When we look back through history, what caused the most bloodshed and oppression? Luis Buñuel, as quoted by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, gives this answer:
God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed. (p. 266)
That seems right to me. The love of God and Country are two powerful forces that have been used to manipulate people for centuries. That doesn’t mean they are wrong — it just means we need to acknowledge this and be very careful.
Loving God, even though he doesn’t exist, can result in wonderful acts of kindness and charity. But that same flame fanned in another direction — as we saw in the crusades and in Muslim fundamentalism — can result in devastating acts of violence. It can also result in oppression — look at how long Christians held on to slavery, for example, then “separate but equal,” and now fight against gay marriage.
The same can be said of patriotism. Patriotism can result in acts of bravery hardly imaginable. But it can also result in painfully divisive politics, as well as war, death, and destruction against a foe who happens to love a different country.
What do you think — are God and Country the unbeatable team for oppression and bloodshed?
I can’t improve on Diderot. “Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
The standard Christian answer would be to point out that Stalin or Pol Pot (or whomever) racked up a larger absolute body count without reference to any explicit God. In this case, I think they’re correct, and Dawkins’ point as stated stands refuted.
Now, what the secular baddies did have in common with religion was a dogmatic ideology which over-rode any consideration of compassion or feedback from reality — we KNOW that we are right, and we KNOW that we are bringing salvation to our land, and that justifies whatever we must do to bring that about.
I think the underlying reality is certain nasty aspects of human psychology. God is the historically most frequent co-conspirator with the Heart Of Darkness, but not the only one available (and the alternative of non-religious dogmatism did not realistically exist until the modern era).
@Eamon Knight: I would say those fall under Country.
Absolutely! Religion an extreme nationalism are two branches of the same tree. Each uses unquestioning dogma, oppression, and exclusion/fear of outsiders to achieve their ends. It isn’t surprising though that they’re effecitve. They play on our primal urges of fearing those who are different and they give their ahderents a sense of belonging. I’d like to think that if more people were aware of this fact, “God and Country” would hold less sway over the general populace.
I would also say racism, but that really just might be a subset of one or both of the two main ones, God and Country. I do have a feeling a good part of racism stems from religion. There is an us vs. them mentality throughout.
Eamon,
I can never understand people that bring up Stalin, Pol Pot, and Hitler (although supposedley he was a Roman Catholic, and many of his followers Christian) and compare their “body counts” to all of non-secular human history.
There’s just no winning that argument. I see how there could be debate about whether faith was a motivating factor, but if we’re just talking evil atheists vs. believers, it’s a no contest.
@Daniel: I can’t tell if you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me.
@McBlog:
I left out Hitler because (unlike a lot of Christian liars and fools) I know that he wasn’t an atheist. From what I have read, he seems to have been a lapsed Catholic, but still theist, with a bunch odd mystical notions about Das Volk, bolstered by a bunch of pseudo-scientific racial crap.
As far as comparing body-counts: point taken, and I refrained from elaborating. My main point is that Dawkins’ original claim strikes me as a bit simplistic.
I don’t really know how to measure and compare “degrees of nastiness” in a way that doesn’t beg the question. Should it be cumulative over all of history? Over equal intervals? Deaths per year? Specific episodes (eg. WWII vs. the Crusades)? Do you correct for the fact that in modern times there are more people to slaughter, and a larger-scale infrastructure and more efficient means at the tyrants’ disposal?
Eamon,
All good points. I don’t think that anyone should ever compare specific events of nastiness, particularly because it is impossible to know all of the intricacies of the event.
Perhaps the same could be said of the simplistic way an atheist strokes over human history and claims more evil to be done in the name of a god, but if we are to follow the same logic that a theist responds to that point by pointing out specific atheist evil rulers, then it is a point that neither side could win.
It’s been said that whatever you love most is your God.
To worship your own religious rightness or your idea of patriotism is worshipping at a false altar.
As Isaiah said; You have fallen through the cobweb you trusted in for support and leaned upon.
(loose transcription)
Look how the Christians brought an end to slavery. And I repeat, no one who strictly follows the teachings of Christ and His apostles will ever kill or do violence for his or her faith.
All good points, I find it interesting that both religion and nationalism are meant to enhance unity and acceptance within a group, and by these means they create hate and disapproval against other groups. If god did exist, would he want all these people hating and killing?
In some intances though it seems that religion bloodshed overthrows country bloodshed. Our current war is an example of a battle begun because of the difference in religion, or even the feuds that occured in Ireland is a key example. They may all love their god and their country, but it is their devotion to their own religion that creates a feud and bloodshed between them. They are all similar except for that one aspect, an aspect that can never be proven, and yet people die and lives are ruined because of it.
To add, are countries not originally made because of religion? were most not built by people that shared similar”beleifs”, therefore is not religion the main cultprit for the “country and god” bloodshed? With the ireland example, and WWII, it seems that the beleif in a religion (or against a religion) can split a country more than nationalism can split a religion.
I agree that following religion can be healthy and present good morales, but it is hard to deny this fact that god (and religion) causes much bloodshed in our world.
@murrowcronkite:
Nicely put: Pol Pot and Stalin, rather than dethroning god, tried to supplant Him. They were, in their own ways, as dogmatically certain of Truth as any theocrat.
@Dwight:
The Christians who eventually ended slavery were vehemently opposed by another group of Christians who supported it, and quoted scripture to that purpose.
Your second statement is the clearest use of the “No true Scotsman” fallacy I’ve seen in a while. In that statement, you assert that no-one who’s ever killed for the Christian faith is a Christian, ignoring the fact that many such thought of themselves not only as good Christians, but possibly better-than-average.
I actually believe that in the modern era, religious differences take a back seat to nationalism. It’s been shown in the Palestine-Israel conflict that nationalism is a greater force for motivation than religion, even among groups that claim to be Islamist, such as Hamas.
Dwight: The Bible was written by and for a slave-owning culture. If you really followed the word of the Bible, you’d support slavery!
/snark