When discussing the negative effects of religion, we shall not make the mistake of equating “religion” with only “Christianity” (as, unfortunately, have many atheist comrades-in-arms). Rather, we will study the effects of religion in general. This is a difficult endeavor because there are so many different religions. Yet, there are a few things that all religions share by definition:
They make supernatural statements;
They are sufficiently old enough to be considered a religion (instead of a New Religious Movement). Therefore, their moral framework and worldview typically predate our own.
They have survived until today, which makes them a religion and not a mythology, and hence they have most likely used some of the religious survival memes that we have discussed before.
These commonalities allow us to identify and criticize traits that most major religions share.
We will look at these traits from a Humanist point of view, i.e., from the perspective of someone who defends equal rights, supports the freedom of religion, subscribes to a liberal moral framework, believes in science and logic, and is generally interested in the well-being of people and society.
The reader is reminded that the details of all major religions are discussed in the Chapter on Religions. The denominations of Christianity (Orthodoxy, Protestantism, and Catholicism) are discussed in the Chapter on Christianity. Islam is explored in detail in the Chapter on Islam(not available here for security reasons). In the present chapter, we will occasionally limit our analysis to the most populous religions, whose adherents together comprise around half of the world’s population: Hinduism, Christianity (or more precisely, Catholicism), and Islam
Throughout this chapter, as throughout the entire book, a religion is understood as a set of belief statements (also called simply “beliefs”). For example, Hinduism is understood as a set of beliefs that include “There is a repeating cycle of birth, life, and death called Samsara” and “There is a supernatural form of justice called Karma, which rewards good deeds in future lives”. An interpretation of a religion is a superset of these beliefs, i.e., a set of beliefs that contains the core beliefs of the religion plus additional beliefs. For example, there are interpretations of Hinduism that believe in Samsara and Karma but revere different gods. As discussed before, we will occasionally say that a religion or an interpretation “says”, “believes”, “prescribes”, or “prohibits” something, which just means that its beliefs contain such an affirmation, prescription, or prohibition. We will also occasionally say that some religion “does” something, by which we mean that its adherents do that something.
Before we proceed, we need to define one more technical term: the mainstream form of a religion. By this, we mean the fictitious interpretation of a religion that contains all those beliefs that are each shared by the majority of adherents of the religion. For example, 61% of Hindus believe that there is one Supreme Being with several manifestations1. Therefore, mainstream Hinduism contains this belief (along with the belief in Samsara and the belief in Karma). This does not mean that what we call mainstream Hinduism is the “correct” Hinduism, let alone the “true” one. It does not mean either that “mainstream Hinduism” would be a monolithic or recognized form of the faith. It does not even mean that the majority of Hindus believe in all statements of mainstream Hinduism. It just means that each belief in mainstream Hinduism is shared by a majority of Hindus.
If there is a god, atheism must seem to him as less of an insult than religion.
In a nutshell
From an atheist point of view, religions are collections of stories that people tell each other. The harm of this practice unfolds as follows:
Religions do not make any predictions about the physical world, because they are, by definition, unfalsifiable. This means that a religion does not tell us anything about the real world that cannot be known just as well without it. Thus, from the viewpoint of understanding the real world, religion is a useless construction.
Since a religion does not make any predictions about the real world, we can never determine if the religion is wrong (which is, again, just a consequence of its unfalsifiability). In this way, religion is an ideological trapdoor: once we start believing in it, we can never find out if we are mistaken. This means that a believer has left the sphere of rational argument. In religious matters, anyone can claim anything.
Tied to that ideological trapdoor is a set of moral values that are benign at best, besides the point in many cases, and in outright contradiction to the Human Rights at worst: All major religions (except Taoism and some variants of Protestantism) give fewer rights to women; all major religions (except the Bahai Faith, Buddhism, and Taoism) oppose interfaith marriage; all major religions (except liberal Christianity and variations of Hinduism and Taoism) shun homosexuality; and all major religions trivialize or even glorify violence by presenting hell as a solution to human wrongdoing. Liberal adherents of these religions play their part, too: They posit that it is OK to believe in God and to follow God’s will, just that they know what God really wants. This is, coincidentally, what the more conservative adherents claim as well. In this way, the more liberal adherents validate the practice of arguing with God’s will — and thus, ultimately, the more harmful interpretations of the faith.
Since no religion can be proven wrong, and since they all differ, they create clans of adherents that are based neither on kinship nor on reason, but on ideology. These clans don’t intermarry, and the boundaries between them coincide with conflict zones all over the world, such as the Middle East, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Somalia, Nigeria, Darfur, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Sudan, the Philippines, Kashmir, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.
Atheism holds that we are better off without religion. Humanism (the particular flavor of atheism that we promote in this book) goes further, and offers a constructive alternative to religious ideologies. It envisions a society based on reason and empathy, in which knowledge about the physical world comes from science, ethical rules are derived from empathy, political decisions are taken by democratic means, and people are free to do or believe anything that does not harm someone else.
Truth of religious claims
Medieval Notion of Truth
Let us start our criticism of religion by looking at the claims that religions make. By definition, religions make supernatural statements, i.e., claims about gods, spirits, supra-systems, or the afterlife. Such statements are presented to be as true as observed facts. Religions do not distinguish between “This is a fact” and “This is a supernatural belief”. Adherents of all major religions will explain some facts of life (such as stones falling down) by scientific theories, and other facts of life (such as the genesis of the universe) by supernatural intervention — with the same seriousness. We may argue that liberal Christians are an exception to this rule because they take a very light view on religious dogmata. Yet even liberal Christians will say “There is a god” with the same seriousness as “The Earth is spherical”. They consider both statements equally true.
In reality, there is a fundamental difference between supernatural statements and scientific statements. Scientific statements are based on evidence in the form of validated theories. Supernatural and magical statements are not: They are just claims (and unfalsifiable ones at that).
Religion blurs the difference between these two types of statements. It teaches people to trust in tales that were compiled thousands of years ago as if they had the same status as scientific discoveries. In this way, religions convey a medieval, mystical, pre-scientific concept of truth. Religious adherents hold that it’s OK to believe in unverified stories whose only voucher for truth is tradition, as long as it’s their own. After all, we all believe things that have not been proven. However, when it comes to serious decisions such as which medicine to take, which material to choose for a bridge, or which school to send our children to, we all seek evidence. Religion, in contrast, governs the most serious decisions in life (e.g., who to marry, what to eat, what to do, what to avoid) without the slightest evidence in its favor. For this to work, religions must downplay the need for evidence. They have to say that evidence is not always required for something to be believed. The problem is that, by removing evidence from the equation, religion robs us of something way more fundamental: the means to distinguish truth from falsehood.
This devaluation of evidence has very palatable consequences. If evidence is no longer needed for belief, then there is no argument that can be brought forward against superstitions, lucky charms, homeopathy, quacksters, conspiracy theorists, cult leaders, faith healers, televangelists, Scientology recruiters, and all other types of charlatans who play with the gullibility of people. By abandoning evidence as a way to distinguish what is true from what is false, we basically validate these teachings as well.
We teach people that faith needs no proof, evidence or justification, and then watch them believe the wrong thing.
Unfalsifiable statements
The supernatural statements that religions make are not just unsupported by evidence, but even unfalsifiable. This means that there is nothing that an adherent would accept as a proof for their falsehood. God not answering your prayers? That’s because he decided not to grant your wish! Never seen evidence of life after death? That’s because Heaven is outside your perception! Never seen a god or spirit? That’s because they are invisible! Other examples for such unfalsifiable claims are abstract statements such as “Life has a meaning” or “There is something greater than us”. There is no way to prove these statements false either.
This unfalsifiability has three consequences. First, they do not make any prediction about the real world. The believer knows nothing more than the nonbeliever about what will happen tomorrow. This is because, if the statement told us anything concrete about tomorrow, then we would see tomorrow whether the statement is false, thereby making the statement falsifiable. Without such predictions about tomorrow, however, the statement is literally meaningless in the sense of this book.
The second consequence of this unfalsifiability is more disturbing. Since the belief cannot be falsified, it is not possible to show that it is wrong — even hypothetically. This means that the believer has chosen a belief that prevents him from changing his mind. Hence one cannot discuss his faith with him. He has given up searching. He has arrived at a conviction that is beyond reason.
The third consequence of unfalsifiability is that anybody can come up with any other unfalsifiable belief. For example, if you claim that there is a god, I can claim that there are two gods. You cannot prove me wrong. For whatever argument that you bring forward for your god, I can always say that my gods are intentionally misleading you into your false belief, and that you just cannot notice it. You can say the same about me. We are each convinced that our respective worldview is the only right one, but neither of us can prove the other wrong. In such a setting, legitimacy cannot come from arguments or reasoning — it must come from somewhere else. All too often, it comes from amassing large numbers of adherents, from silencing critics, and in some cases, even from violent domination.
The solution to these problems is, of course, to disqualify unfalsifiable statements from discourse. It does not make sense to argue about unfalsifiable statements, just like it makes no sense to argue about statements such as “colorless green ideas sleep furiously”. Such statements carry no meaning. Religions, however, cannot identify unfalsifiability as the problem. If they did, they would immediately catapult themselves into senselessness. Hence, religions are bound to argue by non-logical means. With this, they destroy the basis of rational discourse. And indeed, religious adherents engage in all types of arguments that are not just wrong but also outright inadmissible in a rational discussion.
People will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth — often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it.
False claims
A leaflet in Jerusalem dating the creation of the Earth to roughly 4000 BCE.
of a leaflet by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation in Jerusalem, Israel.
Religions make not just statements that are unsupported by evidence and unfalsifiable, but also statements that are outright false. The most prominent example is maybe the Young Earth Theory upheld in some interpretations of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. This theory holds that the Earth is just a few thousand years old (see picture on the right). Other examples of such claims are that Buddha could produce fire from his upper body; that St. Joseph of Cupertino could fly; that Moses parted the Red Sea; that Mohammad ascended directly to heaven; and that Jesus healed the sick, died and rose again, and could change water into wine2. Even liberal Christians will recite the Nativity story as if it were true (while it is historically false). In addition, some religions claim contemporary miracles: faith healing (Christianity), a prophet miraculously surviving an execution (Bahai Faith), people being healed miraculously, or people levitating (Hinduism).
From a scientific point of view, of course, all of these claims are false. God did not create life; it emerged from proteins. Miracles do not happen; they are just stories. Faith Healing does not work; it’s all just fraud and hearsay. Moses did not part the waters; that’s just a mythical story. People cannot levitate, and they don’t survive when they are killed ; such accounts are just unverified legends.
In all of these cases, a religion claims something that is outright false. It then assuages us by saying that these claims are exceptional, isolated cases; by saying that we should not criticize them because they are an element of faith; or by claiming that we cannot know the truth and should hence give the benefit of doubt. But that is false. We do know the truth: These miraculous occurrences go against the laws of nature. (This is by definition, because a miracle is something that goes against the laws of nature.) Hence, the laws of nature tell us that the miracles did not happen — and they have a much better track record of speaking the truth than any religion.
Thus, anybody who claims these things, and in particular, anyone who teaches them to children, speaks a falsehood.
You are completely entitled to opinions that are not supported by evidence. But the moment you spread that opinion as fact, while knowing that it is not supported by evidence, you are a fraud.
Knowing what God wants
Most major religions fall into several denominations or interpretations. Usually, adherents of one interpretation claim that their interpretation is “What God really wants” or “What the religion really is” while all others are derivatives thereof. Moderates will say that the more conservative interpretations of their religion take the holy scriptures too literally and are therefore not the true intention of the religion. Vice versa, conservatives argue that the more liberal interpretations are modernized deviations from what the god(s) or holy men originally proclaimed. Some people even believe that a god personally told them what is the “right” thing to do in a dream or in prayer.
In all of these examples, people claim to know what a supernatural entity really wants. From an atheist point of view, of course, the adherent’s interpretation of his religion is purely his own opinion. It is usually the result of whatever he was told plus his own predilections. He then comes to hold that his beliefs happen to be what God wants. Thus, the believer in effect raises his own convictions to the level of the divine. Believers may complain that atheists know no higher authority than man. But believers go a step further: They claim that their own opinion is God’s will and thus even above that of man.
The believers, of course, are unable to see this. For them, their belief is the will of God — not their own. They are unable to conceive the thought that other people may have the same strong convictions about an entirely different interpretation of the faith.
Such a position is a problem because it gives believers a conviction that cannot be overturned by rational arguments. No moral obligation, no scientific proof, and no logical argument can override what God himself has told the believer. This is dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness3. Some believers hold that God wants them to mutilate the genitals of their daughters, others that God wants women to be obedient to men, and again others that unbelievers deserve death.
Now we may say that in the Western world, claims of “what God really wants” are harmless. God may say things such as “buy the red shoes instead of the blue ones” or “all people shall live in peace”. But even these claims are not harmless: They basically tell the extremist: “It is OK that you want to follow God’s will, but you are actually getting him wrong. I know what God really wants.” This is, co-incidentally, what the extremist believes as well. Thus, by claiming that religious extremists do not practice “God’s will”, we validate the principle of arguing with God’s will, and thus actually lend support to the extremists' argument. In this way, religion makes us vulnerable to all kinds of fanatics that free-ride on the vehicle that religion created in the first place: the idea of arguing with God’s will.
So many idiots speak in God’s name. If God were real, he would speak for himself. The fact that God does not speak, and that he allows any lunatic who comes along to speak “in his name”, shows us that God is imaginary.
False claims of power
Some religions offer a method to ask the gods or spirits for a wish. These methods can be prayers, blessings, rituals, or intercessions. The believers practice such methods because they believe the methods will somehow affect the future.
The problem is that they don’t. Prayer has absolutely no effect on the real world, apart from psychological effects. Thus, claiming that prayer has any effect on the world is a lie. It is used to keep people in a religion and to lure them into a belief system, a moral framework, and a worldview. The claim promises people a power that it does not have.
Some adherents argue that prayer is merely a request, not a commandment to the gods, and hence, that they do not expect the prayer to have a direct impact on reality. However, the very fact of asking the gods for something implies the expectation that it will occur — or at least that asking increases the probability of it happening. It does not make sense to ask for something while knowing that asking will definitively not have an effect.
