There's a fair bit of to-and-fro going on with the Sciblings about Richard Dawkins' latest book The God Delusion, which, being at the edge of empire, I haven't yet seen. When I do, I will read it and comment, of course.
But I want to ask a general question - is religion in itself a malign influence on society? For example, any number of Islamic Imams, including the leader of Australia's Muslim community, think that women who don't dress "modestly" (which can mean anything from wearing a long sleeved top to the burka) are to blame for being raped.
And attacks on the moral influence of Christianity are long-standing. Herbert Spencer once responded to a review of one of his books thus:
I am glad that you have taken the occasion to denounce the hypocrisy of the Christian world; ceaseless in its profession of obedience to the principles of its creed, and daily trampling upon them in all parts of the world. I wish you would seize every occasion which occurs (and there are plenty of them) for holding up a mirror, and showing those who call themselves Christians that they are morally pagans. [Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer D. Duncan, Methuen, 1908, 308]
Religious hypocrisy deserves attack. So too does hypocrisy from any quarter, including the atheist and free-thinker community (as it used to be called). The present attack upon religion is both justified, and misplaced.
The history of any religion is usually a bloody one. In western society not too long ago, churches were involved in slavery, child abductions, discrimination, riots, tortures, murders, and of course child sexual exploitation. And it is hard to get them to accept this history and take responsibility for it. Some do, of course, but True Believers will rationalise it or try to shift the blame to, for example, "evolutionists". So criticism of religion on the basis of its scorecard to date is justified.
But I wonder if the critics of religion are being entirely balanced here. For a start, one can cherry pick examples for any doctrine or ideology and find atrocities. Religion is a human activity, is it not? Humans do good and bad things. They are sometimes enlightened, and sometimes ignorant and prejudiced. They are occasionally altruistic and egalitarian, and mostly nepotistic and corrupt. So the real question is whether religion is better or worse than the general mode of human behaviour.
The answer is going to be empiricially determined, and there will be a problem of ascription and causation. Remember that correlation is not causation, and also that anecdote is not the singular of data. Critics of religion tend to be most critical of that which they grew up with (for instance, I have it from back channels that Dawkins' extended family is evangelical), but to really be sure, we need to do a proper study. Is the activity of Hitler, for instance, due to his religion (he was and remained a Catholic)? I rather doubt it, although clearly his religious opinions either caused or justified to himself after the fact the acts he took against Jews, gypsies, and socialists.
So I think that it is better to ask, why religion at all? What does religion do that is unique? I think the answer to that is that religion is an expression of, and an institutional way of reinforcing, social identity and economic interest of groups within and between societies. As such, of course it will be involved in any actions or events that serve to increase or maintain the position and privileges of that group. Catholics will strive to have influence on social morés because that increases their social fitness, as it were. Hindus in India will strive to exclude non-Hindus from power for the same reason. And non-religious social groups that are nevertheless defined by their stance towards religion would do exactly the same thing if they can.
The recent "movement" (which seems to have died a death) of the "Brights" pits worldview against worldview - why? In one sense it is because they, just as firmly as any other doctrinally based institution, believe that their views will improve society and progress (and I happen to agree with them on that). But how would a Brights-based society play out? Would it be egalitarian and nondscriminatory, treating religious folk with equal respect? The hell it would. Humans would be running that society, and that simply isn't how humans behave. Ideas don't make people behave in a moral and upright fashion (and even if they did, such a society would be subverted from within by those who don't behave so nobly); institutional structures do.
For example, take a democratic society that has checks and balances against hegemonistic control by subsection of society. Until the classes or special interest groups (like a certain elephantine political party in a nation I will not name) find ways to subvert those checks and balances, people can have equality before the law, freedom of speech, and safety against arbitrary arrest and detention or even death. Once those institutions are subverted, though, no matter who is in control, the end result will be oligarchy, corruption, and bias against some members of society. That's the human way.
So is religion malign? I think religion is just another human activity, and subject to the sins and flaws of humans. Calling for the burka, or hating fags, or demonising A-rabs, or whatever. It's all just a way of marking the in-group from the out-group, so that you know who to call on for favours, and who not to. And a civil society, a society that is the best sort of human society we are capable of, will fight against that exclusivism even if it happens to be the majority opinion, not so that another exclusivism can replace it, but so that none ever does.
