As you say the response to the smallpox question is surprising. I’m a secular campaigner but I would have been taken aback if asked to compare religion to smallpox - as the language is so intemperate.

Surely the people who commissioned that question must have thought a vast majority would have disagreed and they could then use the results to pour scorn all over Richard Dawkin’s head. However, a considerable body of British public opinion is clearly hostile to religion.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find the “christianity has an important role to play in public life” question rather confusing. Is it a factual question? Because then you would have to say yes, to this day religion is part of our public life. But, if the question means do you think this is a GOOD thing, then someone like me would answer no. I don’t think it is clear what this question is intending to quantify.

I’m surprised - but delighted by these findings. I hope Americans don’t find out about it, though. They might stop doing business with the UK!

I’m halfway through Dawkins’ book at the moment. It’s a witty and thought provoking read. Whether he is right or not, God only knows.

Btw, I agree heartily with the sentiments in your first paragrah concerning pressure groups that commission polls.

Done any more work for ‘The Taxpayers’ Alliance’ recently?

No idea (and if I did know, I couldn’t tell you anyway!). The Taxpayers Alliance’s most recent polling seems to have been done by ICM.

Anthony,

A considerable number of people plainly believe that religion is a force for good in society, at the same time as belieiving that faith is as evil as smallpox. How does one reconcile the two?

Are they treating the faith question as a general question, unconnected to religion?

Sean, not necessarily - the 53% of people who thought religion was a good thing might not cross with the 42% who think faith is a great evil (in practice there probably is some crossover, there are always some people who give flatly contradicting answers for whatever reason).

They could well be thinking of faith in some way other than just religion. It could be that Matthew Parris was wrong, and “faith” actually has more negative connetations than “religion” does.

I think Matthew Parris may be wrong - I’m not sure there is much difference between “faith” and “religion” - the former possibly implies personal belief, while the latter somethinG more structured (its always “personal faith” and “organised religion” never the other way round).

Faith also implies (to my mind) unthinking and uncritical belief, which is highly dangerous. Mainstream, “organised” religions rarely go in for mass murder these days, its normally those with strong (and highly individual) faith.

Faith is fine…but religion is a rediculous concept and mankinds worst invention.

Surely faith is only “fine” if it’s in something which deserves our trust, ie which is actually true. Every religion competes in its claim to be (exclusively) true. So the opposite of what Ian claims must be the case - the religion which is actually true demands our trust and acceptance, while faith is only ‘fine’ as long as it’s in that true religion. Which is why much of the debate over faith misses the point and we should be asking ‘what religion offers me the (historical) truth?’. Only then can we anchor the debate in reality.

The trouble is religion/faith/superstition often results in fanaticism (fundamentalism).

And that “universal faiths” are intrinsically mutually exclusive: “Because Mine is true, your’s is false”. Even if a religious person does not say this, and even recognizes that other people have a (different) faith as deep as their own; the fact is both cannot be true.

Given this fact, it how the “Religious” deal with different faiths: Tolerance or destruction.

Religious tolerance has only existed under two specific circumstances: A) Under Humanist rationalist influence. B) Under polytheist influence.

At all other times: religions persecute one another.

In the West we are still under the influence (though declining) of 18th century Humanist rationalism.

The Islamic world had some secularism imposed (by European colonialists, modernizing Nationalists and socialists) and is reacting with a pre-18th century mentality, which is now called “fundamentalism”. Prior to 1700 fundamentalism was the norm, both east & west.

The thing I find worrying is both the rise in Christian & Jewish fundamentalism and their influence in politics AND the rise in superstition. If this happening in the “educated & developed” west, no wonder fundamentalism is so strong in the less developed “East”.

This poll is contradictory: It shows that 42% think “Faith” is evil, but 53% of people thought that (on balance) religion was a force for good in society (!?!) and 58% believe that Christianity has an important role to play in public life!!!!

How can an evil “thing” be good for society and should have an important role in public life?

Frankly it indicates to me the problems of polling & that specific (often closed) questions can give contradictory results. AND that pollsters choose the “controversial” answer to lead their articles. ;o)

The other thing is semantics. People are arguing about the difference between “Religion” and “Faith”. This shows how (ignorant) people change the meaning of words. One used to be a noun, the other a verb. Interestingly old dictionaries (my 1960’s Oxford) makes the distinction….while my modern “desk” version does not.

Thus: “I am a Christian (noun), I have faith (verb) in God”. Reading the article & comments there seems to be some confusion. Without one, you cannot have the other.

