June 2007

Articles of Faith
Daniel Baird’s “God’s Slow Death” (April) discusses several books that suggest Western liberal democracies ought to eradicate religion “in favour of a more rational form of humanism.” This provocative thesis has certainly sold books. None of the authors, however, grapples with the very real issue of morality in the absence of God.

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins reduces the position of God and morality to mere “sucking up, apple polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky.” According to Dawkins, God’s ethical imperative is nothing more than the expression of man’s childish need for an external morality, creating an opportunity for him to be rewarded or, at least, to avoid punishment. But without an absolute morality, as provided by God, what’s wrong, for instance, with engineering human genetics to create a race of super beings or reducing a small number of people to slavery in order to benefit a majority? Dawkins attempts to use Kant to create a purely materialistic ethical imperative; perhaps absolute morality can be found through some calculus of human happiness, but the issue is far from trivial.

All of the authors, especially Sam Harris, do a solid job of outlining how religion has been misused to the detriment of humanity. No credible argument can be made to justify the brutality of the Crusades or 9/11. That said, the fact that God’s name is misused is no argument that God does not exist. If a nation’s armed forces commit war crimes, it does not mean the nation doesn’t exist. Rather, it means the nation’s name has been brought into disrepute. Harris forgets that religion, like every other human activity with potential for good (science, politics, art), can be used for evil. Certainly, in the last century, the greatest evils — and there was a lot of competition — were not committed by people of faith but by faith’s opponents.

Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao were thoroughly anti-religious (although, tellingly, Hitler occasionally covered his rage at Christianity with fig leaves). In fairness, the evil they perpetrated was not most directly a consequence of their materialism, but rather their extremism and lack of humanity. However, it is at least arguable that their extremism and lack of humanity was the result of a morality unconstrained by anything other than materialism — humans and humans alone as the measure of all things. Without some anchoring, morality is subject to drift. While religion is not a perfect harbour for morality to dock in, without it there is a real danger of morality becoming that of the totalitarian state.
James Morton
Toronto, Ontario

In his charming review essay, Daniel Baird reports on French philosopher Michel Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam without commenting much on Onfray’s typically French secularist distortion of the traditions he hates so much. The philosopher, Baird writes, believes that “the three great monotheistic religions — Christianity, Judaism, and Islam — are equivalent in their deeper origin and structure.” This flat structuralist reading is hopelessly ahistorical and uninformed. Onfray imagines that in the face of death, at the point of “deeper origin” (early Judaism?) “denial takes over and transforms [death] into a beginning . . . . God, heaven and spirits come forth to dispel the pain and violence of death.” As far as Biblical scholarship can tell, earliest Judaism had no happy ending/beginning in an afterlife; the Psalms speak only of Sheol, the pit, a kind of dark repository or dormitory of the dead, somewhat like the Greek limbo.

Most observant Jews I know (and I’ll include myself here) do not believe in pie in the sky, by and by. Onfray’s claim that all three monotheisms share a profound hatred of humanity, intelligence, life, and sexuality is hateful. It’s also utterly wrong as regards Judaism; I won’t speak for the other two, except to note that they have sometimes been guilty of some of these charges but have just as often preached and acted from a profound love of humanity and life. Judaism takes life and the preservation of life as the highest principle, to which all other commandments and principles are subordinate

Onfray cannot understand “the monotheisms” because he knows so little about any of them and because he sees them all through the distorting lens of the first Enlightenment, the root both of secular French society and of the modernist disdain for religion as obscurantist and dishonest. Baird talks about taking his daughter to a Kol Nidre service at a traditional synagogue to savour “the rites of many of her ancestors and . . . a world view that is deep and powerful.” Why not teach her something of the actual facts about Judaism? Had he known them, he might have been in a better position to demonstrate what Onfray’s ideas are: dishonest and obscurantist.
Dr. Andrew Colin Gow
Director, Medieval and Early Modern Institute
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta