God: The Failed Hypothesis (32 page)

According to Scalia, who President Bush called his model for Supreme Court appointments, governments do not derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Rather, Scalia tells us, “It [government] is the ‘minister of God’ with powers to

‘revenge’ and to ‘execute wrath,’ including even wrath by the sword [which is unmistakably a reference to the death penalty
¹⁴
].” In March 2005 the United States became the last country in the world to abolish the death penalty for offenders who were under eighteen when they committed murder. Scalia vigorously dissented from the Supreme Court decision.

Most Americans view the Constitution as a “living document”

that evolves as society evolves. Scalia calls this a “fallacy.” For him, the text is fixed in meaning what it always meant. If slavery, which was not forbidden in the Constitution, still existed today, Scalia would probably rule against its abolition. If women could not vote, Scalia would do his best to see that they never did. No doubt he would use the Bible to justify those opinions.

Justice Scalia’s thinking exemplifies all that is wrong with religion and why it is so inimical to human progress. God rules over a physical and social firmament that must remain unchanged, because change implies imperfection in his original creation.

I hope I have made it clear in this book that, while I wish people were less gullible, less willing to believe in the most prepos-terous supernatural notions, I still have a high regard for the basic decency of most human beings. Many people are good. But they are not good because of religion. They are good despite religion.

Nineteen Muslims would not have wreaked the havoc of September 11, 2001, destroying themselves along with three thousand others, had they not been believers. I need not detail all the killing in the name of God that has gone on throughout the ages
¹⁵
. At the time of this writing we have religious conflicts in a half-dozen places around the world
¹⁶
. In his book
Is Religion Killing Us?
Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer traces the biblical and Qur’anic sources of violence. He concludes, “Violence is widely embraced because it is embedded and ‘sanctified’ in sacred texts and because its use seems logical in a violent world
¹⁷
.”

Religion at least partially accounts for the large cultural differences and mistrust that divide racially similar groups, like Israelis and Palestinians or Indians and Pakistanis, who might otherwise live together in harmony or even as a single people.

Not every war in history has been over religion, but religion has done little to ameliorate the conditions that led to war in those cases. We just have to look back half a century and witness the role played by the Catholic Church in aiding Nazi Germany
¹⁸
For example, the German Church opened its genealogical records to the Third Reich so that a person’s Jewish ancestry could be traced. Not a single German Catholic, including Adolf Hitler, was excommunicated for committing crimes against humanity
¹⁹
. And Hitler often claimed he was serving God. In
Mein Kampf
he says, “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator:
by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord
²⁰
.”
However, I must hasten to add that many Catholic leaders outside Germany did speak out against the Nazis and some, such as the Dutch archbishop, were retaliated against.

Now, you might ask, what about all the undeniable good that is done by religious charitable institutions—helping the poor and caring for the afflicted? Although the many selfless and dedicated people who do charitable work will tell you that they are motivated by their love of God, it is not really clear that God has that much to do with it. Perhaps these people are simply innately charitable and would have done the same in the absence of religious motives. The empirical fact is that people with no religion are not noticeably less charitable than those with religion.

Much of the time and money spent by Christian charities, including that now provided by federal and state governments in the United States as part of “faith-based initiatives,” goes to pros-elytizing rather than solving the problems they were set up to solve. This money would be put to better use in providing services other than worship services. Certainly no evidence exists that so-called faith-based charities do any better than secular ones.

Indeed, there is mounting evidence that some do worse.

For example, in 1996, the then Texas governor George W. Bush saw to it that state agencies eliminated inspection requirements of religious charities. In five years, the rate of confirmed abuse and neglect at religious facilities rose by a factor of twenty-five compared to state-licensed facilities. In another example of misuse, a Texas state district court found that a jobs training program unconstitutionally used $8,000 of state money to buy Bibles and spent most of the time on Bible study while providing no secular alternatives
²¹
. For a survey of the negative social impact of religious extremism in the United States, see the book of essays edited by Kimberly Blaker
²²
.

Now, you might say this has nothing to do with the existence or nonexistence of God. However, the concept of a beneficent, loving God held by most people would reasonably be expected to lead to a better world when God is widely worshiped. Well, God is widely worshiped and we do not have a better world because of it. On the contrary, the world seems worse off as the result of faith. The certainty and exclusiveness of the major monotheisms make tolerance of differences very difficult to achieve, and these differences are the major source of conflict
²³
.

In stark contrast to almost all other religious leaders, the Dalai Lama has tried to keep Tibetan Buddhism in tune with the modern world. He has often made it clear that whenever a Buddhist teaching disagreed with science, then he would attempt to change the teaching. However, as I have already noted, the Dalai Lama still seems to believe in a duality of mind and body not supported by science.

Not that Buddhists have avoided committing their own atrocities (condemned by the Dalai Lama, to be sure), as the recent history of Sri Lanka demonstrates.

Meaning

Finally, we need to deal with the personal aspects of religion that may be the most important for most people. In this section we discuss the common claim that life is meaningless if God does not exist
²⁴
. In the next section we will consider the widespread belief that religion provides comfort and inspiration.

Christian apologist William Lane Craig has spoken of “the absurdity of life without God.” According to science, the human race is ultimately doomed as the universe plunges toward inevitable extinction. Without God, without immortality, Craig tells us, “The life we live is without ultimate significance, ultimate value, ultimate purpose
²⁵
.”

