Yuval Harari recently argued, in a bestselling book, that religion is essentially a global control mechanism. At one time, that argument would have shocked me. Now, I find myself in agreement.
I was brought up in a multi-faith environment. My father was a Hindu and fervently religious but believed that there are many paths to God and that it doesn’t matter which faith you follow as they all lead to the same destination. My mother was a Buddhist and observed many rituals but as a teaching more than a faith. We children attended Christian schools where we had morning prayers in daily assembly and some of my siblings even went to Catholic convent for a while to be bullied by the nuns. As a Girl Guide, I swore allegiance to the Queen and marched in the church parade every last Sunday of the month. All in all it has made me a fervent atheist.
I confess that when I didn’t study hard enough for my school exams I would make all sorts of promises to any deity listening in if I thought my grade would be better. But even then, I didn’t really believe anyone was listening in. Frankly, if they were, they should have been doing something more constructive with their time like averting a flood or famine.
Years later I brought 3 wonderful daughters into the world. Despite the lack of religious tendencies (my husband is even more of an atheist than I), we lied to our children about Santa Claus, and tooth fairies. Even the kids didn’t believe in the Easter bunny. We swore to them that Santa came down the chimney – and had to invent an even bigger lie to explain how he got through double glazing and no chimney when we were on holiday in a foreign country. We fabricated elaborate currency and exchange-rate explanations even before the kids understood what that meant, to explain why their cousins got more money than they did from the tooth fairy. To be more factual when they asked us what happened when people died, we told them they become stardust and are all around us. At least that bit was true.
Why are we humans so keen on these made-up stories? They make us feel better, of course, and they perhaps ease our fear of death a little. But this fear of the unknown afterlife adds fuel to the fire of religious zealotry. And then, in the name of religion, we mutilate the bodies of our children, hate our neighbours, kill people even though most religions would say you shouldn’t, and spend endless hours in institutions talking about being good – and falling short.
We do need some rules for society that allow us to collectively agree on what behaviours are good and what are destructive to the wellbeing of people living in a shared community. They don’t, however, need to be connected to a religious teaching.
So, with these sorts of musings, my thinking has shifted over the years away from the idea that religions are OK, since they give comfort to some individuals and it seems important for them to have faith. But religious institutions have continued to disappoint the world and are hardly ever found to be operating with true integrity. It is astonishing to me that so many still flock to the Catholic church despite hundreds of years of abuse of power, child abuse, and corruption. moving priests to new communities so they could find new victims and never be brought to justice. Islam actually advocates for the killing of its enemies, which gives carte blanche to lunatics all over the world to terrorise communities they grew up in. There are no female-led churches, so generally speaking women are squarely second- or third-class citizens in every religion. They are, for example excluded from Hindu temples when menstruating for being unclean. The very biological process that brings forth life is considered to be unclean! The reality is that all holy scriptures are taken as the word of God but are, and can only be, the word of man.
Interestingly, during my years as an HR business leader, I witnessed compliance, integrity and ethics becoming increasingly important. Companies had to have a Mission, Values and Guiding Principles. These are as close to Corporate religion as you can get. It was the same tactic as any institution to get the employees to buy into the dream of how you live together, sharing the same dream and operating within a culture of cooperation and mutual trust. But just like religion, a lot of leaders in politics and business do not live up to their own mantras. The leaders of Enron, for example. cynically lied to their co -workers, getting them to buy into stocks to improve cash flow and line their own pockets, knowing that loyal people without much money would be left in a mess financially with no way out. Robert Maxwell .and subsequently Sir Philip Green, stole money from their own pension funds. Or James Dyson, who advocated for Brexit and then moved to Singapore when it was passed.
I do think the world needs clearly laid out ethics and values where facts take precedence over fiction and man-made stories. Here’s a few for starters: being honest, being clear what you stand for, and then acting without hypocrisy, being kind and generous, eliminating institutional corruption and partisan bias based on race and gender, striving for all people to have a happy and fulfilling life.
The reality is that we live in a world of paradox and contradictions. I owe it to my girls to say it is just as valid to believe in Santa Claus, who doles out gifts to well-deserving children, as it is to believe in God, who seems to sit on the side lines, allowing us to create mayhem on Earth. In the end, it is useless to argue against faith, because by its very nature there is no evidence for or against it. You can decide, however, whether it is divisive and damaging in practice. Religion gives us reasons to hate each other and be tribal when we would be better served to see each other as fellow humans and extend a helping hand.
What if leaders reduced the gap in pay from the highest to lowest and operated with integrity?
What if lobbying and fund raising became illegal for politicians?
What if we lived in an inclusive world where fact and fiction are kept separate and we operate with rules that serve us all?
What if faith was left at home and not embedded in any part of our shared institutions?
Wouldn’t that be a better world to live in?