In this section, we will argue that, despite all the criticism that can be advanced against religion, faith can have positive effects on the well-being of a believer. By well-being, we mean a wide array of factors that include health, mental health, happiness, and life satisfaction.
Measuring such positive effects of religion is not easy: First, data collection is expensive and tricky, as people may over-report, under-report, or refuse to reveal their religious attitudes, for reasons we have discussed before. And indeed, many studies on religiosity are small in scale, not representative, not statistically significant, or even contradictory. Second, religious belief itself is not easy to measure: do we ask for the certainty in the existence of God, the frequency of attending religious services, or a qualitative description of one’s religious attitude? Since the frequency of attending services is easiest to quantify, many studies focus on this variable — but is attending services really indicative of one’s faith? Third, religiosity and personal well-being can interact in various ways, and it is not always one that impacts the other: a study may find that prayer correlates with illness, but this does not mean that prayer makes you ill, but could simply indicate that those who are ill pray more often. Likewise, even if a study were to find that people who attend services feel lonely, this may not mean that attending services makes you lonely, but could rather be a consequence of the fact that older people attend services more often, and older people are more likely to suffer from loneliness. The fact that older people attend services more often is itself related to the fact that Western societies are becoming more and more secular over time, which means that studies of religiosity are shooting at a moving target. Finally, mystical states or religious experiences are often difficult to distinguish from psychotic behavior or hallucinations. In a somewhat biased appreciation, one tends to call them “mystical” if they were pleasurable, and “pathological” when they were distressing1. All of these problems are known, and social scientists are trying their best to counter-act them, for example by seeking to clarify definitions, relying on large cohort-studies with tens of thousands of participants, controlling for variables such as socio-economic status, and aggregating over dozens of smaller studies.
The resulting picture is relatively clear. As the Handbook of religion and health summarizes2, in the majority of studies, religious involvement is correlated with:
greater happiness and well-being in general
more positive feelings such as hope and optimism
a greater ability to cope with adversity, such as illnesses or stressful situations
less depression and anxiety
greater self-esteem
more altruistic behavior, including forgiveness and gratefulness
less substance abuse
lower mortality, i.e., a longer life
less delinquency and crime
greater marital stability
stronger social connections
better “social capital”, i.e., more community participation and membership in community-based, civic, political, or social justice organizations, more volunteerism, trust, and reciprocity between people
This picture is supported by other cross-study analyses3451.
A big caveat in these studies is that they take “religion” to mean nearly exclusively “Christianity”. They mention Islam and Judaism only in passing, and almost never consider other large world religions such as Shintoism, Spiritism, or Buddhism. (We have argued before that the inability to perceive other religions as equally important is symptomatic of many religions.) A similar limitation applies to the geographical scope of the studies: The vast majority of large-scale studies are conducted in the United States, and thus apply to only 4% of the world’s population. (Some readers may suspect a similar inability here to consider the importance or existence of other places.) Finally, it goes without saying that all studies are concerned with the modern, post-Enlightenment version of Christianity. The effects of medieval belief in exorcism, physical hell-fire, and social ousting or punishment of those who doubt the dogma are not the subject of discussion. So when the “Handbook of religion” talks about the positive effects of religion on people’s health, what it means are the positive effects of modern Christianity on Americans.
These positive effects notably hinge on the feeling of spiritual connectedness with a loving God. Those who perceive God as a punishing entity actually experience more emotional stress1. Besides, findings on other religions and other populations often differ significantly1. For example, in some African communities a person would be considered insane not to believe that the spirits of the dead actively influence an individual’s life, whereas that same conviction would be a sign of a major thought disorder in the United States1.
In this chapter, we will not try to prove whether the studies on religion and health generalize to all religions or all places. Rather, we will explore factors that may make religion so helpful in the cases that have been studied. These factors may then well apply also to other religions and other places.
Factors for personal well-being
Personal well-being is a complex concept that encompasses health, mental health, happiness, life satisfaction, and a wide array of other features. Consequently, it is hard to measure scientifically what exactly causes which component of well-being. However, science has established a number of factors that generally correlate with personal well-being6789. We have already outlined them before, and we flesh them out in more detail here:
an attitude of altruism and forgiveness with other people7
mature mechanisms to cope with life’s ups and downs9
These factors were established by scientists independently of religion. However, we will now see how religion caters exactly to these factors.
Dietary restrictions
Most major religions come with dietary restrictions of some kind. We have previously argued that some of these restrictions place a high burden on the believer, serve more the survival of the religion than the well-being of the individual, and are sometimes outright absurd. However, there are cases where these dietary restrictions coincide with the scientific mainstream opinion. For example, some religions prohibit alcohol (Islam, Bahai Faith, Buddhism, variants of Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism). These religions thus tick an important point on the shopping list of healthy behaviors. Even for Christians, religious service attendance can correlate with less smoking and less heavy drinking1.
Other religions prohibit the consumption of red meat (beef in Hinduism, pork in Judaism and Islam) or even of meat altogether (Mahayana Buddhism, Jainism, and variants of Hinduism and Christianity). It turns out that red meat, as well as processed meat, is indeed to be avoided for a healthy diet10.
Even the intermittent fasting prescribed by some religions (Islam, Bahai Faith, Christianity) may have a healthy effect: studies have found that fasting can improve insulin sensitivity, and lead to lower blood pressure, decreased LDL cholesterol, and weight loss6.
These religious diet prescriptions appear to hit the right spot more by chance than by intention. However, there is also a more general factor at work: Some religious denominations encourage good health behaviors out of respect for the body as an instrument of God’s service1. With this, they offer an all-encompassing encouragement for believers to take care of their health — which is one of the ingredients of a happy life.
In the past, when doctors believed they could cure a patient by letting him bleed, a religion may have saved lives purely by keeping its adherents in the church and away from the hospital.
And Atheists?
No supernatural entity prescribes what atheists should eat or drink. Atheists thus have to rely on their own decision to lead a healthy life — which they may or may not take (and which they may or may not follow even when they have taken it). We have previously argued that atheists have every interest in prolonging their life, because they do not believe in an afterlife. However, not all atheists follow this reasoning, and even if they do, they might be unaware of the factors that help a healthy life, or unable, or unwilling to implement them.
One may think that the situation is different for Humanists. After all, Humanism strives for “the fullest possible development of every individual”, and this arguably includes a healthy life. However, Humanism cares only for putting in place the conditions for people to flourish (by limiting the restrictions that other people put on their freedom). Humanism does not encourage, let alone force people to flourish once these conditions are in place. On the contrary, Humanism defends one’s freedom to do whatever one pleases, as long as no-one else is hurt — and this includes living an unhealthy life. In other words, the liberal moral framework that Humanism defends prevents it from encouraging people to flourish as Humanism intends them to.
Community
A Hindu community
in Bodhgaya/India
One of the main features of a religion is that it establishes a community. This works through several means:
A common moral framework, such as the 10 Commandments, the duty to give charity, or the call to non-violence.
Common beliefs, such as a world model, a set of mythological stories, and shared beliefs about history.
Common rituals, such as fasting, joint prayer, church attendance, life event celebrations, annual celebrations, or sacrifices.
Initiation rites, such as circumcision or baptism.
Shared experiences, such as fares, excursions, or concerts.
