HOW TO GET RID OF RELIGION, AND WHY
Floris van den Berg
Director, Center for Inquiry Low Countries
Lecture to the Ethical Society, 19 January 2009
The full version of this talk is available at: http://verlichtingshumanisten.web-log.nl
I: Beyond the New Atheism
It is time to take up the project of the radical Enlightenment and try to liberate humankind of ignorance, unreason and superstition, some of which have been institutionalized as religions. It is time - it always was - to stop treating religion with respect, as if it is something precious. Patients are precious, not their illnesses. In recent years a plethora of books about and against religion have been published, called the New Atheism. However, the most important question about religion is neglected in public discourse, even in the wave of books about and against religion: How to get rid of religion? If religion has been diagnosed as something bad - which is the case - then it is time to move forward and find liberal ways to become free from religion.
The New Atheism books, most notably Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great and Sam Harris' The End of Faith have diagnosed religion, including contemporary religion, as an illness. It is overwhelmingly clear that the truth claims of religion are either false or meaningless. Not one single argument for a transcendental being or realm has stood the test of critical inquiry. It is time to find a cure. My talk is a help to find strategies to liberate humankind of religion. I am proposing a strong secularism.
II: Moral and Epistemological Atheism
There are two major reasons why the disappearance of religion would make the world a better place. In the first place, religion is false. Religious claims about the nature of reality can and are an obstacle to free (scientific) inquiry. This could be called epistemological atheism.
The second objection to religion is moral. I am primarily a moral atheist. Moral atheism is concerned with religion because religion often is an obstacle for individual freedom, choice and self-determination. If religion were relatively innocent, like the belief in flying saucers, I personally would not be much interested in it. If religion - though false - had positive influence on individual liberty, social justice, sustainability and animal welfare - I would not bother to criticize and scrutinize religious beliefs too much. As it is, I am not convinced of the blessings of religion. Religion seems to be a malignant virus, which on balance causes more harm than good. All books of the New Atheism linger on the evil aspects of religion. Religion is not the root of all evil, but of much human-made evil and misery. Religion can reinforce evil.
III: Religion, Culture & Traditions
Apologists of religion will respond to accusations of the evils of (their) religion with: `(my) religion is good; those who have done evil deeds in the name of religion are not real believers'. However, for an outsider, there is no difference between a real and a fake believer. If someone says `I am a Muslim/Christian etc.', then I believe hir. The criterion for belief is the believer hirself claiming to be a believer. Any other definition of what belief is, is likely to run aground in debates between believers.
For a moral atheist, it is morality that matters most, not whether or not it is religion. Any cultural practice should be morally evaluated by some standards like: 1. are there any victims (can you want to trade places?) 2. does it contribute to the wellbeing of individuals? and 3. is it true? These criteria will rule out a great many cultural practices. Many cultures do not respect individual rights, especially the rights of women.
IV: No Guarantee for Utopia
A cure for AIDS makes the world a better place because it would save many people from suffering and dying. However, this cure does not guarantee health, because there are many more threats to a person's health than AIDS alone. Still, a cure for AIDS is a moral good. A cure for religion makes the world a better place; it saves many people from evil and ignorance. However, this does not guarantee sanity, because there are many more threats to sanity and morality than religion alone. Still, a cure for religion is a moral good.
V: Some Strategies
1. Prevention of Religious Indoctrination
`Prevention is the best cure', is a folk wisdom. Many illnesses in the western world are easily preventable illnesses, which are caused by unhealthy life styles. I argue that religion is also an unhealthy life style, for yourself, your family and others. The best way to get rid of religion is to stop imposing faith!belief/religion on children. Not only should people be free to choose or change religion, children should be free from religion. `[Faith based education] involves the indoctrination of intellectually defenseless children, and that is a form of child abuse.'
I am a secular humanist, who takes individual liberty as a core value. That limits the range of means that can be used for the cure for religion. A totalitarian dictator, like Stalin, who, for completely different reasons, wanted to get rid of religion, used totalitarian means - violence and suppression - to abolish and abandon religion. Just like liberal democracies cannot and should not use illiberal means in the `war on terror', there should not be illiberal methods used to dispense of religion. What matters most is the individual. Most people will probably frown when they read the phrase `how to get rid of religion', because it has become common to grant religion special privileges, like infusing children's minds with nonsense.
Individual liberty is the core value of the (radical) Enlightenment, of liberalism, free thought and secular humanism. And if individual liberty is the core value, then why should parents, or any other guardian, have the right to impose nonsense, ignorance and sexual taboos on a child and have the right to withhold (scientific) knowledge about the world? A free flow of information, without censorship, is a necessary prerequisite for both individualism and an open society.
Schools should teach about religions. What is taught about religion should be science-based. So, if children ask the teacher whether or not god exists, the teacher should give the scientific answer: `There is no evidence whatsoever for the existence of god or gods'. In secondary education attention might be given to theories about the functions and origin of religion.
