An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish by Bertrand Russell

One of my favourite essays by Bertrand Russell, written in 1943. Insightful and witty, it highlights the silliness of religious belief by comparison with other popular superstitions.

An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish   

Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents. On the contrary, I have seen the world plunging continually further into madness. I have seen great nations, formerly leaders of civilization, led astray by preachers of bombastic nonsense. I have seen cruelty, persecution, and superstition increasing by leaps and bounds, until we have almost reached the point where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old fogey regrettably surviving from a bygone age. All this is depressing, but gloom is a useless emotion. In order to escape from it, I have been driven to study the past with more attention than I had formerly given to it, and have found, as Erasmus found, that folly is perennial and yet the human race has survived. The follies of our own times are easier to bear when they are seen against the background of past follies. In what follows I shall mix the sillinesses of our day with those of former centuries. Perhaps the result may help in seeing our own times in perspective, and as not much worse than other ages that our ancestors lived through without ultimate disaster. 

Aristotle, so far as I know, was the first man to proclaim explicitly that man is a rational animal. His reason for this view was one which does not now seem very impressive; it was, that some people can do sums. He thought that there are three kinds of soul: the vegetable soul, possessed by all living things, both plants and animals, and concerned only with nourishment and growth; the animal soul, concerned with locomotion, and shared by man with the lower animals; and finally the rational soul, or intellect, which is the Divine mind, but in which men participate to a greater or less degree in proportion to their wisdom. It is in virtue of the intellect that man is a rational animal. The intellect is shown in various ways, but most emphatically by mastery of arithmetic. The Greek system of numerals was very bad, so that the multiplication table was quite difficult, and complicated calculations could only be made by very clever people. Now-a-days, however, calculating machines do sums better than even the cleverest people, yet no one contends that these useful instruments are immortal, or work by divine inspiration. As arithmetic has grown easier, it has come to be less respected. The consequence is that, though many philosophers continue to tell us what fine fellows we are, it is no longer on account of our arithmetical skill that they praise us. 

Since the fashion of the age no longer allows us to point to calculating boys as evidence that man is rational and the soul, at least in part, immortal, let us look elsewhere. Where shall we look first? Shall we look among eminent statesmen, who have so triumphantly guided the world into its present condition? Or shall we choose the men of letters? Or the philosophers? All these have their claims, but I think we should begin with those whom all right-thinking people acknowledge to be the wisest as well as the best of men, namely the clergy. If they fail to be rational, what hope is there for us lesser mortals? And alas—though I say it with all due respect—there have been times when their wisdom has not been very obvious, and, strange to say, these were especially the times when the power of the clergy was greatest. 

The Ages of Faith, which are praised by our neo-scholastics, were the time when the clergy had things all their own way. Daily life was full of miracles wrought by saints and wizardry perpetrated by devils and necromancers. Many thousands of witches were burnt at the stake. Men’s sins were punished by pestilence and famine, by earthquake, flood, and fire. And yet, strange to say, they were even more sinful than they are now-a-days. Very little was known scientifically about the world. A few learned men remembered Greek proofs that the earth is round, but most people made fun of the notion that there are antipodes. To suppose that there are human beings at the antipodes was heresy. It was generally held (though modern Catholics take a milder view) that the immense majority of mankind are damned. Dangers were held to lurk at every turn. Devils would settle on the food that monks were about to eat, and would take possession of the bodies of incautious feeders who omitted to make the sign of the Cross before each mouthful. Old-fashioned people still say “bless you” when one sneezes, but they have forgotten the reason for the custom. The reason was that people were thought to sneeze out their souls, and before their souls could get back lurking demons were apt to enter the unsouled body; but if any one said “God bless you,” the demons were frightened off. 

Throughout the last 400 years, during which the growth of science had gradually shown men how to acquire knowledge of the ways of nature and mastery over natural forces, the clergy have fought a losing battle against science, in astronomy and geology, in anatomy and physiology, in biology and psychology and sociology. Ousted from one position, they have taken up another. After being worsted in astronomy, they did their best to prevent the rise of geology; they fought against Darwin in biology, and at the present time they fight against scientific theories of psychology and education. At each stage, they try to make the public forget their earlier obscurantism, in order that their present obscurantism may not be recognized for what it is. Let us note a few instances of irrationality among the clergy since the rise of science, and then inquire whether the rest of mankind are any better. 

When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with the enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God. For, as all right-thinking people were aware, lightning is sent by God to punish impiety or some other grave sin—the virtuous are never struck by lightning. Therefore if God wants to strike any one, Benjamin Franklin ought not to defeat His design; indeed, to do so is helping criminals to escape. But God was equal to the occasion, if we are to believe the eminent Dr. Price, one of the leading divines of Boston. Lightning having been rendered ineffectual by the “iron points invented by the sagacious Dr. Franklin,” Massachusetts was shaken by earthquakes, which Dr. Price perceived to be due to God’s wrath at the “iron points.” In a sermon on the subject he said, “In Boston are more erected than elsewhere in New England, and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. Oh! there is no getting out of the mighty hand of God.” Apparently, however, Providence gave up all hope of curing Boston of its wickedness, for, though lightning rods became more and more common, earthquakes in Massachusetts have remained rare. Nevertheless, Dr. Price’s point of view, or something very like it, is still held by one of the most influential of living men. When, at one time, there were several bad earthquakes in India, Mahatma Gandhi solemnly warned his compatriots that these disasters had been sent as a punishment for their sins. 

Even in my own native island this point of view still exists. During the last war, the British Government did much to stimulate the production of food at home. In 1916, when things were not going well, a Scottish clergyman wrote to the newspapers to say that military failure was due to the fact that, with government sanction, potatoes had been planted on the Sabbath. However, disaster was averted, owing to the fact that the Germans disobeyed all the Ten Commandments, and not only one of them. 

Sometimes, if pious men are to be believed, God’s mercies are curiously selective. Toplady, the author of “Rock of Ages,” moved from one vicarage to another; a week after the move, the vicarage he had formerly occupied burnt down, with great loss to the new vicar. Thereupon Toplady thanked God; but what the new vicar did is not known. Borrow, in his “Bible in Spain,” records how without mishap he crossed a mountain pass infested by bandits. The next party to cross, however, were set upon, robbed, and some of them murdered; when Borrow heard of this, he, like Toplady, thanked God. 

Although we are taught the Copernican astronomy in our textbooks, it has not yet penetrated to our religion or our morals, and has not even succeeded in destroying belief in astrology. People still think that the Divine Plan has special reference to human beings, and that a special Providence not only looks after the good, but also punishes the wicked. I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious—for instance, the nuns who never take a bath without wearing a bathrobe all the time. When asked why, since no man can see them, they reply: “Oh, but you instance, the nuns who never take a bath without wearing a bathrobe all the time. When asked why, since no man can see them, they reply: “Oh, but you forget the good God.” Apparently they conceive of the Deity as a Peeping Tom, whose omnipotence enables Him to see through bathroom walls, but who is foiled by bathrobes. This view strikes me as curious. 

The whole conception of “Sin” is one which I find very puzzling, doubtless owing to my sinful nature. If “Sin” consisted in causing needless suffering, I could understand; but on the contrary, sin often consists in avoiding needless suffering. Some years ago, in the English House of Lords, a bill was introduced to legalize euthanasia in cases of painful and incurable disease. The patient’s consent was to be necessary, as well as several medical certificates. To me, in my simplicity, it would seem natural to require the patient’s consent, but the late Archbishop of Canterbury, the English official expert on Sin, explained the erroneousness of such a view. The patient’s consent turns euthanasia into suicide, and suicide is sin. Their Lordships listened to the voice of authority, and rejected the bill. Consequently, to please the Archbishop—and his God, if he reports truly—victims of cancer still have to endure months of wholly useless agony, unless their doctors or nurses are sufficiently humane to risk a charge of murder. I find difficulty in the conception of a God who gets pleasure from contemplating such tortures; and if there were a God capable of such wanton cruelty, I should certainly not think Him worthy of worship. But that only proves how sunk I am in moral depravity. 

I am equally puzzled by the things that are sin and by the things that are not. When the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals asked the pope for his support, he refused it, on the ground that human beings owe no duty to the lower animals, and that ill-treating animals is not sinful. This is because animals have no souls. On the other hand, it is wicked to marry your deceased wife’s sister—so at least the Church teaches—however much you and she may wish to marry. This is not because of any unhappiness that might result, but because of certain texts in the Bible. 

The resurrection of the body, which is an article of the Apostles’ Creed, is a dogma which has various curious consequences. There was an author not very many years ago, who had an ingenious method of calculating the date of the end of the world. He argued that there must be enough of the necessary ingredients of a human body to provide everybody with the requisites at the Last Day. By carefully calculating the available raw material, he decided that it would all have been used up by a certain date. When that date comes, the world must end, since otherwise the resurrection of the body would become impossible. Unfortunately I have forgotten what the date was, but I believe it is not very distant. 

St. Thomas Aquinas, the official philosopher of the Catholic Church, discussed lengthily and seriously a very grave problem, which, I fear, modern theologians unduly neglect. He imagines a cannibal who has never eaten anything but human flesh, and whose father and mother before him had like propensities. Every particle of his body belongs rightfully to someone else. We cannot suppose that those who have been eaten by cannibals are to go short through all eternity. But, if not, what is left for the cannibal? How is he to be properly roasted in hell, if all his body is restored to its original owners? This is a puzzling question, as the Saint rightly perceives. 

In this connection the orthodox have a curious objection to cremation, which seems to show an insufficient realization of God’s omnipotence. It is thought that a body which has been burnt will be more difficult for Him to collect together again than one which has been put underground and transformed into worms. No doubt collecting the particles from the air and undoing the chemical work of combustion would be somewhat laborious, but it is surely blasphemous to suppose such a work impossible for the Deity. I conclude that the objection to cremation implies grave heresy. But I doubt whether my opinion will carry much weight with the orthodox. 

It was only very slowly and reluctantly that the Church sanctioned the dissection of corpses in connection with the study of medicine. The pioneer in dissection was Vesalius, who was Court physician to the Emperor Charles V. His medical skill led the emperor to protect him, but after the emperor was dead he got into trouble. A corpse which he was dissecting was said to have shown signs of life under the knife, and he was accused of murder. The Inquisition was induced by King Phillip II to take a lenient view, and only sentenced him to a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On the way home he was shipwrecked and died of exhaustion. For centuries after this time, medical students at the Papal University in Rome were only allowed to operate on lay figures, from which the sexual parts were omitted. 

The sacredness of corpses is a widespread belief. It was carried furthest by the Egyptians, among whom it led to the practice of mummification. It still exists in full force in China. A French surgeon, who was employed by the Chinese to teach Western medicine, relates that his demand for corpses to dissect was received with horror, but he was assured that he could have instead an unlimited supply of live criminals. His objection to this alternative was totally unintelligible to his Chinese employers. 