Social services, such as hospitals, kindergardens, schools, or senior citizen homes.
Mutual assistance, such as help for the poor, the ill, and the desperate.
A label, such as “Jew”, “Buddhist”, or “Catholic”, together with a sense of pride in the religion and the community.
The prohibition to venture out of the community, e.g., by prohibiting the marriage with adherents of other faiths, the shunning of those who decide to leave the religion or even just criticise it, the branding of outsiders as errants, and more generally the focus on one’s own faith at the expense of knowledge about the others
We have previously not stinted with criticism of religious communities, because the prohibition to venture out of the community curtails the freedom of the individual, is incompatible with the Humanist ideal of an egalitarian and open society, and bears the risk of amplifying conflicts between adherents of different religions. However, notwithstanding these critique-worthy effects, the religious community does constitute an important pillar in the believer’s well-being.
Indeed, an embedding in a community constitutes an important factor for a happy life in general, and even the single most important factor: A Harvard study has followed hundreds of people and their descendants over 80 years, to measure their happiness and well-being. It is the longest such study that has ever been conducted. It turns out that these 80 years and thousands of interviews all point to a single main message: the embedding in a social structure of family and friends is the single most determining factor for one’s happiness and well-being11. The social relationships are not just important for one’s mental well-being, but even for one’s physical well-being: they are one of the factors that provably lead to a longer and healthier life6.
Religion does not just establish such communities, it also promotes the values that help deepen it: Most religions emphasize love of others, compassion, and altruistic acts as well as encourage meeting together during religious social events. These prosocial behaviors have many consequences that buffer stress and lead to human support when support is needed during difficult times. Religions typically also promote virtues such as honesty, forgiveness, gratefulness, patience, and dependability, which help to maintain and enhance social relationships. 2
The religious community can be particularly useful outside one’s home country. If two people find that they both belong to a minority religion, they will feel a bond between them. All other factors being equal, they will be more likely to help each other, to trust each other, and to promote each other. Sharing the same faith ensures that people abide by the same codes of behavior, adopt the same rituals, and use the same language, resulting in a common identity grounded in the same symbolic universe 12.
This community has benefits that go beyond the individual person. Religious people (as compared to atheists) declare to have more trust in others, in their governments and in the legal system, to be less willing to break the law, and to hold stronger beliefs about the fairness of market outcomes 13. Trust, in turn, is the basic prerequisite for a society that wants to progress beyond clans. Thus, religious communities can play a significant role in creating and maintaining a society.
I sometimes suspect that people just don’t really care if some of their most cherished beliefs are rationally groundless. [...] What many people gain from religious belief, and what they legitimately care about, is the ritual, the community, the shared ethical values, the coffee and donuts.
And Atheism?
Atheism, in contrast, cannot create a community, because atheists generally share neither a moral framework, nor a world view, nor rituals, nor any scripture. The only thing that links atheists is their rejection of belief in the supernatural, and this is too weak to create a community. All that atheists can do is find other communities, which are not based on faith: foremost the family, but also sports clubs, choirs, benevolent associations, and the like.
Humanists, in contrast, do share corner stones of a moral framework and a world view . There are even Humanist associations that offer secular rituals for life events (usually one per country14). However, these associations have not achieved the traction of religious communities — already because many people who adhere to the principles of Humanism might not even know they are Humanists.
Never adhere to an ideology because you enjoy the community. Only ever adhere to a community if you share the ideology.
A Reason for Life
One of the factors that contribute to a healthy life is the conviction that one’s life has a purpose156.
As it so happens, all major religions can provide such a purpose for life. Religion tells us why we exist, what is our purpose of life, and what we should do with our lives. This can be very reassuring. It gives us a place in this universe, and a direction to follow. It allows people to literally live a purposeful life. Devout believers have no existential questions to worry about, and thus suffer less from existential angst2.
We have previously complained that religious dogmata do not really provide an answer to the great questions of life, because they just shift the question from us to the deity. For example, a believer may say that she exists because God exists, but she cannot tell us why God exists. However, God’s existence is not a very essential question for people. The existence of a god is a philosophical, meta-physical, supernatural, out-of-this-world conundrum. People can live their lives without worrying why God exists. They can also accept that they cannot understand why God exists, because he is supernatural. Their own existence, however, is a very tangible experience for them. It is very important for them to know why they are there. By answering the question about their own existence at the expense of neglecting the question about God’s existence, the religion answers the question that is more essential for people.
He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.
And Atheists?
Atheists have no means to answer the big questions of life by supernatural entities. They have to find these answers by themselves. If they can’t find the answers, they have to admit that they don’t know them. While the atheist life stance may thus appear less convenient than the believer’s, it usually does not cause much discomfort to the atheist. Humanists, for example, take pride in the fact that they have to define their purpose of life, their moral values, and the working of their society by themselves. More generally, psychological studies suggest that people with low need for dogmatic belief structure (among whom we may count the atheists) tend to seek existential comfort through the exploration of novel ideas.16
In what way is it comforting to know that God loves you, and that he once deliberately drowned everyone on Earth because they were “full of sin”, and that most people in the world are sinful now — including yourself?
Prayer
Hindu prayers in Bali, Indonesia
We have seen that one of the factors that contribute to the psychological well-being of an individual is a mechanism to cope with life’s ups and downs9. That is, in times of insecurity, the individual needs a strategy to follow. Religion provides one such strategy in the form of prayer (or other ways of approaching the supernatural, which can include meditation).
We have previously pointed out that prayer has no real world effects. You can’t change the world by talking in your head and believing someone listens. However, you can change yourself. A prayer lets you think about your day, reflect your behavior, discover your wishes, and speak out your fears. In this way, praying contributes to your self-awareness. A prayer can also help you structure your thoughts, and prepare for upcoming difficulties. As it turns out, the mere planning of the things ahead can already give you peace of mind. One psychological experiment has shown that students who were asked to plan the things they had to learn had lower levels of anxiety and better concentration than a control group who was planning an unrelated event — and comparable to those who worked on actually learning for the exam17.
Just talking with someone can also help people discover by themselves a solution to their problems. People talk, describe their problem, and thereby stumble upon the solution. Interestingly, that effect can be achieved even if the other person does not talk at all, and merely listens. By just imagining the reply of the other person, one can find the solution. In Christianity, this coping strategy is known as asking “What would Jesus do?”. By answering this question, the believer finds the solution to the problem. In Computer Science, the strategy is known as “rubber duck debugging”: the programmer places a rubber duck on the desk, and explains the computer code to the duck. By explaining the code, the programmer finds the problem in the code1819. In this way, the duck takes the role of Jesus.
A prayer can also give the adherents the impression that they can somehow influence their future. It gives them a subjective sense of control over events2. Even if that is an illusion, it still helps people cope with their fate. Psychological experiments show that people can withstand more pain if they have a button that stops the pain — even if that button does not work. This phenomenon is known as the “Illusion of Control”17. Prayer is thus an effective strategy to lower one’s anxiety.
Finally, just the belief that prayer is effective may already bring about the desired effect. For example, if a person suffers from a psychosomatic illness, and if that person prays for betterment, then the illness may indeed abate. This phenomenon is known as the “Placebo Effect”20, and prayer is one of the classical application cases. Prayer can thus have effects beyond the mental.
