By Ibn Katakpingi
“Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum...” (To such heights of evil are men driven by religion) Lucretius, De Rerum Natura One of the last defences that religious apologists offer is the utilitarian argument, which claims that religions are the source of our sense of good and bad, and that religions offer us a sense of purpose, a meaning not available otherwise. Now, in spite of the fact that there are many good religious people, and many others have found meaning and transcendence in their faith, I submit to readers that the claims that religion is the source of morality and the only means by which people find meaning in their lives are patently fraudulent. I submit also, in line with the evidence that our discrimination of good and bad has evolved with secular progress; that today, most religious people pick and choose from the jumbled mass of religious literature only those injunctions that satisfy modern standards of morality and humanity. I should say upfront that I am not a theologian (as religious people have the penchant of accusing atheists and secular people of intellectual arrogance) but I have the conviction that one does not need a PhD in religious studies to comprehend the alleged holy injunctions of the holy books. I should also say that, although I can only consider Christian teaching in this article, I am impartial to the claims of any religion. In fact, it is my view, in light of overwhelming evidence, that all religions are equally false, and are the works of fallible, culpable and delusional men, living at a time of ignorance and general stupidity. Humans are among a number of species of animals on the planet that live in social groups (others include bees and termites, lions and hyenas, orang utans and chimps). There are many good reasons why living in groups has such wide occurrence in the biological world. Among them is the obvious one that a group can accomplish tasks that will be impossible with individuals. Humans, for example, have collaborated to build great cities and wage great wars that will be beyond the powers of any one individual. But group living also means that one has to deal with other members of the group, and in an existence dominated by the struggle for the same resources-nourishment, territory and mating partners-conflicts are commonplace. To reduce conflicts, social animals devise rules(explicit and implicit) of conduct and responsibility that define the position of each member of the group, reward members deemed good and punish deviants.
Biologists have long suspected that the organism is a contrivance employed by the genes, which specified the organism's constitution in the first place, to replicate themselves. But it was Richard Dawkins who expounded the idea in the context of Darwinian selection, in his powerful 1976 book “The Selfish Gene”. Our strong sense of self-preservation arises, in large parts, from the genetic programme that requires us to live in order to reproduce and spread the genes. The reasons organisms have become slaves of genes is an interesting story that I will attempt to explain in another article. But the point I am making here is, social animals seek, simultaneously, to obtain the benefits of group living and avoid the damaging consequences that such associations inevitably bring.But why are humans good to other humans? If the survival of the individual is important for the survival of its genes, why do animals sometimes behave in ways that at a minimum do not advance the survival of its genes or may even be dangerous? Why will an animal act as a sentinel to raise an alarm to warn others of impending danger but which can also draw danger to the sentinel? Why do humans act perfectly morally, humanely and even helpfully to strangers they have never met before and probably never will again? These are intriguing questions that I cannot discuss exhaustively in this brief thesis. Let me just touch upon a fact which everyone can relate to without having to read the literature on this.
In a group, one may sacrifice its comforts and even endanger themselves in the awareness that they will in turn benefit at a later time from the sacrifice of other group members. This is the concept of reciprocity, or as it might be put simply rendered, “you do me, I do you”. Members of a group also tend to be related genetically. For example, individuals share half of their genes with their parents and siblings; a quarter with their grandparents, half-siblings, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews; and so on . Many readers will attest to the extraordinary lengths that parents go to ensure the survival and success of their children. By keeping your close relatives alive, you are keeping your genes alive. How about random acts of kindness; kindness to strangers who are not kin? Well, ancestral humans lived in small bands or companies of related individuals. Thus, one was likely to meet only family members in their entire lives. If what we now call morality evolved in this context, it is not difficult to imagine how that behaviour can persist even today when people no longer live in small groups. Just as sexual lust persists even when one uses contraception (and thus, suppressing the reproductive purpose for which sex evolved), acts of kindness and morality persist in a now cosmopolitan world. You can find a summary of this fascinating story in Dawkin's “The God Delusion”.
“Do to others only what you'd want them to do to you” is universally considered an ideal rule by the mammals that have elected themselves to be called “wise man” or Homo sapiens, as humans are known in Latin. The late Jesus of Nazareth, known also to his followers as the “Christ” or “Messiah”, was reported to have enjoined his sheep in Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31 and 10:25-28 to follow this rule. YHWH, the god of Moses and Abraham, did not give this rule to the Jews explicitly but he was said to have commanded them not to kill and steal and commit other “sins”, which I think can be trusted to produce a similar effect of protecting individuals within that group.
