I was supposed to have a 10 hour tour of the Dieng Plateau in Central Java today, and my guide was promptly here at 6 AM to pick me up. But it was raining abundantly and it looked as if the sky had enough rain in it that it would probably take the whole day to unload it. We both agreed that it was best to cancel the trip as this weather would hide the beautiful landscape of terraced rice fields and make rather unpleasant the stops to visit the ancient Hindu temples on the tour.
So, here I am, trapped by rain at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. After an early breakfast, the prospect of spending the day in the Regency Club lounge is not altogether unpleasant, as it will give me time to read Popper and Russell and reflect.
The well-lit and comfortable surroundings of the lounge and the landscape through the large window facing me make an ideal backdrop for my meditations. I can see golf players undeterred by the rain ambling across the gently undulating green fairways interspersed with graceful palm trees. Female caddies, covered head to foot in ponchos, hold umbrellas and pull the bags of clubs on wheeled carts.
The woman sitting at a table nearby does not however appear to react to this soothing atmosphere in the same manner. Wiry and intense, she nervously picks food in her plate with one hand, and continually fumbles with the other on her iPod, probably jumping from one tune to another, not having the patience to listen to any single one to its end. Not for her the joys of rambling idle thoughts …
I find much to agree with in Russell's
Why I am not a Christian, a collection of essays written from the late 1890s to the 1950s and re-published together in 1956. Russell was a rationalist through and through and his attack of religion is devastating (for people guided by reason) and witty. These writings must have inspired Richard Dawkins'
God Delusion, a much more recent similar attack. Of course these attacks will not convince many believers to change their convictions, since, as Russell points out, "it would seem that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear [fear of death in particular], conceit and hatred". Reason is hard put to prevail against such passions.
Russell's wit is manifest. Here is, as an example, the first paragraph of an essay first published in 1930 (
Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilisation?)
My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilisation. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.I do find that Russell, although keenly aware of the strength of the human impulses embodied in religion, was perhaps too optimistic about reason's ability to win against them, for he concludes this essay with the following sentence: "It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion." The first part of the sentence (the possibility of mankind being at the threshold of a golden age) shows Russell's optimism, rooted in the progress of science and industry and the impact it should have on education and the provision of resources sufficient to ensure "tolerable subsistence for everybody". The last part shows that he saw the strength of the perceived enemy of progress, religion, since he describes it as a "dragon".
It is easy to see, with hindsight, how misplaced that optimism was, expressed as it was in 1930, when mankind, far from being on the threshold of a golden age, was about to enter a very dark period of wars and unspeakable atrocities during which freedom nearly succumbed to the threats of fascism and communism. And we could perhaps say that Russell was choosing the wrong enemy when he saw religion as the dragon to slay. This would be, however, a superficial analysis, for a strong case can be made that fascism and communism were fundamentally new religions born as reactions against the progress of reason.
This case is powerfully made by Popper in the second volume of
The Open Society and its Enemies, published in 1945. I will quote the first paragraph of the next to last chapter, which eloquently summarizes Popper's analysis.
Marx was a rationalist. With Socrates, and with Kant, he believed in human reason as the basis of the unity of mankind. But his doctrine that our opinions are determined by class interest hastened the decline of this belief. Like Hegel's doctrine that our ideas are determined by national interests and traditions, Marx's doctrine tended to undermine the rationalist belief in reason. Thus threatened both from the right and from the left, a rationalist attitude to social and economic questions could hardly resist when historicist prophecy and oracular irrationalism made a frontal attack on it. This is why the conflict between rationalism and irrationalism has become the most important intellectual, and perhaps even moral, issue of our time.Socialism and Communism were seen as harbingers of progress towards economic justice, and the hope, nay, the conviction, that they were an inescapable historical necessity, was shattered by the disillusionment of seeing these movements degenerate in horrible totalitarian regimes responsible for the misery and death of millions. As a result, many in the West, particularly in the United States, concluded that reason (which can mistakenly be perceived, at least until one reads Popper, as the progenitor of the socialist and communist movements) cannot be the sole answer to man's quest for truth and happiness, and they turned with renewed fervor towards the traditional religions. Russell's book is a useful reminder that disillusionment with reason is not a reason to find refuge in nonsensical religious dogmas.
According to Marx, Communism was to be the ineluctable victory of the working class and the end of history. After the collapse of the communist regimes in the USSR and Eastern Europe, some thought that we had attained a different end of history and that the Western liberal views and capitalism (not the unrestrained capitalism of the 19th century, whose inhumanity, as Popper points out, rightfully roused Marx's indignation, but a capitalism tempered by state intervention) had won the battle for freedom and the open society. There were reasons for thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama to hold such views, as China, after 40 years of communist rule, was not yet an economic and political great power and Muslim fundamentalism was not yet perceived as an existential threat.
China's success, which may rekindle belief in the new religion of Marxism, and the Islamo-fascist movements sponsored by Iran and others are threats to the Western liberal democracies, and urgent reasons to read again the works of Karl Popper and Bertrand Russell, those two great 20th century rationalist philosophers.
Both thinkers help us to understand that there is no substitute to reason to improve the lot of mankind and that, ultimately, Russell was not far off the mark when he saw religion as the dragon to slay, in its old and new manifestations.
