Not for the first time A.C. Grayling is writing about religion. Not for the first time I will do so too. Grayling sees in religion...
... the same kind of commitment - exactly the same intellectual delusion - as is involved in believing that there are pixies and gnomes lurking invisibly among the rhododendrons.Me likewise. And he says, in a context making it plain that he laments this state of affairs:
Religion premises an absolute authority over the self, which trumps everything else.That is not a state of affairs, I agree, such as to encourage virtues of independent and critical thought.
Once again, however, I am taken aback at how so ardent a partisan of reasoned argument and the careful weighing of evidence - this precisely in order to recognize the evils, as he sees them, of religion - fails to apply to the case at hand the standards he commends to us. For the post of his that I'm referring to is about religion as a force for evil; and yet the most elementary requirement in considering this issue, for any proponent of rational examination and disputation, he himself simply bypasses. Put baldly his case is that 'religion is, overall and by a large margin, a force for ill in today's world'. Now, if that is what you think and want to persuade your audience of - I mean persuade by reasons, not merely sway by rhetoric - then you have to give the fact that religion has also been, and is, an influence for the good due recognition. If you don't do so, if, to the contrary, everything you say in this regard is designed to minimize any beneficial influences of religion, then not only will it not persuade the sceptical, it might also create the impression that your belief that religion is a force for more ill than good is merely that - a belief, a prejudice rather than a conclusion based on conscientious weighing of the evidence.
But minimize is just what A.C. Grayling does whenever he comes to touch on the possible benefits of religion. He speaks of...
... the pleasant folk who shake hands with each other in an English country church on Sunday mornings - a much dwindled and still dwindling rump of folk, true, but harmless and even admirable for the cakes they bake for the Saturday fete, raising money for developing world children and other good causes...And he adds:
... the kindness of such folk would still be there if they had never heard of religion.He says that...
... there are sincere religionists, and... some religious organisations do charitable work (but 80% of British charities are non-religious, and non-religious people give more to charity than self-described adherents to a faith)...An intention to belittle here is plain. But, in any case, apart from 'pleasant folk' in English country churches, there have been those who behaved with enormous courage in the face of grave danger, and those who made large sacrifices for others, and those who gave their energies to trying to make the world a better place, and those who tried to live good lives, because of their religion. The argument that they could have done such things without the religion may be true but it isn't relevant: if we are estimating what the effects of religion have been, then its beneficial effects are what they are even if they could have been obtained otherwise. I have said once before that I don't know how to estimate, for the whole expanse of historical time, what is the balance of benefits and ills that are due to the influence of religion. But a serious assessment can't be made in the way Grayling goes about it here, by mockery. The murderous effects of religious intolerance and hatred have been gigantic, no question about it, as also has been the sum of daily repressions inflicted in the name of religious doctrine upon millions, particularly women. But we also need a way of calculating all the acts big or small of people who were moved to do, or encouraged in doing, good for others by their belief in God. And we would need also to consider what part the belief that all human beings are the children of one God has played in furthering the cause of human equality. This exercise cannot sensibly be undertaken by ironizing at the expense of nice English churchgoers and the cakes they bake.
Towards the end of his post, A.C. Grayling talks of 'general points [that] merit statement and constant iteration, in the hope that as water wears away stone, it will conduce to a desirable effect'. Mere repetition can, of course, do that. I would have thought, however, that he should want to forego such an effect if it is an effect only of words without the backing of reasoned argument - just like the words of religious devotion that he so contemns.