Does religion do more harm than good?

Gathering at Newcastle University on 16th February, an expert panel discussed the thorny issue of “Does Religion Do More Harm Than Good?” The debate is part of a series organised by the British Academy in association with Prospect. It was chaired by Professor Helen Berry of Newcastle University, and the speakers were Islam scholar Malise Ruthven, Professor of Catholic Studies Tina Beattie, journalist David Aaronovitch and Ian Reader, an expert on Japanese extremist religious groups.

Ruthven argued that before working out whether it did more harm than good, the word religion needed unpacking. Religion, he argued, was a category invented in the 18th and 19th centuries by the British to label the beliefs of colonised people. This led to a “devastating compartmentalisation” of religions in south Asia—people didn’t strictly think of themselves as Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs before they had been described as such. The Arabic word “Deen,” which is found in the Quran, is often translated as "religion," but in fact means “way of life.” The record of toleration of other beliefs in Islam had been good, he said, up until the modern era. The problem of religious extremism derives from the “huge pressures of the Enlightenment,” where modernity is being thrust on societies with older models of thought, at high speed and from a perceived foreign— i.e. western— source.

The Chair Helen Berry asked if we were seeing a clash of civilisations. Ruthven said it was inevitable that Muslim societies would catch up with the west. The process of secularity took 200 years in Britain and France. The benefit of secularity is not so much its anti-religious stance, he said, but its capacity for pluralism.

Tina Beattie followed up by outlining some of the arguments she made in a piece for Prospect’s website. “Religion cannot do anything,” she said, “only people can act.” Beattie described herself as a Catholic and a feminist who had lived most of her life in sub-Saharan Africa. While Ruthven looked forward to a time when secular values spread all over the world, Beattie argued that Catholicism “has not caught up with—and perhaps it should never catch up with—the credo of autonomous individualism that is such an important part of the Enlightenment.” Still, she argued, there were points where she did think the Catholic Church was wrong—in the area of individual rights and of women, especially sexual and reproductive rights: “I have been silenced by the Vatican for coming out in favour of same-sex marriage.” She praised Pope Francis for his “radical and unflinching” critique of modern capitalism and said that after the collapse of Communism, Catholicism had filled the void. She ended by saying, “If all faith activity stopped tomorrow, for millions of people there would be little or no access to education.”

David Aaronovitch opened by saying he was there to “represent the Godless and the inexpert.” He accused Beattie of echoing arguments by the religious writer Karen Armstrong: everything good about religion is down to religious belief, while everything bad is down to politics. He went on to say that he had been brought up in a kind of faith (Communism—which he later abandoned), but even communism's adherents did not believe it "had recourse to a supernatural adjudicator.” The “inexpressible mystery of life,” that Beattie described, he said, was being solved by science—for example, in the recently discovered evidence for gravitational waves. On whether religion did more harm than good, the answer was “it depends.” It was similar to asking whether “curiosity” did more harm than good. Religion can be “supremely damaging,” he said, with transcendent authority handed down by God to men with beards. The more believers cleave to ancient texts, the more fundamentalist they were, and therefore the more likely they were to cause damage. On the other hand, Aaronovitch praised the work of religious groups caring for asylum-seekers and refugees. The transcendent can give a meaning beyond the self that encourages charity. Ultimately, though, he would prefer that we follow secular ideals such as those embodied in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Ian Reader said that “religion is a human product and it has all the problems of humanity associated with it.” For many years he has studied murderous religious groups. He is an expert on the Tokyo Subway Attack of 1995 that killed 12 people, which was carried out by a Japanese religious cult. The perpetrators genuinely believed they were killing people in order to save the world. “When you have the truth, anything is permitted,” was a good summary of their belief system. For Reader, religion has an intrinsically millenarian thread: the destruction or overturning of the current civilisation. He said he saw the same ideas in militant Islamist groups such as ISIS. This absolute moral certainty could be very dangerous, he said. But as to whether religion does more harm than good overall, the “answer is yes, no and maybe.”

Berry asked what good religion had in fact done. Ruthven praised the Aga Khan’s Ismaili Muslim community for donating generously to charity. Beattie repeated that the Church spoke out on social justice. She would like it, she said, if bankers and corporate bosses would think: “You may go to hell if you continue behaving the way you do.” Aaronovitch said this was the language of the “elect and the damned.”

A questioner from the audience asked Beattie to explain the historical crimes of the Catholic Church—the crusades, child sex abuse. “You’re on your own,” quipped Aaronovitch to audience laughter. Beattie replied that the Crusades were from a different era, and that child abuse was a problem in all large institutions—though the Catholic Church had done a bad job of dealing with it, including the current Pope. Another questioner asked whether atheism was compatible with believing in an objective morality. “The answer is yes," said Aaronovitch. "It is quite obvious. If you cannot conceive of an ethical order without supernatural power that’s your problem.” Another audience member stood up and described himself as a “committed Muslim.” He picked up Ruthven’s earlier point about the word “Deen” in the Quran. “Don’t we all have to question whether our religion—or way of life—does more harm that good?”

The next British Academy faith event is being held in Belfast with the title: "Is True Religion Always Extremist?"

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