Hitchens' "God is not Great": Chapter Two

“Religion Kills”
His point in this chapter is concentrated on multiplying religious acts of violence. The media has covered muslim aggression very well, and many condemn Islam because of it, but Hitchens expands that idea of violent zealots to include the most venerable Christianity. The Holocaust was predicted by Christianity’s ambiguous and often outright violent outburst against judaism. Worse, Hitchens recounts an episode of a similar treatment of fellow Christians. To say that one is a Croatian is to say that one is a Roman Catholic while saying that one is a Serb means to say that one is a Christian Orthodox. Here I quote Hitchens’:
“In the 1940’s, this a Nazi puppet state, set up in Croatia and enjoying the patronage of the Vatican, which naturally sought to exterminate all jews in the region but also undertook a campaign of forcible conversion directed at the other christian community. Tens of thousands of Orthodox Christians were either slaughtered or deported in consequence, and a vast concentration camp was set up near the town of Jasenovacs. So disgusting was the regime of General Ante Pavelic and his Ustashe party that even many German officers protested at having to be associated with it.”

And Hitchens goes on to discuss how a few decades later the shoe was found on the other foot. What is called “ethnic cleasing”, Hitchens observes, is in fact “religious cleaning”.
Now, he goes on to answer the imaginary counter, which basically associates religion with charity and in fact opposition to such genocides. But of course, he argues, you find the Christian slave-owner as well as Christian abolitionists. But he plays the averages. We all are human. Hitchens chalks such instances of moral behaviour to a common humanity. As he puts it:
“In all cases I have mentioned, there were those who protested in the name of religion and who tried to stand athwart the rising tide of fanaticism and the cult of death. I can think of a handful of priests and bishops and rabbis and imans who have put humanity ahead of their own sect or creed (…) But this is a compliment to humanism, not to religion.”
You can find admirable behaviour both from atheists and theist, but violent behaviours and crusades and inquisitions, in these, the strict sceptic, the strict atheist will not be found. This point was also made by Russell who was appalled by the Ku Klux Klan and Nazism.

On page 18 he tells us how Denis Prager “who is one of America’s better-known religious broadcasters. He challenge me in public to answer what he called a ‘straight yes/no question’, and I happily agreed. Very well, he said. I was to imagine myself in a strange city as the evening was comming on.Toward me I was to imagine that I saw a large group of men approching. Now-- would I feel safer, or less safe, if I was to learn that they were just comming over from a prayer meeting?”
Obviously Hitchens would feel much safer if they had not. But what do you think?

Since most people in history have been at least officially religious, well, most of the killing and violence has been done by religious people. To list instances of this may be fun, but it proves very little. What you need is some evidence that people who are not religious are less violent. Religious people tend to point out the violence perpetrated by at least officially atheistic regimes. Some atheists accepts that these were atheist regimes, some do not and the discussion often wanders off on that digression. But I have yet to see some real comparative study. Where is the control group. In an experiment, if we want to prove that something causes something else, we cannot just tell anecdotes with correlation.

In that case, his writing is nonsense. End of story.

There is no such thing as a religious act of violence. The author is projecting.

There is only violence. You can describe the act by what is physically done but the motivation behind an act is anybody’s guess and can not be verified by anybody except for God or some other supernatural force.

I don’t know…when someone blows the dynamite strapped to his chest after yelling “Allah Ackbar” I think it’s a good indicator that his religion played a significant role in the motivation for the event. You don’t think so?

No. I do not believe everything I hear.

First of all, you never heard that in your life. You are just believing what military news reporters say.

More importantly, most of those people are destitute victims of drug lords and local mafia thugs who force them into multi-generational debt. The thugs offer to absolve their family debt if they suicide bomb. That is the significant role in the motivation for those events. The “Allah Ackbar” is the last cry of a desparate person who knows he is dying – it really is meaningless. Only an idiot would place any significance upon those words. For all you know, the suicide bomber is asking God for forgiveness because he knows he is doing something crazy and wrong.

Forgive me but you really should make an effort to learn more about international politics – more than the bullshit superficial news reports that we are force-fed every day.

1S8, I mostly agree with you, but I think you take your position too far. In law, intent is established all the time; motive is a requisite in murder cases. Certainly it’s hard to say what the intent or motive of an entire population is, but in the case of the individual, part of accepting that a human object is a person is to attribute reasons to their actions.

