The Anti Faith

When it comes to faith, patriotism, and sports teams, most human beings tend to be emotional, irrational, and unwavering in their defense and hooligan-like in their retaliation for any perceived offense. But it is the first one on the list that has caused the greatest destruction to otherwise prosperous human societies and has taken the greatest toll in human lives through out history. Whatever and whichever flavor, color, philosophy or degree of adherence one subscribes to, religion continues to govern our lives and certain things are simply not open for discussion. If one is born into a faith one judges others according to its dictates and is judged likewise.

 

Although in some places murder in the name of a deity has been steadily on the decline over the past couple of centuries, religion has continued to wreak havoc in other places. Old scores, some hundreds of years old if not a thousand, are still being settled in the name of a one true faith. If someone killed someone’s ancestor four hundred years ago over their beliefs, or more precisely used religion as a tool of politics, then chances are someone today will find a reason to avenge that murdered ancestor, also for political reasons, and justify killing thousands in the name of a faith.

 

The fact is religion’s usefulness in organizing social interactions and delineating rights, obligations, and limits of individual freedom and action in society, is far out weighed by its capacity to polarize and fanaticize human societies into a hysterical, unthinking and violent mass.

 

Almost every human society claims its laws are derived from its religious texts, and yet no one dares question the authorship of those texts, in some cases on pain of death or at the very least ostracism from family and society. Human societies have created self sustaining myths that require unbending devotion and blind trust, but in return offer very little in the way of evidence to convince the rational mind of their argument. The desire to belong is so strong and the fear of ostracism so crippling that many suspend their disbelief and follow the flock. Like children, who assume their parents are right because they just are, so many of the faithful regress, ignore their mind’s pleas for reasoned discourse, for proof, evidence, rational argument, and instead trust in the unseen, guided by the keepers of the keys to the secrets and mysteries of the faith.

 

Even in the US where separation of Church and State is a basic pillar of constitutional government, the words on the very fabric of happiness, the US dollar bill, are clear for all to see: In God we Trust. It might as well read: “In the unseen, intangible and unproven we trust,” ironically prophetic in view of the latest financial debacle as it turns out.

 

In the West, and since the enlightenment, there has been a slow but steady retreat of the influence of faith in the lives of the people. Religious institutions have shrunk in importance and political power in Europe, but they remain tolerated as a colorful part of the social mosaic. In the US, the religious right is resurgent but is mercilessly ridiculed by liberal talk show hosts. In the west, there has been an undeclared truce between faith and science, as each operates in a totally different sphere of life; one relies on empirical evidence before it claims anything to be a fact, while the other issues transcendent statements on the origin of everything and calls them facts.

 

Preserving the very institutions that once led witch hunts and inquisitions is obscene to put it simply. These old and apparently harmless institutions that today engage more in charity work than in politics still retain the power to do great harm. As long as mankind has the capacity to be led by their passions, there is potential for great harm. Just look at the conservatives in the United States, the Republican Party led by Bible toting fanatics, a state of affairs that Barry Goldwater once warned about if anyone remembers their history: “When you say radical right today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.”

 

Religion has a way of making politics, that fine art of the possible, of compromise and consensus building, almost irrelevant, even here in the Middle East we feel it. The new Egypt, for example, is beginning to look awfully familiar! But far from being a reincarnation of Mubarak, the new president is a civilian for once and he was elected by the people, but both he and his party could very well at some point down the road make politics irrelevant. I am thankful for those who stood up to Mursi’s move to assume dictatorial powers, even if, as he said, these powers are only temporary until the country has votes on a constitution. But we in the Arab World are very skeptical about such promises, after all so many of our most illustrious life-term presidents made similar promises early in their rule.

 

But the Middle East is more complicated than the US or Europe. Over here so many still take religion very seriously and are intolerant of any dissenters who dare to speak their minds on the matter of faith as a vital component for good governance. In fact, I would rather be governed by a faith-neutral person who is empathetic with the plight of the downtrodden and the poor, than by a saint.

 

Here are a few great men talking on religion:

 

“The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion,” Thomas Paine

 

“I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion,” James Buchanan

 

“Each nation knowing it has the only true religion and the only sane system of government, each despising all the others, each an ass and not suspecting it,” Mark Twain

 

“The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church,” Ferdinand Magellan

 

“I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord’s work,” Adolf Hitler

                                          Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition