Organized Religions vs. Universal Humanist Values, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay
November 7, 2010
Organized Religions vs Universal Humanist Values
by
Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay,
Emeritus professor, University of Montreal
Ph.D. Stanford University
Former president of the North American Economics
and Finance Ass’n
Author of the book “
The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles
”, 2010 [Prometheus Books, ISBN: 978-1616141721]
“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority,
[and]
science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works… They
[religous people]
made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible.”
Stephen W. Hawking (1942-
), British theoretical physicist
“The Bible is a manual of bad morals
[which]
has a powerful influence on our culture and even our way of life…It is
a catalog of cruelty and of what’s worst in human nature.
Without the Bible, we would be different and probably better people.”
Jose Saramago (1922-2010), 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature winner
“I think that on balance the moral influence of religion has been awful. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.”
Steven Weinberg, 1979 Nobel Laureate in Physics
“The whole contention that Christianiy has had an elevating moral influence can only be maintained by wholesale ignoring or falsification of the historical evidence.”
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), (Why I am not a Christian)
“All natural institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
Thomas Paine (1737-1809), American author
“We’ve never had a problem expressing what we’re against. Humanists have always been critical of theism. But as our movement matures politically and socially, it will be beneficial to express our positive values, like ethical values based on reason and support for critical thinking as a way to solve public problems.”
Dr. Paul Kurtz, American humanist
I- Religiosity Around the World
W
hat must be understood with organized religions and religion in general, is that they are a form of religious nationalism, whether they are Christian, Jewish or Islamic, as compare to the usual secular political nationalism. That’s why I think that when we remove their theological clothes, we find the great organized religions to be essentially political and social movements.
Indeed, there are social and emotional motives for some people to join organized religions, far beyond any metaphysical proposition, and it relates to a certain natural instinct to belong and to be part of a larger group. Humans are social animals and they have a natural inclination to be part of a group or community. —It is a condition for survival. When membership within a given nation is weak, and when secular political nationalism is weak, it is understandable that people can fall back on organized religious as a nationalist substitute.
I give here three examples:
1- The Example of e
after the British Conquest and after the failed revolt of 1837-39.
During one hundred years, Quebec experienced a political system of creeping theocracy. This period, from 1840 to 1940, is called the Great Darkness. It followed the failed revolt of 1837-1839 against the British occupation, during which the Catholic Church took de facto control of everything that was important in the collective social life in Quebec, with the exception of the economy and of central politics: Education (while at the same time being opposed to compulsory education), hospitals, orphanages, charitable institutions or rehabilitation institutions and hospitals, etc.
In order to be in the good graces of the British Empire, the leaders of the Catholic church of the time rushed to excommunicate the patriotic leaders of the insurgency. Their clear purpose was to replace those civil leaders in the remnants of whatever the foreign occupant would concede to them in terms of autonomous political life.
Our native bishops were faithful servants of two foreign empires: the British Empire, which militarily occupied Quebec and the Roman Catholic Empire to whom they owed their primary allegiance.
The religious theory of politics at the time was that political power came from God and that royal or imperial authorities were its rightful owners. The people had no right to self-government.
Thus, on July 25, 1837, Bishop Jean-Jacques Lartigue (1777-1839), first bishop of Montreal, said the following regarding the Patriots:
“It is never permissible to rebel against the legitimate authority, or violate any laws of the country ... it (is not) permissible to rebel against the government under which we are fortunate to live ...”
. For him, “the royal authority comes from God.” —That’s it. And God loves kings and queens! This explains why he hastened to excommunicate the Patriots after their defeat. Twelve of them were hanged, adding insult to injury.
But political power was not the exclusive domain of the British occupation. The Catholic Church and the Canadian Catholic hierarchy claimed for themselves a significant part of secular political power.
Bishop Louis-François Laflèche (1818-1898), the right arm of Bishop Ignace Bourget (1799-1885) was among the first to say that French-Canadians (the Quebecers of the time) form a Catholic nation, that they have a providential mission to fulfill, and that therefore they owe their bishops—leaders by divine right of society—a most absolute submission, both in spiritual and in temporal matters. This, of course, under the tutelage of the military occupiers.
2-
A second example is
the United States’ South
after its defeat in the Civil War. The South, having lost its battle for political nationalism, took refuge in religious nationalism. Even today, the Southern American states are known as the “Bible Belt” and are very religious, I would say extremely religious. Such a religious nationalism has served as a kind of substitute for a political nationalism which was lacking.
3-
Finally, we observe that in Europe of course, but more and more often here also,
immigrants living in poorly integrated ghettos
tend to congregate around their religious affiliations as if they were standards or political movements aimed at serving their interests. The imams and mullahs become important political figures, when they do not try to enforce their religious laws to the detriment of the civil laws and the constitution of the host country.
Therefore, it would be a mistake to underestimate the attraction of organized religions as social and political organizations. Even when people are not overtly forced to adhere to a particular religion, they can still find it to be in their interest to do so under certain circumstances.
