Introduction
Stupidity
Religions and ideologies and active harm
The dangers of non-resistance to active harm
The dangers of toleranceSee also my aphorisms on
Religion, ideology and honesty
Introduction
I was a Christian for about two years, in my late teens, but sufficiently
committed to Christianity to study theology for a year. Since then, I've had
no doubts at all - Christianity and all the other religions are false and
harmful but so too are many of the alternatives to the religions of the
world.
I stress here the necessity of {adjustment}. There are still
old-fashioned atheists who regard Christianity as the most harmful
force in the world today, ignoring the need for {modification} of
attitude. In the twentieth century, fascism and Stalinism completely
eclipsed Christianity as a threat to body and mind. (This phrase is a concise
way of expressing my conviction that harmful forces may threaten not just
the body, by killing and injuring, but the mind, by threatening free thought
and free expression, including artistic expression as well as intellectual
expression.) Threats to the mind are of no account to many people. If
beliefs are deluded but the people holding them are 'harmless' (not
terrorists, not advocates of indiscriminate violence), then this is of no
account.
In the twenty-first
century Christianity is negligible as a threat to the body whilst the dangers of
Islamism have become obvious, to anyone with any sense and
{adjustment} is needed to recognize these changing realities. But it isn't
enough to recognize the chief threats, there has to be quantification of the
threats. Even radical, terror-supporting Islamism is obviously far less of a threat to body than fascism or
Stalinism in the past, (to concentrate attention here on how large-scale the
threat is). Its outrages are horrific but localized. No Islamic state or
terrorist organization has perpetrated a fraction of the atrocities
inflicted by Nazi Germany, again, despite the horrific atrocities they have
inflicted, in part because Islamism generally seems to
be incompatible with highly developed economies, social organizations and
scientific and technological expertise. When an Islamic state is an
exception to this - Iran is the prime example now - then the potential
threat to body is immense.
Dangers to body, from terrorism, or
nuclear warheads, if Iran develops them and launches them without being
forestalled, are only one danger. Islamists, not just Islamists and
Islamists who condone terrorism but peaceful and law-abiding Islamists too,
very often, are a threat to freedoms of mind.
The need for a
((survey)) is obvious, however, and the need to practise {resolution}. There
are many, many Muslims who pose no threat to body or mind. Muslims in the
Balkans often belong to this category, for example.
Stupidity
'For Christianity and all existing creeds Hume
had, and always displayed, the greatest contempt: and he used the
attribution of orthodoxy as a standard form of abuse. Writing for instance,
to his old friend, the Moderate minister, Hugh Blair, Hume referred to the
English as 'relapsing fast into the deepest stupidity, Christianity and
ignorance.' (From Richard Wollheim's introduction to 'Hume on Religion,'
which includes 'Dialogues concerning Natural Religion' and other essays by
David Hume.)
When Hume wrote these words, and for many centuries before, stupidity took the form of Christianity more often than not
in this country and the rest of Europe. In a largely post-Christian age, stupidity more often takes
other, secular, forms. Many of the English, and other nations, have relapsed
fast into the deepest stupidity and ignorance which are completely
unreligious. Even so, the prevalence of Christian stupidity in the United
States can't be ignored.
One of the post-Christian stupidities -
there are many more - is extreme hedonistic stupidity. A sticker seen on a car
near here: 'If it's not fun, don't do it.' (The temptation was strong to go
home, print out a large poster and stick it on one of the car doors,
the poster containing just these words: 'If removing this poster isn't
fun, don't remove it.)
'The non-religious sentiment of the sticker is
ridiculous, infantile in its view of the world, hopelessly unformed and
mindless. The defence that it's nothing but a little fun in itself won't
work. There are many, many people who believe it, believe in it, or
something ridiculous and infantile but less stupidly ridiculous and
infantile. If very many people followed it - but that would be
impossible - then societies of any worth would be impossible.
