Is religion dangerous? Does it do more harm than good?

A current glut of best-selling books answer these questions in the affirmative. Professor Richard Dawkins teaches that religion is “the root of all evil.” Christopher Hitchens believes religion is deadly, poisoning everything it touches. Sam Harris argues that commitment to religion at any level – from fundamentalist to liberal expressions – is dangerous to society.

Keith Ward responds to the arguments put forward by these atheists (or better, anti-theists) in his newest book, Is Religion Dangerous? He argues that “such assertions are absurd. Worse than that, they ignore the available evidence from history, from psychology and sociology, and from philosophy. They refuse to investigate the question in a properly rigorous way, and substitute rhetoric for analysis. Oddly enough, that is just what they tend to accuse religious believers of doing” (7).

Surely, religion does some harm – but it also does some good. Indeed, one could reasonably argue that it does a great deal more good than harm. And that is exactly what Ward does in this book. He provides a reasonable argument for the positive contributions of religion. Following is a summary of a few of his arguments. For the most part, I have quoted Ward at length with minimal commentary. However, this is simply a summary to whet your appetite. I highly encourage every reader to pick up a copy of this book.

Is religion merely man-made?

Many write off religion simply because they believe it has its origin in a primitive mindset that had no problem embracing myth and magic as literal realities. Most contemporary anthropologists approach the study of religion with this assumption. From the beginning they assume that religious beliefs are false. Their goal, therefore, is not to explain religious beliefs, but rather, to explain them away as relics of the primitive mind.

The problem with this approach is that there is simply no proof for it. It is merely assumed. Therefore, statements in this regard are not scientific – they can neither be verified nor falsified.

As an example, Ward puts forward ancient Aboriginal religious art that is full of symbolism. The question that must be asked of the anthropologists who dogmatically pronounce that religion proceeds from literal to symbolic is: “on what evidence does anyone think that humans have moved from literal to symbolic interpretations?” Ward writes,

If humans have evolved, then it will be true that at some stage, many tens of thousands of years ago, human thought would have been less developed than it is now. But does that mean it would have been more literal? Perhaps literalness is a late development, and the idea that artifacts should literally be like what they represent — or even the idea of ‘literalness’ itself – is a concept that only developed when humans began to think scientifically or analytically.

It could be that the obsession with ‘literal truth’ is itself a product of the scientific outlook, and of the belief that only literal truths are true at all. … It may be the case that very early human thinking was more metaphorical than literal in nature. (15)

In light of the methodological biases of many studying religion, Ward warns us: “The important thing to see is that all speculations about the origins of religion are very poorly evidenced, and depend almost entirely on our present attitudes towards religious belief – on whether we think it is reasonable or fundamentally a delusion. Study of the origins of religion cannot help in making that decision, since the results of such a study will already incorporate our views about the authenticity and truth of present religion” (19). Ultimately, if our desire is to understand religion in our world, it is not the origin of a religion that matters as much as its expression in its present form.

Are religious beliefs merely projected fantasies?

Some argue that religion is nothing more than the projected fantasies of primitive minds seeking childlike solace in an imaginary friend. But is the use of one’s imagination in reflecting upon the nature of reality and the possibility of the transcendent really as ludicrous as some would suggest? Ward has an interesting take on this:

Ideas of God are imaginative projections. An idea of God (remember, I am talking about our idea of God, not about God!) is a construct of the imagination, not a perceived object in the external world. It is a construct because it is trying to form some image of a reality that is beyond all images. The only question is whether it is a construct that has no basis in reality, or whether it is striving to depict some sort of objective reality. (16)

Though the human imagination is limited, there is nothing to suggest that it has no objective connection to ultimately reality. For example, mathematicians do not believe they are just inventing mathematics. They assume they are discovering a set of objective truths by using their imaginations as creatively as possible (see page 16). In the same way, religious people do not believe that they are inventing a transcendent reality, but that, through their beliefs and practices, they are seeking, discovering, and connecting with it.

