'Nother Solent

Professor Grayling writes

,

"Dear NS - what about doing a book of some of the blogs and responses? It would make great reading. Am in Davos doing my bit at the World Econ Forum & when back will be v. caught up with a new book coming out, so will leave the deabte now (for a time) if that's ok - have enjoyed it greatly and much applaud your forensic style of argumnet. Very good wishes - Anthony."

In fact he does make a couple of quick interjections later - but as I warn in the new, updated reference post, I, too, was feeling that I was coming up to my final lap in this debate, at least for the time being. My excuses were much less cool than having to take part in the World Economic Forum, though.

Besides, the WEF does not sound my cup of tea (which is why I did not pursue the invitation that was obviously lost in the post). All that wrangling in a claustrophobic, yet intensely public atmosphere, and then there's the risk of George Galloway licking milk out of your hand.

No easy fixes.

Moira Breen writes:

"Dear Natalie,

"Regarding your discussion with Mr. Grayling, his (to my mind) whimsical rejoinder arguing for religion, again, as the real root of atrocious human behavior made me wonder if the argument at bottom isn't really a disagreement about human nature. (Your correspondent ARC covers related territory in his invocation of Burke.) Grayling apparently believes that we can "fix" a great deal of human nastiness by purging religion from civilization. If only there were no monasteries, there could be no Stalins! I, on the other hand - though an atheist who dislikes and distrusts many manifestations of the religious impulse - shudder at the obscene naivete implicit in that account. I feel a lot safer, thank you very much, in a society where hosts of strong institutions - public/private, secular/religious, etc. - exist to protect their (overlapping) membership from the pretensions of every other institution.

"On another point, I fear that either Mr. Grayling is misleading your Martian readers, or I am misinformed on certain finer points of history.

"If the Martians were encountering Earth history for the first time in his recent response to you, they might reasonably conclude from his phrasing that the malignant United States - after all chock-a-block with religious enthusiasm and Southern Baptist types from the get-go - stood in opposition to the triumphant "secular, democratic and humanist offspring of Enlightenment [that] refused to accept either fascism or communism, and defeated the former in seventeen years and the latter in seventy". Maybe the persistence of American religiosity is just a product of sheer testy resentment at having been on the wrong side of history in the last century?

"(Well, actually I think that here Grayling is arguing - enthymematically, of course - for a certain credulous view, common among members of certain classes, that America c. 2000 "got religion" in some historically anomalous fashion - thus the perplexity disappears.)

"And, of course, glad to see you back."

Moira

"Is the failure of religion to control evil the root cause?"

Randy writes:

"I congratulate you on your bravery to even engage in the science-religion-atheism debate. Often to me it seems futile to even engage.

"Having spent many hours thinking/discussing these issues over the years your post caught my attention. Having a best buddy who is a Phd in the history of science and religion, plus a reverend, probably has something to do with that.

"(And of no consequence but I have to write it .........The fact that Grayling is an atheist has ironic significance to me since when people google me professionally the other major professional "Zindler" hit is a leading atheist)

"My main comment is that I question the validity of the science vs religion debate, and the religion vs war debate. I have lately come to the conclusion that fundamentally religion is not the root of war, but evil. I think you were on the mark that one of religions attributes (at least most religions) is the teaching of benevolence and the fight against evil.

"You commented: Since Prof. Grayling is an atheist he naturally holds that religion is false and counts this as one more tick on the bad side of its scoresheet. I am not saying that this is an illegitimate form of argument. But it doesn't quite belong with the Sistine chapel, or antibiotics. Too tired to tease out exactly why not right now

"As to why not right now ........ the question for me is:

a) Is religion is the "root cause" of war and other negatives.

or

b) Is the failure of religion to control evil the root cause?

"I offer up for your consideration the following. While atheists like to trot out religious wars as evidence, I can't help but notice their avoidance of the results of atheistic cultures. The biggest genocides in history (to my imperfect recollection) have all been carried out by atheistic cultures. Most particularly by Stalin and Mao ...... no religion there ........ and then there was Cambodia, Rwanda. Even Hitler wasn't religious, the first people sent to the camps were the pastors and opposition politicians as I was surprised to learn at Dachau.