Now I happen to think, as I gather that others do, that religion is likely to be a "default" human propensity for other reasons than this social one - we tend to anthropomorphise the world, and only science frees us from that. We tend to feel social guilt (it's an evolved disposition that makes us social animals). And we tend to want to retain the traditions of our forebears (doing so is fitness enhancing when you live in an environment that doesn't change much, and is local). So something akin to what we call "religion" is going to persist even if only because it takes a long time to acclimate people to not being religious; education takes time. What we have to do is reinforce secularism - a society that is not based on, and does not favour over others, a particular religion, is going to be the most just and egalitarian society humans are realistically capable of. And this will serve to make religions less unjust and prejudiced. Calls like the Imams', or the televangelists and religious pundits, for moral conformity, to the exclusion of rights for women, gays, other religions (or none), and races, must be resisted even by the religious. But religion is not itself so much a cause of evil as an effect of it, and also an effect of good.
Here endeth the Lesson...
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Very well said. A timely dose of reason after all the heat from two noisy extremes.
Excellent post. At its best religion is a binding force for humanity. There are good and bad people of all types; and people who thrive on confrontation and rubbing the other fellow's nose in it.
As the two previous posters have written, a most excellent and reasonable comment.
The question remains, however, whether the better approach to religion is one of confrontation or conciliation - Dawkins or Wilkins (Will whichever proves superior be a case of 'kins' selection?)
Well obviously mine is. But he's the better writer - if you don't need to qualify or hedge what you say based on reasonableness and knowledge of the topic, then you can make a much stronger statement, so I expect that Dawkins' advocacy will win the day with the choir of antitheists...
I have it from back channels that Dawkins' extended family is evangelical
hm. two points
1) he was though personally raised a convential anglican from what i can tell
2) he seems to have animus toward catholics. i went to a private talk given by him in '95 and noted three jokes at the expense of catholicism, and have noticed a noticeable fixation on this religion for one from a preodminantly non-catholic nation
I agree with what you say here, but you're being just as much an anti-theist as I am.
The argument isn't that religion necessarily causes people to do evil -- obviously, it doesn't -- but that religion does not inhibit evil. As you say, people do evil because people are people, not because they're Catholic or Muslim or atheist. That would be all well and good, and not a reason to dismiss religion, except that religion specifically and rather tediously, I think, insists that it is a moral force in the world. Strip away it's claim of superior morality, and poof, you have to wonder why we should bother with it at all.
It certainly isn't because religion provides a superior explanation of natural forces or our origins.
To turn a common argument around, I would say that one reason us atheists are getting louder and more militant is in opposition to the arrogance of the religious. We're getting a little tired of this smokescreen of Christians, for instance, pretending that they're better people than the godless because they believe in invisible men...and the fact that that belief has become a de facto prerequisite for playing a role in government or even local civic engagement adds some palpable resentment to the whole mess.
Also, like you say, the goal isn't to eradicate religion -- it's to put it in its place and make secularism the common mode of operation for government, education, and public life. The debate is over how to do that. I think that at this stage of the game, at least in the US where religion has become this pervasive miasma, what we need is strong voices ridiculing superstition and dogma. It is not enough to mumble, "why can't we all just get along..." -- we need to fight back first and clear a space for non-theists. The time for accommodation is after we've acquired some parity.
My anti-theism is pretty high, probably somewhere around Hitchens's. That said, anyone who believes in any kind of utopian dogma, be it some unquestioned version of catholicism or communism, is potentially able to justify terrible acts in the name of the ends. Atheism doesn't have the prescriptive content necessary to justify these things, it doesn't tell you what to do, it's not an ethical system for evaluating means and ends.
Looking at the question empirically, the data on who's in prison, who gets educations, &c certainly doesn't find that religious people are better; the data is typically neutral or biased against the religious.
