Last night I watched Bill O'Riely's interview with Richard Dawkins regarding his book The God Delusion. I was disappointed, needless to say. It wasn't so much an "interview" as Bill O'Riely doing his "good ol' smackdown" while Dawkins tried to get a word in edgewise. Dawkin's composure was good, but nonetheless I'd hoped that he would walk all over O'Riely. Bill O'Riely also made the annoying argument that all he needed to know about atheism came from the "fact" that five of the world's greatest mass murderers, including Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot, were atheists. This is a wonderful example of guilt by association, a logical fallacy in which the character of a view's proponents or practitioners are used to dismiss said idea. Apparently, O'Riely isn't even familiar with the basic tenents of debate. Or he is, and he just likes to slimeball his way out of reach of rationality.

The good thing about the experience, though, is that this is the first time I've seen Dawkins interviewed, and I'm glad to have heard a little bit from a man I've heard so much about. After having seen the interview, I became curious about Dawkin's book. So I went to amazon.com and checked to see if they had one of those "look inside" features on his book, hoping to get a quick taste of the tome's thesis. Unfortunately, there was no such excerpt, but I did read a few of the reviews, and I came across this gem:

While Dawkins can be witty, even confirmed atheists who agree with his advocacy of science and vigorous rationalism may have trouble stomaching some of the rhetoric: the biblical Yahweh is "psychotic," Aquinas's proofs of God's existence are "fatuous" and religion generally is "nonsense."

I do happen to agree that Yahweh is psychotic (or at least deranged), that just about any proofs of his existence have no foundation, but the last item bugs me. It seems to me that so many of today's proponents of atheism focus so single-mindedly on its capacity to spread genocide, war, discrimination, slavery, murder and oppression. And for good reason: much blood has been shed in the name of religion, especially the three Abrahamic traditions. It's understandable to fantasize how a world without religion would be so much more peaceful than the one we have today.

But would that be the case? I imagine that such a world would be more peaceful, but I doubt it would be incredibly more so. Religion is not so much a cause of grief and oppression as much as it is a tool of it. Organized religions, especially those of the Judao-Christian variety, are designed largely for the perpetuation of a system of social mores and hierarchies. Just look at the Jewish god Yahweh. The Gods of the Romans, the Greeks, the Norse, the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Persians, Indians are all fundamentally the same, with a few deviations. There is always a god of wisdom (Athena, Thoth), a goddess of love and passion (Venus/Aphrodite, Ishtar), and the ruling God of the winds, rains and thunderbolt. Gods such as Odin, Zeus, Indra, and of course Yahveh. These gods are tribal in nature: gods of war, gods of the Chosen people—the in-group. The thunderbolt is the weapon that upholds their holy Law.

In Judaism, eventually all other gods were scrapped for Yahweh, who was to be the one and the only god a Jew could worship. Yahweh, in Jewish myth, delivered the Ten Commandments that served as the law of Israel, and is credited as the inspiration for the entirety of the Hebrew Bible: a text that is largely concerned with geneologies and rules of conduct. Such a focus in the holy texts and the adoption of such a strict and jealous god as the only ture god bespeaks a great concern with maintaining social order.

There are rules for just about everything in the TaNaKh. From what you eat to rituals that must be performed after sex, who you can have sex with, prohibitions from the spilling of seed and how to sell your daughter into slavery. Women are treated as property, as are children, and those who defy the social orderr are stoned. There is no questioning the ruling priesthood or the fathers who are rulers of their family. Modern prejudices against gays, women, and the faithless are already present. All these properties are of great use for a warrior culture that seeks great control over its people and those it conquers. And that control has lived on today through modern Christianity.

Indeed it can be said that religion is the cause of much opression, if you say it causes it because that prejudice and anger are taught and practiced along with that religion. But that is only a proximate cause. What caused the hatred and discrimination to be there in the first place? Is it inherent to religion?

It could be, if the religions of the world were handed down by one true God. But that is unlikely. All the evidence points to religion as a human invention. That implies that it is not religion that causes hatred, or bigotry. It is us. Religion is simply used as a tool to justify the hatred that already exists inside us, and to pass it down from one generation to the next.

I wish that in times where we see such arguments between theists and atheists that people would remember the words of Joseph Campbell. Campbell looked at the world of mythology and religion as artifacts of deep psychological metaphor, not as facts to be taken seriously. It is when we take gods, demons and holy texts as fact, Campbell says, that we go astray and commit the atrocities that are commited today in the name of God. When we take them in context—in metaphor—religion and spirituality become powerful tools capable of much good.

I believe it is good that Dawkins and others are writing books on this subject, although I do fear this trend becoming an attack on religion instead of a call to critical thought. But perhaps that is necessary. The current religious systems of the world require severe reform for them to serve their true purpose. The term "spirituality" needs to be taken out of the realm of the supernatural and into the psychological. The concept needs to be freed from the bonds of tribal law and prejudice and allowed to enter the inner realm of the psyche. But why bother, you ask? What does spirituality have to offer anyway if it can't cure cancer? I think, yet again, the words of Joseph Campbell hold the key:

Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shal slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.