Although there are many kinds of sin, seven of which are deadly, the most fruitful field for Satan’s wiles is sex. The orthodox Catholic doctrine on this subject is to be found in St. Paul, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas. It is best to be celibate, but those who have not the gift of continence may marry. Intercourse in marriage is not sin, provided it is motivated by desire for offspring. All intercourse outside marriage is sin, and so is intercourse within marriage if any measures are adopted to prevent conception. Interruption of pregnancy is sin, even if, in medical opinion, it is the only way of saving the mother’s life; for medical opinion is fallible, and God can always save a life by miracle if He sees fit. (This view is embodied in the law of Connecticut.) Venereal disease is God’s punishment for sin. It is true that, through a guilty husband, this punishment may fall on an innocent woman and her children, but this is a mysterious dispensation of Providence, which it would be impious to question. We must also not inquire why venereal disease was not divinely instituted until the time of Columbus. Since it is the appointed penalty for sin, all measures for its avoidance are also sin—except, of course, a virtuous life. Marriage is nominally indissoluble, but many people who seem to be married are not. In the case of influential Catholics, some ground for nullity can often be found, but for the poor there is no such outlet, except perhaps in cases of impotence. Persons who divorce and remarry are guilty of adultery in the sight of God. 

The phrase “in the sight of God” puzzles me. One would suppose that God sees everything, but apparently this is a mistake. He does not see Reno, for you cannot be divorced in the sight of God. Registry offices are a doubtful point. I notice that respectable people, who would not call on anybody who lives in open sin, are quite willing to call on people who have had only a civil marriage; so apparently God does see registry offices. 

Some eminent men think even the doctrine of the Catholic Church deplorably lax where sex is concerned. Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi, in their old age, laid it down that all sexual intercourse is wicked, even in marriage and with a view to offspring. The Manicheans thought likewise, relying upon men’s native sinfulness to supply them with a continually fresh crop of disciples. This doctrine, however, is heretical, though it is equally heretical to maintain that marriage is as praiseworthy as celibacy. Tolstoy thinks tobacco almost as bad as sex; in one of his novels, a man who is contemplating murder smokes a cigarette first in order to generate the necessary homicidal fury. Tobacco, however, is not prohibited in the Scriptures, though, as Samuel Butler points at, St. Paul would no doubt have denounced it if he had known of it. 

It is odd that neither the Church nor modern public opinion condemns petting, provided it stops short at a certain point. At what point sin begins is a matter as to which casuists differ. One eminently orthodox Catholic divine laid it down that a confessor may fondle a nun’s breasts, provided he does it without evil intent. But I doubt whether modern authorities would agree with him on this point. 

Modern morals are a mixture of two elements: on the one hand, rational precepts as to how to live together peaceably in a society, and on the other hand traditional taboos derived originally from some ancient superstition, but proximately from sacred books, Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu, or Buddhist. To some extent the two agree; the prohibition of murder and theft, for instance, is supported both by human reason and by Divine command. But the prohibition of pork or beef has only scriptural authority, and that only in certain religions. It is odd that modern men, who are aware of what science has done in the way of bringing new knowledge and altering the conditions of social life, should still be willing to accept the authority of texts embodying the outlook of very ancient and very ignorant pastoral or agricultural tribes. It is discouraging that many of the precepts whose sacred character is thus uncritically acknowledged should be such as to inflict much wholly unnecessary misery. If men’s kindly impulses were stronger, they would find some way of explaining that these precepts are not to be taken literally, any more than the command to “sell all that thou hast and give to the poor.” 

There are logical difficulties in the notion of sin. We are told that sin consists in disobedience to God’s commands, but we are also told that God is omnipotent. If He is, nothing contrary to His will can occur; therefore when the sinner disobeys His commands, He must have intended this to happen. St. Augustine boldly accepts this view, and asserts that men are led to sin by a blindness with which God afflicts them. But most theologians, in modern times, have felt that, if God causes men to sin, it is not fair to send them to hell for what they cannot help. We are told that sin consists in acting contrary to God’s will. This, however, does not get rid of the difficulty. Those who, like Spinoza, take God’s omnipotence seriously, deduce that there can be no such thing as sin. This leads to frightful results. What! said Spinoza’s contemporaries, was it not wicked of Nero to murder his mother? Was it not wicked of Adam to eat the apple? Is one action just as good as another? Spinoza wriggles, but does not find any satisfactory answer. If everything happens in accordance with God’s will, God must have wanted Nero to murder his mother; therefore, since God is good, the murder must have been a good thing. From this argument there is no escape. 

On the other hand, those who are in earnest in thinking that sin is disobedience to God are compelled to say that God is not omnipotent. This gets out of all the logical puzzles, and is the view adopted by a certain school of liberal theologians. It has, however, its own difficulties. How are we to know what really is God’s will? If the forces of evil have a certain share of power, they may deceive us into accepting as Scripture what is really their work. This was the view of the Gnostics, who thought that the Old Testament was the work of an evil spirit. 

As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles. Whose authority? The Old Testament? The New Testament? The Koran? In practice, people choose the book considered sacred by the community in which they are born, and out of that book they choose the parts they like, ignoring the others. At one time, the most influential text in the Bible was: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Now-a-days, people pass over this text, in silence if possible; if not, with an apology. And so, even when we have a sacred book, we still choose as truth whatever suits our own prejudices. No Catholic, for instance, takes seriously the text which says that a bishop should be the husband of one wife. 

People’s beliefs have various causes. One is that there is some evidence for the belief in question. We apply this to matters of fact, such as “what is so-and-so’s telephone number?” or “who won the World Series?” But as soon as it comes to anything more debatable, the causes of belief become less defensible. We believe, first and foremost, what makes us feel that we are fine fellows. Mr. Homo, if he has a good digestion and a sound income, thinks to himself how much more sensible he is than his neighbour so-and-so, who married a flighty wife and is always losing money. He thinks how superior his city is to the one 50 miles away: it has a bigger Chamber of Commerce and a more enterprising Rotary Club, and its mayor has never been in prison. He thinks how immeasurably his country surpasses all others. If he is an Englishman, he thinks of Shakespeare and Milton, or of Newton and Darwin, or of Nelson and Wellington, according to his temperament. If he is a Frenchman, he congratulates himself on the fact that for centuries France has led the world in culture, fashions, and cookery. If he is a Russian, he reflects that he belongs to the only nation which is truly international. If he is a Yugoslav, he boasts of his nation’s pigs; if a native of the Principality of Monaco, he boasts of leading the world in the matter of gambling. 

But these are not the only matters on which he has to congratulate himself. For is he not an individual of the species homo sapiens? Alone among animals he has an immortal soul, and is rational; he knows the difference between good and evil, and has learnt the multiplication table. Did not God make him in His own image? And was not everything created for man’s convenience? The sun was made to light the day, and the moon to light the night —though the moon, by some oversight, only shines during half the nocturnal hours. The raw fruits of the earth were made for human sustenance. Even the white tails of rabbits, according to some theologians, have a purpose, namely to make it easier for sportsmen to shoot them. There are, it is true, some inconveniences: lions and tigers are too fierce, the summer is too hot, and the winter too cold. But these things only began after Adam ate the apple; before that, all animals were vegetarians, and the season was always spring. If only Adam had been content with peaches and nectarines, grapes and pears and pineapples, these blessings would still be ours. 

Self-importance, individual or generic, is the source of most of our religious beliefs. Even sin is a conception derived from self-importance. Borrow relates how he met a Welsh preacher who was always melancholy. By sympathetic questioning he was brought to confess the source of his sorrow: that at the age of seven he had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost. “My dear fellow,” said Borrow, “don’t let that trouble you; I know dozens of people in like case. Do not imagine yourself cut off from the rest of mankind by this occurrence; if you inquire, you will find multitudes who suffer from the same misfortune.” From that moment, the man was cured. He had enjoyed feeling singular, but there was no pleasure in being one of a herd of sinners. Most sinners are rather less egotistical; but theologians undoubtedly enjoy the feeling that Man is the special object of God’s wrath, as well as of His love. After the Fall—so Milton assures us— 

The Sun Had first his precept so to move, so shine, As might affect the Earth with cold and heat Scarce tolerable, and from the North to call Decrepit Winter, from the South to bring Solstitial summer’s heat. 

However disagreeable the results may have been, Adam could hardly help feeling flattered that such vast astronomical phenomena should be brought about to teach him a lesson. The whole of theology, in regard to hell no less than to heaven, takes it for granted that Man is what is of most importance in the Universe of created beings. Since all theologians are men, this postulate has met with little opposition. 

Since evolution became fashionable, the glorification of Man has taken a new form. We are told that evolution has been guided by one great Purpose: through the millions of years when there were only slime, or trilobites, throughout the ages of dinosaurs and giant ferns, of bees and wild flowers, God was preparing the Great Climax. At last, in the fullness of time, He produced Man, including such specimens as Nero and Caligula, Hitler and Mussolini, whose transcendent glory justified the long painful process. For my part, I find even eternal damnation less incredible, and certainly less ridiculous, than this lame and impotent conclusion which we are asked to admire as the supreme effort of Omnipotence. And if God is indeed omnipotent, why could He not have produced the glorious result without such a long and tedious prologue? 

Apart from the question whether Man is really so glorious as the theologians of evolution say he is, there is the further difficulty that life on this planet is almost certainly temporary. The earth will grow cold, or the atmosphere will gradually fly off, or there will be an insufficiency of water, or, as Sir James Jeans genially prophesies, the sun will burst and all the planets will be turned into gas. Which of those will happen first, no one knows; but in any case the human race will ultimately die out. Of course, such an event is of little importance from the point of view of orthodox theology, since men are immortal, and will continue to exist in heaven and hell when none are left on earth. But in that case why bother about terrestrial developments? Those who lay stress on the gradual progress from the primitive slime to Man attach an importance to this mundane sphere which should make them shrink from the conclusion that all life on earth is only a brief interlude between the nebula and the eternal frost, or perhaps between one nebula and another. The importance of Man, which is the one indispensable dogma of the theologians, receives no support from a scientific view of the future of the solar system. 