In cases where the prayer is directed to a particular deity, it can also give the adherent the feeling of being heard. The idea that someone listens can be very reassuring. And indeed, “sharing novel experiences with a loved one” is one of the factors of psychological well-being7. Prayer can take that role, too. Interestingly, prayer is a coping strategy that is not lost or impaired with physical disability — unlike many other coping resources that are dependent on health (hobbies, relationships, and jobs/finances)2. It is thus an all-encompassing, always-available method of stress relief.
Acts of worship improve the mortal, not the god.
And Atheists?
Atheists have no-one to pray to. If they need someone who listens, they have to find a real person. Apart from that, they can of course meditate (or, in a lighter form, just take time to think about an event or a problem). They can also conduct an imaginary dialog with a loved one, a rubber duck, or even (why not?) Jesus. However, these coping strategies are not as simple and as all-encompassing as prayer. Furthermore, they surely do not have the placebo effect, because atheists do not believe that talking to the supernatural in one’s head changes the real world.
What would Jesus do? Wander around the Middle East for a few years, then get nailed to a piece of wood. Not very helpful actually.
Rites
The Fortune Fairy in Chinese Folk Religion. Consider making her an offering!
Hoi Anh, Vietnam
Religions typically come with a set of rites. These include life event celebrations such as baptism and weddings, but also regular activities such as going to the temple, chanting, or praying together. Some of these rites appear absurd to all but those who engage in them, and we have taken a certain pleasure in enumerating them. Other rites are outright harmful: Consider the damage done by genital mutilation alone. Or consider the habit of marrying off girls in their puberty — still widespread in many countries. Both practices are supported by local religious beliefs, and both practices are objectively harmful. So is the insistence of some Charismatic Christians to rely on faith healing instead of vaccination. It translates into an immediate health disadvantage for the concerned children. From an atheist perspective, all rites (the harmful ones and the others) are but an artifact of the centuries-long erratic search of today’s religions for ways of keeping enough adherents to survive to the next generation. Rites proved a useful means to instill the religious world view, to identify free-riders, and to create a community of believers. These effects were needed to heave the religion into the next generation, and so the religions that exist today are those that have such rites. Whether or not the practices were actually useful to the individual was not of concern.
That said, some rituals do happen to be useful to the individual. In particular, rituals can help the believer cope with difficult life events. Consider for example the death of a loved one. If a close friend or family member dies, you feel desperate. Religious rites cannot give you the person back, but they can at least tell you what to do: pray this and that, participate in this ceremony, sing this song, perform this ritual, and say these words. This frame reassures people. It is also a way of expressing grief in a socially accepted form. The same goes if you did something wrong and feel remorse. Religion cannot undo what you did, but it can at least tell you what to do: confess to this person, pray these prayers, perform this ritual cleansing, say these words. In this way, religious rites give people something to cling to when their minds are in trouble. They are a coping strategy, and having a coping strategy is a necessary ingredient for a healthy and happy life9.
In addition, the rites are moments for social gathering. They help build a community, and bind family members and communities together. And indeed, “rituals during which one meets with family members” are one of the ingredients of a happy life7.
And atheists?
Atheists can critique rites as weird, useless, or outright harmful. However, even atheists can acknowledge the positive effects of rituals. Therefore, there have been several attempts to offer secular rites — most notably in atheist regimes, but also in Humanist circles. For example, in Germany, the German Humanist Association offers secular rites for weddings, births, and funerals 21. However, these secular rites have never achieved the popularity of their religious counter-parts.
Thanking God
in the Church of our Dear Lady, Bruges/Belgium
The Abrahamic religions require their adherents to thank God for the good things in life. At the same time, they insist that God is not responsible for the bad things in life. In atheist eyes, this is but a cheap trick to solidify the position of the deity. However, it serves an interesting purpose: It forces people to think of the good things in their life. Since they are encouraged to thank God, and discouraged from blaming him, they have to come up with good things that they can thank him for. Thinking about the good things in one’s life is a great strategy for finding happiness. Besides, an attitude and practice of gratefulness is in itself one of the contributing factors to a happy life7.
And Atheists?
Atheists cannot thank a supernatural being for a positive event. They have to thank the people who made this event come about. For example, if someone recovers from an illness, atheists do not thank God, but rather the doctors. Humanists go a step further, and praise science for discovering the medicine. However, neither atheism in general nor Humanism in particular has a mechanism that would force people to regularly think of the good things in their everyday life.
I have food, clothing and shelter. At this moment I am warm at 25°C — despite the outdoor temperature of 5°C. A huge array of products are available that make my life easier and better: I can watch 80 channels on cable with my TV, I can video-chat with nearly anybody in the world, and I can travel almost anywhere, too. My point here is simple: We take it completely for granted, but life in the developed world is utterly amazing. Absolutely, utterly, amazing. Who created all of this? Did God? Certainly not.
Family values
In general, religions tend to promote conservative family values — which is just the consequence of the fact that religions are, by definition, old. There is much to criticise about these values: they generally diminish the role of women in the family and in society, they are not sufficiently opposed to child marriage, they demonize homosexuality, they prohibit interfaith marriage, and they promote prudery or even condemn sexual pleasure altogether.
At the same time, religious family values can also have positive effects on the individual. First, the insistence that sexual relations can happen only inside the married couple entails that believers are less likely to engage in risky sexual behavior (sex outside of marriage, multiple partners, etc.)2. This, in turn, reduces the risk of venereal diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, chancroid, chlamydia, viral hepatitis, and the human immunodeficiency virus (AIDS). This reduced risk is one of the factors that contribute to the better health that more religious believers enjoy compared to less religious people. The restriction of sexual relationships to the married couple also has a secondary effect: It channels any sexual energy into the couple, which, we can hypothesize, contributes to the sexual fulfillment of the partners and thus to the strength of their relationship.
Second, religions tend to “sanctify” marriage, i.e., to attribute it an importance with a supernatural dimension. People who believe that marriage has a sacred value are more ready to invest into the commitment to their partner, thus reducing the risk of divorce. Religion does not just promote the importance of marriage, it also comes with an entire set of values to foster stable marriages: it typically emphasizes forgiveness, love to one another and to one’s children, commitment, and fidelity. These values are reinforced through religious rituals, myths, and supernatural beliefs. Religion also offers tools for mediation that are unavailable to the atheist: Some couples pray together to resolve conflicts. Others practice theistic meditation, a communication strategy where God (or other supernatural forces) is imagined as a third party who mediates in a conflict. This technique can entice people to disengage from destructive communication patterns and to explore options for compromise or healthy acceptance of one another.1 Through all of these techniques, religion can contribute to the stability of the marriage — which is one of the factors that correlate with a happy life.
Third, most major religions prohibit interfaith marriage. While this is reprehensible from a Humanist perspective, there is some evidence that marriages where both partners share the same faith are more stable1.
The traditional family values of religion thus contribute to the physical health of believers, to the longevity of their marriages, and to the availability of coping strategies — three factors that objectively correlate with personal well-being
And Atheists?