"The facts of history would seem to argue that the lack of religion has lead to the greatest atrocities. And borrowing from your thoughts Stalin and Mao cultures did not produce any Sistine chapels.

"One last note, as my friend taught me many years ago, it's not science vs. religion. Religion birthed science. Most of the "enlightenment" scientists were deeply religious and wanted to understand God better."

Thanks,

Randy

Stand by me.

Over at Albion's Seedlings, Verity asks why so few have spoken up to defend Denmark's stand in favour of freedom of speech.

Blog, and buy Lurpak.

"History is everything that ever happened."

Reader B writes:

"The game of comparing good and bad historical achievements of Christianity is deeply suspect [But, I can't resist adding, still kind of fun - NS], even accepting some of the dubious cases that tend to be suggested.

"1. As Lewis points out somewhere or other, history is everything that ever happened, anywhere, to anyone; and includes Joe Blogg's bad temper a week last Tuesday, and Fred Gummock's astonishing patience with his crabby and senile mother on Wednesday. If we were really trying to keep a tally of the achievements or otherwise of religion, these should also be included - which is naturally impossible. My hypothetical examples are of course trivial, (particularly if like Grayling, you assume the non-existence of God, the soul, etc.); however, we can be pretty sure there are plenty of history-worthy episodes which have not made it to 'History'. Naturally, we cannot know which side of the argument would gain from the inclusion of such cases - though I suspect we could both make a guess. My point is simply that the game, given the nature of our knowlege, is not really worth playing, though the very fact that Grayling is driven to use the Holocaust as an argument _against _religion tells us plenty about who wins even in present circumstances!

"2. If you accept every one of the bad results of Christianity which Grayling and his fellow 'dawks' (I do think that expression is gorgeous) like to dwell on, there is an obvious point to be made, not unrelated to the above. They are all bad results of the church, in one or other of its manifestations. As Christians, we have no difficulty in understanding why no human institution can ever be anything but flawed; but even the opposition would presumably agree that such evils have nothing whatever to do with a set of principles which can be summed up in the single sentence: 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' I'm sure we agree that a thoroughly effective defence can be mounted on the side of the overall contribution of the church to history; but it is even easier to defend Christianity itself!

"3. Finally, and most obviously: if Christianity is true, all this 'effects' debate becomes pretty silly. The Christian religion does not stand or fall by the political behaviour of some of its better known adherents. Either it is true, or it is not. If true, then of course it is good. If false, while it could still be defended against Grayling's arguments, it is of no more inherent value than any other mythological world view."

The perogative of the harlot.

Patrick Crozier writes:

Oh Natalie!

"... he thought employing the services of a male prostitute and putting himself forward for leadership of Britain's third party were compatible activities."

Quite right, they did used to be. Anyway, think on the bright side. At least no animals were harmed in the making of this Liberal Party sex scandal.

There has been a cultural change, a decline of deference on the part of a profession marginalised and scorned by society. The courtesans have become less respectful, too. I blame that Mandy Rice-Davies.

Don't get hung up.

One of Damian Penny's commenters prompted me to take a look at this Guardian piece by Jonathan Steele on Hamas's recent election victory. Steele writes:

Instead, it was further proof that civil society in Palestine is more vibrant than anywhere else in the region

Sorry to keep going on about the Nazis, but I couldn't help being struck by the contrast between Steele's "vibrant civil society" and the fact that the public announced policy of Hamas is more extreme in its anti-Semitism than the public announced policy of the Nazis.

Above all, Europe should not get hung up on the wrong issues, like armed resistance and the "war on terror".

What would be the right issues for Europe to get hung up on, I wonder? Whether Hamas has a constitution that is sufficiently open to transgendered persons? No, perhaps not that one. There must be something somewhere illiberal enough to disturb Jonathan Steele's cool but mankind has not yet discovered what it is.

