John Donvan

Hi, everybody. I’m John Donvan, and this is Open to Debate. You know, we started planning for today’s episode some time ago, but a recent development is giving our topic question some sudden new relevance. You may have heard that the Supreme Court of Alabama has ruled, for the first time, that frozen embryos are to be considered children, and that destruction of such embryos may therefore be a crime, wrongful death of a minor. This has already raised a huge cloud of uncertainty around the continuing practice of IVF, in vitro fertilization, the only way that a lot of people are able to have children, through a process that does rely on creating embryos, and disposing of unused embryos does take place, which could now bring prosecution in Alabama.

John Donvan

So this is a developing situation, but in the meantime, what’s interesting to us is the court majority’s explanation for doing this. It is significantly based on religious belief. To quote the chief justice, Tom Parker, “Embryos cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy god, who views the destruction of his image as an affront to himself.” As a nation, we will no doubt be dividing on the morality and the appropriateness of such reasoning. There will be those who want faith to inform policy and those who don’t, a divide that often reflects attitudes on religion in general, not always, but often, and that is the part that we are looking at today, the impact of religion and religious faith on the world, faith and practice, its impact on the individual, on society, on the events of human history.

John Donvan

Here’s what we are asking in this debate: Is religion a force for good? So, let’s meet our debaters. Answering yes to that question, Shadi Hamid, Columnist and Editorial Board Member at The Washington Post. He is also at Fuller Seminary. Welcome, Shadi, to Open to Debate.

Shadi Hamid

Hi, John. Thanks for having me.

John Donvan

And answering no to that question, we have Annie Laurie Gaylor, who is co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Welcome, Annie Laurie.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Thank you.

John Donvan

Uh, before we get started, I just wanted to ask each of you a little bit of background question in terms of what brings you to this very argument. Uh, I’ll start with you, Shadi. I know that you recently, uh, wrote an op-ed in which you pondered how you might have become a very different person if you hadn’t grown up with religion in your household, so I’m wondering how does religion play to be you being here today in this program.

Shadi Hamid

Great question. Well, in that Washington Post op-ed, I, I was actually lamenting the fact that I wasn’t more religious. So I grew up in a religious household, but then I, let’s say I became more influenced by the secular world around me, living in elite, liberal-leaning cities, where secularism was just the way things were. And, I look back as I get older, and I wonder if having a stronger rooting in religion might have been helpful, and it certainly would have changed my life, I think, in, in interesting ways. Um, but this is also the set of topics that I work on, so there’s a personal and a professional element. I study the role of religion in public life, but I also think about my own state of religiosity, and how that’s changed over the years.

John Donvan

Thanks for that insight, Shadi, into who you are and how you think. Annie Laurie, I, I wanna also ask you about, in a sense, your past life and how you got here today. This whole debate and your being in it really is something of a family affair for you, isn’t it?

Annie Laurie Gaylor

That’s right. Uh, my mother and I created the Freedom From Religion Foundation because we’ve been so concerned about the bad influence of religion in government. But, she taught me to base actions or morality on the yardsticks of reason and kindness, and we don’t need a big spook in the sky to tell us how to behave. We need to figure it out for ourselves, and religion gets in the way.

John Donvan

So you, you worked with your mom on this. You were able to get along

laughs) well enough-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

(laughs) Yes.

John Donvan

… to do that. All right.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Yes, we did get along.

John Donvan

All right, terrific. Well, let’s get to our, our opening statements. Each of you, uh, will get a few minutes to explain why you’re answering yes or no to the question, “Is religion a force for good?” Shadi, you’re up first. Your answer to that question is yes. Please tell us why.

Shadi Hamid

Great. So I want everyone to suspend their biases for the next few minutes, the next hour. You might think religion is uncool or even silly, but try not to worry about that, because for the purposes of the question, we’re only asking whether religion is a force for good, not whether it’s true or rational. And yes, emphatically, it has been a force for good. Let’s start with individual wellbeing. A 2019 Pew study found that in 21 out of 26 countries, the religiously active were happier than the religiously unaffiliated. This is good. In the end, I think most of us want more people to be happy more of the time. Happiness indicates higher levels of fulfillment, meaning, and belonging. People who are content are also less likely to commit crime or acts of terrorism. Well, why might religious people be happier? Take your pick of reasons. Religious people are more likely to get married and have children, and being married and having children is a strong predictor of overall wellbeing. But the point is broader than that. We are social animals, and it is absolutely vital for us to be connected to family, friends, and community. Religion facilitates that.

Shadi Hamid

But data only takes us so far when it comes to life satisfaction, so let’s think more intuitively about this. Even if god isn’t real, he’s real to the people who believe in him, and that offers them comfort and resilience in times of crisis. Humans are meaning-makers, and one of the great challenges we face is how to make sense of tragedy. Religion helps us to precisely that. Well, you might say happiness is overrated. You don’t care about that all that much. So, now let’s turn to religion as a social phenomenon. The book, American Grace, by Robert Putnam and David Campbell, is one of the more exhaustive studies on religion in America. They go through 15 of what they call good deeds, and they find that frequent churchgoers are more likely to give to charity, volunteer, donate blood, spend time with someone who is a bit down. They’re even more likely to

laughs) allow a stranger to cut in front of them at the grocery store, which is amazing when you think about it. I think a lot of us draw the line there.

