Since the era of Newton and certainly since Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ when the great question mark was thrust upon the issue of religious faith and the feasibility of Biblically derived codes of ethics (not to mention the now implausible assertions of ‘Creationism’) - since the dawn of this era, which properly marks the separation of Church and State, we have been in a position to sculpt afresh an alternative set of ‘rules for living’ derived not from an assumed ‘Creator’ entity but from a more grounded and earthly milieu, acknowledging ourselves, as it were, as creatures cast into an indifferent cosmos, yet, with the responsibility nevertheless, to proceed apace and ensure our own effective governance.
This process is far from having being resolved as religious faith still clings on, albeit stubbornly, and increasingly in the face of ever more hostile attacks from self appointed prosecutors acting in the name of Reason and the virtues of the Enlightenment; Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins are but two of the latest assailants upon the “God Delusion” and the pretensions of organised religion to have ethical or moral sway in our private lives. Religion has traditionally provided us with these guidelines and mores, these instructions for ‘living the good life’, but we are no longer so completely in its thrall; at least for those who count themselves as belonging to the ‘enlightened’ and “secularised West” (a generic term I’m using here for all areas of ‘disbelief ’).
And this is where, it appears to me, the nub of the matter resides; for those who now openly tout the perceived past and present evils of the great religions (and clearly there are a long list of wars, inquisitions, conquests, land grabs, persecutions and woefully entrenched dogmas which have blighted our collective history), these advocates of Reason, are doing so at the vanguard of what they regard to be the last great cleansing act of the Enlightenment; they are latter-day crusaders marching under the banner of ‘progress’ oftentimes no less zealously than the most earnest evangelicals. But to where do they expect this immense declaration of loyalties to be displaced which has been hitherto bound up in the worship of their respective faiths? To put it another way; what is it that people are being offered that will entice them away from their fixation, not merely to “God”, but to a complicated nexus of relations which binds them inexorably to an entire extended community and provides them with governing rites of passage for all life’s key events. Like it or not, for birth, marriage and death, daily worship or a weekly sanctorum, from the cradle to the grave, religion is a glue that binds not only families, communities and nations but entire civilizations.
Also, it is all very well deriding the dictates of ‘mediated’ morality and pointing to the too often pustulous visage of its bearer; be it Islam, Judaism or Christianity - but it is well to reflect on what processes would be brought into being should these great organised bodies be somehow effaced from the earth. Some would say a great service would be performed no doubt - we can think of several conflicts currently fired by the mania of religious differences which could be ameliorated if only exclusively political considerations were allowed hold sway as well as possibly beneficial social changes that may be wrought relating to marriage, contraception and (more surely) in halting the proliferation of HIV/AIDS if only “the Church” could free policy makers from their shackles. But just for a moment consider the magnitude of this institution of religion and try and grasp what a root and branch upheaval of its institutions would entail.
By ‘mediated’ morality I mean a process wherein a prophet figure, be it Mohammed, Christ (or Zoroaster) has provided the original impetus wherein an ever-proliferating phalanx of scholars, priests, philosophers, learned imams and scripturalists has sought to interpret, weave together and adjust, according to the measure of their own times, the sacred Word, and blend the whole into an accepted theology which is daily recited at the pulpit or mosque for the edification of believers. This ‘mediated’ morality, at least according to any atheist who gives the matter any thought, is a mediation ultimately derived from, and controlled by, none other than our own good selves; it is an entirely human made as opposed to divinely inspired bank of instructions to which the religious adhere themselves. So to ask whether religion itself is an intrinsic problem is to pour thoughtless calumny on the positive social dimension it provides. It’s function in bridging social gaps, of providing connectivity between and within communities and it’s role as a necessary social glue which binds together otherwise disparate groups and individuals is too often overlooked in the scramble to ascribe blame to “irrational” sectarianism and wars of imputed religious provenance.
