Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

then they may teach their children whatever religious doctrines they like. It’s just an idea, and perhaps there are better ones to consider, but it should appeal to freedom lovers everywhere: the idea of insisting that the devout of all faiths should face the challenge of making sure their creed is worthy enough, attractive and plausible and meaningful enough, to withstand the temptations of its competitors. If you have to hoodwink—or blindfold—your children to ensure that they confirm their faith when they are adults, your faith ought to go extinct.

4 Toxic memes

Any creative encounter with evil requires that we not distance ourselves from it by simply demonizing those who commit evil acts. In order to write about evil, a writer has to try to comprehend it, from the inside out; to understand the perpetrators and not necessarily sympathize with them. But Americans seem to have a very difficult time recognizing that there is a distinction between understanding and sympathizing. Somehow we believe that an attempt to inform ourselves about what leads to evil is an attempt to explain it away. I believe that just the opposite is true, and that when it comes to coping with evil, ignorance is our worst enemy.

—Kathleen Norris, “Native Evil”¹⁰

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Writing this book has helped me to understand that religion is a kind of technology. It is terribly seductive in its ability to soothe and explain, but it is also dangerous.

—Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill

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Have you heard about the Yahuuz, a people who think that what we call child pornography is just good clean fun? They smoke marijuana daily, make a public ceremony of defecation (with hilarious competition to see who gets to do the ritual wiping), and, whenever an elder reaches the age of eighty, have a special feast day on which the person ceremonially kills himself or herself—and is then eaten by all. Disgusted? Then you know how many Muslims feel about our contemporary culture, with its alcohol, provocative clothing, and casual attitudes toward familial authority. Part of my effort in this book is to get you to think and not just feel. In this instance, you need to see that your disgust, however strong, is only a datum, a fact about you and a very important fact about you, but not an inerrant sign of moral truth—it’s just like the Muslim’s disgust at some of our cultural practices. We should respect the Muslims, empathize with them, take their disgust seriously—but then propose that they join us in a discussion about the perspectives on which we differ. The price you should be willing to pay for this is your own willingness to consider the (imaginary!) Yahuuz’ way of life calmly, and ask if it is so clearly indefensible. If they enter into these traditions wholeheartedly, with no apparent coercion, perhaps we should say, “Live and let live.”

And perhaps not. The burden should be on us to demonstrate to the Yahuuz that their way of life includes traditions they should be ashamed of, and should banish. Perhaps, if we engaged in this exercise conscientiously, we would discover that some of our disgust with their ways was parochial and unjustifiable. They would teach us something. And we would teach them something. And perhaps the gulf of difference between us would never be crossed, but we shouldn’t assume this worst-case prospect.