Shadi Hamid

But here’s the kicker. Putnam and Campbell write, quote, “Not a single one of these 15 good deeds is more common among secular Americans than religious Americans,” unquote, not a single one. Of course, correlation isn’t causation, so the authors controlled for other variables, such as education, region, marital status, and even home ownership, and they came to the same result. What’s going on here? Again, it’s intuitive. Being part of a religious community helps you develop habits of participation and cooperation. You learn to be part of a collective of prioritizing something larger than yourself.

Shadi Hamid

I’ll end with a final note. For America and Americans, the argument for religion is even stronger than I have suggested. It’s right there in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” We have inherent worth, each of us. Those are not rights conferred by other human beings, because what humans give, they can take away. We have these rights because they come from a transcendent source. These rights are inherent to us as human beings. So let me state that more sharply. So much of what we hold dear in our country, so much of what we love, would simply not be possible without religion, because religion is a force for good.

John Donvan

Thank you very much, Shadi, and now Annie Laurie, you disagree with much of this, if not all of it, and that’s because you’re answering no to the question, “Is religion a force for good?” And it’s now your turn to make your case.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

I’m a happy third-generation free thinker on my mother’s side, and a free thinker is someone who examines religion from the point of view of reason, not faith, tradition, or authority, and that’s laudable. I’m grateful that my parents allowed me to decide for myself about religion until I was old enough to grapple with theological abstractions like hell and sin, and being told that someone was horribly tortured and killed 2,000 years ago because of my sin. Thomas Paine wrote, uh, that any system of religion that has anything in it that would shock the mind of a child is not a true system.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Religion is a far greater force for harm than good, and this is true in ethics, in history, culturally, and in our current times, and religion in government is never a force for good. But first, let’s talk about ethics. Many religious people are good. Bertrand Russell said that kindly people believe in a kindly god, and they would be kindly in any case, but cruel people believe in a cruel god and use that belief to excuse their cruelty. The physicist Steven Weinberg took that one step further. He said, “Good people will do good things, bad people will do bad things, but for good people to do bad things, that takes religion.”

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Many religious people will insist that you cannot be good without god, but if I don’t accept and parrot back their delusions or claims, then I deserve to be tortured forever in a pit created by their loving god. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are, predicate their morality on being faithful and obedient to a supernatural lawgiver, but true morality isn’t obedience, or having to be bribed or threatened to be good. It is basing your actions on your consequences. Humans should base actions not on arbitrary authority, but on the humanistic principle of avoidance of harm, and holy books are behavioral grab-bags. Um, God is love, but you should kill unbelievers and stone homosexuals. 200 Bible verses treat women as inferior. The Bible contains violent, sexist, racist models of behavior. Zealots in America are banning abortion based on faith, not fact, and now, fertility treatments are endangered because of god’s so-called wrath. In Islamist nations like Afghanistan and Iran, women are brutally put down.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Historically, religion has caused schisms, warfare, crusades, inquisitions, and witch hunts. Religion is innately divisive and makes differences between people more incendiary. Look at Israel and Gaza. Religion’s biggest mistake is making dogma more important than people. If someone believes god is giving them marching orders, watch out. And finally, there is the intellectual harm of believing what isn’t true. If you base your life and your priorities on something for which there is no evidence, it’s building your house on the sand. Religion encourages believers to spend their best time and energy in pleasing an unprovable god or achieving an unprovable afterlife instead of making this world the paradise that it could be.

John Donvan

Thank you, Annie Laurie. Thank you to both of you. So now we know where you stand on this question and why, there’s a lot there to get into, so we’re gonna do that after taking a quick break. When we come back, we’ll be getting deeper into the question, “Is religion a force for good?” I’m John Donvan, and this is Open to Debate. Welcome back to Open to Debate. I’m your moderator, John Donvan, and we’re taking on this question, “Is religion a force for good?” We have heard opening statements from our two debaters, Shadi Hamid, a Washington Post columnist and editorial board member, and Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

John Donvan

What I think I heard in each of your arguments, if I were to sum them up, that Shadi, I heard you making an argument that religion is

laughs) quote-unquote, “Good for the soul,” actually good for the health, good for socialization, good for people connecting with one another, for getting along with one another, for dealing with things like grief and understanding the world. Annie, I h- I’m hearing your argument being a little bit more at 25,000 feet looking across history, uh, religion’s impact on movements, on, on historical events, where you’re making the case that while, while you concede that re- religion can have some good impacts, you’re saying that on the whole, its negative im- impacts outweigh the good. So there’s a lot to get into here, and I’d l- I, I just wanna start with a very specific split that I saw between the two of you, where Annie, you used the phrase about religion that it is innately divisive. Shadi, you’re making the argument that religion is a connector between people. Shadi, take that on first, and your response to the idea that it’s innately divisive.

