Bible that
commands murder in the name of religion is gruesome. What about his command
that men must be circumcised?
Ward says that the world wars were not down to religion and that the desire
for sex and money and power are the big motivations behind violence (page
132). He says religion can contribute to this violence but its role when it
does is small. He says religion is not necessarily intolerant.
World War II was caused by a man religious in his own way - Hitler. This was
not about sex or money. It was about a man who knew that true power is to be
found through religion so he created his Nazi religion. If you want power,
you have to start a religion and religion is based on the notion of
thought-crimes. Religion helps to control people through controlling their
hearts.
Pope Pius XII did nothing about the genocide of non-Roman Catholics in
Yugoslavia. Religion tends to let the state do its dirty work for it. That
is even worse than going and doing the dirty stuff itself.
Ward says that militant Islam is not violent and intolerant on religious
grounds. It is a reaction to how Muslims are treated by non-Muslim nations
(page 132, 133). He then claims he condemns terrorist forms of Islam
absolutely.
Then why do they quote the Koran to justify their actions? If religion had
nothing to do with it, they would simply make the case for a just war and
leave the Koran out of it unless they pick out the bits where the Koran may
be benevolent.
A person who seeks to obscure or distort the fact that religion's do have
gods and scriptures that endorse violence is desensitised to that violence
and becomes part of the problem of religiously motivated violence. He is
helping those who wish to make war for he lulls society into a false sense
of security. He by implication will have those who tell the truth that gods
and Bibles endorse harm silenced while those who lie that religions are all
about peace get all the airtime.
Ward says he believes in Christianity and that it is faith that is possibly
true. Like an agnostic, he would say that it is possible that prayer works
and makes one closer to God. Some agnostics say prayer is reasonable even
though they say they do not judge if there is a God or not. They argue that
this is every bit as reasonable as a man stranded on a desert island who
yells for help though he may never be heard. Giving thanks to a God who may
not be there would be just as important. But God does not have senses or
feelings. Thus the cry for God to take pity or the desire to give him thanks
is misplaced. It would be insane to be thankful to a God who is so unlike us
that he has no feelings or no body.
Atheist Sam Harris's declared that insofar as a Muslim considers Islam to be
the only viable way to God and that the Koran explains this way correctly
they will view anybody who doubts Islam with contempt. Ward criticises this
view (page 134). He claims that the Koran says non-Muslims such as Jesus and
Mary must be revered so this is not true. He says that Muslims regard
Christianity and Judaism as paths to God and Islam teaches that each nation
has its own prophet. He then says that if there is only one revealed way to
God, that is not a permit to despise those who do not have the way. The
reason he gives is that God wants to be freely followed and will not compel
anybody for he loves everybody.
Ward tells some lies here.
The Muslim will certainly regard the sceptic as at best and unwitting
opponent of the truth and of God. Contempt is around the corner. And what
about the person who thinks they know Islam is true and they still oppose it
and encourage doubt? The Muslims should or will regard at least some
doubters with contempt.
And the claim that each nation has its own prophet is irrelevant to today's
Muslims who say that Muhammad was the last of the prophets.
Ward quotes the Quran as saying that he who kills a person unless the person
is a murderer or spreading mischief in the land is as bad as a person who
has killed the whole world. This is supposed to prove, according to him,
that Islam does not believe in killing unbelievers. But the text DOES permit
killing. And surely some unbelievers in Islam are spreading mischief in the
form of a false religion and can be killed?
Harris stated that religion brings out our power to be incredibly brutal. To
this Ward says, that only thinking or feeling that others are less human
than us, thinking or feeling that they are dangerously irrational and
stupid, or thinking or feeling that only the fittest should survive makes us
violent brutes. He thinks religion does not do it for it says all are equal
and precious (page 135). On page 136, Ward says that given the chance most
human beings have been intolerant when they got the power to repress others.
Religious people may feel they are repressing and controlling us by prayer
so in principle they are no better than dictators.
I like Ward's definition of a liberal society as one that allows free
expression of beliefs and ideas that do no obvious harm to others (page
136). But I would add there is a risk of non-obvious harm. That is why
liberal society must not shy away from checking out the disadvantages of the
beliefs.
But Ward is hypocritical. Jesus himself preached about the horrors of Hell a
lot and this would have disturbed children. Also, it's a worry for a
Christian child if a beloved parent won't turn to God. The child will fear
her or him going to Hell.
