The God I Don't Believe In Is A Good God, A Just God, A Merciful God

Consider two imaginary countries, A and B.

The gods of A require a human sacrifice, chosen by lot, once each year. B’s gods abominate human sacrifice, and forbid it absolutely. A, however, is a relatively peaceful society, with little interest in territorial expansion; when A goes to war, its soldiers kill other soldiers and don’t harm civilians. B is aggressive, seeking to become a “great nation.” It makes frequent raids into neighboring kingdoms, and its soldiers kill everyone in the towns they strike, because B’s gods are well pleased to see the infidels slaughtered.

A few days ago I quoted Marilynne Robinson’s dictum, borrowed from a 19^th century divine, “that, in comparing religions, great care must be taken to consider the best elements of one with the best of the other, and the worst with the worst”. The more I think about it, the less I understand how to make it work. The philosopher Walter Kaufmann once criticized the tendency to judge one’s own religion by its principles, and competing religions by their practice. I can make more sense of that, but I think that in judging a religion or a culture, principles and practice can’t be separated, nor can best elements and worst – especially since they are intimately related, even entangled in each other.

Look again at A and B. Who would disagree that it’s better to forbid human sacrifice? But if we look at the body counts, A kills fewer people than B, and B’s eagerness to kill the heathen for their gods’ glory doesn’t look so different from human sacrifice. What are the “best elements” of each country, what are the worst, and which has the better principles?

I deliberately made these examples lopsided, because as far as I know, actual societies that practiced human sacrifice – the Aztecs, for example -- were generally pretty violent and aggressive. Contrasting A and B so strongly will, I hope, make my point clearer. (I did, I admit, take some inspiration from Ursula LeGuin's parable "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.")

Now imagine countries X and Y. X forbids infanticide, because the life of every little baby is precious to its gods. The sight of children suffering is unutterably painful to these tender deities. Unwanted newborns must be taken to the temples to be cared for; few live to see their first birthday, however, because the gods take the little ones to be with them. Infant and child mortality are high in X, because the poor (of whom there are many) are expected to support their children by their own resources, just as the rich do.

Y, on the other hand, permits infanticide by exposure. Unwanted newborns are left in the courtyard of any temple or shrine. The priests and priestesses find them and raise them attentively, because the gods of Y hate little children and don’t want them running around their heavenly home. They should be kept alive until they’ve matured and will make better company. So most live to adulthood and, having been well-educated in the temple schools, marry well. Not too many infants are exposed, though, because the poor receive a lot of support from the state.

This example is a bit closer to reality: there’s a correlation between legal abortion and the welfare of children. Countries where abortion is illegal have higher infant mortality, more child poverty, and spend less on education. The same is true for states within the US. But again, the point of this thought experiment is how to judge differing religions. Which country has the better gods, X or Y? If we try to compare them by their better aspects, how do we decide which they are?