Against Religion

Shortly before his death, Anton Chekov wrote to Diaghilev: ‘I can only regard with bewilderment an educated man who is also religious.’ Tamas Pataki shares that bewilderment.

The idea that the world’s main religions — particularly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — have been fatally undermined since the Enlightenment has been proved spectacularly wrong. Statistics show that traditional faith retains strong support: in the USA, 85 per cent of people claim to believe in God; in Nigeria, 98 per cent; in Indonesia, at least 90 per cent; in Ireland, 87 per cent. The revival of Orthodoxy in Russia and Eastern Europe, religious stirrings in atheistic China, the growth of extreme Hindu nationalism in India, and the appeal of Islamic fundamentalism all show that there is still a vital hankering for religion.

The religious have become more influential in world affairs than they have been for centuries. This is especially true in the United States, where white Evangelical Christians are having a conspicuous social and political impact. George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden, and many of their associates believe themselves to be doing God’s will but, according to reports, only the first of these mass-murderers thinks that he is receiving instructions directly from the Almighty. And, while there is general agreement that certain fundamentalisms are a menace to civil society, they are usually seen as transient perversions to be cured by a re-assertion of a more wholesome tradition.

Tamas Pataki does not agree. Against Religion is a brave and controversial book which argues that extremist religions are branches of the same noxious tree, and that (nearly) all religion is a disease born of fear and a source of untold misery. He argues that we need to seriously consider the possibility that, for many people, their religiosity is founded on something akin to mental illness or infantilism.