One of the frequent attacks made against
religion as a whole is that it is essentially just a scam run by manipulative
fraudsters to cow the great gullible unwashed into obedience, and to give the
fraudsters (i.e. priests) power and wealth in exchange for promises of pie in
the sky. A quote from Mark Twain is frequently trotted out; ‘Religion was born
when the first conman met the first fool.’
It is, unsurprisingly, an assertion that I
do not agree with. However, a story on the BBC
website this week made me sigh, because it appeared to bolster this
assertion. It regards the church in Nigeria, and the fact that certain clergy
are trying to enforce the (shaky) biblical injunction that all believers should
tithe at least ten percent of their earnings to the church. In a country as
poor as Nigeria, many of these clergy seem to be very (perhaps even
suspiciously) well off indeed, with personal fortunes well into the millions of pounds.
The story quotes one of them as saying "Anyone
who is not paying his tithe is not going to heaven, full stop." This makes
me incredibly angry. Not only because it is appallingly untrue, is a disgusting
theology and flies utterly in the face of the teachings of Christ, but because,
as I said, it seems to be confirming all the worst assumptions and assertions
of the angry online anti-theists. It is abundantly clear that these preachers
are little more than conmen using religion as a scam to make themselves rich,
and in the process driving a great many people away from God. Honest, sincere clergy
end up tarred with the same brush due to the crimes of these frauds.
However, it also made me think. It’s
true that these ‘preachers’ are no more than conmen, but they are nonetheless
used as an admittedly unusually stark example of what religion ‘really’ is.
Doing so though is surely something of a
double standard. The problem is that you can apply this argument to science
too. These preachers, and their counterparts across the world, demanding that
their followers send money to assure their salvation, are merely the
theological equivalent of the stereotypical snake-oil salesman. Dr Andrew
Wakefield was an accredited medical researcher, until he was found guilty of
deliberately falsifying information on the safety of vaccines in order to make
considerable personal profit.
As a result, a great many people around
the world now erroneously believe that vaccines are linked to autism. Most
avowed atheists tend to be very scientifically-minded, and rail against
disbelieving the vast majority of modern science and medicine due to a few fraudulent
assertions by a now disgraced scientist. Similarly, they’ll argue against ‘scientists’
funded by oil companies whose researches seem to show that climate change isn’t
happening, in the face of the vast weight of scientific evidence. For some
reason though, they don’t seem to realise that they’re doing exactly the same
thing with regards to Christianity. They are taking manipulative frauds as
being representative, rather than realising that they are, or ought to be, a
disgraced minority.
Now, it’s very true that not all wealthy
churches and clergy are conmen or grasping, greedy manipulators. Many have
quite rightly pointed out the vast wealth of the Catholic Church, and the
Church of England, and I am in total agreement with them. I see very little of
the teachings of Christ in the gold and marble of the Vatican. Being neither an
Anglican nor a Catholic, I don’t feel I need to work too hard to defend these,
and certainly historically, the Catholic Church had become corrupt and
money-driven. It’s largely what sparked the Reformation after all.
Sellers of fake medicine do not disprove
the validity of the scientific method. To suggest that they do is obviously
ridiculous. Sellers of false theology do not disprove the existence of God or
the teaching of Christ. Apparently this is less obviously ridiculous for some
reason. I’ll end with a slight mis-quote from G. K. Chesterton on exactly this
when discussing miracles. “I hope we may dismiss the argument against wonders
attempted in the mere recapitulation of frauds, of swindling mediums or trick
miracles. That is not an argument at all, good or bad. A false miracle disproves
the reality of miracles exactly as much as a forged banknote disproves the existence
of the Bank of England- if anything, it proves its existence.”
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