In an article printed in the magazine Humanist in Canada, Randy Wicker, a gay atheist, writes that “militant atheists are unfortunately often like the religious harpies they hate.” His statement points to a wider truth: that individuals and groups at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum tend to have more in common with each other than with anyone in between. As an example, the former socialist governments of Eastern Europe were frequently just as repressive as right-wing dictatorships in other parts of the world. Wicker’s words also ring true in a more specific sense, in that militant atheists ironically do resemble their fanatically religious foes. 

To the former group of militants belong a good number of contributors to Humanist in Canada as well as many members of Canada’s organized humanist movement. Disdaining Wicker’s “live and let live” attitude towards religion, they put themselves in the rather odd position of railing against something they don’t even believe exists.   While some of Humanist in Canada’s articles deal with issues such as the environment, others focus on attacking religion and describing its supposedly unhealthy influence in the world. The magazine moreover takes an aggressive “missionary position”: like religious fundamentalist publications such as Awake (the bulletin of the Jehovah’s Witnesses), it seeks to draw outsiders into its fold. 

Forcing one’s views 

Although Humanist in Canada’s anti-religious tracts strike me, a practising Catholic, as offensive, I would defend the magazine’s right to publish them, just as I would oppose any censorship of Chick Publications, an anti-Catholic diatribe put out by a Christian fundamentalist group. A few humanists, however, have gone beyond the point of spouting insulting material and hinted at the possibility of forcing their views on the general population, which includes religious adherents in addition to non-believers unconnected to the humanist movement. 

One such humanist is Wendell Watters, a psychiatrist and author of the book Deadly Doctrine. In Deadly Doctrine, which discusses the purported harmful effects of religion on individuals and on society as a whole, he suggests the government consider waging a campaign to protect children from the dangers of religion just as it has crusaded against tobacco and alcohol. Such a proposal is, to my mind, frightening and should be opposed not only by believers - particularly Christians, at whom Watters takes particular aim - but by anybody concerned about religious and other liberties. 

The central point of Deadly Doctrine is that a religious upbringing harms children. By being raised in a faith, youngsters come to believe they are unworthy sinners dependent on an all-powerful God. It follows therefore that “children growing up in families relatively untainted by Christian notions of self-loathing will be more likely to develop self-esteem than children in a ‘good’ Christian home.” These negative consequences persist into adulthood, according to Watters. For example religion’s - especially Christianity’s - erotophobia supposedly makes men and women sexually dysfunctional. Deadly Doctrine also charges that church-going impairs family relations because it emphasizes the “human-to-God” bond over the “human-to-human” bond. Relgious belief ultimately hurts us all, Watters says, and thus the government should think about taking action against it. 

State’s involvement 

Parents obviously shouldn’t work themselves into a frenzy worrying that they might be forbidden to take their children to church or other places of worship in the near future. Watters eventually concedes that perhaps the government should not interfere in private matters such as religious faith or the lack thereof. His conclusion appears to stem more from self-interest than consideration for others’ freedom of belief, though, as he acknowledges that similar state intervention could curb the expression of his humanist creed. 

Nonetheless, the very idea of a government-sponsored campaign against citizens’ personal beliefs is unsettling. In light of Watters’ comparison of such a campaign to the current one against smoking, one wonders what form the former effort might take. Would employees be prohibited from wearing religious symbols such as crosses and the Star of David in the workplace? Would young people be indoctrinated into atheism or publicly discouraged from attending religious services? These scenarios may seem like figments of a wild imagination, but they’re not that far-fetched either.  

While humanists like to swell on the more unsavory aspects of religion, such as the Inquisition and witch hunts, a quick glance at the history of places like Eastern Europe makes it clear that a fair bit of repression has been committed in the name of atheism too. Moreover, Canadian humanists, while not in the same league as yesterday’s Communist leaders, are not above imposing themselves on others. The Humanist Association of Ottawa, for instance, opposed the teaching in the public schools of a comparative religion course, which did not advocate any belief system but merely sought to foster religious tolerance among children, on the grounds that the course did not adequately cover the dark side of religion. Considering all this, a Watters-led anti-religious crusade is an ugly prospect. 

Watters’ comparison of religion to smoking as a potential target of government intervention contains a serious flaw. Restrictions on smoking were enacted at least in part because studies have demonstrated smokers, as well as individuals exposed to second-hand smoke, have higher rates of illnesses such as lung cancer than do people who neither smoke nor inhale smoke produced by others. Such studies are known as controlled studies. That is, they compare two groups: an experimental group, which in this case would include smokers and/or people regularly exposed to second-hand smoke, and a control group, which would consist of non-smokers unexposed to tobacco from other sources. These studies have generally shown that members of the experimental group are more likely to develop lung cancer than are those of the control group, a finding that strongly suggests tobacco’s negative impact. 
Control groups 

Bans on smoking in public places thus make sense in that they protect people to a certain extent from the dangers of tobacco. On the other hand, the observation that some smokers develop lung cancer would not in itself be enough to lay the blame on cigarettes, because without a control group of non-smokers, it would be impossible to say with certainty that tobacco, rather than some other factor, was responsible for the disease. 