Philosopher Erik Wielenberg tells of a gym teacher who would calm things down when tempers flared during a heated ball game by saying, “Ten years from now, will any of you care who won this game?” Wielenberg recalls thinking that a reasonable response would be, “Does it really matter
now
whether any of us will care in ten years
²⁶
?” He quotes philosopher Thomas Nagel in the same vein, “It does not matter now that in a million years nothing we do now will matter
²⁷
.”

In other words, what matters now is what happens now. The September 11, 2001, hijackers were guided by some imagined ultimate purpose and so did not care what happened to them when they flew airplanes into buildings. We (mostly) all agree how sick that was. We can take comfort in that highly probable fact that they did not wake up in paradise.

Surely we can find present meaning in our lives that does not depend on our immortality, especially since our immortality is not likely to happen. Independent of immortality, many people think that life is pointless unless they fit into some grand, cosmic scheme. They imagine that meaning can only be assigned externally, by some outside, higher authority.

But, why can’t we find meaning internally? Why must meaning be handed down from above? Over the ages, philosophers have offered many suggestions on how to live rewarding lives. In his
Nicomachean Ethics,
Aristotle offered three ways that humans might live contentedly: a life devoted to the pursuit of bodily pleasure; a life devoted to political activity; and a life devoted to contemplation
²⁸
. He decided that the life of contemplation was best, since that most closely matches the activity of the gods. I suppose he wasn’t thinking of the gods in Homer’s
Iliad.

Many theists will claim that, without God, humans would seek only bodily pleasure and other selfish interests. But that is not the nature of a social animal. We seek pleasure in the society of others and we empathize with others suffering. With the evolution of civilization, we have an enormous range of wonderful and important activities in which we can participate. I got my curiosity from the same place as cats, but I’ve been able to pursue mine into the deepest questions about the nature of the universe with the help of multimillion-dollar instruments and thousands of other scientists. Far from providing us meaningful goals, religions prescribe tribal values: amity for our tribe; enmity for other tribes; mind-closing faith; abject worship of authority.

God is not necessary for someone to find fulfillment in contemplation or social activity. Ethical philosopher Peter Singer emphasizes that “[we] can live a meaningful life by working toward goals that are objectively worthwhile
²⁹
.” One of the ways he suggests is quite simple, namely, to work to reduce avoidable suffering. This, he claims, is an objectively worthwhile goal that can provide inner meaning and, furthermore, can be done whether or not God exists.

Similarly, philosopher Kai Nielsen has remarked, “A man who says, ‘If God is dead, nothing matters,’ is a spoilt child who has never looked at his fellow man with compassion
³⁰
.”

Comfort and Inspiration

Many find comfort and inspiration in the notion that they are not alone in the universe, that they are a special part of the cosmos with a loving father looking down on them and providing them with an eternal life. During their mortal lives, many also claim that religion inspires them to do greater things, to go beyond the bounds of their material existences.

The idea of life after death probably came about when our primitive ancestors evolved the cognitive ability to not only realize that they will someday die, but also to ask whether death is final or that something still lay beyond the grave. The latter possibility would have been strongly suggested by the fact that a dead person was still “alive” in thoughts and dreams. Those thoughts and dreams were ephemeral, so the notion arose that some “spirit” carried on after the material body ceased to move and began to decay.

In chapter 3 we traced the development of the soul to the place where it exists today as little more than a word used to represent someone’s “personhood,” encompassing the qualities such as love and kindness that identify a person as something more than a mechanical automaton. It now seems almost certain that those qualities are not the product of some immaterial substance or spirit but arise through the natural operations performed by a highly complex but still purely material brain. That brain dies when we die, but our memories and thoughts carry on in the brains of others.

Unfortunately, science cannot confirm the Christian-Islamic promise that we one day will be reunited with departed loved ones and live eternally in the bosom of our creator
³¹
. The rational prospect of life after death is close to nil. But, at least, science
can
assure us that the many who happened to choose the wrong God will not be tortured through all eternity—that those millions who lived and died before the jealous God was invented will rest in peace. As an atheist T-shirt says, “Smile. There is no hell.”

Science can help us to live a better life with the years we have.

No doubt most of humanity today enjoys longer lives in greater comfort and pleasure as the direct result of scientific advances (such as evolution) than it would in the absence of those advances—especially if humanity had relied solely on religious teachings. If science has brought with it new problems, such as overpopulation, pollution, and the threat of nuclear holocaust, few people suggest we do away with science to avoid those consequences. Hopefully they can be avoided with the help of science and wise political actions.

Additionally, by ridding the world of superstition, science helps us live in less fear of the unknown. Humans no longer cower in the back of a cave during an electrical storm—and they know enough to get off the golf course. People are no longer burned at the stake when accused of heresy or witchcraft. By ridding the world of God, science helps us to control our own lives rather than submitting them to the arbitrary authority of priests and kings who justify their acts by divine will.

I do not deny that religion has inspired great art and music, which does much to enrich our lives. I personally have spent many happy hours viewing religious art in the great museums of the world and listening to sacred music in concert halls and recordings.

I cannot think of anything more beautiful or more touching (or amazing) than Michelangelo’s
Pieta
in St. Peter’s in Rome. In my youth I thrilled at singing Bach’s “Magnificat,” Handel’s
Messiah,
and Brahms’s
Requiem
as a member of a church choir.

Many religious stories appeal to us as poetry and plays do.

They are parables speaking to the human condition. Their value has nothing to do with the supernatural or whether they are true.