Faith Versus Fact : Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible (9780698195516) (40 page)

In the end, these attitudes, and their political consequences, come from believing what you'd like to be true rather than what science tells us. Nowhere have I seen this more clearly expressed than by a man who should know better: Father Guy Consolmagno, a Jesuit astronomer and curator of meteorites at the Vatican Observatory. Noting people's surprise that the Vatican even
has
an observatory, Consolmagno explained that it serves “
to make people realize
that the church not only supports science, literally . . . but we support and embrace and promote the use of both our hearts and our brains to come to know how the universe works.” It's hardly necessary to add that the heart is not an organ for thinking, and that we can never understand “how the universe works” by using our emotions, via faith, instead of reason.
Father Consolmagno's heart
, for example, has convinced him that if extraterrestrial beings exist, they have souls like ours.

It's intriguing to contemplate how the world would be different without empirical beliefs based on faith—and not just religious faith. What would that be like?

What we would lose in a world without faith would not be the good things—the art and literature, the fellow feeling that inspires us to help others, the moral impulses (as we'll see, Europe is largely nontheistic but hardly a hotbed of immorality)—but the bad ones. On the secular side, we wouldn't have
homeopathy or other nonreligious forms of “alternative medicine,” and there would be less opposition to global warming and vaccination. Debates about abortion, universal health care, and much of politics would be far more informed by facts, though, of course, they'd still involve subjective preferences.

On the religious side, we'd lose the harmful tenets of belief that rest on the certainty of God-given morality: the dysfunctional aspects of society that in the absence of religion would find little support. Catholicism is seen as one of the less extreme faiths, yet if its beliefs didn't rest on scripture, this is what would diminish: opposition to abortion, euthanasia, and stem cell research; opposition to divorce; belief in the sinfulness of homosexuality; cramping of the sex lives of consenting adults; the second-class status of women (at least in the church) and the notion that they're largely vehicles for producing more Catholics; opposition to birth control and HPV vaccination; the incidence of AIDS; and the terrorizing of children with guilt and threats of eternal damnation.

And that's just one faith. Islamic tenets are even more harmful because the tight connection between Islam and politics means that beliefs are directly converted into law—often sharia law. Sharia comes straight from the Quran, as well as the hadith
and the sunnah—the reputed sayings, teachings, and beliefs of Muhammad. The law thus takes its authority from Muhammad's status as a conduit for Allah, an empirical claim that for most Muslims is simply beyond dispute.

While the interpretation of sharia law and the degree to which it's applied in civil versus criminal matters vary among Islamic states, some, like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, and Sudan, embrace it completely, becoming theocracies. Many other countries—including Egypt, Libya, Algeria, India, Pakistan, and, surprisingly, Israel—allow it only to Muslim residents, and only for special matters like marriage and inheritance. Here is what sharia law mandates: the subjugation of women (including the legality of child brides), as well as inheritance and divorce laws that discriminate against women (in a sharia
court, a woman's testimony counts only half as much as a man's, and a conviction for rape requires a woman to produce
four
witnesses of it). Sharia law dictates corporal punishment like lashing or amputation for theft, and prescribes the death penalty for both homosexuality and apostasy. Every one of the thirteen countries that impose capital punishment for rejecting
the state religion or espousing atheism is Islamic. Can there be any doubt that had Islam never existed, much of this irrationality would not be with us? (How, for instance, can you kill someone for apostasy if there's no faith to leave?) And so it is with numerous other faiths, many of which use scripture to sanction misogyny and hatred of minorities, as well as to regulate the diets, clothing, and sex lives of their adherents.

Finally, we'd lose a lot of the divisiveness that threatens to tear our world apart. Muslim against Christian and Jew, Hindu against Muslim, Buddhist against Hindu, Catholic against Protestant, Sunni against Shiite—all hatred based solely on faith would disappear. Of course, there would still be strife and xenophobia, which probably rest largely on evolution, but can you really claim that hatred based on religion would inevitably be replaced by hatred based on something else, as if the world had to fulfill a given quota of enmity? After all, Sunnis and Shiites are still Muslims, and have the same cultural background. They kill each other for faith alone.

And there is no reason that a world without faith, particularly religious faith, would be a programmed Stalinesque society, like a hive of bees. We know this because, as we'll see shortly, the largely nonreligious societies of Europe are good ones, certainly more livable and perhaps more moral than those—including Western religious cults like the Amish—that are essentially theocracies.

I've argued that pure faith of any stripe, be it in God, homeopathy, or ESP, should be rejected. But is that always the case? Could it ever be good to have faith? That is, are there important situations—ones on which your life or well-being heavily depend—when you should act in the absence of information you
could
have obtained, or
against
relevant information? Are there situations in which you should guide yourself by wish-thinking, revelation, or unevidenced dogma?

My answer is “sometimes, but not very often”—and there are a few caveats that go with that answer. By “faith” I mean, as always, belief without verifiable evidence. And, of course, the answer to the question of “is it good?” is not simple, for one must distinguish what's good for the believer from what's good for others, or for society as a whole.

A common example of a supposedly useful faith is the “dying grandmother” scenario. Your grandmother is on her deathbed, and is deeply
consoled by thinking that she'll soon be in heaven, reunited with her late husband and ancestors. You don't believe a bit of it, but refrain from saying anything. What's wrong with that?