Jonathan Steele was also the man who gave us this. Not sure if Mr Steele still wishes to praise Palestinian society for being "far-sighted, civic-minded, and secular" now that they have started kidnapping foreign aid workers. I doubt if it'll make much difference to him; and given the far worse acts that he had already decided did not militate against a society being described as civic minded there is no reason why it should.

"Technology can be the unintentional father of moral events."

I had two emails from JEM.

In the first, he says:

"Natalie,

"It's great to see you back. I was getting worried...

"It's not quite so great to return to the Science v Religion Debate, "Which Does The Most Harm Or Good?" Section, but still it's great enough to find I'm unable to resist doing a spot of water-muddying.

"Because I think both Professor Grayling and yourself are wrong. The basis of the argument is false.

"Science does neither good nor harm. Science is morally neutral. It tells us how nature works, not why it works or what should be done with it.

"Why nature works the way it does is not the province of science, but religion or philosophy. What to do with scientific knowledge is also not the province of science, but once again the responsibility of religion or, this time, moral philosophy.

"Yet science is the basis upon which technology happens, and technology can be the unintentional father of moral events.

"For instance, I would contend that the true reason for the demise of slavery over the last two hundred years is not because of a renewed or revived religious or moral sense, but the industrial revolution. Steam power and the machinery it drove made slavery economically anachronistic, so it died out through a process economists call creative destruction. All the moral posturing and wars and so forth over this was ultimately moral grandstanding. Slavery was condemned to death by James Watt and his separate condenser, but I bet he never thought that his invention had anything to do with slavery.

"Another example: Zyklon B was developed by the German chemical industry as a rat poison. It just happened to turn out to be rather effective at killing people in gas chambers, but I doubt that idea ever crossed the minds of the scientists who discovered the chemistry that made it possible or the technologists who set out to make a better rat poison. They were not responsible for the wicked use made of their invention by evil men.

"There are numerous others cases like these, but my point is I hope clear by now. There are three powerful forces at work through human history. One is that certain large trends are beyond our control; then, no matter how benevolent our intent the result may be perverted by others; and if we think we can forecast what will happen we are deluding ourselves.

"So questions of good and evil are nothing to do with science, but are for religion and moral philosophy alone. Indeed come to think of it, I'm not sure even religion in the broadest sense qualifies, as many religions are totally uninterested in questions of right and wrong -- Christianity, Judaism and Islam are rather unusual in so far as they are concerned with such matters.

"Is that all muddier now?"

- JEM

In the second email, JEM replies to ARC. I'll give it a title in bold because titles help keep track of all these emails:

It was the industrial revolution that ended slavery.

"Natalie,

"I feel I must point out that I have already suggested to you before your latest post why ARC's contention that:

An example of the kind of historical achievement of Christianity that I would defend in an argument of this kind is the campaign against slavery in the nineteenth century. An institution that had existed in every culture from time immemorial had a war waged on it. The campaign was led by evangelical Christians who stressed their Christian motivation, and the idea that slavery was wrong all over the world was only able to be propounded because it had already been abolished at home by a long historical process within a Christian culture. Several parts of the campaign - the undeclared war against Brazil in the 1850s for example, or the Royal Navy's countless cutting-out expeditions against slavers off the west African coast - were wholly without ulterior motives; were indeed obviously counter to the purely selfish interests of Great Britain...

... is incorrect. As I said:

"...I would contend that the true reason for the demise of slavery over the last two hundred years is not because of a renewed or revived religious or moral sense, but the industrial revolution. Steam power and the machinery it drove made slavery economically anachronistic, so it died out through the process of creative destruction. All the moral posturing and wars and so forth over this was ultimately moral grandstanding. Slavery was condemned to death by James Watt and his separate condenser, but I bet he never thought that his invention had anything to do with slavery."

"Indeed, when ARC goes on to say:

> After becoming rare as a result of this campaign, mass slavery was reintroduced to the world in the twentieth century by militant atheists - the communists had millions enslaved by the middle thirties; the national socialists started later but soon caught up.