Shadi Hamid

Well, first of all, division on its own isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some divides are worth having. I don’t believe in unity. I think diversity and pluralism is good. But I would say that religion is a connector because it helps us grow in communities and houses of worship. It’s fundamentally about how we interact with other people. When we’re praying, when someone is preaching, they’re not preaching to an empty room. They’re preaching to people. And I think that, um, chroniclers of American political life like Tocqueville for example, one of the main themes of his master work, Democracy in America, is that religion is absolutely fundamental to the American spirit, to American civic engagement. That’s where we learn the essential habits of how to deal with one another. And there’s no requi-

John Donvan

All right, I’d like to-

Shadi Hamid

Yeah.

John Donvan

L- let me, let, just let Annie Laurie respond to some of that, because you’ve made quite a few points.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Uh, well of course, I believe in pluralism too, and I believe in “e pluribus unum,” “From many come one,” and there is strength in diversity, but unfortunately, god believers in our country have supplanted that very good motto with, “In god we trust.” And who is that we? Up to 1/3 of the population today is nonreligious. In terms of it being a unifying factor, how many times do we see basically wars over, “My god is the right god. My god is telling me to kill you.” I mean, we see this going on right now, in Israel and Gaza. So, I don’t know how you can ignore that, and I think that what you’re proposing is kind of a fool’s paradise. If religion makes you feel better, then that’s good, then you should believe a lie. And of course, I don’t go around knocking people out of their pews and trying to de-convert them from churches, but I do think that indoctrinating people to believe in things that are not true, that say you are not responsible for your own consequences, I think that is very, very dangerous for our society.

John Donvan

So Shadi, that’s an, uh, uh, a challenging point. As you said in the beginning, this debate is not about whether the tenets of faith are true or not, and this debate is not about that. However, your opponent is asserting that they’re not, and then m- making the, the more even stronger statement that therefore, people are living according to a lie.

Shadi Hamid

Annie Laurie’s more than welcome to think that god is a lie. Obviously, religious people themselves don’t think it’s a lie. They think it’s true. So it’s unclear to me why someone like Annie Laurie can impose her view about the lack of truth on the rest of us. Reasonable people can disagree on the matter. I’m a believer. Is she suggesting that I’m living a lie? Okay. But I believe that it’s true, so for me it is true. That’s what matters here. And the idea that it’s unprovable… So many things cannot be seen directly with our own sight, and so many things that we hold out as being unequivocally true, like follow the science. We know the mess that got us into, uh, during the COVID period. Risk-

John Donvan

Are, are you suggesting that the, that the follow the science mantra was religion-like in its, uh, in its power and impact?

Shadi Hamid

Yeah. We as human beings, we all have a religious impulse, in the sense we’re all searching for transcendent meaning and purpose, and so if we’re not gonna find it in religion, we’re gonna find it in something else. We’ll find it in secular ideologies, like communism, and fascism, and god knows what else. We can find it in follow the science. We can find it in even the emphasis on rationality and reasonableness. Who decides what is reasonable or rational? The idea that there is a provable reality that is evident to all human beings if only they look is simply not accurate. If that was the case, we’d be united. If that was the case, we’d all find-

John Donvan

Okay, forg- forgive me-

Shadi Hamid

… agreement.

John Donvan

… again for breaking in, but once again

laughs) you’ve hit a number of points. But Annie Laurie, what I heard was if I’m of f- of faith, and it’s my truth, that’s okay for me. Um, but let me give you a specific example. If somebody believes in the afterlife, and if it motivates a person to live with kindness, and compassion, and decency, what’s wrong with that?

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Because then they’re not making this world precious. You know, Emily Dickinson said, “Because it is finite is what makes life so sweet,” that when you know this is the only world, well, that we are aware of, this is the only evidence we have, for our one world, then we cherish it much more, instead of being given pie in the sky like Christianity gave the black slaves, for example. That’s of, example of the harm of belief in an afterlife. The flying of planes into buildings by pilots who thought they were gonna be rewarded in eternity is another very clear example of the harm of afterlife. I did wanna say that not all of us, and my opponent said all of us are looking for transcendent, meaning I believe it was. No, I’m not looking for transcendent meaning, because there is no meaning of life. W- There’s no god giving us a meaning of life and we’re supposed to go out and find it. We give ourselves meaning in life. We need to make this world our best home and not think about some afterlife you cannot prove, and I did wanna say that science makes mistakes, but science is self-correcting, unlike the Quran, unlike the Bible, and that’s a real problem.

Shadi Hamid

Look. I mean, I think my opponent is in the unenviable position of being at cross purposes with most of the data we have. I cited some of that in my opening. I wanna add one more, this idea that religious people don’t care about this world, they don’t see it as precious, is just simply not supported by any evidence that I’m aware of. In the same Pew study that I quoted earlier, religious people are more likely to vote. This was the case in every single one of the 26 countries polled, and here, the gaps tended to be quite large. Just to give one example, in the US, 69% of the religiously active say they always vote, compared to only 48% of the religiously unaffiliated. Uh, the same-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Who are mostly younger, by the way. Older people do vote, and 98.8% of the members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation vote. We have 40,000 members, so [inaudible

:18].

