What does it take to blame religion? [View all]

[trotsky]

An oldie but a goodie from Jerry Coyne.

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/what-does-it-take-to-blame-religion/

We’re all familiar with those people who claim that no foul deed, no murder, no injury can be laid at the feet of faith—at least in modern times. They might grudgingly admit that the Inquisition or the Crusades may have had something to do with faith, but those were the bad old days. Now things are different. And while religion may seem to be involved in today’s horrors and evils, when you look deeper, they say, you’ll ultimately find the real causes. The Protestant/Catholic fracas in Northern Ireland? A historical squabble—religion was just a “label” for political opponents. The persecution of Galileo? A civil and political affair, not involving faith. The institutionalized slaughter of the Jews during World War II? Well, the Nazis needed a scapegoat somewhere. The murder of UN workers and Afghanis in last week’s mosque-fuelled riots? Islam had nothing to do with it: it was simply the effect of lying, manipulative mullahs inflaming a populace who hate the colonialism of America and Europe.

...

Granted, evil actions often stem from a complicated nexus of faith and secular factors. But I wonder about this: if people say that the root causes of evil in this world are things like xenophobia, politics, colonialism, and the like, why wouldn’t you place faith among them? After all, to many people faith is far more personal, far more important, than politics. Many Catholics go to church weekly; many Muslims pray five times a day and read only the Qur’an. Many people say that their faith is the most important thing in their lives. And, as I said, people consider it far more insulting to criticize their faith than their politics. Given this, why wouldn’t faith be responsible for some awful things? Why is it alone excused from being an impetus of evil? We all know the reason: belief in belief.

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So I offer a tentative suggestion to identify situations in which religion is “responsible” for evils. It’s this:

Would those acts have still been committed had there been no religion?