Is religion oppressive to human existence?

Some argue that religion is so oppressive to individual human existence and that its contributions to social evil are so great that it must be completely rejected. Ward turns the tables by arguing that it is atheism that is more likely to lead to the destruction of the individual and to oppressive social evil:

It is when people feel that life is pointless, that there is no point in trying to be good, that existence itself is some sort of cruel joke or regrettable accident, that they surrender to sadistic and destructive impulses. In short, it is lack of faith in the value of existence and in the possibility of goodness that is likely to lead to pure evil. And if there is one thing that the world religions are united on, it is the insistence (in the Abrahamic faiths) that existence is good, or (in Buddhist traditions) that even if existence involves suffering, release is possible by practicing compassion and renouncing possessive desire. Religion cannot be the source of all evil. For it systematically opposes the hatred of existence — and that is the source of pure evil, if anything is. (30)

If religion is not the problem, what is?

Though some act as if only religion is open to abuse, this is certainly not the case. All beliefs hold the potential to be abused. There are evil religious beliefs and evil non-religious beliefs. “What makes beliefs evil is not religion, but hatred, ignorance, the will to power, and indifference to others” (35). “It is not religion that causes intolerance. It is intolerance that uses religion to give alleged ‘moral’ support to the real cause of intolerance – hatred of those perceived or imagined to be oppressors or threats to one’s own welfare” (38). He continues: “Of course we want to know what it is in religion that allows it to be used as a ‘moral’ cloak for evil actions. But the sad truth is that almost any human beliefs and institutions can be utilized for evil ends, given the existence of deeply rooted hatreds and genuine injustices” (36).

It is certainly true that “[r]eligious scriptures can be misused. But such misuses can be identified by the fact that they ignore the weightier matters of scriptures – the love of God and neighbour, and the search for compassion and mercy – and choose texts taken out of context and applied without any sense of history or concern for general traditions of interpretation” (37). This is true for all major religious traditions. Extremists emphasize a small selection of passages that support their fanaticism and then turn a blind eye to the wealth of passages that call for patience, peace, love, respect, humility, compassion, and understanding. Strangely enough, the contemporary anti-theists of our time actually aid the fanatics. By writing off all religion, they short-circuit the only real possible solution for the extremists – dialogue with and critique from moderates.

Those who reject religion wholesale because of its potential for abuse should be consistent and reject everything that has this same potential, including politics, science, and ethics. All of these public pursuits can be abused. For example,

liberal democracy can go wrong. Plato said that democracy was the second worst form of government, ‘the rule of the mob’. Adolf Hitler was democratically elected. What if you lived in a deeply racist society in Africa, where a vast majority wished to eliminate white people? You could allow everyone to express their views, knowing that the majority would always win. By a popular vote, the white minority could quickly be eliminated — even though they were free to protest about it. (42-43)

“The lesson is that anti-religious corruptions and religious corruptions are both possible. There is no magic system or belief, not even belief in liberal democracy, which can be guaranteed to prevent it” (44). “It should be perfectly obvious, however, that we can admit that liberal democracy can be dangerous, and that in some cases it has become corrupt, without conceding that liberal democracy is a bad thing, or that we would be better off without it. The same is true of religion” (45).

How do we prevent such abuses from occurring? “In religion, we need to distinguish rationally defensible belief from irrational fanaticism. The intellectual laziness of those who attack religion as such is that they fail to do that. So they fall into the trap the fanatics have prepared for them. By confusing what is fanatical with what is reasonable and good, they are misled into attacking things that are good. So they become complicit in undermining attitudes and practices which really are of great social and moral value and that is exactly what fanatics want” (54-55).

Is religion the source of most wars?