Shadi Hamid

Sure, that’s fine, but I’m saying the overall-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

You’re, you can’t-

Shadi Hamid

… the overall numbers, the s- all the survey data that we have, that on an aggregate level, for us as a country, religious people are more likely to vote. They’re more likely to give to charity, and to participate in their communities, to join, uh, voluntary organizations. The list goes on. That’s what the data te-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Well, you’re, you’re citing one or two studies, but I would like to cite the work of someone like Phil Zuckerman and Ryan Cragun, about contrasting religious states with nonreligious states, and in fact, the data shows the opposite, that the more religious a state is, uh, the more crime, the more poverty. That’s true of states in the United States. The more religious states have much more poverty, much more crime. More babies are dying, more obesity-

Shadi Hamid

Are you suggesting that religion is causing that? How does it-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

I, I’m saying-

Shadi Hamid

… cause crime?

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… that you’re saying the opposite, that somehow religion is all sweetness and light, and it does-

Shadi Hamid

(laughs).

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… only good things.

Shadi Hamid

I didn’t say [inaudible

:15].

Annie Laurie Gaylor

[inaudible

:15].

John Donvan

Actually, actually, I, actually, I didn’t, Shadi, I did not hear you make the case that religion never does anything bad or wrong, and th- and that does get me to a question that, again, comes from Annie Laurie’s opening, that we know that religion has, uh, energized hostility in war. We can take the example of the crusades. We can talk about, uh, Northern Ireland. We can talk about Gaza and Israel. Um, there are, uh, a lot of examples where people went to battle under, particularly in Europe, under the symbol of the cross and bad things happened, and I’d like you to take on that-

Shadi Hamid

Yeah.

John Donvan

… perception, of religion, uh, uh, i- i- it’s, again, goes to, uh, uh, her argument that it’s a separator.

Shadi Hamid

Yeah. Well first of all, Israel-Palestine is not primarily about religion. That’s about land and territory, and two competing nationalist, um, causes. Um, but putting that aside, the, the argument that religion is particularly violent is, again, not supported by the evidence. In fact, I would suggest the opposite. The most secular century in human history was the 20th century. That’s when we see a profound secularization spreading throughout the world. This was also the most violent century in human history, by far, by millions and millions, because we had three ideologies in particular, that were secular, that were antireligious, that actually saw no-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

You’re not saying that-

Shadi Hamid

… that, that-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… Hitler was secular. I can’t let you get away with that.

Shadi Hamid

Hit- Hitler w-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

He was Catholic.

Shadi Hamid

Hitler was-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

And had concordance with-

Shadi Hamid

… an opponent of Christianity.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… Catholic churches and Lutheran churches, and he said, “I am killing Jews for Jesus.” So he was not-

Shadi Hamid

Well, we know-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… an atheist.

Shadi Hamid

… most of the historians who have studied The Third Reich and Hitler argue now that Hitler was actually sometimes, in public statements, trying to curry favor with religious people-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Sometimes.

Shadi Hamid

… but that he himself, privately-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

(laughs).

Shadi Hamid

… um, and was not-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

So what?

Shadi Hamid

He was certainly was not religious, and he was-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Oh, that’s-

Shadi Hamid

And there’s no evidence that he believed in-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

On their buckles-

Shadi Hamid

I just finished a b-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Just let me say. Soldiers wore, on the buckle of their Bible belt, [German

:21] “God with us.” Whether he was religious or not, he was using religion-

Shadi Hamid

Nazism, though, was not-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… for extermination-

Shadi Hamid

… a religious-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… of people-

Shadi Hamid

… ideology.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… who were not-

Shadi Hamid

I’m, I’m just-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… Christian.

John Donvan

Let me wade in m- uh, moderate-wise. Uh, I, I w- I didn’t wanna interrupt the passion with which you were both arguing at that point, but, uh, uh, Shadi, can you make, can you conclude your point-

Shadi Hamid

Well, I’ll just finish-

John Donvan

… and then we’ll move on.

Shadi Hamid

Yeah, sure. Secular ideologies have been, by far, the most destructive forces, and the other ones are communism and fascism, and we’re talking about tens of millions of people killed, so this idea that-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Mussolini was-

Shadi Hamid

Sec-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… Catholic.

John Donvan

Annie Laurie, let, let him just get through this

laughs) and then you’ll get your shot.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Okay.

John Donvan

Thanks.

Shadi Hamid

And historically, if you look, say Catholicism or my own religion, Islam, there is a proud tradition of just war, of, of imparting clear limits on what you can do in the battlefield, not harming women, children, innocents, noncombatants. That is part of the great religious traditions, in a way that secular ideologies have never had. When it’s secular ideologies fighting, all bets are off, and I think we’ve seen that time and time again throughout the 20th century.

John Donvan

Okay. Annie Laurie, here’s your shot. Go for it.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

(laughs) Well, I do wanna say, of course, f- fascism was brought in by a Catholic, Mussolini, um, so we can’t whitewash history. Um, when we look at, for example, the treatment of women under Islam, um, whether you have just wars or not, I don’t think it was very just that the young woman who was not wearing a headscarf was killed because some of her hair was showing. I mean, when we look at the atrocities-

John Donvan

If you’re speaking about in Iran this past couple years, mm-hmm.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

In Iran. I’m talking about how Afghan women and Iranian women are treated in Islamist nations, meaning nations that do not have separation between religion and government. And, uh, the, it sh- when religion is unchecked, watch out. Uh, religion needs to be kept in its place, and when it is… Uh, government goes behind religion, and even behind religious slogans like, “In god we trust,” this disenfranchises those who are not the right religion.

