Critique of a response to Art's column on Religion

[Dardedar]

Art Hobson wrote a column about religion which can be read here. Dr. Bill passed me a copy of a letter that was written in response to it. It's not available on line but my line by line response includes all of his main points. This is a copy of the letter I am mailing to him. I have invited him to respond here.

****
To: Mike H.
[address snipped]

September 28, 2009

Hello Mr. H,

You wrote a response to Art Hobson’s article which talked about religion correlating strongly with dysfunction in society. I am co-founder of the Fayetteville Freethinkers, a local skeptic group (of 300 or so) and I gave a presentation at our September freethinker meeting about his article. I also addressed one or two of your claims. I wrote the following line by line response to your comments and have passed it around. I also posted it in our freethinker forum here:

I welcome you to respond in our forum which is open to all. I am sure people would like to hear your response if you are interested in sharing one. I include a copy below.

***
MH: ”Art Hobson makes a crucial scientific mistake in his article... calling for the end of religion."

DAR
He never does this in his article at all. You made that up.

MH: "His hypothesis has been field tested in Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Nazi Germany, Communist China, and the killing fields of many other leftist socialist regimes."

DAR
Instead of addressing the current and relevant data Dr. Hobson presents (which shows religion correlating strongly with bad societal results) you instead refer us to cherry picked instances of failed societies which substituted the worship of a dictator in the sky, for the worship of a dictator on the ground. This suggests that dictators of either sort don't make for well functioning societies.

Dr. Hobson's material is preferable because it actually looks at comparable, current democratic societies and finds the more secular societies doing much better at solving their social problems. This presents a problem for those who confuse religion with morality.

MH: "These atheistic atrocities far surpass any religious atrocities visited on mankind."

DAR
Calling these atrocities "atheistic" is of course absurd. Stalin didn't kill anyone in the name of "atheism." How many people have been killed in the name of Zahdism? None have, because there is no such religion as Zahdism. How many have been have been massacred in the name of Christianity or countless other religions? Millions. Atheist literally means “not” “theist” and it is the only characteristic common to those who use that label.

Who knows, perhaps Stalin would have killed even more efficiently if he had been a Christian like Hitler and his Christian Nazis. People like to pretend Hitler was an atheist but this only reveals they don't know what they are talking about.

Hitler's Mein Kampf is filled with references to Bible scripture and he clearly explained his motivations: "Therefore, 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." His writings and speeches are littered with references to his Christian God. Hitler, a Roman Catholic (never excommunicated) went out of his way to specifically target the "godless." An Associated Press story of Feb. 23, 1933, notes: "A campaign against the 'godless movement' and an appeal for Catholic support were launched by Chancellor Adolf Hitler's forces." Hitler opposed "secular schools," because, as he said "such schools have no religious instruction" and "we need a believing people." Prayers to Jesus became mandatory in all schools under Hitler's administration. He criminalized abortion, and if you missed these clues he even went to the trouble of having each of his soldiers wear a belt buckle which boldly declared "Gott mit uns" ("God with us").

Hitler's SS were required to swear an oath to God and the Nazi Party was explicitly Christian as their 24th principle from the infamous Twenty Five Points (1920) states: "...the Party represents a positively Christian position...". This is certainly curious behavior for an "atheist" organization to engage in.

Regarding the anti-Christian comments sometimes attributed to Hitler in "Hitler's Table Talk," we now know those to be spurious. See HERE

I would now take a moment to examine the evidence showing Hitler was an atheist, but there isn't any.

MH: "Our forefathers in America set up a revolution and government based on the religious premise that man is evil and God is good."

DAR
That's nonsense of course, "they" said no such thing. And not by accident did they leave God entirely out of the nation’s foundational document since they knew all too well the tendency for religion to try to grasp power and use government to enforce holy dictates. That's why they prohibited any of that first off, see amendment number one.

MH: "...government must be limited and based on religious principles encouraging freedom."

DAR
a) If they wanted government to be based upon "religious principles," they completely forgot this when they wrote their godless constitution
b) Religious principles, based upon the unverifiable dictates of an unknowable deity, represent the opposite of freedom. The leading founders who were deists and freethinkers, knew this.

MH: "The French, on the other hand, turned to atheism..."

DAR
The French are still far more secular than the US and this is to their credit. The data Art refers to shows they are better than the US at dealing with their social problems, as were most of our less religious peer countries.

MH: "The only thing restraining the evil impulses of mankind is faith."

DAR
The only thing restraining evil is people believing in things without evidence? An astonishing falsehood but often taught in church. History is replete with counter examples. The fellows who perpetrated the attacks of 9/11 didn't find their faith a "restraint" on that day, in fact it was their entire motivating force. See Hitler, see the crusades, see the inquisition, see the pogroms, see Martin Luther's hatred of the Jews, see Northern Ireland in the 1980's, etc.,. Except for perhaps the Black Plague, nothing has caused more war, death and destruction than the timeless Faith Based Initiatives based upon "my God is bigger than your God, and He told me to take your land and kill your family." Says so right here in the book.