There are many other sources of false belief besides self-importance. One of these is love of the marvellous. I knew at one time a scientifically minded conjuror, who used to perform his tricks before a small audience, and then get them, each separately, to write down what they had seen happen. Almost always they wrote down something much more astonishing than the reality, and usually something which no conjuror could have achieved; yet they all thought they were reporting truly what they had seen with their own eyes. This sort of falsification is still more true of rumours. A tells B that last night he saw Mr.—, the eminent prohibitionist, slightly the worse for liquor; B tells C that A saw the good man reeling drunk, C tells D that he was picked up unconscious in the ditch, D tells E that he is well known to pass out every evening. Here, it is true, another motive comes in, namely malice. We like to think ill of our neighbours, and are prepared to believe the worst on very little evidence. But even where there is no such motive, what is marvellous is readily believed unless it goes against some strong prejudice. All history until the eighteenth century is full of prodigies and wonders which modern historians ignore, not because they are less well attested than facts which the historians accept, but because modern taste among the learned prefers what science regards as probable. Shakespeare relates how on the night before Caesar was killed, 

A common slave—you know him well by sight— Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn Like twenty torches join’d; and yet his hand, Not sensible of fire, remain’d unscorch’d. Besides—I have not since put up my sword— Against the Capitol I met a lion, Who glar’d upon me, and went surly by, Without annoying me; and there were drawn Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women, Transformed with their fear, who swore they saw Men all in fire walk up and down the streets. 

Shakespeare did not invent these marvels; he found them in reputable historians, who are among those upon whom we depend for our knowledge concerning Julius Caesar. This sort of thing always used to happen at the death of a great man or the beginning of an important war. Even so recently as 1914 the “angels of Mons” encouraged the British troops. The evidence for such events is very seldom first-hand, and modern historians refuse to accept it—except, of course, where the event is one that has religious importance. 

Every powerful emotion has its own myth-making tendency. When the emotion is peculiar to an individual, he is considered more or less mad if he gives credence to such myths as he has invented. But when an emotion is collective, as in war, there is no one to correct the myths that naturally arise. Consequently in all times of great collective excitement unfounded rumours obtain wide credence. In September, 1914, almost everybody in England believed that Russian troops had passed through England on the way to the Western Front. Everybody knew someone who had seen them, though no one had seen them himself. 

This myth-making faculty is often allied with cruelty. Ever since the middle ages, the Jews have been accused of practicing ritual murder. There is not an iota of evidence for this accusation, and no sane person who has examined it believes it. Nevertheless it persists. I have met white Russians who were convinced of its truth, and among many Nazis it is accepted without question. Such myths give an excuse for the infliction of torture, and the unfounded belief in them is evidence of the unconscious desire to find some victim to persecute. 

There was, until the end of the eighteenth century, a theory that insanity is due to possession by devils. It was inferred that any pain suffered by the patient is also suffered by the devils, so that the best cure is to make the patient suffer so much that the devils will decide to abandon him. The insane, in accordance with this theory, were savagely beaten. This treatment was tried on King George III when he was mad, but without success. It is a curious and painful fact that almost all the completely futile treatments that have been believed in during the long history of medical folly have been such as caused acute suffering to the patient. When anaesthetics were discovered, pious people considered them an attempt to evade the will of God. It was pointed out, however, that when God extracted Adam’s rib He put him into a deep sleep. This proved that anaesthetics are all right for men; women, however, ought to suffer, because of the curse of Eve. In the West votes for women proved this doctrine mistaken, but in Japan, to this day, women in childbirth are not allowed any alleviation through anaesthetics. As the Japanese do not believe in Genesis, this piece of sadism must have some other justification. 

The fallacies about “race” and “blood,” which have always been popular, and which the Nazis have embodied in their official creed, have no objective justification; they are believed solely because they minister to self-esteem and to the impulse toward cruelty. In one form or another, these beliefs are as old as civilization; their forms change, but their essence remains. Herodotus tells how Cyrus was brought up by peasants, in complete ignorance of his royal blood; at the age of twelve his kingly bearing toward other peasant boys revealed the truth. This is a variant of an old story which is found in all Indo- European countries. Even quite modern people say that “blood will tell.” It is no use for scientific physiologists to assure the world that there is no difference between the blood of a Negro and the blood of a white man. The American Red Cross, in obedience to popular prejudice, at first, when America became involved in the present war, decreed that no Negro blood should be used for blood transfusion. As a result of an agitation, it was conceded that Negro blood might be used, but only for Negro patients. Similarly, in Germany, the Aryan soldier who needs blood transfusion is carefully protected from the contamination of Jewish blood. 

In the matter of race, there are different beliefs in different societies. Where monarchy is firmly established, kings are of a higher race than their subjects. Until very recently, it was universally believed that men are congenitally more intelligent than women; even so enlightened a man as Spinoza decides against votes for women on this ground. Among white men, it is held that white men are by nature superior to men of other colours, and especially to black men; in Japan, on the contrary, it is thought that yellow is the best colour. In Haiti, when they make statues of Christ and Satan, they make Christ black and Satan white. Aristotle and Plato considered Greeks so innately superior to barbarians that slavery is justified so long as the master is Greek and the slave barbarian. The Nazis and the American legislators who made the immigration laws consider the Nordics superior to Slavs or Latins or any other white men. But the Nazis, under the stress of war, have been led to the conclusion that there are hardly any true Nordics outside Germany; the Norwegians, except Quisling and his few followers, have been corrupted by intermixture with Finns and Laps and such. Thus politics are a clue to descent. The biologically pure Nordic loves Hitler, and if you do not love Hitler, that is proof of tainted blood. 

All this is, of course, pure nonsense, known to be such by everyone who has studied the subject. In schools in America, children of the most diverse origins are subjected to the same educational system, and those whose business it is to measure intelligence quotients and otherwise estimate the native ability of students are unable to make any such racial distinctions as are postulated by the theorists of race. In every national or racial group there are clever children and stupid children. It is not likely that, in the United States, coloured children will develop as successfully as white children, because of the stigma of social inferiority; but in so far as congenital ability can be detached from environmental influence, there is no clear distinction among different groups. The whole conception of superior races is merely a myth generated by the overweening self-esteem of the holders of power. It may be that, some day, better evidence will be forthcoming; perhaps, in time, educators will be able to prove (say) that Jews are on the average more intelligent than gentiles. But as yet no such evidence exists, and all talk of superior races must be dismissed as nonsense. 

There is a special absurdity in applying racial theories to the various populations of Europe. There is not in Europe any such thing as a pure race. Russians have an admixture of Tartar blood, Germans are largely Slavonic, France is a mixture of Celts, Germans, and people of Mediterranean race, Italy the same with the addition of the descendants of slaves imported by the Romans. The English are perhaps the most mixed of all. There is no evidence that there is any advantage in belonging to a pure race. The purest races now in existence are the Pygmies, the Hottentots, and the Australian aborigines; the Tasmanians, who were probably even purer, are extinct. They were not the bearers of a brilliant culture. The ancient Greeks, on the other hand, emerged from an amalgamation of northern barbarians and an indigenous population; the Athenians and Ionians, who were the most civilized, were also the most mixed. The supposed merits of racial purity are, it would seem, wholly imaginary. 

Superstitions about blood have many forms that have nothing to do with race. The objection to homicide seems to have been, originally, based on the ritual pollution caused by the blood of the victim. God said to Cain: “The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth to me from the ground.” According to some anthropologists, the mark of Cain was a disguise to prevent Abel’s blood from finding him; this appears also to be the original reason for wearing mourning. In many ancient communities no difference was made between murder and accidental homicide; in either case equally ritual ablution was necessary. The feeling that blood defiles still lingers, for example in the Churching of Women and in taboos connected with menstruation. The idea that a child is of his father’s “blood” has the same superstitious origin. So far as actual blood is concerned, the mother’s enters into the child, but not the father’s. If blood were as important as is supposed, matriarchy would be the only proper way of tracing descent. 

In Russia, where, under the influence of Karl Marx, people since the revolution have been classified by their economic origin, difficulties have arisen not unlike those of German race theorists over the Scandinavian Nordics. There were two theories that had to be reconciled: on the one hand, proletarians were good and other people were bad; on the other hand, communists were good and other people were bad. The only way of effecting reconciliation was to alter the meaning of words. A “proletarian” came to mean a supporter of the government; Lenin, though born a Prince, was reckoned a member of the proletariat. On the other hand, the word “kulak,” which was supposed to mean a rich peasant, came to mean any peasant who opposed collectivization. This sort of absurdity always arises when one group of human beings is supposed to be inherently better than another. In America, the highest praise that can be bestowed on an eminent coloured man after he is safely dead is to say, “he was a white man.” A courageous woman is called “masculine”: Macbeth, praising his wife’s courage, says: 

Bring forth men children only,

For thy undaunted mettle should compose

Nothing but males.

All these ways of speaking come of unwillingness to abandon foolish generalizations. 

In the economic sphere there are many widespread superstitions. Why do people value gold and precious stones? Not simply because of their rarity: there are a number of elements called “rare earths” which are much rarer than gold, but no one will give a penny for them except a few men of science. There is a theory, for which there is much to be said, that gold and gems were valued originally on account of their supposed magical properties. The mistakes of governments in modern times seem to show that this belief still exists among the sort of men who are called “practical.” At the end of the last war, it was agreed that Germany should pay vast sums to England and France, and they in turn should pay vast sums to the United States. Every one wanted to be paid in money rather than goods; the “practical” men failed to notice that there is not that amount of money in the world. They also failed to notice that money is no use unless it is used to buy goods. As they would not use it in this way, it did no good to anyone. There was supposed to be some mystic virtue about gold that made it worthwhile to dig it up in the Transvaal and put it underground again in bank vaults in America. In the end, of course, the debtor countries had no more money, and, since they were not allowed to pay in goods, they went bankrupt. The Great Depression was the direct result of the surviving belief in the magical properties of gold. It is to be feared that some similar superstition will cause equally bad results after the end of the present war. 

Politics is largely governed by sententious platitudes which are devoid of truth. 

One of the most widespread popular maxims is, “human nature cannot be changed.” No one can say whether this is true or not without first defining “human nature.” But as used it is certainly false. When Mr. A utters the maxim, with an air of portentous and conclusive wisdom, what he means is that all men everywhere will always continue to behave as they do in his own home town. A little anthropology will dispel this belief. Among the Tibetans, one wife has many husbands, because men are too poor to support a whole wife; yet family life, according to travellers, is no more unhappy than elsewhere. The practice of lending one’s wife to a guest is very common among uncivilized tribes. The Australian aborigines, at puberty, undergo a very painful operation which, throughout the rest of their lives, greatly diminishes sexual potency. Infanticide, which might seem contrary to human nature, was almost universal before the rise of Christianity, and is recommended by Plato to prevent over-population. Private property is not recognized among some savage tribes. Even among highly civilized people, economic considerations will override what is called “human nature.” In Moscow, where there is an acute housing shortage, when an unmarried woman is pregnant, it often happens that a number of men contend for the legal right to be considered the father of the prospective child, because whoever is judged to be the father acquires the right to share the woman’s room, and half a room is better than no room. 