Everyone has a “religion” based on some aspects of “faith” - where a religion is what one holds to be the absolute criteria against which we measure all things and faith are those metaphysical beliefs that *ALL* philosphies have. Now, most people don’t understand this or deny it (including Dawkins). Those who don’t understand this quite literally are not sane in terms of seeing distinctions that do not exist and missing things that do.

The question is “which is closest to the truth” and which “corrects itself over time to align with truth”. Which is self-contradictory (e.g. those who state with certainty that certainty in religions is bad) and which is integral/whole.

Finally, whenever a “religion” gets the power of the sword, there is an opportunity for evil.

Faith is the only really constructive force for change in society. As we see around us in Europe, secular societies fail to reproduce themselves, grow economically, or maintain a decent public moral sense. It is irrelevant whether the thing you have faith in is true or not - this is hardly decidable considering the creator of the universe after all. What matters about faith is whether it instills in the individual a sense of self worth, and civic involvement. That is something Europe has lost with its murder of Christian belief - we now have a choice between utterly cynical Socialist/Liberal politicians, and violently repressive Islam.

Faith (as a verb) is most definitely positive in concept, religion (as a noun) most certainly isn’t. Both Faith and her charmingly naive sister Belief display a childlike trust in something that cannot be understood; religion takes those childlike sentiments and turns them into something uniquely evil.

I have faith in the underlying good of human nature.

I believe that one day a cure will be found for religion.

[…] It already has been dropped by the majority in the UK. People only claim CofE so they can get a church wedding. Take a look at this 42% polled in the UK think faith is as evil as small pox. The majority in this country have a new deity to worship and it’s name is Government. When tragedy comes the people offer up their liberties as a libation to Big Brother and his archishop the Rt.Hon. Tony Blair. Had to shove that in, sorry… __________________ "He was part of the government, wasn’t he? Governments took money off people. That’s what they were for." — Terry Pratchett […]

Since smallpox is a virus, without sentience and therefore judgement and free will, it cannot be ever called ‘evil’. I think I’d disagree with the statement on those grounds. Faith as practised by people is *more* evil than smallpox.

I am a philosophical agnostic and a functional atheist but I must say that the idea that religion is more dangerous than secularism simply flies in the face of the empirical evidence.

Starting with the French revolution, a definite pattern has emerged wherein the more antagonistic a political ideology is towards religion, the more dangerous it is to its own people and foreigners when it gains power. Atheistic communist were the biggest killers of the 20th century and National Socialism was a secular ideology hostile to traditional christianity (even if individual Nazi’s expressed various degrees of personal deistic views.) Communist threatened the human race with extinction. By comparison, Islamist are merely an annoyance.

Moreover, Christians can claim some significant moral victories over the last two centuries. The anti-slavery movement of the 1800’s was driven by Christian zeal. Slavery was wiped out nearly world wide by those whom secular Leftist would consider the trifecta of evil: Christian, Capitalist, White-males.

Frankly, the secular Left (who comprise the vast majority political atheist) hasn’t accomplished much positive even by their own standards. The vast welfare states of Europe were voted into place by those we could collectively call Christian Socialist. It was the idea that Christian charity was so important that it justified using the coercive power of the state that created the modern welfare state not atheistic Marxism. Only dumb luck prevented AIDS from turning the sexual revolution into the greatest cultural disaster of all times.

Traditional religions function just like Common Law. Like Common Law, they evolved over the course of centuries and have a kind of inertia which prevents any particular individual or even an entire generation from making to great a change in the basic system. Secularist by comparison can turn on a dime. If they reason themselves to a point where a lot of people have to die, such as Paul Eichmen’s famous claim in the Population Bomb that we would just have to “write off” India and let its population starve, then there is nothing preventing them from implementing it. By comparison, a religious person couldn’t carry out such act even if they reasoned themselves to the same point. Their “irrational” moral code would require them to attempt to save lives even if reason told them they would fail.

Most Secularist hate traditional religion for the same reason they hate Common Law. Both prevent the immediate implementation of whatever untested idea they have plucked from their posterior. They simply don’t want to admit that figuring out how the world works and what is the best action in any particular situation is simply incredibly difficult. They don’t want to admit that it requires a great deal experimentation and that most experiments will fail. They rather arrogantly believe that if they can’t create a “rational” explanation for a particular idea or behavior then no rational explanation exist.

In short, having a secular or atheistic world view doesn’t prevent anyone from making horrifically bad decisions. The idea that it does is simply the result of two centuries of political marketing.