Still though, I think MSS’ demand for a ‘control group’ is a little extreme. A lot of what’s going in on is a matter for legitimate disagreements of interpretation. As 1S8 points out, economic factors are involved in suicide bombings, and supposedly religious anger against the US has a lot to do with poor policy decisions over the last few decades.

Even if we polled people from a young age and consistently throughout their lives about their religiosity, and then saw what percentage of the religious people committed crimes, died young, whatever, there would still be complications and interpretation. Maybe religiosity and violence have a common cause. And how do we draw the line for religion? Is Buddhism a religion? Is New-Age a religion? I think both the religious and non-religious factions would want to claim them both, while both would want to disavow suicide cults.

I agree with Hitchens that people shouldn’t use religion to justify violence, and even that people do use religion to justify violence. However, I’m not as convinced that people are actually motivated by religion to be violent.

Perhaps the solid point is that, in the cocktail of influences which drive persons to be excessively violent, religion can become an incomparable excellerant. Given the predispositon, putting the match to religious influence can ignite a person in ways comparable only to severe psychotic delusions, or maybe to defending one’s young. Likewise, on the positive side, there’s little like religion (at least so far) to keep a good person going when the going gets rough… :-k

Maybe you’re right, but are you going to tell me that all cases where someone yells allah ackbar and then blows themselves up aren’t at all influenced by religion? That the conflict between shia and sunny is really WHOLLY about something else? I don’t believe it.

cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/06/iraq.main/

Okay, the reasons of the people brainwashing these kids may be areligious, (and I don’t believe even that, but granting that this is totally true in all cases) do you really imagine that these kids are convinced to kill themselves on account that the drug lords need to wack the competition? Do you think that these kids pick up an AK or strap c4 to their belt because they’re convinced that killing the drug competition is a justifiable cause? Do you honestly think that even in these cases religion plays no role…that we can’t know that religion plays no role…that we should conclude that religion doesn’t play a role?

First you say that it’s up for grabs what really motivates these people, then you say that it’s economic reasons, or physical intimidation, but not religion.

Sure, this may be a fact in some cases, just as it’s a fact that in some cases kids 14-15 are convinced that they’ll get 72 women in heaven if they blow themselves up, but why should I believe that your fact motivates people and mine doesn’t?

Why not? You have to believe that there have been cases where a kid has been being told until adulthood that sacrificing himself while in the service of Allah will give him eternal happiness in heaven. I personally know of 40 albanian kids who fucking hanged themselves because of promises of rebirth. You’re saying that even in these cases, which are very common, that religion doesn’t play a motivational role when eventually the kid does blow himself up? What’s the excuse for these cases, and how would you dismiss the obvious?

How good were their lives before they hung themselves? Look, I’m not taking that strong a stance, I’m just taking a mild form of the position 1S8 took: motivation is a complex beast, and even in apparently obvious cases where people do things for religion, it isn’t necessarily that obvious. If these kids who hung themselves were suffering while they were alive, they may have been all too willing to kill themselves, and religion was simply a good justification.

I also don’t mean to say that religion is saved by being ‘merely’ a justification. If a person wants to do something terrible, and rational reflection would probably restrict their actions, religion can cause great harm by giving them a socially acceptable justification that absolves them of making the hard decision to not do what they shouldn’t do. That’s pretty damning in itself, so I think the case for motivation, whatever water it holds, is not necessary: justification does nearly the same amount of work, and the case is much stronger (do deny it would be to deny that the suicide bomber didn’t actually yell “allah ackbar”).

I do not care if legal systems try to presume intent. It can not be done. You can never know what an other person is thinking, let alone after the fact. The concept of motive does not even apply to a population.

Fine but unless you are God or you speak to God or you are appealing to super-natural abilities, you have no way of knowing what the motives of an other person really are.

There is no reason. You have a choice.

Carleas,
Unless I’m misunderstanding you, I think you’re wrong in thinking justification is different from motivation. I think justification plays a role in motivating to believe and act.

Someone who wants to kill himself but doesn’t have justification is, I think, lacking sufficient motivation. Justification in this case is needed for the person to be sufficiently motivated to act. And I don’t mean to say that justification is a necessary condition for people to be incited to do…whatever. I’m saying that I see no reason why justification is something different from motivation…that where one has justification to act, one isn’t being motivated to act, or when one is motivated to act, one lacks any justification.