Other religions have this principle in one form or the other incorporated into their teachings. The first statement of the Golden rule, as it has come to be called, appeared in the Analects of Confucius, about 500 years before our common era. But it is generally recognised that no human society could exist if people treated others and their property with careless abandon. Thus, as Christopher Hitchens writes in his wonderful book “God is not Great”, the people of Moses could not have survived up to the time YHWH was said to have given them the 10 commandments, if they did not know that stealing and murder and perjury were bad. In fact, When Cain reportedly murdered his brother Abel in the fable called Genesis, he was understood to have committed a sin, one deserving of punishment. This raises the question of the relevance of the 10 commandments to the morality of the Jews. It is interesting that the last commandment asks believers not to desire the wives and property of others. This is a clear absurdity, as Hitchens notes, since it is wicked to wish to restrain thinking people from pondering over the successes of their neighbours or fantasizing about a beautiful or desirable woman, who happens to be theirneighbour's wife. We see this problem with many injunctions in our holy books. Jesus tells his followers in Matthew 5:28 that whoever lusts after a woman in his heart has already committed adultery with her! I do not think that there exist English words that can sufficiently describe the absurdity and wickedness implied by this injunction. Aside from the fact that the holy books do not contain moral injunctions that free irreligious societies could not come up with, there are the inconceivably wicked and palpably hypocritical stories and commandments recommended by the books as moral exemplars. Most people do not see these stories and injunctions for what they really are because their preconceptions about the holy books lay a thick veil over the wickedness and vileness described or implied. Pastors, evangelists and Islamic clerics select choice passages from the holy books that preach charity and compassion and love. But by failing to draw attention to the genocide, infanticide, human sacrifice, discrimination, warrant for slavery and casual murder, paedophilia, greed, and other forms of cruelty that abound in the holy books, the clergy succeed in convincing most people that the holy books are truly holy. To cut a long story (actually, a litany of stories) short, I will give a few examples from Christian teachings to illustrate the main point I have been trying to make: most people are good and moral not because of religion but in spite of it. I am aware of the objections that my religious friends on this forum will make against my choice of examples. They will protest that I am taking these stories as literal truths, which I think they are not (thank God!). In fact, I think most of the stories in the Bible have no bases in fact. As for Mohammed's revelations, we can dismiss them with the same ease. These religiose friends will also say that I am ignoring the moral injunctions and specifically looking for evidence in the holy books to blacken the name of God, which I do not deny. But that is precisely the point I am making: we scour the good books for the bits that are laced with sugar and honey and glaze over the chunks that contain heavy doses of quinine. In essence, correct judgements of good and evil do not stem from the holy texts, but from our biology and secular progress. A third objection that I anticipate is the argument that godless people have also behaved cruelly (here, Stalin and Hitler, and Pol Pot come to mind). I cannot deal with the supposed connection between godlessness and 20 th century totalitarianisms in this article, which merits a full article in its own right. Suffice it to say, for now, that in a complex and competitive world, bad people are bound to be found on either side of the god question. The critical issue pertains to crimes and evil deeds committed by ordinary people in the name of religion; crimes that ordinary people will not even contemplate for a second if religion was left out of the question. I might also add that many observers acknowledge 20 th Century totalitarianisms to be the products of men setting themselves up as gods. Let us turn first to the Talmud (the Jewish holy book), which Christians belittle by referring to it as the Old Testament. Elisha was a disciple of Elijah, of whom many hagiographic stories have been written in the Books of Kings. It was Elisha who inherited a double portion of Elijah's spirit. One fine morning after his master was “taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire and horses of fire” (I am quoting NIV), Elisha, who was apparently bald, was walking along a road in the town of Bethel when a group of boys came up to him and teased him about his bald head. “Hey baldy”, they teased.
“Get out of here”! Incensed by the mockery of these little devils, Elisha cursed the little boys “in the name of the LORD”, whereupon two bears appeared and KILLED forty-two of them (2Kings 2:23 and 24).The first time I read this story I cringed with disgust. Perhaps, I reasoned, somebody with an awful sense of humour inserted that passage in an attempt to measure the reaction it will elicit. Then, I read the cherem against Baruch Spinoza, imposed on him by the Jewish elders in Amsterdam in 1656, which I reproduce here from a website:
"...By decree of the angels and by the command of the holy men, we excommunicate, expel, curse and damn Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of God, Blessed be He, and with the consent of the entire holy congregation, and in front of these holy scrolls with the 613 precepts which are written therein; cursing him with the excommunication with which Joshua banned Jericho and with the curse which Elisha cursed the boys and with all the castigations which are written in the Book of the Law. Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up. Cursed be he when he goes out and cursed be he when he comes in. The Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven. And the Lord shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law. But you that cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day."
