Typepad having returned to the land of the living, the Posse is now able to comment on this article by Mark Steyn.
Though we have nothing but the greatest respect for him, we feel he's missed a huge opportunity to set the record straight and drive a stake through the heart of the "all religions are evil, but Christianity is the worst" dogma.
Here is how he begins the article:
Peter Watson, the author of a new book called Ideas: a History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud, was interviewed by the New York Times the other day, and was asked to name ‘the single worst idea in history’. He replied:
‘Without question, ethical monotheism. The idea of one true god. The idea that our life and ethical conduct on Earth determines how we will go into the next world. This has been responsible for most of the wars and bigotry in history.’
Steyn does an excellent job of noting that Marxism has - in its century and a half of existance - done banner work in exceeding all previous records for slaughter and violence.
But he fails to pick out two very easy counterarguments to the central thesis.
"Ethical monotheism" is a polite way for saying Christianity, and forcing its defenders to also defend every other faith, whether they agree with it or not.
This allows the writer to tap into the old argument that religion has caused more wars than anything else. Unfortunately for him, this belief is demonstrably false.
Religion doesn't cause wars - people cause wars. The secular left has a tendency to assume that any and all people of faith are merely witless automoatons waiting to be told who to kill and what to do by their priestly masters.
In fact, religion has been essential in curbing the basic brutality of humanity.
Now the secular left has an ingrained habit of twisting facts (hence its support for gun control) but it is also monumentally ignorant of history.
Even the most cursory review of history reveals that religion is at best a minor factor in the conduct of war.
Was Carthage sacked because the Pontifex decreed it? Did Sparta and Athens war out of a religious disagreement?
Did Rome embark on centuries of conquest and empire out of a a religious need?
In fact if one reviews the list of wars on record we find that they are predominantly about:
Control of territory (boundary disputes)
Control of resources (farm land, water)
Control of the state (dynastic succession)
Religions hardly factor into any of this. Even the much-maligned Crusades were not a purely religious affair. There were strong dynastic reasons for getting involved and strategically they were necessary to check the onslaught of Islam after the disastrous Byzantine defeat at Manzikert in 1071.
Moving along into the "Wars of Religion," we find that once again, theology takes a back seat to traditional power politics. That is why Catholic France (led by a Cardinal, no less) can support Protestant princes in Germany against Spain and Austria.
France also had little problem with allying with the Muslim Ottomans against Austria and the Catholic League, again demonstrating the limited reach of religion.
Indeed, for much of history, the question of the royal (or imperial) succession has been far deadlier than disputes over predestination and transubstantiation.
The second problem with Watson's idea is that it also ignores the benefits of "ethical monotheism," particularly Christianity.
If one compares the pre-Christian world with the Christian one, it is not (as some neo-pagan revisionists would have us believe) a golden age of tolerance and openness vs. one of close-minded orthodoxy, but rather a world of personal gratification vs a higher calling to goodness.
Pagan cultures were tolerant only within a narrow range of beliefs. So long as the local gods were in tune with the accepted pantheon, they could be quite tolerant. Hence the Greek and Egyptians were able to get along reasonably well.
However if there were serious differences, the pagans pretty much wrote the book on vengefulness and spite. The Jews and early Christians found this out to their great sorrow.
The pagans also had no real notion of what we call "Christian charity" or forgiveness. Everything was tempered by the pursuit of power and the needs of the world. Gods could be bought off with sufficient sacrifice and anyway, they did pretty nasty things to each other so who were they to judge?
The gods did impose horrific punishments on those that displeased them, but this had less to do with violating universal commandments than offering a particular insult to one of them.
This fickleness only added to the blood-soaked nature of warfare and society. The pagan world, while not wholly devoid of what we would consider virtue, was far less friendly to the oppressed and weak.
Constrast this with the historic role of the Church and its emphasis on healing and caring for the poor.
While no organization is immune to tempation and corruption, the Christian tradition has remained remarkably consistent. Even the "evil" Crusading orders had a merciful side. The Knights Hospitaller - who unlike the Templars remain active to this day - took a leading role in healing and caring for the poor.
(Indeed, it was partly for this reason that the Hospitallers were not suppressed: they were always short of money and when the threat of war passed, they had their hospitals to run. The Templars, being a purely military order, got rich and dangerously bored in peacetime.)
The contributions of the Church in art, human rights and individualism cannot easily be reckoned. To claim that monotheism is the "worst invention" is merely to be ignorant and spiteful toward a tradition and faith that is the foundation of our current enlightened society.
It is not surprising that space constraints kept Steyn from bringing this out, but we would have liked to see at least one shot pointing out that "ethical monotheism" was a damn site better than polytheism or atheism.
That is, like democracy, it is the least worst way to live or, in more postive terms, the best option we have.
Recent Comments