Shadi Hamid

Um, I’m sorry. Like, a- as one of the minority religions in America, Islam, which, um, is not what people have in mind when they say, “In god we trust,” that does not disenfranchise me. I’ve never felt that way. I do agree that nothing should be unchecked. So of course, there should be limits on what religious leaders can do, just like there should be limits on what secular leaders should do. We should have checks and balances, separation of powers. The problem with Iran is actually more that it, it’s an authoritarian regime, not that it’s a theocratic one.

John Donvan

I, I w- I, I wanna pull a little bit on the thread, uh, that just came up about treatment of women in Islam, and, and I have heard it said over the years that, um, the attitude towards women in Islam come less out of the Quran than they do out of, uh, tradition, um, in, in, in the communities from which Islam r- aro- arose, but nevertheless, we kn- kn- know that there are serious inequities. But it’s not just Islam. There’s a thread, uh, Shadi, throughout the, the monotheistic religions, uh, it is said, of subordination of women, and uh, I want to ask you to address that, and uh, take on whether that’s a challenge to your position in this argument.

Shadi Hamid

Well, when Islam came to be in the seventh century in Arabia, it was actually quite progressive on matters of gender and granting women rights that they never had in the pre-Islamic period. In the pre-Islamic period, we know that daughters would be buried if parents only wanted to have boys. There was no right to property. Women were able to have their own income and have, and have their own property, with the coming of Islam. Now, of course, um, as things went along, and in the modern period, there are serious inequities, but we have to ask ourselves, is that caused by the religion itself, or is it caused by culture? Even in relatively secular, um, Muslim-majority countries, where Islam doesn’t play much of a public or political role, we still see similar inequities. You could also point to Muslim-majority countries that elected female prime ministers well before, uh, well, the US has never done that, uh, so we’re talking about Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Turkey, just to name three.

Shadi Hamid

So, the story is much more complicated, and luckily, there are increasingly progressive interpretations, um, including right here in America, from female Muslim scholars challenging patriarchal readings, and I think their argument would be that if you live in a patriarchal society, your readings of religion are naturally going to be patriarchal. So ultimately, we’re talking about a complex mix of not just religion, but religion with culture, and with the politic- political systems that don’t actually allow free debate and discourse around how to treat women.

John Donvan

Okay, so-

Shadi Hamid

And that’s what you need. You need to be able to give people a chance to provide different interpretations that are more open and progressive on these questions.

John Donvan

Uh, all right, so let me take that to you, Annie Laurie, is that Shadi is saying that it’s, um, in, in a sense, don’t blame religion for so much, that it, the cu- culture plays a big role as well. So w- where do you take that answer in terms of the impact on women, of religion?

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Well, if you have people who are religious, and you tell them, “God is telling me that this is how we should do things, this is the law, this is what we have to do or obey,” that’s the most powerful thing you can do if you have believers. In other words, you don’t have to persuade through reason, um, popularity, whatever. You have god on your side, and that’s the might. And that’s what’s so dangerous. That’s what makes religion so powerful. And you can make up anything you want about this god, and people usually

laughs) do, who are, uh, in power, and, uh, very dangerous. And I’m glad that Bangladesh was brought up, because I have a good friend, Bangladeshi-American, who cannot go back there, because she was there with her husband, um, Avijit Roy, a well-known atheist, and as they were leaving a book fair, he was hacked to death in front of her eyes, and she was almost killed. This is what religion does.

Shadi Hamid

This is not what religion does, because we’re… You, you’ve, uh, you’ve repeatedly brought up examples that reflect such a small, tiny minority. There’s 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Of course we can point to terrorist acts like 9/11 and the rise of ISIS and so forth, but if you look at it in the broader context of such a massive body of believers, this is not mainstream. The idea that people go around hacking each other for their religious beliefs is simply not an accurate, uh, r- representation of what, what, of real life. So, uh, I think that Annie Laurie, your, your position depends on cherry-picking a small number of examples, and then generalizing that and saying, “This is Islam as a whole. This is religion as a whole,” and that’s-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Well, then would you say-

Shadi Hamid

… just not correct.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… that Islam does not call for killing unbelievers, that, that the Old Testament does not call for killing unbelievers? Because they do.

Shadi Hamid

If it di-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

And so of course, if you’re a believer, you can cherry-pick that, and say, “God’s telling me to kill you.”

Shadi Hamid

Of course that’s not true, because there are two billion Christians and 1.6 billion Muslims. That’s 3.6 billion people. If, if our scripture was telling us to kill unbelievers, you would see that happening nonstop every day. When was the last time, in America, you heard about someone hacking to death a so-called unbeliever, either from Christians or Muslims? This is not the way we practice our faith, and the, your description of religion, just, I can’t relate to it. I don’t know what religion you’re describing.

