ATHEISTS UNITE!
by John Rawson
It is time that atheists came out.
And agnostics, too, for that matter. It is time that a blight on all humanity
was recognized as such, its terribly harmful effects and its lack of truth
being very important elements of that blight. It is time that the highly
desirable acceleration of the decline of religious belief was given extra
impetus by continual injections of contrary opinions from those that have been
too silent for too long. Not one of the religions is worthy of exemption from
the powerful criticisms that it is not difficult to muster.
This
silence, not a total silence, of course, is a state that has endured over the
centuries. And now, in 2001, the Government of the State of Victoria has
passed a bill that 'will make unlawful serious or harmful abuse or expressions
of hatred or contempt for a person's race or religion. (Rob Hulls, Attorney
General of Victoria, in a letter dated 29/5/01 to the present writer.) So here
is how things stand: a citizen of Victoria may now break the law in that State
if he or she criticizes an influence on the people that is both harmful and
untrue. One may break the law, that is, by speaking the truth. Hatred does not
come easily to me, but I have a deep contempt for religion, which,
in this document, I seek deliberately to express.
The reasons for
religion's longevity are many. Humankind's difficulty in understanding the
world meant that ignorance in many important matters was universal. That
ignorance has been receding over the last few centuries, despite the intense
opposition of religion; there has been little need for a long time now to turn
to the myths of religion in seeking a true understanding of the world. Great
philosophers and great scientists have opened our eyes and, we should hope,
our minds. Theologians are, and belong, in the unknowing past. The right of a
person to be religious is not, of course, disputed here.
Further, the
opinion that religion is somehow 'good' has been fostered over the centuries,
and many people feel that it should not be criticized. That is, it may be
said, a kind of indoctrination has occurred. So people with strong arguments
that refute religious belief weaken in any resolve to take a stand. They have
thoughts like this: "Oh, people are entitled to their opinions, [of course
they are] so I should leave religion alone." That is, they condone, (yes, I
emphasize that word) for one thing, the appalling dictatorship from the
Vatican, a dictatorship that insists, among other things, that women, millions
of them living in poverty, in parts of the world, must continue to give birth
to unwanted babies. In July of 2001, news services informed us that a Roman
Catholic Archbishop in South America was demanding publicly that members of
the faith must not use condoms. Nothing new about that demand, of course: that
is the unwavering policy of the dictatorship. The church has its own, facile,
explanation for that policy. But more adherents of the faith; more jobs for
clerics; more money for already overflowing coffers; more power for the
functionaries of the dictatorship; those are the things that really matter.
By not challenging religious beliefs, atheists and agnostics condone
the results of the truly awful murderous hatreds in Ireland, the Middle East,
in Indonesia and Pakistan, in Afghanistan and the Balkans and India, and all
those other places where religions exert their power over people. Some
consider that their success, say, in business or in politics or in some other
activity, would be jeopardized were they to reveal themselves as opponents of
religious belief. And so on and so on. There is hardly an end to the harmful
effects of religious belief. Yet many atheists and agnostics believe that it
should be protected despite knowing the harm that it does.
Humankind
is not up to the task of taking seriously and practising the tenets of the
Sermon on the Mount. You need only to look at much of the conduct of the
so-called Christian nations over the centuries and just recently for that
matter. I have in mind the events in the Balkans a couple of years ago. And I
have in mind particularly here, the reaction of the church to the bombing
atrocities in Yugoslavia and later Iraq. What reaction? you may well ask. I
thought the silence of the wide Christian community, not to mention other
religions, contemptible. I was prompted to send this brief letter to The
Australian newspaper. It was published on 17/2/01, but the final sentence was
omitted. I wonder why?
Bomb-happy-bogus-lefty Blair, pal of Beazley and
Gallop, lackey of the supreme-court-elected Bush, has again joined in the
dropping of death on Baghdad. Christian leaders everywhere should join in
protest. But they will not, of course.
Religion is not only not good;
it is positively harmful. On top of that, and perhaps even more to its
discredit, it is not true. (And I am about to use an argument of Bertrand
Russell's here.) There is a number of major religions. They differ from one
another in important respects. It follows as a matter of simple logic that not
more than one of them can be true. Atheists think that not one of them is
true. As for the harm that religion does, consider first this example: in many
parts of the world people kill one another in its name. That is true. Little
children, in many parts of that same world, are indoctrinated with opinions
that cannot stand up to scrutiny. That is true. Over much of the world,
unwanted little children are born because there is religious objection to
other than church-approved means of contraception. That is true. Criticisms of
religion are so very easy to come by. Remarkably, the pope, himself, has
recently made apologies for his church's terrible behaviour over the
centuries. Those admissions suggest that the church is on very shaky ground
and so it deserves to be! And luminaries from all the branches of religious
belief, do have so much scope for many words of contrition. Really, though,
how can so many truly believe the virgin birth story, or the story of the
resurrection, or that should you die for your religion you will go straight to
heaven? As for the question of the virgin birth, I shall include this comment
from Richard Dawkins of Oxford University. The Sunday Age thought it wise to
omit it from a letter of mine that was published on 5/2/1995:
Take, for
example, the matter of the alleged virgin birth. It is fairly widely known,
but of course not much mentioned, that the words "young woman," were
mistranslated from Hebrew to Greek as 'virgin.' Thus: "Behold a virgin shall
conceive and bear a son." Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene 1989.
What
of faith? If there are religious teachings that you badly want to believe, or
being a religious leader you badly want others to believe, but there is no
proof of their truth, what do you do? You rely on faith. Russell said: "Faith
is a belief in something for which there is no evidence." Someone else wrote:
"Faith is believing in what you know to be false." (When I write of truth, I
am using the opinion that a statement or belief is true when it corresponds
with fact. If it is a fact that a god exists, then it is a true statement to
say that he does.)
Atheists and agnostics should not be afraid to
proclaim their unbelief or doubts about the existence of god and other
religious so-called truths. What evidence is there for the belief that Jesus
Christ existed? Bertrand Russell wrote that it is extremely unlikely that
Jesus Christ ever existed. Unbelievers should not be afraid to come out. The
press has been more receptive to the opinions of unbelievers in recent years
than was earlier the case. The new laws against free speech in Victoria,
however, will very likely mean a retreat by the press. Religion has had its
opportunities for so long now to show the world that, even if it is not true,
it is at least 'good.' It has failed dismally the world's peoples. It is time
for it to be regarded as the ancient, harmful and untrue institution that it
is. Enough of superstition!