As an aside, I was walking on NCSU campus one time with a good friend, a math professor who is a lapsed catholic, and upon coming across one of the angry street preachers, he said, "What makes him so dangerous, is that he is so certain. There is no doubt."
razib - there are evangelicals in the Church of England (Anglican is the adjective, not the proper noun, except in Australia). They are not like the American kind in many ways, but they can be just as insistent, in that quiet English kind of way. His prejudice against Catholicism may have something to do with the hard line the RCC has traditionally taken in the UK.
Paul, I don't disagree with anything you say here, except that I am not antitheist. I am anti-injustice and moral hypocrisy. Whether that is perpetrated by theists, atheists or members of the International Clown Society is besides the point. Let people be theists, and let them influence their own faith community. Make nobody have to be a member of that or any other faith community, and I am happy.
As to superstition, I think this is a much harder topic than we realise. Our innate (there! I used the i-word!) tendencies to personalise nature are a hard thing to overcome. I actually think that science runs counter to our evolved nature in this regard, which is why it's hard to get people, sometimes even those with a science education, to think scientifically. Or maybe Gaia made me think that, I dunno.
But if you don't try for accommodation now, you will never have it - either they will exclude you or you will exclude them. It's like the argument against the use of terror in freedom fights. Start a society based on the indiscriminate use of violence, and you will inherit one that is indiscriminately violent for centuries. The "liberal" (in the original political sense of liberty of all) society means that while we will face backsliding, we have a goal for reforming it. But attack all the time, make it us against them, and that is how it will proceed thereafter. Look at European history, and the effects even now of the counter Reformation, the wars of religion, and prejudice against Catholics in Protestant nations. Look at the middle east. Look at the United States. Oh, wait a minute, you might like to ignore that sentence...
Steve, I most greatly fear those who are certain. We humans did not evolve to know for sure, only for good-enough. Bayes rules...
But that's what I'm saying--you are just as much an anti-theist as I am, or Richard Dawkins. None of us are talking about caging Christians or telling people they can't go to church. We are all saying that religion isn't the source of human virtue.As for accommodation—no, it's too late here. When I say we atheists need to fight, it's for the right to exist and be recognized as legitimate contributors to society. We're at the point where we are trying to stand up for basic rights on which we cannot compromise. And you do not succeed by meekly striving for the bare minimum, you have to push for more to have any hope of achieving those basics.A minority that has been marginalized has no chance of progress if they start by conceding that maybe we could surrender a little more dignity to make the majority happy.
I don't think that I ever implied that atheists ought not to stand up for their own rights and freedoms. When the US can openly elect an atheist to public office, then progress will have been made.
But I think you may be misreading what I am saying, and I you, which is worrying, given that we are twins. The way to get rights is not to attack the rights of others. It is not to say: "You theists are just stupid poopypants who should have no say in the running of the country" and so on. I know you aren't saying that, but the implication is there, a bit. And of course, put in that way, theists (reasonable theists at any rate - no, it's not a contradiction in terms; I've known too many counterexamples) will arc up and push back. If you want rights, and you should have them, get theists to see that it is in their own interests to support your rights.
And of course, surrender no dignity.
I can afford to be a bit sanguine on this because I live in a nation where around 40% or more are of no religion at all, and we don't like others imposing their own views on us no matter whether we are or aren't. Except when we import American extremism. To be an atheist here is an easy matter, relatively.
PZ,
This is the sort of extremist rhetoric that makes you seem, at times, a bit crazed in your evangelical atheism. "Right to exist"? Oh come on.
John's point is important:
Energy spent on fighting injustice and moral hypocrisy is useful. Calling anyone who makes a reference to God an idiot is not -- especially when you can do the former without doing the latter. Many fine people have some kind of God belief and are not generally idiots. Your over generalization limits your effectiveness.
It's all just a way of marking the in-group from the out-group, so that you know who to call on for favours, and who not to.
Some inchoate thoughts:
It seems to me that this is just another way of saying "religion is politics." I happen to think that religion is politics, neither more nor less.
Religions only exist in opposition to one another. Unless there is some competing theology to set yourself apart from, it's all superstition and tradition. That is, the idea of religion qua religion only becomes an issue when people with different sets of superstitions and traditions come into conflict.
