suddenly
discover that there was no god, would they find themselves to be
less considerate, less hopeful, less charitable? If any
religious person can honestly say yes to this, then it would
only be right to be suspicious of the claim that they are
hopeful, kind, or charitable now. God, this mythical being who
lives apart from the physical world, and his existence are only
questions of science: he either exists or he does not. If he did
not exist, it would hardly deprive anyone of ethical or moral
behavior. If a city, a road, a mountain, a lake, or a natural
formation did not exist that we had believed to exist, at
discovering this, would we abandon all humaneness and all forms
of goodness? Only those who had reveled in hypocrisy and deceit
can truly say so. There is nothing innately special of the
mythical beings called gods that means their existence gives
privilege to moral behavior.
There are, though, the genuine claims that we should not
abandon religion on the grounds that religion has portrayed a
truthful and honest view of the world. Though this claim made be
made on the foundation that we ought to pursue the truth, it
often fails short of that, because religion has universally been
the opponent to investigation and inquiry. There have been times
and eras where the church had disallowed the public from reading
or writing, and had made it punishable by death to be found with
a Bible written in local languages. In 391, Christians burned
down one of the world’s greatest libraries in Alexandra, said to
have housed 700,000 scrolls. [The New Columbia Encyclopedia, 61,
and Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade.] The tale of Galileo
should not need repeating, but perhaps the tale of Giordano
Bruno or Francisco Ferrer need repeating. Though