What I believe is that people are human first, and as humans they have an aversion to cutting off people’s heads or killing themselves…nothing controversal about that, I think. Religion is notoriously powerful as a number of moral intuitions. There’s no controversy about that, either. Sure, there are other things that have the same effect on people, but the point about religion remains. So, what we get with religion is a numbing of intuition, and commands to kill others and one self. A promise of 72 virgins to those who die while killing the infidel isn’t just coincidental to this point.

And there can be no knowledge either, you’re right about that…but one choice can be more productive than the other. Let’s take the case of a US general in charge of the task of lowering the number of suicide bombings in an area. Would it be a productive thing if this general choose to believe that it isn’t the religious extremists preaching the message that all who die while in the process of fighting the infidel go to heaven that are playing any role in motivating the kids to blow themselves up? Would it be wise for him to go after the drug lords instead? Would you, if you were the general think that any choice you make on the matter is inconsequential?

And, again, someone needs to show that people who are not religious are less likely to find or have other excellent accelerants. I assume that most of the non-theists in this thread are supporters of the scientific method. Good. Then you all know what needs to be done to move from speculation - either deductive or based on anecdotes - to making a solid case for a causal relation.

Oh, I’ll bet if we were discussing alternative medicine, suddenly anecdotes and speculations based on what seems logical to an advocate of alternative medicine would suddenly NOT MEET THE GRADE.

When discussing religion and violence rationalists allow themselves to draw conclusions in ways they would mock those they consider irrational for using.

There is nothing in Hitchen’s or any posts here that counters the argument that humans find excuses to be violent and to manipulate other people to be violent - as can be seen via the actions of atheist regimes, for example. Humans are violent. Given that most people have been religious, most of history’s violence has been perpetrated by violent poeple and very often religion was used as a motivator.

I realize having a good control group is hard in this instance. But then, I am pointing out that this thread is mere speculation.

XZX, I think we might be talking about different things. I mean motivation as prior to justification. Motivation as I’m using it is sort of like the raw impulse to act, and justification is the conscious and rational defense of that impulse. So, in the case of religion violence, the motivation might be better described as group competition and reacting to a set of individuals as ‘competition’, while the justification is that they are enemies of god and must therefore perish.
I agree there is a sense in which “motivation” means essentially the same thing as “justification” (something like "the conscious reasons for action). But I was using the word differently, so it seems our disagreement is largely semantic.

1S8, XZC’s point about the ultimate utility of talking about people’s motivation is what I would have said as well. Certianly, you must agree that people are motivated by certain things, and that while we can’t “know”, we can “act on rational belief”. I law, that’s the standard that’s applied. So too should we apply the standard in global politico-social affairs. Ultimately, a bunch of things are making these people do what they are; we should identify the most salient of these, and act to prevent them because it doesn’t make sense to throw up our arms in skeptical dispair.

MSS, alternative medicine is not a good comparisson. With medicine, you can actually assemble groups of volunteers to test treatments, you can use animal experiments. You can’t ask a group of people to believe in something for a while and see how it goes (for practical reasons, ethical considerations aside). The way you test medicine is very different from the way you test the effect of beliefs.
I, and I assume most rationalists, would be fine saying that, in social matters, since we can’t test things the way we test medicines, we should use the next best thing. The next best thing, though, is not anecdotes and speculation (although essentially all hypotheses begin as anecdotes and speculation); the next best thing is statistics and literature surveys, and other means of quantifying intangibles.

It would be more intelligent if the whole situation was approached by understanding the markets and the economics involved. In economics, at least theories start assuming that everybody acts in their own self-interest.

Possibly. However, if the general just went up to people and asked them what they wanted – instead of assuming he knows – that might be even more wise.

Also, if he just gave people money, that might solve the problem too.

However, I do not believe the war effort actually cares about peace and I think that Western nations are actually in cahoots with the drug running and geographic control of energy supplies.

Why is starting with such a narrow assumption an asset? First of all, Homo Economicus isn’t universally accepted, not even by economists. It is not where all economic theories begin, and there’s good reason to believe it shouldn’t be where they begin.
Second, “self-interest” is an umbrella term that would include “desire to go to heaven”. Even if we’re assuming that people are acting in their own self-interest, a person’s self interest is not necessarily going to exclude their use of religion as a motivator for violence. So Homo Economicus seems both fallacious and not very useful in analysing this situation.

And how can you criticize someone for “assuming he knows” after singing the praises of an equivalent assumption on the part of someone else (i.e. the economist)?

