Customer Reviews

The Role of Religion in History

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This book is an outstanding, concise work on the impact that each of the major world religions has had in shaping our still-current attitudes on urban life, sex, money, etc. Through telling the stories of the ancient origins of the religions themselves we learn how views on morality and other subjects came to be pounded out and made influential. The scholarship, based on a multitude of biblical and other textual references is unassailable, and the reading, as fast-paced and enjoyable as any good human-interest drama. Read it to gain a much clearer understanding of religion's role in mankind's story. Read it because it's an important story, knowledgeably, good-humoredly, though sympathetically, and vividly told.

The late Ayn Rand developed a philosophy which she called "Objectivism." As Mr. Scott Ryan has shown, the foundation of this philosophy is not "reason" or "objective reality" but the denial of God in order to make man his own god. Objectivists dismiss all religious beliefs (other than their own) with pejorative terms such as "mysticism," "irrationalism" and denounce its advocates as "witch doctors." Indeed Rand, a master of her own "argument from intimidation," said that religion teaches "the damnation of life and the worship of death." [For the New Intellectual, p. 18.]

Dr. George Walsh, himself an Objectivist philosopher (although not always allied with "official Objectivism"), gave a number of lectures about religion which have been transcribed in this book.

There are all sorts of problems with this work. The first problem, as others have noted, is that this book is not really about the role of religion in history; rather it is a discussion of the history and teachings of various religions (with occasional naturalistic evaluations), a somewhat less grandiose topic. Second, it appears that these lectures were given to an Objectivist audience, so it is assumed that the listener knew about Objectivism, but Dr. Walsh shouldn't have assumed that such would be the case with readers of this work . Third, the lectures are given an informal style that sounds silly at times when written. Fourth, there are numerous errors and typos. Take for example the following sentence: "Think of the traditionalist Archbishop Lefevre and his ordinations disapproved by the pope." [p. 5.] Well, the name is "Lefebvre," and it isn't even mentioned in the book's index.

Taking these limitations and oversights into account, this book still isn't particularly useful. What the various religions teach has been presented before and much better. OK -- but what about as a critique of religion? Dr. Walsh tells us "[t]he outlook governing the work is naturalistic and seeks to interpret religious phenomena in light of Objectivism." [p. vii.] While that may be true to a point, there are only a hand-full of references to Rand or Objectivism and virtually no analysis of what a specifically Objectivist critique of religion would be as opposed to a generic naturalist critique. So, this book isn't much of a contribution to Objectivist thought. In fact, Leonard Peikoff's treatise, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, contains a more detailed evaluation of religion than Dr. Walsh's. Unfortunately, Peikoff -- in attempting to show that the various "axioms" of Objectivism preclude belief in God or the supernatural -- never rises above the level of ipse dixit. [See OPAR, pp. 31-33; see also Gotthelf, On Ayn Rand, pp. 48-50.] For example, Objectivists argue that because "existence exists," God cannot exist. Got that? Well, I suppose we'll have to wait for the definitive Objectivist critique of religion (what a loss).

Any reader who wants to learn about the role of religion in history might start with the works of Christopher Dawson (such as Progress and Religion and Christianity and the Rise of Western Culture).

[This is a reposting of a review I submitted a few years ago.]

George Walsh's _The Role of Religion in History_ was touted, upon its publication, as the first major Objectivist work on religion. I rather hope it's the last.

In the first place, this book suffers from extremely poor editing. That may not be Walsh's fault; the book is assembled from his lectures, and I gather from other sources that the state of his health may not have permitted him to do his own transcribing and editing. Still, it's a very patchy job by whoever _did_ do it -- with jarring shifts into informality, odd grammatical constructions, and annoying repetitions of major points.

There are also errors that somebody didn't catch. For example, on p. 182, while trying (sloppily) to maintain (incorrectly) that the Kantian notion of 'duty' exemplifies 'the Judeo-Christian ethic', Walsh refers to W.D. Ross's _Foundations of Ethics_ -- but calls it _The Principles of Ethics_. A small complaint, perhaps, but this is not the only such blunder.

