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                    IS RELIGION OF USE?


Reprinted from "Essays on Freethinking," Vol. 1, published
by American Atheist Press, Austin, Texas.

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	Chapman Cohen (1868-1954) was the third president of
the National Secular Society, Britain's largest Atheist
organization. He was a noted orator and writer on behalf
of the Atheist cause.

	There are no questions of so vital importance to man
as those that cluster around religion. So said a daily
paper the other day. And we meet the assertion with a flat
denial. Really, there is no subject of so little intrinsic
importance as that of religion. Everyone finds they can
quite safely treat other people's religion as of no
importance. The Christian treats his own religion with the
utmost gravity, and laughs at those of others. The only
reason he has for thinking a particular religion is of
importance is that it happens to be his own. And the other
man never fails to return the compliment. Each one laughs
at the other's absurdity -- and cherishes with the utmost
affection his own. The awe-inspiring narrative of one
religion becomes the laughter-making material of another.
What is revered and what is laughed at is largely a matter
of geography. If Old Mother Hubbard had been in the Bible,
it would have been treated with the same gravity as Jonah
and the Whale. It is a mere accident that we have not as
many solemn commentaries dealing with the esoteric
significance of Jack and the Beanstalk as we have dealing
with the Song of Solomon. So long as we only know one
religion, we may talk of its transcendent importance. It
is when we contemplate religions as a whole, and note how
one cancels the other, that we begin to realize how easily
the whole might be dispensed with. 


	What justification is there for the often expressed
opinion that it is of profound importance to have sound
views concerning god and a future life? Does it really
matter? How can a belief in god -- for the presence of
which no one is the better, and for absence of which no
one is the worse -- how can a belief of this kind be said
to be of importance? Other things being equal, the
student, the scientist, the "man of the world," gets no
help from this belief. The belief in god never made a fool
a wise man. It has never made an honest man of a rogue;
but it has often made the road from honesty to roguery
easier than it would otherwise have been. No one, where
there is anything at stake -- say, a house to let,
business credit to be given, or an assistant to be
employed -- ever takes religious belief as an adequate
guarantee of character. Long experience has removed all
delusions on this head. In all the practical affairs of
everyday life we look to a man's recorded character, not
to his professions of faith. And it is manifestly absurd
to call important beliefs that may be, and are, so easily
and safely set on one side. 


	Today there is not even the theoretical importance
that once attached to religious beliefs. While natural
forces were believed to be either supernatural in
character or under the direct control of supernatural
beings, there was at least a theoretical importance in
forming right beliefs concerning these assumed powers. The
gods then punished or rewarded men as their beliefs
concerning them were sound or unsound. But this view is no
longer held by the great mass of educated believers. God,
they say, no longer interferes with the action of natural
forces. He works through them, and their effects on
believer and unbeliever alike are identical. And what is
this but saying in a roundabout manner that the belief in
god does not matter? If natural forces operate on all
alike, if prayer is powerless to alter them, if god does
not modify their incidence to meet the needs of believers,
if these things are true, in what essential does the
position of the believer in his dealings with Nature
differ from that of the unbeliever? I do not believe in
god, says the Atheist. I believe in god, but he does
nothing, says the Theist. What substantial difference is
there between the two positions? Practically none. Our
whole welfare depends upon our knowledge of Nature and its
processes. The theory of god *minus* this knowledge is of
no value. The knowledge *minus* the theory of god is none
the worse. And all history enforces this lesson.
Individuals and nations flourish or decay in proportion to
their understanding and use of natural forces. Nothing
else matters. The god who sent harvests and plagues,
health and disease, victory and defeat, was someone to
reckon with. But a god who does nothing may safely be set
on one side in a world where the need for intelligent
action is great. 


	The sober truth is that religious doctrines never
trouble those whose minds have not been specially prepared
for their reception. Left alone no one born in a modern
society would experience any difficulty concerning them.
If such questions occurred at all, it would only be as men
discuss the habitability of Mars, or the question of an
atmosphere in the moon. The professed interest in religion
is an artificial, a manufactured one. It is the result of
thousands of preachers impressing it upon the public; of
parents, acting as the unconscious tools of the pulpit,
impressing it on their children. The prominence given to
religion in State functions helps to perpetuate the
illusion, and the result is, not the creation of a living
conviction of the value of religion, but a divorce between
theory and practice that makes our public and political
life a mass of insincerity and mental crookedness. Long
ago Emerson said:


		"Our young people are diseased with the
     theological problems of original sin, origin of evil,
     and the like. These never presented a practical
     difficulty to any man -- never darkened any man's
     road who did not go out of his way to seek them.
     These are the soul's mumps, and measles, and whooping
     cough -- a simple mind will not know these enemies. 
     But a simple -- that is a free mind -- is precisely
     what we are not allowed to have. Our education, our
     social environment, is so arranged that the dice are
     loaded against us from the start. Our enemies wear
     the garb of friends, and our friends are
     unconsciously made our enemies. The "Black Army" is
     in occupation, and our chances of a free life in a
     free city are small while we give the leaders of the
     Army an honoured place in our homes and in the
     schools." 


	It is an old complaint with the clergy that people
"forget god." The wonder is that it is never asked *why*
god is forgotten! A god who did something would not be
ignored in this way. People could not, even if they were
inclined to do so. But the suggestive thing is, not that
god is ignored, but that no one is the worse for ignoring
him. In every other direction the pressure of insistent
facts is such that they command attention. Society cannot
retain bad drains and keep free from disease. We cannot
eat bad food and drink impure water without paying the
price. Natural facts, real facts, cannot be ignored with
impunity. Sooner or later we are brought up against the
facts of existence. Why is it, then, that people can go on
year after year, not merely blind to god's existence, but
convinced that their disbelief in his existence is
justified by the facts, and feeling no need for the
assumption of his being? That is the real question the
believer has to face, and never does. The truth is that
god is not forgotten, he is found out. People have become
aware of the fact that "god" is no more than one of those
primitive ideas that were framed in the childhood of the
race, and which have become utterly discredited by more
mature thought. It is the hypothesis of god that is
ignored, and the reason for that is precisely the one that
justified the rejection of witchcraft or demoniacal
possession. 


	It is not true then, that the question of religion is
of vital importance. It is only needful that people should
understand it, and that chiefly because to understand it
is the surest way of leading to its rejection. For the
rest there are a hundred and one things in life that are
of greater importance than religion. The land question,
the housing question, sanitation, education, are all of
infinitely greater importance than any of the questions
about which theology concerns itself. Yet we put on one
side matters of "great pith and moment" while we discuss
questions of vestments, and lights, and baptism, and the
other grotesques that go to make up the phantasmagoria of
theology. We starve our scientific workers while we
squander millions on a priesthood that has left its evil
impress on every page of European history. We allow that
priesthood to retain a footing in our schools, and thus
deliver up the new generation mentally shackled and ready
for exploitation. We cry out for reform, and refuse to
recognize that the most pressing reform of all is to learn
to take things in the order of their importance; to deal
with this life while we have it, and with any other on its
emergence.


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