To me, the question is, "Is religion intrinsically different from other forms of political organization, and if so, how?" Intuitively, it feels like religion is unique, compared to, say, political parties or national allegiences, but I find that I can't really say just how it is different. God, like the Queen of England, is a figurehead whose power is basically symbolic, but the Queen of England unquestionably exists.
Paradoxically, I think perhaps religion derives its political power from the fact that God doesn't exist. If God were as real as His believers claim, then religion would be reduced to just another political organization.
"but that religion does not inhibit evil"
True enough, but neither does atheism.
Religion isn't a sine qua non for ethical behavior and neither is atheism.
Very well said.
Among these debates, I think it's often missed that the issue with cultural pathologies is not religion per se (as religion itself can be seen as a general term). The problem is that people can sieze on any idea, event, occurrence, religion, etc. to justify and enable some pretty nasty behaviors.
Hold it -- so saying that we shouldn't be interested in kicking out the Christians or dominating society, but that our goals are just the bare minimum -- "the right to exist and be recognized as legitimate contributors to society" -- is "extremist rhetoric"?
Which should we back down on? Will the theists be appeased if we surrender our role as open contributors to society, or do we have to go all the way and snuff it?
Undoubtedly, the argument that religion has, in the past, been a powerful negative force is inescapable. History is just too littered with a variety of atrocities committed in the name of one deity or another, or under the impetus of one religious point of view or another.
It's also undeniable that there is a pretty strong correlation between locations with high rates of violent crime, unwed motherhood, intolerance, and a whole lot of other human ills and locations with high levels of religiosity. Of course, correllation without evidence of causation isn't sound evidence.
But for me, the real problem with religion is that it actively promotes non-rational thinking. The elevation of "faith" over reason and evidence as a reason to believe is poisonous. After all, believing through faith is nothing more than believing because *someone* with a more powerful personality than your own *told* you to.
I see no counterbalancing positive influence from any religion which comes close to compensating for this powerful negative effect.
Lynn
Lynn,
I'd actually say the problem is blind faith period. Religion, having the weight of history and culture behind it, is much more easily a repository for it (inertia) and is harder to question (it challenges people's assumptions).
I've encountered people with blind faith (a religious zeal as it were) in things that we wouldn't consider religions - and it's pretty much the same no matter what. Perhaps the most memorable experience on my part was, in a cultural discussion group, analyzing online flamewars between Harry Potter fans - and the arguments and issues we witnessed were indistinguishable from religious arugments.
It is notable that those going to have mostly read the book, and those going fro have not, and are relying on the reviews of others.
Religion is also sometimes used as an excuse for evil. It forestalls rational discussion. If someone tells you that God told him to invade another country, how are you to argue with that? Can you ask God to change his mind?
Mustapha, the point is that religion is used as an excuse. It is no different than using national (homeland) security as an excuse for evil, or using social conventions, or"science" (as in the Nazi experiments). Acceptance of someone telling you that they are doing God's work is as evil as the claim made in the first place. Those who accept that God told Bush to invade Iraq are as culpable as Bush and his administration for the deaths and civil chaos there, for example. You can challenge a speaker on what God's will is, and many do.
There is a difference: religion declares their excuse to be exempt from questioning, and officially and dogmatically and automatically a force for Truth and Goodness.
Patriotism is also subject to that kind of jingo, but isn't backed up by claims of eternities of torture for anyone who criticizes it.
One point I'd add to all this that gets missed in the debates is the notion of responsibility.
If someone beleves God told them to do something, it does not remove responsibility - they choose to believe, choose to act, choose to have faith. They are responsible for their actions. Its the same if someone bases a choice on a social convention, a scientific theory, etc. No "kind" of belief relieves one of the fact that a choice is made.
I think that's where some (a lot?) of us get pretty edgy about certain religious beliefs - when religion is treated as a "get out of responsibility free" card.
It can also happen with things people get really 'religious' about and they stop thinking. Politics, these days, is example one.
Patriotism is also subject to that kind of jingo, but isn't backed up by claims of eternities of torture for anyone who criticizes it.
