Dogmatism Is A Bigger Problem Than Religion, I Think, Maybe, Possibly

Scenes from my chat with Richard Dawkins last month

I had the pleasure of interviewing Richard Dawkins during an event in Chicago last month (as of now, there’s no audio or video available, unfortunately). I thought it was an interesting, wide-ranging conversation, and I was blown away by his ability to recall the specifics of various debates and discussions from decades ago. 

Since it’s rare to get to do something like have a public discussion with Richard Dawkins, I decided to ask him about something that I’d been thinking about for years but had never really developed a coherent view about: Is it really the case that, when it comes to cruel human behavior, religion per se is the problem, as opposed to just dogmatism of all stripes?

I’m curious about this in part because of my own evolution on questions of faith, religion, and rationality. For a time, I was one of those angry, judgmental atheists. When I was 20 or so, I thought that it was clear that there was religion on one side, there was rational thought on the other, and society would improve immeasurably if we simply spread secular values and attenuated the influence of religion. These days, I generally view things as much, much more complicated than that, and I’m really skeptical there’s a straightforward correlation between believing in objectively false things about the world and committing bad moral acts.

It should go without saying that there are obvious contexts in which religious beliefs lead to, reinforce, or exacerbate oppression. I’m not really a cultural relativist when it comes to questions like whether, say, women should be allowed to wear what they want, or whether grown consenting adults should be allowed to engage in whatever sex acts they want behind closed doors without government interference. So yes, to the extent it is religion that drives policies like those that prevail in places like Iran or (even worse) Afghanistan, I think less religion would be a good thing, though I also think people sometimes blame religion for backward local or regional customs that were there before that particular religion arrived on the scene.

But I’ve grown increasingly skeptical of the stronger claim that religion poses a unique threat to human well-being and safety. It certainly doesn’t help that the worst atrocities of the blood-soaked twentieth century were carried out in the name of secular ideologies like Nazism, Stalinism, and Maoism. I have no doubt that if certain aspects of history had zigged or zagged, and dominant religious movements had arisen after the advent of the technologies of mass killing, those movements would have participated. But my point is that Nazism and Stalinism certainly seem just as evil as anything even the most sociopathic and powerful jihadist or Christian nationalist could come up with, no?

I asked Dawkins about this during the talk, albeit in a somewhat rambling manner: