The play, Inherit the Wind, based on the Scopes “Monkey” Trial (1925), has always riveted me, showcasing a small town school teacher tried in court for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution against the biblical account of creation. It allegorised the dangers of McCarthyism, which has now come to mean ‘the use of unfair allegations and investigative techniques to restrict political dissent’. The play trounces intolerance and injustice among the rabid believers.

When Inherit the Wind was staged in his school, I was surprised to see my 14-year-old son playing the prosecuting attorney Mathew Brady, venomously denouncing all scientific enquiry as blasphemy. It was a convincing parody of draconian Christianity.

Faith neither improves humanity nor strengthens society

I remembered that play yesterday when I came across a research paper on religion and social welfare, stating that faith neither improves humanity nor strengthens society. The researcher found secular societies having a lower violence/crime rate. The less people believed in God, the better their social behaviour. Paradoxically, moral codes are far better maintained in secular societies.

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The study is contemporary but the idea is not new. We know how some ancient schools of Indian philosophy dismissed God as irrelevant while promulgating human virtues. The Jains and Buddhists too felt no need for a God when they established stringent moral codes to promote the well-being of humankind. The Greek world had thinkers who saw nature as a self-contained system without any divine supervisor, while others said that religion was nothing but a bogey to scare people into submission. Stoics and Sophists had little time for God. Socrates was executed by the State for questioning the existence of the gods, and endangering the State by instigating young people into questioning everything.

An atheist?

Sometimes you could be called an atheist if you did not accept a given code. Early Christians were atheists to the pagan Romans, while adherence to Roman gods made you an atheist in Christian Rome.

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How many Renaissance scientists had to suffer inquisition and torture for making their discoveries public! Poor Giordano Bruno who said that stars were distant suns was burnt at the stake, while Galileo, despite stoutly denying his “heretical” heliocentric theories, was kept under house arrest. In 1677 British law ordained death for the atheist. Through the long centuries, it has never been easy to keep the questioning spirit alive when religion held sway.

The galaxy of celebrated freethinkers has mostly consisted of scholars, scientists, artistes and philosophers. They believed that atheism banished illusions and weaknesses, leading humans back to nature and truth. The poet Shelley wrote “The Necessity of Atheism” to support social justice.

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Freedom of thought being the atheist’s central credo, the French philosopher Voltaire declared that he would defend to his death the right of any man to disagree with him. No, we can never hope to hear this principle echoed by any hardcore theist.

Nietzsche announced that ‘God is dead, humanity has killed him’, and Karl Marx saw religion as the opium of the unthinking masses, neither foresaw nor advocated the horrors of Communist regimes. Nor can these atrocities be attributed to their banning religion.

More than ever before

According to recent studies, more people have become non-religious now than ever before, believing that though all religions preach some kind of non-violence, in actuality they promote violence and prejudice.

As hardline Muslim groups threaten large-scale protests if Bangladesh considers dropping Islam as its state religion, I ask myself: instead of feeding ignorance, denying the equality of humankind, weakening intellectual curiosity, increasing anti-social behaviour and racial discrimination, can faith make us wise, free and compassionate? Or is an atheistic stance the only way of ensuring equality and freedom?The author is a playwright, theatre director, musician and journalist