Customer Reviews

Is Religion Dangerous?

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This excellently-written and very readable book has 200 pages dealing with this most modern of issues - is religion dangerous? Keith Ward explores how we define religion and the ways in which religions and groups can be seen to be `dangerous' where their intent might be quite the opposite.

I liked the way that he drew examples from all aspects of life and history - Christianity, Islam, Nazi Germany, the Crusades, Iraq, Quakers, Buddhism and more. This wide-ranging look at the world and the religions that are part of it, their history and form today and ways in which their followers can be dangerous was excellently portrayed.

His conclusion - that it's the human within the religion that is dangerous, not the religion itself - is perhaps not a surprise but his masterly arguments are well worth reading. A useful book to encourage thought and dialogue within Christianity and other religions.

Is religion dangerous?

In recent books, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens argue that it is. Keith Ward disagrees. His new book rebuts four standard atheist arguments:

First, religion causes violence, e.g., the Crusades and Islamic terrorism. But as Ward points out, "hatred of life, of others and of oneself" is the cause of violence. Anything human can be corrupted by such hatred, including religion and even atheism. How many millions did Communist regimes kill in the 20th Century, after all?

Second, faith is irrational. Specifically, it's unscientific. Ward responds, "Many of the most important beliefs we have in life are not scientifically testable, but we still live our lives by them." Intelligent people believe in God, offer reasons for their beliefs, and practice their faith humanely. They are not irrational.

Third, religion promotes immorality. There are many violent stories in the Old Testament that are hard for Christians to explain. But atheists fail to see that such hard cases make bad law. Jesus taught that love of God, neighbor, and self is our basic moral duty (Matthew 22:37-40). What is immoral about that?

Fourth, religion is unhealthy. Freud famously called religious belief a neurosis. But citing numerous studies, Ward reaches the opposite conclusion: "the influence of religion on personal life...is overall and in general good."

I disagree with Ward here and there. He occasionally defends Islam where I wouldn't. And he makes a few political remarks which I disagree with. But overall, I'm impressed by his concise and intelligent rebuttal of atheist arguments.

Prof Ward provides a reasonable and readable rebuttal to the claims that religion itself is dangerous and that teaching about hell, etc. is bad. His perspective is fairly orthodox, though from a Reformed perspective, a bit wanting. Since his defense is slightly more generic, it might have a greater mass appeal. However, one sometimes wishes for a defense of religion from the revelation of Christianity itself (maybe even a la Barth). Suitable for nearly anyone who has a high school diploma.

All right, I'll admit that I haven't bothered to read the whole book. This is not a scientific refutation of a point. It is an exercise in logic. As such, I did not think it unreasonable to judge the rest of the book by the logic exhibited in the beginning of the book. On the plus side, I'll admit that he writes fairly engagingly (certainly better than myself) and that, if you're willing to put up with the relatively subtle illogical logic, then you could very well enjoy the book and learn a few things from it. However, poor logic is poor logic and, if that is the foundation of a book, then there are probably better place from which to absorb these facts.

In his intro, he begins his book by trying to build an argument that human religious structures haven't evolved, sorry, developed from literal (i.e., this god truly does look like X and that god truly does not like Y) to symbolic (that just how we interpret God's actions which are beyond our understanding) beliefs in god(s). Yet one of his argument is developed from examinations of modern religions such as the aboriginal religions of Australia. Here, he points out that, while some of the religion is literal, it is steeped in a rich symbolism that belies a primitive literalistic origin. He doesn't mention that, to the best of our estimates, those religions are thousands if not tens of thousands of years old. No matter what the state of their technology, their religion was and is far from primitive and, therefore, is not a valid basis for this argument.

Rather than suggesting models of how religions might have developed then examining them with the evidence that we do have so as to discard inappropriate models (a version of what we call the scientific method) he suggests that one model is wrong therefore his alternate model is probably correct.

I cannot, therefore and based on my limited reading, recommend this book to any inquiring minds. However, those who want the comfort of support (however ill-founded) for their pro-religion and pro-Christianity views may enjoy it immensely.