As atheism is just the rejection of belief in the supernatural, it has nothing to say about sex or marriage. Humanism has some elements to contribute: with its emphasis on science, it can point to scientific evidence that links risky sexual behaviors to transmittable diseases. It then follows that its moral system, with its overarching goal of avoiding harm to others, condemns transmitting such diseases to others. (Oddly enough, it cares more about avoiding harm to the other person than to oneself, but since transmission works both ways, the effect is the same.) In a notable difference to religion, Humanism does not indiscriminately condemn all non-marital sexual behaviors, but only those that cause harm. Humanism thus aims at a minimal, targeted, justified restriction of liberty (which notably leaves place for pre-marital sex and homosexual relationships), while religion shotguns at everything it does not explicitly approve of (which was arguably the easiest means to avoid sexual diseases in a time when little was known about them).
When it comes to the stability of marriage, Humanism can point out that infidelity is a violation of the pact of marriage that the couple entered, and thus a harm that is to be avoided. However, it has no sanctification of marriage on offer. It can also not propose any supernaturally inspired toolbox for stabilizing the relationship with one’s partner.
The first of these salutary features of religion is the belief in supernatural entities that care for us. In the Abrahamic religions, this is a loving god. In the other religions, these can be the spirits, benevolent deities, or the souls of the deceased. Having such entities around is very comforting. As the American author Marshall Brain has argued, the idea that God is listening to and responding to you individually can be tremendously satisfying. It means that you are special in God’s eyes22. Scientists, too, suspect that the belief in a personal transcendental force that loves and cares about humans contributes to personal well-being, by advancing a generally optimistic worldview.2 One hypothesis is that God functions as an attachment figure — taking a role that is similar to the parent of a child. This figure constitutes a safe haven in crisis and a secure base for exploration. Indeed, more secure attachment to God has been associated with greater life satisfaction, agreeableness, religious symbolic immortality, positive affect, as well as with less negative affect, neuroticism, loneliness, anxiety, depression, and physical illness1.
And Atheists?
Atheists do not believe that there is a supernatural entity that cares for us. It is, in atheist eyes, pretentious to assume that there is some all-powerful being who cares about us in particular, but not about the hundreds of children who starve to death every day. It is also implausible, from the atheist perspective, to assume that some supernatural being or beings have been hanging around for 13 billion years (since the genesis of the universe), or even longer, to finally occupy themselves with one tiny species of humanoids on one tiny planet in the universe. And what will all these beings do for the rest of eternity when humanity dies out one day? With such considerations, however, the atheist forfeits the comfort that comes from the belief in these entities.
Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the religions.
Belief in the afterlife
And if there were more to life than what meets the eye?
in New Zealand
All major religions believe in some life after death — be it in Heaven or Hell, in a future reincarnation, or in this world as a spirit. These stories tame the fear of death that we are hard-wired with: Psychological studies show that people with a strong afterlife belief view death as having more positive and fewer negative implications.16. The belief in the afterlife is thus a coping strategy to deal with fear of death — and coping strategies are one of the ingredients of a happy life.
The eternal life that religion promises is also available for your loved ones. The belief that a deceased family member is still somehow alive, albeit in another place, can help people come to terms with their loss23. Again, religion provides a coping strategy to deal with some of the most difficult events in life.
And Atheists?
Atheists do not believe in life after death. Psychological studies suggest that atheists may be consciously overriding religious concepts of an afterlife when reminded of death. They do acknowledge the desirability of an afterlife, but refuse to believe in it. When they are reminded of death, their certainty about their rejection of religion increases, but they also become more ideologically open-minded — perhaps reflecting a search for viable secular beliefs.16
Believers, in contrast, tend to become more defensive of their faith when reminded of death — so as to make sure they get their place in the afterlife16. However, atheists suspect that they do this mainly to convince themselves of something they don’t really believe either. For example, if people really believed in the afterlife, they should rejoice when someone dies, because they would get to see this person for eternity in the afterlife. They usually don’t. This disbelief is not just a modern phenomenon. In the 13th century, King Louis IX of France led a crusade with the goal to make Egypt Christian land. When their soldiers were defeated, they decided to surrender. One of the soldiers proposed instead to have themselves killed so that they all go to Paradise. Yet, the soldiers preferred to be captured rather than sent to Paradise24. We can spot the same disbelief in Islam: When Armin Navad, a devout Muslim, tried to commit suicide at the age of 14 years in order to reach Paradise, his action should have 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 atheists25). Or consider the French attack on the Islamic State in Syria in 2015, which killed many of their soldiers. The organization duly declared all people who died martyrs in Paradise. Still, rather than thanking France to have “saved” so many of their brethren (who might otherwise have gone to Hell for their heinous warfare), the Islamic State ordered a suicide attack on Paris on November 13th, 2015 in revenge — indicating that they don’t believe their own stories either26. Or consider the masterminds of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. They preferred to plead guilty and spend life in prison rather than to suffer the death penalty and go to Heaven27. If even Islamic terrorists do not believe in life after death, atheists wonder, then who does?
This discussion leaves us to conclude that people (both believers and atheists) have to find other ways of dealing with their fear of death. One of them is certainly to postpone it as much as possible, and we have discussed ways of doing this in a previous chapter. Beyond that, there are different strategies to deal with one’s mortality, which work to different degrees for different people. One of them is to achieve what is called “secular immortality”, i.e., a lasting legacy by which one is remembered — by contributions to the future of your family, business, service/charities, education, healthcare, government, art, or sports16. Another strategy is to try to accept death as an event that belongs to life — just as every book, no matter how good it is, has a last page. Again another strategy is to try to perceive life not as something that vanishes, but as something that persists in its time, even if that time is in the past. This strategy is illustrated by the following quote:
So, now, if I ask myself, where is my childhood? — or, where is the time we spent as a family in the park along the Alster, long before my mother died? Well, physics says that it’s still there. That happy crowd, that sunlit moment, they are where they always were and always will be: in 1967. My mother was born in a place, in a moment, and died in another place, in another moment. Her conscious life connects those two space and it always will. That, to me, is a comforting thought.
Coping with suffering
The name of this church is “Mother of God, soothe my sorrows”
in Saratov/Russia
We have already discussed that most religions offer explanations as to why there is so much suffering in this world: it is a test for the afterlife, it is part of God’s plan, it is a result of bad karma, etc.. We have also not withheld our criticism of this scheme: by explaining the suffering in this world as something ultimately good or something ultimately justified, believers accept rather than oppose it.
At the same time, the belief that suffering is ultimately justified can be very comforting: it relieves us from the weltschmerz that we must feel when we understand how much injustice, illness, hunger, and sadness there is in this world. It can also help us come to terms with our own suffering: when we believe that there is a reason for our mishap, we can more easily accept it. 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 popular belief, and psychological studies have shown again and again that most people harbor it in one form or another28. There are several reasons why the BJW might have developed: First, it allows people to rationalize unforeseen hardships, and thus helps them establish a (false but comforting) sense of control29. Second, the belief is assumed fundamental for people to feel safe and positive and to perceive the world as a predictable and manageable place30. Finally, the BJW appears to have a role in what is known as the “personal contract”: the attempt by children (and adults) to withhold immediate gratification in order to obtain long term benefits. The personal contract can work better if one believes in a causality between good behavior and good outcomes28.
The BJW generally correlates with religiousness3130, with God being one of the assumed sources of justice32. The BJW is thus, for some believers, a coping strategy to deal with difficult life events, or suffering in this world in general.