It is wicked that a non-event fabricated millennia ago can be unearthed and used to threaten a harmless philosopher, especially one as great as Spinoza. It is also an indissoluble conundrum for the religious apologists who attempt to dampen the case against YHWH as a cruel, vindictive, whimsical, uncharitable, unreflective dictator, of whose deeds common sense does not appear to have been employed, let alone omniscience. The young victims of Elisha were not the only casualties of YHWH's casual murder of innocent children. In Deuteronomy 21:18-21, parents are instructed to kill, by stoning, their rebellious and cheeky children. No one knows the number of innocent children that have been tortured and killed as a result of this mindless injunction. In Numbers 31, Moses under instructions from God supervised the massacre of the men and women of Midian and unbelievably, extermination of male children and enslavement of virginal girls for purposes that I would not even deign to state. Then, there is the near sacrifice of Abraham's son Isaac in Genesis 22. And, oh, if you imagined that God was joking about Isaac, the story of Jephtha and his daughter in Judges 11 should disillusion you. Jephtha offered her virginal daughter as a burnt offering to God for making him victorious in one of the tribal squabbles that fill the pages of the Old Testament. There was no divine intervention in that case to stop the burning of a girl while she was still alive. I imagine the terror in her eyes, her dying yells as the flames swallowed her, a young bud destroyed before it had the chance to blossom. Her hopes and passions unfulfilled. What horrible way to die! What wickedness! What nonsense! And for what? What does the smoke of burning girl mean to a god? I have always wondered why YHWH has such an appeal among non-Jews. It does not seem to bother many people that YHWH instructed his chosen people to destroy all the tribes that were already established in the land of Canaan. What was so special about that patch of desert that motivated the Maker to offer it to the Jews at such a cost? Do my Christian friends on this forum think that if their ancestors were unfortunate to have lived near the Israelites they would have been spared? Absolutely not! They would have been obliterated like the Philistines and Hittites andMidianites. One would think that a cosmic designer would make one of the many uninhabitable worlds in our solar system comfortable for his chosen people if he wished. Can you imagine existence on one of Jupiter's moons? Such a world would be a much more interesting one than the pathetic existence that the Jews later endured in the desert even after all the promises and the wars and massacres. Apart from the fact that the chosen people would not be bothered by other inhabitants that they have to share this planet with, I imagine that a view of the giant planet and its swarm of moons from a vantage point in the moon system would be something to write home about.
In my humble opinion, the most appalling concept in all of religion is the idea of absolution from sin as a result of a human sacrifice carried out in primitive Palestine two millennia ago. In brief, this immoral concept, which is the central thesis of the New Testament, asserts that humans have sinned against God because a talking ophidian (just a fanciful term for a snake!) deceived the first humans, Adam and Eve to eat a fruit from the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” that was irresponsibly planted in their backyard. Because of this original sin, God took a nightmarish vacation amongst the Jews, got himself tortured and crucified so that he could forgive himself! In this wretched story, I receive atonement for my sins by affirming belief in the dead man. Why was this needed at all? Theologians have argued that it was to enable man exercise freewill. But there's no freewill in this matter since, echoing Hitchens again, the alternative exercise of my freewill to reject this evil and contemptuous sacrifice will purchase me a one way ticket to hell for all eternity! But the critical point about this atonement business is that it purports to absolve people of personal responsibility for their deeds or misdeeds. Just as the Israelites piled their sins on a goat, which they drove into the desert to die in the wicked practice called scapegoating, the death of Jesus takes away the sins of the faithful. This doctrine is immorality of the unpardonable kind. Whereas it is possible to forgive one's transgressors, it is unthinkable to try and wash them clean of personal responsibility. This is a central tenet in modern concepts of morality, upon which the justice system hinges.