In the second place, the book's title has little to do with its content. There's hardly anything here about the role of religion in history; the book is little more than a summary of what the major religions are about, as construed from a (more or less) Objectivist point of view.

In the third place, it's far from clear why anyone would care what Objectivists think of religion, any more than one would care what tone-deaf people think of music. What could Objectivism possibly have to say on this topic?

Very little, it appears. Objectivism, we recall, is the philosophy of Ayn Rand -- who denied that the well-being of people other than oneself is in any way a direct source of normativity; insisted that Christianity demands the 'sacrifice' of greater values to lesser ones; and objected to God on the grounds that His existence would pose an insurmountable obstacle to man-worship. One would expect a discussion of religion from such an outlook not to be especially enlightening.

And one would be right. Here, from the very first page, is Walsh's definition of religion: 'a system of beliefs and practices resting on the assumption that events within the world are subject to some supernatural power or powers such that human needs, either physical or psychological, can be satisfied by men's entering into relations with such powers' [p. 3]. I shall leave it to the reader to deal with this definition, but by my lights it exemplifies what Rand herself would have called definition-by-nonessentials.

Now, granted, Walsh goes considerably farther than many Objectivists -- this isn't saying much -- in at least trying to understand the views of non-Objectivists; indeed that's probably what got him ejected from the movement in the first place.

But apart from some sketchy history, Walsh never really comes to grips either with religion itself or with its influence on history or philosophy. Oh, there is a bit of elaboration on the views of this or that religious tradition and some interesting discussion of the occasional philosopher. But when it is all boiled down, it doesn't tell us anything we can't learn better elsewhere. And importantly, Walsh doesn't even present arguments for the Objectivist dismissal of religion; apparently he simply assumes that the reader knows those arguments and agrees with them.

The book really adds little to the Objectivist view of religion with which we're already familiar from Rand herself (and Leonard Peikoff's nasty piece 'Religion In America', reprinted in _The Voice of Reason_). In the final analysis, Walsh takes 'religion' to be based on what Rand called the 'primacy of consciousness' as opposed to the 'primacy of existence' -- and I say 'opposed' advisedly, as Objectivism takes these two as representing a genuine dichotomy. (I argue in my own book that they do not; Rand's 'arguments' on this point are question-begging, self-serving, and just plain wrong.)

In general, then, this book is a sermon written for the choir, and not a very good one at that. It's not so much that Walsh's 'insights' are always mistaken (though they are questionable at times, and rarely very penetrating even at their best); in fact I cited Walsh's book myself in an article I wrote a few years ago (on the role of reason in Judaism). It's that even when they're right, they're usually presented carelessly and even flippantly, as though Walsh is simply poking fun at his subject in the company of people he knows will agree with him.

Some of this is just the informality-of-tone problem I mentioned above -- but not all of it. Even with competent editing, the problem would remain; a good deal of this dismissive, epistemologically-holier-than-thou snideness is just built in to the philosophy itself. Since Objectivists already (think they) _know_, on the basis of Rand's footless arguments, that 'religion' is just wrong from scratch, all that really remains to be discussed is how in the world people could be so silly. This sort of village-atheist condescension is hardly likely to impress anyone with the scholarly profundity of the Objectivist movement. (Nor is Walsh's little teeny tiny 'bibliography', which includes exactly 22 items, about a quarter of which seem to have been culled from the late Gordon Stein's Rolodex.)

This book is therefore not recommended as a source of information about religion; for that, Huston Smith's _The World's Religions_ already exists and is far, far superior to the present volume. (And it is _a fortiori_ not recommended as a source of information on its nominal topic.) But as a source of Objectivist _views_ of religion, it might come in handy.

The amazing thing is not, of course, that tone-deaf people write _good_ books about music. It is that they have sufficient hubris to write on the topic at all -- let alone to claim, on the basis of their tone-deafness, that there is no such thing as harmony.