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Tallis in Wonderland

Religion & Evil

Raymond Tallis has some inconclusive thoughts.

Secular humanism would be an impoverished worldview if it defined itself only in terms of what it is against. Many are tired of the rather too well-worn paths of adversarial atheism – a selective journey through history and the Holy Books, crying “Gotcha!” at every gout of spilled blood and every bloodthirsty sentiment. Humanist thinkers, they argue, would spend their time more fruitfully contemplating the large, extraordinary truths about our unique nature and the human world we have built, and on this basis construct a positive secular worldview.

Nevertheless, the moral case against organised religion cannot be ignored. All of us, believers and infidels, need to be aware of the dangers that can arise when individual spiritual experiences feed into collective behaviour, and visions of transcendence are mobilised to underpin social institutions.

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