Is Religion A Moral Force For Change ?

One of the arguments for religion is that it's the basis for morality, and that without religion mankind would be left without any moral guidance. One of the ideas that springs from this belief is that religion has been throughout history a moral force for change that has made the world a better place. Is this true?

We already know that more people have been killed over religious beliefs than for any other cause. People have always gone to war (even before the establishment of the two bloodiest religions -- christianity and islam) secure in the knowledge that they were in the right because god was on their side. This continues today, regardless of whether there is any real justification for a war.

This fact by itself would be enough to create serious doubt about the morality of religion. But what about change for the good of mankind. Has it really been as a result of the moral force of religion? The evidence suggests it has not. Take for example the question of slavery, which many want to think was abolished because of religious morality. Steven Weinberg, University of Texas physics professor and Nobel Prize winner, doesn't think so. Here's what he has to say:

The distinguished physicist Freeman Dyson has emphasized the role of religious belief in the suppression of slavery. I'd like to comment briefly on this point, not to try to prove anything with one example but just to illustrate what I think about the moral influence of religion. 

It is certainly true that the campaign against slavery and the slave trade was greatly strengthened by devout Christians, including the Evangelical layman William Wilberforce in England and the Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing in America. But Christianity, like other great world religions, lived comfortably with slavery for many centuries, and slavery was endorsed in the New Testament. So what was different for anti-slavery Christians like Wilberforce and Channing? There had been no discovery of new sacred scriptures, and neither Wilberforce nor Channing claimed to have received any supernatural revelations. Rather, the eighteenth century had seen a widespread increase in rationality and humanitarianism that led others—for instance, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan—also to oppose slavery, on grounds having nothing to do with religion. Lord Mansfield, the author of the decision in Somersett's Case, which ended slavery in England (though not its colonies), was no more than conventionally religious, and his decision did not mention religious arguments. Although Wilberforce was the instigator of the campaign against the slave trade in the 1790s, this movement had essential support from many in Parliament like Fox and Pitt, who were not known for their piety. As far as I can tell, the moral tone of religion benefited more from the spirit of the times than the spirit of the times benefited from religion. 

Where religion did make a difference, it was more in support of slavery than in opposition to it. Arguments from scripture were used in Parliament to defend the slave trade. Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. 

The fact is that religion has never been a moral instrument for change. In fact, just the opposite is true. Religion is the tool most often used by those in power to keep change from happening -- to maintain the status quo. Whatever one might think of the political views of Karl Marx, he was right about religion. He called it the "opiate of the masses" -- a way to keep people's minds off their troubles (both political and economic) so they don't demand change.

Rather than being an initiator and leader in making change happen, religion usually has to be dragged kicking and screaming into finally accepting the change that people (through humanist thought) have accomplished or are demanding. It has made change more difficult -- a roadblock that must be removed or overcome for change to happen.

Religion takes credit for change but only after that change has happened. It is forced to do this to protect itself and to justify and defend the new paradigm. Religion may get credit for moral changes -- but it is credit it doesn't deserve.