For most people (who tend not to dwell at length on questions of theological import - such as their faith’s legitimacy in the face scientific inquiry) it is the generally simple face-value interpretation of holy writ to which they align themselves - it’s ready made code of ethics to which they are familiar from childhood. From the materialist standpoint religion occupies the domain of superstructure; it is transmitted ideology and as such, at least according to this influential school, it is not the dominant factor influencing inter-tribal or inter-ethnic tensions. What is important from this school’s standpoint is the primacy of economic determinants which in turn defines the political response.
The ‘Troubles’ in northern Ireland began with the Civil Rights marches and the ongoing political disenfranchisement of the nationalist community; the pre-existing ‘confessional’ divide is then highlighted and much of the future violence is cast in sectarian rather than political terms as though religious differences were themselves the initial instigator of discontent. But how many other regions in Europe today where there is found a similar distribution of Protestant and Catholic populations (as there is in Ulster) do we see these kinds of tensions manifest themselves? Religion and religious faith are in this instance subsidiary actors who play no role in generating the root causes of grievances but because of their proximity to the intimate lives of the people will of necessity be mobilised in some shape or form whenever conflicts arise. The ongoing conflict over the disputed Palestinian territories perhaps complicates this thesis as while there is an undoubted economic determinant - the control and access of land and its resources - in some Israeli quarters this appropriation and expansion of a “Greater Israel” is justified via reference to certain Biblical passages. But, nevertheless, it may equally be argued that many (perhaps most) of those within Israel who defend the ongoing settlement regime are themselves secularist in their thinking (despite any lip-service they may pay to scriptural endorsement) and simply see the whole process as a demonstration of ‘might is right’ - we were not the initial aggressors and the lands now claimed are simply the spoils of war; whatever else the international community may think.
Similarly, with the exception perhaps of the early Muslim Brotherhood and its numerous offshoots who appeared to have deplored the West’s ‘corruption and decadence’ in and of itself and who sought to establish an Islamic state based on Shar’ia law we find it otherwise difficult to discern among the majority of Muslims such fundamental differences in worldview as makes it impossible for us to co-exist. Again, if we focus on the stated grievances of Al-Qaeda (as relayed by Bin Laden) it is a question of more mundane earthly matters which are the source of discontent; US armed forces occupying Saudi Arabia and continued Israeli expansion in Palestine - not, as Bush had it, their general aversion to the West (“because of who we are” - our love of liberty and so on).
When people are being squeezed economically or oppressed politically religion often assumes a more fundamentalist guise and its proselytisers can afford to become all the more stringent in their dictates. The reign of the Western backed Shah of Iran coincided with an upsurge of Sh’ia fundamentalism as all other outlets for social expression outside the mosques and madrassas were supervised by the secret police (similarities can be drawn with the rise of Puritanism under Charles I) and the Taliban gained a foothold in Afghanistan only after it was economically devastated following the Soviet retreat. Again, Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan is defined by its relationship to poverty. Here, the (mainly) Saudi-funded madrassas who trained the self-same Taliban stepped into the breach left behind by the failures of the State by providing an education and a daily meal for parents who couldn’t afford to send their children anywhere else. Meanwhile, this clientalist military state which poses as a democracy is obliged to safeguard its position by displacing populist discontent onto issues such as Kashmir thereby heightening tension with India whose own corporatist clientalism, often caste-based politics, gross disparities of wealth and burgeoning Hindu nationalism offer little succour to its own earnest reformers.
Everywhere we look in fact where we think we see the “irrational dictates” of religious fundamentalists holding sway and inducing inter-ethnic, inter-tribal or intra-regional tension it is better to take a step back and ask ourselves what are the basic economic (and political) determinants at play. By extension, the fuel of the fundamentalist proselytisers of the Enlightenment is often the false assertion that it is the religious differences themselves or the (misconceived) world views to which they give rise that are the main causes of these conflicts; a view which is simply incompatible with a materialist ‘bottom up’ conception of social change.
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