II-
Religion in Contemporary United States
And even today also, there are some American politicians and evangelists who openly call for the United States to become a latent theocratic society (contrary to the U.S. Constitution) just as Quebec was in the 19th Century. Just consider what an American Vice-president said in 1988:
“I don’t know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”
Here are the results in a summary:
Canada
USA
UK
EVOLUTION:
61%
34%
66%
Humans evolved from less
(Quebec: 66%)
advanced life forms
(
Alberta: 51%)
over millions of years
(Saskatchewan: 50%)
CREATIONISM: God created
24%
47%
16%
human beings
(Quebec: 17%)
in their present form
(Alberta: 31%)
within the last 10,000 years
(Saskatchewan: 39%)
Not sure
15%
18%
15%
Not sure
15%
18%
15%
And here are the U.S. results broken down by region:
USA
Neast
MidWest
South
West
EVOLUTION: Humans evolved 34% 43% 37% 27% 38%
fromless advanced life forms
over millions of years
CREATIONISM: God created
47%
38%
49%
51%
45%
human beings
in their present form
within the last 10,000 years
Not sure
18%
19%
13%
21%
16%
Source:
“Americans are Creationists; Britons and Canadians Side with Evolution”
, Angus Reid Public Opinion, 2010
In general, the younger people are and the more educated, the more they accept the scientific consensus about evolution. Conversely, the older people are and the less educated, the more they tend to agree with the creationist legend.
III- Weaknesses of Organized Religions
Over the past decade, many authors have demonstrated the irrational and even destructive features of religion, of which there are some 1,250 denominations or sects according to some statisticians, and over 4,000 according to others. Therefore, many thanks go to Dawkins, Harris, Stenger, Onfray and others for their wits and their courage for speaking out about religions, and for exposing the emptiness of religious thought.
But this is not enough. More is needed and this for two reasons.
Like anything else that belongs to the realm of feelings and emotion, rather than reason, facts and abstract arguments often fail to change minds. In fact, they can produce the opposite effect: Show someone that his or her beliefs are false, and he or she may cling to them even more closely. Scientific experiments have shown such a psychological reality for many individuals.
For example, in a series of
studies
done in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. On the contrary, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs.
Especially in the religious sphere, but also in politics, facts don’t necessarily have the power to change minds. Often, this is quite the opposite. In such a context, rational arguments demonstrating the fallacies of certain beliefs are unlikely to influence many people.
Personally, I rarely use the religious term “atheism” as such in my most recent books. I prefer to raise the issue in rather general terms as a secular and independent humanist, while stressing the negative personal and social consequences of established religions, today of course, but also throughout history.
For example, in
“The CODE for Global Ethics”
(Prometheus, 2010), I raise a number of fundamental criticisms against established religions and their founding texts, with an emphasis on the failings of the three so-called Abrahamic religions, i.e. Judaism (Torah), Christianity (the Bible) and Islam (the Koran).
Basically, I criticize these three major religions for being in direct conflict with the scientific knowledge developed over the last four centuries. Indeed, the vision that people had of themselves about their place in the universe was forever turned upside down by three fundamental scientific breakthroughs:
Galileo’s proof, in 1632
, that the Earth and humans were not the center of the Universe, as so-called holy books have asserted.
Darwin’s discovery, in 1859
, (“On the Origin of Species”) that humans are not some unique god-like creatures among all species, destined to have eternal life, but are rather the outcome of a very long natural biological evolution, having evolved from other forms of life.
The Watson-Crick-Wilkins-Franklin’s discovery, in 1953
, of the structure of the double helix DNA molecule (Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid) in each of the 46 chromosomes in human cells, and the devastating knowledge that humans share more than 98 percent of their genes with chimpanzees.
I would add, also, that ongoing research about how the human brain functions has cast new light on how some phenomena, such as different kinds of thoughts, including religious thoughts, are generated in different zones of the brain, an indication that all psychic phenomena have their origin in the brain.
Therefore, nobody can assert anymore that the Earth is the center of the Universe; nobody can claim that humans are unique in the scale of things; nobody can maintain that the human body and the human mind are two unrelated entities.
Nevertheless, these powerful organized religions continue to profess that:
human beings have been placed at the center of the universe by mysterious divine forces, some 6,000 years ago (a scientific error);
the human mind is an entity that is independent of the human body (such a distinction has no scientific basis);
it is permissible to persecute and even kill members of other religions or people who have other philosophies, in certain circumstances, based on the myth of so-called superior races or “chosen people”;
there is one ethics for individuals as individuals and another for persons who happen to be heads of state;
and people should base their behavior on the fear of eternal punishment in a kind of extraterrestrial “Hell”. (This ideology of hell, because of the hate and exclusion that it engendered against the “others”, has been a major cause of numerous persecutions, religious wars and even genocides throughout human history.)
Let us say that religious faith in things without evidence makes fools of men.