In fact, adult “human nature” is extremely variable, according to the circumstances of education. Food and sex are very general requirements, but the hermits of the Thebaid eschewed sex altogether and reduced food to the lowest point compatible with survival. By diet and training, people can be made ferocious or meek, masterful or slavish, as may suit the educator. There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. Plato intended his Republic to be founded on a myth which he admitted to be absurd, but he was rightly confident that the populace could be induced to believe it. Hobbes, who thought it important that people should reverence the government however unworthy it might be, meets the argument that it might be difficult to obtain general assent to anything so irrational by pointing out that people have been brought to believe in the Christian religion, and, in particular, in the dogma of transubstantiation. If he had been alive now, he would have found ample confirmation in the devotion of German youth to the Nazis. 

The power of governments over men’s beliefs has been very great ever since the rise of large States. The great majority of Romans became Christian after the Roman emperors had been converted. In the parts of the Roman Empire that were conquered by the Arabs, most people abandoned Christianity for Islam. The division of Western Europe into Protestant and Catholic regions was determined by the attitude of governments in the sixteenth century. But the power of governments over belief in the present day is vastly greater than at any earlier time. A belief, however untrue, is important when it dominates the actions of large masses of men. In this sense, the beliefs inculcated by the Japanese, Russian, and German governments are important. Since they are completely divergent, they cannot all be true, though they may well all be false. Unfortunately they are such as to inspire men with an ardent desire to kill one another, even to the point of almost completely inhibiting the impulse of self-preservation. No one can deny, in face of the evidence, that it is easy, given military power, to produce a population of fanatical lunatics. It would be equally easy to produce a population of sane and reasonable people, but many governments do not wish to do so, since such people would fail to admire the politicians who are at the head of these governments. 

There is one peculiarly pernicious application of the doctrine that human nature cannot be changed. This is the dogmatic assertion that there will always be wars, because we are so constituted that we feel a need of them. What is true is that a man who has had the kind of diet and education that most men have will wish to fight when provoked. But he will not actually fight unless he has a chance of victory. It is very annoying to be stopped by a speed cop, but we do not fight him because we know that he has the overwhelming forces of the State at his back. People who have no occasion for war do not make any impression of being psychologically thwarted. Sweden has had no war since 1814, but the Swedes were, a few years ago, one of the happiest and most contented nations in the world. I doubt whether they are so still, but that is because, though neutral, they are unable to escape many of the evils of war. If political organization were such as to make war obviously unprofitable, there is nothing in human nature that would compel its occurrence, or make average people unhappy because of its not occurring. Exactly the same arguments that are now used about the impossibility of preventing war were formerly used in defence of duelling, yet few of us feel thwarted because we are not allowed to fight duels. 

I am persuaded that there is absolutely no limit to the absurdities that can, by government action, come to be generally believed. Give me an adequate army, with power to provide it with more pay and better food than falls to the lot of the average man, and I will undertake, within thirty years, to make the majority of the population believe that two and two are three, that water freezes when it gets hot and boils when it gets cold, or any other nonsense that might seem to serve the interest of the State. Of course, even when these beliefs had been generated, people would not put the kettle in the ice-box when they wanted it to boil. That cold makes water boil would be a Sunday truth, sacred and mystical, to be professed in awed tones, but not to be acted on in daily life. What would happen would be that any verbal denial of the mystic doctrine would be made illegal, and obstinate heretics would be “frozen” at the stake. No person who did not enthusiastically accept the official doctrine would be allowed to teach or to have any position of power. Only the very highest officials, in their cups, would whisper to each other what rubbish it all is; then they would laugh and drink again. This is hardly a caricature of what happens under some modern governments. 

The discovery that man can be scientifically manipulated, and that governments can turn large masses this way or that as they choose, is one of the causes of our misfortunes. There is as much difference between a collection of mentally free citizens and a community moulded by modern methods of propaganda as there is between a heap of raw materials and a battleship. Education, which was at first made universal in order that all might be able to read and write, has been found capable of serving quite other purposes. By instilling nonsense it unifies populations and generates collective enthusiasm. If all governments taught the same nonsense, the harm would not be so great. Unfortunately each has its own brand, and the diversity serves to produce hostility between the devotees of different creeds. If there is ever to be peace in the world, governments will have to agree either to inculcate no dogmas, or all to inculcate the same. The former, I fear, is a Utopian ideal, but perhaps they could agree to teach collectively that all public men, everywhere, are completely virtuous and perfectly wise. Perhaps, when the war is over, the surviving politicians may find it prudent to combine on some such programme. 

But if conformity has its dangers, so has nonconformity. 

Some “advanced thinkers” are of the opinion that anyone who differs from the conventional opinion must be in the right. This is a delusion; if it were not, truth would be easier to come by than it is. There are infinite possibilities of error, and more cranks take up unfashionable errors than unfashionable truths. I met once an electrical engineer whose first words to me were: “How do you do? There are two methods of faith-healing, the one practised by Christ and the one practised by most Christian Scientists. I practice the method practiced by Christ.” Shortly afterwards, he was sent to prison for making out fraudulent balance-sheets. The law does not look kindly on the intrusion of faith into this region. I knew also an eminent lunacy doctor who took to philosophy, and taught a new logic which, as he frankly confessed, he had learnt from his lunatics. When he died he left a will founding a professorship for the teaching of his new scientific methods, but unfortunately he left no assets. Arithmetic proved recalcitrant to lunatic logic. On one occasion a man came to ask me to recommend some of my books, as he was interested in philosophy. I did so, but he returned next day saying that he had been reading one of them, and had found only one statement he could understand, and that one seemed to him false. I asked him what it was, and he said it was the statement that Julius Caesar is dead. When I asked him why he did not agree, he drew himself up and said: “Because I am Julius Caesar.” These examples may suffice to show that you cannot make sure of being right by being eccentric. 

Science, which has always had to fight its way against popular beliefs, now has one of its most difficult battles in the sphere of psychology. 

People who think they know all about human nature are always hopelessly at sea when they have to do with any abnormality. Some boys never learn to be what, in animals, is called “house trained.” The sort of person who won’t stand any nonsense deals with such cases by punishment; the boy is beaten, and when he repeats the offense he is beaten worse. All medical men who have studied the matter know that punishment only aggravates the trouble. Sometimes the cause is physical, but usually it is psychological, and only curable by removing some deep-seated and probably unconscious grievance. But most people enjoy punishing anyone who irritates them, and so the medical view is rejected as fancy nonsense. The same sort of thing applies to men who are exhibitionists; they are sent to prison over and over again, but as soon as they come out they repeat the offense. A medical man who specialized in such ailments assured me that the exhibitionist can be cured by the simple device of having trousers that button up the back instead of the front. But this method is not tried because it does not satisfy people’s vindictive impulses. 

Broadly speaking, punishment is likely to prevent crimes that are sane in origin, but not those that spring from some psychological abnormality. This is now partially recognized; we distinguish between plain theft, which springs from what may be called rational self-interest, and kleptomania, which is a mark of something queer. And homicidal maniacs are not treated like ordinary murderers. But sexual aberrations rouse so much disgust that it is still impossible to have them treated medically rather than punitively. Indignation, though on the whole a useful social force, becomes harmful when it is directed against the victims of maladies that only medical skill can cure. 

The same sort of thing happens as regards whole nations. During the last war, very naturally, people’s vindictive feelings were aroused against the Germans, who were severely punished after their defeat. Now many people are arguing that the Versailles Treaty was ridiculously mild, since it failed to teach a lesson; this time, we are told, there must be real severity. To my mind, we shall be more likely to prevent a repetition of German aggression if we regard the rank and file of the Nazis as we regard lunatics than if we think of them as merely and simply criminals. Lunatics, of course, have to be restrained; we do not allow them to carry firearms. Similarly the German nation will have to be disarmed. But lunatics are restrained from prudence, not as a punishment, and so far as prudence permits we try to make them happy. Everybody recognizes that a homicidal maniac will only become more homicidal if he is made miserable. In Germany at the present day, there are, of course, many men among the Nazis who are plain criminals, but there must also be many who are more or less mad. Leaving the leaders out of account (I do not urge leniency toward them), the bulk of the German nation is much more likely to learn cooperation with the rest of the world if it is subjected to a kind but firm curative treatment than if it is regarded as an outcast among the nations. Those who are being punished seldom learn to feel kindly toward the men who punish them. And so long as the Germans hate the rest of mankind peace will be precarious. 

When one reads of the beliefs of savages, or of the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, they seem surprising by their capricious absurdity. But beliefs that are just as absurd are still entertained by the uneducated even in the most modern and civilized societies. I have been gravely assured, in America, that people born in March are unlucky and people born in May are peculiarly liable to corns. I do not know the history of these superstitions, but probably they are derived from Babylonian or Egyptian priestly love. Beliefs begin in the higher social strata, and then, like mud in a river, sink gradually downward in the educational scale; they may take 3,000 or 4,000 years to sink all the way. You may find your coloured help making some remark that comes straight out of Plato—not the parts of Plato that scholars quote, but the parts where he utters obvious nonsense, such as that men who do not pursue wisdom in this life will be born again as women. Commentators on great philosophers always politely ignore their silly remarks. 

Aristotle, in spite of his reputation, is full of absurdities. He says that children should be conceived in the Winter, when the wind is in the North, and that if people marry too young the children will be female. He tells us that the blood of females is blacker then that of males; that the pig is the only animal liable to measles; that an elephant suffering from insomnia should have its shoulders rubbed with salt, olive oil, and warm water; that women have fewer teeth than men, and so on. Nevertheless, he is considered by the great majority of philosophers a paragon of wisdom. 

Superstitions about lucky and unlucky days are almost universal. In ancient times they governed the actions of generals. Among ourselves the prejudice against Friday and the number thirteen is very active; sailors do not like to sail on Friday, and many hotels have no thirteenth floor. The superstitions about Friday and thirteen were once believed by those reputed wise; now such men regard them as harmless follies. But probably 2,000 years hence many beliefs of the wise of our day will have come to seem equally foolish. Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. 

Belief in “nature” and what is “natural” is a source of many errors. It used to be, and to some extent still is, powerfully operative in medicine. The human body, left to itself, has a certain power of curing itself; small cuts usually heal, colds pass off, and even serious diseases sometimes disappear without medical treatment. But aids to nature are very desirable, even in these cases. Cuts may turn septic if not disinfected, colds may turn to pneumonia, and serious diseases are only left without treatment by explorers and travellers in remote regions, who have no option. Many practices which have come to seem “natural” were originally “unnatural,” for instance clothing and washing. Before men adopted clothing they must have found it impossible to live in cold climates. Where there is not a modicum of cleanliness, populations suffer from various diseases, such as typhus, from which Western nations have become exempt. Vaccination was (and by some still is) objected to as “unnatural.” But there is no consistency in such objections, for no one supposes that a broken bone can be mended by “natural” behaviour. Eating cooked food is “unnatural”; so is heating our houses. The Chinese philosopher Lao-tse, whose traditional date is about 600 B.C., objected to roads and bridges and boats as “unnatural,” and in his disgust at such mechanistic devices left China and went to live among the Western barbarians. Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent. 