Other adherents argue that prayer is merely an act of commemoration. They do not ask God to help the victims of the hurricane disaster, they just raise awareness for the plight of these victims. Yet, people literally say “Lord, we ask you”. Indeed, “to pray” means “to make a request”: It derives from the Latin “precare”, which means “to entreat”4. In Italian, “pregare” means both “to pray” and “to ask”. The same is true of the French word “prier”. In German, “beten” (“to pray”) shares its root with “bitten” (“to request”). Prayer has always been a means to make something come about, and this means does not work.
The situation is worse when the claim of supernatural power is made by an official of the religion: a priest who claims to protect a house by blessing it; a faith healer who asks the gods to heal an illness; a monk who blesses a marriage; or a shaman who claims he can increase fertility. In all of these cases, the official wrongly assumes a power that he does not have. This wrong power gives him an authoritative position in society. Thus, he uses a lie to secure his social status. Furthermore, this act is part of his job, and for this job, he gets paid — either by the religious organization or by donations, but in all cases, ultimately from the believers. This means that he uses a lie to make a living.
Those who offer false consolidation are false friends.
Pretentiousness
And no, your planet is not the center of the universe. CC0 NASA, with Earth added
Religions typically provide answers to the most fundamental questions of humanity: Where do I come from, where do I go, what is morally right? While thousands of people have dedicated their lives to finding the answers to these questions, religions claim to already have the ultimate answers — but without providing any evidence. That is pretentious. Examples are as follows:
Over millennia, humankind has developed thousands of legal and moral systems, written hundreds of philosophical treaties, developed millions of laws, permitted and then abolished slavery, shunned and then endorsed women’s rights, invented and then prohibited smoking — and laws are still changing continuously. The believer thinks that his current interpretation of his religion is the eternal and unchanged answer to all these questions — notwithstanding the fact that different believers, different eras, and different religions all have different “eternal answers” to these questions. In fact, there is a high chance that the believer himself adheres to a religion that changed its view on slavery, women’s rights, or brutal punishments quite recently.
For around 200 years, scientists have been seeking to understand the beginning of the universe. On the way, they have discovered atoms, quarks, and the theory of relativity, and they have given us X-rays, the GPS, radio, and aluminum. They have not, however, discovered what happened before the Big Bang. Here, the believer steps in: She posits that her God created the world. Her theory has no verifiable evidence in its favor; it is not grounded in any way in astronomy, cosmology, physics, chemistry, biology, or geology; and it was in fact developed by people from the Bronze-age who thought that the Sun orbited around the Earth. Still, the believer holds that her theory can answer what thousands of experts cannot answer. This is absurd. Indeed, science has disproven religious theories about the real world over and over again throughout history.
Science does not yet fully understand the workings of the human mind. And yet, the believer considers it obvious that there is some spiritual substance in us, called “the soul”. What is more, the believer knows with complete certainty that this soul will live on after the death of the body. And yet, despite being so sure about the life after death, the believer thanks God whenever the chance to this transition is avoided.
Some believers hold that life can have a meaning only through belief in their god, and that, hence, atheists cannot have a purposeful life. This is not just false, but also an arrogant hijacking of the term “meaning of life” 6. What does the believers know about an atheist’s life?
Some believers think that they can be in personal contact with the being who created the universe. They believe that the creator of the world will take the time to help them, even with something as trivial as finding their car keys. And yet, in the very same minute the believer finds her keys, that supernatural being lets hundreds of children starve to death, despite their prayers. Thus, the believer assumes that she is important enough to be helped by the creator of the universe, while millions of others are not. This is a sign of supreme arrogance7. As the Iranian author Armin Navibi argues: “To assume that God is not only personally invested in the minutiae of your life, but that your problems are ultimately more important than other problems he may be asked to solve is both selfish and absurd, considering the incredible amount of individual problems and concerns of every human on this planet”8. On the contrary, given the size and the scope of the universe, it is absurd to think that we might have any cosmically vital role within it8.
You do not even know the question,
but you already claim to have the answer.
Weirdness
A “Shabbat-elevator” in Jerusalem, Israel, which stops on every floor on Shabbat, so that conservative Jews do not have to press any button, which would be prohibited.
Different religions have different beliefs. Usually, the beliefs of one religion appear strange or funny to adherents of another religion. To illustrate this, we list here some curious beliefs. The reader is invited to guess whether the beliefs are made up for this book or actually held by a religion.
Adherents marry only within their faith. Since their faith comprises only four families, each marriage must be approved by a geneticist in order to avoid genetic disorders. True or false?
True. Samaritans (who were mentioned in the Bible in the parable of the good Samaritan) number only a few hundred and consist of only four distinct families9. Since they marry only among themselves, genetic disorders are a danger, and couples have their genes checked prior to marriage10.
Adherents believe that God wants them to cut off certain body parts as proof of their faith in him. Therefore, they perform rituals in which they amputate body-parts of children. True or false?
True. In Islam and Judaism, adherents believe that they have to cut off the foreskin of a young boy’s penis. This ritual is frequently performed without anesthetization.
Adherents believe that to achieve liberation, one must renounce all possessions, including clothing. Therefore, the monks of this denomination remain naked. True or false?
True. Male monks of the Digambara denomination of Jainism live naked. Since women are not allowed to be naked in public, this obliges them to first be reborn as a man in order to achieve liberation.
Adherents believe that certain “dirty tasks” can be carried out only by certain “dirty people”. One of these “dirty tasks” is cutting the umbilical cord of a newborn. True or false?
True. In mainstream Hinduism, cutting the umbilical cord can only be performed by a member of the “Untouchable Caste”11.
Adherents believe that a man has to suck the penis of a baby boy. True or false?
True. Judaism knows the ritual of Metzitzah B’peh, in which the man who performed the circumcision sucks out blood from the wound in the belief that this speeds up the healing12. This ritual has become less popular in recent times.
Adherents believe that a specific ritual can protect them against throat illnesses. True or false?
True. Catholicism knows the “Blessing of the throats”, which asks God to deliver the recipient from every disease of the throat13.
Adherents believe that their underwear is the most sacred of all things in the world. This is because the underwear provides protection against temptation and evil. True or false?
True. The Latter-Day Saints (also known as Mormons) wear a certain type of underwear thought to spiritually protect them against temptation and evil. Hence, Church President Joseph F. Smith taught that the garment was to be held as “the most sacred of all things in the world, next to their own virtue, next to their own purity of life”14.
Adherents believe that the Earth will be destroyed soon. Therefore, they actively prepare for the end of the world. True or false?
True. For the last 2,000 years, mainstream Christianity has been teaching that the end of the world is near. This belief is based on sayings of Jesus that equate current times with the times before the Great Deluge[Bible: Matthew 24:37–39]. Christians have been predicting precise dates for the end of the world since Jesus’ death (Wikipedia maintains a list that is continuously updated15). The year 2012 was a popular guess, with 10% of the world population believing that the world would end that year16.
Adherents believe that an extraterrestrial dictator brought billions of his people to Earth, stacked them around volcanoes, and killed them using hydrogen bombs. The essences of extraterrestrials gather around people in modern times, causing them spiritual harm. True or false?
True. This is Scientology, with several hundred thousand adherents.
Adherents believe that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster, and that we should all wear a cullender on our heads in reverence to that being. True or false?
Let’s say: as true as the other religions. Pastafarianism is a movement that declares itself a religion in order to draw attention to the preferential treatment that religions receive from governments. Pastafarians do occasionally wear cullenders on their heads for this purpose17.
Adherents believe that they can be relieved from their sins by listening to a certain radio program. Since 1985, it has also been possible to achieve relief from sins by watching a certain television program. Since 1995, relief can also be achieved via the internet. True or false?
True. In Catholicism, those who are physically present in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, Italy, for the “Urbi et Orbi” blessing of the pope can expect forgiveness of their sins. More recently, the effect of the sermon can also be achieved by listening to transmissions via the radio, television, or internet18.
Adherents believe that at certain times of the year they are not allowed to eat or drink while the sun shines, as a commemoration of their prophet’s revelation. Therefore, they get up before the sun rises in order to eat and then go back to sleep. True or false?
True. In Islam, during the month of Ramadan, adherents are not allowed to eat or drink during daytime. The same is true for the Bahais, who observe a 19-day fast.
Adherents believe that the copying of information (in particular the sharing of computer files) is a sacred activity. They also believe that in the beginning of the universe, there was a single bit, which was then copied over and over again to give rise to the universe. True or false?
True. The Missionary Church of Kopimism is registered as a religion in Sweden. CTRL+C and CTRL+V, the common computer shortcut keys for “Copy” and “Paste”, are considered sacred symbols19.
Adherents believe that they are not allowed to heat food on certain days. Therefore, there are special microwaves, which are switched on the night before, and which keep the food warm the entire night, so that adherents can eat warm food the next day without heating it. True or false?
True. In Judaism, adherents are not allowed to operate any devices on Saturday. To cater to these people, there all kinds of appliances that simulate normal functionality, but can be operated without pressing a button (see the picture above). For the same reason, orthodox Jews make stacks of toilet paper the day before Shabbat, because they are not allowed to rip off the paper on Shabbat20.
Adherents hold weekly ceremonies during which they believe that they eat the flesh of a human. True or false?
True. In Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity, the bread that adherents eat during mass is believed to literally transform into the flesh of Jesus. (Interestingly, this does not work with gluten-free bread21.)In Protestant Christianity, the bread is only a symbol of Jesus’ flesh.
Adherents believe that they are not allowed to eat dairy products and meat together, and that, by extension, restaurants can have either dishes with dairy products on the menu or dishes with meat, but not both. For example, a restaurant cannot offer both meat dishes and ice cream, because ice cream contains milk. True or false?
True. In Judaism, the coexistence of meat and milk in restaurants is prohibited, as is the consumption of both food groups at the same time22. This is extrapolated from the Bible passage “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk”[Bible: Exodus 34:26].
Adherents believe that they must throw their babies from a 10-meter balcony onto a blanket held below in order to bring good luck, health, and prosperity. True or false?
True. Hindu priests in the Indian state of Karnataka regularly perform this ritual23.
Adherents believe that they receive mercy from a certain deity if they crawl on their knees in the street to a place of worship. For this purpose, a “crawl lane” (similar to a bike lane) has been put in place, and people crawl on this lane by the thousands. True or false?
True. This is the pilgrimage of Orthodox Christians on the Greek Island of Tinos to Holy Church of Panagia Evangelistria24.
Adherents believe that their prophet is without moral fault, even though he robbed caravans, oversaw the enslavement of women and children, and had intercourse with a 9-year old girl. True or false?
True. According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad and his followers routinely robbed Meccan caravans during their time in Medina. He also oversaw the enslavement of the women and children of the Jewish tribe of the Qurayzah, and he married his second wife, Aisha, when she was six years old, consummating the marriage when she was nine2526. At the same time, Islam holds that Muhammad is without moral fault[Quran 33:21, 68:2-4], and questioning his integrity carries steep penalties in many Muslim countries.
Adherents follow the philosophy of the Jedis, the extraterrestrial beings from the television series Star Wars. True or false?
True. The religion of Jediism is inspired by the Star Wars series and has several hundred thousand adherents27.
Adherents believe that evil demons are afraid of white chickens. Therefore, they kill a white chicken and use it to chase away demons from a possessed person. True or false?
True. Hinduism knows several forms of exorcism, and this is one of them 28.
Adherents believe bread cannot be owned on a certain day of the year. Since the State owns the bread factories, the State sells the bread in these factories to a hotel manager for $5,000 before buying it back the next day. True or false?
True. In Judaism, some types of bread may not be owned on the Passover holiday. Since the State of Israel owns State bread companies, the prison service, and the country’s stock of emergency supplies, the bread is sold every year to Mr. Jaaber Hussein, a Muslim hotel manager residing in Abu Ghosh. The next day, the State buys it back.29
Adherents believe that people who die need physical items such as money or cars in their afterlife. To transfer these items to the dead after the funeral, paper replicas of these items are burned. Items include paper televisions, computers, and mobile phones for technological comfort, and Viagra, call-girls, and condoms for physical comfort. True or false?
True. Chinese folk religion incorporates this belief. The paper replicas are called “Joss papers”30.
Adherents believe that they should not come in contact with images of women. Therefore, they have specially-configured smart phones that censor such content. To enforce their usage within the community, the devices have their own group of phone numbers and a distinctive ringtone. True or false?
True. Haredi Jews have special “kosher connection” smartphones. They became necessary because while Rabbis banned television sets, they found themselves unable to ban computers and mobile phones31.
To an atheist, all of these beliefs are weird. Religion makes people believe things that would otherwise be considered completely absurd.
The easy confidence with which I can tell another man’s faith is a folly
tells me that my own is, too.
Disconnection from Reality
The American author Marshall Brain tells the following story32:
“Imagine that I have an adult friend. Once you get to know her, you realize something. She believes in Leprechauns — dwarf-like figures of Irish mythology (pictured). She believes in them with all her heart.
She believes that she can talk to the Leprechauns by speaking silently to them in her head, or by speaking to them out loud with her hands folded.
She also believes that the Leprechauns will help her heal diseases.
If she loses something, she calls to the Leprechauns who live in her house to help her find it.
She says she has a personal relationship with the Leprechauns, and they guide her in many parts of her life.
She wears a shamrock necklace.
She believes that the Leprechauns created the universe. She says, “No one can deny that the Leprechauns created the universe, and no one can prove that they did not.”
When she dies, she believes that he will join the Leprechauns in a magical castle in the sky and live forever.
She believes that by talking to the Leprechauns, they will grant her wishes. Even if this has never happened in the past, she insists that it works.
Now, what do you think of my friend? Her beliefs are harmless, are they not? By speaking out loud to the Leprechauns living invisibly in her house, she feels less lonely and happier.
And yet... there is something creepy about it, isn’t there? Yes there is. It is creepy because you know that my friend is completely and totally delusional. She has lost her ability to distinguish the imaginary from the real.”
