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History's Verdict on Religion
He achieved world-wide recognition for his many prize winning books including The Story of Philosophy and the monumental eleven volume classic of world history, The Story of Civilization, the last five volumes of which were co-authored by his wife, Ariel Durant.
After completing their lifes work they looked back
and asked what history had to say about the big issues in life. The result
was a little book published in 1968 entitled The lessons of History. In
it they distilled the accumulated store of knowledge from their forty years
of historical research. This leaflet contains some of their valuable insights
from the chapter entitled, "Religion and History."
God in History
"Religion does not seem at first to have any connection with morals. Apparently
(for we are merely guessing, or echoing Petronius, who echoed Lucretius)
it was fear that first made the gods." [p. 43]
"Does history support a belief in God? If by God we mean not the creative
vitality of nature but a supreme being intelligent and benevolent, the
answer must be a reluctant negative. Like other departments of biology,
history remains at bottom a natural selection of the fittest individuals
and groups in a struggle wherein goodness receives no favors, misfortunes
abound, and the final test is the ability to survive. Add to the crimes,
wars, and cruelties of man the earthquakes, storms, tornadoes, pestilences,
tidal waves, and other acts of God that periodically desolate human and
animal life, and the total evidence suggests either a blind or impartial
fatality to which we subjectively ascribe order, splendor, beauty,
or sublimity...Nature and history do not agree with our conceptions of
good and bad; they define good as that which survives, and bad as that
which goes under; and the universe has no prejudice in favor of Christ
as against Genghis Khan." [p. 46]
Religions Survival
"One lesson of history is that religion has many lives, and has a habit
of resurrection. How often in the past have God and religion been
reborn! Ikhnaton used all the power of a pharaoh to destroy the religion
of Amon; within a year of Ikhnatons death the religion of Amom was restored.
Atheism ran wild in the India of Buddhas youth, and Buddha himself
founded a religion without a god; after his death Buddhism developed a
complex theology including gods, saints, and hell... In America the
rationalism of the Founding Fathers gave place to a religious revival
in the 19th century." [p. 49-50]
"Catholicism survives because it appeals to the imagination, hope, and
the senses; because its mythology consoles and brightens the lives of the
poor; and because the commanded fertility of the faithful slowly regains
lands lost to the Reformation.
"Catholicism has sacrificed the adherence of the intellectual community,
and suffers increasing defections through contact with secular education
and literature; but it wins converts from souls wearied with the uncertainty
of reason, and from others hopeful that the Church will stem internal disorder
and the Communist wave." [p. 49]
"As long as there is poverty there will be gods." [p. 51]
The Causes of Religions Decline
"First the Protestant Reformation, which originallydefended private judgment.
Then the multitude of Protestant sects and conflicting theologies, each
appealing to both
Scriptures and reason. Then the higher criticism of
the Bible, displaying that marvelous
library as the imperfect work of fallible men.
Then the deistic movement in England, reducing religion to a vague belief
in a God hardly distinguishable from nature.
"Then the growing acquaintance with other religions, whose myths, many
of them pre-Christian, were distressingly similar to the supposedly factual
bases of ones inherited creed. Then the Protestant exposure of Catholic
miracles, the deistic exposure of Biblical miracles, the general exposure
of frauds, inquisitions, and massacres in the history of religion...the
massive attack of the French Enlightenment upon Christianity...Finally,
the awesome triumphs of scientific technology, promising man omnipotence
and destruction, and challenging the divine command of the skies." [p.
47]
"In one way Christianity lent a hand against itself by developing in many
Christians a moral sense that could no longer stomach the vengeful
God of traditional theology. The idea of hell disappeared from educated
thought, even from pulpit homilies. Presbyterians became ashamed of the
Westminster Confession, which has
pledged them to a belief in a God who had created
billions of men and women
despite his foreknowledge that, regardless of their
virtues and crimes, they were
predestined to everlasting hell.
"Educated Christians visiting the Sistine Chapel were shocked by Michelangelos
picture of Christ hurling offenders pell-mell into an inferno whose fires
were never to be extinguished; was this the gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
who had inspired our youth?
"Just as the moral development of the Hellenes had weakened their belief
in the quarrelsome and adulterous deities of Olympus (A certain proportion
of mankind,
wrote Plato, do not believe at all in the existence
of the gods.), so the development of
the Christian ethic slowly eroded Christian
theology. Christ destroyed Jehovah." [p47-48]
"A thousand sings proclaim that Christianity is undergoing the same decline
that fell on the old Greek religion after the coming of the Sophists and
the Greek Enlightenment." [p. 49]
"The Church was manned with men who often proved biased, venial, or
extortionate...The Church stooped to fraud, as with
pious legends, bogus relics, and
dubious miracles; for centuries it profited from a
mythical Donation of Constantine that
had allegedly bequeathed Western Europe to Pope Sylvester
I and from False Decretals (ca. 842) that forged a series of documents
to give sacred antiquity to papal
omnipotence. More and more the hierarchy spent its
energies in promoting orthodoxy
rather than morality, and the Inquisition almost fatally
disgraced the Church. Even while
preaching peace the Church fomented religious wars
in sixteenth century France and the
Thirty Years War in Germany. It played only modest
part in the outstanding advance
of modern morality--the abolition of slavery. It allowed
the philosophers to take the lead in the humanitarian movements that have
alleviated the evils of our time." [p. 45]
Moral Freedom
"Meanwhile much of our moral freedom if good, it is pleasant to be relieved
of
theological terrors, to enjoy without qualm
the pleasures that harm neither others or
ourselves." [p. 42]
The Verdict
Historical evidence does not support the existence of a god; it indicates that religion, born in fear, breeds among the poor, but is now declining with advancing knowledge, morality, and standards of living. Christianity promoted persecutions and was, but morality was advanced by others. Life improves without religion.
Suggested Reading:
Durant, Will and Ariel, The Lessons of History, New
York, 1968.
Durant, Will and Ariel, A Dual Autobiography, Simon
and Schuster, New York, 1977.