Figure 30. Making War, Not Love
When it comes to between-group levels of violence, humans behave much like chimpanzees, with males fanning out into surrounding environments in search of food and other resources that often result in seek-and-destroy missions against other groups. (Top:) Two groups of New Guinea hunter-gatherers square off for war. (Photograph by Robert Gardiner. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum) (Bottom:) A group of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam sweeps through rice paddies in an army photograph entitled “Mission—Search and Destroy the Vietcong.” (Photograph by SFC Jack H. Yamaguchi)
Figure 31. Making Love, Not War
Bonobos have much lower levels of within-group violence and much higher levels of sexual contact. Conflict resolution among bonobos often involves sexual and erotic contact. Although humans are like chimpanzees in our high levels of between-group aggression, we are more like bonobos in our low levels of within-group aggression and high levels of sexuality and eroticism. (Photograph by Frans de Waal. Courtesy of Frans de Waal)
From Intolerance to Tolerance: How the Mind Works
Since the founding of the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine in 1991, I have been asked countless times how and why I lost my faith. Although my conversion to Christianity was sudden and dramatic, as is often the case for those who are not inculcated into a religion in childhood, my “de-conversion” was gradual and evolutionary. The scales did not suddenly fall from my eyes. Paul did not morph back into Saul. Rather, there was a slow but systematic displacement of one worldview and way of thinking by another: genesis and exodus myths by cosmology and evolution theories; faith by reason; final truths by provisional probabilities; trust by verification; authority by empiricism; and religious supernaturalism by scientific naturalism.9
Intellectually, I found little substance in the so-called scientific proofs of God’s existence or the philosophical arguments dating back to the Middle Ages that form the foundation of Christian apologetics. Although the scientific explanations for the origins of our universe, our world, and ourselves—Big Bang cosmology, historical geology, and evolutionary theory—were not wholly encompassing and had plenty of gaps, they seemed to me to have a higher probability of being true, by orders of magnitude, than the origin myths offered by religion. Anthropologists and social psychologists elucidate the fact that most aspects of religion, including and especially myths of origins and morality, are culturally determined and socially constructed. In my studies there came a point when it seemed to me absurd to even ask if these stories were true. Attempting to calculate how many pairs of animals could have fit on Noah’s ark seems like a pointless exercise: if God is omnipotent, He could fit as many animals on the ark as He liked. The point of the Noachian flood story is about destruction and redemption, not how Noah kept the predators away from the prey or on which deck the dinosaurs were housed. In this sense, creationists have butchered the Bible in their attempt to squeeze the square peg of religion into the round hole of science.
Emotionally, over time I found increasingly less in religion that appealed to me. The definitive nature of religious answers struck me as contrived, particularly when contrasted with the provisional nature of answers in science. For my temperament, the uncertainty of science was one of the perks of the job. Now anyone, including me, could join in the search for answers and participate personally in the adventure of exploring our world and our selves. Since there was no Archimedean point of objective observation, it meant that I was on a journey of discovery with the rest of humanity. There are no privileged priests in science.
Morally, there were aspects of religion that I found more than a little troublesome. When I became a born-again Christian, the moral complexities and subtleties of life—that I was only just beginning to explore and comprehend—suddenly vanished in the clarity of the absolute and final answers to moral dilemmas. Or so I thought. My first inkling of a problem came the day after my conversion, when a passionately religious friend reprimanded me for choosing the wrong faith. He told me I was still doomed if I did not switch to his church, the Jehovah’s Witnesses. As it turned out, this was not an isolated instance. The more faiths I examined, the more aware I became of the fact that they all think they alone are right.
Religious Absolutism and Intolerance
The belief that one’s faith is the only true religion too often leads to a disturbing level of intolerance, and this intolerance includes the assumption that nonbelievers cannot be as moral as believers. The Bible reinforces this idea (Ps. 14:1): “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none who does good.” The most famous pronouncement along these lines came during a news conference on August 27, 1987, by Vice President George Bush, who was making a stop at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on the 1988 presidential campaign trail. After he explained that “faith in God is important to me,” a reporter inquired, “Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?” Bush replied: “No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”10 This conclusion, however, is not born out in the data from the scientific study of religion and morality. While individual religious believers may be exceptionally moral and tolerant people, and while religion may inspire in some individuals extraordinary morality and tolerance, religion does not necessarily foster these desirable traits.