In the very same way, atheists hold that believers in other supernatural reveries have lost the connection to reality. That in itself may be harmless, but the trouble is that such people hold positions of power in our world. The presidents of the United States and of Pakistan, for example, are fervent believers in the supernatural — and they have access to nuclear weapons. They believe that they can influence reality by talking in their head. They also believe that when they die, they will go to Heaven. Quite plainly, such people should not possess nuclear bombs.
The other religious people are actually accomplices to this situation. They insist that it is perfectly normal that these presidents believe they can talk with the supernatural, or that they will be saved by that same supernatural when they die. In this way, the other religious people make it impossible to criticise the absurdity of the situation.
Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.
Empty words
In this book, we have argued that religions are out of touch with reality and modernity. One way religions cover this up is by using “empty words”, i.e., beautiful words that embellish ugly truths. More precisely, an empty word, in the sense of this book, is a word that is used in its usual meaning and connotation, but then loses that meaning when one enquires about its actual real-world consequences. Examples are as follows:
Christianity
Christianity holds that “God loves us”. However, this god does not do anything when we suffer, even though he could. Thus, the “love” has no consequence whatsoever. If a real person “loved” us this way, we would not call it love. We would call it apathy. Another example is the fire of hell. In Catholicism, since 1999, the eternal fire of hell is no longer a literal fire — it does not actually hurt the condemned, it just burns away their sins. In Orthodox Christianity, too, the fire has been reinterpreted as a side-effect of God’s love: It is “the presence of God’s splendid glory and love that is the scourge of those who reject its radiant power and light”33. In this way, the “fire” has become an empty word, disemboweled of its usual meaning.
Judaism
The Bible explains that the Jews are God’s “treasured people from all the nations”[Bible: Deuteronomy 14:2, Exodus 19:5] and that God chose the Jews “because the Lord loved [them]”[Bible: Deuteronomy 7:7-8]. This assumed focus of God’s love did not sit well with the other adherents of that god34. Hence, the term “chosen people” has been watered down to mean “people with a specific mission”. Some go on to state that “every people — and indeed, in a more limited way, every individual — is “chosen” or destined for some distinct purpose in advancing the designs of Providence.” (Wikipedia maintains a continuously updated list of reinterpretations of the term35.) If everyone in the entire world is “chosen”, however, then the word does not actually mean anything.
Islam
Islam has a long tradition of interpreting individual verses and words of the Quran — a practice known as tafsir36. It is possibly due to this tradition that Islam has a particularly rich repertoire of empty words on offer. For example, women have fewer rights than men in mainstream Islam. Still, even the most conservative interpretations of Islam hold that “women are given the greatest honor in Islam”37. Usually, the word “honor” implies a position above the average person (it is synonymous with “privilege”38). In mainstream Islam, however, it is actually men who are “a degree above [women]”[Quran: 2:228] — which is the exact opposite. When pressed, an apologist may argue that, in this context, “honor” means having certain rights and not being as subordinate as in pre-Islamic societies37. That, however, is a pretty low bar to clear. How is it any way an “honor” for women to have less rights than men?
In the same spirit, some women call their head coverings (required by conservative interpretations of the faith) a “liberation” because they allow them to freely participate in public life39. From an atheist perspective, this is absurd, of course, because the veil liberates them from a restriction that conservative Islam imposed on them in the first place. In any way, the imposition of a constraint cannot be considered a “liberation” in any common understanding of the word.
Take another example: The Quran is considered a book of supreme wisdom and beauty and a “literary miracle”40, as the Quran itself hints[Quran 2:23]. And yet, the Quran has never achieved popularity outside of Muslim communities41 (possibly because more than a quarter of the book talks exclusively about the terror of hell and the despicableness of unbelievers). Adherents argue that the beauty of the Quran unfolds only in Arabic. But can a supreme wisdom go away when it is translated?
Or consider Allah’s love: Allah loves his followers[Quran: 85:15, 2:222, 3:146, 2:195]. And yet, believers who do not follow God’s commandments are thrown into eternal hellfire without any possibility of redress[Quran: 30:45, 3:32, 22:38, 18:103-106]. But what does “love” mean if it does not know mercy?
Hinduism
In Hinduism, the Karma enforces the “law of automated justice”42, which automatically punishes people for their bad deeds. It has to be said, though, that this justice may arrive only in the next life43. Also, when that justice does arrive, perpetrators will not know for what they are being punished, as their previous lives will be inaccessible to them44. But what is justice if neither victim nor perpetrator know when it is being administrated and for what reason? The atheist’s answer is clear: an empty word.
Most religions
Most religions (although not all) propose methods to influence one’s fate, such as prayers, blessings, rituals, or intercessions. We have already discussed that these methods amount to false claims of power because they do not work. This shortcoming is often artfully hidden under empty words: “God answers your prayers” should literally mean that a god performs some action in return for one’s prayers. However, since no action whatsoever happens, the phrase has come to mean “whatever happens anyway after the prayer will be considered the answer of God”. The word “to answer” has thus been voided of its meaning. In a similar way, phrases such as “Heaven protects you” or “this god protects you” should literally mean that one is safe from harm. But they don’t. These words have been hollowed out.
In all of these cases, words have been reinterpreted beyond recognition: hell is no longer hell, justice is not really justice, an answer is not necessarily something that happens, and chosen people are no longer really chosen. All of these words have become empty words.
Christians find themselves in extremely awkward and, quite frankly, embarrassing positions. They must believe that God answers their prayers even though it is quite obvious that he does not.
Claims of the afterlife
One more empty word that we see in religious contexts is the promise of the afterlife in the Abrahamic religions. For the ordinary believer who has not committed any major fault in this life, the afterlife is unequivocally described as something amazing: Depending on the flavor of the Abrahamic religion, an adherent can look forward to living like angels in Heaven (Christianity), to gardens of perpetual bliss (Islam), to a state of perfect happiness (Spiritism), to something similar to the Garden of Eden45 (Judaism), or at the very least to a spiritual world (Bahai Faith).
However, if people really believed in such a wonderful afterlife, they would rejoice when someone dies, knowing that that person is now enjoying the postmortal pleasures. People would also show no fear of their own death, on the contrary, anticipating it in happy excitement. And yet, they usually don’t. This incoherence is not just a modern phenomenon. In the 13th century, King Louis IX of France led a crusade to make Egypt Christian land. When his soldiers were defeated, they surrendered. One of the soldiers proposed that the unit kill themselves so that they could all go to Paradise. Yet, the soldiers preferred to be captured rather than be sent to Paradise46.
We can spot the same incoherence in Islam: Armin Navad, a devout Muslim, tried to commit suicide at the age of 14 in order to reach Paradise. One might think that his action caused admiration for his bravery and strength of faith. However, people were horrified. (He survived, recovered from his wounds, and became one of the most vocal ex-Muslim atheists8). Or consider the French attack on the Islamic State in Syria in 2015. Numerous Islamic State fighters died and the organization duly declared them martyrs in Paradise. Theoretically, Paradise is a very enviable outcome for the fighters (who might otherwise have gone to Hell for their heinous warfare). And yet, rather than thanking France for sending so many of their fighters to Paradise, the Islamic State ordered a suicide attack on Paris on November 13th, 2015 — indicating that they don’t believe their own stories of Paradise either20. Or consider the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. When the Islamist masterminds of this act were caught and convicted, they preferred to plead guilty and spend life in prison rather than suffer the death penalty and go to Heaven47. If even Islamic terrorists do not believe in eternal bliss after death, atheists wonder, then who does?
The highest tribute to the dead is not grief, but gratitude.
Moral Values
Dogmatic Values in the Abrahamic Religions
We now turn to the moral values that religions comprise. We have already seen that the Humanist moral system focuses on the notion of suffering: If something does not cause suffering to other humans or animals, it is allowed. If something does cause suffering, the perpetrator has to make up for the damage done. Furthermore, a punishment is applied to prevent the perpetrator from repeating the deed. The goal of this process is simple: It is aimed at compensating past suffering and avoiding future suffering.
Some religions share this philosophy. The Five Precepts of Buddhism, for example, concern only worldly issues, and prohibit killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, and intoxication. The 18 Titles of Hindu Law, likewise, regulate only earthly concerns such as debts, ownership, field boundaries, contracts, verbal and physical assault, inheritance, and sexual violence. Of the Five Vows that Jains take, four are concerned with the well-being of other people. Spiritualism, too, centers its morality on the Golden Rule: “Treat others as you would like others to treat you”. The Bahai Faith knows a list of dos and don’ts, and, as we have already seen, these are for the vast majority centered on human well-being. The Wicca religion even mirrors the Humanist understanding of moral values one-to-one, stating: “Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfil: An it harm none do what ye will.”
In contrast, the moral frameworks of the older Abrahamic religions (i.e., Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are not principally aimed at reducing suffering. They lump together offenses against the sacred and against fellow humans, and often give as much weight to the former as to the latter:
Judaism
Judaism derives 613 Commandments from the Torah48. The vast majority of them are concerned with food constraints, idolatry, and rites rather than with fellow humans.
Islam
Islam is said to rest on five “pillars”: prayer, almsgiving, fasting, pilgrimage, and the declaration of faith. Of these, only one is actually concerned with other people. In the same spirit, the Reliance of the Traveler (the most well-known Sharia, i.e., concrete elaboration of moral rules based on Islamic sources) contains just as many chapters on rules that concern the sacred (prayer, pilgrimage, fasting, etc.)[Reliance of the Traveler: A, B, E, F, G, I, J, V, S, U] as it contains chapters on rules that govern inter-human relations (trade, alms, marriage, slander, etc.)[Reliance of the Traveler: C, H, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R]. Furthermore, the most popular interpretations of Islam prohibit criticism of the Prophet Mohammed, apostasy, and/or blasphemy — all of which do not cause suffering to other (living) humans.
Christianity
Christianity knows the overarching call to “love your neighbor”. And yet, Jesus immediately complements this rule with the saying, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart”[Bible: Matthew 22:34-40], giving the sacred rule as much weight as the inter-human one. The Christian 10 Commandments lean more towards the human but still consecrate the first three rules to God and not to people.
In such systems, morality is not a question of whether someone is hurt but a question of religious duty. Such rules have served their religion well. By elevating rules about the sacred to the same level as rules about humans, and by blurring the line between the two, religions can piggy-back on the built-in human tendency to obey rules and assure their own survival into the next generation.
Morality is doing what is right, regardless of what you are told.
Religion is doing what you are told, regardless of what is right.
The Consequences
Detaching morality (what is “good”) from its effect on humankind (what causes human suffering) has several consequences. First, certain behaviors may be immoral within each religion even though they do not hurt people. For example, not obeying ritual obligations is considered immoral even though no harm is done to any person. From a Humanist point of view, such rituals are needless restrictions of liberty. Second, and worse, certain behaviors may be moral within the religion even though they do hurt people, such as circumcision (prescribed in Judaism and Islam), female genital mutilation (prescribed in certain interpretations of Islam), and child marriage (permitted in Catholicism and mainstream Islam). These practices cause harm, but since harm is disconnected from morality within the Abrahamic value system, people can perform these rituals without concern. Such behavior is in direct contradiction with Humanist ethics. Third, a moral system that does not depend on its effect on people teaches people that morality is something to be obeyed whether they understand the reasons for it or not: A behavior is “bad” not because it makes someone suffer but because it has been declared as such by a divine authority. This makes it impossible to adapt treligious morality to modern society. For example, many societies have recently recognized that discrimination against homosexual people causes harm. Hence, laws have been put in place to sanction such discrimination. Religious frameworks, in contrast, have a much harder time adapting to such a reckoning, because their understanding of morality does not depend on real-world effects. As the American author Roy Sablosky summarizes: Kindness is good, cruelty is bad -- if that axiom is left out, none of the rest can have validity.
Dogmatic values have another drawback: They make it impossible to find compromises with people of a different religion. Compromises can be found only if people are ready to adapt their stance. A dogmatic moral framework cannot do that. Dogmatic values can even fuel extremism and fanaticism, as follows: A religion that accepts dogmatic values accepts that people believe something simply out of conviction, no matter whether there is an understandable reason for it or not, and no matter whether someone is hurt or not. The problem appears as soon as someone believes in a dogmatic value that is harmful, such as the belief that a daughter must be married off at the age of 12, or that one has to fight infidels. If we accept that dogmata are a valid reason for belief, then we have no argument against such a person. Whatever argument we bring, the person can always reply that he upholds his dogmata just like other people uphold their dogmata. He can always say that God told him to obey a dogma. Thus, the very concept of dogmata withdraws beliefs from the control of reason and argument.
It is thus surprising that moderate religious leaders teach their own dogmata on one hand but complain about extremist dogmata on the other. If you teach people to follow dogmata, you should not be surprised that some people follow dogmata other than yours.
Obedience is not morality.
An Atheist and Humanist View
For atheists, there are no God-given dogmata — moral rules are made by people. This applies also to religious rules, which were, according to atheists, created by people and then later ascribed to gods. In a Humanist worldview, moral rules should be produced by human consensus. This requirement for consensus subdues the rules to argument, reason, and checks and balances, making the rules less volatile to extremism. Much like open-source software is more robust to bugs thanks to the collaboration of many people, secular values are more robust to fanaticism and discrimination thanks to their exposure to criticism from all sides.
This does not mean that secular values are always perfect. On the contrary, secular values have been brutal at times. They are far from being canonical or universally accepted, and they still offer plenty of room for improvement. Fortunately, secular rules can be changed if they are found to be imperfect. And indeed, they are continuously adapted to technological progress, and modified to mirror the consensus of society. Dogmatic rules, in contrast, cannot do that.
The Buddha teaches us that we are each responsible for our own actions. If you are unsure whether an action is right or wrong, you can apply this simple rule of thumb as taught by the Buddha: If the action harms either yourself or another, then avoid doing that action. If not, then go right ahead. Now if you did harm somebody, then you have to make amends and ask for forgiveness. Ask the person that you wronged, and not a third party. If it is not possible to be forgiven by the person you wronged or to make amends, then you should let the matter go. Learn from it, and forgive yourself.