To exclude religion as religion from the schools is not atheistic indoctrination, as religious apologists and multiculturalists commonly say. There is a fundamental difference between an open education and a closed frame of mind. What apologists and multiculturalists fail to notice is that critical inquiry excludes many things. The goal of education is not indoctrination, but liberation; knowledge, not ignorance. Teaching scientific facts (which are fallible) and the scientific method is not indoctrination. Freedom is not slavery. True is not false. Evidence based knowledge is not faith.
2. Political Secularism: Separation of Religion and State
Political secularism, or laicism, is about a separation of religion and state. Religion is a private matter, like a hobby. Religion should not be privileged in the public domain, like tax exemption for religious organizations. All existing privileges should be abolished, including religious schools. Religion has historically permeated law and gained privileges. It is time to undo this injustice. Essential for an open and free society is that its citizens have as much freedom as is compatible with the freedom of other individuals. The state is neutral in matters of religion. Religion is not a state matter, nothing that happens between (well-informed) consenting adults (who cause no harm or damage to others or the environment) is a state matter.
Politicians, when in office, should not use religious arguments. State officials in a position that requires a neutral point of view should not be allowed to wear symbols of a religion or any other group or organization which distorts their neutrality (so, also no button of one's favourite soccer club). For example, law officers and judges should not be allowed to wear a cross or a necklace, nor may they wear a headscarf, yarmulke or turban. Also, a religious beard (a beard which is only grown in religious groups) should not be allowed for those public officials. In a multi-religious society - as is the case in most western societies - all individuals, including religious people, benefit from a secular state and government, because believers are free to do as they please, within the bounds of the (secularized) law. In an open society all individuals are equal: believers and non believers alike.
3: Moral Secularism: A Plea for Moral Esperanto
When people discuss ethical problems no religious arguments should be used, because it is a priori impossible to reach consensus if people do not share the same (religious) vocabulary. For example, in a debate about abortion, only arguments that do not refer to religion should be used. If people use the same secular discourse it is possible to reach consensus or at least agreement. Moral Esperanto is not only a means for communication between believers and non-believers. Believers from different religions would benefit as well if they refrained from using religious arguments and spoke in the moral discourse of Esperanto.
A moral and political theory should be secular and not rely on religion. Atheism, or at least an exclusion of religion from the moral domain, is a prerequisite for ethics. Ethical theories, which depend on god or other kind of transcendentalism, are not true, and often immoral, when analyzed from the perspective of their victims. Secularism, a strict separation of church and state, is a necessity for liberal political philosophy, which takes as core value the freedom of each individual citizen and the free flow of information. The political argument against ethics based on religion is that without the use of repression and violence there is no way there will ever be consensus about which god and what religion is right.
4. A Policy of Determent
[...] imagine if we identified children from birth as young smokers or drinking children because their parents smoked or drank!
Government should have the same attitude towards religion as it has (recently) in regard to smoking: government allows the private use of tobacco for adults, but informs smokers that it is bad for their health, and government protects secondary smokers so far as possible by banning smoking in public (indoor) areas. Taxes deter people from buying tobacco. The analogy with tobacco is partial: individuals should be allowed to wear and publicly expose (symbols of) their religion, because this is part of the right of the freedom of expression, and because this does not harm others.
Of course people should not be forced to wear anything against their wish (uniforms and special requirements of course excepted - a surgeon is not free to choose not to wear a hygienic outfit). Headscarves should be forbidden in primary and secondary schools, because children should be free from religion (at least at school), and should be free and well informed to choose a religion, or none at all, when they are adults. Children should not belong to a religion, and there should not be religious ceremonies or rituals involving children, like circumcision, baptism, or catechism. Wearing a burka - any outfit that makes a person unrecognizable in public space, should not be allowed, because it is a threat to public safety.
A paradox of liberalism is that it is impossible to impose freedom upon others. People should be free to be unfree - within limits though, individuals have the right to opt out. It is not allowed to submit yourself as a slave: you are allowed to play as a slave for some time, but people cannot forfeit their right to escape. Everyone can voluntarily enter communes or sects where there is little personal freedom. This is all allowed. But individuals always have the right to step out and leave. Freedom is absolute and not conditional. The liberal state, therefore, should not tolerate intolerance and be on the side of those individuals who are being coerced into doing or not doing something against their will. A liberal state can and should try to create the best possible institutions and cultural climate to foster individual freedom, autonomy and well-being. If well-informed women freely decide to wear a headscarf, this should be allowed. But of course government should be suspicious as to whether this is a real free choice and keep attention focused on this issue.
The state should be strictly secular and neutral. It is not the role of the state to try to get rid of religion. Laicism and a policy of determent are as far as the government should go. But it is the role of public intellectuals, scientists, humanist, free thinkers and their organizations to try to get rid of religion.
5. Coming Out
People should speak out about being an atheist. Non-believers, non-theists, atheists, rationalists, skeptics and freethinkers have kept quiet for too long. While religious believers speak out loud and proud about their belief; nonbelievers have been polite and quiet in their defense. Outspoken atheists like Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens are accused of hitting religion too hard. But that is the world turned upside down: religion makes claims about reality, prescribes social and ethical rules and evangelizes these ideas and ideals. For centuries religion had such a strong grip on social life that it