Religion complements the BJW by other strategies to reinterpret negative life events as ultimately helpful. For example, a major life crisis can be viewed as an opportunity for spiritual growth, a crisis can be attributed to a loving God who is trying to teach the individual a valuable lesson, and a tragedy can be perceived as part of a larger, mysterious, but ultimately benevolent plan1. Religion can also provide role models of persons suffering with the same or similar problems (illustrated in religious scriptures)2.
Should some person cause so much harm that even the “grand cosmic plan” cannot justify it, the major religions promise justice in the afterlife. In the Abrahamic religions, God punishes the wrongdoers in Hell after their death. In the Indian religions, the role is taken by karma — bad deeds will entail suffering in the coming life. In the Chinese religions, an abstract entity called Heaven watches over injustices, and acts accordingly. Should an injustice happen, and should the perpetrator slip away, believers know that the last word has not been spoken. They can trust that the perpetrator will find their just fate in this life or the next. Believers are thus reassured that any harm in this world is either justified or will be punished in the hereafter. They can have confidence that all suffering will eventually find a “happy ending”.
All of these considerations do not mean that religion encourages us to stand by when injustice happens. On the contrary, many religions incorporate a strong component of outreach to those in distress. But religion does provide people with strategies to deal with suffering, loss, and injustice that we cannot counter — and such strategies are one of the ingredients of a happy life. They are also assumed to have a positive effect on health: The coping strategies that religion provides increase the frequency of positive emotions and may thus reduce the likelihood that stress will result in emotional disorders.2
And Atheists?
For atheists, the promise of justice in the afterlife is wishful thinking only. Atheists also have no supernatural means to justify or explain the suffering in this world. Humanists, in particular, see all suffering as bad, and posit that we have to alleviate it rather than justify it. The belief in a just world is arguably a hindrance in this endeavor: it can be shown that adherents of the BJW have a tendency to blame the victims for their suffering28. When confronted with people who suffered from violence (e.g., rape), they tend to believe that the victim was responsible for it, and they tend to devalue and reject the victim. They also tend to believe that poverty is self-inflicted, and that people are responsible for the illnesses they suffer. Thus, they justify the evil on Earth for their own emotional comfort. This is, of course, a horrible thing to do from a Humanist perspective. By condemning the BJW, however, the Humanist forfeits a means to alleviate her or his own suffering as well. It thus seems that there is a balance to be found between accepting the harm we cannot counter, and countering the harm we cannot accept.
All of us face things we can control, and things we can’t.
Each of us must find ways to work with the hand we're dealt with.
Absolute conviction
We will now speculate about a benefit of religion that is related to its unfalsifiability. As this insistence on the link between religion and unfalsifiability is somewhat idiosyncratic to this book, the thesis we will now discuss has received less coverage in the psychological literature. It may nevertheless have some merit.
We have argued before that people are to a large degree exposed to events that they cannot control. In this stream of largely unpredictable events, people are often forced to give up convictions that they previously held dear: a partner may be less faithful than we thought; a politician we trusted may break her promises; and even science has to correct its own theories from time to time. This necessity to revise what we held true is generally an unpleasant experience, and it may induce insecurity, regret, and embarrassment.
Now suppose that we meet a person who tells us about a world view that can never turn out to be wrong. In fact, it is guaranteed that this world view can never be proven false. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Finally something stable to cling to, finally a piece of absolute security. We listen to this person, and indeed we can find no fault with the world view. We start adhering to this world view, and tell other people about it. No matter what these people say, they cannot show we’re wrong. Isn’t that fantastic? And no matter what happens, it never contradicts our beliefs. Nothing that ever happens and nothing that is ever said can prove us wrong. We will become so convinced of this world view that we will never let it go again.
There is, of course, only one type of statements that can withstand any questioning: those that are unfalsifiable. By extension, there is only one type of ideology that can deliver absolute certainty: religion. Nobody can ever prove that God does not exist. Nobody can prove there is no life after death. Nobody can prove that we are not reborn. Nobody can prove that injustice in this life does not ultimately serve a grander purpose. Thus, religion delivers what no other major ideology delivers: absolute certainty.
We can hypothesize that this absolute certainty is highly comforting. It gives the believer something to cling to, something to trust in even if all other convictions turn out to be wrong. It thus stands to be conjectured that this feeling of certainty contributes to the emotional stability and psychological comfort, and thus ultimately happier life, of the believer.
And Atheists?
Atheists have no supernatural unfalsifiable claims to cling to. Humanists may even eschew them as irrational. This means that atheists and Humanists are frontally exposed to the insecurity that any of the convictions that they hold true may turn out to be false — including atheism itself.
Philosophy: While diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be.
And Atheists?
Top banner: “Trust God in difficult times!” Bottom right badge: As for ourselves, we rather trust ADT securities.
in Philippsburgh, Sint Maarten, Dutch Caribbean
We have seen that believers enjoy a number of advantages that atheism, and even Humanism, cannot deliver: the encouragement to live a healthy life, a community, a purpose of life, prayer and rites as coping strategies, the encouragement to foster an attitude of gratefulness, a positive reappraisal of negative life events, the reassurance of an afterlife, and the absolute certainty of not being proven wrong. The question is thus why atheists do not convert.
We first note that the current scientific consensus is that all the positive effects of religion are achieved by purely natural means. No supernatural mechanisms are known to be responsible for the relationship between religion and health2. The fact that religion brings health benefits is thus no proof of the supernatural, and thus will not convince atheists that the supernatural exists. Thus, if an atheist was to adhere to a religion for its health benefits, she or he would do so not because of true belief.
And this is the first answer to the questions why atheists do not convert: The psychological advantages of a religion are bestowed mainly to those who truly believe in it. While one can fake one’s adherence to a religion to obtain the material benefits of its community, it is much harder to obtain feelings of gratitude, the reassurance of an afterlife, or a purpose of life this way1. The scientific literature uses the (not uncontroversial) distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic faith: The intrinsic believer “lives” her or his religion and views faith as an ultimate value in itself. In contrast, the extrinsic believer “uses” religion in a strictly utilitarian sense to gain safety, social standing, or other secular goals1. If we were to convert to a religion to obtain its advantages, we would clearly be an extrinsic believer — and would thus not obtain them. Furthermore, atheists (and Humanists in particular) would consider it wrong to profess adherence to something that they do not really believe in. It would be a lie vis-à-vis the other (supposedly true) believers, and also vis-à-vis society. Such a lie would lead to a state of inner incoherence and cognitive dissonance, which would probably annihilate most of the advantages of religion anyway.
The second answer to the question is that atheists are actually doing fine. There are just so few of them that most studies that measure health and religiosity fail to account for them. The studies are primarily concerned with the correlation of health with the importance of religion in one’s life. Atheists, with their minuscule (or even absent) representation at one end of the spectrum are lumped together with the less serious adherents of a religion33. However, lower religiosity is not identical with higher atheism33, and thus these studies do not actually talk about atheism and health at all. There are very few studies that do measure atheist health. Some conclude that atheists do not differ overall from religious adherents in terms of physical health outcomes34. Others report better physical353633 and mental health for atheists3633. These findings point to a U-shaped relation between religiosity and well-being, in which both strong belief and strong disbelief grant a better life. (It’s just that one end of the U has been studied so little that it resembles more a J.) One hypothesis to explain this U-shape is that it is the certainty of one’s world view (in atheists and believers alike) that predicts overall well-being more than what that world view is33. And indeed, atheists can use a whole arsenal of methods that we have discussed before to increase their chances of a healthy and happy life. They can even appreciate and learn from the positive effects of religion, should they wish to do so. Atheists are thus not devoid of means to achieve happiness, and many arguably do.
Happiness is not a goal.
It is a by-product of a life well lived.
Positive effects on society
TODO: Religions as costly signaling to show ahderence to society (Boyer’s works) TODO: handbook of religion (see Koenig’s article) defines religion by enumertaing them! The transcendent is that which is outside of the self, and yet also within the self
Koenig: Religion may also be used to justify hatred, aggression, prejudice, and the exclusion of others; gain power and control over vulnerable individuals (as seen in cults); foster rigid thinking and obsessive practices; lead to anxiety, fear, and excessive guilt over minor infractions (and even self-mutilation in some cases); produce psychosocial strains due to failure to live up to high religious standards; lead to escape from dealing with family problems (through excessive involvement in religious or spiritual activities); and delay diagnosis and effective mental health care (due to antagonistic relationships with mental health professionals). While R/S is not a panacea, on the balance, it is generally associated with greater well-being, improved coping with stress, and better mental health.
Moral Values
We now turn to the positive effects that religion has on society. Here, the picture is much less clear than in what concerns the positive effects on the individual. In fact, we will argue that, from a Humanist perspective, the effects of religion on society are often more harmful than beneficial.
We start with one of the main arguments that are often brought forward in favor of religion: the moral framework that religion provides. The moral framework tells people what to do and what to avoid. This has several advantages: First, it guides society. It tells people that they should not steal, kill, and injure. This is the very basis of any society. Second, a religious moral framework provides legal security. Religious frameworks typically evolve very little over time. Thereby, they provide a constant that people can rely on. Finally, religious moral frameworks come with a divine authority that no secular framework can hope to obtain. They also usually come with a supernatural supervisor to check compliance to the rules, as well as with punishment in the hereafter if that compliance is not given. With this, religious moral frameworks are a formidable tool to impose ethical behavior on a society.
A Humanist perspective
Humanists have a different perspective on religious moral frameworks. They first note that the interpersonal moral values that religions promote are not actually linked to any of today’s religions. The rule not to steal, kill, and injure is not specific to some religion. As we have seen before, such moral frameworks have existed for millennia, across all regions of this world, before any of today’s larger religions existed. Such frameworks also arise spontaneously in any group of people who have to make do with each other. It would thus be wrong to credit religion with establishing these values.
On the contrary actually, today’s Western values have actually little to do with the values of any of the major religions: Human Rights, Freedom of Religion, Women’s Rights, Democracy, Republicanism, environmentalism, and Freedom of Speech have not been been invented by religion. These values have actually been developed largely in opposition to religion. It is thus false to credit that religion with it.
Besides, some religions support not just values that are beneficial to society, but also values that are disastrous. We have already discussed the obsession with the supernatural in the moral systems of the older Abrahamic religions, which promotes obedience to rules for their own sake rather than for the avoidance of harm. And indeed, in the past, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have lent their weight to slavery. Christianity has supported the crusades and the colonization of the Americas and Africa; Islam has supported the conquest of large swaths of land to create an intercontinental empire. Non-Abrahamic religions have their share of moral problems, too: Hinduism has supported (and to some degree still does support) the caste system. Still today, most denominations of Christianity, traditional Judaism, mainstream Islam, the Bahai Faith, mainstream Hinduism, Theravada Buddhism, and mainstream Confucianism give less rights to women. The mainstream interpretations of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Confucianism prohibit interfaith marriage. Most major religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the Bahai Faith, Buddhism, Confucianism) shun homosexuality in their mainstream interpretations. The scriptures of Catholicism, Islam, and Hinduism have nothing to say against child marriage, and most major religions punish or shun apostasy and blasphemy.
Humanists draw two lessons from this: first, any religion that today promotes these values, or that did promote such values in the past, discredits itself as a guarantor of morality in Humanist eyes. How could one delegate moral questions to a religion that once justified slavery, Humanists ask, or that still today advocates values such as the subordination of women or homophobia? Believers can argue that these interpretations of their faith are or were erroneous. Humanists can counter that the divine scriptures of a given religion have always been the same, across all centuries and across all continents. If these scriptures can be misinterpreted in such a fundamental way so as to justify slavery, then these scriptures are just no good as a moral guideline. Consider, e.g., Article 4 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”[Human Rights § 4]. How can this be misinterpreted to allow for slavery? And if it cannot, then which moral guideline is superior?
In all fairness, slavery was once allowed also in secular systems. And this brings us to the second lesson that Humanists draw: Secular law is what it is today because it evolved. Arriving at the values that we consider fundamental today took centuries of struggle between different powers, interest groups, and philosophies. And it would be pretentious to assume that this struggle is over now — just as it would have been pretentious two hundred years ago to assume that the last word on morality had been spoken. If we cement the values of today with religion, then we risk making the same mistake today that people made two hundred years ago. The only remedy against making such mistakes, Humanists hold, is to subject our moral values continuously to questions, critique, and proposals for change. These are, coincidentally, the things that religions, with their insistence on eternal values, are particularly bad at.
All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.
Contribution to Culture
A common argument in the West goes that religion has made extraordinary contributions to culture: A large part of our art is religiously inspired. Much of our finest music was composed by deeply religious people. Churches, temples, and mosques belong to the most impressive architectural achievements of humanity. Most notably, some cathedrals took generations to build. They could never have been completed if people had not believed in something that transcends their own life span.
Religion has inspired not just architecture, music, poetry, books, and paintings, but also philosophy, the laws, individual rights, and our social order in general.
A Humanist perspective
In the “Cusco School” in Peru, Indigenous artists were forced to copy postcards with Christian motives (bottom right).Picture taken in the Museo Pedro de Osma in Lima, Peru
Humanists remark that religious cultural contributions are so prevalent because all other contributions were suppressed for a long time of history. In the Christian world, activities outside the religious frame were for a long time either unpopular or dangerous or both. It is thus not surprising that any artwork, and any expression of thought that we see from places dominated by Christianity follows Christian leitmotifs. Therefore, we cannot credit the religion with these contributions to culture. On the contrary, we have to blame the religion for suppressing all non-religious contributions. The result of this suppression is deplorable, as we have argued before: Most artworks from Christian Medieval times focus exclusively on Biblical stories, with Jesus' death being a particularly popular (and ultimately repulsive) motive. There are hardly any depictions of the beauty of nature, for example. All expressions of femininity were channeled onto the virgin Mary and other puritanical women — what a loss!
