(This iexerpt is from
the first chapter of the book re-published in Women Without
Superstiton, "No Gods No
Masters" by Annie Laurie Gaylor in 1997 )
THESE TALKS ARE ADDRESSED to the ordinary man and woman, whose
attitude towards religion is that they do not quite know what they
believe.
They were married in church; they have had the children baptised; and
they still on rare occasions go to church, though mainly for social
reasons; but they do not pretend to believe the creeds they repeat
there. Their general feeling is that it does not much matter what
views a man holds on the higher management of the universe, so long as
he has the right views on how to behave to his neighbour. And they are
not at all troubled about religion, except for one thing: what shall
they teach the children?
For where intellectual doubts are concerned, this ordinary parent's
feeling is: `Who am I to judge? I find these doctrines hard to
believe, but many very able men believe them-men who have studied the
subject much more fully than I have.' Furthermore, parents are
repeatedly told that Christianity is the only alternative to
communism, and that there can be no sound character-training that is
not based on religion. When juvenile delinquency increased after the
war, they heard on all sides that this was
the inevitable result of the decay of religious belief and the lack of
sound
religious training in the home; and in 1944 a new Education Act was
passed, by which daily prayers and religious instruction were made
compulsory in the state schools. So, on the whole, our ordinary parent
thinks it is best to take no risks. When the children are older they
can decide for themselves; meanwhile, better bring them up in the
orthodox way-talk to them about God; teach them to say their prayers;
take them to church occasionally; and try to stave off awkward
questions.
I want here to make three suggestions: first, that the doubts the
ordinary man feels about religion are justified, and need not be
stifled or concealed; second, that there is no ground for the view
that Christianity is the only alternative to communism, or that there
can be no sound character-training that is not based on religion; and,
third, I want to make some practical suggestions to the parents who
are not believers, on what they should tell the children about God,
and what sort of moral training they should give them.
The first thing I want to do is to define `religion,' for it is a term
that is used in a great many senses. Sometimes when people say they
`believe in religion' they turn out to mean little more than that they
believe in a moral standard, or that they believe there are more
important things in life than money and worldly success. I need
scarcely say that I have no quarrel with religion in either of these
senses. But this is not really a correct use of the term. The Oxford
Dictionary defines `religion' as `Recognition on the part of
man of some higher unseen power as having control of his destiny, and
as being entitled to obedience, reverence and worship.'
That is the sense in which
I shall use the term religion in these talks; and by `Christianity' I
mean over and above that, the beliefs essential to the Christian
religion- that is, at least, that this `unseen power' is omnipotent,
and wholly good; that Christ was divine; that he rose from the dead;
and that human beings survive bodily death. That is a bare minimum of
Christian belief: there is far more than that in the official creeds
of the Churches.
I am not out to destroy the Christian convictions of people in whom
they are deeply implanted and to whom they mean a great deal. And I am
sure that nothing I say here will have the slightest effect on
believers of this type. But what I do want to argue is that, in a
climate of thought that is increasingly unfavourable to these beliefs,
it is a mistake to try to impose them on children, and to make them
the basis of moral training. The moral education of children is
much too important a matter to be built on such foundations.
In any religious argument, one is sooner or later reminded that `science
isn't everything' and that `logic isn't everything.' That
is perfectly true; there are many human activities-art, music, poetry,
for example- to which science and logic are more or less irrelevant.
But religion is not in this category, for religion, unlike art and
music and poetry, is a system of belief. And a system of belief that
is to be acceptable must satisfy the ordinary criteria of reason: the
beliefs must be consistent with each other and not obviously in
conflict with fact. Orthodox Christian beliefs, I suggest, do not
satisfy these criteria.
I will just take one point which I think is crucial. Orthodox
Christian theology is completely inconsistent with the facts of evil.
This was not so obvious in the old days when people believed in the
Devil. To regard the universe as a battlefield between God and the
Devil, with the odds on God, so to speak, at least did not do violence
to the facts. But now most Christians have ceased to believe in the
Devil; and the orthodox view is (as indeed it always was, but the
Devil got slipped in somehow) that the universe is controlled by a
single, all-powerful and wholly benevolent Power, and that everything
that happens, happens by his will. And that raises insuperable
intellectual difficulties. For why should this all-powerful and wholly
benevolent Being have created so much evil? It is no answer to say
that evil is just a means to good. In the first place, there is no
reason to believe this is always true; and in the second place, even
if it were true it would not be an answer; for a Being who was really
all-powerful would not need to use evil means to attain his ends. It
is no answer to say that God is not responsible for the evil - that
evil is due to man, who has misused his freewill and defied God's
edicts. Because it is not true that all the evil in the universe is
due to man. Man is not responsible for leprosy and gangrene and
cancer, to take a few obvious examples.