Asceticism in the Indian Religions
Buddhist monks chant the words of the Buddha in order to remind them of the virtues that the Buddha taught. When the monks acquire these virtues, they can hope for a better life after rebirth.
in Chiang Mai, Thailand
If, instead of chanting, the monks repaired the sidewalks, that would lead to a better life not just after rebirth, but already in the present — and not just for them, but also for the other people.
in Chiang Mai, Thailand as well
We have seen that Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism have value systems that are more centered on human well-being than their analogs in the older Abrahamic religions. However, these religions, too, have a peculiar moral value: asceticism, i.e., the practice of self-denial with the goal of attaining a higher spiritual state49. While many religions have known ascetics, asceticism is prevalent today mainly in Jainism, Tibetan Buddhism, and branches of Hinduism49.
If someone wishes to live a secluded life to find spiritual fulfillment, there is nothing that a Humanist could have against that. The practice becomes problematic only if it is promoted as the ideal lifestyle. This is indeed the case in some interpretations of these religions. In Jainism, the highest ideals of human life are represented by the ascetics, who renounce possessions, relationships, emotions, and desire, and who remain completely celibate in body and mind. In the Digambara denomination of Jainism, spiritual liberation from the cycle of Samsara even passes necessarily through asceticism50.
In Hinduism, ascetics are known as Sannyasi. Their life is discussed in the Sannyasa Upanishads (sacred texts that extend the Vedas) and the rules that govern them are explained in the Dharmasutra[Baudhayana Dharmasutra: II.10.18] (legal sacred texts based on the Vedas). The latter holds that this practice makes the Sannyasi “fit to be united with Brahman”, and indeed, some interpretations of the faith promote asceticism as a path towards liberation5152. In Theravāda Buddhism, too, it is the ascetic life of a monk that leads to liberation49.
From an atheist point of view, there is no Samsara, and thus no need to achieve liberation from it. On the contrary, by renouncing one’s worldly life, one waives the only occasion that one has to enjoy the time on this earth. Thus, from an atheist perspective, any promise of liberation through ascetism is a treacherous way of making people waste their life. That waste does not just concern the ascetics themselves: The ascetics, monks, and nuns in Buddhism49, Hinduism[Baudhayana Dharmasutra: II.10.18], and Jainism53 ask for alms. In this way, these people do not just waste their own life, but also the resources of the well-meaning people around them. Instead of being productive members of their societies, they depend on other people’s money in the hope to achieve their own salvation.
Women’s rights
After having discussed the general mechanisms of moral values in the large religions, we now turn to concrete moral questions. The first of these concerns the role of women. As we have discussed, the vast majority of people in this world adhere to a religion that does not give equal rights to women: Unreformed Judaism, most denominations of Christianity, mainstream Islam, mainstream Hinduism, mainstream Confucianism, and Theravāda Buddhism.
Liberal adherents will be quick to contend that the “real” Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, or Judaism is, in fact, egalitarian, and that the faith is being misinterpreted. This discussion, however, is not to be had with an atheist but with the conservative adherents of these religions. They will have the theological and historical arguments for the more conservative interpretation of their faith. The atheist can just observe that there are conservative interpretations of these religions, and that these comprise the majority of the world’s population of the world — no matter whether these interpretations are “true” or not.
It is nearly needless to recall that any ideology that gives women fewer rights than men is directly opposed to Humanist values and the Human Rights[Human Rights § 2]. This holds regardless of whether such discrimination is sold as an effort to “protect” women, whether it is veiled under talk of “equal spiritual value”, whether the situation for women was worse before that religion came into existence, or whether women “naturally” want to take a certain role within the family structure. In a Humanist framework, women and men can take whatever roles they want, but they must have the same rights before the law.
Discrimination against women in written law is usually just the tip of the iceberg. It often goes along with (and supports) a general patriarchal attitude that it is OK for women to be less privileged than men. This attitude contributes to the nearly ubiquitous discrimination against women worldwide, amounting to fewer opportunities for education, honor killings, sex-selective abortions, domestic violence, laws that disadvantage rape victims, and a deep-rooted mindset that women are inferior in general (a topic on which the author has written elsewhere54).
If the woman can’t choose her husband freely, he can never be sure of her fidelity. And thus was born the oppression of women from the evil of arranged marriages.
Interfaith Marriage
The mainstream interpretations of most major world religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism) prohibit or constrain marriage with people of another faith. While this is understandable from a Darwinian point of view, it is not so from a Humanist point of view.
First, the free choice of a partner is a Human Right[Human Rights § 16 (1)]. Thus, any prohibition of marriage based on faith runs counter to the Human Rights. Some may argue against interfaith marriage saying that if people marry outside of their religion, their partner is unlikely to share the same values. This, however, does not entitle us to outright forbid interfaith marriage. The partners know better whether or not they share the same values. Others may argue that everyone is free to exit their religion and then marry whom they wish. This, however, does not change the fact that any moral framework that does not grant this freedom is incompatible with the Human Rights. If you have to exit the framework to get your rights, then the framework is incompatible with these rights.
Second, it is discriminatory to regard people of other faiths as not marriageable. Imagine that a father decides: “I do not want my daughter to marry a vegetarian”. That would be perceived as stupid, over-generalizing, patronizing, and offensive. And this is exactly what adherents do when they prohibit interfaith marriage.
Finally, the prohibition of interfaith marriage partitions mankind into groups that are so separated that they are akin to animal species. This may look like a bold comparison, but it is true in the technical sense of the word: A species is a group of animals that can interbreed55. This means that if two individuals cannot interbreed they cannot belong to the same species — and this is what religion enforces for humans of different faiths. This practice leads to an ignorance of the other “species” and to segregation, discrimination, and sometimes even violence between them. Half of the world’s most deadly conflicts run along religious lines. If people were allowed to intermarry, the scars that separate them would heal within a generation.
Family planning
Average number of children per woman in 2023, according to the Population Reference Bureau. Blue is 0.8, brown is 6.9.CC-BY-SA Korakys
Prevalence of chronic hunger in the world in 2022, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Dark red is 40%-60%.CC-BY-SA Allice Hunter
We will now turn our attention to Sub-Saharan Africa. Even more than many other regions of the world, Sub-Saharan Africa suffers poverty, food insecurity, lack of access to schooling and health care, political instability, ineffective or authoritarian governments, corruption, terrorism, armed conflicts, displacements, environmental stressors, and economic stagnation56. Some of these complications are directly caused or exacerbated by foreign influence: developed countries, ex-colonial powers, and other countries vie for influence and meddle in local politics; multi-national companies exploit resources without respect for the local population and environment (and, in some cases, the law); foreign countries finance militias or sell arms, and impose disadvantageous trade or development treaties. Other complications reinforce each other: climate change causes loss of livelihoods and migration; lack of livelihoods causes poverty, malnutrition, illness, and suffering; desperation increases the readiness of people to join militias or terrorist groups (who often capitalize on local resentments between people from different ethnicities or religions to drive conflicts and war); war causes human suffering and institutional instability; instability prevents investments; a lack of investments prevents the creation of a viable local economy; the lack of a viable economy increases the percentage of the population in poverty; cash-strapped governments cannot effectively invest in education, health care, or law enforcement; ineffective social services leads to corruption, crime, and violence, often between different groups vying for power; and this instability leads to the emergence of “strongmen”, who accumulate power and suppress competitors, eventually often giving rise to an authoritarian government that diverts resources from already limited social services (such as education and health care) to the strongman and his friends. One could fill page after page elaborating on this cycle, which is indeed what the author has done elsewhere57. Here, we will focus on the role of religion. In most of the complications we have enumerated, religion plays no role at all, neither exacerbating nor (as we will criticize later) attenuating. It does, however, contribute an orthogonal factor that makes many of these complications even harder to manage: The dominant religions in the region, Islam and Catholicism, both encourage large families (as do Judaism, Spiritism, the Bahai Faith, and Orthodox Christianity). Such an encouragement is understandable from a Darwinist point of view but it aggravates the humanitarian problems of the region.
As of 2022, the average woman in Sub-Saharan Africa has 4.5 children58. And as of 2023, the population of the continent has doubled since 1996, quadrupled since the 1970s, and increased 6-fold since 1950 to 1.5 billion people59. To understand what that means, consider a country such as France. In 1950, France had 42 million inhabitants. Today it has 66 million. If France had had the same rate of population growth as Africa, it would stand today at 250 million inhabitants. The country would just have collapsed under this population growth.
This is roughly the situation many Sub-Saharan African countries are facing: If a family cannot feed two children, it cannot feed five. If it is hard to find university scholarships for thousands of students, it is harder to find scholarships for tens of thousands of students. A population that grows exponentially cannot be supported by infrastructure (and foreign aid) that grows linearly, if at all. Indeed, the countries with the highest fertility rates are those with the highest malnutrition rates60 (see graphics on the right) — and these are Muslim and Catholic. Nowhere in the primary scriptures of these religions is there a commandment to restrain the number of children (on the contrary, Catholicism prohibits contraception). With this, these religions play their part in the complex network of factors that make life in Sub-Saharan Africa difficult.
Leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods express a preference for “natural” methods of population limitation. A natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation.
Child Marriage
Women married at the age of 18 in 2023 (or latest data available), according to UNICEF. Blue is 0%, red is 60%, black is 76%.CC-BY Fabian M. Suchanek
Three of the largest religions of the world permit child marriage in their sacred texts: Catholicism, Islam, and Hinduism.
This is not to say that all Catholics, all Muslims, or all Hindus think that their religion permits child marriage: Opinions about child marriage vary widely. It is also not to say that child marriage is a direct result of one’s religion. On the contrary, child marriage correlates more with poverty than it does with religion. For example, Southern Africa has high rates of child marriage while Western South America has low rates — and both are Catholic.
It is to say, however, that these three religions either do not contain prohibitions on child marriage in their primary scripture or even explicitly allow it in their primary scripture (Islam), secondary scripture (Hinduism), or official regulation (Catholicism). As a consequence, the institutions of these religions have historically not opposed child marriage, and popular interpretations of these religions still do not oppose it. These religions are thus a bystander to the practice, and so it continues unopposed by religion in Sub-Saharan Africa (mainly Catholic and Muslim), India (mainly Hindu), and Brazil (mainly Catholic).
Atheists suspect, of course, that these religions actually have every interest in not preventing child marriages: The younger a bride marries, the more of her sexually active lifetime intersects with her fertile lifetime, and therefore the more children (adherents) she will produce and the shorter the gap with the next generation will be. Furthermore, the younger a girl marries, the less likely she is to receive an education and the less likely it is that her children will be educated — all of which increases the chance that her children will remain religious.
Child marriage is incompatible with the Human Rights because these rights require “free and full consent of the intending spouses” for marriage [Human Rights § 16 (2)]. Children cannot give informed consent. Thus, any child marriage is, by definition, an arranged marriage, decided by the family and not by those concerned. When a young girl is married, her entire life is constrained without her consent. It is determined for her with whom and how she will spend the rest of her life, and (implicitly) that she will produce children at a young age. Indeed, the purpose of child marriages is usually procreation. Thus, the girl is expected to have sex with a (usually older) man whom she did not choose and whom she has no way to refuse (in Islam, this policy is made explicit[Quran: 2:222-223]). This must be a traumatic experience for any young girl. Indeed, in many legislations, any sexual relation between an adult and an individual who legally is not old enough to consent amounts to statutory rape61. Thus, religions that have no clear prohibition of child marriage effectively allow statutory rape.
Beyond the psychological harm, child marriage also causes physical harm to both the under-age spouses and their offspring. A UNICEF report explains that “medical complications from pregnancy are the leading cause of death among girls ages 15 to 19 worldwide. Compared with women ages 20 to 24, girls ages 10 to 14 are five times more likely to die from childbirth, and girls 15 to 19 are up to twice as likely, worldwide.” 62 Early marriage “is also associated with adverse health effects for [the] children, such as low birthweight. Furthermore, it has an adverse effect on the education and employment opportunities of girls.”63 There is a reason why such marriages are shunned in the Humanist moral framework and in international law. Religions that do not explicitly prohibit child marriage are accomplices to the practice.
Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.
Homophobia
In their mainstream interpretations, most major religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the Bahai Faith, Buddhism, and Confucianism) shun homosexuality. This is particularly visible in Islam: The vast majority of Muslims today reject homosexuality65, and homosexual acts are punishable by death in 12 countries, all of which are Muslim66. Even the more liberal forms of Islam (as well as the other religions) regard homosexuality as unnatural, condemn homosexual acts, and/or encourage people to not engage in them.
Any singling out of a person based on their sexual orientation runs counter to Humanist ideals of personal freedom. It is no one’s business whom someone loves as long as it is consensual.
Any religious denomination that singles out gay people contributes to a culture in which these people are discriminated against. In most of the world, gay people cannot openly live their sexual orientation. They are harassed, stigmatized, and sometimes attacked. Even in more liberal countries, society makes it difficult for individuals to “come out” (Why do they even have to “come out” in the first place?). By stigmatizing homosexuality, religion makes life needlessly harder for those 10% or so of us who are gay.
If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, [...] then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. [...] We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
Shunning Apostasy
As we have already discussed, the three largest world religions (Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism) have a history of excluding or punishing apostates. This historical baggage still impacts the present. In Hindu India, atheism is not recognized in government forms and statistics as a worldview alongside the major religions; in Christian countries, atheists are routinely discriminated against; and in many Muslim countries, atheists or converts to other religions face severe social ostracization, hatred, violence, legal harassment, and even punishment up to and including the death penalty. This disdain for, discrimination against, and persecution of atheists happens also because mainstream Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism do not accept apostates as equals.
The freedom of religion is an essential Human Right[Human Rights § 18], as is the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of religious belief[Human Rights § 2]. Thus, any system that proposes that atheists or adherents of other religions should not have the same rights as believers runs counter to the Human Rights. And any system that nurtures a disdain for atheists contributes to the discrimination and social pressure that atheists and agnostics witness in most countries in the world.
The basic premise is simple and rational: unless society encourages people to think freely, out of the box, originally and question present conditions, how can there be improvements, progress and innovations? That is why we see that the societies where apostasy is punished are among the most uncivilized terror-prone hells on earth.
Shunning blasphemy
Blasphemy is the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God or sacred things67. We have seen that all major religions condemn blasphemy. As of 2023, 95 countries punish blasphemy, with penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment and, in seven countries, even death (Nigeria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia)68.
