Peter Hitchens, brother of Christopher, the well-known journalist and professional atheist, reflects on the role of religion in restraining human beings from evil actions (Daily Mail, March 15, 2010):
“Left to himself, Man can in a matter of minutes justify the incineration of populated cities; the deportation, slaughter, disease and starvation of inconvenient people and the mass murder of the unborn. I have heard people who believe themselves to be good, defend all these things, and convince themselves as well as others. Quite often the same people will condemn similar actions committed by different countries, often with great vigour.
For a moral code to be effective, it must be attributed to, and vested in, a non-human source. It must be beyond the power of humanity to change it to suit itself.
Its most powerful expression is summed up in the words ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’.
The huge differences which can be observed between Christian societies and all others, even in the twilit afterglow of Christianity, originate in this specific injunction.
It is striking that in his dismissal of a need for absolute theistic morality, Christopher says in his book that ‘the order to “love thy neighbour as thyself” is too extreme and too strenuous to be obeyed’. Humans, he says, are not so constituted as to care for others as much as themselves.
This is demonstrably untrue, and can be shown to be untrue, through the unshakable devotion of mothers to their children; in the uncounted cases of husbands caring for sick, incontinent and demented wives (and vice versa) at their lives’ ends; through the heartrending deeds of courage on the battlefield.
I am also baffled and frustrated by the strange insistence of my anti-theist brother that the cruelty of Communist anti-theist regimes does not reflect badly on his case and on his cause. It unquestionably does.
Soviet Communism is organically linked to atheism, materialist rationalism and most of the other causes the new atheists support. It used the same language, treasured the same hopes and appealed to the same constituency as atheism does today.
When its crimes were still unknown, or concealed, it attracted the support of the liberal intelligentsia who were then, and are even more now, opposed to religion.
Another favourite argument of the irreligious is that conflicts fought in the name of religion are necessarily conflicts about religion. By saying this they hope to establish that religion is of itself a cause of conflict.
This is a crude factual misunderstanding. The only general lesson that can be drawn is that Man is inclined to make war on Man when he thinks it will gain him power, wealth or land.”
My Comment
An interesting piece, but one I don’t necessarily agree with. I’ve known at least one atheist (at least, he called himself that at an early point of his life) who was more impeccably ethical than any believer I ever knew (and that includes me).
Indeed, I’ve often felt that it’s people with near-uncontrollable passions (intellectual or physical) who most often turn to religion.
Your natural-born atheist doesn’t seem to be troubled with the same kind of turbulence. To my way of thinking, then, whether a person is atheist or believer ultimately rests on their psychological predisposition, their upbringing, and the circumstances of their life. It isn’t a reflection of some eternal verity about their moral state.
It is simply impossible to believe for some. Simply impossible not to believe for others. The question is not so much what one believes. It is how one acts.
And how one acts depends on the freedom one is allowed in acting. That is, one is far less likely to follow one’s ethical impulses when one is constrained by others, whether these be churchmen or statesmen. If the Soviets were guilty of great crimes, so were the religious warriors of other ages (albeit their cruelties have been exaggerated by modern revisionist historians).
If, on examination, we find that the crimes of the Soviets were greater than those of the religious warriors of early modern Europe, it is more likely because the Soviet state itself was far bigger and more totalitarian than any religious state in Europe at the period than because Soviet rulers were atheists.
We will find more answers, I feel, in looking at the form that a rule takes rather than the ideology of the ruler. Which is to say, a small Swiss cantonment that professed atheism would be far less likely to engage in mass cruelty than a large totalitarian state that professed a belief in Christ.
That said, I have to wonder if a genuine belief in God is compatible with the nature of a totalitarian state, where autonomy and the individual have no value.
Let me rethink Peter Hitchen’s conclusions. It’s not that atheism automatically leads to the totalitarian state (although it might have a tendency to). It is that acceptance of a totalitarian state inevitably leads to atheism.
But, equally, resistance to a totalitarian state seems to be accompanied by religious awakening.
“…acceptance of a totalitarian state…”
Isn’t that a form of religion?
It seems like one.
I understand why you say that but no…totalitarianism can exist in an uncharismatic form..ie no messiahs, no deep meaning..
the bureaucratic version.
In fact, that’s what totalitarianism is today
Theocracies are dictatorships but not really totalitarian in the same way
“I’ve known at least one atheist (at least, he called himself that at an early point of his life) who was more impeccably ethical than any believer I ever knew…”
Of course if the atheist is correct (that there is no authority in the universe higher than man), ethics do not exist beyond those which the individual creates for themselves.
Yes, but what is man?
Do we know what man is?
The “self” in man, may be the same “Self” in the universe – hence, Rand’s philosophy of “self-ishness.”
This is not to be construed, as some do, as Gordon Gekko selfishness (look at this passage, which condemns fraud, false values and tawdry motives).
This is very Hindu, of course.
Hinduism does not see the ultimate relation as horizontal – man to man.
But “self” in man to “Self” in God, to be found within and not outside.