He does not concern himself with two rather clear points. One is that Communism and National Socialism are more in the nature of religions than science, so in so far as that is so it was religion and not science that revived slavery. The second is that in a modern economy, slavery is economically illiterate. In both cases, it is self-evident that slavery was a large part of the reason behind the ultimate economic, social, moral and military failure and final collapse of both 'religions'.

"In other words, I submit that these relatively recent experiences reinforce my argument from the industrial revolution.

"And by the way, National Socialism was certainly the enemy of traditional religions, but is was not atheistic."

- JEM

Question-begging on the wrongness of religion as one of its evils?

"Reader A" writes:

"In the reply you posted on 23 Jan., you said:

"Since Prof. Grayling is an atheist he naturally holds that religion is false and counts this as one more tick on the bad side of its scoresheet. I am not saying that this is an illegitimate form of argument. But it doesn't quite belong with the Sistine chapel, or antibiotics. Too tired to tease out exactly why not right now."

I will say it for you. He makes the claim that religion is wrong because it is bad (that is, that religion, on balance, does evil). He then makes the claim that religion is bad (evil) because it is wrong.

"This is nearly pure question begging; a basic logical fallacy.

"I should perhaps note that I don't find religion interesting enough (compelling enough?) to be worth the trouble of engaging. It's not that I believe it to be incorrect (atheism), nor that I don't know what to believe (agnosticism), but that I don't respect its arguments enough to dispute them.

"On the face, this would seem to make me a natural ally of Prof. Grayling, and I might actually hold many views he agrees with. Too bad he can't make or respond to an actual argument; also too bad this isn't a surprising performance by an academic.

"That I don't find value in religion, however, does not mean that there is no value in it for anyone. Nor does it mean that I consider religion a net negative. (I do consider science a strong net positive.) I suspect my point of view would be anathema (so to say) for the professor, though. Tolerance isn't well thought of in the academy."

[I feel I ought to defend Prof. Grayling on that last point. The fact that this exchange is taking place is testament to his willingness to engage in debate - NS.]

That's enough cutting

and pasting for tonight. While Blogger was down I went over to The Daily Ablution and opined that Galloway would bounce back. I want to get this prediction recorded in as many places as possible so that when it comes true I can have a feeling of gloomy satisfaction for at least three minutes.

Professor Grayling himself

sent a second email in reply to my earlier post. Here it is:

"Thank you very much for your email, and for the very interesting response posted on your website. I compliment you on your formidable skills as a debating partner, and I_m glad therefore that you acknowledge that in the constraints of polemical newspaper articles (and as you say, in blogs too), enthymeme is often called for: for yes, my argument was enthymematic on the question of the outweighing balance of harm attributable to religion in history, though not (as you suggest) as regards the arguments in support of points unfavourable to my case, but as regards the arguments against the points themselves _ which I take to be, after all, well enough known.

"Straight away, though, I must comment on what you say at the very end of your remarks: _Since Prof. Grayling is an atheist he naturally holds that religion is false and counts this as one more tick on the bad side of its scoresheet._ The massive and systematic falsity of views to the effect that supernatural agencies operate in the universe with express reference to the lives of human beings on this planet, given in addition that they are so often and widely invoked to direct, dominate and often distort those lives, is scarcely describable in so offhand a way as _one more tick on the bad side of the scoresheet._ In fact, this is the very core of the matter between us. Consider the contrast. Science labours towards an understanding of things, testing itself vigorously and on the way (_directly and indirectly_ to re-employ my phrase - this latter via technologies) affecting the lives of billions every day. I confidently asserted before, and do so again, that the good versus harm balance lies hugely in its favour in this, as witness the commonplace example of its effects - say, electricity: the electricity that pumps water to your house, lights and heats it, cooks your food, puts you in touch with your family and friends, brings you news and entertainment - all and every day. When last did it guide a missile your way, or communicate itself to you via a torturer_s cattle prod? These things tragically happen, and they are indeed applications - misapplications - of science: but though you rightly say that the numbers game is crude, it is relevant. For the dozens of mutually blaspheming and non-rationally-based religions, each claiming final and uncontestable truth on the basis of supposed revelations communicated two or more thousand years ago, live off their falsehood continuously, invoke it and rely upon it daily, and use it to motivate antipathies and conflicts as well as to encourage benignities: though even as regards this latter one would surely wish to see people encouraged to kindness and concern by feelings of humanity rather than by fairy stories (or rewards in heaven: seventy-two virgins &c).

