I have often heard the accusation that religion is evil. The evidence, it is claimed, is that many wars have been fought in the name of religion and many people have been mentally and physically abused in the name of religion. There is then usually a comment about the restrictive laws that have subjected women, people of other races and the sexually orientated minorities to terrible suffering in the name of religion.
Of course, many of these accusations do have foundations because many religious people have been the source of much suffering (to deny this would be a crime in itself). I would like at this point to add my voice, again, to the many others who have said sorry for the suffering that has been caused in the name of religion.
When the religious counter this argument by pointing out that the same suffering (if not more) has been caused by atheist regimes the counter-claim is made that these were of course regimes that were – to all intents and purposes – religions, in that they encouraged the worship of individuals.
However, such an argument – in my opinion – misses the point completely and here is why. An organisation and the philosophy that drives it are two distinct things and should not be confused.
The truth is that it is not the religion that causes the problem but it is the organisation that is set up in the name of that religion that is to blame. Sadly, when power, influence or money is at stake people look for justifications to allow them to take what belongs to others (be it oil, land, gold, whatever). They can find excuses in the corruption of any philosophy to justify their actions. Sometimes organisations get so big and the people who run them so powerful that they get corrupted. This is as true for any atheist organisation as it is for the Church or government or whatever other organisation you might mention. We are currently seeing this played out with FIFA where so much power and money is concerned that people have manipulated rules – or so it seems – to allow them to have a greater share of the power and money than perhaps they should have done. It seems obvious to me that the problem is with the organisation and not necessarily with the philosophy behind it. If you want to learn about organisations that cause suffering you have to include the old communist states of the world in your reckoning – atheist organisations of course who did everything in their power to stamp out religion – including causing great suffering to the religious.
So why do religions get more blame than other organisations? Is it because we are all aware that they should know better? Is it because we know that the religions behind them have such a high moral code at their heart that they should know better than to cause such suffering and problems? I think this is certainly true of the Christian church – though I cannot speak for other religions. Christians should know better but sometimes they get it wrong and the organisation becomes corrupted (even if the people at the top don’t understand that what they are doing is wrong – but that is a big subject for another day perhaps). And that is why, from time to time, the church issues an apology – what other organisations do you know that do that? Has the scientific world (for instance) apologised for the part it played in the extermination of thousands of Jews during the second world war? If it has I’ve never heard of it.
Here are some links to church apologies in case you doubt this: From JP2 from Methodists
Of course, the organisation that breaks its own codes of morality should be held to account for it but that does not make the codes of morality evil. I am quite happy to say that atheists are not evil people – misguided yes but not evil. I don’t blame atheism for the suffering caused in its name – though I do have questions about the lack of moral absolutes that can so easily lead to such suffering. So, you can’t blame the Christian faith for the bad things the church has done in its past – to confuse the two is either extremely nieve or downright ignorant.
The best you can do is to attack each religion on its moral code – not the organisations associated with it (hence, to condemn the Muslim faith on the grounds of terrorism alone is nonsense). To make any such argument you would have to attack the moral codes of each religion and at least decide on each religion individually (this would require a detailed examination of what each religion ACTUALLY says and not your own interpretation of some obscure texts or literal out of context quoting or quoting some extreme minority position, as most atheists seem to do). I am happy to say – without spelling it out in detail here – that I believe Christianity can stand up very well to such an attack.
No, religion is not evil.
P.S. Of course, without religion you couldn’t even ask the question because without God there are no moral absolutes and without moral absolutes there is no such thing as good or evil. If you are an atheist who wants to make the claim that religion is evil then you are defeating your own argument – sorry.