“Communist threatened the human race with extinction. By comparison, Islamist are merely an annoyance. ” - That’s because Islamisits don’t have the military capability of the Cold War USSR - Yet.

Actually, if secularists “hate traditional religion”, it’s because of the religious people who try to boss us around by writing religious taboos into the laws that apply to everyone — see abortion, stem-cell research, physician-assisted suicide, etc. (admittedly this is more of a problem here in the US than in Britain). I don’t have a problem with those religionists who don’t do that — I think their beliefs are silly, but as long as they aren’t harassing me about them, there’s no issue.

Communism was just another religion for all practical purposes, even if it didn’t have a god (as Buddhism doesn’t) — an irrational and dogmatic belief system, a sacred text (Marx’s writings), a priesthood (the Party), an eschatology of inevitable tribulation and final utopia, etc.

Atheists aren’t a coherent group with a common agenda the way adherents of a particular religion are. One might as well lump all people who don’t believe in flying saucers into one category and hold them all responsible for each others’ actions.

[…] The UK Polling Report also reports that, on another question in the poll, 53% agree that religion is a force for good in society, compared with 39% who disagree. […]

The 53% who call religion “a force for good” probably include all of the Muslims in Britain (3% of total population), and by “religion” they mean THEIR religion. Thus it seems likely that only 50% of the authentic British supported this claim. Among those, many probably agreed out of unthinking force of habit and half-remembered school lessons about religion, not real conviction, since this question does not contain any alarm bells (like linking faith and smallpox) which would jolt a person alert and make him think more clearly about what he really believes.

As a Buddhist, I would like to protest against the overgeneralizing terms “Religion” and “faith”.
Mostly, when Westerners are talking about this subject, they only regard a limited number of faiths, namely Judaism / Islam / Christianity.
Then, they generalize the bad thing done in the name of these religions to the term religion as a whole.
As a consequence, other religions which have nothing in common with these violence-promoting religions suffer from their negative image as well.

When I, being a Westerner, decided to convert from Christianity to Buddhism, the peace and tolerance brought forth by this religion, so different from the intolerant monotheistic creeds, was a big factor which influenced my decision.

So, is religion/faith as evil as smallpox?
Not in general. However, the inherent intolerance of the monotheistic religions Judaism / Christianity / Islam can often be the seed of hatered/violence.
On the other hand, rational religions like Buddhism which promote non-violence (the Dalai Lama is an outstanding example for this) can actually benefit humanity as a whole.

I’m delighted by the results especially when you consider who conducted the poll. I have ‘faith’ that the 43% will become 50%, then 60% etc and religion will attain the same status as tarot cards, spoon bending and all the other superstitious nonsense, maybe then the human race can move forward.

“good people will always do good things, bad people will always do bad things, but it takes religion to make good people do bad things”

[…] Posted by geoff at November 21st, 2006 From polling Report Theos, a new Christian think tank, heralded their launch by commissioning a poll from Communicate Research. They started by taking one of Richard Dawkins’ more confrontational statements and asking if people agreed with it: “Faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate”…. Obviously people were going to think that “faith” was nicer than “smallpox”. […]

There has been a bout of anti-intellectualism and anti-rationality in the United States that was probably always there, but has, in the last 25 years or so, been given legitimacy by the rise of the Conservative Christian political machine teamed with the Republican party. As an atheist, and as a patriot, it has been deeply distrubing to watch what has unfolded in this time. There have been signs of this stranglehold may be loosening, but I don’t look for the reversal that must come within my lifetime. If people in Europe have figured this out sooner than we Americans, I congratulate them. But, with the rise of Islam on the Continent, I’m not sure either culture will come away unscathed from the violent, thought-crushing, and senseless attacks upon our reason and humanity by these institutialized systems of irrationality.

Buddist says:

“However, the inherent intolerance of the monotheistic religions Judaism / Christianity / Islam can often be the seed of hatered/violence.”

Is this because patriarchal monotheism has a natural tendency to develop a priesthoood which is a prerequisite for turning (personal) faith or belief into a dogmatic credal religion?

My English teacher told the class that “There is a lie at the centre of belief.” At the time, I thought he was talking about spelling. Now I’m not so sure.

Anthony, you say that the Yougov poll found only 35% of people do not believe in a god, however the next question in that poll found that in addition to 35% of people calling themselves atheist (with the proper definition explained) a further 46% also called themselves agnostic (with the definition explained). So a total of 81% describe themselves as either atheist or agnostic while just 16% say neither in that question. But the high agnostic percentage doesn’t seem to tie in with the rest of that poll.