"This acknowledges your point that religion - these false views of the universe - can give comfort and inspiration, and prompt an _uncountable number of acts of benevolence_. I should wish comfort and inspiration to everyone, and applaud any act of benevolence with all my heart: but still prefer that their motivation not be falsely based. And of course, uncountable acts of benevolence are performed by non-believers too, perhaps more admirably still, since humanity alone (if it is truly benevolence in the case) is the impulse.

"It is in the light of this contrast between science and religion that my original piece was written. Hence the complete confidence that if one throws the net wide (your _whoa_ point about the Holocaust), what it catches in the respective cases is very different indeed in overall character. The argument that _Communism, an ideology officially dedicated to scientific atheism, has killed more people than all the holy wars and holy tortures ever made_ is a canard that itself deserves the full Natalie Solent treatment of forensic deconstruction. Was it the _scientific atheism_ aspect that prompted the massacre of Kulaks or the starvation of Chinese peasants in the Great Leap Forward, or might it have been the ideology of class war, theories about collectivisation, and the like? Where did Communism learn its lessons about prophets and holy books, orthodoxy and conformity, the putting to death of heretics, and the like again? On what did it model is eschatological picture of human history, its call for suffering now in the interests of a utopian future, its preparedness to kill and die for the faith? Those less reflective about the nuances of history blame communism (and fascism) on the Enlightenment, failing to see that the secular, democratic and humanist offspring of Enlightenment refused to accept either fascism or communism, and defeated the former in seventeen years and the latter in seventy. For both are in fact counter-Enlightenment movements, sharing more in common with the forms of religion from which they borrowed their lineaments - the oppression of a monolithic world-view premised on a fairy tale about origins, destiny, and the right morality required for salvation - than with the pluralist, open, educated, liberal society based on rights and opportunities envisioned by the eighteenth century_s philosophes (and yes: which is yet to come, if ever it will; but look at the forces opposing it even as we write: Southern Baptists, radical Islam).

"Your remarkable comment about the United States as a religious but benign country I will leave to your second thoughts or other bloggers to respond to.Our disagreements in part flow from the very brevity of my original article. With proper diffidence, might I ask if you can get hold of a copy of my book What Is Good? which sets out my case at full length? (I'd be happy to send you a copy, but without wishing to foist it on you.) I should be pleased to see anything you have written at greater length too.Thank you for your points and views, which I much appreciate. Again my good wishes"

- Anthony Grayling

Blogger's working again!

Quick, post the email from ARC. He writes:

"The Holocaust is rather an egregious example to use on his side of the argument. The Nazis who perpetrated it were gottglaubigers, i.e. they believed in a life force, but did not believe in Christianity or in a life after death. Many of them spelt this out in words of one syllable. Eichmann specifically stated he was a gottglaubiger just before his execution. Hitler, at the 1937 Hossbach conference (taken as the formal start of the conspiracy at Nuremberg), told his generals that 'after severe struggles, he had freed himself from childish religious ideas that he had continued to harbour and that "now I feel as fresh as a foal in the meadow"'; he then made plain the connection between this 'freedom' and the brutality he planned. Bormann, ordering the Gauleiters on the 'fight against the churches', ridiculed the idea that a God could be interested in the 'planetary bacilli' that were men, could respond to 'prayers, or other surprising things', etc. The full quote has something about Nazis respecting 'the force that moves the universe' or something like that. I cannot recall the exact form of words.