The commonest objection to birth control is that it is against “nature.” (For some reason we are not allowed to say that celibacy is against nature; the only reason I can think of is that it is not new.) Malthus saw only three ways of keeping down the population; moral restraint, vice, and misery. Moral restraint, he admitted, was not likely to be practised on a large scale. “Vice,” i.e., birth control, he, as a clergyman, viewed with abhorrence. There remained misery. In his comfortable parsonage, he contemplated the misery of the great majority of mankind with equanimity, and pointed out the fallacies of reformers who hoped to alleviate it. Modern theological opponents of birth control are less honest. They pretend to think that God will provide, however many mouths there may be to feed. They ignore the fact that He has never done so hitherto, but has left mankind exposed to periodical famines in which millions died of hunger. They must be deemed to hold—if they are saying what they believe—that from this moment onward God will work a continual miracle of loaves and fishes which He has hitherto thought unnecessary. Or perhaps they will say that suffering here below is of no importance; what matters is the hereafter. By their own theology, most of the children whom their opposition to birth control will cause to exist will go to hell. We must suppose, therefore, that they oppose the amelioration of life on earth because they think it a good thing that many millions should suffer eternal torment. By comparison with them, Malthus appears merciful. 

Women, as the object of our strongest love and aversion, rouse complex emotions which are embodied in proverbial “wisdom.” 

Almost everybody allows himself or herself some entirely unjustifiable generalization on the subject of woman. Married men, when they generalize on that subject, judge by their wives; women judge by themselves. It would be amusing to write a history of men’s views on women. In antiquity, when male supremacy was unquestioned and Christian ethics were still unknown, women were harmless but rather silly, and a man who took them seriously was somewhat despised. Plato thinks it a grave objection to the drama that the playwright has to imitate women in creating his female roles. With the coming of Christianity woman took on a new part, that of the temptress; but at the same time she was also found capable of being a saint. In Victorian days the saint was much more emphasized than the temptress; Victorian men could not admit themselves susceptible to temptation. The superior virtue of women was made a reason for keeping them out of politics, where, it was held, a lofty virtue is impossible. But the early feminists turned the argument round, and contended that the participation of women would ennoble politics. Since this has turned out to be an illusion, there has been less talk of women’s superior virtue, but there are still a number of men who adhere to the monkish view of woman as the temptress. Women themselves, for the most part, think of themselves as the sensible sex, whose business it is to undo the harm that comes of men’s impetuous follies. For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favourable and unfavourable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern; all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience. 

The deeply irrational attitude of each sex toward women may be seen in novels, particularly in bad novels. In bad novels by men, there is the woman with whom the author is in love, who usually possesses every charm, but is somewhat helpless, and requires male protection; sometimes, however, like Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, she is an object of exasperated hatred, and is thought to be deeply and desperately wicked. In portraying the heroine, the male author does not write from observation, but merely objectifies his own emotions. In regard to his other female characters, he is more objective, and may even depend upon his notebook; but when he is in love, his passion makes a mist between him and the object of his devotion. Women novelists, also, have two kinds of women in their books. One is themselves, glamorous and kind, and object of lust to the wicked and of love to the good, sensitive, high-souled, and constantly misjudged. The other kind is represented by all other women, and is usually portrayed as petty, spiteful, cruel, and deceitful. It would seem that to judge women without bias is not easy either for men or for women. 

Generalizations about national characteristics are just as common and just as unwarranted as generalizations about women. Until 1870, the Germans were thought of as a nation of spectacled professors, evolving everything out of their inner consciousness, and scarcely aware of the outer world, but since 1870 this conception has had to be very sharply revised. Frenchmen seem to be thought of by most Americans as perpetually engaged in amorous intrigue; Walt Whitman, in one of his catalogues, speaks of “the adulterous French couple on the sly settee.” Americans who go to live in France are astonished, and perhaps disappointed, by the intensity of family life. Before the Russian Revolution, the Russians were credited with a mystical Slav soul, which, while it incapacitated them for ordinary sensible behaviour, gave them a kind of deep wisdom to which more practical nations could not hope to attain. Suddenly everything was changed: mysticism was taboo, and only the most earthly ideals were tolerated. The truth is that what appears to one nation as the national character of another depends upon a few prominent individuals, or upon the class that happens to have power. For this reason, all generalizations on this subject are liable to be completely upset by any important political change. 

To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error. 

If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself. Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted. He did not do so because he thought he knew. Thinking that you know when in fact you don’t is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone. I believe myself that hedgehogs eat black beetles, because I have been told that they do; but if I were writing a book on the habits of hedgehogs, I should not commit myself until I had seen one enjoying this unappetizing diet. Aristotle, however, was less cautious. Ancient and medieval authors knew all about unicorns and salamanders; not one of them thought it necessary to avoid dogmatic statements about them because he had never seen one of them. 

Many matters, however, are less easily brought to the test of experience. If, like most of mankind, you have passionate convictions on many such matters, there are ways in which you can make yourself aware of your own bias. If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If some one maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants. 

A good way of ridding yourself of certain kinds of dogmatism is to become aware of opinions held in social circles different from your own. When I was young, I lived much outside my own country in France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. I found this very profitable in diminishing the intensity of insular prejudice. If you cannot travel, seek out people with whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party that is not yours. If the people and the newspaper seem mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to them. In this opinion both parties may be right, but they cannot both be wrong. This reflection should generate a certain caution. 

Becoming aware of foreign customs, however, does not always have a beneficial effect. In the seventeenth century, when the Manchus conquered China, it was the custom among the Chinese for the women to have small feet, and among the Manchus for the men to wear pigtails. Instead of each dropping their own foolish custom, they each adopted the foolish custom of the other, and the Chinese continued to wear pigtails until they shook off the dominion of the Manchus in the revolution of 1911. 

For those who have enough psychological imagination, it is a good plan to imagine an argument with a person having a different bias. This has one advantage, and only one, as compared with actual conversation with opponents; this one advantage is that the method is not subject to the same limitations of time or space. Mahatma Gandhi deplores railways and steamboats and machinery; he would like to undo the whole of the industrial revolution. You may never have an opportunity of actually meeting anyone who holds this opinion, because in Western countries most people take the advantage of modern technique for granted. But if you want to make sure that you are right in agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you will find it a good plan to test the arguments that occur to you by considering what Gandhi might say in refutation of them. I have sometimes been led actually to change my mind as a result of this kind of imaginary dialogue, and, short of this, I have frequently found myself growing less dogmatic and cocksure through realizing the possible reasonableness of a hypothetical opponent. 

Be very wary of opinions that flatter your self-esteem. Both men and women, nine times out of ten, are firmly convinced of the superior excellence of their own sex. There is abundant evidence on both sides. If you are a man, you can point out that most poets and men of science are male; if you are a woman, you can retort that so are most criminals. The question is inherently insoluble, but self-esteem conceals this from most people. We are all, whatever part of the world we come from, persuaded that our own nation is superior to all others. Seeing that each nation has its characteristic merits and demerits, we adjust our standard of values so as to make out that the merits possessed by our nation are the really important ones, while its demerits are comparatively trivial. Here, again, the rational man will admit that the question is one to which there is no demonstrably right answer. It is more difficult to deal with the self-esteem of man as man, because we cannot argue out the matter with some nonhuman mind. The only way I know of dealing with this general human conceit is to remind ourselves that man is a brief episode in the life of a small planet in a little corner of the universe, and that, for aught we know, other parts of the cosmos may contain beings as superior to ourselves as we are to jellyfish. 

Other passions besides self-esteem are common sources of error; of these perhaps the most important is fear. Fear sometimes operates directly, by inventing rumours of disaster in war-time, or by imagining objects of terror, such as ghosts; sometimes it operates indirectly, by creating belief in something comforting, such as the elixir of life, or heaven for ourselves and hell for our enemies. Fear has many forms—fear of death, fear of the dark, fear of the unknown, fear of the herd, and that vague generalized fear that comes to those who conceal from themselves their more specific terrors. Until you have admitted your own fears to yourself, and have guarded yourself by a difficult effort of will against their mythmaking power, you cannot hope to think truly about many matters of great importance, especially those with which religious beliefs are concerned. Fear is the main source of superstition and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavour after a worthy manner of life. 

There are two ways of avoiding fear: one is by persuading ourselves that we are immune from disaster, and the other is by the practice of sheer courage. The latter is difficult, and to everybody becomes impossible at a certain point. The former has therefore always been more popular. Primitive magic has the purpose of securing safety, either by injuring enemies, or by protecting oneself by talismans, spells, or incantations. Without any essential change, belief in such ways of avoiding danger survived throughout the many centuries of Babylonian civilization, spread from Babylon throughout the empire of Alexander, and was acquired by the Romans in the course of their absorption of Hellenistic culture. From the Romans it descended to medieval Christendom and Islam. Science has now lessened the belief in magic, but many people place more faith in mascots than they are willing to avow, and sorcery, while condemned by the Church, is still officially a possible sin. 

Magic, however, was a crude way of avoiding terrors, and, moreover, not a very effective way, for wicked magicians might always prove stronger than good ones. In the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, dread of witches and sorcerers led to the burning of hundreds of thousands convicted of these crimes. But newer beliefs, particularly as to the future life, sought more effective ways of combating fear. Socrates on the day of his death (if Plato is to be believed) expressed the conviction that in the next world he would live in the company of the gods and heroes, and surrounded by just spirits who would never object to his endless argumentation. Plato, in his “Republic,” laid it down that cheerful views of the next world must be enforced by the State, not because they were true, but to make soldiers more willing to die in battle. He would have none of the traditional myths about Hades, because they represented the spirits of the dead as unhappy. 

Orthodox Christianity, in the Ages of Faith, laid down very definite rules for salvation. First, you must be baptized; then, you must avoid all theological error; last, you must, before dying, repent of your sins and receive absolution. All this would not save you from purgatory, but it would insure your ultimate arrival in heaven. It was not necessary to know theology. An eminent cardinal stated authoritatively that the requirements of orthodoxy would be satisfied if you murmured on your death-bed: “I believe all that the Church believes; the Church believes all that I believe.” These very definite directions ought to have made Catholics sure of finding the way to heaven. Nevertheless, the dread of hell persisted, and has caused, in recent times, a great softening of the dogmas as to who will be damned. The doctrine, professed by many modern Christians, that everybody will go to heaven, ought to do away with the fear of death, but in fact this fear is too instinctive to be easily vanquished. F. W. H. Myers, whom spiritualism had converted to belief in a future life, questioned a woman who had lately lost her daughter as to what she supposed had become of her soul. The mother replied: “Oh, well, I suppose she is enjoying eternal bliss, but I wish you wouldn’t talk about such unpleasant subjects.” In spite of all that theology can do, heaven remains, to most people, an “unpleasant subject.” 

