By Edgar Pearlstein
Is religion a force for good or for evil? There is evidence both
ways, and I don't know how to balance the pluses and minuses.
Certainly religion provides comfort to many people, and
perhaps gets some to behave more ethically than they might
otherwise. Religions have inspired many great works of art,
architecture, and music. They have sponsored charitable,
medical, and educational institutions.
On the other hand, religion is divisive and provides impetus
for discrimination, cruelty, family breakup, and persecution
toward those of different religion. Religion is a medium
for some people's hypocrisy. Even murder and child neglect
are sometimes ordered by the god.
I am reminded of a quote from Steven Weinberg (Nobel laureate
in physics): “With or without religion, good people
can behave well and bad people can do evil — but for
good people to do evil — that takes religion.”
People fight and die over religious holy places, some of
which are claimed by more than one religion, as in Jerusalem
and India.
In some cases religion makes people miserable through arbitrary
rules, such as those about divorce, birth control, shunning,
and limitations on medical care.
There are also some large-scale horrors to which religion
contributed: wars, pogroms, crusades, jihads, persecutions,
inquisitions, witch hunts. We have seen these things in old
history and some continue today.
Here are just a few of the many examples we have had in
very recent times: In the countries of former Yugoslavia,
there were Catholic Croats, Orthodox Christian Serbs, and
Muslims all at each other. In Lebanon, it was Christian Arabs
(supported by Israel) versus Muslim Arabs in a terrible civil
war. In India, it is Sikhs and Hindus fighting over a holy
place.
Almost every modern religion has at times been the perpetrator
and at other times the victim of such evils.
Religion has served as justification, if not the real reason,
for slavery, colonialism, and even cruelty to animals.
On another level, it can be argued that religions tend to
discourage people from thinking independently and clearly.
For religions insist on the Truth of ancient stories and
superstitions regardless of any evidence or reasoning that
appeared since their origin. The religious mindset of smug
rectitude and superiority gets in the way of a mindset toward
justice and reason.
“The simple faith of a child”, sometimes glorified
by religious people, can be charming in a young child, but
is disgraceful in an intelligent adult.
There are many what if questions one can pose (but
not answer). Here are a few:
What would the world be like now if there had never been
the Crusades, or the Spanish Inquisition?
How different would the United States be today if there
had never been religious persecutions in other countries,
which sent so many of our ancestors here?
What would the UK be like if Henry VIII hadn't broken
so bitterly with the Catholic Church?
What would India-Pakistan be like if there had been no
religion-based partition?
How would the world be different if there had not been
the religious motivations of people like Mother Theresa,
Martin Luther King, and Albert Schweitzer?
Where would scholarship be now if churches hadn't founded
such great universities as Harvard and Oxford?
Would we have the music of Johann Sebastian Bach if he
hadn't been employed by a church?
Most of this article concerned the past, which, of course,
we are powerless to change. A more important question is: Will
religion be a force for good or evil in the future?
The author is Professor of Physics, Emeritus,
at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
©Text by Edgar Pearlstein, 2004 |