You then list some famous people, some of them Christians:

MH: "Mother Teresa"

DAR
Perhaps you didn't get the note about her admitting to being skeptical of God's existence. For most of her life she admits she "felt no presence of God whatsoever." -- http://tinyurl.com/yc5w9mf

MH: "Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John Adams."

DAR
All were clearly deists, not Christians. None of the first six presidents were orthodox Christians either.

MH: "Gandhi."

DAR
He talked about God a lot but was always rather vague. Now we know why. He used to say "God is Truth" but later change this to "Truth is God." This is something an atheist would much prefer. Gandhi wasn’t just a regular atheist he said he considered himself "a super-atheist." Read the interview here.

MH
"What about research showing religious people give more and [live longer]?"

DAR
Careful readers will notice that this correlation, if true (the US doesn't exactly shine in the category of longevity), doesn't speak at all to whether the beliefs of those "religious people" are true. It may be that not drinking and going to bed early helps Mormons live longer but this doesn't make their religious claims the slightest bit more likely to be true.

As the data Hobson references shows, and you still don't address, it is specifically the most religious areas of the US that are the least successful at solving these social problems. Secular societies do much better.

MH
"What about research showing people of faith actually have stronger marriages..."

DAR
While it's not clear how to know a marriage is "stronger," it should be pretty clear that when it ends in divorce, it wasn't "stronger." So if there was anything to this it's curious to find that the Bible belt has the highest divorce rates (and "Gay Marriage" Massachusetts has had the lowest). Note:

"...no region of the United States has a higher divorce rate than the Bible Belt. Nearly half of all marriages break up, but the divorce rates in these southern states are roughly 50 percent above the national average." --LINK

MH
"America is in moral decline precisely at the same point in its history it has become the most secular."

DAR
Besides the fact that our secular society has grown more moral in so many ways (slavery, equal rights, women's rights, programs for widows, orphans, poor, handicapped etc.) religious people sometimes like to exaggerate just how religious the US was in its early days. Consider:

"The attitude of the general public was one of apathy: in 1776, only 5 percent of the population were participating members of churches." [Ian Robertson, _Sociology_, 3rd editions, Worth Publishing Inc.: New York, 1987, page 410]

MH
"It [US] did not have the problems described by Art before it abandoned prayer in school,..."

DAR
The idea that school prayer was ubiquitous in the early days is another myth. Note:

"Bible reading, prayers or hymns in public schools were absent from most public schools by the end of the 19th century,..."

"At the time the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 1962 and 1963 decrees against school-sponsored prayers and bible-reading, it is estimated religious observances were unknown in about half of the nation's public schools."

"Until the 20th century, only Massachusetts required bible-reading in the schools..."
--LINK

Prayer has been thoroughly tested and the results are 100% consistent. It always fails the test. In our schools, it would be best to teach children methods that are known to work rather than methods that are known to not work.

MH
"Didn't murder babies with abortion."

DAR
We did have abortions but it was hidden better, with very disastrous results for the health of the mothers. A good indicator of a society not functioning well is the teen pregnancy rate. And what do we find?

"Teen birth rates highest in most religious states"
--MSNBC

As for nationally, it looks like our trend toward secularism is helping out, note:

"...teen birth rates in the United States have reached their lowest level since record keeping began 60 years ago."
--LINK

MH
"The closer we move to Art's vision of a godless society, the more we are falling apart."

DAR
Actually, the data Art referred to specifically refutes this notion, and saying otherwise is not a rebuttal. The world is replete with examples, right now, of comparable democratic societies that, while much more secular than the US, are doing much better at solving these social problems. This data suggests that not only is religion not necessary, it's harmful and gets in the way.

Kind regards,

Darrel Henschell
Fayfreethinkers.com
fayfreethinkers@yahoo.com

[kwlyon]

A very long time ago, in a galaxy far away, where I would get bored...I would send letters like this to see how people would respond or even if they would respond. I would try to see just how outlandish I could be...how far I could perturb the conversation into the realm of the ridiculously absurd before someone called my hand. You would be surprised, when pretending to be a creationist for example, how far you can push this line before people begin to catch on. Of course I always came clean in the end. This looks like something I would have written. If this correspondence continues down a steady path of ever increasing insanity, call his hand on it. Accuse him of just screwing with you and see if he fesses up. If he is messing with you there is NO WAY he will turn down the offer to post on this page. However even if he does don't get your hopes up...one might be tempted to believe that most of these guys are just assholes playing games with your head. I am quite convinced that most of them are indeed for real.

-Kevin

[Dardedar]

If he is messing with you...

DAR
There is no question he is serious. His letter was published in the NWAT and, as absurd and palpably false as his views are, they are probably shared by about 1/3 to 1/2 of American Christians.

D.

[kwlyon]

If he is messing with you...

DAR
There is no question he is serious. His letter was published in the NWAT and, as absurd and palpably false as his views are, they are probably shared by about 1/3 to 1/2 of American Christians.

D.

Go ahead then...crush my hopes....