Religion, what is it good for?

Our time is distinguished by wonderful achievements in the fields of scientific understanding and the technical application of those insights. Who would not be cheered by this? But let us not forget that human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth...What these blessed men have given us we must guard and try to keep alive with all our strength if humanity is not to lose its dignity, the security of its existence, and its joy in living.

-Albert Einstein

I am shocked by people who oppose religion. Why would any intelligent person be opposed to that field of study which investigates the meaning of life and the consequent moral value of our actions? What could be better for the world than for people to learn how and why to be more moral? Certainly, there is much room for disagreement within this field, but to oppose the field of knowledge itself? This would be akin to opposing science because you disagree with a particular theory.

At first I concluded that they were merely ignorant of the meaning of the word. Perhaps they had been taught that religion means superstition, and merely meant that they were opposed to superstition. This is true of some people, and since it is just a matter of which words are used, it is a simple matter to set them straight.

Others say they oppose religion because it is the cause of all wars. This argument is fallacious in so many ways that I hardly know where to begin. Religion never caused a single war. Let us take a specific example that is often used, the Crusades. The claim is that it was their being Christian that led them to massacre so many people. If only they would have been opposed to religion themselves, no one would have gotten hurt. According to that, if there would have been more Christians there would have been more deaths. So if everyone in the world were Christian, it would have caused the most number of deaths. This is not so. If everyone would have been Christian, there would have been no need for them to fight against the Muslims, for there would have been none. It was not the religion itself that caused the Crusades, but intolerance for other religions. The very sort of intolerance that those opposed to religion espouse, except that they are even more intolerant, because at least the Crusaders were tolerant of Christianity. But in hating the Muslims they were the same. If the Crusaders would have been opposed to religion, it would perhaps have been much bloodier, because they would not have had to contend with the Christian teachings about turning the other cheek and the Golden Rule.

The subject of war is a good example of the important need for religion. The Nazi ideology that led to the holocaust came from the most respected secular thinking of the time: racism and eugenics, both considered up and coming new fields of science based on Darwin's theories. Racism applied the evolution of species to humans, with Africans as the least evolved race, and Europeans the most evolved, with the German "Aryan" race at the pinnacle of evolution. Eugenics applied survival-of-the-fittest to humans by advocating that inferior humans be killed out so that only the most evolved pass on their genes. The conclusion was that all inferior races, including the "Semitic" race, as well as those with any disability, infirmity, or deformity, must be systematically eradicated. Hitler only very thinly masked his hatred for religion, declaring the Ten Commandments to be "the worst thing the Jews have ever done to the world." He had to wait longer before he could gradually bring public opinion against Christianity than against other religions, because most Germans were Christian. Countless people felt compelled by their religious convictions to risk their lives defying the Nazis by sheltering Jews and others targeted for annihilation, because even though the secular thinking of the time advocated their deaths, religion placed the value of human life above all else due to the moral value inherent in every person.

The world is replete with examples of the important role that religion plays in the well-being of society. The vast majority of hospitals and charitable organizations in the world were built by religious institutions. It could not be any other way.

If we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice. Imagine Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address without reference to "the judgments of the Lord." Or King's I Have a Dream speech without references to "all of God's children." Their summoning of a higher truth helped inspire what had seemed impossible, and move the nation to embrace a common destiny.

... Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

-President Barack Obama