John Donvan

I’m John Donvan. This is Open to Debate. When we come back, we’re gonna, gonna continue this conversation around our question, “Is religion a force for good?” And we’re gonna be joined by some other voices to help go further on that question. We’ll be right back. This is Open to Debate. I’m John Donvan. Welcome back to Open to Debate. I’m John Donvan. Our question is, “Is religion a force for good?” And now we’re gonna bring in some other voices, some, really some experts and writers on this topic, who have been listening in to the conversation and are gonna join us now, and the first person I’d like to say hello to is Reha Kansara, who is the religion correspondent for BBC News Global. Reha, thanks so much for joining us, and please d- come on in with your question.

Reha Kansara

Thank you for having me, and Annie Laurie and, um, Shadi, it’s been great hearing both of your perspectives. Very interesting. I couldn’t help but gravitate towards the latter part of your discussion around culture and religion, and two things stuck out to me, two questions that you can probably answer in one. Um, essentially, one is can you separate religion as a tool for good versus a weapon for political gain, um, which sort of ov- overlaps with how do we separate culture from religion?

Annie Laurie Gaylor

I think that, uh, it would be ideal if religious people would simply, um, practice their religion privately, and not try to force their religion on others through the state. And that’s where we get into trouble. We can all get along with different beliefs so long as the government isn’t making a decision about which religious belief is true.

Shadi Hamid

Just to clarify, the question here is is religion a force for good. The way that I interpret that is we’re talking about the net result. So, I would never pretend to say that religion is completely pure, and there’s never been something negative done by religious people. Of course not. But we’re talking about the broader sweep of history. We’re also not talking about religious states. We’re talking about is religion a force for good. And, I, you know, the idea that when religious people do something bad, it’s caused by religion, I just don’t see how we can make that case. When a secular person, or an atheist does something bad or implements a, a destructive policy, do we really say that their secularism caused them to do that? So it seems that we’re holding religion to a standard that we would never hold, uh, for other, for other persuasions.

Shadi Hamid

And I would also say that I, religion can’t be kept private, because if religion is something that is important to you, and it’s part of your community and your sense of belonging, of course you’re gonna express that in public. And I should just remind everyone that religion, public religion has played a very powerful role in anticolonial movements, in places like Sudan and Algeria, but it’s also been a ca- a force for liberation for black Americans. I mean, the civil rights movement was led, not exclusively, but certainly some of its most prominent advocates, were devoted Christians, who saw their Christianity as fundamentally informing their desire and demand for justice and equality, and their care for the poor and the downtrodden. Um, the great abolitionist movements were driven by, again, a sense of Christian witness, and care for those who are destitute or disregarded by society.

Shadi Hamid

I mean, religion gives so much passion and power in the public arena. Now, of course that can lead to bad things, but let’s not forget that the political power of religion can lead to really great movements of liberation and justice.

John Donvan

Annie Laurie, I saw you shaking your head during Shadi’s comments just then, especially when he talked about the inspiration for the abolitionists.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Right, because the earliest abolitionists were almost all, um, nonreligious or they were considered heretics among their own sects, such as Quakers, and Thomas Paine was one of the earliest to call for the abolition of slavery. Um, uh, of course, was a deist in the classical sense. But in terms of, uh, saying that, gee, I’m, I’m being unfair to religion, I’m blaming religion for everything. If you look today, at our very un-United States of America, we can see what is the problem right now, what is the threat. It is Christian nationalism, and that, that means a political movement, not Christianity, but a political movement saying that a certain kind of Christianity has to be enforced by our government, and certain Christians are more privileged. And we are seeing them take away the rights to abortion in 21 states, uh, trying to take away the rights of LGBTQ rights in almost that many states. We just saw this death of this 16-year-old in Oklahoma, very tragic, because their superintendent has been making a huge deal about which bathroom to use. I mean, over and over again, we see the harm of religion in our laws and policies, and that’s why religion is not, on its whole, a force for good.

John Donvan

We’re gonna go on to another question, but i- in, in the meantime, I, I think we got to an area where I was, uh, I was prepared to ask, uh, a question of Shadi based on something that I read that you wrote. “Though the United States was not founded as a Christian nation, Christianity was always intertwined with America’s self-definition. Without it, Americans, conservatives and liberals alike, no longer have a common culture upon which to fall back.” S- s- s- I, that’s a r- a very, very provocative and big, sweeping statement, that suggests that the, the faith tradition is keeping America afloat, and without it, uh, we’re gonna sink.

Shadi Hamid

Yeah. Well, exactly, and, and I think the evidence there, we can look at it with our own very eyes as America has secularized profoundly. So, for the better part of the 20th century, church membership hovered around 70 to 75%, but in the last 25 years, it’s dropped below 50%, a precipitous decline in a very short period of time. It’s not an accident that during this same period, we’ve become more ideologically polarized, more ideologically fragmented. This idea that if we all become more secular, that we’ll all be able to be reasonable, and deliberate, and work together, it just hasn’t happened. Secularization has not led to this promised land. When we lose our religious grounding, we look for it in other places. We’re still gonna be searching for meaning, and the danger there is that the other things that we find can be worse than religion. So whether that’s-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

(laughs).

