Against All Gods

Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness

A C Grayling

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781849433112
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Athéisme

Do religions have an inherent right to be respected? Is atheism itself a form of religion, and can there be such a thing as a 'fundamentalist atheist'? Are we witnessing a global revival in religious zeal, or do the signs point instead to religion's ultimate decline?
In a series of bold, unsparing polemics, A.C. Grayling tackles these questions head on, exposing the dangerous unreason he sees at the heart of religious faith and highlighting the urgent need we have to reject it in all its forms, without compromise. In its place he argues for a set of values based on reason, reflection and sympathy, taking his cue from the great ethical tradition of western philosophy.

1

Introduction

DOES RELIGION DESERVE RESPECT? I argue that it deserves no more respect than any other viewpoint, and not as much as most.

Is religion really resurgent, or is this an illusion masking the real truth, that we are witnessing its death throes? I argue that, all appearances to the contrary, we might well be witnessing its demise.

What are the real meanings of ‘atheist,’ ‘secularist’ and ‘humanist’? The words denote importantly different concepts, but get bandied about as if they were synonyms. I seek to explain them properly here.

Religious apologists charge the non-religious with being ‘fundamentalist’ if they attack religion too robustly, without seeming to notice the irony of employing, as a term of abuse, a word which principally applies to the too-common tendencies of their own outlook. Can a view which is not a belief but a rejection of a certain kind of belief really be ‘fundamentalist’? Of course not; but there is more to be said too.

And: what is a humanist ethical outlook, apart from being one that does not start from belief in supernatural agencies? I sketch the outlines of this rich, warm and humane view in the concluding essay here, to offer the alternative to a religious outlook, an alternative that comes from the great tradition of Western philosophy.

Public debate about matters of moment takes place mainly in newspapers and magazines and on radio and television, and the nature of these media imposes limits on how long (not very long), how detailed (not very detailed) and how complicated (not very complicated) contributions to the debate can be. This often has the effect of over-simplifying and polarising matters too far, but it need not: it is not impossible to make one’s case economically and clearly, though it is inevitable that those who cannot tell the difference between a concise and intelligible expression of a view, on the one hand, and on the other a merely simple and even simplistic view, like to call the former the latter if they disagree with it. Such is life.

The six polemical essays to follow, and the concluding essay outlining what a non-religious ethics looks like, all began life as journalistic contributions – with aspirations to concision and clarity – to the debate society is currently having with itself about religion. I subscribe to a non-religious outlook, and criticise religions both as belief systems and as institutional phenomena which, as the dismal record of history and the present both testify, have done and continue to do much harm to the world, whatever good can be claimed for them besides. The debate has become an acerbic one – and worse: some contributors to it have their say with bombs – but the following thought governs my own part in it: that all who have secure grounds for their views should not be afraid of robust challenge and criticism; if they are confident in their views they should be able to shrug off satire and mockery. The more insecure people are, the less confident they feel, the less mature their outlook is, the angrier they are made by what they label ‘offence’ to their religious sensitivities – even to the point of violence. They undermine and refute themselves thus.

Apologists for faith are an evasive community, who seek to avoid or deflect criticism by slipping behind the abstractions of higher theology, a mist-shrouded domain of long words, superfine distinctions and vague subtleties, in some of which God is nothing (‘no-thing, not-a-thing’) and does not even exist (‘but is still the condition of the possibility of existence’ – one could go on) – in short, sophistry, as it would be called by those who have attempted a study of real masterworks of philosophy, for example in the writings of Aristotle and Kant. But those who would escape into clouds of theology for their defence miss the point made by religion’s critics. The great mass of religious folk believe in something far more basic and traditional than the vaporous inventions of theology, and it is on this that they repose their trust, and for which some – too many – kill and die (‘faith is what I die for, dogma is what I kill for’). Moreover, the deeply forested hideaways of theology start from the same place as ordinary superstitious faith, so laying an axe to this root brings it down too.

But religion is not theology; it is the practice and outlook of ordinary people into most of whom supernaturalistic beliefs and superstitions were inculcated as children when they could not assess the value of what they were being sold as a world view; and it is the falsity of this, and its consequences for a suffering world, that critics attack.

This applies also to those who point to the comfort and solace religions bring to the lonely, the old, the fearful and the ill, even – they sometimes say – if it is false. Well: leave aside the comfort and solace brought to the suicide bomber who thinks he has earned all his family a free pass to heaven, and himself the posthumous ministrations of seventy-two ever-renewing virgins, and think only of the comfort religions provide ‘even if false’. Would we tolerate the government telling us comforting lies about, say, an accident at a nuclear plant, or a spillage of deadly viruses from a laboratory? No? Then comforting lies have their limits. More importantly, is truth less important than comfort, even for the lonely and afraid? Are there not truthful ways to comfort them from the resources of human compassion? There certainly are. Given the crucial, inestimable, ultimate value of truth, would these not be far better than lies, however comforting? They certainly would.

And art – Raphael’s Madonnas, Bach’s sacred cantatas, exquisitely decorated psalters and Qu’rans, York Minster and the Blue Mosque of Istanbul – where would art be without religion? It would be exactly where it is now. Art is the outpouring of the human heart; its skill is human skill, it is the effulgence of the creativity, delight, passion and yearning of the human mind. When our gods were dogs and cats, in Egypt, people made exquisite effigies of dogs and cats, and painted them in their elegance on tomb walls. When gods lived in the clouds on Olympus, people built wonderful temples with marvellously wrought reliefs around their pediments, depicting Athene and Hermes, Zeus and Apollo. Since the Renaissance when patrons other than the church were wealthy enough to commission nudes, landscapes, portraits, ...