Reply to Hitchens and the ex-Bishop of Oxford, by John Perrey

Hitchens is unfair to the religious. It may be true that there is no moral action or belief that depends for its existence on religiosity but still it is often the case that post-religious cultures struggle to recreate the spirituality of religious culture. By that I mean in particular the emphasis on Love, Brother and Sisterhood, and the Sacredness of individual life found in Christian culture that creates an active concern for the lives of others and which plays an increasing role in people's lives the stronger its influence. It may be right to say that at times these aspects of the Christian way of life have not been upheld by some or even the majority of Christians, but this does not mean the ideals were not there for some to live up to. Today those ideals endure and animate the lives of many Christians. That is not necessarily the case with atheists. In a society where religious belief is not strong and the society is correspondingly secularised there is not this emphasis on these virtues. In recent times secular society has instead been characterised by self-interest and callousness towards others. It need not be this way, it could import or restate the values of Christianity, but until it does there is a value to the Christian religion and those like it which atheistic societies do not possess.

Harries' response to Hitchens is a now typical response to the faithless. It's composed of two ideas, that religion isn't the cause of evils such as war and persecution, it merely affords an excuse to the people who are the real cause, and that faith isn't as unreasonable as religion's critics believe. Is it reasonable to counter scepticism about the existence of God because of a lack of evidence to corroborate that faith by simply saying that many artists, academics, and philosophers have been people of faith? Doesn't this simply avoid providing a solution to the problem that needs to be solved, namely that there is a lack of evidence for God's existence? Simply because others have believed that something is true, no matter their credentials, is not in it self a reason to believe it is true, especially when more apposite facts suggest the contrary. Harries is making a fallacious argument from authority, let us hope for his sake not wilfully. Indeed if we examine say, the writings of the estimable John Locke on the existence of God found in his 'An Essay  Concerning Human Understanding' of 1690 we can see that whatever his other virtues this is inadequate stuff.

There is a tendency to blame religion for all the world's evils (perhaps in a conscious attempt to deny credence to the idea of the Fall) which Harries is right to oppose because religion can't be given all the responsibility for them, but neither can it be absolved of all guilt as Harries wishes. He blames economics, broadly meaning economic resources.  Developing this idea we can say that religion has been a mere pretext, an excuse for war to gain economic resources such as land at the expense of neighbours and rivals. Religion's role has been to provide a makeshift moral justification for a wrongful act which assuages feelings of self-condemnation and preserves our good reputation in the eyes of others. However this omits those times when religion has been the actual cause of wars or persecutions or has been part of the cause in combination with other factors and may have been the crucial ingredient. Who can now know whether the first crusade of Islam out from Arabia, across the Middle East and North Africa, and in to South Eastern Europe , Spain, and as far as North-Central France was motivated by hunger for power, or religious zeal?  Similarly how can we know how much the first Christian crusade was motivated by revenge for the invasion of Europe, the desire for power, or religious zeal?
 
We can isolate religion as a cause in some things though, for example the reason why the Vatican would have felt the need to suppress by violence any dissent with its authority would have been religious as without this reason what interest would they have in attempting to maintain and extend temporal power? Surely if temporal power was their principal goal they could have achieved this more easily by accommodating dissent within the church?  It is impossible to deny that religion is the cause of religious persecution since without religion there would be no reason to persecute someone on religious grounds, it is the reason the persecution happens, excusing religion because persecution might have happened anyway misses the point. It's like saying 'don't lock your front door! Burglars can get in through the windows anyway!', which seems to be what John Gray is saying in his attacks on Hitchens and Dawkins. Perhaps the problem is not religion, or Christianity as such, but the dogmatism of Christian moral doctrine, however without this there would be no religion identifiable as Christianity. Presumably there could be a religion that doesn't have the character flaws of those currently existing but there isn't and those that exist are what we must judge religion by. We could just say it was always the corruption of temporal power that motivated the church, but then why bother to form a religion to achieve those ends? Can we really believe the whole thing is just a hoax, a cloak to shield the hunger for world domination by the apostles and the prophet?

It is only in a time when religions of faith in the supernatural seem unlikely that we can believe that these religions, based as they are on the notion of eternal punishments in an after-life, would not have motivated people to acts of extreme violence and cruelty. Imagine what religion meant for people in Europe's past. They really believed that giving the right answers to various questions meant the difference between an eternity of torture and a heaven where the problems of human existence where not to be found. They really believed that people who gave wrong answers to these questions were evilly leading others astray from the path to salvation and that ending their lives to prevent them harming others and themselves was justified not least because they were probably not human anymore anyway but possessed by evil spirits. No wonder then the history of religio-economic schisms in Europe and elsewhere is so gory. Currently existing religions need not be like this it is true, but ignoring the salutary lessons of the past makes their recurrence more likely.  

John Perrey is a writer.

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