In April 2013, Stephen Sackur interviewed philosopher and atheist Daniel Dennett on the BBC's Hard Talk programme. I doubt the stance revealed by Mr Sackur's questions and reactions is truly his own, because I credit him with more intelligence. I assume therefore that he falsely adopted a position that he felt was in tune with the views of the bulk of his audience.
Religion, asserted Mr Sackur, must be useful because it has been around for a long time. Dr Dennett responded by citing the common cold, also long-standing but far from useful. When Dr Dennett went on to list alcohol, drugs and tobacco, Mr Sackur dismissed these comparisons because they are all material substances. "Religion is a set of ideas," he opined. "It's in our heads. We can't smoke or drink it."
Mr Sackur had quite a lot to say about what religion is not. At no point did he define precisely what religion is. "A lot of people will feel that your view of religion is a very long way from theirs," he condescendingly intoned.
We have heard this before. It is a machiavellian smoke-and-mirrors trick; a piece of verbal sleight-of-hand employed universally by popular religious apologists. It is the idea that religion is something awe-inspiring and powerful; magical; comforting; the promise of something beyond our daily material routine with its predictability and its mortality. How can anyone deny that such spiritual richness is not only harmless but upliftingly inspiring to its adherents? Who could criticise proponents of such a heartening, gladdening, energising mindset?
Trouble is, religion, the phenomenon with which Dr Dennett and others take issue, is nothing like that. Religion requires the assertion that there is an omnipresent supernatural being who monitors our every thought and action, sleeping or waking. Religion seeks to impose a set of rules about matters such as what consenting adults do with their genitals in private. Religion strives to replace scientific education with stultifying rote recitation of baseless creation myths. Religion has come to demand respect for which it has no intrinsic merit, based on the false but widely accepted notion that religion is, at bottom, all about virtue and being good.
There is no evidence at all for the existence of any kind of God. That is a simple statement of fact, devoid of arrogance, devoid of aggression, devoid of stridency. However, as Mr Sackur demonstrates during the interview, any criticism of religion, however mild, is instantly labelled as arrogant, or 'delivered with undue certainty'.
Is he serious? What about ...in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, words repeated at every Christian funeral? It seems that it is fine to be certain about the baseless premises of religion, but so much as to utter an objection is to be accused of unjustifable certainty that there is no God.
Of course we cannot be certain that there is no God, just as we cannot be certain that there is no Tooth Fairy, no Juju up the mountain, no invisible dragon in the garage, no Santa Claus and no UFOs. But until even a shred of evidence appears, there is absolutely no reason to posit the existence of any one of the above, nor of an infinite number of other imaginable but unprovable entities. The God of the Bible and the Qur'an has no attribute qualifying him for precedence over any other member of the list.
Mr Sackur, how many of your audience would sympathise with your theatrically aghast pro-religion rhetoric, if you were to substitute the Ancient Egyptian pantheon for God? "Most Americans believe in God," you assert, as though that of itself proved anything. All Ancient Egyptians believed in Horus, Osiris, Ra, Seth and others, just as sincerely and for a good deal longer. So what?
Your podcast will one day be invaluable as a historical source, underscoring the incredulity of future generations at the undue reverence and unjustified respect afforded by you and those you represent, to the damaging, urgently threatening, barbaric, brutally dehumanising institutions of religion.
