If you've seen Religulous, or have watched Bill Maher for any length of time, you'll be familiar with the comedian as one of America's leading voices speaking out against religion.
I part ways with his wholesale rejection of all things religious. I think anything that has played - and still plays - as important a role in history, right down to the present day - should not be rejected out-of-hand, but analyzed with nuance. Which is just a fancy way of saying I think there are all kinds of religious impulses in the human race, from inspirational to toxic. Toxic religion is right up there with fascism and genocide as far as I'm concerned, when listing evidence that evil actually does exist. But I see no reason to undermine anyone's search for meaning, provided it reflects good will and genuine human yearning. I follow the simple rule of thumb that if you encounter somebody trying to tell you what God wants you to do, lock your windows and doors and call the cops. If you find somebody listening in hopes of hearing "the still small voice of God," embrace them as a fellow temporary resident of Planet Earth seeking to find meaning in this mystery called life.
A catholic theologian friend of mine and I once got into a Facebook argument over who has inflicted more harm on the planet, atheists or religionists. I maintain that if atheists have done harm, they have not done so under the mantle of atheism. Stalinists and Maoists were atheists, but their brutality was motivated by their particular take on communist idealism, not by atheism per se. In contrast, there is no escaping the obvious connection between organized religion and some of the most wide-spread abuses ever committed.
It was not a real argument - I don't think you can have a real argument on Facebook, by the way, so I stopped early on exchanging views on that venue. Where I would take the argument, if we moved to a suitable forum, would be to point out that religionists commonly feel obligated to impose their will on you, but non-theists are by and large quite passive about their beliefs. The so-called "Four Horsemen of Atheism" who have achieved some fame (or notoriety, if you prefer) as public atheists - Christopher Hitchens, now sadly deceased and greatly missed, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett, are actively engaged in what they see as disabusing believers of their folly, but they are intellectuals committed to changing minds through reason-based argument, not men with armies like ISIS or others inclined to use force to come out on top.
Their starting and concluding point is the conviction that truth should be defined as the sum total of all knowledge to date, alterable at any point with the introduction of new contradictory evidence. The religionists, in contrast, claim the strength of their convictions is grounded in scriptures they consider holy, or in papal pronouncements, or in the claim that "God told me so." For many, it suffices to say "I just know in my heart it's true."
I've argued before that the downside of the fact that the U.S. is the modern world's most religious nation is that once you convince yourself that "faith" is a positive thing, you've opened the door to all manner of nonsense and removed the guardrails, those guardrails being critical thinking and a "show me" attitude. The difference between the world today where we live to 100, some of us, and the day when people routinely died at 37 of an abscessed tooth is that we live by the conviction that things are not so simply because you desperately want them to be so, but because there is reason to believe they are so, backed up by evidence.
Bill Maher just came out today with his newest and latest volley in the battle for reason, the same argument I was making, but better articulated. "If you accord religious faith the kind of exalted respect we do here in America, you've already lost the argument that mass delusion is bad."
"Magical religious thinking," he says, "is a virus, and QAnon is just its current mutation."
It's not a coincidence, he points out, that every Senator that objected to certifying the Electoral Vote in Arizona is an Evangelical Christian.
But let me stop quoting him from the video. Check it out for yourself here.
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