The most refined religions, such as those of Marcus Aurelius and Spinoza, are still concerned with the conquest of fear. The Stoic doctrine was simple: it maintained that the only true good is virtue, of which no enemy can deprive me; consequently, there is no need to fear enemies. The difficulty was that no one could really believe virtue to be the only good, not even Marcus Aurelius, who, as emperor, sought not only to make his subjects virtuous, but to protect them against barbarians, pestilences, and famines. Spinoza taught a somewhat similar doctrine. According to him, our true good consists in indifference to our mundane fortunes. Both these men sought to escape from fear by pretending that such things as physical suffering are not really evil. This is a noble way of escaping from fear, but is still based upon false belief. And if genuinely accepted, it would have the bad effect of making men indifferent, not only to their own sufferings, but also to those of others. 

Under the influence of great fear, almost everybody becomes superstitious. The sailors who threw Jonah overboard imagined his presence to be the cause of the storm which threatened to wreck their ship. In a similar spirit the Japanese, at the time of the Tokyo earthquake took to massacring Koreans and Liberals. When the Romans won victories in the Punic wars, the Carthaginians became persuaded that their misfortunes were due to a certain laxity which had crept into the worship of Moloch. Moloch liked having children sacrificed to him, and preferred them aristocratic; but the noble families of Carthage had adopted the practice of surreptitiously substituting plebeian children for their own offspring. This, it was thought, had displeased the god, and at the worst moments even the most aristocratic children were duly consumed in the fire. Strange to say, the Romans were victorious in spite of this democratic reform on the part of their enemies. 

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd. So it was in the French Revolution, when dread of foreign armies produced the reign of terror. And it is to be feared that the Nazis, as defeat draws nearer, will increase the intensity of their campaign for exterminating Jews. Fear generates impulses of cruelty, and therefore promotes such superstitious beliefs as seem to justify cruelty. Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear. And for this reason poltroons are more prone to cruelty than brave men, and are also more prone to superstition. When I say this, I am thinking of men who are brave in all respects, not only in facing death. Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one. Obloquy is, to most men, more painful than death; that is one reason why, in times of collective excitement, so few men venture to dissent from the prevailing opinion. No Carthaginian denied Moloch, because to do so would have required more courage than was required to face death in battle. 

But we have been getting too solemn. Superstitions are not always dark and cruel; often they add to the gaiety of life. I received once a communication from the god Osiris, giving me his telephone number; he lived, at that time, in a suburb of Boston. Although I did not enrol myself among his worshipers, his letter gave me pleasure. I have frequently received letters from men announcing themselves as the Messiah, and urging me not to omit to mention this important fact in my lectures. During prohibition, there was a sect which maintained that the communion service ought to be celebrated in whiskey, not in wine; this tenet gave them a legal right to a supply of hard liquor, and the sect grew rapidly. There is in England a sect which maintains that the English are the lost ten tribes; there is a stricter sect, which maintains that they are only the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. Whenever I encounter a member of either of these sects, I profess myself an adherent of the other, and much pleasant argumentation results. I like also the men who study the Great Pyramid, with a view to deciphering its mystical lore. Many great books have been written on this subject, some of which have been presented to me by their authors. It is a singular fact that the Great Pyramid always predicts the history of the world accurately up to the date of publication of the book in question, but after that date it becomes less reliable. Generally the author expects, very soon, wars in Egypt, followed by Armageddon and the coming of Antichrist, but by this time so many people have been recognized as Antichrist that the reader is reluctantly driven to scepticism. 

I admire especially a certain prophetess who lived beside a lake in Northern New York State about the year 1820. She announced to her numerous followers that she possessed the power of walking on water, and that she proposed to do so at 11 o’clock on a certain morning. At the stated time, the faithful assembled in their thousands beside the lake. She spoke to them, saying: “Are you all entirely persuaded that I can walk on water?” With one voice they replied: “We are.” “In that case,” she announced, “there is not need for me to do so.” And they all went home much edified. Perhaps the world would lose some of its interest and variety if such beliefs were wholly replaced by cold science. 

Perhaps we may allow ourselves to be glad of the Abecedarians, who were so-called because, having rejected all profane learning, they thought it wicked to learn the ABC. And we may enjoy the perplexity of the South American Jesuit who wondered how the sloth could have travelled, since the Flood, all the way from Mount Ararat to Peru —a journey which its extreme tardiness of locomotion rendered almost incredible. A wise man will enjoy the goods of which there is a plentiful supply, and of intellectual rubbish he will find an abundant diet, in our own age as in every other.

Do our values come from God?

In Chapter 7 of his book: God: The Failed Hypothesis, Victor Stenger explores the origin of human values...

DO OUR VALUES COME FROM GOD? 

Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man.
—Charles Darwin

THE PIPELINE
The religions of the world have laid claim to the role of arbiters of human behavior, and their leaders continually decry the moral decay they claim to see in society. They insist they have the right to tell the rest of us what is right and what is wrong because they have a special pipeline to the place where right and wrong are defined—in the mind of God. 


Even secular institutions pay tribute to this claim. Whenever a moral issue arises in politics, such as stem cell research or when to end life support, clergy are called upon to provide their wisdom. On the other hand, the opinions of atheists, freethinkers, and humanists are rarely solicited—and frequently reviled. 

The implication is that atheists and humanists are somehow undesirable members of society, people you would not want to invite into your house. According to lawyer Phillip Johnson, nonbelievers actually think humans came from monkeys, which is the source of many of the "evils" of modern society, including homosexuality, abortion, pornography, divorce, and genocide— as if the world had none of these before Darwin came along.1 

However common may be the view that religion is the source of moral behavior, what do the data say? I have seen no evidence that nonbelievers commit crimes or other antisocial acts in greater proportion than believers. Indeed, some studies indicate the opposite. According to statistics from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Christians make up almost 80 percent of the prison population. Atheists make up about 0.2 percent.2 It is to be admitted that these data are not published in a scientific journal, but I think it is safe to conclude that the godless do not fill prisons. Published studies do indicate that a child's risk of sexual abuse by a family member increases as the family's religious denomination becomes more conservative, that is, when the teachings of scriptures and other doctrines are taken more literally.3 Similarly, the probability of wife abuse increases with the rigidity of a church's teachings pertaining to gender roles and hierarchy.4 

But let me not rely solely on sociological statistics, where correlation does not always imply connection given all the mitigating factors. Even observers from the Christian side have expressed dismay that the current dominance of evangelical Christianity in America has not translated into a strengthening of the nation's moral character or the characters of evangelical Christians themselves. In an article in Christianity Today, theologian Ronald Sider lamented: "Scandalous behavior is rapidly destroying American Christianity. By their daily activity, most 'Christians' regularly commit treason. With their mouths they claim that Jesus is Lord, but with their actions they demonstrate allegiance to money, sex, and self-fulfillment."5 

Sider continues, 

The findings in numerous national polls conducted by highly respected pollsters like The Gallup Organization and The Barna Group are simply shocking. "Gallup and Barna," laments evangelical theologian Michael Horton, "hand us survey after survey demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, selfcentered, and sexually immoral as the world in general." Divorce is more common among "born-again" Christians than in the general American population. Only 6 percent of evangelicals tithe. White evangelicals are the most likely people to object to neighbors of another race. Josh McDowell has pointed out that the sexual promiscuity of evangelical youth is only a little less outrageous than that of their non evangelical peers. 

COMMON STANDARDS 
It is not my purpose in this chapter to say how humans ought to behave. Rather I am acting as a scientist, observing how they do behave and asking what those observations tell us about the truth or falsity of the God hypothesis. In this regard, I reject the notion that science has nothing to say about morality. 

Preachers tell us that any universal moral standards can only come from one source—their particular God. Otherwise standards would be relative, depending on culture and differing across cultures and individuals. The data, however, indicate that the majority of human beings from all cultures and all religions or no religion agree on a common set of moral standards. While specific differences can be found, universal norms do seem to exist. Anthropologist Solomon Asch has observed, "We do not know of societies in which bravery is despised and cowardice held up to honor, in which generosity is considered a vice and ingratitude a virtue."6 

While we live in a society of law, much of what we do is not constrained by law but performed voluntarily. For example, we have many opportunities to cheat and steal in situations where the chance of being caught is negligible, yet most of us do not cheat and steal. While the Golden Rule is not usually obeyed to the letter, we generally do not try to harm others. Indeed, we are sympathetic when we see a person or animal in distress and take action to provide relief. We stop at auto accidents and render aid. We call the police when we witness a crime. We take care of children, aged parents, and others less fortunate than us. We willingly take on risky jobs, such as in the military or public safety, for the protection of the community. 

That stealing from members of your own community is immoral requires no divine revelation. It is revealed by a moment's reflection on the type of society that would exist if everyone stole from one another. If lying were considered a virtue instead of truth-telling, communication would become impossible. Mothers have loved their children since before mammals walked the earth—for obvious evolutionary reasons. The only precepts unique to religion are those telling us to not to question their dogma. 

Of course, not everyone agrees on every moral issue. These disagreements can be very pronounced, especially within specific religious communities where the same scriptural readings are often used to justify contradictory actions. 

For example, consider the opposing interpretations of the commandment against killing found within the Christian community. Conservative Protestants interpret this commandment as prohibiting abortion, stem cell research, and removing life support systems from the incurable, among other actions. However, they do not view capital punishment as prohibited, pointing to the biblical prescription of an eye for an eye. Catholics and liberal Christians, on the other hand, generally interpret the commandment as forbidding capital punishment. But Catholics oppose while liberals allow abortion, the removal of life support, and stem cell research. In all these cases, the Bible is evidently ambiguous. 

As philosopher Theodore Schick Jr. points out, both sides of the abortion debate believe murder is immoral. Where they disagree is on the nature of a fetus—whether or not it is the sort of entity that can be murdered. In other words, moral disagreements are often not about what is good or bad but about some other aspect of reality.7 

So how do Christians decide what is right or wrong? While they may look at the Bible, how they interpret what they read must depend on ideals that they have already developed from some other source. 

NOBLE IDEALS 

The Judeo-Christian and Islamic scriptures contain many passages that teach noble ideals that the human race has done well to adopt as norms of behavior and, where appropriate, to codify into law. But without exception, the fact that these principles developed in earlier cultures and history indicates that they were adopted by—rather than learned from—religion. While it is fine that religions preach moral precepts, they have no basis to claim that these precepts were authored by their particular deity or, indeed, any deity at all. 