Page 138 deals with Sam Harris's assertion that to say our intuitions about
right and wrong in relation to the wellbeing of others and ourselves are
sourced in religion is absurd. Ward takes this to mean that Harris is
opposing those who say that we have got the truths from Heaven and we must
not think about them at all but just accept them. Ward says that we must
only believe in revelation from God if the revelation is kind and morally
blameless.
Ward is contradicting Jesus' teaching that the main commandment is to love
the one true God of Israel with all one's heart and soul and strength and
mind. If we decide what is good then if we start to think that God agrees
with us then clearly God is not being put first. We are putting ourselves
first and using God to hide that. Also, the commandment appeared in the
context of commanding us to obey the Torah or Law of Moses in the Bible
which contained many brutal revelations. God wanted two men caught having
sex stoned to death.
Page 140 accuses atheists of holding that morality is a human invention.
Ward says we need to hold that God sees what is really good for us and tells
us so we do not invent morality but learn about it from him. He says
atheists have a morality but it is not a morality about anything being
objectively right or objectively wrong. This is nonsense. Torturing a baby
to death for no reason and when there is no justification is undeniably bad
for it causes great suffering and takes a life. You don't need a God to tell
you that you shouldn't do it. And if you do then what does that say about
you?
Christians accusing atheists of treating morality as a human invention
suggests they think that atheists should not be tolerated. The person who is
against morality is necessarily against the law of the land too. The law is
based on morality.
Christianity is lying that you need to believe in God to believe in
morality. You can believe in God and not know right and wrong very well.
Belief in God does not necessarily mean you are not inventing your morality.
Ward would have to agree that cults such as Mormonism invent morality
despite believing in a kind of God. His argument seems to imply that you
need to believe in God as he has revealed himself to the real Christian
religion. Belief alone will not help. One needs to know what one believes in
and revelation is needed for that.
Page 141 mentions Harris's declaration that Christians lie and distort the
facts in order to avoid having to endorse the Bible God's commands that we
exterminate certain people for the glory of God.
Ward denies this but it is true. Even Christians saying those rules were
made by God but he changed them since are saying that in principle God can
command genocide. They are saying they would get involved if they were
transported to the times before the changes in a Time Machine. They claim
the right to honour such evil as the will of God thus they cannot complain
if some prophet comes along saying the rule has been reinstated.
Page 154 states that Harris and atheists are right to declare that blind
faith without evidence is dangerous and irrational. But what is not said is
that religious blind faith is the worst of the lot.
Page 169 says that religion is not dangerous though there are dangers in
religion. This seems to be saying that the dangers exist because of the
abuse of religion and they are not religion's fault. But if the dangers are
in the abuse of religion how can you say the dangers are in religion? Ward
is a soft-soaper.
We tend to be irrational in many ways and rational in others in all our
relationships. Birds die every day. We let our cats kill them. We eat the
more intelligent birds for dinner. Yet despite this we can love our
canaries. We can be devastated when they die. This seems irrational. If a
bird is valuable it is not valuable because it is your pet but because it is
a bird. So all birds dying should devastate us. In fact our love for one
bird is akin to idolatry - it denies other birds the same value in our
hearts. It is not their fault they are not our pets and we demean them. Do
not say, "It is not that we demean them! It is just that we think our bird
is special." But that proves the point and denial of our darkness just makes
us worse. Our irrationality makes our relationship to God suspect. Is it
really God we intend to serve or love as he is or are we pretending to care
a lot about God as he is? Belief in God is not a good thing for most if not
all are fake worshippers. We are so good at pretending that we care about
good as it is. No we care about what we want it to be. Because of this
problem, the genuine believer in religion or God will study and be open to
changing their religion if it turns out that it is not the one true faith
and therefore a hindrance to truth. There are few who even care!
The lesson in this that our service of God and belief in him needs to be as
rational as possible and nearly completely rational. Suppose there is a God.
God is not like us and will not need us to feel love for him - he is a God
for whom action matters not feelings or sentiments.
Conclusion
Keith Ward errs or lies on every major point. His distortion fools no one.
He has persuaded us that religion is indeed violently irrational.
The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, edited by Michael Martin, Cambridge, New
York, 2007
Is Religion Irrational? Keith Ward, Lion Books, Oxford, 2011
