Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

According to the faitheists, the New Atheists are too shrill and militant, and just as annoying as the fundamentalists they criticize. (In an XKCD webcomic, a character responds, “Well, the important thing is that you’ve found a way to feel superior to both.”)⁵² Ordinary people will never be disabused of their religious beliefs, they say, and perhaps they should not be, because healthy societies need religion as a bulwark against selfishness and meaningless consumerism. Religious institutions supply that need by promoting charity, community, social responsibility, rites of passage, and guidance on existential questions that can never be provided by science. Anyway, most people treat religious doctrine allegorically rather than literally, and they find meaning and wisdom in an overarching sense of spirituality, grace, and divine order.⁵³ Let’s look at these claims.

An ironic inspiration for faitheism is research on the psychological origins of supernatural belief, including the cognitive habits of overattributing design and agency to natural phenomena, and emotional feelings of solidarity within communities of faith.⁵⁴ The most natural interpretation of these findings is that they undermine religious beliefs by showing how they are figments of our neurobiological makeup. But the research has also been interpreted as showing that human nature requires religion in the same way that it requires food, sex, and companionship, so it’s futile to imagine no religion. But this interpretation is dubious.⁵⁵ Not every feature of human nature is a homeostatic drive that must be regularly slaked. Yes, people are vulnerable to cognitive illusions that lead to supernatural beliefs, and they certainly need to belong to a community. Over the course of history, institutions have arisen that offer packages of customs that encourage those illusions and cater to those needs. That does not imply that people need the complete packages, any more than the existence of sexual desire implies that people need Playboy clubs. As societies become more educated and secure, the components of the legacy religious institutions can be unbundled. The art, rituals, iconography, and communal warmth that many people enjoy can continue to be provided by liberalized religions, without the supernatural dogma or Iron Age morality.

That implies that religions should not be condemned or praised across the board but considered according to the logic of Euthyphro. If there are justifiable reasons behind particular activities, those activities should be encouraged, but the movements should not be given a pass just because they are religious. Among the positive contributions of religions at particular times and places are education, charity, medical care, counseling, conflict resolution, and other social services (though in the developed world these efforts are dwarfed by their secular counterparts; no religion could have decimated hunger, disease, illiteracy, war, homicide, or poverty on the scales we saw in part II). Religious organizations can also provide a sense of communal solidarity and mutual support, together with art, ritual, and architecture of great beauty and historical resonance, thanks to their millennia-long head start. I partake of these myself, with much enjoyment.

If the positive contributions of religious institutions come from their role as humanistic associations in civil society, then we would expect those benefits not to be tied to theistic belief, and that is indeed the case. It’s long been known that churchgoers are happier and more charitable than stay-at-homes, but Robert Putnam and his fellow political scientist David Campbell have found that these blessings have nothing to do with beliefs in God, creation, heaven, or hell.⁵⁶ An atheist who has been pulled into a congregation by an observant spouse is as charitable as the faithful among the flock, whereas a fervent believer who prays alone is not particularly charitable. At the same time, communality and civic virtue can be fostered by membership in secular service communities such as the Shriners (with their children’s hospitals and burn units), Rotary International (which is helping to end polio), and Lions Club (which combats blindness)—even, according to Putnam and Campbell’s research, a bowling league.