For a Humanist, the freedom to question, criticize, mock, and even insult religion is every bit as essential as the freedom to practice it69[Human Rights § 19]. This is because we can determine the truth or falsehood of an ideology (religious or otherwise) only if we are allowed to question it. If the tenets of the ideology are true, then they will withstand the questioning by the force of their truth. It follows that any ideology (religious or otherwise) that prohibits questioning it cannot have truth as its ultimate goal. In many cases, its primary goal is just the maintenance of its own power.
We can be tempted to draw a line between criticizing a religion and mocking it. And yet, this line is almost impossible to draw. Pointing out that Catholics believe they are ingesting human flesh during the Eucharist sounds as if one is mocking their faith, although it is just a factually correct assertion. But even if it were possible to draw the line between critizing and mocking, religion does not deserve protection, neither from mockery nor from criticism. This is because a religion is just an idea — it does not have rights70.
If we cannot mock and question an ideology, we will succumb to all of its harmful consequences. The world’s major religions have many: the mistreatment of women; the prohibition of interfaith marriage; the encouragement to have many children even in the face of malnutrition; homophobia; the shunning of apostasy; and the support of child marriage. By shielding religion from criticism, we shield these harmful practices, too. Any system that prevents us from criticizing ideologies is an accomplice to the injustices that they induce.
We can argue that such reasoning applies only to the most harmful interpretations of today’s religions. Yet, even the moderate interpretations of a religion posit that faith shall not be criticized. They have created an aura of untouchability around religious issues. “Faith has to be respected”, the saying goes. If the faith is not respected, some adherents react with anger or offense. This aura of untouchability then extends directly to the other more harmful flavors of religion. For example, Christianity cannot criticize that Judaism circumcises infants because Christianity has to defend the idea that faith must be respected. In Germany, Christian leaders have come to the support of their Jewish brethren in this matter71. Or consider the Islam-critical drawings in the French magazine Charli Hebdo, which led Islamists to attack the magazine’s headquarters and kill 12 people in 201572. The Pope compared the drawings to an insult to his mother, saying that “if [a close friend] says a swear word against my mother, he’s going to get a punch in the nose”73. Thereby, he explicitly justified if not the attacks themselves, then the need for revenge against criticism. One religion protects the harmful variants of another. Within Islam, moderate adherents go to great lengths to explain that extremist variants of Islam are “not the true Islam”, and that “Islam has nothing to do with Islamism”. When critics point out that Islamism can find fertile arguments in Muslim religious sources, and that these should thus be considered as factors in extremism, moderate adherents shun those critics as Islamophobes. With this, the moderate adherents shield their religion from criticism — but shield also its more harmful interpretations. They are more interested in protecting their religion than in identifying and rooting out the sources of Islamism. Thus, they ultimately play into the hands of fundamentalists.
In summary, by positing that faith should not be criticized, the moderate flavors of religion de facto protect the more harmful variants.
Take truth as the authority
not the authority as truth.
The case of Islam
The reader will have noticed that nearly all points of criticism that we have discussed so far apply to Islam. While that may appear like an unfair singling out of a religion, it is not. To see this, let us remember that there are a number of design principles that convey Darwinian advantages to a religion. These include the promise of Heaven and Hell, the prohibition of interfaith marriage, and the punishment of apostasy. All religions have a Darwinian interest in perfecting these ideas. To this end, younger religions can learn from and improve over older religions. Take the example of Hell: It did not exist in early Judaism, it was created for Christianity, and it was made a place of most detailed brutality in Islam. The same goes for Heaven: It did not exist in early Judaism, it was created for Christianity, and it is the most wonderful in Islam. Another example is proselytism: Christianity introduced it and the Islamic caliphates then perfected it by implementing a system in which unbelievers are first subdued and then nudged towards Islam via taxes and restrictions on daily life that cease only once they accept Islam. (Still today, no major religion apart from Christianity and Islam knows proselytism at all.) Or consider interfaith marriage, which is prohibited in most major religions. Islam has further perfected this prohibition: It does not allow interfaith marriage in general but permits the marriage of Muslim men with women of other faiths — under the expectation that the children from said marriage will be Muslim. In this way, Islam allows expansion of the faith into non-Muslim environments. Yet another example is the prohibition of sex outside marriage: Conservative interpretations of Islam do not just subscribe to this principle, but also erase any female physical temptation from public life by imposing the veil upon women. Islam has thus refined the strategies of its predecessors.
The problem is, of course, that many of these survival strategies (eternal hell, prohibition of interfaith marriage, etc.) are contrary to a humanist understanding of morality. This is why religions born after the Enlightenment (such as Spiritism, the Bahai Faith, or New Religious Movements) can no longer support these principles. Since Islam is the youngest religion born before the Enlightenment, it could refine these strategies most before the Enlightenment made them unpopular.
These strategies have served Islam well. The conservative interpretations of Islam have remained remarkably resilient, even in recent history. No event such as the Enlightenment took place in Muslim countries. Thus, while Christianity is slowly coming to accept homosexuality, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and women’s rights, no such trend is discernible in Muslim countries, interfaith marriage.
Different from any other major religion, Islam has also succeeded in shaping the law in numerous countries — to the degree that Islamic law is, along with Civil Law and Common Law, one of the three types of law systems in the world. This entails that the tenets of conservative Islam are today enshrined in the legislation of numerous Muslim-majority countries. They are also defended at the international level by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which considers itself the “collective voice of the Muslim world”74. The interpretation of Islam defended by the OIC is thus the largest ideology on Earth that openly advocates unequal rights for men and women[CDHRI § 6a], denies gay people the right to exist75, and opposes freedom of religion[CDHRI § 10] and of speech7677787980. The primary victims of these tenets are, of course, Muslims themselves81.
Islam has also developed powerful mechanisms that stifle critique: In many Muslim countries, any criticism of Islam is considered blasphemy, which, as we have learned above, is ostracized or even punishable by law. Deviations from the religion are closely watched (and in some cases punished) by family and the community. In the West, criticism of Islam is muted by accusations of Islamophobia, international pressure from the OIC80, and in extreme cases, Islamist terrorist attacks. These factors ensure that it is very difficult to critically analyze Islam, both in Muslim lands and in the West.
Don’t tell me what is the “true” Islam.
Tell the millions of Muslims who think otherwise.
Dealing with outdated values
Changed moral frameworks
We have seen that most major religions are incompatible with Humanist values on several aspects. But on other aspects, religions have actually changed their view towards a more enlightened perspective. We will discuss two examples: slavery and brutal punishments.
Slavery
How it looks when you abolish slavery and you mean it. Go find that in your holy book. Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863
We have already seen that there is no explicit call to abolish slavery in any of the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam — nor in the historical interpretations of these religions. In practice, slavery was accepted as the normal state of affairs for millennia. Only after secular powers began to abolish slavery starting in the 19th century did religions finally change their position.
Thus, the value systems of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have, at least historically, been at odds with today’s values. In Humanist eyes, this fact disqualifies these religions as moral guides. If a religion once erred on the one moral question on which now nearly all of humanity agrees (that slavery is wrong[Human Rights § 4]), how can it pretend to be a moral guideline for today’s society?
I have stayed in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. [...] And these deeds are done and palliated by men who profess to love their neighbors as themselves, who believe in God and pray that his will be done on Earth. It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.
Brutal punishments
Another example for a religious change of view concerns the cruelty of punishments. As we have discussed, most major religions have known punishments that are considered cruel by today’s standards, including beating (Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism), amputation (Islam, Judaism, Confucianism, and Hinduism), and execution (Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Confucianism, and Hinduism). The latter can take very brutal forms, such as crucifixion in Islam, stoning in Judaism, burning in Hinduism, or the slow slicing of the body into several pieces over an extended period of time in Confucianism. The Quran also knows the concept of kin punishment, whereby an innocent person is killed in revenge[Quran 2:178].
These punishments are horrible by today’s standards. They are also incompatible with the Human Rights, which state that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”[Human rights § 5]. Humanists, in particular, believe that the primary goal of punishment is not to induce suffering but to prevent future harm. In light of this, Humanists cannot understand how people could derive satisfaction from mistreating another human being. Still, these punishments are listed in religious scripture (and have never been changed or removed). Even if adherents now promote their religion as humanist and gentle, this is in contradiction with their religion’s history and scripture. A religion that first promoted brutal punishments and then abandoned them is inconsistent, and therefore should not be trusted when it comes to moral questions.
The Lord says: Whoever does any work on Sabbath must be put to death. Thus, the word of the Lord basically tells us to kill half of the U.S. population. But if God is an all-powerful being, he would kill them himself. There would be no need for people to do the murdering. These people would already be dead, and Wal-Mart would be closed on the Sabbath through lack of employees.
Dealing with incompatibility
We have seen that nearly all major religions have (or have had) a moral framework that is incompatible with the Human Rights in at least one aspect. This is not surprising: these religions are centuries old. They are based on an ancient worldview in which accidents and diseases were thought to be a punishment of the gods, the Western scientific understanding of the laws of nature was unknown, and the Earth was thought to be the center of the universe. It is no wonder that this outdated physical world view goes along with an outdated moral world view.82 Several solutions are currently being tried out by religions to deal with the divergence between the traditional religious values and today’s morality:
Continuity
One option for a religion is to just uphold the same moral framework in spite of it becoming outdated. Catholicism, for example, continues to be at odds with some Human Rights, in particular concerning child marriage, homosexuality, gender equality, and the rights of children. The Catholic Church just continues to affirm its position as God-given — notwithstanding the fact that it has previously changed its “God-given” positions on slavery, the death penalty, and religious freedom. Mainstream Islam, too, remains conservative: In response to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the Islamic world has come up with several alternative Islamic Human Rights, which most notably oppose religious freedom and equal rights for men and women8384. Brutal punishments, too, continue: Stoning as a judicial sentence exists in nine Muslim countries, and five Muslim countries have amputation as punishment in their law books. The majority of Muslims in the world continue to oppose interfaith marriage, apostasy, blasphemy, equal rights for women, and homosexuality, and these practices are outlawed in most Muslim countries.
Emphasis on previous progress
Another strategy religions use to justify their moral perspective is to focus on previous progress. For example, while Islam did not abolish slavery, it has given slaves some rights. At a time when slaves were mere objects, that was revolutionary. Similarly, Christianity allowed women to lead (female) monasteries and receive an education. At a time when women had fewer rights than men, this was an unusual responsibility. The Torah, valid for Jews and Christians, codified the principle “an eye for an eye”, which was revolutionary at the time because it limited excessive punishment. Buddhism does not give equal rights to women but improved their position with respect to the Vedic society. Other religions, too, can be credited with establishing moral standards or with prohibiting cruel pagan rituals. When such a religion is criticized for its shortcomings, adherents can point to the early achievements of their system. They will argue that their religion has historically been very progressive. However, past achievements cannot make up for the fact that what was progressive a thousand years ago is often utterly backward now.
Extrapolation
Another way to deal with the evolution of human values is to interpret the religious scriptures as indications for the right direction. For example, the fact that Jesus appreciated Mary Magdalene can be interpreted as an indication that Jesus desired equal rights for women (which is what feminist Christians hold). The fact that Islam appreciates the freeing of a slave can be understood as an instruction to abolish slavery on the long run. The fact that the Buddha allowed women to head monasteries can be extrapolated to a general instruction to give men and women equal rights. These, however, are speculations. If it had been divine will to give women equal rights or to abolish slavery, then the respective prophet could just have stated that explicitly. If we start speculating about extrapolations, then why not extrapolate even further? What can we extrapolate from the fact that Jesus did not marry? What from the fact that the Prophet Muhammad was illiterate? What from the Buddha’s saying that one should avoid sensual desires? There is the danger that we extrapolate the holy sources in whatever direction we like, and that religion becomes just a cloak of authority that we wrap around whatever view we want to support.
Auto-Adaptation
Some believers hold the view that the religious sources automatically adapt themselves. While the literal text stays the same, their interpretation changes so that the current reading of the texts is always congruent with current values. The problem is that we never know when to change the interpretation and in which direction. Furthermore, whoever wishes to propose new values has not only to justify these new values, but also to come up with a new interpretation of the texts. Therefore, the texts always act as a support for the status quo, and never as a force for change.
Denial
Another option is to deny the divergence between religion and society. One can, for example, claim that “Hinduism is tolerant towards other religions” (though current Hindu intertpretation prohibits marriage with non-Hindus), “Muslims had slaves just to protect them” (though Arabs actively raided and sold slaves from places as far away as Iceland ), “Islam gives equal rights to women” (though mainstream Islam does not), “Hinduism does not support the caste system” (though the caste system has existed for millennia within that religion), “Buddhism is gender-neutral” (though the Buddha made misogynistic comments that would be outrageous if they were not written in a holy book), or “Jesus loves everyone” (though it was him who invented hell for the unbelievers). Denial does not change the fact that the traditional interpretations of these religions conflict with modern values.
Not the real religion
When confronted with a problematic stance of a religion, a believer can hold that this stance is a wrong interpretation of the true religion. The problem with this is that all the other interpretations claim the same. In any case, even if one interpretation were the “true one”, this does not change the fact that millions adhere to the “wrong one”.
Re-Interpretation
Religious leaders can find that the scriptures have been misinterpreted. However, if religious scriptures can be misinterpreted so easily for centuries, it raises the question of who guarantees that the current interpretation is the correct one — and not, say, the medieval one. In any case, between 1000 CE and 1500 CE, when the world religions controlled most of Europe, the Arab world, and India unchallenged, there was no progress on women’s rights, the abolishment of slavery, and freedom of religion whatsoever, despite ample time to find the “right” interpretation. Only when the religions lost their grip did these issues move.
In atheist eyes, all of these strategies are but apologetic attempts to reconcile modernity and religion.
Truth never triumphs. Its opponents just die out.
Verbal Acrobatics
To understand how religions reinterpret their sources, we give here some examples of verbal acrobatics that religions employ to this end.