Just actual torture for what seems like an eternity.
Something else to consider on this. It's easy to say many will challenge those who claim to speak for god, and say that we need to invade our neighbors and kill in the name of religion. It makes it that much harder to speak out against that, though, when we don't also criticize those who claim to say that they speak for god, and god says he loves everyone and wants us all to give each other big happy hugs and help the poor and work for peace.It's the same god saying "love your neighbor" and "slaughter the heathen". Accepting one message strips us of our credibility in criticizing the other.
John Wilkins wrote:
I don't agree. Your styles are different - to me, you read a bit more like Paul Davies - but I would not say you were much inferior. All you really need to work on are the vivid image and apposite metaphor for whch Dawkins has such a great gift.
A lot of back-and-forth here about "religion," "faith," and "God." Also important is exactly which religions are being discussed?
Everyone seems to be really talking about monotheism, which despite its present dominance via Christianity and Islam represents but a small part of the spectrum of human religious experience, practice, and belief.
Also important is the nature of individual religions themselves? Some like Buddhism and assorted paganisms ancient and modern emphasize practice over doctrine. Others like Christianity and Islam emphasize doctrine over practice. Practice seems to tolerate greater diversity than doctrine: you can be a practicing Buddhist or Wiccan without accepting supernaturalistic dogmas.
Polytheistic religions tend to be more tolerant, having no One True God.
The violence of monotheism is arguably not so much hypocritical as firmly rooted in scripture: the liberal Jesus rests primarily on the beatitudes and a handful of sayings and aphorisms, and hardly a page of the Koran goes by without some kind of threat or contempt toward unbelievers.
John Wilkins makes the most sense to me. Myers, Dawkins, et al. seem willing to trash an entire realm of human experience on the basis of one set of doctrines about that experience.
All you really need to work on are the vivid image and apposite metaphor for whch Dawkins has such a great gift.
It is said that at Dawkins' birth, the Good Fairy and the Bad Fairy came to his crib.
The Good Fairy said that she would give him many gifts - intelligence, a handsome face, a beautiful wife, and a permanent Chair.
The Bad Fairy gave him a gift for metaphor...
There is an old distinction between propositional (i.e., doctrinal) religion and practical (i.e., rule-adherence) religion. Judaism has a plethora of doctrinal schools, but is until recently more practical - it didn't matter, within reason, what you believed so long as you adhered to the Hallakhah. Framing religion in terms of doctrine is based on the assumption that Christianity, which is a doctrinal religion and has been since at least the Nicene Council, is the prototypical religion.
But is Christianity the prototypical religion? That's a question that seems to go largely unaddressed. Of recent commentators, only Sam Harris has distinguished dogma-centered, text-based religions from spiritual practices that are not dogmatic.
No it is not, and this raises an interesting feature of the present debate. The attack upon religion is framed in terms of Christianity in the US and the west, but Christianity is a hybrid form of highly derived religion. The doctrines of Christianity appear to be the defining markers of in- and out-group, but in fact more important are social and cultural markers like sexual behaviour, dress, ritual behaviour, and social attitudes, in each particular case and place.
Specifying that the deal with religion is the doctrines and belief systems is to already assume a lot; too much, if you ask me. "Religion" is much broader than this doctrinal target.
Indeed, doctrines are not the whole story. The problem is that it's the doctrines that provide many Christians and Muslims with the personal certainty that they have the right to impose their social and cultural markers on others.
Attacks on the religious and spiritual in that much broader sense seem to me misplaced. That's the basis on which I have trouble with many doctrinaire atheists ("doctrinaire" doesn't seem quite the right word, but I can't think of a better at the moment). With the exception of a few like Harris, they make no distinctions.
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John Wilkins makes the most sense to me. Myers, Dawkins, et al. seem willing to trash an entire realm of human experience on the basis of one set of doctrines about that experience.
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When any religion can produce 1/4 pound of God spoor that can be tested as such, I am sure scientists around the world will at least reconsider, until then, the above sentence is meaningless. There is no "realm" there. Religion is distracting us and retarding progress on the search for the real, objective, scientific way to achieve happiness. That research is really the domain of neurobiologists and secular philosophers or buddhists. Spokesmen for the invisible old guy in the sky have nothing to offer humanity.
