Religion: Is It A Beneficial Brake On Human Progress?by C. W. Dalton
How disappointed Tom Paine would be if he returned to Earth today. Paine believed that the advent of democratic governments would encourage open inspection of religions. He believed that religions such as the Christian religion would collapse with the freedoms of press, speech and inquiry ushered in by democracy. "Soon after I had published the pamphlet, Common Sense, in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion," Paine wrote about 200 years ago in The Age of Reason.
Well, we all know it didn't follow. Instead, we see highly educated people today, even scientists, making pilgrimages to Lourdes, or traveling part way around the world to squat reverently at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Or embracing astrology, parapsychology, or flying-saucerology. What happened? Well, Paine overlooked the fact that increased liberty included the liberty of the ignorant and the avaricious to propagate their superstitions among the populace. Paine overlooked the fact that increased literacy in democratic societies increases the accessibility of the masses to religious propaganda and religious shysters. Paine failed to see that "education" can be used to spread ignorance and superstition as well as to spread enlightenment and scientific knowledge. But - most of all - Paine didn't realize that intelligence and rationality have little to do with belief. People believe in religion with their hearts, not with their heads. For 200 years since Paine wrote The Age of Reason free minds have been exposing the pious fraud of Christianity. They have totally discredited the Bible. Even devout biblical scholars have contributed to the disparagement of the Bible. And developments in science have impugned the purported "truths" of the Bible. Yet the Bible is - still - America's number one "best-seller." Even among our educated elite we find relatively few voices condemning superstition and religion. In fact, many of them defend religion and apologize for it. (To express disbelief in the ridiculous and preposterous ideas of religion often subjects one to rejection, ridicule and persecution.) While we have made relentless progress in the sciences - heliocentrism, relativity, quantum physics, nuclear science, computer technology, genetic engineering - our sociopolitical ideas and our religious ideas have changed very little since the time of Christ. Marxism is about the only radical idea that has taken hold. How are we to explain this? Perhaps evolution has selected societies that are conservative in the sociopolitical sphere and in the religious sphere. If sociopolitical progress had taken place at the same fast rate as scientific progress, human society would by now have disintegrated from the progressive explosion. In fact, if it weren't for the impeding forces of religion, science itself would have developed the nuclear bomb several thousand years sooner - and blown us to bits long before Christ was born. Religion, then, may be a governor, which slows down progress - progress which would only hasten the explosion in sociopolitical progress and in physical science that would inevitably lead to disintegration. Now, I would prefer such a "governor" to be one based on something other than dishonesty, hypocrisy and fraud. But, nevertheless, religion may indeed have a pragmatic function. Give the devil his due. C. W. Dalton is the author of You're O.K. - the World's All Wrong and How to Raise a Winner. He lives near San Diego, California.
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