Christianity
Christianity adapts to the current mainstream by artfully cherry-picking Bible verses. We have already seen several examples in the Chapter on Christianity: Slavery was first allowed in Christianity, based on Bible verses. Now it is shunned — also based on Bible verses. Similarly, abortion was first allowed based on Bible verses and now it is shunned — also based on Bible verses. An equally impressive example is the interpretation of the Bible in matters of the death penalty, which can also go either way.
Islam
Islam has developed a rich tradition of interpretation and reinterpretation, in which theological justification has been found for very diverse viewpoints. For example, adherents disagree on whether apostasy has to be punished or not, whether flogging, amputation, and death are permitted as punishments, whether a woman has to be veiled, whether she can be beaten if she does not obey her husband, whether faiths other than Islam should be respected, and whether female genital mutilation is required. Each of these viewpoints is supported by carefully interpreting verses from the holy sources. To see how that is done, we look here at only one example — slavery.
The Quran does not prescribe a punishment for taking slaves. The Reliance of the TravelerTraveler (the most well-known Sharia, which has been approved by the Al Azhar University in Cairo) designates that children captured in war are slaves and also annuls slave women’s marriages[Reliance of the Traveler: o9.13]. From the 7th to the 19th century, Muslim raiders captured slaves in Africa and Europe (the word “razzia” derives from the Arab word for these raids85) and held and sold millions of them. In 1833, Britain abolished slavery, followed by most Western countries, and, later, the Muslim world (Saudi Arabia in 1962). Since then, Islam started concentrating more on the Quranic verses that laud the manumission of slaves[Quran 90:13, 4:92, 5:92, 58:3], which are also echoed in the Sharia[Reliance of the Traveler: i1.20, o5.2, o20.2]. The argument goes that since God rewards the freeing of a slave and permits the capturing of slaves only in war86 (and since wars should eventually end), God implicitly wanted to abolish slavery altogether (and was just too shy to say it). Consequently, numerous Muslim scholars from all over the world signed a letter in 2014 saying that “No scholar of Islam disputes that one of Islam’s aims is to abolish slavery”87 and that, unbeknownst to the dozens of generations of Muslims who came before, “the Shariah has worked tirelessly to undo [slavery]”87.
Hinduism
One of the main stumbling blocks in the value system of Hinduism is the caste system. We have already discussed that this system has a long history in Hindu society, and is mentioned in several scriptures[Bhagavadgita: 1.40-43, 4.13, 18.41-44][Laws of Manu: 1.87-91]. Yet, today, scholars argue that it is a myth that the caste system is intrinsic to Hinduism88. The argument runs that although the holy scripture of the Bhagavad Gita partitions humankind into castes, it mentions nowhere that caste is determined by birth. Therefore, the argument says, caste is merely a description of one’s profession. (The question of why the Bhagavad Gita denounces Varna Sankara[Bhagavadgita: 1.40-43], the mixing of castes, remains unanswered.) The stipulations in the Law of Manu (which explicitly define caste by birth[Law of Manu: 1.98-99]) are countered by a verse that says to “avoid [...] lawful acts [that] are offensive to men”[Law of Manu: 4.176]. Since the caste system is considered offensive, this verse is read so as to permit its abolition. The question of why the Laws of Manu prescribe the caste system in the first place (or, more generally, why they permit their own rules to be considered so offensive that they can be abandoned) remains unanswered.
For today’s adherents of these religions, it is obvious that the current interpretation of the faith is the true will of their deities. And yet, the eternal truth that they believe in today is completely different from the eternal truth that their predecessors believed in just a hundred years ago. As a corollary, what is taught today as eternal truth may be wrong some decades down the road.
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Social Effects
Justification of Evil
...and he is not alone: The Cornwall Alliance of 1500 theological signatories believes that the Earth was created by God’s intelligent design and is hence robust to climate change.
We now turn to the social and psychological aspects of religion. One of these is that all religions have found ways to explain the evil and suffering in this world. The problem is that such explanations also justify the suffering.
The Abrahamic Religions
Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Spiritualism, and the Bahai Faith believe in an all-powerful god. Therefore, the evil in this world must come, in one way or another, from this god (or at least happen with his permission). Various theories have been developed as to how a benevolent god could allow evil to happen: It could be a punishment, a prerequisite for a greater good, a catalyst for spiritual growth, a part of a bigger plan unknown to us, or a test for the afterlife. All of these explanations, however, mean that the evil in this world actually serves a purpose. It is, paradoxically, good that the evil happens. Such a viewpoint is abominable from a Humanist point of view. For a Humanist, suffering is never good. This is because if we accept that suffering ultimately serves a good purpose, there is no need to remedy it. And if suffering is a test for fitness for the afterlife, then why help someone who suffers? We don’t help people in high-school exams either...
Another line of reasoning goes that suffering is actually subjective or minuscule in comparison to the joys of the afterlife. Such a viewpoint diminishes the plight of those who suffer. It is, therefore, inadmissible in any system that is based on empathy, such as Humanism.
Hinduism
Hinduism teaches that bad behavior accumulates bad karma, which leads to suffering in the next life. Good behavior, in contrast, produces good karma. It then follows that whoever suffers has accumulated bad karma in the past. Thus, every person who suffers actually deserves the suffering[Laws of Manu: 3 / 92]. Modern parlance avoids the word “deserve”, instead calling the suffering a supernatural “justice”42 or a “correct situation to be in, given the action [in the previous lives]”89. No matter which word we choose, the suffering is justified in the Hindu worldview. However, neither the suffering person nor anybody else knows what that person did wrong in a previous life. Such a punishment is, from a Humanist perspective, absurd, for how can the punishment lead to betterment if the person does not know what they are being punished for? In fact, there is no proof that this person did anything wrong at all. And even if there was a proof, that would not justify such agonizing sufferings as illness or hunger. Any notion that someone would actually deserve such suffering is incompatible with Humanist ethics44. Worse, if we really believe that a person’s suffering is a deserved punishment, we would do best to not help that person. We don’t go freeing criminals from prison either.
Buddhism
Like Hinduism, Buddhism teaches the theory of Karma. When a man suffered violence by villagers, the Buddha told him: “Bear with it! The fruit of the Karma that would have burned you in hell for many years, many hundreds of years, many thousands of years, you are now experiencing in the here-and-now!”[Pali canon: Majjhima Nikaya / Angulimala Sutta] Again, any system that justifies suffering based on putative bad deeds in a previous life is incompatible with Humanism.
Taoism
Taoism holds that all the sufferings in the world are ultimately man-made, and that the way to overcome evil is to follow the Tao90. Such reasoning is factually faulty: Natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, for one, are not man-made, and neither are many illnesses. It is, from a Humanist viewpoint, illicit to chalk up such to a person, most importantly because one risks ultimately blaming the victims.
This is not to say that adherents of these religions welcome the evil in this world or that they do not help others in need. On the contrary, helping others in need is a core tenet of all of these religions (and one of the ways in which the religions recruit new members). Rather, the criticism is that these religions justify the evil in this world as deserved, ultimately good, purposeful, negligible, recommendable, or acceptable. Why do the religions do that ? The reason is that such explanations provide emotional comfort: it is easier to bear the suffering in this world (and even one’s own suffering) if one can believe that this suffering happens for a good reason. The justification of evil thus makes a religion attractive and gives it a Darwinian advantage over religions that do not provide such a justification.
In psychology, the belief that everything in this world ultimately happens for a good reason is known as the belief in the just world (BJW). It is a very comforting hypothesis, and we will later show that it is one of the successful strategies with which believers can cope with difficulties in their lives. The flipside of the BJW is that it entails that any suffering in this world must happen for a just reason, i.e., that victims of misfortune ultimately deserve their fate. And indeed, when adherents of the BJW are confronted with people who have suffered from violence (for example, people who have been raped), they tend to believe that the victim somehow brought it upon themselves. They also tend to believe that poverty is self-inflicted, and that people are responsible for the illnesses they suffer. With this, they heap the responsibility for any misfortune on the victims themselves919282. This is, of course, a horrible thing to do from a Humanist perspective, for two reasons: First, it adds insult to injury. It is unjust, demeaning, and in the majority of cases, simply factually incorrect to assume that the victim bears the sole responsibility for their suffering, let alone that they deserve it. Second, if the misery is the victim’s fault, then there is less reason to alleviate it. Why help someone who maneuvered themselves knowingly into trouble? Adherents of the BJW will, of course, insist that everyone should be helped, and they may even do so, but psychological studies show that they tend to devalue and reject the victim91. Ultimately, the adherents of the BJW justify the evil on Earth for their own emotional comfort, and that is inadmissible from a Humanist perspective.
If God has a plan, then everyone who died in the Holocaust died for a reason.
Prudery
By definition, a religion is old. When today’s religions were born, there were no or fewer effective means for paternity tests or birth control. Hence, all major religions restricted sex to married couples, and channeled all sexual energy into relations between husband and wife. Since then, technical means and societal norms have changed but the religions were unable to update their scriptures. Still today, all major religions restrict sex to married couples, and pre-marital sex, masturbation, prostitution, and pornography have no place in mainstream Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, or Confucianism.
Beyond that, some religions shun sexual pleasure even inside the marriage. Traditional Judaism regards any ejaculation in general as unclean; Spiritism holds that sensuality shall not be given preference over reproduction in physical intimacy; the Buddha identifies sexual craving as one of the hindrances to attain insight; Confucianism teaches people to repress human desire, including sexual impulse, and holds that the primary purpose of sex is procreation; and mainstream Islam takes a suffocating stance on female beauty in public. For a Humanist, any such prudery is just a needless restriction of life.
Scholars have argued2 that the prudery of the major religions is part of a larger pattern in which religions see the body as an obstacle to spiritual fulfillment. Hence, the religions prescribe restrictions on bodily functions, such as prolonged fasting, mandated celibacy, or proscriptions against masturbation. They also propose modifications to one’s physical appearance, including head- or hair-coverings, full-coverage clothing, tattoos, as well as various body-purification rites, such as ritual ablutions (washing), baptism, circumcision, genital mutilation, and self-flagellation. All of these practices are driven by the idea that the body (in its natural form) is somehow impure and needs to be overcome.
In Humanist eyes, of course, a human is their body. Devaluing the body thus amounts to devaluing the human.
Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.
I am a human, and nothing human is foreign to me.
Most major religions know the concept of hell. The scriptures provide detailed descriptions of the tortures that await the sinner there, and this cruelty is presented as something normal, acceptable, and sometimes even noble. This is disturbing to a Humanist, in particular when it is taught to children — something that all major religions do.
Christianity
In Christianity, God orders mock executions, desires human sacrifices, and commits genocide. All of these stories are read to children as if they concern normal, justifiable behavior. They learn to glorify a God who wiped out all of humanity by drowning. They grow accustomed to looking at the half-naked body of a man being tortured to death (Jesus). This atrocity is presented as a necessary step to making God forgive the sins of humanity. They also learn that the man who loves humanity most (Jesus) came up with the idea that those who do not love him back will be roasted in hell forever.
Islam
Every 10th verse of the Quran is concerned with describing hell in the most vivid colors. People learn that burning men to death, and then replacing their skin so that they can be burnt to death again, is a valid way of punishment by the all-loving God. The Quran also presents the amputation of hands and crucifixion as correct ways of punishment for crimes — along with an array of other tortures and ways of execution. In some countries, all of these brutalities are taught to children in schoolbooks9495949697. Indeed, considerable proportions of Muslims wish to see these punishments applied9899, and they are actually applied in a number of countries.
Judaism
The Torah is full of descriptions of cruelty. God orders mock executions, desires human sacrifices, and commits genocide. Children learn to pray to this god as the most loving entity. The Torah also upholds the “eye for an eye” principle, which is essentially retaliation by amputation. The traditional techniques of execution were stoning, burning, slaying, and strangulation. Nowadays, amputation, retaliation, and execution are less popular. However, they have never been removed from the holy books and children still encounter them whenever they read the scripture.
Chinese Religions
Taoism and Confucianism often blend into Chinese folk religions. These religions know Diyu, a purgatory in which sinners are fried in oil cauldrons, are put into a grinding machine and ground into a bloody pulp, have their tongues being ripped out, and are frozen into ice cubes that then break apart. This is not criticized as something outrageous but is presented as the normal course of things.
Indian Religions
Hinduism and Buddhism, likewise, know a brutal hell between two lifetimes on Earth. In Buddhism, people are “roasted in an immense blazing oven with terrible suffering”. In Hinduism, sinners are devoured by ravens, boiled in jars, and subjected to diseases. Again, this is not criticized as something outrageous but considered justified.
All of these stories trivialize violence. In the Abrahamic religions, cruelty is even presented as the will of their benevolent god, which effectively justifies and glorifies this violence.
Any glorification, justification, or trivialization of violence runs counter to Humanist values.
A religion clashes with Humanism whenever it values souls over lives.
Potential Consequences
Much effort has been devoted to explaining, justifying, softening, or reinterpreting violence in religious books. However, violent words have an impact that goes beyond the conscious: Hostile words can subconsciously make us more aggressive and more hostile towards people of other groups. This effect has been studied extensively for violence in the media100101102103104. For decades, research has shown that exposure to violent behavior not only encourages the repetition of the same kind of behavior, but also enables people to believe that violence or aggression may be acceptable in certain situations100. In particular, the dehumanization of people of other groups increases aggressive behaviors towards these groups, and induces the feeling of no obligation to apply moral human standards to these people100.
It is disputed to what degree the same applies to religions105. One study shows that thinking about God discourages dehumanization of people of other faiths for Christians and Jews105. Others find that reading religious scripture that emphasizes God’s punishing nature increases intergroup aggression105. This inconclusiveness of scientific results is quite possibly due to the fact that there is not one “religion” but several, and that these differ in the frequency and role of violence in their texts106. Nevertheless, we do find that more than half of the world’s violent conflicts arise between populaces of different religions. It is thus natural to ask whether such violence against people of other religions has something to do with the constant de-humanization of the “other”, and the continuous dishing-out against deviators in the Abrahamic, Indian, and Chinese religions.
When you recite to a child still in his early years the verse “They will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternative sides cut off,” regardless of this verse’s interpretation, and regardless of the reasons it was conveyed, or its time, you have made the first step towards creating a terrorist.
Totalitarianism
We will now draw a somewhat daring analogy: We will find parallels between religion and totalitarianism. A totalitarian regime is one that attempts to assert total control over the lives of its citizens107. Such a regime is characterized, among other things, by
an elaborate, all-encompassing ideology that makes promises of a utopian future108,
complete control of the citizen’s thoughts and actions109,
no respect for private space (and the gathering of sensitive information with which to blackmail and control the citizens)110,
a system of terror (physical or psychic)108, often enforced by a secret police107.
It is interesting to see that, by these criteria, all major religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Spiritism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and the Chinese folk religions) are totalitarian. They definitively have an elaborate, all-encompassing ideology that makes promises of a utopian future. They also take complete control of the citizen’s thoughts and actions by dominating education, the arts, and people’s thoughts. They show a lack of respect for private space by dictating whom people can marry and whom they can love. They assert complete control over moral order by prescribing an all-encompassing moral framework. They eradicate critical thought by opposing criticism and by shunning or even punishing adherents if they go astray. Finally, they employ a system of terror, which is implemented not by a secret police, but by the supernatural. Much like a secret police, the supernatural knows everything that happens but operates “in secret” (in the sense that the victim cannot see that they are being spied on). The supernatural threatens people with tortures in cases of disobedience (which is exactly what the secret police does in worldly totalitarian systems). And, finally, a secret police is purposefully unpredictable107 so as to further terrorize citizens with uncertainty and arbitrariness. The same can be said of the supernatural: It is utterly arbitrary in dishing out its punishments.
The major religions are thus totalitarian according to the definition of the word. Totalitarianism runs counter to liberal ethics. It also runs counter to the Human Rights, which do not tolerate intrusion into the private sphere[Human Rights § 12]. The only reason why these religions remain legal in Western countries despite their totalitarian affectation is that their threat to privacy is, well, imaginary.
Any system is fine, as long as you can change it.
Orwellianism
The concept of totalitarianism has been extrapolated to truly monstrous regimes in the books 1984 and Animal Farm by the British author George Orwell. Regimes that follow this extrapolated totalitarianism are now called “Orwellian”111. In Orwell’s books, such regimes know an “all-seeing, all-knowing emblem of totalitarian control” called Big Brother — a role that is made-to-measure for the Abrahamic God. They know a torture chamber called Room 101 — which corresponds pretty closely with the Abrahamic notion of hell. They also know the concept of “thoughtcrime”, i.e., the criminalization of the mere thought of objecting to state ideology. Again, this concept can be found in the Abrahamic religions. They know a “Ministry of Truth”, which decides what “truth” is — much like the Abrahamic religions assert a monopoly on truth, at least when it comes to metaphysical questions. Finally, these regimes know the concept of doublespeak, in which words are used in opposition to their real meaning. In Orwell’s books, for example, the “Ministry of Love” is a government office that uses torture to extract confessions. This abuse of words, too, can be found in the Abrahamic religions: “God’s love” is doublespeak for “God’s complete apathy” and “God answers your prayer” means “nothing happens that would not have happened anyway”.
Thus, technically, the Abrahamic religions fulfill the criteria of an Orwellian regime. Religious leaders will, of course, contest this interpretation — much like we would expect Orwellian regimes to contest that they are Orwellian.
What is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion if the activities or teaching of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked?
Stifling progress
We will now argue that the major world religions are hindering the adoption of humanist values. This happens along three dimensions: moral, scientific, and economic.
Moral progress
Religions typically have a moral framework that cannot easily evolve: There is no mechanism by which the gods can update the framework when it no longer fits with mainstream society. This means that religious moral frameworks often trail behind contemporary values. When the divergence becomes too big, the religious framework will eventually be updated (it has to be for the religion to retain members), accompanied by claims that the religion has been pushing for progressive moral values all along. But history has shown us that a change toward more humanist morals almost never originates inside a religion after it is established. More precisely, once a religion has passed its first 150 years of existence, it will stop leading the way and only ever follow suit.
Examples are as follows:
Slavery was first abolished by the British parliament and only much later removed from mainstream Christianity and Islam.
Cruel punishments were not abolished by religious preachers but by Enlightenment thinkers.
Equal rights for women were not spearheaded by religious figures but by Enlightenment thinkers, feminist activists, and Communism.
Gay rights are not pushed forward by religions but by modern LGBTQI+ movements.
Freedom of (and from) religion was not spearheaded by religious authorities but by the Enlightenment.
The protection of nature, animals, and the environment was a non-issue for religions until the Green movement popularized it in the late 20th century.
Not only do religions usually not lead the way on such initiatives, but they also hinder such movements by sticking to their supposedly divine moral frameworks. A believer who wishes to advocate for a new idea does not only have to become convinced of that idea, but he also has to find in his religious sources a quote that could be used to justify that new conviction. This puts a double burden on the believer. As the American philosopher Sam Harris has argued: “the doors leading out of scriptual literalism do not open from the inside”34.
An ideology can advocate change only if the very advocacy of change is part of it. Humanism, for example, advocates questioning all convictions, including its own.
For conservative people, the present is the end of the past. For progressive people, the present is the beginning of the future.
Scientific progress
Religions typically provide gap-fillers for the open questions about the universe. Early religions provided answers to questions like “How does the sun rise?” Today, the open questions that remain for religions to answer are more like “How did the universe originate?” Here as well, religions provide their answers. The problem is that by providing their supernatural answer, they make all other (scientific) answers appear unnecessary, false, or even blasphemous. For example, the Bible tells us that God ordered the sun to stand still so that Joshua could fight longer against the Amorite kings[Bible: Joshua 10]. For centuries, this was seen as a divine confirmation that the Sun orbits around the Earth. Hence, until 1822, the Catholic Church prohibited the publication of books that supported heliocentrism — as blasphemy112. But even if blasphemy is not invoked, the very conviction of already having an answer discourages the exploration, understanding, and dissemination of alternative ideas.
Humanism, in contrast, explicitly encourages learning about the world continuously, in particular also through science.
Do not expect grapes from a burning bush.
Economic progress
For the US, research on religious people has shown that they tend to object to innovation and are more risk-averse113. According to Israeli history professor Yuval N. Harari114, there is a more general factor at work when it comes to stifling economic progress: The major world religions tend to glorify the past: Their ideal world is the one of the respective prophet (Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius, the ancient Hindu sages). Since that time, the world has continuously gotten worse, and human well-being can come only from going back to that old world.
This has an important economic consequence on the business of giving loans, Harari says: The creditor believes that the debtor will be able to pay back the loan in the future. That is, the creditor believes that the debtor will create a value in the future that currently does not exist — a thing of impossibility in traditional religious thinking, whereby humanity constantly degrades. This impossibility is illustrated in the traditional Jewish115, Christian115, Muslim116, and Hindu117 prohibitions to charge interest (later watered down or abolished).
While the practice of lending money is obviously risky (as personal over-indebtedness, country defaults, and financial crises show), it is nevertheless an indispensable mechanism when it comes to financing any larger project: A person who wants to open a new shop in a village; a farmer who wants to obtain land to work on; a city that wants to build a toll-financed bridge; a rail company that wants to build a tunnel; and even a country that wants to recover from war all need loans. Without the Marshall plan, Europe would not have recovered as quickly after the Second World War. And the Marshall plan was, at least in part, a loan. For all its problems, financial credit has helped the economic growth and the material comfort that we enjoy in today’s wealthier countries. And indeed, for all the faults of the current world, few people want to go back to the Middle Ages — thus defeating religious pessimism about the future.
I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
Exemptions to laws
Religions claim an authority above that of humans. With this, they are a potent basis for contesting human-made political systems106. And indeed, there have been several cases where religions have won exemptions from the (secular) law.
Judaism and Islam in Germany
These religions require the circumcision of young boys. Such a procedure is, technically speaking, bodily injury: A body part is cut off without the consent of the concerned. In light of this, a German court ruled in 2012 that circumcision without medical indication is a criminal act118. This ruling caused a lot of embarrassment in Germany, which, as a country, feels historically obliged to accommodate the concerns of the Jewish community. Since the religious rule could not be changed, the law was changed instead: Article 1631d of the German Civil code was added to permit circumcision of male infants. To appease followers of Judaism (who traditionally circumcise infants on the eighth day after the baby’s birth, with the procedure performed by a specially-trained religious, but not medically, approved man called the Mohalim), the article specifically permits circumcision by non-medical personnel during the first 6 months after birth for religious reasons119.
Islam in the UK
Muslim religious leaders have set up “Sharia courts” in the UK that arbitrate in religious and family matters. These courts cannot override British law, but they can entice litigants to enter contractual relationships. And indeed, members of the Muslim community are sometimes under considerable social pressure to enter contracts mediated by a Sharia court when it comes to marriage, divorce, inheritance, and commercial relationships. In particular, when a couple marries religiously through the Sharia court (and not in a civil procedure), the marriage is considered a personal contract between the spouses governed by the court. Such contracts invariably discriminate against the wife when it comes to divorce, dowry, and financial arrangements.120121122. In such cases, the religious institution replaces a secular one, to the disadvantage of the woman.
Charismatic Christianity in the US
Usually, parents are expected to care for their children. In particular, they are required to seek medical help if the child suffers from an illness or accident — as stipulated in laws on child neglect or non-assistance of a person in danger. However, the US also has a law that exempts parents from this duty if (1) the parents do not wish to provide medical assistance to their child due to religious beliefs or (2) choose to rely on spiritual means rather than medical ones123. This exemption concerns, in particular, charismatic Christian faith healing practices. These, however, do not work in practice. Thus, the law effectively allows parents to let their children suffer (and possibly die) for religious reasons124. In the same vein, almost all US states allow children to be exempted from mandatory vaccination on religious grounds125.
Christianity in Germany
Anti-discrimination laws state that companies or organizations may not refuse a job candidate because of their religion. However, in the US and Germany, religious groups are exempted from anti-discrimination rules in hiring and firing126 (i.e., they can decide to hire only Christians). As an example, the author went to a Catholic school in Germany (Preface) that was run by nuns but financed by the state. This school required that all of its teachers follow a Christian lifestyle. They were, for example, not allowed to divorce or remarry. At a secular institute, any such requirement would be illegal. But for a Christian school, the law does not apply.
New Religions in the US and the UK
In the US, adherents of the Centro Espírita Beneficiente União do Vegetal believe they can understand God only if they drink Hoasca tea. Even though this tea contains Dimethyltryptamine (a controlled substance), the adherents were allowed by the Supreme Court to continue importing the tea into the US127. In another example, a British court let a Wicca adherent out of jail for four nights so they could worship the moon 128. Another Wicca prisoner claimed that he needed to carry a knife as a “ritual object”129. The court ruled that the adherent’s beliefs were indeed “religious”, though not “usual” enough to grant him a knife. Just imagine what would happen if such a custom was indeed “usual” in some religion — would that oblige the state to give the prisoner a knife?
Islam in India
In India, Muslims have the option of resolving family and inheritance-related cases in officially recognized Islamic courts known as dar-ul-qaza. These courts have attracted criticism for undermining the Indian judiciary, as a subset of the population is not bound to the same laws as everyone else. Furthermore, the courts are considered unfair towards women, as Islamic jurisprudence does not believe in gender equality before the law1.
Apart from perhaps the harm done to children, these exemptions do not cause much damage. Many of them concern only fringe groups or specific individuals. Furthermore, the cases remain limited to certain jurisdictions or religions.
However, these cases prove a more general point: Religious belief can be granted an exemption from the law. This contradicts Humanist values, which demand equal treatment for all before the law. From a Humanist perspective, religions are organizations like all other organizations. They may claim to be divine, but they are man-made systems. Therefore, it is unacceptable that they would stand above the law.
Apart from such ethical considerations, the exemptions granted to religious organizations are also expensive: In many countries, these organizations are exempted from paying taxes. In the US alone, these exemptions cost the government billions of dollars in tax revenue per year130. It is actually disturbingly simple to get oneself registered as a tax-exempt religious organization in the US, as the British-American comedian John Oliver has demonstrated131132.
New rule: If churches don’t have to pay taxes, they also can’t call the fire department when they catch fire.
Rites and Restrictions
All major religions come with some rites and restrictions. These may include:
Rituals such as praying, attendance of a religious service, pilgrimage, or slaughtering protocols.
Constraints such as fasting, inactivity on certain days of the week, or special clothing such as veils for women in some interpretations of Islam, sables for Sikhs, kippas for Jews, and special underwear for Mormons.
Dietary laws such as the prohibition of alcohol (Islam and the Bahai Faith), pork (Islam), beef (Hinduism), meat (as in some variants of Hinduism and Buddhism), or the combination of milk and meat (Judaism).
In short, all major religions restrict our daily life in some way. These restrictions do not prevent any harm, and they are thus a needless reduction of personal liberty in Humanist eyes. However, some rites are not merely needless, but outright harmful. This concerns foremost female genital mutilation (the cutting of the female genitalia without medical reason). This practice is condemned by many Muslims and also by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)133, based on interpretations of the Quran and other scripture134135136. However, in line with the tradition of widely differing interpretations of Islam, the practice is considered recommended or even mandatory by the Sharia[Reliance of the Traveler: e4.3], the Al-Azhar University in Cairo134 (until it changed opinion in 2007137), conservative interpretations of the faith138, all four schools of Sunni jurisprudence136, religious conservatives in Oman139, the Indonesian Council of Ulema140139141142, the government of Brunei139, and many Muslims in both the West143 and in Muslim countries144, in particular Malaysia139145, Indonesia141, and in Sri Lanka, India, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand, where it correlates with Islam139.
Unsurprisingly, Humanism is staunchly opposed to female genital mutilation as a cruelty that is prohibited by the Declaration on Human Rights[Human Rights § 5]. Female genital mutilation has, according to the UN, severe physical and psychological consequences for the victims146. This is even more true since, according to the WHO, in 82% of the cases, the procedure is carried out by non-medical experts147. Thus, whoever approves of the procedure, whether Muslim or otherwise, whether out of religious motives or not, and whether the practice is the true interpretation of Islam or not, infringes on Human Rights.
