• Site Resources • Main Site Index • What is Atheism? • Religion & Theism • Skepticism & Logic • Arguments for / against Gods • Evolution vs. Creationism • Religious Timelines • Hate Mail • Glossary • Book Reviews

After the terrorist attacks which occurred in the United States on September 11, 2001, there began the natural quest to assign blame - to figure out who was responsible for the thousands of deaths and, if possible, punish them. The process of assigning blame is psychologically and socially important for humans, and thus taking a closer look at where people end up placing that blame can be informative about how they think.

Looking over several attempts in the past months to figure out who was ultimately responsible for the terrorist attacks has revealed one interesting commonality: many people seem to have the need to believe that religion had nothing whatsoever to do with what happened. The earliest example of this is also probably the most famous, Jerry Falwell on Pat Robertson's 700 Club television show:

The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this. Throwing God out, successfully, with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this. God will not be mocked. When we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe the pagans, the abortionists, and the feminists and the gays and lesbians, who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who tried to secularize America, I point the thing in their face and say, 'You helped this to happen.'

Falwell later apologized for the "timing" of this statement, but he never apologized for the actual content. What many may not realize is the fact that Falwell's theological opinion here is shared by a great many fundamentalists throughout the country. The radical anti-abortion group Missionaries to the Unborn has posted on their web site the following comment:

New York City continues to choose sin as if there is no God who judged Sodom & Gomorrah by fire and destroyed the Jewish nation at the hand of a foreign enemy for shedding innocent blood. The point of September 11th has been completely missed.

This was in response to the fact that Michael Bloomberg, then speaking as mayor-elect, expressed the fact that he is pro-choice and pro-gay rights. Theirs is really not an unusual perspective - it has long been a part of Jewish, Christian and Muslim theology that when something really bad happens, it does so because of God's wrath. And of course, God is never wrathful for no good reason - it must be that the people suffer because they have done something wrong.

But there is, I think, something more going on here: a desire to believe that the cause of the attacks is something other than religion - anything other than religion. It is preferable to believe that God has brought this to us because of our sins rather than believe that other humans motivated by sincere religious faith could have done it themselves.

We can witness similar motivations among others who argue for their own pet theories as to what caused the terrorist attacks. One common example is the argument that the terrorists and their supporters aren't "really" Muslims and that Islam, being "really" a religion of peace, couldn't possibly motivate anyone to kill.

Usually, this sort of argument is made by Muslims themselves. Although Islam does have a lot to say about peace, it is disingenuous to tell others that "real" Islam is only about peace and that "real" Islam has nothing about it which can support violence. Islam, like Christianity, has as much to do with violence as it does with peace because both, being human religions, exhibit both human failings and virtues.

A rather interesting way to go about has recently come from one Angelo M. Codevilla, a professor of international relations at Boston University and a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute. In a recent article he has offered the unbelievable argument that the responsibility for terrorism ultimately lies with "well-known atheists who live un-Muslim lives and have persecuted unto death the Muslim movements."

It requires a very circuitous route to arrive at such a destination. First, Codevilla has to ignore the obvious fact Osama bin Laden and others like them offer nothing but religious justifications for their actions. They certainly can't be branded with the label "atheist," so Codevilla has to look elsewhere.

What he finds are Palestine's Yasser Arafat, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Syria's Assad family. Of course, they aren't atheists either, but they do lead political movements which are ever so slightly more secular than many of their counterparts. Evidently, for Codevilla, the slightest hint of secularism is the equivalent of atheism. Thus, it is atheism which is responsible for global terrorism and, naturally, the attacks of September 11th, rather than religion.

Why is it so awful to see religion and religious faith as bearing some responsibility for violence and terrorism? Such acknowledgement would have two immediate results: first, it would require admitting that religions come at least as much from humans as they do from supposed gods; and second, it would require admitting religious faith is not always a good thing.

Neither of these are admissions which many religious conservatives would be willing to make. Falwell, Robertson and Codevilla are not the sorts who will acknowledge that there can be problems with religion and religious faith. Secularists and religious liberals, however, do acknowledge the existence of failings in religious systems, and it is up to them to ensure that religious conservatives do not dominate the public discourse.

There is a common prejudice that it is good for someone to follow some religion -any religion, no matter what it is - and that being religious is better than being irreligious. This prejudice is encouraged by those who, like Codevilla, give people the impression that "real" religion does not cause any problems and that atheism is always to blame for violence. That is why it is important for those who know better to confront such inaccuracies and set the record straight. People need to understand that neither religion nor theism are required for morality and that religious faith is not an unmitigated good.