"Perhaps the professor's argument is something along the lines of the historical context in which the Nazis could make the Jews the centre of their ideology being an inheritance of Christendom. This has been well argued against in its own terms (I would suggest Hannah Arendt's overview of antisemitic history in 'Origins of Totalitarianism' ) but I notice rather the more basic absurdity: all modern atheism has Christendom as its historical context and the professor could also alledge religion's culpability for Stalin's holocaust if the above were his argument.

"It may be, of course, that the above is not his argument. But as he has failed to offer an argument as to why an act of self-professing atheists is the fault of religion, I may justly observe that it is his fault I must guess what it would have been.

"Religion has its holocausts. Stalin and Hitler set a high standard of evil for it to match. Burke, writing of the French revolution's murders, points out that power is needed for these acts so the perpetrators must always be those with power - kings and bishops when kings and bishops had power, revolutionaries when revolutionaries have power - using the pretexts of the time - religion when religion can move masses to kill, socialism when it can move masses to kill. He mocks those who are 'wise historically, a fool in practice' and spend their time 'filleting the tomb while their house is full of robbers'. It is a shallow understanding that confuses the excuses with the evil, the ranks with the actors.

> Accordingly it would be a bold individual who sought to claim that just as the hundreds of millions saved by (say) antibiotics can be invoked as some compensation for the (say) millions whom advanced weaponry has killed (adamantly granting that ONE person thus killed is too many), so the (say) Sistine Chapel and Joe Smith's comfort at having his bible under his pillow make the historical excesses of (say) anti-Semitism OK, to say nothing of the wholesale enslavement of mankind to falsity which religion by its nature seeks to impose, and too often succeeds.

"Of course, art works would hardly figure on my list of justification for almost anything. I like art but it is a luxury. Nor would anything _false_ - but here his argument is somewhat circular. Were Christianity untrue, it's being comforting to someone would be no more an excuse for it than for than any other comforting lie; likewise for atheism. We agree that that which is untrue is harmful. We disagree on what is true. Would the professor allow me to argue the harmfulness of atheism's false belief as one its historical crimes? I think not.

"An example of the kind of historical achievement of Christianity that I would defend in an argument of this kind is the campaign against slavery in the nineteenth century. An institution that had existed in every culture from time immemorial had a war waged on it. The campain was led by evangelical Christians who stressed their Christian motivation, and the idea that slavery was wrong all over the world was only able to be propounded because itr had already been abolished at home by a long historical process within a Christian culture. Several parts of the campaign - the undeclared war against Brazil in the 1850s for example, or the Royal Navy's countless cutting-out expeditions against slavers off the west African coast - were wholly without ulterior motives; were indeed obviously counter to the purely selfish interests of Great Britain. After becoming rare as a result of this campaign, mass slavery was reintroduced to the world in the twentieth century by militant atheists - the communists had millions enslaved by the middle thirties; the national socialists started later but soon caught up.

"Fundamentally, I stand by Burke's remark that the truth or falsity of ideas, and the urgency or otherwise of alleged dangers today, are not proved or disproved solely by the fact that they were the once the pretexts by which men gained and misused power."

- ARC

I had a horrible bout of real life yesterday.

Once again some pestilential people offered me money to do work for them. I really wish they wouldn't do this when I have important blogging to do. My husband, for some reason, wishes they would do it more.

Those emails of which I spoke really will come soon. And others of which I did not speak. And a bulletin about Sewing Stress, if you prove yourselves worthy.

Coming soon.

Two erudite emails, one from my regular correspondent "A Regular Correspondent" and a second one from Professor Grayling. I have to do a really tedious thing with the formatting before I post them or they come out looking like modern poetry with all the line breaks in odd places.

Fear not, I will not fob you off with sex and politics gossip for long. Soon we will bring out the heavy ratings hitters of the God slot.

Sow your wild oaten while you may.

