The real axis of evil is Islam, Judaism and Christianity - Christopher Hitchens
The big three monotheistic religions have long been sources of violence and other problems that plague the human race. The New Atheists in particular have brilliantly critiqued these monotheistic monstrosities. However, the leaders of the New Atheism have often been unable or reluctant to acknowledge that there is also much good that has come from these religions. Such is the great and disturbing paradox of the big three.
Moreover, the New Atheists and other non-theists do not acknowledge that some religions are mostly good, rational, humane, and downright humanistic. For example, Unitarian Universalists are not only humanistic, but many of them are non-theists. They are progressive and welcoming of women leaders. They combat homophobia and work toward equal opportunity for all. They critique reactionary religionists and support biblical criticism. They are not motivated by the notion that they have the One True Faith. Rather, like secular humanists, they use critical thinking and empathy as their guides in determining how human beings ought to live. They do not embrace the angry, violent, misogynistic, homophobic God of the Old (First) Testament. Rather, as the great 19th century freethinker Robert Green Ingersoll pointed out, “their God is a gentleman.”
Confucius also promoted a rational religion with no need for a God. Confucius understood that we could not even understand ourselves as human beings, let alone have any knowledge about the will of a possibly existent God. Confucius stressed the importance of strong, loving families and right behavior. Five hundred years before Christ, Confucius put forth the silver rule: Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.
The Society of Friends, a.k.a. the Quakers, have a very good religion. They were among the first people in the Americas to actively oppose slavery. They were also heavily involved in the civil rights movement. Indeed, Bayard Rustin, a primary architect of the civil rights movement, was raised by his grandparents, Julia and Janifer Rustin. His grandmother, Julia, might have belonged to the Religious Society of Friends when she was a girl. This group certainly influenced her social activism. She joined the NAACP after it was founded in 1909.
Today there is a group known as the Nontheist Friends that conducts workshops led by activist Robin Alpern and writer David Boulton. Boulton is the editor ofGodless for God’s Sake: Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism, and the author of The Trouble with God: Building the Republic of Heaven.
In the early 1990s, when I was the executive director of African Americans for Humanism (AAH), the group I founded, I was approached by an elderly White woman named Lillian Spears. Ms.
Spears closely identified with the Society of Friends. It was a dream of hers to persuade some group or individual to establish a Monument to the Unknown Slave somewhere in the U.S. to commemorate those that courageously lived as enslaved African Americans, as well as those that died during the Middle Passage, etc.
I ran with the idea and established the National Commission for the Establishment of a Monument to the Unknown Slave. I brought in many well-known people as advisors, including sports broadcaster Bryant Gumbel, jazz Musician Wynton Marsalis, public intellectual Cornel West, congressmen Pete Stark and John Conyers, and others. Other celebrities, such as former boxer Sugar Ray Leonard, congressman William Gray, and Colin Powell supported the project. The project was lost in U.S. government bureaucracy. However, this was another example of empathy influenced by the Friends.
Indigenous African and Native American religions are good religions. Unlike the monotheistic religions, these religions are not characterized by the arrogance of faith, or absolute certainty. In my first book, African-American Humanism: An Anthology, Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu discussed “Morality and Religion in Akan Thought.” He showed how the Akans, a Ghanaian ethnic group, develop their morality without positing a God. Indeed, he quoted the late Dr. J.B. Danquah, a leading expert in Akan culture:
. . . [The] original Akan society did not act according to any Christian conception. We have never had a Christ or a Buddha or a Mohammed. Never in the history of the Akan people, so far as we know, have we had what is known as a revealed religion, a revelation to, or by, a prophet, of duty to a Supreme Master or Lord, residing in your heart or residing in Heaven, who sits there waiting for you at the end of your life, to judge you as either a goat or a sheep, and to send you to Paradise or to Hell, according as you are a sheep or a goat. (Quoted in African-American Humanism: An Anthology, p. 219, from J.B. Danquah, “Obligation in Akan Society,” West African Affairs, No. 8 (1952), published by the Bureau of Current Affairs, London, for the Department of Extra-Mural Studies, University of the Gold Coast, p. 3)
Wiredu happily and correctly concluded that Akan morality could survive the erosion of theism in society, a claim that would be unlikely to be raised by most theists where their religions are concerned. This is certainly an obvious advantage of secular morality.
There are many other good religions such as Buddhism, the Bahai faith, and the religion of the Dalai Lama. Incidentally, in his new book, Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World, the Dalai Lama argues for secular ethics that can be applied to theists and non-theists alike. He promotes secular values such as critical thinking and empathy.
We at the Institute for Science and Human Values (ISHV) are very much interested in dialoging and working with good religionists. Indeed, it only makes good sense to work with one’s allies. The notion that non-theists and theists should never work together is hopelessly unrealistic. Now more than ever, due to globalism, technology, etc. the entire world is becoming increasingly connected and interdependent. It is time that good people from all backgrounds work together to save ourselves and to save our planet.