Correction: they have worse than nothing to offer humanity if the last 4500 years are anything to go by.
"When any religion can produce 1/4 pound of God spoor that can be tested . . ."
"Monotheism [i.e., "God"] represents but a small part of the spectrum of human religious experience, practice, and belief."
Two ships passing in the night.
The one quote refers to the doctrine of monotheism, the other to a realm of experience that is universal throughout human history and human cultures. That experience is a matter of fact. Just look at the record.
The doctrine is an imposition, and as unlikely to be true as anything can be.
"That research is really the domain of neurobiologists and secular philosophers or buddhists."
Can't argue with that, especially the part about Buddhists.
To me, the debate about how to debate religion, and about how far to go in debating religion, is almost even more interesting than the debate about religion.
One of the things about it that makes it interesting, to me, is that there are a large group of people who espouse the 'live and let live' line, also known as the 'can't we get along' line. I, personally, find this an untenable position to hold -- and by that I'll highlight that I mean such a position is untenable for me.
I am categorically against the concept of the supernatural. I personally consider religion to mean a belief system which is founded upon the supernatural. Therefore, I am categorically against religion - regardless of how much benefit may come from a particular religion, I maintain that it is, at base, harmful, due to its foundation on the supernatural.
How does this affect my position on the 'live and let live' line of approach? Well, let us consider that religion is, by and large, a completely socially acceptable thing. That is, by and large, people do not object to religion, religious behavior, or religious people. In certain circumstances, more people object to such behavior, that's true, but generally speaking, no one has a problem with religious people. Hence, even those who are themselves not religious and personally dislike religion, will often take the 'soft' approach of 'live and let live' -- the common tactic is to state that religion is personal, and as long as no one is forcing their beliefs on others, it's okay, etc. etc.
Now, what happens if we take such arguments and replace religion with something which is most certainly not normally acceptable? What if we take one of the passages above, and replace 'religion' with, say, 'racism'?
'The history of any racism is usually a bloody one. In western society not too long ago, racists were involved in slavery, discrimination, riots, tortures, murders, and of course child sexual exploitation. And it is hard to get them to accept this history and take responsibility for it. Some do, of course, but True Racists will rationalize it or try to shift the blame to, for example, "coloreds". So criticism of religion on the basis of its scorecard to date is justified.'
Or what if we replace it with 'nationalism'? Or 'torture'?
Now, does this mean that I equate these things? No. Rather, I see this as a useful exercise to see exactly how much of an argument concerning the debate over religion is not really reflective of religion's merits itself, but is being influenced by society's acceptance of it.
I consider religion, as a supernatural belief, on its merits. I find it lacking, and I don't give a damn whether it's not socially acceptable. I don't compromise with racists, nationalists, or torturers, and I'm not going to compromise with someone who believes in the supernatural.
In the long tradition of commentors who pop up late in a thread and claim to supply an observation that resolves the whole discussion with my penetrating insight and philosophical subtlety:
Aren't PZ Myers and John Wilkins talking past one another, because the one is using an intensional definition and the other an extensional definition of religion?
PZ is coming from the background of someone who gathers and synthesizes natural facts, so of course he evaluates religions by their ideas, and John is coming from Hull's tradition that sees religions and social movements generally as historical individuals rather than intentionally defined entities. The question "is religion malign" doesn't really seem fungible between these two paradigms. So PZ can say that even the 90% of American Christians who are nice people 90% of the time and agree with him (and me) down the line in political views are still in the grip of something "malign" insofar as belief without evidence is always a normative culpability, and John can say that in the long term religious groups as historical individuals aren't any more (or at least, not apprecialy more) "malign" than any other ingroup. They're just talking about different things.
