here is an assumption among some opponents of religion, one of them being Richard Dawkins, that the following contrary to the fact statement (a counterfactual as such a statement is called in philosophy) is true: Had there been no religion, then there would not be so very much of the hostility that we find in the world today; hence, the world would be much better off.  Dawkins writes:

Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no religion.  Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as Christ-killers’, no Northern Ireland ‘troubles, no ‘honour killings’, no shiny-suited bouffant haired televangelists fleecing guillible people of their money (‘God wants you to give til it hurts’.  Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues; no beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female for the crime of showing an inch of it. 

The God Delusion (pp. 1-2)

The inference that we are supposed to draw, of course, is that had there not been religion, then the bad things mentioned in the above quotation would not have occurred; hence, the world would have been better off without religion.  I shall demonstrate the inadequacy of this line of reasoning.  There are in fact two problems with it.  I shall begin with the more obvious one.  The second problem, as we shall see, pertains to the value of self-sacrifice that has been majestically husbanded by religion and which bears upon, of all things, academic institutions.

Now, what is certainly true is that

(A) If there had been no religion, then there would not have been any crimes or atrocities committed against human beings in the name of religion. 

But claim (A) is logically different from and does not entail claim

(B) If there had been no religion, then there would not have been any crimes or atrocities committed against human beings. 

And surely it is claim (B) and not claim (A) that is supposed to be established by the long passage from Dawkins’ book quoted above.  For things are radically uninteresting if, instead of (B), all that Dawkins meant for his readers to infer from that passage is:

(C) If there had been no religion, there would of course still be crimes and atrocities committed against human beings.  It is just that these would not be committed in the name of religion.

After all, a crime or an atrocity is no less painful merely because it was committed for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with religion.  And there seems to be no shortage of crimes and atrocities committed by individuals whose motivations are entirely shorn of religious convictions. 

Some counterfactual are more rightly seen as more plausibly true than others.  Here is a plausibly true counterfactual: (i) If I had been born 6 days later, it is rather unlikely that my life would be any different from what it is now. 

As things stands, this counterfactual seems true enough; for it seems next to impossible to point to anything relevant during the intervening 6 days that would count for a substantial difference.  All sorts of things could have happened, but they did not.  If, for example, during the intervening 6 days both my parents had died or had been exposed to some radiation that rendered me blind in the womb, it is rather likely that things would surely have been very different.  But none of that happened.

Now, contrast (i) with: (ii) If I had been born blind owing to an infection acquired in the womb during the 7th month, it is unlikely that my life would be any different from what it is now.  Needless to say, this counterfactual is so far removed from the reality that it is not all clear how we should evaluate it, although we are quite clear about what it means to be born blind.  Obviously, there are ways in which my life would be fundamentally different.  But do would we know that my life as a blind person would have been less fortunate than my present life?  Absolutely not.  My life could actually turn out to have been more fortunate. 

Consider Ray Charles.  When compared to any number of individuals with sight, Ray Charles seems to have had quite a fortunate life—so much so that our knowledge that he was blind does not call to mind the typical concerns or pity that we have when we think of a blind person. 

With the second counterfactual regarding my having been born blind, only one fact about my initial entry into the world has changed.  I have the exact same genetic make-up, social background, and so on.  Yet, it is next to impossible to extrapolate from that single change what my life would have been like. 

Turning to Dawkins’ counterfactual about the world had there been no religion: What is incontrovertibly true is that the world be quite different.  But just how it would be different is anything but obvious.  It is logically possible that the difference would be for the better.  But it is also logically possible that the difference would be for the worse.  The example of my being born blind makes it clear just how difficult is to extrapolate from a single change. 

Accordingly, it is sheer intellectual dishonesty to aver that there would be less evil in the world, when all that we can possibly know for sure is that in a world without religion there would be no evil committed in the name of religion.  This truth does not even entail that there would be less evil, but only the truism that the evil committed would not be committed in the name of religion. 

Certainly, Richard Dawkins is not under the delusion that it is only in the name of religion that evil is committed.

No one can deny the bad done in the name of religion.  Still, an honest and forthright discussion of a world without religion requires that we look not only at the bad occasioned by religion, but the good occasioned by religion, if indeed there be any. 

It is easy enough to come up with a list of good things done in the name of religion.  However, I want merely to draw attention to a single idea that surely has its ontogenesis in religion, namely that of self-sacrifice on behalf of others.  If there is any one single good idea with untold marvelous implications that religion has husbanded, it is the idea of self-sacrifice.  It is not clear that any other institution could husband this idea as effectively as religion has done.  So if we take away religion, then our present conception of the idea of self-sacrifice that we valorize and that religion sanctifies would also have to go. 

Now, the value of self-sacrifice has been one of the cornerstones in the development of Western civilization; and part of the proof of that turns out to be academic institutions themselves.  The idea of providing people with the proper training has deep religious roots.  Many distinguished institutions, including Harvard University and Yale University and the University of Notre Dame, to say nothing of many of Oxford’s colleges (Corpus Christi College; All Souls College), owe their beginnings to the religious ideal of self-sacrifice. 

Most major academic institutions have long since departed from their religious moorings.  But we can ask: Would these institutions have come about in the absence of religion?  Respectively, Henry Dunster and Charles Chauncy were the first two presidents of Harvard University; and both were members of the clergy.  Here is what we find about Dunster on Harvard’s website:

Dunster established education strongly allied with the Christian missionary goals of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  Students were required to read scripture and prayers twice a day at the College Hall.  Weekly recitations were encouraged.  Moreover, a code of conduct or "Rules and Precepts" was established for every student to observe.  These rules instructed students that the foundation of all sound knowledge and learning was in knowing and studying the words of God and Jesus Christ.

As this single example makes abundantly clear: Dawkins’ counterfactual world without religion would require some serious changes in the history of the world even with respect to things that we highly praise and value. 

Mr. Dawkins is very, very good.  But in his world without religion he does not get to throw out the bad things done in the name of religion and keep the good things occasioned by religion all the while pretending that the good things have a source entirely independent of religion. 

It is stupefying that a man of Richard Dawkins intellectual caliber and breadth of knowledge cannot seem to remember any of the positive contributions of religion—including those of which he is a beneficiary, if only indirectly, namely educational institutions. 

I, like Dawkins, am horrified by many aspects of religion.  Yet, if I have seen nothing in society that has come even close to anchoring a sense of self-sacrifice like religion has.  No criticism of religion has a chance of being a just and sound criticism if that criticism is committed to ignoring the gifts of religion. 

For all I know, it may be possible to show that, even when one takes into account all the good that has been done in the name of religion, the good done by religion is still substantially outweighed by the bad done by religion.  But Dawkins has not even come close to presenting that argument.  Worse, he is too committed to the truth of his conclusion even to see the need to do so.  In his athiesm, then, he is behaving rather like the religious zealots that he detests. 

Painfully, this is the right characterization of someone who claims that the very nature of religious upbringing is such that it is worse than being a victim of child sexual abuse.  If I should ever have to choose between (a) believing that being a victim of child sexual is, as Dawkins claims, worse than religious upbringing and (b) believing that God spoke to Moses through a burning bush, I would take the burning bush story any day.  For surely this much is obvious: The very nature of child sexual abuse makes it a horror for any child to experience; whereas the burning bush story can easily be played out in a number of majestic and inspriring ways. 

Dawkins is asking us to replace thesis (b) with thesis (a).  You tell me: How wonderful would that world be?