The View from Number 80

Rant - 80 has had more than a few people complain that too much attention on these pages is now being focussed on religion and not enough on quackery and pseudoscience. This is a matter of priorities, the need to concentrate on the greatest threat to a free and rational society, and that threat comes not from quacks and the peddlers of pseudoscience but from the upsurge in religiosity that has occured over the last few years. The three fields are not unrelated, as the irrationality that accepts miracles and gods is just as likely to accept quackery and pseudoscience. The connecting strand is the rejection of evidence and the emphasis on blind belief, on faith. The point about religion is that it places far more people in jeopardy than the other two, despite, say, the idiotic rejection of childhood vaccines by quacks or the current state of denial over global warming by some governments, an example of pseudoscience if ever there was one, but even here the evidence is becoming so overwhelming that scientists cannot be successfully cowed or gagged for much longer.
 
 It is blind faith that is so dangerous, from that of the bloodthirsty fundamentalists right across the spectrum to the wishy-washy, "spiritual" types who, through sheer inertia or ignorance, are happy to feel that, at heart, all religions are somehow beneficial and well-meaning. With (very) few exceptions they are not - they are divisive and sectarian and cloud the minds of otherwise reasonable people. To quote physicist Steven Weinberg "Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things -- that takes religion." As the recent fabricated rioting over a few cartoons proves, religion is a effective way for repressive regimes to channel the frustration of their citizens by providing an outlet. Anyone who thinks a mob could destroy an embassy in Syria without government connivance is hopelessly naive - all Hassad had to do was to push the button marked religion. Even in a largely secular society like Britain the Labour government under Blair is pushing as hard as it can for the establishment of faith schools despite the lessons from such schooling in Northern Ireland, where old sectarian hatreds were passed from one generation to the next in a segregated education system. The thought of a whole new generation of children in the UK being taught the cruel old Iron Age myths as holy writ should concern (and frighten) anyone who has any any hopes for the future of human beings on this planet. The worst culprits are the so-called abrahamic, patriarchal religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, although they are not the only ones. We can all cherry pick the various "sacred writings" to find instances of kindness, compassion and tolerance but they are more than outweighed by the widespread cruelty, misogyny and hatred. Moderate religionists who are, say, Christian, seem to find nothing wrong in this choosing of the kinder passages and ignoring the many instances of xenophobia and war. Meanwhile the fundamentalists of that faith can all too easily find plenty of passages that justify bigotry and repression.
 
 One of the contradictions that atheists and agnostics often present to moderate Christians is that of theodicy, something long wrestled with by Christians themselves. How can there be a caring and loving god who sees the fall of a single sparrow and yet allows war, famine, cancer and natural disasters? The moderates jump through metaphysical hoops to get around this question, but the fundamentalists don't have to - they actually embrace the concept of a cruel and vengeful deity. Naturally they assume that they are favored in some way and the fire and brimstone is for everybody else. This is far from just a Christian attitude and fundamentalists in Islam and Judaism all sound very much the same. These rules by which we choose to live, they say, are given to us in a holy book, the word of God, the supreme being, therefore it is only right that our beliefs should become the norm, enshrined in the laws of the land so that all must comply. The similarity in outlook between the Taliban in Afghanistan and rabid right-wing Christians in the US is no coincidence, they are cut from the same cloth, and differ only in degree.
 
 Those who place their hopes in a fairer, juster world by the application of religious values are making a terrible mistake. Those who hope to bring about the end of the world to fulfil their particular vision of paradise are even more mistaken - but both groups are a danger to everybody on the planet. The whole point of revealed religion is that it is based on supernatural authority and therefore beyond question. There is no room for rational criticism, and no room for decisions based upon the evidence. Religionists will even make a virtue of believing in nonsense - the more ridiculous the better - for this demonstrates the strength of their faith. Religion has had thousands of years of completing claims, of jihad and crusade, of persecution and Inquisition, and what has it achieved compared to the advances made in the short time since the Enlightenment? Whether we like it or not we now live in a world that can only be sustained by science and technology - no amount of praying is going to help with global climate change, famine, overpopulation and diminishing resources. Some will say that it is the misapplication of technology informed by science that has caused many of the world's troubles such as pollution, and, in some instances, this is certainly true - but this does not mean the answer is to turn your back on logic and embrace the supernatural. People who do not acknowledge evolution will not, cannot, produce the solutions that are needed to combat rapidly evolving diseases. Overpopulation will not be solved by religions that still espouse the thinking of an outnumbered desert tribe - even to the point of denying the use of condoms by people at risk from AIDS/HIV, people often of a different faith.
 
 If the above seems to be a bilious diatribe, that's because it is. It is a reaction to the loss of a dream and the realization of a nightmare. Instead of a world that is united, where there is liberty and justice, where people are enabled to become all that they can be, there is a world of hatred, of illogic, of appeals to authority instead of evidence, a world that is tipping over into a new dark age. And it is religion that is to blame, not capitalism, not communism, but religion, and I for one am scared, not for myself but for the generations to come. There is a continuum running all the way from young men beating women in the street for being "provocatively" dressed, to the Blair government's unreasoning push for a flood of state-sponsored "faith" schools. There is a continuum between filling children's heads with fairy tales and threats of hell, to wanting to behead someone for drawing an insensitive cartoon. There is a continuum between the quiet, well-dressed middle class congregations and the bombing of abortion clinics and the murder of doctors and nurses. I am scared and I am angry - this is the reason for the amount of religion that has forced its way onto my pages - for it has also forced itself upon the world and its terrible effects cannot be ignored. Whether this tide can be turned I don't know - optimism is hard to maintain but as I have said in an earlier piece there is no option but to keep bailing. Retreat into either despair or indifference is not an acceptable option. (For those who think there is not enough about the malign effects of religion here see Faith Based News. Also quackery and pseudoscience are still fair game for 80. Homeopathy and chiropractic, for example, qualify as both, as well as being faith-based. Also see Rant For the Day.)