Perhaps the primary principle upon which to live a moral life is the Golden Rule: "Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you." In our Christian-dominated society in the West, most people assume that this was an original teaching of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount. For some reason, their preachers, who surely know better, perpetuate this falsehood. In fact, Jesus himself made no such claim. Here's what he actually said, according to the Gospel: "So, whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law of the prophets" (Matt. 7:12, Revised Standard Version). Indeed, the phrase "Love thy neighbor as thyself" appears in Leviticus 19:18, written a thousand years before Christ. 

But the Golden Rule is not the exclusive property of a small desert tribe with a high opinion of itself. Here are some other, independent sources showing that the Golden Rule was already a widespread teaching well before Jesus: 

• In The Doctrine of the Mean 13, written about 500 BCE, Confucius says, "What you do not want others to do to you, do not do to others." 

• Isocrates (c. 375 BCE) said, "Do not do to others what would anger you if done to you by others." 

• The Hindu Mahabharata, written around 150 BCE, teaches, "This is the sum of all true righteousness: deal with others as thou wouldst thyself be dealt by."8 

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus also urged his listeners, "Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matt. 5:39, Revised Standard Version) and "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matt. 5:43-44, Revised Standard Version). 

Again, these are generally regarded as uniquely Christian sentiments. But the call to "love your enemies" precedes Jesus and does not even appear in the Old Testament:9 

• I treat those who are good with goodness. And I also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. I am honest with those who are honest. And I am also honest with those who are dishonest. Thus honesty is attained (Taoism. Tao Te Ching 49). 

• Conquer anger by love. Conquer evil by good. Conquer the stingy by giving. Conquer the liar by truth (Buddhism. Dhammapada 223). 

• A superior being does not render evil for evil; this is a maxim one should observe; the ornament of virtuous persons is their conduct. One should never harm the wicked or the good or even criminals meriting death. A noble soul will ever exercise compassion even towards those who enjoy injuring others or those of cruel deeds when they are actually committing them—for who is without fault? (Hinduism. Ramayana, Yuddha Kanda 115). 

No original moral concept of any significance can be found in the New Testament. In the early twentieth century, historian Joseph McCabe noted: "The sentiments attributed to Christ are . . . already found in the Old Testament. . . . They were familiar in the Jewish schools, and to all the Pharisees, long before the time of Christ, as they were familiar in all the civilizations of the earth—Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian, Greek and Hindu."10 

As with the Bible, the Qur'an contains many sentiments that most of us would classify as commendable. It tells Muslims to be kind to their parents, not to steal from orphans, not to lend money at excess interest, to help the needy, and not to kill their children unless it is necessary. 

But, again, these are not original moral principles. In the scriptures and other teachings of the great monotheisms we find a repetition of common ideals that arose during the gradual evolution of human societies, as they became more civilized, developed rational thinking processes, and discovered how to live together in greater harmony. The evidence points to a source other than the revelations claimed in these scriptures. 

THE GOOD SOCIETY 
Not only personal behavior but also societal behavior is supposedly regulated by God. But, once again, we can find no evidence for this. One of the prevailing myths in modern America is that the nation was founded on "Christian principles." However, the United States Constitution is a secular document that contains no reference to God, Jesus, Christianity, salvation, or any other religious teaching. Most of the early presidents were not fervent Christians and based their commitments to freedom, democracy, and justice on Enlightenment philosophy rather than biblical sources. 

We often hear, especially from American politicians, that our legal system is founded on the Ten Commandments. Attempts have been made to display the Ten Commandments in public facilities such as courthouses, which the courts have so far disallowed. But, we need to read what the commandments actually say. 

Since there are several versions, let me present a simplified wording with religious language omitted:11 

The Ten Commandments 

1. Have no other gods before me.
2. Make no images of anything in heaven, Earth, or the sea, and do not worship or labor for them.
3. Do not use the name of your God in vain.
4. Do no work on the Sabbath.
5. Honor your parents.
6. Do not kill.
7. Do not commit adultery.
8. Do not steal.
9. Do not give false testimony against another.
10. Do not desire another's wife or anything that belongs to another. 

Only commandments 6, 8, and 9 (the numbering is different for Catholics and Protestants) can be found in the laws of any modern nation. Killing, stealing, and perjury are illegal—except when done by the government. While adultery is normally considered immoral, it is not generally illegal. 

The Old Testament contains many examples of killings performed under God's orders. The only way this can be reconciled with commandment 6 is to assume that the proscription against killing must be restricted, say, only to your particular tribe rather than all humanity. 

And, how many believers realize they are breaking commandment 2 every time they take a photograph or draw a picture? How many would stop if that were pointed out to them? 

The restrictions imposed by the Ten Commandments can be found in other civilizations predating the time of Moses. Furthermore, it is clear from the above list that most of these restrictions are irrelevant to modern life and hardly form the basis for any existing legal system. Indeed, the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1780 BCE) represents a considerably more significant historical step in the development of laws of justice, containing not merely 10 but 282 detailed commandments.12 Perhaps these should be displayed on courthouse steps. 

Or, another option would be the Laws of Solon. Solon (d. 558 BCE) was an Athenian who is regarded as the founder of Western democracy and the first man in Western history to record a written constitution. That constitution eliminated birth as a basis for government office and created democratic assemblies open to all male citizens, such that no law could be passed without the majority vote of all. (Equal rights for women were still a long way off.) American democracy owes far more to Solon than the crude rules of the Hebrews.13 

Christendom and Islam have a long history of authoritarianism with little disposition toward individual freedom and justice. Nowhere in the Bible can you discover the principles upon which modern democracies and justice systems are founded. 

Slavery provides another example where the Bible hardly forms a model for our modern free societies. The Old Testament not only condones slavery but actually regulates its practice: 

When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. (Exod. 21:2, Revised Standard Version) 

If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's and he shall go out alone. (Exod. 21:4, Revised Standard Version) 

Jesus had many opportunities to disavow slavery. He never did. St. Paul reaffirms the practice: "Bid slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect" (Titus 2:9). 

Prior to the Civil War, the Bible was widely used to justify slavery in the United States. Baptist leader and slave owner Richard Furman (d. 1825) laid the foundation for the biblical arguments that would be made in support of slavery leading up to the Civil War. While president of the State Baptist Convention, Furman wrote to the governor of South Carolina, "The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example."14 Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, founded in 1826, was named for Richard Furman; his writings can be found in its archives. 

Another prominent churchman, Alexander Campbell (d. 1866) wrote, "There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is not then, we conclude, immoral."15 It is to be noted that Campbell declared himself against slavery, so once again we have a Christian following his own conscience despite what the scriptures say. 

Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, claimed to follow what the scriptures said: "[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God . . . it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation."16 

While Christians in the South held onto their slaves as long as they could, secular humanist Richard Randolph of Virginia began freeing his in 1791.17 Popes and other fathers of the Catholic Church owned slaves as late as 1800. Jesuits in colonial Maryland and nuns in Europe and Latin America owned slaves. The Church did not condemn slavery until 1888, after every Christian nation had abolished the practice.18 

Distinguished Catholic scholar John T. Noonan Jr. points out that the Church has traditionally denied that it has made any changes in the moral teachings of Jesus and the apostles.19 Slavery and other examples he presents amply illustrate that the Church's teaching does indeed change with the times. 

Now, the campaign to end slavery in the United States and elsewhere was led by Christians, to their everlasting credit. However, the abolitionists clearly were not guided by the literal words of scripture but by their own interpretations and innate senses of a higher good. 

Finally, let me just briefly mention the historical oppression of women. St. Paul said, "Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior" (Eph. 5:22-23, Revised Standard Version). Western societies finally have begun to recognize the irrationality and injustice of treating women as lesser human beings, providing a clear, recent example of how our notions of right and wrong evolve independent of and often contrary to religious teachings. 

HOLY HORRORS 
The Old Testament is filled with atrocities committed in the name of God. These are rarely mentioned in Sunday school, but anyone can pick up a Bible and read them for herself. I will just mention some of the worst: "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves" (Num. 31:17-18, Revised Standard Version). 

At another time, Moses orders three thousand men put to the sword on God's authority: "And he said to them, 'Thus says the Lord God of Israel, "Put every man his sword on his side, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his companion, and every man his neighbor"'" (Exod. 32:27, Revised Standard Version). 

Most Christians dismiss this and other biblical carnage as anachronistic and imagine such orders were eliminated with the coming of Jesus. However, in the New Testament, Jesus frequently reaffirms the laws of the prophets: "Think not that I have come to abolish the law, or the prophets: I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them" (Matt. 5:17, Revised Standard Version). The theist may respond that the above quotation is not a law but merely the report of an event, but the stories of the Bible are supposed to provide guides to proper behavior. 

Christians like to pride themselves on their "family values" and their desire for peace in the world. No doubt, most are devoted to their families and are upright members of society. But they fail to remember that Jesus said: "Do not think that I have come to send peace on earth: I have not come to send peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Matt. 10:34-37, Revised Standard Version). 

The history of Christendom abounds with violence sanctioned by the Church and thereby defined as divinely inspired "good." This divine inspiration is not limited to scripture but continually available to the specially anointed. Pope Urban II (d. 1099) assured the medieval knights of the Crusades that the killing of infidels was not a sin. And this did not apply just to Muslims in the Holy Land. The Cathar faith in southern France, which was apparently based on the notion of dual gods that appeared earlier in Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism,20 was brutally suppressed in the Albigensian Crusade in the thirteenth century. When the besieged Cathar city of Beziers fell in 1209, soldiers reportedly asked their papal adviser how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel among the captives. He recommended: "Kill them all. God will know his own." Nearly twenty thousand were slaughtered—many first blinded, mutilated, dragged behind horses, or used for target practice.21 

Incidentally, until recently the term crusade was used to refer to a Christian holy war, the equivalent of the Islamic jihad. Lloyd George's book of speeches given during his stint as British prime minister during the First World War was called The Great Crusade. General Dwight Eisenhower's memoir of the Second World War was called Crusade in Europe. The term crusade only fell into disuse recently, when shortly after September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush used it to refer to the war on terrorism and was warned off by his advisers because of its negative connotation for Muslims.22 Of course, the Muslim terrorists themselves felt they were obeying God's command to engage in jihad. 

