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Is religion dangerous?

Loving absolutists

IS RELIGION DANGEROUS?
By Keith Ward
Lion Books. 206 pages. £8.99
ISBN 0 7459 5262 3

Though mentioned by name only in passing, Richard Dawkins is clearly a major target of this book. Dawkins, in his TV programmes and bestselling book, The God Delusion, has argued not only that religion is false but that it is downright harmful. In the name of religion, or God, people have oppressed women, gone to war and crashed aeroplanes into buildings. Ward takes on the claim that religion causes these things and provides a comprehensive rebuttal.

This book may help anyone engaged in apologetics. Ward, a learned and influential philosopher of religion, gives a readable account of what religions have said and done over the years. While admitting many of the failures, he is also clear that there is a distinction between the best ideas of religions and the bad behaviour of many religious believers.

In areas like moral behaviour, wars and anti-intellectualism, the problem lies with people, not religion: ‘What makes beliefs evil is not religion, but hatred, ignorance, the will to power, and indifference to others’ (p.35). Ward does his best to distinguish between the ideals of Islam and the violent ‘Marxism’ of a group like Al Qaida. Christianity and all the world religions are mined for examples of the good that has been brought in social reform, health and prosperity.

Turning from a defence of religion to an assessment of atheism, Ward points out how blinkered Dawkins and his friends are to the evils done in the name of atheism. The impact of atheist ideologies in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, in North Korea, China and North Vietnam speak for themselves. Anti-religious ideologies have a bloodstained history of their own.

There is much in Ward’s book that makes sense and would be a welcome addition to the defence of Christianity. However, his approach is flawed by an underlying assumption in his thinking. It is not as clear in this work, but in other places Ward calls himself a ‘soft’ pluralist. By this he means that all religions are a mixture of truth and error. At their heart all religions are similar and, with the passage of time, one can hope for a convergence of the religious faiths.

This theory lies behind the book. It is a defence not of one religion but of all religions. It is an attempt to write from a point of view amenable to all faiths. In so doing, he argues that all religions need to rethink their primitive or violent history in the light of a more modern morality; ‘So each religion in the modern world needs to accept its place as one of many paths to a fulfilling relationship with a supreme spirit’ (p.198). Whatever their differences, religions are called upon to accept this common liberal outlook. Ward’s case against Dawkins is also a promotion of his own ideas about religious unity. I would argue that the real challenge for the Christian is to demonstrate that belief in absolute truth is compatible with love and respect towards those with whom we disagree.

Chris Sinkinson