Hi moresillystuff,

I take your point, though I simply meant to make the intuitive connection that Religion (and it is already too much to be so monolithic about it, yes) is/can be extremely powerful stuff, for positive or negative…

I think the scientific method is great, and I’m functionally non-theist, but I don’t think non-theist positions are dependent on scientific discourse. Exposition can be an art form too (which isn’t to say that my artistry is awesome, but hey, spare me a dime!).

There are many excellent accelerants out there, but what would be more excellent than religion, evolutionary psychology? Sure otherwise rational non-theists can go off the handle, too, in accordance with whatever their belief system might be. But Religion, well, it holds a special magic in that respect, no?

BTW: I appreciated your correction of excellerant! =D>

(Appreciated the tone of your post by the way!)

Holds a special magic. Well…See the point I am focusing on is the idea that without religion we would have less violence. I see nothing to convince me of that. Mao and Stalin managed to kill millions without using God or the afterlife as accelerants/rewards. Certainly, I agree that religion can function as a powerful accelerant. Greed, paranoia, ideology in general - which generally means (believed) text and spoken word that is presenting itself as rational AND not necessarily at all divinely inspired, SCARCITY OF RESOURCES, racism all do rather well.

Do I think that if we all became atheist we would have less violence. No, I don’t. I think we would find ‘reasons’ to kill. I don’t think it is the root of the problem.

You should keep that spelling for a special occasion. I think it could be part of a solid sarcastic jab. In fact I wasn’t sure if that was the idea or not, so I just used the usual spelling in mine without comment.

Your argument seems to me to be…

We cannot do the same kind of testing so it is OK to pretend we are sure about something using methods we do not respect to this degree in other cases.

Then it should be presented as speculation. But it isn’t.
In fact I do not think that at least some of the rationalists who do this even realize the methodological issues involved.

It just feels OK to present speculation in certain terms and they do not really notice they have made this shift.

I guess after watching these discussions for a while I notice a pattern. First the anecdotes come with some deductive reasoning, often mostly implicit. The conclusion: religion leads us to violence, if we did not have religion we would be less violent. When the non-religious regimes are brought up - STalin, Mao - then people bring up that Stalin was a Catholic when he was a kid. Or they make the case that these were not really atheistic regimes, just officially so.

In the end there is no control group and yet somehow the absolute certainty that the conclusion is obvious is nevertheless present.

I can see why people can conclude it might lead to a less violent world. and I can see presenting the conclusion with that modal verb. I can also see how one might be cautious, given that we seem pretty flexible about how we manipulate ourselves and others to be violent.

So to me I see an ideological faith skewing the way people present their positions from one of possibility to one of certainty.

And from people who are very much aware of the methodological issues involved and can, quite articulately, apply them in contexts where it does serve their beliefs.

I find the absence in this topic telling.

Further one could do some pretty solid work on this social issue. One could look for example at the statistics around how well the Weapons of Mass Destruction claims of the Bush Administration worked on atheists as opposed to religious people. Or breakdown support for the Gulf War along those lines. Or %ages of people against the Vietnam war amongst theist and non-theist US citizens.

You are of course correct. There are more factors and correlation and cause are harder to separate out here. But I see a lack of interest, by people like Hitchen’s for example, in actually looking at the information we can have access to and at least chewing on it.

As far as I can see the Neo-cons, for example, a group I consider non-religious though there are exceptions, are capable of manipulating a great deal of violence without invoking God or Heaven, though some of their puppets will on occasion make this sound.

As a pagan theist, I see several ideologies out there that have been used for mass killing. Some monotheist, some non-theist. I see the atheist traditions arising out of the monotheisms. I mean the active non-believers who participate in forums like this one. These are often ex-monotheists or come from families that had some monotheistic element or from communities that were predominantly monotheistic. I certainly sypmathize with many of these people’s ideas - this group of athiests - and reactions to the behavior of some theists, especially powerful ones. On the other hand once people start masquerading speculation as solid where the conclusions are that theism leads to violence, I reject it. When Europeans came to the Americas, certainly the churches and religious ideas justified a lot the violence aimed at native peoples - pagans. On the other hand, the neo-cons of the day - and many of the robber barrons, etc. were only nominally monotheists, these guys worshipped money and many thought the church was hooey - worked hand in hand with their religious counterparts because they had a common interest in destroying the ‘irrational barbarians’.

To me, I see people grabbing at excuses and finding whatever way possible to get the masses to kill those they want to kill. And my guess, note the speculative tone, is they will find excuses even in a world full of atheists. I can list anectdotes and do some deductive reasoning with what information we do have about atheists to back this up, also.