Except in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia, etc., etc.
Christopher Hitchens in God Is Not Great repeatedly says, “Religion poisons everything it touches.” However, Hitchens’ own god, science, can also be said to poison everything. Science has produced weapons that will kill (including weapons of mass destruction), carcinogens, pollution, automobiles and airplanes that crash, oil spills, nuclear disasters, global warming, and the internet, which has more evil on it than Sodom and Gomorrah could ever have imagined. So if we are to get rid of religion, should we also do away with science? Science, even including the internet, has produced much good in the world. But so has religion.
True, as Hitchens and other atheists are fond of listing, there have been abuses of of religion. The usual suspects are the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, witch trials, Protestant-Catholic wars, Muslim terrorism, and child abuse by priests. But when looked at more closely, these are all a result not of religion but of politics. They are cases of power corrupting. They certainly are not cases of following the beliefs and dictates of Christianity or Islam. Jesus would have supported none of these, and the Koran does not advocate either suicide or killing innocent women and children. The child abuse by priests were individual sins, aided and abetted by the political cover-up by individual administrators. Catholicism itself certainly does not condone it.
To use these abuses of religion as an argument to do away with religion is like saying because there are students in public schools who cheat on exams, drop out of school, or bully fellow students, or there are teachers and administrators who are unjust, tyrannical, or sexual predators, we should do away with public education. Or because in our nation we have some corrupt politicians who take bribes, misuse taxes, pass pork barrel legislation, and pad expense accounts, we should do away with government, or at least democracy. Attacking Christianity because of its extremists or hypocrites does injustice to millions of more faithful followers of Christ. Atheists would be rightly offended if tyrannical dictators or serial killers are used as arguments against atheism.
The Western world owes much of what is good in its culture to Judaism and Christianity. Science, law, education, hospitals, women’s and children’s rights, abolition of slavery, even democracy all have their roots in the teachings of the Bible and its followers. Art, music, theater, literature all were religious in their earliest forms. Caxton and Gutenberg invented their printing presses, technology which essentially changed the world, in order to print Bibles. Even the ACLU started out as a Quaker organization, and secular humanism is basically Christianity without God, but Christianity had to come first. Ironically, secular humanism is now given status as a religion by the U.S., so if religion is done away with, secular humanism would have to go too.
There are many religious organizations, especially (but not only) Christian ones that provide money, volunteers, and workers to help the suffering poor, the needy, and the homeless throughout the world. The Roman Catholic Church alone has Catholic Charities, St. Vincent De Paul Societies, Knights of Columbus, Daughters of Charity, and other groups. There are also many Protestant charitableorganizations, such as World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, and Beyond Borders to name a few I know about and have contributed to. There are also missionaries all over the world who sacrifice a comfortable life style to bring not only the Gospel but medicine, better living conditions, water, food, hope, and even jobs and businesses to desperate people.
Then there are the individuals and groups within individual churches that on a ‘ daily basis provide all kinds of acts of service to people within their churches and without. My church has renovated homes to create low income housing, started a mall ministry, has a free counseling service with trained counselors, serves lunches twice a week to homeless and other needy people, has missionary trips to do work projects in poor areas of the U.S. and Latin American countries, and has funds available to help individual people when they come to the church for aid. This is multiplied many times by all the many other churches doing similar things. When FEMA dropped the ball after Hurricane Katrina, it was thousands of volunteers from churches and other religious organizations who came to help the displaced. Atheists would have the tax-exemption taken away from non-profit organizations, which would leave the government and tax dollars to fill in the gap less efficiently.
John Lennon’s song “Imagine” thinks the world would be better off without religion. Were the atheistic countries of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot better off? WasHitler’s attempt to wipe out the Jewish religion a good thing? Ironically Christianity has grown greatly in communist/Buddhist China, and Christianity had a lot do with the fall of the Berlin wall.
Yes, there are hypocrites in churches (Jesus was the one who used “hypocrites,” the Greek word for actors, to scold the “religious” Pharisees of His time), but there are also hypocrites who don’t go to church. If you have any kind of belief at all, chances are you don’t always act according to your belief. Even the great philosophers had trouble living by their philosophies. The difference is that Christians tend to suffer conscience and guilt at their hypocrisies and strive to overcome them. Contrary to public opinion, in my experience, when Christians get together they rarely talk about abortion, gay marriage, or evolution but discuss how they can live according to Jesus’ teachings.
Some of the greatest figures of the Bible were flawed. Abraham lied that his wife was his sister, Jacob cheated Esau out of his birthright, David committed adultery and, in effect, murder, Jonah disobeyed God’s command to go to Nineveh. Among the disciples of Jesus Peter denied Jesus three times, Thomas doubted Him, Judas betrayed him. All, except possibly John, fled when Jesus was crucified. The Bible offers forgiveness for those who are willing to accept it; the world does not. The real problem with Christianity is when Christians stop acting like Christians. But religion transforms what is bad in human nature and brings out what is good in human nature.
Some people who aren’t atheists don’t go the church because they find fault with organized religion. They may say they are “spiritual,” not religious, or that they can worship God in nature as well as in church. Do these spiritual people actually worship regularly in nature or at home, do they find ways to help the homeless and poor, do they study the Bible, do they get together for pot luck suppers? Or are they just acting “holier than thou” by, in effect, saying I’m better than those people who are being corrupted by belonging to organized religion? And that’s the problem here: using religion as an argument against the existence of God is usually a shallow, one-sided approach made up of popular clichés, not an in-depth examination.
There are many books that give rational arguments for Christian belief. One of the best is Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis Others I’d recommend are Why I Am a Christian: Leading Thinkers Explain Why They Believe, edited by Norman L. Geisler and Paul K. Hoffman, What Has Christianity Done for Us? by Jonathan Hill, and Michael Koren’s Why Catholics Are Right, which sensibly defends against the usual clichéd attacks against Catholicism.
A religion should not be judged by those who abuse it but by those who faithfully live by it. Judge Christianity by the believers who truly live by Jesus’ teachings. Judge Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism, Hinduism, and Buddhism by their most faithful followers. Some atheists actually see the benefits of religion even if they don’t participate themselves. Christopher Hitchens even admitted he knew some good Christians. So
atheists might be better off giving up their futile attack on religion.
Комментарии