Some Christians, when they are faced with these facts, try hard to
convince themselves that illness and pain and misery are not really
evils; they are desirable states, blessings in disguise, if we could
only see it. But, if that is really so, why do we try to cure illness,
and think it wrong to inflict pain? Why did Christ heal the sick? But
in any case we can leave human suffering out of the argument, because
animal suffering sets a still greater problem. Why should an
omnipotent and benevolent Power have made animals prey on one another
for food? Why implant in the cat the instinct, not merely to kill
mice, but to torture them before it kills them? There is no possible
answer to the dilemma that so troubled St. Augustine: Either God
cannot prevent evil, or he will not. If he cannot, he is not
all-powerful; if he will not, he is not all-good.
This difficulty arises for all religions which hold that there is an
omnipotent and benevolent power in control of the universe. The
specifically Christian doctrines raise still further difficulties, on
which I need not enlarge. I do not suggest that these doctrines have
been disproved-most of them are not susceptible of disproof. But it is
undeniable that in the present scientific climate of thought, belief
in these doctrines is becoming more and more difficult to maintain.
Just as, to take what I should regard as a parallel case, it is now
almost impossible for anyone to believe in witches, though I do not
imagine any scientist has ever disproved their
existence.
Actually, there is not
much attempt today to defend Christian dogma by reasoning. The
fashionable attitude among orthodox believers is a defiant
anti-intellectualism. The popular Christian apologists are men like
Kierkegaard- who made the famous pronouncement `Christianity demands
the crucifixion of the intellect,' as though this were a great point
in Christianity's favour. It is surely pessimistic to suggest that
doctrines which even their own adherents describe in such terms
provide the natural basis for morals and the only alternative to
communism? The position is more hopeful than that.
However, as regards the moral training of children, I realise that a
case can be made, and is sometimes made, even by unbelievers....
People say: `Of course I realise that these beliefs are not literally
true. But then children are not literal-minded, they think naturally
in terms of symbol and legend. So why not make use of this tendency in
character-training? It is no use giving the child cold-blooded lessons
in ethics-moral teaching has got to have colour and warmth and
interest. So why not give them that by the means that lie ready to
hand-the myths of religion, and the moving and beautiful ceremonies of
the Church? The child will cease to believe in the myths as he grows
older, but that won't matter-they will have served their purpose.'
I agree that moral training cannot be coldly rational. There must be
colour and warmth and interest. One of the best ways to give that is
to give the child plenty of models that he can admire and imitate.
Tell him plenty of stirring stories about courageous, heroic,
disinterested actions- stories that will move and excite him, and make
him think that that is the sort of person he would like to be. This
may be far more effective, even at the time, than tying up the idea of
goodness with the Church, and religion: and there is not the same risk
that, later on, if the child leaves the Church and casts off the
religion, he may cast off the morals as well.
But let us consider the young child first. If he is brought up in the
orthodox way, he will accept what he is told happily enough to begin
with. But if he is normally intelligent, he is almost bound to get the
impression that there is something odd about religious statements. If
he is taken to church, for example, he hears that death is the gateway
to eternal life and should be welcomed rather than shunned; yet
outside he sees death regarded as the greatest of all evils and
everything possible done to postpone it. In church he hears precepts
like `Resist not evil,' and `Take no thought for the morrow'; but he
soon realises that these are not really meant to be practiced outside.
If he asks questions, he gets embarrassed,
evasive answers: `Well, dear, you're not quite old enough to
understand yet, but some of these things are true in a deeper sense';
and so on. The child soon gets the idea that there are two kinds of
truth-the ordinary kind, and another, rather confusing and slightly
embarrassing kind, into which it is best not to inquire too closely.
All this is bad intellectual training. It tends to produce a certain
intellectual timidity - a distrust of reason-a feeling that it is
perhaps rather bad taste to pursue an argument to its logical
conclusion, or to refuse to accept a belief on inadequate evidence.
And that is not a desirable attitude in the citizens of a free
democracy. However, it is the moral rather than the intellectual
dangers that I am concerned with here; and they arise when the
trustful child becomes a critical adolescent. He may then cast off all
his religious beliefs; and, if his moral training has been closely
tied up with religion, it is more than possible that the moral beliefs
will go too. He may well decide that it was all just old wives' tales;
and now he does not know where he is. At this stage he could be most
vulnerable to communist propaganda, if a communist were to get hold of
him and say: `Well, you've finished with fairy-tales-now you're ready
to listen to some grown-up
talk.' Far from being a protection against communism, tying up morals
with religion could help to drive people into its arms. On the subject
of communism, it is a mistake, I suggest, to think of Christianity and
communism as the two great rival forces in the world today. The
fundamental opposition is between dogma and the scientific outlook. On
the one side, Christianity and communism, the two great rival dogmatic
systems; on the other, Scientific Humanism, which is op-
posed to both. To try to combat communism by reviving Christianity is
a hopeless task. It is like-what shall I say?-like trying to combat
the belief in flying saucers by reviving the belief in witches riding
on broomsticks. I do not want to press that analogy too closely-but
what I mean is, it is trying to drive out a new myth by reviving an
old one, instead of going forward to something sounder than myth.
Scientific Humanism-that is crudely materialist, or that it thinks
nothing is important but what happens in laboratories: far from it.
But scientific in that it does not regard it as a virtue to believe
without evidence; scientific in that it deals with hypotheses, not
dogmas-hypotheses that are constantly tested and revised