Without fail, anti-theists hold up the Inquisition as an example of religion’s poisonous influence. However, to blame it all on religion simplifies history: “Religion may have played some part in these affairs, but it is the desire for power and wealth that is the constant factor” (65). Ward continues:

There are certainly some major historical blots on the record of the Christian churches. I have suggested that they were due to three main factors: the church’s involvement with the violent political powers of the dying Roman empire, faced with invading barbarians and Muslims who placed that empire under a clear and pressing threat; an ideology of illiberal paternalism; and that factor which is never completely absent from any human affairs and institutions: sin, or hatred, greed and envy. (72)

Anti-theists often exaggerate the role of religion in wars. Some even claim that religion is responsible for more wars than anything else. However, it is not true that the majority of wars have been directly related to a religious cause. Ward writes,

The list of atrocities and human tragedies is long and immensely depressing. It you set alongside it the number of violent conflicts that are religious in origin, religious wars are a tiny minority of human conflicts. War and violence seem to be part of the human condition. To see religion even as a main cause of this is simply to miss the real problem, and therefore to give up all hope of finding any solution. Even in those cases here religion is a major factor, there is more hope of understanding the situation when other economic or ethnic factors are taken into account. (76)

Is religion irrational?

The prophets of anti-theism declare that religion is opposed to reason. “In assessing this claim, we need to ask whether religious beliefs are, as such, irrational, blind and clearly false. Can there be such a thing as reasonable religious belief? A blunt response is that there evidently are reasonably held religious beliefs. Are we to accuse Anselm, Aquinas, Kant, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Descartes and Leibniz of being irrational? If we do so, we are setting the standard of rationality impossibly high. These people define what we call reasonableness” (85).

There is nothing unreasonable in possessing a worldview that maintains the reality of the transcendent, for worldviews are intrinsically transcendent – they transcend the available evidence.

For Kant, all ultimate worldviews (all systems of transcendent metaphysics, as he would have said) are unverifiable. Yet it is supremely reasonable to have one, for we must base our practical life-commitments on something, on the best we can manage as human beings. That best, for Kant, was the postulate of a supremely good and wise God, on whom the rationality of the world and of human thought, and the reasonableness and obligatoriness of morality, could be founded. We have to go beyond the evidence, for reason itself compels us to do so. (94)

For Kant, faith and reason were interrelated: “Faith was in human reason and goodness, seen as founded on an ultimate reason and goodness, rooted in the nature of things” (84). This is not to admit theism in any of its varieties, but it is to confess that an objective good exists that makes religious expression reasonable. (Indeed, that makes rationality reasonable, as well.)

Ward demonstrates how Kant’s perspective opens the way for the significance of divine revelation:

Kant did not have much time for special revelation. But if you think the universe is founded on a supreme wisdom, beauty and goodness, it is very natural to suppose that at some specific points the character of that goodness and of the purposes it may have for the cosmos may become clearer. It is very reasonable to suppose that a being of supreme goodness would not leave humans completely in the dark about what they are meant to be and do, and about the nature of the Supreme Good itself. In a word, it is very reasonable to expect some sort of revelation of the character and purposes of God.

It is for this reason that it is wholly reasonable to think that some revelation of God has occurred in human history. That revelation will not overturn or contradict reason (except where reason is being misused). It will take human knowledge of God beyond what reason alone can establish. (95)

Ward’s conclusion: “Religion, then, is based on a worldview at least as reasonable as any other. Such worldviews cannot be based on evidence, for they determine what is going to count as evidence, and how evidence is going to be interpreted” (96). The validity of a worldview – whether religious or secular – is not based on evidence alone, since all evidence is interpreted from within one’s worldview. “Religious worldviews are not rational because they produce overwhelming arguments that ‘prove’ the truth of the worldview to all competent people. They are rational because they are structured and elaborated in a critical and reflective way, using rational criteria for judgment that are always open to diverse interpretations” (97). This helps us to recognize that “[s]ecular thinking can be as filled with prejudice, partiality and neglect of relevant data, and as intolerant of and impatient with opposition as the most narrow religious view” (98).

