Yes, Religion Does Have a Purpose

Amy Alkon, a militant atheist, writes of a woman who complained about college Christian groups that threw pizza socials. "Of course they threw pizza socials," I want to say. "College students like pizza socials. That's half the point of a group like that. It's an excuse to have pizza socials."

I'm not a religious person. But I'm often frustrated by atheism's most public figures; religion has done a great deal of good, and they don't like to admit it. Amy Alkon is usually such a person, and even though I typically agree with her I find her a bit shrill whenever the subject comes up. But today she gets it right. Religion is as common as it is not because the Pope is a nefarious hypnotist with a supernatural ability to compel us to submit to his beliefs, but because religion serves a number of real purposes in most people's lives.

The most obvious benefit is psychological; belief in god gives an order to the universe that makes a lot of people feel more secure about their lives. I don't need religion to balance me; I trust that everything will turn out well, and try to make it so, but don't need god to keep me from freaking out. But if your church helps you get through the day, put in that extra bit of effort, or just generally makes your life happier and better, more power to you.

But a lot of atheists miss the wholly practical advantages of belonging to a church: a social network. Church socials give you a place to hang out and meet people in your area (and things to do with them)—something that lots of twentysomethings, especially in the cities, say is becoming harder and harder to find. Without her church my grandmother would spend her days sitting at home watching the shopping network on TV; instead she has a circle of friends, places to go, and things to do so she doesn't get terminally bored. Church is an opportunity for business networking as well, putting parishioners in contact with all sorts of people from the community whom they might want to talk to. It's a convenient structure to organize large-scale charitable activities. And it can be a place to turn if you have a run of bad luck and need some help to tide you over.

Churches these days aren't doing as good a job at a lot of these as they used to, largely because we don't let them. The important part of a social network is the 'social' part; as fewer people participate, whether from secularization or other reasons, the networks become less valuable and people have less reason to join in. But we don't yet have a good replacement. In the long run I suspect the internet will provide; as the social networking sites figure out how to create interfaces that actually allow their users to network socially, they will replicate many of the benefits that churches used to provide in abundance.

But many atheist spokespeople remind me of G K Chesterton's comment on overambitious reformers:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

When someone like Richard Dawkins (a very bright man whom I much admire) calls religion a virus and explains that it serves no purpose and is actively harmful, he alienates the majority of Americans who know that their religion benefits them. The secularist spokemen won't be taken seriously until they can admit that religious organizations benefit their members, and find some other way to provide those benefits.

And that's why I think Amy is basically right when she says we should have Atheist organizations. Not because atheism needs to be a religion, but because people like to have groups that can throw the pizza parties. Form a club for atheists to hang out, chat, meet members of the opposite sex, and go on camping trips, and a lot of them will love to join. It's really all about the pizza.