The Qur'an is as bloodthirsty as the Old Testament. Numerous references can be found for the horrible fate that awaits nonbelievers. However, it is Allah himself who generally metes out that punishment: "Lo! Those who disbelieve Our revelations, We shall expose them to the Fire. As often as their skins are consumed We shall exchange them for fresh skins that they may taste the torment. Lo! Allah is ever Mighty, Wise" (Qur'an 4:56). Muslims are enjoined to kill infidels wherever they find them, but only those who initiate hostilities: 

Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors. Do not fight wars of aggression. And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they first attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers. But if they desist, then lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah. But if they desist, then let there be no hostility except against wrong-doers. (Qur'an 2:190-193) 

Of course, in every religion there are a few fanatics who follow to the letter what they regard as God's will: 

• Yigal Amir, who assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, was an extremely religious Jew who stated in court, "Everything I did, I did for God."23 

• Paul Hill, who murdered abortion provider Dr. John Britton in Florida in 1994, made the following statement just before his execution in 2003: "I feel very honored that they are most likely going to kill me for what I did. I'm certainly, to be quite honest, I'm expecting a great reward in heaven for my obedience."24 

• Mohammed Bouyeri, the Muslim extremist who killed Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004, declared in his trial, "What moved me to do what I did was purely my faith. . . . I was motivated by the law that commands me to cut off the head of anyone who insults Allah and his prophet. "25 

But, thankfully, they are the exception. Furthermore, each of these fanatics would be hard-pressed to demonstrate where exactly in their scriptures were they commanded to commit their dreadful acts. 

Of course, no one of conscience today would think it moral to kill everyone captured in battle, saving only the virgin girls for their pleasure. Few modern Christians take the commands of the Bible literally. While they claim to appeal to scriptures and the teachings of the great founders and leaders of their faiths, they pick and choose what to follow—guided by some personal inner light. And this is the same inner light that guides nonbelievers. 

AN INNER LIGHT 
If God does not define what is good, who does? How are theists supposed to decide what is good? 

Most do not go so far as to say that they hear it directly from God. While they claim to appeal to scriptures and the teachings of the great founders and leaders of their faiths, they pick and choose what to follow—guided by some personal inner light. 

A good example is the Catholic community in the United States. Shortly after the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005, the New York Times reported: 

The roughly 65 million Catholics in the United States no longer have as distinctive an identity as they did a generation ago, and as they assimilated more thoroughly into American society, their views on social and moral issues came to mirror those of other Americans.

"Catholics as a whole occupy the mainstream of American life, when 50 or 60 years ago, they were on the periphery of society," said John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron in Ohio and an expert on religion and politics. 

As a result, the Vatican's teachings on a number of subjects, including contraception, the ordination of women, and homosexuality, are out of step with the beliefs and lifestyles of most American Catholics. But the Americans mostly find a way to stay in their faith by adhering to values most important to them and quietly ignoring those they disagree with.26 

The Bible is not clear on what may be killed and what may not be. It does not explicitly sanction or forbid the killing of a fetus or stem cell. And, it certainly sanctions the killing of enemies, specifically those who do not worship Yahweh. 

In all these cases, believers clearly read the Bible to find support for moral principles that they have already developed from some other source. 

Christians draw Jesus Christ in their own image. As philosopher George Smith explains, "Because of the theological obligation to endorse the precepts of Jesus, Christian theologians have a strong tendency to read their own moral conviction into the ethics of Jesus. Jesus is made to say what theologians think he should have said."27 

Philosopher Walter Kaufmann agrees, "Most Christians gerrymander the Gospels and carve an idealized self-portrait out of the texts: Pierre van Passen's Jesus is a socialist, Fosdick's is a liberal, while the ethic of Reinhold Niebuhr's Jesus agrees, not surprisingly, with Niebuhr's own."28 As George Bernard Shaw commented, "No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says. He is always convinced that it says what he means."29 

Every time a theologian reinterprets Moses, Jesus, or Muhammad, he further reinforces my crucial point: we humans decide what is good by standards lying outside the scriptures. 

Believers are guided by their consciences in deciding for themselves what is right and wrong, just as are nonbelievers. The basic notions of good and evil that we all share—believers and nonbelievers—are, for the most part, common and universal. Psychological tests indicate that there are no significant differences in the moral sense between atheists and theists.30

In short, the empirical facts indicate that most humans are moral animals whose sense of right and wrong conflicts with many of the teachings of the great monotheistic religions. We can safely conclude they did not originate at that source. 

NATURAL MORALITY 
If human morals and values do not arise out of divine command, then where do they come from? They come from our common humanity. They can be properly called humanistic.31 

A considerable literature exists on the natural (biological, cultural, evolutionary) origins of morality.32 Darwin saw the evolutionary advantage of cooperation and altruism. Modern thinkers have elaborated on this observation, showing in detail how our moral sense can have arisen naturally during the development of modern humanity. 

We can even see signs of moral, or protomoral behavior in animals. Vampire bats share food. Apes and monkeys comfort members of their group who are upset and work together to get food. Dolphins push sick members of a pod to the surface to get air. Whales will put themselves in harm's way to help a wounded member of their group. Elephants try their best to save injured members of their families.33 

In these examples we glimpse the beginnings of the morality that advanced to higher levels with human evolution. You may call animal morality instinctive, built into the genes of animals by biological evolution. But when we include cultural evolution as well, we have a plausible mechanism for the development of human morality—by Darwinian selection. 

It seems likely that this is where we humans have learned our sense of right and wrong. We have taught it to ourselves. 

THE MORAL ARGUMENT 
Since Thomas Aquinas, theologians have claimed that the very fact that humans have a moral conscience can be taken as evidence for the existence of God: 

There must be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness and every other perfection: and this we call God. —Thomas Aquinas34

Contemporary Christian apologist William Lane Craig puts it this way, "If we can in some measure be good, then it follows that God exists."35

However, I have turned that argument on its head. The very fact that humans have a common moral conscience can be taken as evidence against the existence of God. 

As we have seen from an examination of the empirical evidence, God cannot be the source of commonly accepted human morals and values. If he were, then we would expect to see evidence in the superior moral behavior of believers compared to nonbelievers. Even if you deny that any discrepancy exists between the behavior of believers and what is taught in their scriptures, the empirical fact that nonbelievers show themselves to be no less virtuous provides strong evidence that morals and values come from humanity itself. Observable human and societal behaviors look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God.

NOTES

1. Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1991).

2. According to a March 5, 1997, letter to Rod Swift from Denise Golumbaski, research analyst, Federal Bureau of Prisons, online at http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm (accessed February 5, 2006).

3. Ruth Miller, Larry S. Miller, and Mary R. Langenbrunner, "Religiosity and Child Sexual Abuse: A Risk Factor Assessment," Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 6, no. 4 (1997): 14-34.

4. Michael Franklin and Marian Hetherly, "How Fundamentalism Affects Society," Humanist 57 (September/October 1997): 25.

5. Ronald J. Sider, "The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience," Christianity Today 11, no. 1 (January/February 2005): 8, http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2005/001/3.8.html (accessed March 22, 2005).

6. Solomon Asch, Social Psychology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1952), pp. 378-79.

7. Theodore Schick Jr., "Is Morality a Matter of Taste? Why Professional Ethicists Think That Morality Is Not Purely Subjective," Free Inquiry 18, no. 4 (1998): 32-34.

8. For other historical statements of the Golden Rule, see Michael Shermer, The Science of Good & Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care,Share, and Follow the Golden Rule (New York: Times Books, 2004), p. 23.

9. Thanks to Eleanor Binnings for providing these quotations.

10. Joseph McCabe, The Sources of Morality of the Gospels (London: Watts and Co., 1914), p. 209, as quoted in George Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1989), p. 317.

11. Richard Carrier, "The Real Ten Commandments," Internet Infidels Library (2000), http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/features/2000/carrier2.html (accessed August 14, 2005).

12. The text of the Code of Hammurabi, translated by L. W. King, online at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/hamcode.html (accessed April 3, 2005). Commentaries by Charles F. Home (1915) and the Encyclopaedia Brittanica entry, 11th ed. (1910), written by Claude Hermann Walter Johns, also can be found at this site.

13. Carrier, "The Real Ten Commandments."

14. Richard Furman, "Exposition of the View of the Baptists Relative to the Colored Population of the United States to the Governor of South Carolina 1822," transcribed by T. Lloyd Benson from the original text in the South Carolina Baptist Historical Collection, Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina. Available at http://alpha.furman.edu/~benson/docs/rcd-fmnl.htm (accessed December 1, 2004), p. 6.

15. Alexander Campbell, "Our Position to American Slavery—No.V," Millennial Harbinger, ser. 3, vol. 2 (1845): 193.

16. Jefferson Davis, "Inaugural Address as Provisional President of the Confederacy," Montgomery, AL, February 18, 1861, Confederate States of America Congressional Journal 1 (1861): 64-66; quoted in Dunbar Rowland,Jefferson Davis's Place in History as Revealed in His Letters, Papers, and Speeches, vol. 1 (Jackson, MS: Torgerson Press, 1923), p. 286.

17. Melvin Patrick Ely, Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s through the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).

18. John T. Noonan Jr., A Church That Can and Cannot Change: The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005).

19. Ibid.

20. Jean Markale, Montsegur and the Mystery of the Cathars, trans.Jon Graham (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2003).

21. For this and other tales of atrocities in the name of religion, seeJames A. Haught, Holy Horrors: An Illustrated History of Religious Murder and Madness (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990).

22. Joan Acocella, "Holy Smoke; What Were the Crusades ReallyAbout?" New Yorker, December 13, 2004.

23. CNN Report, March 27, 1996, http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9603/amir_verdict/ (accessed December 9, 2004).

24. Associated Press, September 2, 2003, http://www.fadp.org/news/TampaBayOnline-20030903.htm (accessed December 9, 2004).

25. Trial statement, Associated Press, July 12, 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5136448,00.html (accessed July 20, 2005).

26. Dean E. Murphy and Neela Banjeree, "Catholics in U.S. Keep Faith, but Live with Contradictions," New York Times, April 11, 2005.

27. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God, p. 313.

28. Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic, paperback ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1963), p. 216.

29. From a Saturday Review article, April 16, 1895.

30. Marc Hauser and Peter Singer, "Morality without Religion," Free Inquiry 26, no. 1 (December 2005/January 2006): 18-19.

31. Paul Kurtz, Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Humanism (Amherst,NY: Prometheus Books, 1988).

32. Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984); Richard D. Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter, 1987); Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology (New York: Vintage Books, 1994); Frans B. M. de Wall, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals (Cambridge, MS: Harvard University Press, 1996); Larry Arnhart, Darwinian Natural Right; The Biological Ethics of Human Nature (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998); Leonard D. Katz, ed., Evolutionary Origins of Morality: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives (Bowling Green, OH: Imprint Academic, 2000); Jessica C. Flack and Frans B. M. de Wall, "'Any Animal Whatever' Darwinian Building Blocks of Morality in Monkeys and Apes," Journal of Consciousness Studies 7, nos. 1-2 (2000): 1-29; Donald M. Broom, The Evolution of Morality and Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Shermer, The Science of Good & Evil.

33. Shermer, The Science of Good & Evil, pp. 26-31.

34. Thomas Aquinas, Fourth Way in Summa Theologica.

35. William Lane Craig, "The Absurdity of Life without God," http://www.hisdefense.org/audio/wc_audio.html (accessed March 9, 2004).