Later in the book, Ward strikes one more blow against anyone who would claim that religious belief is irrational – the vain hope of primitive and uneducated minds:

All that is needed to refute the claim that religious belief is a delusion is one clear example of someone who exhibits a high degree of rational ability, who functions well in the ordinary affairs of life, whose faith seems to enable them to live well and be happy, and who can produce a reasonable and coherent defence of their beliefs. There are thousands of religious believers who are like that, including some of the most able philosophers and scientists in the world today — Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, Basil Mitchell, Chris Isham, John Barrow, John Polkinghorne. And that is an almost random selection from a very long list indeed. You could hardly ask for a stronger refutation of the argument that religion is a delusion than this. (172)

Religion deals with ultimate questions about God, life, meaning, and significance. This is not evidence of mental illness. “But there are many people who show an unduly serious concern with ultimate questions who are not mentally ill at all. They are called philosophers” (167).

Does a religious view of the afterlife create apathy or suicide bombers?

Anti-theists propose that those who believe in an afterlife may care less about this life or be more likely to strap themselves to a suicide bomb. But is it always the case that a belief in an afterlife is dangerous?

First, Ward defines hell in a way that is applicable to our present existence: “The world of hell is the world of unrestrained desire, where the destructive consequences of people’s own egoistic behaviour are unleashed upon each other without the possibility of mitigation or escape” (101). “The fear of hell, in other words, is the fear of a future without love and without God” (101).

The desire to escape hell may be abused by fanatics who feel that they are in no danger of tasting it, but it also may encourage moral behavior. “I certainly do not want to say that atheists are bound to be immoral, but I see no reason why atheists should care more about human life than theists do. Free from fear of hell, and having no hope of heaven, people are at liberty to act as they please, without consideration for consequences after death” (103). Ward is careful here: “I am not arguing that you have to be religious to be moral, or that religious people are more moral than nonreligious people. I am arguing that there is an important connection between religious and moral belief. Some forms of religious belief provide stronger justifications for some forms of moral belief than can any non-religious view” (128).

There is nothing within a purely atheistic worldview that compels us to do anything other than pursue our own desires at the expense of the public good. Certainly, many atheists choose not to do this, but the possibility remains open, without any significant personal consequences. And it certainly provides little help in forming a social conscience: “But if it is reasonable for me to pursue my desires, and for everyone else to pursue their desires, and if everyone desires pleasure, it does not at all follow that it is reasonable for anyone to pursue the pleasure of everyone (that is the invalid move made by Mill), for they may very well have no desire to do so” (131).

Ward’s Religion

Ward declares the essence of his religious beliefs by setting them in stark contrast to beliefs he finds abhorrent:

Some religious views – for instance, the view that God issues a set of commands that are to be obeyed, even against the promptings of conscience; or that morality is irrelevant to faith, since we are saved by grace; or that most people are condemned to eternal hell, whatever they do — seemed to me morally abhorrent. But the religious belief that there exists an objective and supreme Good, that there is a power that can help people to be good (or at least better), and that goodness will at last triumph over evil in the world, meaning that human moral efforts are never in vain, offered a distinct basis for moral action. Christianity, I started to see, is not about tyrannical sky-gods, but about the objectivity of goodness. (134-135)

This kind of religion is life-giving, life-affirming. It strives for the good of humanity, since good is not relegated to one’s personal good, or the good of one’s own group or nation. True objective goodness is not ego-centric or ethno-centric, but world-centric. It provides “a rationale for commitment to human freedom and dignity, a firm faith that moral action is never useless, and the fact that goodness objectively exists. For believers, morality is personal and inward, part of a life-transforming relationship of responsible and enduring love with the creator of the world rather than a matter of social convention” (136).

