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<H2 class=sl-art-head-hed>Let’s Abolish Religion! </H2>
<H1 class=sl-art-head-dek>How two British atheists convinced a crowd of New
Yorkers that the world would be better off without faith at last night’s
<STRONG><EM>Slate</EM></STRONG>/Intelligence Squared U.S. debate.</H1>
<P class=sl-art-byline>By <A
href="http://www.slate.com/authors.elizabeth_weingarten.html"
rel=author>Elizabeth Weingarten</A><SPAN class=sl-art-datetime><SPAN
class=sl-art-head-pipe>|</SPAN>Posted Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2011, at 3:40 PM
ET</SPAN></P></DIV></FONT></DIV>
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<P>According to Chapter 25 of Deuteronomy, if you’re in a fight and your wife
attempts to help you by grabbing your adversary’s testicles, you should chop her
hand off. That’s just one piece of evidence that religion does not make us
better people, joked Charles Darwin descendent Matthew Chapman at last night’s
<STRONG><EM>Slate</EM></STRONG>/Intelligence Squared U.S. debate. “I know it’s
kind of cheap to poke fun at the Bible because it’s so easy,” Chapman said to
laughter during his opening remarks for the debate motion “The World Would Be
Better Off Without Religion.” “But there is a serious point here. Far from
making us behave better, religion often complicates and distorts morality. By
any reasonable standards, hacking bits off your wife is far worse than her
squeezing your enemy's nuts.”<BR><BR>The packed audience at NYU’s Skirball
Center agreed—or at least thought Chapman’s side, the one against religion and
for the motion, offered the better argument. Chapman, originally from England,
and philosopher A.C. Grayling battled for the debate motion with dry British
humor and digs at archaic religious texts. Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in
Los Angeles and president of King’s College Dinesh D’Souza argued against the
motion and for religion, by highlighting evidence of religious goodness, and
appealing to the audience’s less cynical side with stories of faith.<BR><BR>The
audience voted electronically either for the motion, against it, or undecided,
before the debate and afterward. In the end, Chapman and Grayling’s side won
because they attracted the most new supporters post-debate. Before the debate,
52 percent voted for the motion, 26 percent were against, and 22 percent were
undecided. Afterwards, 59 percent voted for the motion, 31 percent against, and
10 percent undecided.<BR><BR>Chapman and Grayling argued that anything good
religion does—encouraging ethical behavior, providing comfort and community,
promoting charity—nonreligious groups do, too. But along with the good stuff,
religion also consigns women to a second-class status, foments division and
conflict, oppresses gay people, encourages credulity, and stunts scientific
progress. Of course, not all religious people share the same insular
perspectives, but most extremists do, Grayling argued. “The extremists are the
most honest of the people who have a religious view because they commit
themselves to what their tradition tells them, and they stay closest to the
text,” he said, explaining that moderate believers often “cherry-pick” the best
parts of their religion, ignoring the rest. “Now, if that’s real religion,
that’s honest religion, the world is very much better off without
it.”<BR><BR>Wolpe and D’Souza maintained that religion does a vast amount of
unrecognized good in the world—unrecognized because media outlets won’t run an
article with the headline “Religious Man Feeds Hungry Man.” Religious
wrongdoings, on the other hand, are exaggerated and overhyped in the news. Wolpe
rattled off study after study showing that religious people are more likely to
volunteer and participate in civic life, and less likely to do drugs or get
divorced. Apparently, believers are even healthier and live longer. Oh, and if
you think religious fundamentalists are evil, they’re nothing compared to the
atheists. “The crimes of religion, even of Bin Laden, are infinitesimal compared
to the nightmare of atheist regimes,” said D’Souza, naming Khrushchev and
Brezhnev, Chernenko, Ceaușescu, Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, and Pol Pot as a few
examples. “[They] have killed far more people, in far shorter of a time, and are
still doing it right now.” The world without religion, the men said, would
be a bleak and impoverished place.</P></DIV></DIV><A style="VISIBILITY: hidden"
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<P>The question, Chapman said in his opening statement, is not whether religion
does good in the world. “Of course it can and it has,” he conceded. “The
question is: Can we come up with something better that does not depend on
dangerous and childish faith and thousands of competing gods? Can we persuade
people that it's possible to live a good, peaceful and happy life guided only by
human conscience and modern knowledge?”</P></DIV></DIV><A
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<P>And about that peaceful and happy life: Why, Grayling wondered, pointing to
one of Wolpe’s cited studies, does it matter if religious people live longer
lives? “If you're religious, you live longer, that puzzles me,” he said. “I
mean, isn't heaven meant to be a nice place?”</P></DIV></DIV>
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<P>D’Souza asserted that atheists often turn away from God because they feel
wounded, not because they want evidence for transcendent belief. He claimed that
Darwin, Chapman’s great-great-grandfather, only became an atheist after his
daughter, Annie, died, not because he discovered evolution. Then, things got
even more personal for Chapman.</P></DIV></DIV><A style="VISIBILITY: hidden"
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<P>“You, Matthew, in your <A
href="http://author.slate.com:81/cf#/content/slate/bullpen/the_nov_15_slate_intelligence_squared_u_s_debate_why_the_atheist.html">article</A>
in <STRONG><EM>Slate </EM></STRONG>magazine talked about nuns or teachers who
beat you on the ankles and people who stuck their hands down your pants,”
D’Souza said, referring to Chapman’s account of his days at a religious school.
“My point is, in many cases, we're not dealing with facts. We're dealing with
wounded theism. Many times when we hear the word ‘atheism,’ we're dealing with a
person who is angry with God or angry maybe with the representative, the
self-appointed representative of God.”</P></DIV></DIV><A
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<P>“Matthew Chapman, are you angry with God?” asked debate moderator John
Donvan, a correspondent at ABC News.</P></DIV></DIV><A
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<P>“How can you be angry with somebody that doesn't exist?” Chapman fired back.
“I'm angry with Dinesh because he's making these preposterous statements about
my—”</P></DIV></DIV><A style="VISIBILITY: hidden" name=pagebreak_anchor_2></A>
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<P>“Well, I didn't put my hand down your pants,” interrupted
D’Souza.</P></DIV></DIV><A style="VISIBILITY: hidden"
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<P>“—Great-great-grandfather,” finished Chapman. “His atheism didn't come solely
from the fact that his daughter died. It was a very slow process of seeing how
the theory of evolution was in conflict with the Bible.”</P></DIV></DIV><A
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<P>The “for” side invoked the Bible several times during the evening, inspiring
Wolpe to say, at one point, “It’s so interesting that the side that’s quoting
the Bible is that side, and the side that has actually provided evidence of any
kind is this side.” The other side, Wolpe said, seemed to miss the point of the
debate. “We're asking not would the world be better off if you rewrote the
Bible, but would the world be better off without the influence that religion has
on religious people.”</P></DIV></DIV><A style="VISIBILITY: hidden"
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<P>If you believe people are fundamentally good and don’t need behavioral
guidance, you’ve never visited a playground, Wolpe said to laughter. “My
experience is when a new kid comes to the playground, the other kids don't go,
‘Oh, look, a new child. Let us embrace him and share our toys.’
”</P></DIV></DIV><A style="VISIBILITY: hidden" name=pagebreak_anchor_2></A>
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<P>Wolpe took offense at Chapman’s argument that religion encourages
credulity—breeding generations of unquestioning, naive believers. The idea that
atheists denounce religion because they’re intelligent and religious people
believe because of some psychological deficit, “not only slights the idea that
religious people are capable of thought, but also tries to railroad into this
belief that you should condemn it without actually looking at all the
statistics, the ideas, the history that we cited.”</P></DIV></DIV><A
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<P>And why, he said, would he be there that evening if religious people were
unthinking, credulous automatons?</P></DIV></DIV><A style="VISIBILITY: hidden"
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<P>Wolpe earned more points when he criticized one of Grayling’s Tom
Friedman-esque anecdotes about a London cabdriver. (Grayling was apparently
trying to prove that Judaism wasn’t responsible for Western morality, but didn’t
have a chance to finish his story.) Grayling asked the cabdriver if he had read
the Old Testament. He hadn’t, but recalled a bit of it. Grayling then asked if
he remembered the story about God destroying Sodom because he hated its
homosexual residents. He continued on with the story of Sodom until Wolpe cut
in.</P></DIV></DIV><A style="VISIBILITY: hidden" name=pagebreak_anchor_2></A>
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<P>“Sodom was not destroyed because of homosexuality,” he retorted. “Read the
book of Ezekiel. It was destroyed because of the cruelty of the people of Sodom,
their immorality. And with all due respect, I think that to cite London
cabdrivers, pithy though they may be, as the demonstration that Judaism didn’t
actually create the morality of the West, may be a little
thin.”</P></DIV></DIV><A style="VISIBILITY: hidden" name=pagebreak_anchor_2></A>
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<P>Even if Judaism <EM>did </EM>construct the moral code of the West, those
ethics haven’t stuck, Chapman said. “If religion made people behave better,
markers of social dysfunction, drug addiction, ignorance, teen pregnancies,
violent crime would be much lower in highly religious societies,” Chapman said.
“In fact, the opposite is true.” Ninety percent of Americans say they believe in
God, he claimed. “But we have by far the largest prison population on earth.
Drug addiction is widespread. Gun violence is grotesque. Our education system
produces kids whose math and science skills are far lower than in secular
countries while our rate of teen pregnancy is far higher. And in a country so
rich and Christian, it's amazing how many people live in abject
poverty.”</P></DIV></DIV><A style="VISIBILITY: hidden"
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<P>Science, on the other hand, has cured the sick, reduced infant mortality, and
increased life expectancies. “All this progress, all this beautiful knowledge,
all this alleviation of human suffering in 100 years,” said Chapman. "Religion
has had thousands of years to prove its supernatural effectiveness. It
hasn't.”</P></DIV></DIV><A style="VISIBILITY: hidden"
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<P>At the end of the debate, neither side seemed to have a clear advantage over
the other—which was reflected in the “for” side’s narrow win. Both D’Souza and
Chapman agreed on reason for the debate outcome: “It’s New York!” laughed
D’Souza. “[Wolpe and I] talked before and said if we can hold our own in New
York City, we’ll be doing pretty well. But hey, this was a bit of a hostile
crowd!”</P></DIV></DIV><A style="VISIBILITY: hidden"
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<P>Chapman, too, told me they won because of the liberal crowd. “I think the
other side would’ve won in more primitive areas,” he said. “We had a more
forward-looking, progressive argument.”</P></DIV></DIV><A
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<P>Moderator John Donvan dismissed the idea of a biased audience. He believes
they’re open-minded, and that they listen closely to the quality of each
argument. Still, he was somewhat surprised by the results. “I thought Wolpe and
D’Souza’s arguments had more blood, sweat and sinew in them,” he said. “They
were arguing that it would be a bleaker world [without religion], and to some
degree, I did feel like I was hearing about a bleaker world from the side that
won.”</P></DIV></DIV></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>__________________________________</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>Wayne A. Fox<BR><A
href="mailto:wayne.a.fox@gmail.com">wayne.a.fox@gmail.com</A><BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>