The situation in Muslim lands was not much better. All historical interpretations of Islam condemned apostates to death. Hence, all artwork had to happen necessarily inside the frame given by the religion. And this frame was even more restrictive than Christianity’s: due to Islam’s prohibition to draw people or nature, artists were restricted to the use of stylized plants or geometrical forms37. Thus, Islamic art concentrated almost exclusively on patterns, geometric forms, and calligraphy of Quranic verses. No portraits of people; no drawing of landscapes, villages, or families; no caricatures and not even comic strips. The performing arts, likewise, did not find large-scale acceptance in Islamic culture. Islam took a very dim view on theater plays and dancing shows — mainly because women, leading a life of seclusion, could not play an active part in them38. Traditional interpretations of Islam prohibited (and still prohibit) music and singing altogether, except for religious purposes39, as stipulated by the Sharia[Reliance of the Traveler: r40]. Expressions of female beauty were, and to a large degree still are4041, unwelcome in public in many Muslim countries. So no female beauty, no music, no dancing, no theater, and no paintings of nature or people — how can one celebrate such restrictions as an advancement of culture?
All of this is not to say that there is no noteworthy Christian or Muslim cultural contributions at all. Cathedrals and mosques, for example, belong to the finest architecture we have today. Furthermore, religion remains an important source of inspiration — for composers, for painters, for architects, and for philosophers alike. This inspiration may even reach atheists, as the present book testifies. Religion has thus not lost its inspirational force. It has just lost its exclusive claim to it.
In a world without religion, Michaelangelo might have been free to paint something more interesting.
Charity
Charity is one of the Five Pillars of Islam
in the Blue Mosque in Kazan/Russia
Religions typically reach out to the poor and disadvantaged. In Germany, the US, and Ireland, for example, religious organizations provide social services. They run hospitals, senior citizen homes, kindergardens, and social centers. In many countries, religious charities also run soup kitchens, charity stores, rehabilitation centers, homeless hostels, and overnight warming stations. In developing countries, they are often at forefront in the fight against poverty, warfare, famines, or epidemics — often under the most adversarial circumstances. In some places, where the state is not rich enough, not powerful enough, or entirely absent, religious charities are the only ones that provide such services. The people who work in these charities draw their strength also from their faith.
With such services, religion makes a material contribution to the welfare of society.
A Humanist Perspective
Humanists are critical of religious schools and hospitals in Germany and the US, for three reasons. First, these institutions are run by religious organizations, but, contrary to public perception, financed by the government. The religious organization thus acts as a paid service provider. This means that the taxpayer’s money de facto pays for an advertising campaign for these religions. The second problem is that the religious organizations will implement the service in a way that conforms to their values, and that these values are often at odds with the values of the state. As examples, consider the debate in Germany whether Catholic hospitals can administer the anti-baby pill to rape victims42, the cases in Ireland where a religious hospital refused an abortion to a woman whose life was in danger43, the debate in the US whether school vouchers subsidize religious schools that condemn homosexuality44, the debate in Germany whether religious employers may discriminate against employees of a different religion45, or the debate whether creationism should be taught in school. In such cases, the religious organization does not even fully provide the service it is being paid for. Finally, religious organizations use their services also to promote their own ideology. Children, people in distress, and the old are particularly vulnerable to such advances. Thus, the state de facto supports the proselytism of the religion.
This last reproach carries over to other religious charities: these charities also always promote the ideology of their religion. This can be very explicit, as in religious schools or kindergardens. It can also be subtle, by merely advertising the brand of the religion together with the provided service. Therefore, from a Humanist perspective, it would be better if the charity were provided by a neutral organization.
The red cross symbol has led to so many unwelcome assocations with religion that the Red Cross Movement has adopted an additional, neutral symbol: The Red Crystal (seriously).CC0 Denelson83
Fortunately, there exist numerous such neutral organizations: The largest charity, for example, is the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Despite its allusion to the Christian Cross and the Muslim Crescent, the organization is entirely secular. Nothing in its principles or statutes mentions God, Christianity or Islam. Even its symbol is not intended to be religious46. The same applies to the other huge charities: Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders, and the charity organizations of the United Nations (like UNICEF) are entirely secular.
For private charitable foundations, the picture is not much different: Of the 10 wealthiest charitable foundations, only 1 is religious (The Church Commissioners for England, which manages historic property assets of the Church of England, and pays clergy pensions). The others are mostly driven by companies or rich individuals: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Mastercard Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, or the Ford Foundation are examples. They sponsor education, research, medicine, health, or child care. In the developed world, the efforts by churches are in any way dwarfed by their secular counterparts. No religion could have decimated hunger, disease, illiteracy, war, homicide, or poverty on the scales that the implementation of Enlightenment principles have47.
Thus, religion does not have a monopoly on charity. On the contrary, a large part of charitable work takes place outside religion. There is thus no need to bind charity to a religious organization.
Priests are not primarily concerned with good works. If that were their highest priority, they would become doctors, scientists, teachers, or artists — not priests.
A package
A religion offers not just moral guidelines, but an entire package of life principles, which include charitable values, a community, a cultural dimension, rites, legends, beliefs, and a meaning of life. This way, religion offers a coherent whole, which covers most aspects of everyday life — literally from the cradle to the grave. The value of this package is greater than the sum of its parts: it is a complete guideline to life. In this system, everything fits together, and everything makes sense. There are no moral, metaphysical, or philosophical questions left open.
It is true that some of the metaphysical arguments of religion, and even some of its moral values, are debatable (as we have not hesitated to point out before). However, these are, in the view of believers, necessary and ultimately minor evils. Religion, as a package, has brought moral values, philosophical clarity, and social structure to so many societies that one should not worry about the details of religious dogmata, but rather appreciate the work that religion as a whole has done to domesticate mankind.
In any case, religion is just a vehicle to convey a higher message. Rather than explaining ever-changing theories of scientific discovery, moral philosophy, and metaphysics to a person who might not even be able to read, religion is a single package that transmits a simple message that can be understood by everyone. As Demopheles argues in Arthur Schopenhauer’s “Dialog about Religion”48, religion is like a jug, which is just a tool to transport the water. Don’t break the jug if you want to carry the water.
A Humanist perspective
Humanists argue that we should not praise the jug if all we want is the water. That water can very well be carried in any other jug (or in a pipeline, for that matter). Hiding behind the claim of an ultimately helpful message is just a trick to avoid criticism, according to Humanists. Religion should not be allowed to promote its harmful aspects, such as homophobia, subordination of women, or claims of knowledge of the divine will, under the guise of transmitting some higher message. And indeed, in Schopenhauer’s dialog, Demopheles' interlocutor replies: Untruth may never serve as a vehicle for truth. If we permit untruth to be taught, and be it with good intentions, we open the door to malicious abuse at devastating scale — which is indeed what happens with religions.
Fortunately, Humanism itself is now old enough to also qualify as a coherent whole. Humanism provides moral values, a philosophy of life, a scientific dimension, and a political standpoint. All of these fit together and work in tandem. Together, the core values of Humanism (science, democracy, uninhibited inquiry, Human Rights, and liberal egalitarian ethics) have brought more equality, more knowledge, more health, and more prosperity to more people than any of the previous systems. This makes Humanism a comprehensive life stance in its own right.
Different from religions, though, Humanism is not a monolithic ideology. Humanism is open to improvement and criticism (as the present book testifies on several occasions). Humanism accepts that values evolve, and holds that it is up to all of us, together, to explore how we can make life better for more people. One of the keys in this endeavor is, according to Humanists, education. So, rather than finding ways to convey a message to under-educated people, Humanism holds that we should educate these people in the first place.
In the dark, it is good to take a blind man as guide.
But you should let go of him by the day.
