Parallel Readings 4

           After ending his first chapter with the emotion laden (and rationally suspect) phrase “Religion poisons everything,” Christopher launches his second chapter with the simple statement “Religion kills.”  He goes on to offer a list of places starting with B where either religious violence (or violence at least tinged by religion) has recently erupted: Baghdad, Beirut, Belfast, Belgrade, Bethlehem and Bombay.  He focuses on the religious divides and largely downplays other aspects of any conflicts that are (or have) occurred there.  He tells the Irish joke of the atheist stopped by the IRA being asked if he is a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist, but deliberately insists on missing the point.  Emotionally, religion HAS to be the culprit. 

           The arguments he makes are rhetoric, not logic.  A list of violence perpetrated by blacks is not proof that blacks are inherently more violent or dangerous than others.  That priests and ministers blessed  and encouraged the soldiers on either side of World War II does NOT make World War II into a primarily religious conflict.  Yet that is the very argument he attempts to make about the ethnic conflicts in former Yugoslavia.

            It is certain that Religion IS one form of tribalism that is capable of launching violence and war.  It is by no means the most common nor necessarily the most potent.  When wars arise for whatever reason, religion is often used to unify sentiment and commitment among warring population.  Religion is a human phenomenon and as such is touched by both the basest and the noblest of human capacities and intentions.  Christopher seems capable of focusing only on the basest potentialities exhibited by religion.  In doing so he oversimplifies many of the conflicts he tells of and is unable to see literally ANY positive or peacemaking potential in a religious individual without denying that religion could have anything to do with it. 

            War and violence usually requires the psychic construction of the enemy as a dehumanized “other.”  What worries me about Christopher’s intensity here, is the efficiency with which he has converted his religious enemy (at least in his rhetoric) into the very type of “other” against whom organized oppression, violence or war would be justified.  If religious people and ideas are really as evil and dangerous as he claims, why would violence or state supported suppression NOT be justified?  His particular style of atheism seems to be as potentially dangerous and virulent a form of religion as any found in his cities that start with a B.