But also male circumcision (practiced almost ubiquitously in Judaism and Islam148) is technically bodily injury: the amputation of a body part without medical indication (and frequently, without medical supervision). While the World Health Organisation (WHO) sees evidence for a lower risk of reproductive tract infections and penile cancer in circumcised men, it also notes that “these conditions are rare”, and that “routine neonatal circumcision is not currently recommended on medical grounds”. It also notes that circumcisions undertaken in non-clinical environments can result in serious complications and even death149. In addition, the WHO notes the necessity of informed consent. Humanists agree, of course: With informed consent, anyone is free to have a circumcision. Children, however, cannot give such informed consent. It is also not clear why they would: The circumcision of a child is a physical cruelty performed on the most intimate part of their body. This, no Humanist can approve of150.
When women are no longer oppressed, disfigured, or killed in the name of religion; when gay people are no longer legislated to second class citizens in the name of religion; when doctors can no longer deny crucial health care in the name of religion; when children are no longer indoctrinated with bigotry, fear, and hate in the name of religion; when it is no longer claimed that faith is greater than knowledge; then, and only then, will I lay down my banner of Anti-Theism.
Communitarianism
If we want world peace, mutual tolerance, and respect, we have to understand what other people believe and why they do so. However, religions teach people exclusively about their own religion. No major religion encourages its adherents to read the scripture of the other religions. Furthermore, the religions typically prohibit inter-faith marriage, shun conversion, and build up a community based on religious conviction.
All of this leads to an estrangement between peoples. It encourages a thinking of “us versus them” in which adherents of one faith consider themselves fundamentally different from people of other faiths. In French, this phenomenon is called “communautarisme”.
We give here some examples to illustrate how this phenomenon can look in practice:
In Germany, until the 1960s, there was a wall across schoolyards that separated Protestant children from Catholic children. 151 In Northern Ireland, children are separated into Catholic and Protestant schools to this date. Thus, children make friends only within their own communities3. Only 9% of children go to school with children of another faith, and even these children learn that it is a “false ideology that everyone is the same”152. It is no wonder, then, that these children grow up in an environment of ignorance or hostility towards the other faith.
In France, certain urban quarters have become so dominated by conservative Muslims that women have been bullied out of public life. The pressure is so strong that women avoid walking around in a dress or having a coffee in a bar153.
In Europe, researchers have identified a “group-based conformity, and a dissociation [of Muslims] from the areligious mainstream culture” 154, a development that has been seen in particular in the UK, Germany, and Sweden 155120156157158.
In India, 45% of Hindus say they would not be willing to accept followers of another religion as neighbors1. Both Hindus and Muslims in India prefer to live religiously segregated lives, including when it comes to marriage and friendships.
All of these are but individual examples of a more general phenomenon: The partitioning of society into religious communities. This partitioning runs counter to the Humanist ideal of a free society.
Unfortunately, the love of “us” has an ugly cousin:
the fear and suspicion of “them”.
Hell
A supreme form of intolerance towards other faiths can be found in mainstream Islam. It condemns all non-Muslims to eternal hell-fire based on Quranic verses to that effect[Quran: 22:19-21, 4:56, 56:92-94, 3:4, 4:160-161, 5:10, 5:36, 6:49, 6:70, 6:113, 98:6, 83:34, 3:85M, 4:18, 4:116-117, 4:48, 5:72, 9:113, 10:68-70, 3:85]. (There is a verse that appears to save Jews and Christians[Quran: 2:63], but there is still no hope for Buddhists or Hindus, let alone atheists.) Indeed, in all but 4 of the 38 Muslim-majority countries surveyed by Pew Research, more than half of Muslims believe that Islam is the only way to Heaven159 — meaning that all non-adherents must go to Hell. The tenet is also taught in Saudi Arabian schoolbooks97 as well as in schoolbooks of Saudi-run schools in the UK94.
Such a belief may seem harmless, given that the hell-fire is purely imaginary from an atheist point of view. But such a belief is not harmless. Since it is the all-just god who condemns the unbelievers to eternal hell-fire, this can mean only that non-believers deserve eternal suffering. If such a belief is voiced in public or taught to children, it becomes an insult. It insinuates that unbelievers are worth so little that they can be burnt like firewood. This an attack on the dignity of non-Muslims, a legal good that is protected by the Human Rights[Human Rights §1, §12]. Any unbeliever has a right to take offense if someone tells their children that all unbelievers deserve to burn in hell.
What do I have against conservative Islam?
That it worships a god who wants to burn me alive.
Proselytism
Christianity and Islam actively seek to convert the rest of mankind to their religion. Both religions emphasize that the conversion must be voluntary and may not be achieved by force. However, even peaceful proselytism is a profound sign of disrespect. It means that a religious community cannot accept that a person has a different faith. By extrapolation, it means that two communities of believers cannot live together without one community constantly bothering the other one to convert. It is a human right to follow whatever religion you choose, without being invited or continuously pushed to convert[Human Rights § 18]. Therefore, obligatory proselytism runs counter to Humanist values.
As it happens, both Christianity and Islam also shun people who leave the faith via conversion. Historically, both religions have put apostates to death. Variants of Islam still do. As soon as two religious communities meet, each of which wants to convert members of the other but punish apostasy by its own, it is clear that the result will be conflict. Indeed, Christians and Muslims have clashed violently in the past (when Muslims conquered large parts of the Christian Byzantine Empire and Spain in the 7th and 8th century CE, or when Christians tried to regain Spain and the Levant in the Crusades and the Reconquista a few hundred years later). Still today, Muslims face societal discrimination in traditionally Christian lands, and Christians face legal discrimination and persecution in many traditionally Muslim lands161162. Statistics support our point: The majority of Muslims long for peace between the religions, but at the same time, the majority of Muslims consider it a duty to convert others to their faith163. These goals cannot co-exist.
Conflict
Conflicts arise surprisingly often along religious boundaries. Let us look at the list of the most violent armed conflicts (as of 2024):
2024 ongoing military conflicts with more than 1000 deaths per year (collected by Wikipedia164 )
In half of the ongoing military conflicts with more than 1000 deaths per year, the factions coincide with religious boundaries. This does not necessarily mean that religion is the cause of conflict. Many factors play a role in wars, including cultural and ethical differences, claims to power, oil, or land, interests of warlords or military powers, as well as other outside interests and interventions. However, it is striking how often these other factors coincide with religious frontiers.
This coincidence appears elsewhere, too. Take the conflict in the Middle East: Israel is Jewish, Palestine is majority Muslim. Or remember the civil war in Sri Lanka: The Tamils are Hindu in majority, the Sinhalese are Buddhist. Or take the conflict in ex-Yugoslavia: Did you ever wonder why the Serbs, Bosniacs, and Croats got into conflict, although they speak the same language? Part of the reason is that Serbs are Orthodox, Bosniacs are Muslim, and Croats are Catholic (as a consequence, the eternal conflict on the Balkans is proverbial). The same holds for the conflict in Northern Ireland: Unionists are Protestant while nationalists are Catholic. The same is true for the conflict in Sudan: the North is Muslim while the South is Christian and Animist. The same goes for the conflict in the Philippines: the majority of the country is Christian while the break-away region is Muslim. Or consider the animosity between Armenia and Turkey: Armenia is Christian while Turkey is Muslim. The Second World War opposed the Christian United States with Buddhist and Shintoist Japan. The same goes for the everlasting conflict between India and Pakistan for the region of Kashmir: India is Hindu and Pakistan is Muslim. Many other conflicts in South-East Asia run along religious lines, too: The Muslim Rohingya are persecuted by the Buddhist majority in Myanmar; Bangladesh chased non-Muslim tribes into India; Christians, Hindus, Shia Muslims, and Ahmadis are hounded in Pakistan165. While this is rarely made explicit, war boundaries coincide with religious boundaries again and again.
Nothing unites a community as well as an attack on one of its members.
Preaching Peace...
Most religious leaders condemn violence. They point out that violence is not allowed by the value system of their religion, and/or that it goes against the will of their supernatural institutions. This leaves us to ask why religion and conflict correlate so frequently. One hypothesis is that religion is not violent but that it creates the ideal breeding ground for violence. According to this hypothesis, religions should preach peace but seed conflict. Let us now see how this comes about.
...but Seeding Conflict
“Peace walls” such as this one separate some Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern IrelandCC-BY-SA David Dixon
We have already seen that Christianity and Islam engage in a natural antagonistic mechanism, in that they both shun the conversion of the adherents of their own faith, but strive for the conversion of the adherents of the other one. Both religions also share another conflict factor: the habit of claiming the “true” interpretation of the religion. This problem was particularly visible in Christianity after the Reformation. During the Thirty Years' War in the 17th century, Protestants and Catholics slaughtered each other in the millions. This war was certainly also fueled by political and military interests, but claims of being the true religion played a major role (as the neat denominational segregation of combatants shows). Christianity eventually came to accept its diversity. Islam did not: The religion exhibits a wide diversity of beliefs, but at the same time, the majority of Muslims are of the opinion that there is only one correct interpretation of the faith — theirs166. Such a claim offends people of the other denominations who also believe that theirs is the only true faith. The inability to accept that there exist several interpretations of Islam is quite possibly a key factor in the conflicts in the Muslim world. In the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, Iraq was ruled by a Sunni (Saddam Hussein), while Iran is mainly Shia. In the civil war in Syria of the 2010s, the president Bashar al-Assad is an Alawite (Shia) supported by Shia Iran while most of the population is Sunni. In Yemen, a civil war waged in the 2020s between adherents of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi (a Sunni, supported by Saudi Arabia) and the Houtis (who are mainly Shiite, and supported by Iran). In Lebanon, Hezbollah is a Shia militant group, which is supported by Shiite Iran, but opposed by most members of the Arab League, which are Sunni.
Major civilizations, according to Samuel P. Huntington, simplifiedCC-BY-SA DLommes
Another factor that can aggravate conflicts along religious lines was proposed in the 1990s by the American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington. He argued that the world is divided into roughly seven civilizations (which are in turn defined largely by religion): the Western world (Protestant and Catholic Christianity), the East European world (Orthodox Christianity), India and neighboring countries (Hinduism and Buddhism), the Far East (East Asian religions), the Muslim world (Islam), Latin America (Catholicism), and Sub-Saharan Africa (Catholicism and Islam). Conflicts arise mainly along the fault lines between these civilizations. His argument is that people feel adherence to their civilization and will support other people of the same civilization when they are attacked. This entails that a conflict between two places that belong to different civilizations can turn quickly into a conflict between larger entities, or even entire civilizations. In this way the civilization (which, in most cases, equals a religion) functions as an amplifier of local conflicts.167
Other sources of conflict are more subtle: As we have seen, religions build up a closed community of believers by teaching exclusively their own faith, and by prohibiting interfaith marriage and conversion. Furthermore, religious adherents believe in things that are considered weird by everyone else — but take offense when this is pointed out. This is obviously a recipe for conflict, especially when combined with a divine confidence in one’s own faith. These factors are specific to religion, and not, say, to language. A language does not prohibit you from marrying someone who speaks a different language, and you can even become fluent in two languages. It is religion that does not permit this flexibility.
Now add to this setting anything that can be understood as a threat to the group: a dispute with people who happen to have another religion, a careless remark by the leader of another religion, scarcity of resources, social tensions, or poverty. The easiest way to discharge these tensions is to seek safety in one’s own religious community and to scapegoat the other. Therefore, armed conflict often coincides with religious boundaries. While it would be false to say that religion in general is violent, it is probably true that religion can form a breeding ground for conflict.
Human history is filled with tragic stories of war and inhumanity. The concept of “Us” versus “Them” is at the core of many of these atrocities. Today we are faced with global challenges such as climate change, poverty and terrorism. It is time to finally realize there is only “Us”.
Underperformance
We have seen before that religious countries tend to be worse off economically than more secular countries. Many of them are also less well-governed, less democratic, and less peaceful. They are also more likely to suffer from higher criminality, corruption, and lower life expectancy. We have argued that religion is not necessarily the cause for such misery but that it is probably the misery that is the cause for the religiousness. Yet, we can still reproach religion for being an accomplice — not just because it benefits from the misery, but also because it does not use its power to counter it.
Let us develop this argument step by step.
The Power of Religion
We first observe that religion has enormous power over people. For centuries, the messages of the Bible, the Vedas, the Quran, the Buddha, and Confucius have been reiterated by preachers and parents, shouted from minarets, shared in scripture that every single person in the country is exposed to, and hammered into every child’s brain at school. Thus, religion has an extraordinary outreach on society. In addition, its teachings are regarded by its adherents as absolute truth.
Such a religion has the power to change people’s lives. And it does:
It can prescribe rituals and customs.
It can tell people what to eat.
It can tell people what to wear.
It can tell people whom to marry.
It shapes a society’s value system, for example in the treatment of women.
Religion is literally one of the most powerful systems on Earth. It can profoundly influence what people do and what they think.
Religious morality is designed neither to make people in general happy, nor to make any deity happy. It is designed to make priests happy.
The Results of Religion
Despite its enormous power, religion has not used its force to lift people out of their misery. If one had the power to write a book that every person in the country would have to study and read, that every child would get taught from an early age, and that every person would believe to be true, then one could change life dramatically. One could, for example:
establish the equal treatment of men and women;
reiterate the importance of education, literacy, and scientific research;
establish the freedom of religion, teach the respect for all other religions, including the right to marry the adherents of the other religions;
condemn corruption;
praise democratic elections, and ask adherents to respect the result of a vote even if it does not coincide with their own interests;
promote family planning;
teach people the importance of a diversified diet with vegetables, proteins, and micro-nutrients (iron, zinc, folic acid, etc.)60;
give very simple health advice, such as: wash your hands frequently with soap; boil water before drinking it; give iodine supplements to pregnant women; defecate in latrines rather than in the fields; or treat diarrhea with salt and sugar in clean water82.
These tenets could literally save millions of lives and change life for the better for many. But no major religion maintains these tenets as part of their value system. On the contrary, many religions have the opposites of some of these tenets on their books (see the respective articles). We thus conclude that on the one hand, religion has an enormous power, and has shaped entire societies, but that on the other hand, religion has not used that power to establish tenets that could change today’s societies for the better. Religion thus abuses its power.
Imagine there’s no heaven...
It’s easy if you try...
No hell below us,
above us only sky...
