Death by Religion
by Joseph Rowlands
Recently I had a conversation with a Christian. She tried to make the claim that Christianity is more peaceful than Islam, based on what current affairs. In the Middle East, there's terrorism, dictatorships, suicide bombers, and holy wars. In the West, you have a bunch of people who go to church, sing songs, and have picnics. Who could argue with that?
I can.
Christianity isn't a peaceful loving religion. Read a history book. The violence and bloodshed, the intolerance, the ignorance and viciousness are all there to see. The good name Christianity has is not due to their religion, but due to classical liberalism removing the power of life and death from their hands. Political power severed from the church has made Christianity peaceful. Give them absolute power back, and you'll see the bodies pile up.
Why is this? Why do religions cause so much death? Wasn't there the ten commandments that specifically said "Thou shalt not kill"? How could any such religion cause harm? Why are theocracies so bloody?
The answer comes from morality, and one's views on it. Objectivists hold morality to be objective, grounded in the facts of reality. We say you should be nice to people, or those people won't want to treat you well either. We say that you have to be productive, or you won't gain the values you want. We learn the lessons that life gives us, and we walk away with understanding. We can learn from events.
Religion works in a different way. For the religious, morality is not something you learn from the world around you. Morality is the will of god, which you must obey. Of course, you learn that will through the bible, and the priests. But the bible is very, very flexible. The bible wasn't ignored during the dark ages. It was interpreted to say exactly what people wanted to hear. If that meant slaughtering the innocent, so be it. And priests can say whatever they want. If enough of them agree with each other, people are convinced it must be the will of god.
This has a terrible implication, though. Morality guides our choices, but it also limits them. It tells us when things are wrong or evil, and we need to avoid them. A morality even partially based on reality would make people uneasy about killing others. A morality based on religion has no such problems. Since morality is allegedly derived from the will of their gods, they are unconstrained entirely by reality.
That means there is no limits to the evils they can do. It's all in the name of god, so anything goes. They can slaughter, torture, rape, pillage, or anything else they feel like. How could anyone feel bad about it? It's the will of their own god. A theocracy is not at all limited by morality, because the morality can change to fit the will of it's leaders.
In practice, a subjectivist whim-worshipper would probably have enough of a grasp of reality to feel guilty about slaughtering innocent people. Religious people don't have that problem. If god commands, how can they second guess him? Even if they did feel queasy about it, they would just remind themselves that god requires faith in him, and that they're biggest crime is in doubting his word.
Religion is a useful excuse for any form of atrocity. There are absolutely no limits to what a religion can ask for in the name of god. To the extent that people believe in god and his arbitrary morality, they'll be willing to do an heinous act. And with that kind of absolute power, there will always be some brutal leader willing to step up and use it "in the name of god".
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