Shadi Hamid

… white nationalism, or even, on my side of the spectrum, what we might call woke-ism, or w- or social justice warrior-ship, and so forth. These are ideologies that are uncompromising, unyielding, and they are primarily secular, and that’s what I’m worried about going forward in America, that if this secularization trend continues, we’re going to see a more aggressive kind of politics, not because of religion, but in, but in spite of it.

John Donvan

Annie Laurie-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Hoo.

John Donvan

You’re up

laughs).

Annie Laurie Gaylor

We don’t have a religious test for public office, supposedly, in our Constitution. We should not have, Shadi, a religious test f- to be a citizen. There should be-

Shadi Hamid

When have I said that?

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… no ex- Well, you said that this is a Christian nation, or that, that people are expected to have Christianity or our nation will fall apart, and you, you, earlier, um, applauded, uh, diversity, so that is a bit of a contradiction, and I w- certainly would not want to go back to the 1950s or 1960s. Would you? We had the women’s movement. We’ve had the civil rights movement. We’ve had the gay rights movement. And so-

Shadi Hamid

I never said that we were-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… secu-

Shadi Hamid

… a Christian nation. I said that we had a common Christian culture, that there was a basic familiarity with Biblical references. There was something there in the broader culture. And, you know, and it’s worth noting that, um, I mean, not to go back to the founders. Even the founders who weren’t Christian, some of them were deists and theists. They were products of a broader Christian culture, and they drew on natural rights theories when they were developing their own ideas about individual rights, as stated in the Declaration of Independence. It’s stated there, in ex- as, as explicitly as it could possibly be, that these rights are endowed by our creator. So clearly, the move towards freedom and equality and human rights, while still had a long way to go at that time, presumably, we as Americans believe in our ideals, and most of us believe in the founding and its promise. That just simply wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for the influence of religion.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Oh, if it wasn’t for the influence of religion, we also wouldn’t have seen, um, manifest destiny and the, uh, genocide of Native Americans, and the slavery of so many people in Africa, where it was justified by Biblical verses that allow slavery.

John Donvan

Okay, I’d like to welcome in Ryan Cragun, who is a professor of sociology at the University of Tampa. Ryan, thanks

laughs) so much for your patience. Uh, we’d like to hear what you have to say.

Ryan Cragun

Uh, so here’s my question. Scholars are increasingly recognizing that American Grace, which Shadi referenced earlier, is a deeply flawed book. Mostly, readers don’t realize that the authors, Putnam and Campbell, grouped inactive religiously affiliated individuals with those who have no religious affiliation, then compared them to the religious. More recent research shows that accurate comparisons between religiously active individuals and affirmatively secular people like atheists show no meaningful differences in health, happiness, criminality, charitable giving, or volunteering, among many other prosocial measures. That all leads to my really awkward question given this debate. Is it possible that religion and non-religion aren’t really what make people good or bad, and the religion is neither a force for good or bad, or stated inversely, can people be good without, with or without religion?

Shadi Hamid

Sure, of course we can be good without religion. I mean, some of my best friends are nonreligious. Some of them are even atheists, and they’re

laughs) some of my favorite people, so hey, you know? Um, but I think that when you… Uh, we have to look at things more broadly, and I think it’s not so much about whether religion makes some, an individual good or bad. It’s more that religion helps individuals be part of a broader community, and that’s the positive force here, that religion makes you part of something meaningful and transcendent. And maybe Annie Laurie is not looking for transcendent meaning, but I think that throughout human history, the search for transcendence has been a recurring theme in the human story. We’re looking for something ultimate. We’re looking for something beyond the self. We’re not content to just be self-referential.

Shadi Hamid

And I think this is the power of religion. You don’t even really have to believe in religion to actually take part in religion, and um, you know, Pascal’s wager famously said that, you know, you act as if religion is true, even if you’re not sure that it is. Um, and you can, uh, you can act as if it’s true by going to church, or mosque, or synagogue, even if you have your own doubts about whether there is an afterlife or whether god truly exists. And that, to me, so the power of religion, I think is located in this other space that is maybe m- more difficult to define, and I’ll also just go back to life satisfaction, that I think the evidence, um, is strong that people who are religious have, report higher levels of life satisfaction. I think that’s good because I think happiness is good, and I would like more people to be happy.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Pascal’s wager isn’t just, “Oh, I think I’ll b- uh, there’s no harm in believing in religion.” Pascal’s wager is that, “Gee, if there is a god who would sentence me to eternal hell for disbelieving, then it would be better for me to act as if there were a god.” But many people have pointed out, if there was a god like that who was such a fiend, then why wouldn’t that god perhaps decide someone like Pascal, uh, should be sent to hell for not being a Muslim? I’m mean, uh, uh, this is all make-believe, and you can speculate endlessly about make-believe. And in terms of transcendence, we-

Shadi Hamid

How do you know it’s make-believe?

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… how can you not find-

Shadi Hamid

I’m sorry.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… awe? How can you not find awe-

Shadi Hamid

How do you know it’s make-believe?

Annie Laurie Gaylor

… in nature? Well, there’s no proof. Let’s say that the-

Shadi Hamid

That’s different, though.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

That’s, this is true. I think it’s make-believe, but you’re the one making the claim, and you have to prove it, and you can’t prove it, so, um, when you make a claim that there is a creator out there who’s responsible for everything, you have to prove it, and you can’t.