That is why, because of all these errors, I prefer to reverse Immanuel Kant’s position on religion, at least as far as ethics is concerned. For him, religious morality was the rationale that he advanced for keeping religious organizations. If you remember, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in his analysis of religions, came to the paradoxical conclusion that although the philosophical foundations of established religions were false, it was nevertheless necessary to accept them (the religions) because they were a necessary source of morality for men.
I am in agreement with Kant that many religions propose false and irrational beliefs and myths.
However, unlike Kant, who lived in the eighteenth century, my analysis of religion-based codes of ethics has led me to the conclusion that they are either fundamentally deficient and inadequate, or at the very least very incomplete, for a humanity which must live and survive in the new globalizing context.
Thus my first conclusion is that organized religions, far from being a reliable source of moral values, are rather, in many senses, a moral threat to humankind.
IV- A Superior Human Civilization
All of this led me, first, to wondering what a truly humanistic civilization would be, based on humanistic values and not on religious creeds? And if, as I think these humanist values are superior to any other moral system, why doesn’t the world adopt basic humanist principles but instead seems to be moving presently away from humanism to embrace dangerous absolutist religious worldviews?
Let me answer the first question about what a humanist civilization would look like.
First and foremost, the scope of human empathy would be more universal and more comprehensive, and would not merely apply to some chosen people, to members of a particular religion or to persons belonging to a particular civilization.
In practice, this would require that we establish a higher threshold of human morality, beyond the traditional norm of the Golden Rule (
“Treat others as you would have others treat you.”
) It would require that we adopt what I call a
Super Golden Rule
of humanist morality that incorporates the humanist rule of empathy:
“Not only do to others as you would have them do to you, but also, do to others what you would wish to be done to you, if you were in their place.”
— Of course, the corollary also follows:
“Don’t do to others what you would not like to be done to you, if you were in their place.”
[This is a far cry from the implicit rule that former President George W. Bush seems to have been following while in power:
“Do unto others before they do unto you!”
]
This is a general moral principle, which requires that we judge whether an act is moral or not as
if
we did not know in advance if it would apply to us or to others. Such a concept is analogous to John Rawls’ famous “veil of ignorance” for distributive justice. Thus,
racism
is wrong because you would not want people to treat you badly if you were of another race;
sexism
is wrong because you would not want to be treated disrespectfully if you were of another sex;
torture
is wrong because you would not want to be tortured, etc.
In essence, in such a humanist civilization,
All human beings would be equal in dignity and in human rights.
Life on this planet would not be devalued and seen as merely a preparation for a better life after death, somewhere beyond the clouds.
The virtues of tolerance and of human liberty would be proclaimed and applied, subject only to the requirements of public order and the rule of law.
Human solidarity and sharing would be better accepted as a protection against poverty and deprivation.
The manipulation and domination of others through lies, propaganda, and exploitation schemes of all kinds would be less prevalent.
There would be less reliance on superstition and religion to understand the Universe and to solve life’s problems and more on reason, logic and science.
Better care of the Earth’s natural environment—land, soil, water, air and space—would be taken in order to bequeath a brighter heritage to future generations.
We would have ended the primitive practice of resorting to violence or to wars to resolve differences and conflicts.
There would be more genuine democracy in the organization of public affairs, according to individual freedom and responsibility.
Governments and parents would see that their first and most important task is to help develop children’s intelligence and talents through education.
As we can see, we do not currently live in a humanist civilization. The question is why?
After World War II and the adoption of the UN Charter and the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it was widely believed that a more humanist civilization could replace political totalitarianism and the brutal wars that characterized the first part of the 20th century. We know today that this was not going to be the case, because wars of aggression and genocides have continued as if nothing had happened.
The old forms of fascism and of communism are less prevalent, but they seem to have been replaced by a new form of corporatocracy or corpocracy, in other words a form of shadow government where the CEOs of large companies, banks, conglomerates and other concerns take effective control of the electoral process, of the media, and even of the courts and of the governments. One could also describe this kind of system as a form of plutocracy, which is in itself a new form of fascism.
VI- General Conclusion
Religious organizations are much more than sellers of serotonin to calm the anxiety of death. Above all, they are social and political organizations. If they are to be replaced over time, and I think that on the whole they present a net negative influence on the evolution of our societies and of that of all humankind, a replacement must be found. Among other things, other institutions must provide the concrete services presently the realm of organized religions. In any case, in terms of ethics and morality, it is my contention that humanism is a much superior substitute for what they can offer.
* Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the Université de Montréal. He has written 30 books. His most recent publication is “The Code Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles” with a Preface by Dr. Paul Kurtz. (Prometheus Books: ISBN:
978-1-61614-172-1)
http://www.amazon.ca/Code-Global-Ethics-Rodrigue-Tremblay/dp/1616141727/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263004778&sr=1-1
Dr. Tremblay also writes an international blog about economics and geopolitics at:
www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/blog