Oh no, now I have to say something halfway relevant to give me an excuse for that title. I was going to have a go at Mr Oaten for describing his adultery as an "error of judgement." An error of judgement is when you have to assess a situation with incomplete information and get it wrong, with a slight implication that incomplete though your information was you could have called it right if you had been concentrating. It is an error of judgement when you take a corner too fast, or buy stock just before a crash, or stay too long at the office party even you sense the bloke from Accounts is getting silly because you didn't want to offend anyone. Deciding to commit adultery and doing so repeatedly over six months is not an error of judgement.

(There is nothing unusual about politicians or other people using weasel words to whitewash their own actions. Oddly, however, Mr Oaten seems to like the "error of judgement" phrase so much that he even used it himself to whitewash a mean trick played against him by a Tory rival who snatched his domain name.)

Then I thought again. It isn't the adultery that makes Mr Oaten unfit for office. Although there is the issue of honour to consider, in politics many adulterers have done well, and some have done good. It is indeed the error of judgement that rules him out. Here was a man whose assessment of the likely consequences of his actions was so inaccurate that he thought employing the services of a male prostitute and putting himself forward for leadership of Britain's third party were compatible activities.

"It's a minority, but we'll take it."

After consideration, Damian Penny has decided not to return the Canadian election result to the store after all. But he may be writing to the new management. He'll certainly be writing about them.

That's the trouble with the internet.

When one writes a blog post it feels like one is having a therapeutic coffee-time grouse to one's mates about what's in the paper - and then the subject of the grouse turns up at the door two years later with a printout of one's remarks under his arm and the glint of battle in his eye. Of course the trouble with the internet is also one of its glories.

In February 2004 I criticised a piece in the Times by Professor Anthony Grayling. (The Times has relaxed its rules about letting you see old articles, so my warning that Professor Grayling's piece would soon disappear is inoperative.)

Professor Grayling has written back.

Dear Natalie Solent

A correspondent passed to me some comments you made in your blog about a short piece I wrote in the Times a year or two ago, about the contrast between the fruits of science and religion. I wonder whether you remember your interesting suggestion that you could rewrite what I'd said about science thus:

'It is said that we shall know a thing by its fruits. A striking fact about the adventure of religion, whenever it escapes the attentions of those who pervert it to an instrument of power rather than faith, is how well it serves mankind.'

The express implication of my original formulation was of course that there are precious few ways in which religion does not do serious disservice to mankind, and many ways in which the benefits of science outweigh the disservice it can be used to do. The defenders of religion like to point to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and Bach's sacred cantatas (etc), together with the solace afforded the old, ill and lonely (etc again), as a kind of equivalence to the payoff of science's positive fruits against Zyklon B (to use your own & well-chosen example).

But the enthymematic point I was making is precisely that even if religious art (invariably a product of devotion? or of the fact that the church had the money to commission it?) and the deceiving solaces are counted into the equation, the massive burden of conflict, psychological no less than in the way of wars, inquisitions, crusades, burnings of heretics and the rest - egregious among them the Holocaust - for which religion is directly and indirectly responsible, makes for a massive weight of harm to humanity which dwarfs these benefits. Accordingly it would be a bold individual who sought to claim that just as the hundreds of millions saved by (say) antibiotics can be invoked as some compensation for the (say) millions whom advanced weaponry has killed (adamantly granting that ONE person thus killed is too many), so the (say) Sistine Chapel and Joe Smith's comfort at having his bible under his pillow make the historical excesses of (say) anti-Semitism OK, to say nothing of the wholesale enslavement of mankind to falsity which religion by its nature seeks to impose, and too often succeeds. (And here, you see, how hollowly it would ring to say 'and just ONE person thus victimised would be too many' - for religion does the contrary of concede that this is victimisation). Yet - can it be these last that you were implying by your rewrite of my remark?

My good wishes to you - Anthony Grayling

Professor Grayling has put me out of countenance by being much nicer to me than I was to him. I hereby resolve to be a nicer blogger so that I won't be embarrassed again.