Shadi Hamid

You’re making the claim that god doesn’t exist, so it seems to me that the burden of proof would be on you-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

No

laughs).

Shadi Hamid

… to explain why-

Annie Laurie Gaylor

No, that’s not the way-

Shadi Hamid

… how you’re so sure that god doesn’t exist, because you’re the one who’s been arguing that.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

I’m happy to explain why, uh, a god doesn’t exist, but the burden of proof is on the person making the claim.

John Donvan

Ryan, I want to thank you very much for your question, but we need to move into our closing round, and in our closing round, each of the debaters has two minutes to make, uh, their closing statement. Shadi, uh, Hamid, you are up first with that, as you were at the beginning. Uh, one last reas- uh, lone, one last time to tell us why you believe that religion is a force for good.

Shadi Hamid

I wanna maybe conclude with a couple thoughts that are maybe more personal. I think one of the great things about religion, certainly Christianity and my own faith, Islam, is the idea of delayed judgment, that not everything has to be accomplished in the here and now. When Annie Laurie mentioned earlier that we should seek paradise in this world, that makes me really nervous. Life is inevitably about suffering, and tragedy, and difficulty. We’re never gonna be able to erase that from the human experience. What religion can often do, and I, it does it certainly for me and, and many of the religious people I know, is it allows you to chill, because you know there’s something beyond this world, that you can wait a little bit. If there is an afterlife, that can actually tamp down passions, because you can leave things for the next life. You don’t have to accomplish them right now.

Shadi Hamid

There’s actually, um, a great thing in Islamic tradition where legal scholars would end their [foreign language

:12] or religious edicts with the phrase, “And god only knows.” That’s really powerful to me, because they’re making their case. They’re saying that god wants you to do X, Y, and Z, but there’s an intellectual humility there, because we know that god is so much better and bigger than we are as mere mortals, and we defer ultimate authority to him. And when religious people try to act as if they are god, they are violating fundamental principles in their faith, which is that they can’t be god, that they are weak and frail, and they don’t have the full access to the truth. And that’s why I’m, I get very nervous around definitive statements about whether or not god exists or doesn’t exist. I think we all need a little bit more intellectual humility there, and somewhat surprisingly perhaps, we can find that through a religious sensibility.

John Donvan

Thank you, Shadi, and Annie Laurie, you get the final word in this debate, one more time why religion is not a force for good.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Good Christian parents in Weston, Wisconsin watched their 11-year-old daughter die over a six-month period and did nothing. Madeline Kara Neumann had developed diabetes, which is imminently treatable, but her parents believed in the Bible, and passages such as James 5:15, which says, “The prayer of faith will heal the sick.” When Kara began showing symptoms of illness, they hid it, pulling her out of public school. She suffered horribly. Her six-month, drawn-out dying included nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, weight loss, and weakness. In her last days, the parents ironically called America’s Last Days, who prayed for Madeline on the day before her last day. As we say at the Freedom From Religion Foundation, nothing fails like prayer. The family phoned him back after she died, asking him to pray that the Lord would raise her up. She did not rise up. Her 11-year-old life was over. The parents never repented.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

If having religion means an 11-year-old child is sacrificed in its name, that Mahsa Amini was killed in its name because her lock of hair s- escaped her headscarf, that women must continually fight for our rights, that gender minorities are being erased in the name of religion, that climate change is being denied because religious doctrines and dogmas are more important than people, then it is time for the human race to outgrow religion and rely instead on ourselves, and devote ourselves not to faith, but to making a better place here on Earth.

John Donvan

Thank you, Annie Laurie, and that is a wrap on this debate, and I would like to thank everybody who took part. I would like to thank Reha and Ryan for bringing their interesting and probing questions to the table, but I especially wanna thank Shadi Hamid and Annie Laurie Gaylor for the fact that you brought to this conversation deeply held personal convictions, and disagreed sharply, and yet you did so with respect for one another, and civility, and that’s the goal that we aim for at Open to Debate, so thank you, both of you, for, for taking part and for the way that you took part.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Thank you.

Shadi Hamid

Thank you, John, and thank you, Annie.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Thank you.

Shadi Hamid

Uh, nice to be in dialogue and debate with you.

Annie Laurie Gaylor

Yes, it is. I appreciated it.

John Donvan

And a big thank you to you, our audience, for tuning into this episode of Open to Debate. Thank you for listening to Open to Debate. As a nonprofit working to combat extreme polarization through civil discourse, our work is made possible by listeners like you, by the Rosenkranz Foundation, and by supporters of Open to Debate. Robert Rosenkranz is our chairman. Our CEO is Clea Conner, and Lia Matthow is our chief content officer. This episode was produced by Alexis Pangrazi and Marlette Sandoval. Editorial and research by Gabriella Mayer and Andrew Foot. Andrew Lipson and Max Fulton provided production support. Milly Shaw is director of audience development, and the Open to Debate team also includes Gabrielle Iannucelli, Rachel Kemp, Linda Lee, and Devon Shermer. Damon Whittemore mixed this episode. Our theme music is by Alex Clement, and I’m your host, John Donvan. We’ll see you next time on Open to Debate.