Nothing. If that faith eases her last moments, it would be churlish to attack it, for the costs are high and the benefits nil. Unfortunately, this scenario is often used as a criticism of atheists, who, say critics, are supposedly champing at the bit to dispel the poor woman's illusions about an afterlife. But I know of no nonbeliever who would sanction that, or say there's anything wrong with allowing the dying to retain their faith. In fact, it is
theists
who try to convert people on their deathbeds, informing the terminally ill that they'll burn in hell unless they accept Jesus. As a prominent atheist, the late Christopher Hitchens was particularly subject to this form of harassment.

But while having that kind of faith might be beneficial at the end of a believer's life, that doesn't mean that
society in general
is better for having such faith. As we've seen, there are strong arguments against that. Apart from the harmful effects of buying into a religious morality, most people live a long time before they die, and for many their lives would differ substantially if they didn't believe they were facing eternal reward or punishment.

As for having faith, religious or otherwise, that you'll beat a life-threatening illness, there's little harm in that—with one exception. While such optimism may stave off depression (though it doesn't seem to help much with cures), it has the bad side effect of putting off your preparations for the likely result: making peace with old enemies, saying good-bye to loved ones, putting one's affairs in order, and so on. Although religion can buy consolation, it often does so at the expense of practicality.

This trade-off between consolation and practicality is important when considering one of the most common arguments for the value of faith—one used by both atheists and believers alike. Even if we have little or no evidence for the divine, the argument goes, it's still beneficial for people to believe in a god. This argument takes two forms, depending on the population you're considering. If you're thinking of society as a whole, one can argue that faith is a critical social glue, bonding us together in solidarity, comity, and morality. If you're considering only the downtrodden, marginalized, or poor, you can claim that religious belief gives such people hope and a reason
to go on—often because they believe all will be set right in the afterlife. And even if that hope is specious and death is final, they'll never know the difference, but their life will have been less torturous.

Both of these notions exemplify what Daniel Dennett calls “belief in belief”: the claim that faith doesn't necessarily have to be true to be useful. I've heard many fellow atheists make this argument, which from their mouths sounds deeply condescending: “
We're
sophisticated enough to dispense with gods, but the Little People must have theirs. After all, they're not susceptible to reasoned argument, and can't be fulfilled without faith.” But even coming from the faithful, the first argument, that religion is a social necessity and will always be with us, is dubious. It can be demolished with only two words: northern Europe.

Once deeply religious (Spinoza, after all, was expelled from Amsterdam's Jewish community for heresy), northern Europe has in the last few centuries become largely atheistic.
The degree of pure atheism
—those who agree with the statement “I don't believe there is any sort of spirit, god, or life force”—runs between 25 and 40 percent of the population of countries like Germany, Denmark, France, and Sweden. The level of nontheistic spirituality (“I believe there is some sort of spirit or life force, but not God”) is even higher: 25 to 47 percent. When you add the two groups to get the total proportion of nontheists, it's a majority: 71 percent in Denmark, 73 percent in Norway, 79 percent in Sweden, 67 percent in France, 52 percent in Germany, and 58 percent in the United Kingdom. In contrast, nontheists in America constitute only 18 percent of the population, while 80 percent affirm a belief in God.

Now, there's no evidence that northern Europe is socially dysfunctional. In fact, one could make a good case that in many ways those nations function better than does the highly religious United States. Sociologists measure the well-being of countries using indices of social dysfunction that include things like levels of divorce, homicide, incarceration, juvenile mortality, alcohol consumption, poverty, income inequality, and so on.
And on those scales
Scandinavia and northern Europe rank much higher in well-being than the United States, which among seventeen First World countries surveyed was dead last. (The four most “successful” societies were Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands.)
My own analysis
further showed
a negative relationship between societal well-being and religiosity: the least religious societies were the most successful. While this correlation doesn't by itself implicate a cause, neither does it support the claim that religion is essential for a harmonious society. Nor does northern Europe appear to be a hotbed of immorality, despite the claim that religion both furnishes and enforces morality.

Although Europeans' reliance on faith must surely have waned over the last few centuries, their social harmony doesn't seem to have suffered. While Europe's experience cannot necessarily be taken as universally applicable, and secularization has been much slower
in the United States
, the data fail to support the claim that faith is both inevitable and necessary for a well-ordered society.

The second argument for faith is that it gives solace to the marginalized and destitute. And that's no doubt true. When you see yourself as being without hope, there is consolation in thinking that God and Jesus are looking out for you (even if they're not helping much), and in thinking that all will be set right in the next world. I suspect that's why European countries with strong social safety nets—including government-sponsored medical care, paternity and maternity leave, and institutionalized care for the sick and aged—are the least religious. When the state is looking out for you, there's less need to seek help from above.

There is plenty of evidence that when people see themselves as less well off than others, or as in dismal situations or environments where they feel they have no control, they either become more religious or cling to their faith more tenaciously. A strong predictor of both religiosity and people's feeling of well-being is income inequality: even if you're relatively well off compared with other people in the world, you'll still feel marginalized if your countrymen are richer than you. Napoleon Bonaparte clearly saw the palliative effect of religion on this inequality, and its value in running a country: “
I do not see in religion
the mystery of the incarnation so much as the mystery of the social order. It introduces into the thought of heaven an idea of equalization, which saves the rich from being massacred by the poor.”

In the United States, income inequality is one of the statistics most highly correlated with the national level of religious belief: the higher the inequality, the higher the average degree of religiosity. Tellingly, the two
factors fluctuate in tandem, with religiosity increasing only after income inequality rises and decreasing only after it falls. This time delay, with the strength of religious belief changing
after
income inequality, and in the same direction, suggests that it's the inequality that breeds faith rather than the other way around.