According to a 1997 survey conducted by the University of Ohio, for example, intolerance among Christian activists is relatively high, especially when it comes to the perceived moral degeneration of America. In fact, 99 percent agreed that “moral decay is the cause of America’s problems.” What is the perceived source of this moral decay? One-third of the Christian activists who responded to the survey listed the American Civil Liberties Union as the most dangerous group in America, with gay rights groups coming in a close second. About 80 percent stated that members of the ACLU and gay rights groups “should not be allowed to: make a public speech, run for public office, demonstrate in public, or operate legally.” Nearly half, 44 percent, declared that such “dangerous” people “should not be allowed to teach in public schools.” Most threatening to civil liberties and the separation of church and state, more than half (52 percent) agreed with this statement: “Christians should take dominion over all aspects of society.” No less than 91 percent believe that “God works through politics and election returns,” and 89 percent think that “the U.S. has prospered when it obeyed God” and that “Clergy and churches should be involved in politics.” A vast majority (75 percent) agreed that, “if enough people were brought to Christ, social ills would take care of themselves.”11
Nothing fuels religious extremism more than the belief that one has found the absolute moral truth. Islamic terrorism, for example, has gradually shifted from secular motives in the 1960s to religious motives today. One study found that in 1980 there were only two out of sixty-four militant Islamic groups whose mission was religiously based. In 1995 that figure had climbed to nearly half.12 It is a type of fuel that can lead to what Clay Farris Naff, executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Rational Solutions in Lincoln, Nebraska, cleverly calls the “neuron bomb,” after its cold-war counterpart, the “neutron bomb,” which was designed to kill people while leaving buildings and infrastructure intact. A schematic of the neuron bomb looks like this:
Arming Device: Belief that God’s enemies must be defeated or destroyed
Concealment: Can be implanted in any human mind
Cost: Practically nothing
Explosive Materials: Anything at hand
Destructive Potential: Unlimited13
Salman Rushdie minced no words in his analysis of the problems between India and Pakistan, two religiously based political systems poised intermittently on the brink of nuclear holocaust: “The political discourse matters, and explains a good deal. But there’s something beneath it, something we don�
��t want to look in the face: namely, that in India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God’s name. The problem’s name is God.”14
To be more accurate, India’s problem—and the world’s—is extremism in the name of God, even in the industrial and democratic West. “All faiths that come out of the biblical tradition—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—have the tendency to believe that they have the exclusive truth,” writes Rabbi David Hartman of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. “When the Taliban wiped out the Buddhist statues, that’s what they were saying. But others have said it too.”15 Others such as Cardinal Ratzinger, a representative of the Vatican, who proclaimed in August 2000: “With the coming of the Saviour Jesus Christ, God has willed that the Church founded by Him be the instrument for the salvation of all humanity. This truth of faith … rules out, in a radical way … the belief that ‘one religion is as good as another.’”16 Religious extremism in America is particularly potent when gathered together under the umbrella of militia groups. An example can be seen in the life of Eric Robert Rudolph, the American terrorist charged in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing that killed one person and wounded over a hundred others, as well as in the bombing of a gay nightclub and two abortion clinics. When he was captured in May 2003, it was reported that he was a member of the Christian Identity movement (an extremist group that believes Jews are satanic and blacks are subhuman), was known for his anti-Semitic and racist views, and that in his seven-year evasion of the FBI and law enforcement agencies, he probably had help from militia groups as well as local townspeople in Murphy, North Carolina, many of whom apparently share his views. 17
Not only is there no evidence that a lack of religiosity leads to less moral behavior, a number of studies actually support the opposite conclusion. In 1934 Abraham Franzblau found a negative correlation between acceptance of religious beliefs and three different measures of honesty. As religiosity increased, honesty decreased.18 In 1950 Murray Ross conducted a survey among 2,000 associates of the YMCA and discovered that agnostics and atheists were more likely to express their willingness to aid the poor than those who rated themselves as deeply religious.19 In 1969 sociologists Travis Hirschi and Rodney Stark reported no difference in the self-reported likelihood to commit crimes between children who attended church regularly and those who did not.20 In 1975 Ronald Smith, Gregory Wheeler, and Edward Diener discovered that college-age students in religious schools were no less likely to cheat on a test than their atheist and agnostic counterparts in nonreligious schools.21 Finally, David Wulff’s comprehensive survey of correlational studies on the psychology of religion revealed that there is a consistent positive correlation between “religious affiliation, church attendance, doctrinal orthodoxy, rated importance of religion, and so on” with “ethnocentrism, authoritarianism, dogmatism, social distance, rigidity, intolerance of ambiguity, and specific forms of prejudice, especially against Jews and blacks.”22 The conclusion is clear: not only does religion not necessarily make one more moral, it can lead to greater intolerance, racism, sexism, and the erosion of other values cherished in a free and democratic society.
Since I am a nonbeliever, I might reasonably be accused of a biased selection of data to make my case. Consider, then, the results of the well-known religious pollster George Barna, a born-again Christian, discussed in his 1996 Index of Leading Spiritual Indicators. Based on interviews with nearly 4,000 adult Americans, Barna found “Born-again Christians continue to have a higher likelihood of getting divorced than do non-Christians,” and “Atheists are less likely to get divorced than are born-again Christians.” This seems counterintuitive, yet Barna found that the current divorce rate for born-again Christians is 27 percent, while it is only 24 percent for non-Christians. In addition, the baby boomers—that generation often criticized for sexual indulgence and moral relativism—have a lower rate of divorce (34 percent) than the preceding generation (portrayed in popular culture as the idealized 1950s Ozzie and Harriet family), whose rate hovers at 37 percent. Five years later, in a 2001 survey, Barna found that “33 percent of all born again individuals who have been married have gone through a divorce, which is statistically identical to the 34 percent incidence among non-born again adults.”23 My point in this divorce data dump is to counter the claim—heard all too often in our culture—that one cannot be as good without God. That is simply scientifically and statistically false.