Religious people have included many, many mawkish sentimentalists, but they
have often had a view of the world which is strenous, which recognizes
duties, such as caring for the sick even when the duties involved no gain
for the carer, let alone 'fun.' The objections to 'If it's not fun, don't do
it' are obvious and include the objection that when people who believe this
fall sick, they will be looked after by people with very different views.
Secular views, like religious views, may be clueless, secularists, like
religous people, may be clueless.
Richard Wollheim, on Hume's
attitude to the ignorant: 'He was convinced that the ignorant ... would
always have their superstitions: it might be possible to liberate them from
this illusion or that, but it would only be replaced by anothecr. 'In a
future age,' he wrote, à propos of the doctrine of transubstantiation
[to people unfamiliar with the Catholic doctrine, the notion that during the
Mass, the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ -
not symbolically but in actual fact the body and blood of Christ] 'it will
probably become difficult to persuade some nations, that any human
two-legged creature could ever embrace such principles.' Then with
characteristic wryness he added, 'And it is a thousand to one, but these
nations themselves shall have something full as absurd in their own creed,
to which they will give a most implicit and most religious assent.'
Since Hume wrote, the creeds have usually been of an informal kind.
Stupidity has often been too vague-minded for inclusion in a creed. Hume
seems not to have anticipated the stupidity of non-Christian and
post-Christian beliefs, which now dominate our world - or the dangerousness
of non-Christian and post-Christian beliefs.
Religions and ideologies and active harm Hume, writing in the 'Treatise concerning Human
Understanding' (Quoted in Richard Wollheim's introduction): 'Generally
speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only
ridiculous.'
A partial updating of Hume's view: the errors in
religion are dangerous but the most dangerous errors come from non-religious
ideologies. In the past, the most dangerous errors have been Nazism and
Communism, and of communist ideologies, particularly Stalinist communism.
The most dangerous ideologies are those which don't regard economic matters,
technological matters, practical matters in general as of lesser importance,
but which regard them as matters of prestige. The other-worldly aspects of
religion, the stress upon ritual or correct thinking or a holy book, and all
the other varied characteristics of religions, have lessened their capacity
for causing harm. The cruelties of Christianity, such as the Inquisition,
the cruelties of radical Islamism, such as the punisments allowed by Shariah law, are restrained in
scale in
comparison with the savagery of Nazism and Stalinism, or the atrocities
committed by such regimes as those of Pol Pot in Cambodia and the Japanese
during the Second World War.
The dangers of non-resistance to active harm
It would be a great mistake to suppose that only religious beliefs which
are aggressive or grossly intolerant are dangerous, that religious beliefs
which are placid and tolerant can never be dangerous, or that philosophical
beliefs can never be dangerous - with {restriction} of attention here to
physical dangers, the dangers to body. Only a little thought and reflection
are needed to realize that Buddhism and Quaker beliefs (which are
peripherally religious) can be potentially dangerous and actually
dangerous. This is for the reason that any set of beliefs, religious or
otherwise, which fails to recognize and to act against dangers by giving
support to inaction is itself dangerous. If ruthless militarism is a great
danger, so is pacifism in the face of ruthless militarism.
The dangers of tolerance
Even tolerance can be dangerous, as is increasingly recognized. Giving
sanctuary to the persecuted is noble but giving sanctuary to the persecuted
who would be only too glad to persucute themselves, given the chance, is
usually very mistaken. To distinguish between people worthy of a safe haven
in a liberal democracy and people who aren't in the least an asset to a
liberal democracy, who are a threat to a liberal democracy, may be very
difficult, but the attempt has to be made.
A name has to be given to
the practice of ultra-realistic non-tolerance of gross extremism.
'Non-tolerance' is better than 'intolerance,' but I prefer to make use again
of the concept of {adjustment}. On a personal level, benefactors who are
punched in the face by people they have helped substantially, at real cost
to themselves, practise {modification} of attitude or behaviour, if they
have any sense. (Many benefactors do have sense, but not all.) This
{modification} is what I refer to as {adjustment}.
