Of course it’s wrong to say that religion is the source of all evil – that excludes nationalism. OK, I’m kidding, the causes of evil are endless and no single two or three or hundred things can be attributed to it.

But having said that, I think the relationship of religion and evil is not simply a matter of “Yes, religion is one of the factors causing evil”, I think while religion causes some evil, its evil is exclusive to it. I think we can safely argue that if it were not for religion, a great portion of that evil would not exist. This might remind you of this Steven Weinberg quote (via Goodreads):

“Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

This is a quote that my friend Dan Fincke found objectionable, as he expressed this objection in a recent interview he gave, but he had also had written an article earlier tackling the same subject, called Oh You Can Get Good People To Do Bad Things Without Religion Alright.

The point he makes is reasonable. Of course, I do think he is being a bit uncharitable on Weinberg, as I’m sure Weinberg would agree with the nuances he introduces to the discussion, and that statement was made in an oral interview (I’ve watched it), and therefore Weinberg didn’t really have the time to polish and add all the nuances. However, since my main problem with religion, the very reason I’m opposed to religion, is embodied in this quote, but with added nuance, I’ll tackle this article point by point, trying to make my case clear.

I’m not writing this to disagree with Dan – his points are valid. I’m using his valid points to make another point.

At first he says:

First, it’s difficult to define a “good” person from an “evil” person when we’re talking about two people who do evil. Apparently we are assuming that good is not just as good does, and evil is not just as evil does. I think that’s true. So, how can an otherwise good person do evil and how can we still consider them good even if they do some evil? What is making them still “good”?

That’s completely valid. And I don’t know the answer to that. It’s a question I’ve struggled with all my life, even based a bunch of novels around this question, and still haven’t found a satisfactory answer. Sorry.

However, while the question is intriguing on a personal level, and to look at it with a little distant. While I have always been interested to know if religious extremists put their zeal and commitment into causes like equality and liberty instead of religion they might be the best type of advocates or if not at least harmless people, let’s not dwell on that, and instead take a look at some polls that suggest 85% of Pakistanis support gender segregation at workplace, or that 82% of Egyptians and 70% of Jordanians support stoning of those who commit adultery. [source]

These statistics can mean only two things – either 82% of Egyptians are evil – which I think is implausible – or that they are average (and average means a so-so kind of good) people who for some reason support evil things.

So in this case we see that the question is not that difficult. While evil things on small level will always be a problem – no human can envision a day without murder, rape, or theft – a special kind of evil takes place only on a systematic, institutionalized level, a system which encourages, excuses, and rests upon evil practices, and creates a following who will continue to support these institutions, and to a smaller degree marginalize other people but they do it as the members of that “community”. I think the biggest problem that we face is institutionalized evil, and that evil is created by our social structures – religion, nationalism, authoritarian political ideologies, and different discriminatory systems (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc).

So this is how I want to clarify this part of the question: Good people doing evil should be amended to “Good people fighting for, or supporting, or in any shape or form strengthening evil systems, causes, ideologies, and institutions”. On to the next part of the challenge:

Presumably we are talking about someone whose motives are not malignant. We are talking about someone who is generally conscientious about doing what they perceive to be good and/or someone who has a number of generally pro-social feelings and virtuous character traits that regularly contribute to moral behavior. So, someone who is generally compassionate, honest, fair-minded, courageous, sympathetic, empathetic, generous, dutiful, loving, self-disciplined, etc., etc. What does it take for one of these people, motivated by a desire to do good and to be good, to wind up doing evil? It’s simple. They need only misperceive the evil as the good. And you do not need religion for that.

Again, this is too personal, and too narrow in scope. It’s completely understandable for good people to make errors. And Dan follows this up by examples of error, namely “Moral people can disagree about which normally evil or bad behaviors or actions are justifiable by a greater good”, or “there can be cases in which two apparent moral duties conflict and we have to choose which one overrides the other. Sometimes this choice is made seriously wrongly”, “Otherwise good people can also be weak and do evil things for reasons we can sympathize with, if not condone morally. Sometimes with their backs against the wall or with someone they care about in trouble”, or “Good people can also do evil under the sway of factors for which they may not be morally blameworthy”.

All of these cases have the problem of being completely insignificant in a social and/or political sphere. 82% of Egyptians don’t support stoning because they are making honest philosophical mistakes. I actually bet a majority of them have not even thought about the issue. While I agree with Dan in his other articles that we can use reason to break the ice, the ice itself wasn’t formed in a reasonable fashion. 82% of Egyptians support this because their opinion is a product of the larger political ideology, which is religious in this case. The explanation of this phenomenon is not personal, it’s socio-political, only a socio-political entity can be blamed for it.

This is how Dan wraps up his article:

But if these acts of evil were all we had to worry about, civilization would probably be in fantastic shape. The vast majority of evil done in the world can be attributed to the garden variety misperceptions, miscalculations, ignorance, weakness of will, and/or self-deceptions of basically good and usually well-motivated standard issue human beings acting normally. Were these only problems when religions got a hold of them!

If I have understood this correctly, this means that good people do evil things all the time for the reasons he mentioned, and that religion is not the sole cause. While Dan never leaves the personal sphere and goes to the social sphere (where these discussions of ideology really matter, and have the real and larger impact), one can contend that the significant evil (evil caused by social systems) in comparison to insignificant evil (that one person out of 7 billion has an evil opinion) is still not a product of religion alone, but many other social forces, like nationalism and discriminatory prejudices and authoritarian ideologies.

Which is true. Even if religion is wiped clean, good people will continue to support evil causes.

However, I still think that religion holds a very special and dear place among these evil ideologies. One which justifies giving it an exclusive status, a ticket to the VIP section if you will (and that is what Weinberg meant all along anyway). Religion and evil still have an exclusive relationship, although that exclusivity is not on the part of religion, it’s on the part of evil.

This also addresses the famous theist and theist-friendly argument, “but atheists do evil things too”, which is basically true, and utterly irrelevant. May I remind you that atheism is by no means the same as utopia.

The reason is simple. 82% of Egyptians support stoning. Think of it. This is not “evil” in the general sense, it’s a specific evil. It’s one specific issue. And it can only be attributed to religion. It doesn’t have any other type of justification, it’s a complete anomaly in our time. If you ask people from other cultures “Would you support stoning” a great majority of them would go HOLY FUCK NO.

The same can be said about all the wars fought in the name of religious sects. There is no real difference between Irish Catholics and Protestants or Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis. You can ascribe many geopolitical aspects to this conflicts, but nothing changes the fact that all those factors evolved out of a religion that separated people.

Add to that many things related to sexuality. I had a professor at our sex-ed class telling us that masturbation is unhealthy and male circumcision is healthy. Think of the fight over evolution, and how it would never be challenged so much if not for religion. Think of all the other things that can only be rooted in religion.

Religion is not a source of all evil. Religion is not the only motivation behind evil done by good people. But religion is the source of some exclusive evil, and if theoretically the world is rid of religion, those specific evils disappear.

Good people fail to recognize this, and they refuse to leave or fight religion because religion has survival mechanisms that installs its specific brand of evil and makes it beyond reproach. And there the real danger of religion lies, in the idea of holy.

So, I would rephrase Weinberg’s quote like this:

Without religion, our civilization would be rid of specific forms of harmful evil, because good people would never support them. There would still be evil and good people making mistakes, but some specific forms of evil would cease to be systematic and institutionalized.

That’s why I fight religion.