Better society
Religions want their followers to be generous, honest, peaceful and healthy. Therefore, we would expect religious people to fare better overall than non-religious people. By extension, countries were religion is considered important should overall be doing better than more secular countries.
This is, however, not the case. With a few notable exceptions (the US and the gulf economies), the countries that are more religious are usually the countries that are economically less developed49. Such countries tend to be more corrupt, poorer, less developed, less democratic, and less peaceful than the developed countries, and they generally have a lower life expectancy as well. Thus, religious countries fare worse than secular ones on nearly all socio-economic measures, simply because religiousness correlates with less economic development.
The reasons for this correlation are up to debate. We have argued before that it is not necessarily religiousness that causes poverty, but rather poverty that generates religiousness: the less secure one’s environment is, the more one feels the need to appeal to the supernatural. Hence, people in crime-ridden, war-torn, and famine endangered places are more religious than people who spend their life by alternating between the office chair and the sofa.
However, we have also observed that religion itself might contribute some of the factors that make life difficult in the less developed places: For example, the denigration of women has a direct negative impact on 50% of the population. The focus on rituals instead of health, good government, or literacy has set the priorities wrong. The estrangement that religious belief generates between the different communities may be a contributing factor in over half of the world’s most deadly conflicts. In some religions, the insistence on producing children contributes to the overpopulation, and thus ultimately to the undernourishment, in these regions.
This is not to say that a country that is religious is necessarily faring badly on all socio-economic accounts. However, it is to refute the claim that if a country is religious, it automatically does well. This link is just not true. And this is the elephant in the room: Despite all the good things that religion claims to promote, and despite the considerable power that it wields over society, it just does not make society better. It just does not work.
Religions are like wisdom teeth.
Even though they were crucial to our ancestors, today they are unnecessary, and they bring nothing but frustration and pain. Also, they provide us with no wisdom.
Happier society
We have argued that religiousness does not increase socio-economic measures such as longevity, freedom from corruption, or economic development. However, religion makes people happy. This is ultimately what matters, a believer can argue.
Unfortunately, this argument does not work either. A UN study has measured happiness across countries in the world50. It shows that the most happy countries are all non-religious. The most unhappy countries, in contrast, are all very religious:
Position
Country
Happiness
Religiousness
1
Denmark
7.8
Least religious
2
Finland
7.6
Least religious
3
Norway
7.5
Least religious
4
Netherlands
7.5
Least religious
5
Canada
7.5
Less religious
6
Switzerland
7.5
Less religious
7
Sweden
7.4
Least religious
8
New Zealand
7.4
Least religious
9
Australia
7.4
Least religious
10
Ireland
7.3
Less religious
...
146
Congo (Brazz.)
3.8
Most religious
147
Tanzania
3.8
Most religious
148
Haiti
3.8
?
149
Comoros
3.7
?
150
Burundi
3.7
Most religious
151
Sierra Leone
3.6
Most religious
152
Central African Rep.
3.6
Most religious
153
Benin
3.5
More religious
154
Togo
3.0
More religious
Happiness is the average happiness on a scale from 0-10 according to the UN World Happiness Report, read off approximately from the graphics provided there50. Religiosity is on a 5 point scale according to a Gallup poll49.
As the UN report explains, 80% of the inter-country differences in happiness can be attributed to the same few reasons: the material, social, and institutional support that the country provides. Comparing the top four to the bottom four countries, average income is the most stunning difference: it differs by a factor of 40. Thus, in defiance of a common mantra, happiness quite plainly correlates with wealth. This is true both on the individual level and on the national level: people who are richer than their compatriots are happier, and people who live in richer countries are happier overall47. The other differences between the top-ranked countries and the bottom-ranked ones are: healthy life expectancy is 28 years greater, people are much more likely to have someone to call on in times of trouble (95% vs. 48%), to have a sense of freedom (94% vs. 63%), and are less likely to perceive widespread corruption in business and government (33% vs. 85%). This suggests that it is not religion that makes people happy or not, but overall country performance.
Overall country performance, however, is heavily correlated to less religiousness. If we wanted to take correlation for causation, then we should rather all become less religious.
Happiness will ultimately come from the path you carve for yourself, the people you surround yourself with (and choose to love), and the acceptance of situations you cannot change (i.e., your ability to move on). But none of these can happen if you don’t have enough to eat and adequate shelter, and if you don’t take care of yourself.
More spiritual society
We have seen that religious countries are less happy than secular ones. Furthermore, they are less well developed on nearly all socio-economic accounts. A common objection goes that religious societies may fare better on accounts that are not so easily measurable. Consider, e.g., the care for the poor, the stability of families, or altruism — criteria that cannot be measured in dollars or on a scale from 0 to 10. Apart from this, religions make people appreciate the grandness of creation, guide them towards a less materialistic life, give them spiritual fulfillment, and bring them closer to God. This, in turn, makes religious societies more aware of the transcendent dimension of life.
All of these items can be considered advantages of religious societies. Yet, even in combination, they do not outweigh the advantages of secular societies. It is true that elderly people often lead a lonely life in secular countries. In return, they also live around 20 years longer. It is true that secular people may be less altruistic than religious people. In return, secular societies have better socio-economic indicators and better welfare systems, meaning that less people need other people’s help to survive. In Germany for example, only 0.4% of the general population live on public social support51. As a consequence, very few people in the developed world would want to swap their life with a person in the developing world — notwithstanding all the talk of spiritual fulfilment that poor people in developing countries supposedly enjoy. All the discussion of closeness to God, or a more happy, nature-oriented, or spiritual life in religious countries cannot hide the fact that life in these countries is worse on almost all accounts. This is why many more people emigrate into secular countries than into religious countries. People vote with their feet.
In view of these facts, the admiration of religious societies appears to be little more than a nostalgic idealization.
A Humanist View
This chapter has drawn up a paradox: religion can be beneficial for the individual, but it can be impeding or even harmful for the development of a society — or at least it does not lead to healthier or happier societies at the global scale.
Humanism offers a simple reply to this paradox: everyone should be free to practice their religion, but it should be kept out of politics. People should have every freedom to engage in prayer, their religious community, their dietary restrictions, and their belief in the afterlife, but religion should not impact the government, laws, or other people in general. As it so happens, this is the compromise that secular countries have struck: they guarantee freedom of religion, but implement the separation of state and church.
This separation alone does not bring prosperity, to be sure. However, it allows at least identifying the factors that religion puts in its way. That is already a good start. Beyond that, the milestones on the way to a happy, healthy, and economically developed society are well known: corruption, cronyism, and crime have to be reduced; people need to be given a voice in the governing of their country, so that the government has legitimacy to rule; foreign debt has to be reduced or forgiven; the rule of law has to be established firmly; freedom of speech has to be guaranteed, so that people can point out problems in the system; flows of weapons to militias have to be interrupted; red tape has to be reduced; schools, universities, and hospitals have to be built; women have to be given equal rights; foreign companies that extract commodities at the expense of the local environment and local population have to be taxed or booted out; infrastructure has to be built; a viable economy have to be constructed; climate change has to be fought; and, as this book has argued, regions that do not wish to belong to the central government should be let go as independent countries. A happy life thus depends on much more than a religion (or even Humanism) can deliver.
We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.