Such a religiously based morality could be called a sort of transcendental humanism, for what it aims at is the fulfillment and flourishing of all human goods. It is not at all world-denying or negative about human life. It is transcendental because the ideals of human life are rooted in the transcendent personal reality of God. In the end, they are fulfilled in the vision of God, in the clear knowledge of the divine presence. Power, wisdom and beauty — the glory — of God. (137)

Religion provides a solid basis for morality. “My case for founding morality on religion is simply that, at the deepest level, the firmest rational foundation for morality seems to me to be the objective existence of a supreme being who defines what goodness is – a being of wisdom, creativity, sensitivity and bliss. To that understanding, faith adds an insistent moral demand, a responsibility to care for the world that God has created” (138). The absence of faith does not guarantee the establishment of justice: “Where religion was restricted, as it was in National Socialist Germany, or even abolished, as it was in revolutionary France and Russia, what superseded it was cruel and inhumane to an unprecedented degree” (141). Ward’s point is not “to support the absurd oversimplification: ‘religion good; secularism bad’. I simply wish to point out that it is equally absurd to say: ‘religion bad; secularism good’” (142).

The intolerance of the anti-theists is dangerous: “Which is the more dangerous: tolerance of and engagement with views you take to be absurd, or the suppression of views that are opposed to what you believe to be certainly true? The latter is the view of the Inquisition. The former is the hard-won consequence of the Reformation acceptance of critical thinking and tolerance of diversity” (150).

Would we be better off in a world without religion?

The anti-theists claim that a world without religion would be a better world – more enlightened, less violent, and more tolerant.

This argument may seem strong. But consider a parallel case: politics could also be said to be one of the most destructive forces in human life. In Russia and Cambodia, millions of people have been killed in the name of socialist political ideologies. In Latin America, millions of people disappeared in ruthless campaigns of violence propagated by right-wing politicians. Deception, hypocrisy and misrepresentation are commonplace in political life. Might we not be better off in a world without politics too?

Even science, often thought of as an uninterested search for truth, produces terrifying weapons of mass destruction, and the most advanced technology is used to destroy human lives in ever more effective and brutal ways. Would we be better off without science as well? (179-180)

But wouldn’t there be less conflict in a world without religion? After all, isn’t it true that religious advocates are divided in endless disagreements? This may be true, but

religion is not the only or main cause of disagreements and conflicts between human beings. There are apparently irreconcilable differences of opinion in almost every area of human life – in our assessment of other persons, and in all philosophical, historical, ethical, political, legal, artistic and religious matters – in short, in all human affairs. Such disagreement is not peculiar to religion, but it obviously affects religion. (193)

Politics, science, and morality all cause conflict in our world, but no one would say that politics, science, and morality are, in and of themselves, dangerous or harmful. Focusing on morality, Ward argues, “no one would dream of saying that morality is dangerous, even though moral beliefs will inevitably lead to disagreement, conflict and perplexity. For similar reasons, no one should dream of saying that religion is dangerous just because religious beliefs also lead to disagreement and perplexity, and can lead to conflict” (195).

Good Religion

Contrary to contemporary anti-theists, the overall contribution of religion is not negative, but largely positive. Indeed, we need religion to control and guide the impulse of individuals and governments to seek their own good apart from seeking the common good of all – the Objective Good that motivates religion. This is one of the strengths of religion: it challenges us to “overcome egoism and selfish desire, hatred, greed and ignorance, and bring humans to a state or happiness, wisdom and compassion. It takes a special sort of perverseness to call such traditions harmful or dangerous” (192).

This is not to say that religion is above criticism. “No one who thinks responsibly could be content with saying that the world religions can continue to exist just as they are. There is always need for reform and critical self-examination, and that must take place if religions are to be a positive force for human good” (196). Healthy “[s]elf-criticism is openness to learn from others, not a practical hesitancy about one’s own deepest commitments” (197).

Healthy religion should not be at odds with humanism. “Humanism – or, to put it more accurately and more extensively, a concern for the worth of persons and their development – should never be opposed to religion” (198).

Certainly, there is bad religion out there. Certainly, all our traditions could benefit from regular self-criticism. However, to argue that all religion is dangerous is not only extremely simplistic, but also, harshly intolerant and practically dangerous. More than ever, the world needs the positive contributions of religion – of which there are many.

Quotes excerpted from Is Religion Dangerous? by Keith Ward
© Richard J. Vincent, 2007