To justify a campaign against religion, Watters should present controlled studies indicating that children raised in religious households have higher rates of psychological disturbances, such as poor self-esteem, than do their peers in less or non-observant homes. 

Deadly Doctrine makes no mention of any such research. The reason for the omission is simple: studies showing a harmful effect of religion on young people are scanty. In fact, the available evidence suggests youngsters living in religious homes enjoy better mental health. For example, despite Watters’ belief that Christian teaching damages children’s self-concept, at least two controlled studies have found young people from secular families have lower self-esteem than do those with more religious parents. In light of this and other research, the scientific ground for a public campaign against religion is flimsy. 

As to err is human but to admit one’s errors is not, Watters tries to go around the lack of evidence of this view that religion harms children. He claims that his statements have not been “subjected to rigorous scientific examination” and that in any case the “methodology for testing these hypotheses is a long way from being developed” - ignoring research that has found a positive relationship between religion and youngsters’ well-being. 

In an attempt to prove his points, Watters reports on patients of his who were raised in religious households and who subsequently developed psychological problems. Such an approach is known in scientific circles as the case study method. This method, however, has a major shortcoming: individual cases do not always reflect the experiences of the average person or the general population. The situation of Watters’ patients may thus not necessarily represent that of other people raised in a faith. 

There is another serious limitation inherent in the case study method. In looking at individual patients, it is tempting to ascribe their difficulties to a single cause and to ignore other factors that may have contributed to their situation. Watters, as a militant atheist, might have concentrated solely on religion as the source of his clients’ problems and failed to take account of their other background characteristics. His anti-religious bias becomes apparent when he tries to explain how religion specifically brought individuals to his couch or got them into trouble in other ways. 

These explanations frequently require - pardon the pun - huge leaps of faith. For instance, a young woman’s suicide following rejection by her boyfriend is attributed to the fact that by “blackmailing its followers with the sacrifice of Jesus,” Christianity influences people to kill themselves in order to “blackmail loved ones into a state of ... contrition.” He meanwhile makes no reference to statistics showing lower suicide rates among the religiously committed. His logic may appear baffling to most people, but just as some religious denominations adhere to doctrines incomprehensible to outsiders (the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ ban on blood transfusions comes to mind), so does Watters’ humanism. 
Speculation as fact 

Deadly Doctrine relies on another sometimes misused method to bolster its claims: theoretical speculation. Watters speculates in one chapter that children in Christian families will develop low self-esteem because various biblical quotations, such as “not that we are sufficient of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God” (2 Cor 3:5), warn believers against pride and self-love. While many theoretical assumptions have led to important discoveries, others have collapsed under the weight of contradictory evidence from controlled studies. 

Watters fails to mention a single controlled study to back his theory of a relationship between Christianity and low self-esteem. One might conclude that as in his case study approach, his theoretical assumptions are overly influenced by his militantly anti-religious stance. In any event, they provide no convincing scientific evidence of the purported harm done to children by religion. 

When I’m in one of my least Christian moods, I find Watters’ unscientific approach not only inconsistent but dishonest. A more honest position on his part would be to present his arguments as tenets of his individual belief system rather than as established facts. But that’s a stance he’s highly unlikely to adopt. Watters is basically an atheist fundamentalist, and like any other fundamentalist - whether Christian, Hindu, Communist, fascist, or whatever else - he cannot admit that world views beside his own are valid or that his beliefs may be nothing more than personal opinions. Such an admission would furthermore compromise his mission to turn “Homo religiosus” into “Homo sapiens” and eradicate religion from society. 

Things of this world 

After all, an essential part of fundamentalists’ pitch to potential converts is the message that the latter’s existing beliefs are not only wrong but harmful. Whereas the religious proselytizer can assure those who reject his or her message that they will burn in hell for eternity, Watters can only promise suffering in the here and now. He therefore thunders about religion’s negative impact on people’s psychological well-being. 

Watters and other like-minded humanists have the right to their views as well as the right to express them. Imposing those views on others, though, is another matter. Watters has as much right to demand a state-sponsored campaign against religion as the Jehovah’s Witnesses do to legally ban blood transfusions (the Witnesses have actually never made such a demand; I am describing a hypothetical situation here). In a pluralistic and democratic country such as Canada, church (“church” here meaning any belief system) and state should be separate. And this separation must not be broken by any fundamentalists, whether of the religious or atheistic variety. 

(Emily Monroy is a translator working in Toronto who is interested in religion and its portrayal in the media.)