In the preceding discussion on original sin and God's plan for human redemption, I proceeded on the assumption that Adam and Eve did live some 6000 years ago in a Garden of Eden, and did eat a fruit of knowledge of good and evil. It is, of course, a matter of scientific fact that humans, like the rest of life on Earth (and life everywhere, it might be argued) evolved. Fossils of bipedal hominid ancestors have been dated to 5,000,000 years. Homo sapiens, that is us, have been around for some 250,000 years. This knowledge has forced many sophisticated theologians to admit that Adam and Eve never existed at all. But if Adam and Eve never existed then the dogma of original sin is a complete washout. If there is no original sin, then the death of Christ was a complete waste. Finally! We can get a good reply to the late Christian apologist CS Lewis and his pathetic, albeit famous, non sequitur: Christ was neither a lunatic nor a liar: therefore he must be the Lord. The evidence that we now have lead us to a new conclusion: Jesus was a lunatic and a liar both.
The above conclusion may not be welcome to many people. Of course, many Christians forget that the Bible, unreliable as it is, still contains verses that indicate that Jesus was thought by some people even in his family to be mad. Delusions that border on insanity are not infrequent among the religious. Assuming that Jesus did live in ancient Palestine, he must have realized at a point that hewas a fraud. Surely, the self-styled Bishop Obinim must be aware that he can neither heal the truly sick nor bring the truly dead back to life. Since he makes these claims, he must be a liar. Jesus must have been in the same position. By claiming to be who he obviously was not, he was a liar. Many Christians accept the biblical claim that Jesus was an innocent lamb, slaughtered for the sole purpose of cleansing the world of its sins. However, the crimes for which he was killed, if the Bible is to be believed, were blasphemy and imposture – charges that he could not deny. In Bart Erhman's “Jesus Interrupted”, the case is made that Jewish expectations of a Messiah were completely different from the career of Jesus. Thus, though like Hitchens I would have done everything I could to avert the murder of that blasphemous preacher if I had some authority, Jesus could still be considered a criminal according to the existing laws of the Israelites. In any case, if his death was part of the plan for human salvation then there simply is no room to discuss his innocence. If Jesus was resurrected from death, then the sins of the faithful were not purchased by his death because the claim that he died so that sins could be atoned for is false in its own terms since he really did not die. Even if we ignore the physical evidence that eliminates the need to identify God as the “prime mover”, religions still fail to offer convincing philosophical premises for believing (in) their gods.
This explains why the chief enemy of religion at the time science had not made an appearance was philosophy. From Socrates, who was condemned to death for gentle but relentless questioning to Spinoza, who was excommunicated and harassed for a similar “crime”, religions have tried to suppress the spread of free enquiry into their philosophical premises. From the toils and sacrifices of those great men and women of our enlightenment, a nobody such as myself can reject God's (or is it man's?) grand plan for salvation set out in the New Testament as an unlikely means of correcting the human problem. There is an even more pressing reason we should expose religion for what it is. By confecting conflated “misproofs”, religions identify all but the true root of the human problem. To quote Karl Marx, “Religious suffering is one and the same time the expression of real suffering and the protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of tears, of which religion is the halo. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain, not in order that man will bear that chain without any fantasy or consolation but so that he will throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will act, think and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves around manas long as he does not revolve around himself.” Only last week (and Monday morning), a story appeared on Gweb about a preacher who molests women who go knocking for spiritual intervention. The Catholic Church has recently been forced to admit to massive rapes and molestations of children by its priests. Pastors and evangelists are frequently in court for fraudulent behaviour. Poor people continue to impoverish themselves by giving away their hard-earned incomes to conscienceless pastors, and wasting precious time in churches and mosques instead of working. Many die needlessly for failing to seek appropriate medical care because they were performing ineffective and even harmful religious rituals at prayer camps and shrines. Zongo boys have taken Sakawa to the religious dimension and are mercilessly fleecing unsuspecting people of their possessions in bogus healing rituals, and confidence trickery and jiggery-pokery. Religions, indeed, are the immoral veils of the problems of society – Marx's vale of tears. So, the article ends where it begins. Morality is an evolving concept. I am even willing to concede that religion has played important roles in this evolution. But it must not become a hindrance now that our morality has outgrown the morality of primitive Palestine. Few sane people still attempt to follow the laws of the Pentateuch to the letter. The moral thing for religion to do is to allow each human to live their private lives as they choose. It must not seek to legislate its morality for everyone. The death of God becomes evident when ecclesiastical authority is broken and free enquiry is enabled. In most parts of the civilized world, God has died. The only places where He is still much alive is in the Islamic world and poverty-stricken Africa. But the struggle goes on.
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