Hiero5ant, that's a rather profound point, and one I'm ashamed to say didn't actually occur to me (I think I have internalised this stuff too much). Of course that is the difference. PZ thinks of religion in terms of the propositional content of religions (not an illicit thing to do by any means), while I do indeed conceive of religions as historical objects. In PZ's PoV the content is malign and drives people to do awful things. That is, insofar as normative propositions drive people to do anything at all. While I ask a different question - why do people adopt benign or malign normative propositions?, and locate the answer to that in terms of their psychology and social context. PZ thinks, if you are right, that bad ideas drive bad behaviour - I think that bad ideas are adopted because they are part of bad historical processes.
But you'd think that a scientist would be extensional and a philosopher intensional. What a strange world we live in...
This is really been something that I've always wanted an answer to since the heady days of my Dialectical Marxist youth back at university. Back then it was "just obvious" to me that technology + economic class = ideological destiny; a one way, deterministic causal relationship between a person's economic interests and the entire content of their phiosophical beliefs. My pendulum has swung enough times in the opposite radical direction, and then back again, and now I'm so exhausted by "(historical) nature vs. (historical) nurture" arguments that I'd just like some scientist to tell me what the bloody causal relation is already so I know what to think.
Like microcosmic nature vs. nurture arguments, I suspect these macrocosmic arguments about whether "religion is the cause of X" probably come down to muddy differences of emphasis rather than disrcete empirical claims. About all I can say for sure is that the most extreme statements of each position are probably false. No, we are not automata to our tribalistic instincts, and our religious creeds are not just flecks of foam thrown up by the massive waves of biology and economics. No, people don't read the Old Testament or the Koran and then, as though they had reached the ineluctable conclusion of a deductive argument, go out and start killing people. But rejecting these two extremes leaves way too much middle territory.
I "tilt" more to the PZ and Dawkins "malign" conclusion, but that doesn't get me much in terms of a detailed causal model for the relationship between ideas and actions; it is, after all, only a difference in emphasis. So I end up saying things like "I think the crushing economic conditions and punitive actions of the Allied powers explains the rise to power of an extremist political movement in Germany in the 30s, but I don't think economic recession explains Auschwitz. I think American (and Russian and British and French) imperialist meddling in Middle Eastern politics explains the rise of extremist resistance movements, but I don't think it's safe to say that this explains 9/11, or cutting the heads off of journalists, or blowing up Australian kids at discos."
Not very satisfying. I wish someone would come up with a good testable model for the proposition "religion causes malign behavior", in whatever sense, rather than relying on our gut instincts. Somebody help!
I think hiero5ant is on to something, and good thing too -- I'd hate to have to cut my own twin brother out of the will and disown him.
I still have to take exception with one thing. "Malign" is too strong a term. "Fallacious" is closer to what I think. The malignity in religion is that it accustoms people to accepting bad ideas on very, very slim pretexts, and thereby opens them up to bad ideas and behaviors. Going to church, writing hymns, praying at dinner time, even believing in a supreme being who loves you, are all pretty harmless. Thinking the charismatic leader of your church is speaking with the voice of God, and that you must not question him: damned dangerous. Even in cases where the charismatic leader is telling you to love your neighbor.
It's a shortcut that lets people avoid thinking. I bet even a philosopher and a biologist would agree that that is not a good thing.
You have defined a cult, certainly, but no religion I can think of. But even so, fertilizer, if over-applied, have a corrosive effect on your garden. Properly applied, your garden will prosper and bear abundant fruit. Both circumstances have abundant examples in the historical practice around the world.
Which one rules out? Have there been more instances of harm than good? I don't think so, but who has time to tally it all up. And shouldn't we also (while we are at it) measure the malignity of irreligion? What benefits and harms have societies operating without the effects of religion in their midst produced? I can only think of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, and while they attempted to manifest philosophical notions that moved men out from under religions embrace, their actual promise of proper fertilization did not occur. Quite the opposite. It's hard to know if any other philosophies could have done better, but a risky proposition, in my view, to undertake large scale elimination of religion without thinking of the obvious historical consequences these regimes present us with.
So I'd rephrase the question. "Is religion more malign than irreligion?" And after all, irreligion is based on - not just a faith in the non-existance of gods - but also on a faith (without any evidence) that a world without religion would be a better, kinder, smarter, more nurturing world than the one we have now: filled with people who believe they have a strong reason to do good, to be good, and that there is a final exam.