Speaking of his original article, Professor Grayling said it had (1) an "express implication", which I shall summarise as "religion bad in many ways, science much more good than bad", and (2) an "enthymematic point" that even if the good things of religion are factored in, the harm religion does massively dwarfs the good. Accordingly, he concludes, it would be a bold individual (by which he clearly means too bold) who said that "just as those benefited by science can be credited against those harmed, so those benefited by religion can be credited against those harmed."

Some rather bitty responses follow.

• Well, it lasted longer than some of my new year resolutions. Could Professor Grayling put his hand on his heart and swear on the collected works of Hume that the omission of arguments unfavourable to his cause is really best described as having made them, but "enthymematically"?
  
  
• Now, I am confident that Prof Grayling and I would both agree that this business of issuing a good and bad scorecard to each of two teams called Science and Religion, and having them go head-to-head isn't the pinnacle of human thought on these things. His article was only a newspaper article and my blog post was only a blog post, after all. Still, if you are going to play the game, then both sides should operate under the same rules.
  
  
• But Professor Grayling treats the two teams differently. Science gets hundreds of millions saved (antibiotics) counted against millions killed (weaponry). Religion gets the painted ceiling of a famous building and one man's rather childish comfort counted against anti-Semitism. Like, all of it.
  
  
• The reader is forestalled from flaring up at the comparison of good and bad results of science by the carefully modest phrasing of the linking term in Science's equation("just as the hundreds of millions saved by (say) antibiotics can be invoked as some compensation for for the (say) millions whom advanced weaponry has killed"). In contrast, the crudity of the linking term in Religion's equation ("...make the historical excesses of (say) anti-Semitism OK") invites rejection - but that's from the choice of words, not from any strength of argument.
  
  
• "...among them the Holocaust - for which religion is directly and indirectly responsible." Whoa, "Directly or indirectly responsible" is a very wide net! With a net equally wide I could (and did) put the Holocaust down in Science's column for the Zyklon B - or for the identity cards and other bureaucratic tools that allowed the victims to be rounded up and processed. Or I could use another argument to get the same result: it was the scientific worldview that made the eradication of entire races or classes and the mass production of death easy to contemplate. Or I could put the work of Darwin or Herbert Spencer at the back end of "indirectly responsible".
  
  

  As before, I'm not saying that these are my arguments. (The factors I have mentioned must feature in a list of causes of the Holocaust, just as centuries of Christian hatred of Jews must feature.) I'm saying that they are arguments no worse than the Professor's.
  
  

• Professor Grayling seems to be giving religion full bad marks when it changes behaviour for the worse - e.g. causes people to persecute the infidel - but diluting the good marks if the motives for desirable behaviour were not wholly religious - e.g. he observes that religious art may have had motives of display as well. Motives for religious evil may be equally "impure." The Jews of York were slaughtered, in part, so that their creditors would not have to pay them.
  
  
• I only really mentioned religious art and music to parallel his mention of scientific devices that produced entertainment and music. Much more important in my list of good things that religion has done is the uncountable number of acts of benevolence it has prompted (whether individual paupers fed or great public campaigns such as the anti-slavery movement) or acts of evil that religious scruples have restrained. Professor Grayling has not, to my mind, engaged with this argument at all.
  
  
• The question of whether religion or the desire to persecute came first brings me to a point that has been made a million times before. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be made again: Communism, an ideology officially dedicated to scientific atheism, has killed more people than all the holy wars and holy tortures ever made. And here is a minor point I forgot to make about the survey of the US quoted in the original article: although I find it disconcerting if (I'd like to know the exact wording of the questions) the survey is correct to say that so high a proportion of Americans take the Old Testament literally, their example does show that it is possible for a society to be highly religious in a fundamentalist way and yet be by historical standards one of the most humane and tolerant societies that there has ever been.
  
  
• Since Prof. Grayling is an atheist he naturally holds that religion is false and counts this as one more tick on the bad side of its scoresheet. I am not saying that this is an illegitimate form of argument. But it doesn't quite belong with the Sistine chapel, or antibiotics. Too tired to tease out exactly why not right now.