Dawkins and the Horrors or Religion

One of the things that Dawkins and the new atheists like to do is point out the terrible things that religion has done over the ages. They pull together enough examples to leave their audience stupefied and conclude, rather wildly, that religion must be therefore evil. Or, at least, the world would be better off without it. All of it.

There are a lot of problems with this, both historical and logical. The logical problem is this: do religious communities perform atrocities because they are religious, or because they're made up of humans. Again I wonder if Dawkins has used that handy old scientific method to isolate his variables. For example, do we see less aggression, greed, etc from atheists than we do from normal people? I'd certainly never argue that atheists can't be good people; I think they can be. But are we suddenly going to take the dizzying leap into saying that atheists tend to be better people, more generous, forgiving, etc? Shouldn't we have a problem with atheists even using the word "better" and thereby imposing their morals on us? That's what they accuse me of doing. Isn't that at least a little bit ironic?

Historically, the case is even better. The trouble here is that neither Dawkins nor his ilk seems to have read any recent, peer-reviewed literature on some of the pop-history they're parading around. (And yes, for the record, I have - history is my background. No pun intended.) Here are two big examples, since Christianity is often picked on in these debates, being the dominant faith in the West.

We'll deal with one thing at a time, since they're worth talking about in their own right. Others will get their own posts. First up:

1) The Crusades! Look at that, shout the new atheists, "Holy wars! Holy wars!!!" Much is made of this one, but it's a canard. And, honestly, the objective version is much more interesting. So:

The Pop-History Version: Those nasty Europeans, goaded by that nasty pope, launched a war against those poor people in the Holy Land. I hardly have to go into it; all the stereotypes speak for themselves. And, admittedly, atrocities occurred on both sides in this war as in any war. The attacks on Jews, for example, or the sack of Constantinople. But consider-

The Historical History: Europe at the time of the Crusades was hardly a super power. In fact, Islam was far more powerful and culturally advanced than Europe. Europe was the underdog and, more importantly, Christianity was the underdog that had been beaten back by the conquering Muslims for the first 400 years after Mohammed. In the first hundred years of Islam's life a full half of Christian lands fell to their armies. After the dominance of the Romans, this was an impressive feat.

But they also continued from their, pushing across North Africa into Spain and Sicily, taking much of Asia Minor (Turkey.) The Byzantine emperors fought as well as they could, with some success, but then the nomadic Seljuks arrived from the steppes, converted to Islam, and layed waste to the Bysantine Empire. In desperation the Emperor called on the Western Pope for aid and he was answered.

The old idea was that knights went for the purpose of gaining land, but current scholarship has knocked that theory on the head. Many who went were already wealthy and funded both themselves and their retinues. It was an extremelt costly endeavour and a knight would have to provide his own supplies, requiring as much as a year worth of income. Modern historians are discovering that crusaders generally believed in what they were doing, which was pushing back an oppressor that had been hounding them for centuries.

In that sense, the Crusades were a series of defensive wars fought to stem the attacks on Constantinople and to take back some of what had been lost, especially Jerusalem. In the end they were a failed defense, though they were able to accomplish wonders with the small number of men who actually made it, and considering how rarely they were given reinforcements. But it was a wash, and the world of Islam remained undiminished.

For a Christian Europe that wanted to remain Christian this was unfortunate. Islam continued pressing on its borders, taking lands in Eastern Europe and holding Spain until almost 1500. In 1453 the Muslims took Constantinople (renaming it Istanbul of all things, which was just a bastardization/mispronunciation of the Greek word for "The City") and continued pressing in on Europe. As late as 1683 the Ottoman Turks threatened Vienna itself, though they failed in that at least.

In the end it was only the discovery of the New World and the wealth that came with it that allowed Europe to build the ships and the armies it would take to defeat Islam. Much later it was the Europeans who were colonizing. But that was much later. If we examine the Crusades we see a very different picture than mere imperialism. Europe was too weak and divided to be imperial in its ambitions, and imposing an 18th Century vision of Europe onto the 11th Century hardly seems fair. Colonialism hadn't even been invented yet!

Now, every culture has a right to exist. European culture also has that right. The Crusades were a matter of a civilization struggling and failing to defend itself from an outside threat. Christianity was certainly involved, since the words Europe and Christian were (at the time) more or less synonymous.

Summation? Here's one historical nugget that often gets cited as a proof of how brutal religion is at its core. And yet these wars were justifiable, far more so than some of the recent conflicts we've seen in the name of democracy.