Why Religion Facilitates Crime and Immorality
by Mikael Askergren ©
Christopher Moltisanti is in hospital with a bad gunshot wound. Everyone in the extended family, especially Carmela and Tony Soprano, brood on their sins and their relationship to God, to religion, and to the Roman Catholic Church.
However, the episode concludes with everything returning to "normal:" Christopher recovers and picks up his life in crime where he left off. So does Tony. And Carmela, as always, does - nothing. She remains at Tony's side, forever enabling him in his career as professional criminal. As always, the occasional onset of moral anxiety amongst the members of the Soprano family does not bring about any permanent changes in any of them.
One might wonder: How is it even possible for ruthless criminals such as these, and for their enablers, to be regular churchgoers, to be deeply and profoundly religious, and to consider themselves true catholics? This is of course the completely wrong question to ask oneself. It makes so much more sense to ask: Why do so many of us tend to assume that religious faith will make people "better?"
Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his novel
Plenty of statistics prove that truly secularized societies enjoy greater financial equality and greater gender equality, their citizens are more law-abiding, are less corrupt, experience less crime and fewer murders, put fewer people in jail, and trust their neighbors more than the citizens of religious nations do. Believers do not behave "better" than atheists. If anything, religious people behave worse: transgressing secular law is
Religious people are often perceived by nonbelievers as "strict," but all religious systems of morality are in reality extremely pliable, flexible and fluid things: one can always find a religious reason for transgressing secular law and, say, start murdering doctors who performs perfectly legal abortions. Or start robbing banks. One can always find a religious reason for pretty much any act, also for violent and sexist and racist acts, say. In the religious universe there
By contrast, in the nonbeliever's universe, there actually
in addition, religious people believe in a universe of hierarchies, in the existence of entities "above" us mere mortals (gods, goddesses) as well as entities "beneath" us mere mortals (demons). And to the believer, the psychological leap between (a) placing
Once the believer makes that (very short) leap of faith, from thinking (a) to thinking (b), the concept of metaphysical hierarchies begins also to serve worldly and political and nationalist and racist purposes. The metaphysics of religion thus not only distills in people the fear of God, but - extrapolated into the everyday - facilitates looking down on and despising and debasing just about anybody.
This is an important point to make, especially these days, because in today's infected public debate about religiously motivated terrorism and extremist violence in religion's name, one often hears religious people referring to their particular religion or religious denomination as an especially "peace loving" one. Thus presupposing that those deeply religious individuals who are committing very violent acts of terrorism in the name of religion (as well as those theocratic, religious nations that are making war also in the name of religion) merely are sad exceptions to the (religious) rule of thumb that religious people are "better" than other people. When are religious people going to admit to themselves that violence is
By contrast, the secularized mind has no concept of a metaphysical ladder of hierarchy between entities, or people for that matter. The psychological and political and moral leap into placing other mere mortals above or - more alarmingly - beneath oneself is much greater for nonreligious people than for religious people. No wonder atheists are more likely to
Dostoyevsky Was Wrong
Dostoyevsky was obviously wrong. In fact, religious people in general are wrong: religion does not bring higher moral standards to societies. Religion will never do away with disdain or oppression or violence or crime. On the contrary, religion
It can, however, be argued that before a certain nation or society has reached a certain level of social and industrial development, organized religion probably serves that nation or society very well, providing productive rules and institutions for both public life and private life. But once a certain standard of wealth and science and art has been reached, a profound and far-reaching secularization of all laws and institutions is the thing that serves any affluent, advanced, and modern society best. Thus, in the miserable 19th century Russia, with all that famine and serfdom, Dostoyevsky perhaps had a point (on how to best police the ignorant underclass) - but just a few decades later, the emancipated and affluent post WW II Scandinavia and Japan prove him wrong: religion is not the best way to police reasonably educated and affluent societies, it turns out secularization is.
For the record: in distinguishing between organized religion's (positive?) effect on underdeveloped, premodern societies on the one hand, and organized religion's (negative!) effect on modern, developed, affluent societies on the other hand, I owe part of my argument to Wilkinson and Pickett and their recently published and much debated book:
Wilkinson and Pickett begin by stating that in premodern societies, a growing economy and personal financial gain is a positive thing, of course: before there are decent roads and sewage systems available to everyone, and before everyone can afford decent food and an education, everyone gains from economic growth and higher material standards. But - and this is their important finding - once decent material standards have been reached, further personal financial gain will not make people happier, or longer living, or less afflicted by sickness or crime;
Wilkinson and Pickett are very convincing when arguing that one has to separate between underdeveloped and affluent nations when investigating how to improve life for people in modern, Western nations. That goes for my discourse of religion and secularization as well: this part of my argument I owe to them.
They are also very convincing in conveying the message that just more and more money will not make us modern, affluent Westerners any happier. But contrary to Wilkinson and Pickett, I would argue that it is not financial and social equality
Don't get me wrong: I really love the attempt of Wilkinson and Pickett at providing a social and political "theory of everything." Kudos! And they almost got it right! They just got a little confused about cause and effect when it came to inequality and religiousness (a case of "the chicken and the egg"): after all, those nations that rate the highest in Wilkinson's and Pickett's diagrams are
Now,
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Essay by Mikael Askergren first published in English (under the heading:
Illustration at top of page, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett: graph showing the detrimental effects of financial and social inequality on society, from
The text above is in part based on an earlier blog post by Mikael Askergren (2010):
More by Mikael Askergren about religion:
See also: