Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Religious allegory has become a part of the fabric of reality. And living in that reality helps millions of people cope and be better people.

—Langdon, hero of The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown

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When I began working on this book, I conducted interviews with quite a few people to try to get a sense of the different roles that religion plays in their lives. This was not scientific data-gathering (though I have also done some of that) but, rather, an attempt to set theories and experiments aside and go directly to real people and let them tell me in their own words why religion was so important to them. These were strictly confidential interviews, almost all one-on-one, ¹ and although I was persistently inquisitive, I didn’t challenge or argue with my informants. These occasions were often moving, to say the least, and I learned a lot. Some people had endured hardships that I could not readily imagine myself surviving, and some had found in their religion the strength to make, and hold fast to, decisions that were nothing short of heroic. Less dramatic, but even more impressive in retrospect, were the people of modest talent and accomplishment who were, in one way or another, simply much better people than one might expect them to be; it wasn’t just that their lives had meaning to them—though this was certainly true—but that they were actually making the world better by their efforts, inspired by their conviction that their lives were not their own to dispose of as they chose.

Religion can certainly bring out the best in a person, but it is not the only phenomenon with that property. Having a child often has a wonderfully maturing effect on a person. Wartime, famously, gives people an abundance of occasions to rise to, as do natural disasters like floods and hurricanes. But for day-in, day-out lifelong bracing, there is probably nothing so effective as religion: it makes powerful and talented people more humble and patient, it makes average people rise above themselves, it provides sturdy support for many people who desperately need help staying away from drink or drugs or crime. People who would otherwise be self-absorbed or shallow or crude or simply quitters are often ennobled by their religion, given a perspective on life that helps them make the hard decisions that we all would be proud to make.

No all-in value judgment can be based on such a limited and informal survey, of course. Religion does all this good and more, no doubt, but something else we could devise might do it as well or better. There are many wise, engaged, morally committed atheists and agnostics, after all. Perhaps a survey would show that as a group atheists and agnostics are more respectful of the law, more sensitive to the needs of others, or more ethical than religious people. Certainly no reliable survey has yet been done that shows otherwise. It might be that the best that can be said for religion is that it helps some people achieve the level of citizenship and morality typically found in brights. If you find that conjecture offensive, you need to adjust your perspective.

Among the questions that we need to consider, objectively, are whether Islam is more or less effective than Christianity at keeping people off drugs and alcohol (and whether the side effects in either case are worse than the benefit), whether sexual abuse is more or less of a problem among Sikhs than among Mormons, and so forth. You don’t get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and considering seriously the question of whether some other religion, or no religion at all, does better. World War II certainly brought out the best in many people, and those who lived through it often say that it was the most important thing in their lives, without which their lives would have no meaning, but it certainly doesn’t follow from this that we should try to have another world war. The price you must pay for any claim about the virtue of your religion or any other religion is the willingness to see your claim put squarely to the test. My point here at the outset is just to acknowledge that we already know enough about religion to know that, however terrible its negative effects are—bigotry, murderous fanaticism, oppression, cruelty, and enforced ignorance, to cite the obvious—the people who view religion as the most important thing in life have many good reasons for thinking so.

2Cui bono?

Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.

—Psalm 68:19

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