Even everyday intolerances are easily derived from such moral certainty. On March 25, 1998, for example, the Reverend Reggie White, better known for his bone-breaking hits as an all-star linebacker for the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers, presented the Wisconsin State Assembly with his theory of race and religion: “Homosexuality is a decision, it’s not a race. People from all different ethnic backgrounds live in this lifestyle. But people from all different ethnic backgrounds also are liars and cheaters and malicious and back-stabbing.” God, says White, granted each race with special gifts. Blacks, for example, are good at worship and celebration: “If you go to a black church, you see people jumping up and down because they really get into it.” Whites are good at organization: “You guys do a good job of building businesses and things of that nature and you know how to tap into money.” Latinos “were gifted in family structure and you see a Hispanic person, and they can put 20, 30 people in one home.” Asians “can turn a television into a watch.” Native Americans are “gifted in spirituality.”24 Right. God created blacks to make merry, whites to make money, Asians to make televisions, Latinos to make babies, and Indians to make rain.
In a similar vein, pro-lifer Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, succinctly summarized the absolute intolerance that is possible with absolute morality: “Let a wave of intolerance wash over you … . Yes, hate is good … . Our goal is a Christian nation … . We are called by God to conquer this country … . We don’t want pluralism.” Putting an exclamation point on Terry’s philosophy is the abortion clinic bomber John Brockhoeft: “I’m a very narrow-minded, intolerant, reactionary, bible-thumping fundamentalist … a zealot and fanatic … . The reason the United States was once a great nation, besides being blessed by God, is because she was founded on truth, justice, and narrowmindedness.” 25
There is a simple historical problem with this theory. According to the 2001 New Historical Atlas of Religion in America, it is a myth that America was once a Christian nation that has since lapsed into secular debauchery.26 Most revealing are the historical maps and charts that track the changing demographics of American religion. Conservative pundits who worry about the moral fiber of America and proclaim that we need to return to the good old days when America was a Christian nation should look closely at the graph in figure 32, which shows that church membership among the U.S. population over the past century and a half has increased from 25 percent to 65 percent. If America is going to hell in an immoral handbasket, it is happening when church membership is at an all-time high and a greater percentage of Americans (90—95 percent) than ever before proclaim belief in God.
Absolute morality leads logically to absolute intolerance. Once it is determined that one has the absolute and final answers to moral questions, why be tolerant of those who refuse to accept the Truth? Religiously based moral systems apply this principle in spades. From the medieval Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition to the Holocaust and Bosnia, history is rife with examples of intolerance. In the name of God, religious people have sanctioned slavery, anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, torture, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and war. In the name of their religion, people have burned women accused of witchcraft. The events of September 11, 2001, are a potent example of religious extremism gone political.
Figure 32. The Myth of Early America as a Christian Nation
Contrary to what modern conservatives claim, America has never been a more religious nation than it is today. Over the past century, chu
rch membership has climbed from 25 percent to 65 percent of the American population. (From Edwin S. Gaustad, Philip L. Barlow, and Richard Dishno, New Historical Atlas of Religion in America, 2001, figure 4.16)
Secular Absolutism and Intolerance
Despite this ripping indictment of religion, it would be intolerant of me not to reiterate that religion per se is not the problem; it is religious extremism and, by extension, extremism of any stripe. So it is only reasonable to note that this generalization is true of secular moral systems as well. Extreme atheist ideologies, most notably the various Marxist regimes throughout the twentieth century, have generated their share of purges and pogroms in the name of an ideological god. But also during this time, a number of secular ethical systems have been proposed by philosophers in a quest to move beyond religion, while avoiding the relativism endemic to so many nonreligious ethical theories, and the intolerance generated by Marxism.
In A Theory of Justice, for example, John Rawls argued that there are certain moral principles that are absolute and above cultural modification (and thus are inalienable): “In a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.” Where those rights came from without reference to a transcendental power and how they can be secured without political power are challenges Rawls has had to answer against his critics. Rawls is perhaps best known for his tenet that justice, or fairness, be defined by conceiving of an “original position” in which you would not know what your status in life would be (for example, which race, class, or religion you would be born into) before making a political decision. Thus, your choice is made from a “veil of ignorance” of your “original position.” When you do this you soon learn (and feel) just how unfair the world is and how many people are advantaged or disadvantaged in life to no credit or fault of their own but just by dint of birth and upbringing. To remedy this problem, Rawls says that “society must give more attention to those with fewer native assets and to those born into less favorable social positions. The idea is to redress the bias of contingencies in the direction of equality.”27
Science of Good and Evil Page 28