No Time For Gods

 

A frustration shared by socialists and many scientists is the persistence of belief in a god to explain the world. This is partly because ‘god’ is such a quick and easy answer to so many important questions: How did we get here? Why should I behave morally? Why am I here? While science has provided a comprehensive explanation of how and when we got here, and what we are made of, it is less certain when answering the question, why?  Instead, many people have turned to religious or other unfounded explanations.

The reason why the Socialist Party doesn't admit religious people to membership is that we regard their views, on what is after all a key issue (the nature of human existence), as wrong. In the same way, people who want to support the Labour Party or who think that Russia was socialist are not admitted to membership.

Actually, although this is, probably inevitably, how others would classify us, we do not call ourselves “atheists”. The word “Atheism” suggests a concern with opposing religious ideas in particular whereas we are concerned with promoting socialist ideas. (In fact, pointing out the mistaken ideas of religious people only forms a small part of our activity, as you have noticed.) We prefer to describe ourselves as “materialists”, i.e. as people who hold that all we humans know and can know, is derived from the experiences of our senses of the material world that surrounds us and of which we are a part.

The existence of a super-being called god or of an afterlife for humans is theoretically possible, as part of this material world. These can’t be ruled out a priori. However, neither of these hypotheses has been confirmed in accordance with methods and tests of science—the phenomena brought forward to confirm them can be much more plausibly explained in other ways. A rational, logical person ought therefore to dismiss them as disproved hypotheses.

Religious people do not do this. They are therefore thinking illogically. This wouldn’t be so bad (Socialist Party members don’t think logically all the time) if it didn’t concern a key aspect of the socialist case: human nature.

The materialist approach, which socialists take, sees humans as the product of biological and social evolution (not the creation of some super-being), that individual humans have brains and minds which cease to exist when they die (and not souls or a spirit that pre-dates birth and survives death), and that the only way humans can improve their lives is by their own collective efforts (not by relying on some outside intervention from some super-being or beings). This life is the only one we are going to get and we should therefore try to make it the best possible both for individual humans and for the whole human species. Given the present stage of human social evolution, this can only be done within the framework of a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s resources.

This is the, if you like, "philosophical’’ basis of the case for socialism. It follows from a scientific approach to human existence and problems. Religious people don't, and can’t share, this view. They can only see this life as some sort of preparation for a better life after death. Since not all of them are committed to the pessimistic and anti-human doctrine of the depraved nature of humans (though they have to be if they are orthodox followers of the world’s two main religions, Christianity and Islam), some unorthodox religious people can find a religious justification for wanting socialism. We know from experience that such people exist (perhaps you are one). What they then do is up to them. Some subscribe to the Socialist Standard or support our work in other ways. They don’t need our permission to do this. It’s their choice made, presumably, in the knowledge of our views on religion. 

 

Workers who are suppressed and exploited under capitalism should keep their attention on the real, material world in which they live; this is the only life we know we have and we must struggle to make it the best of all possible experiences. All religion is a diversion from the workers’ urgent task of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism. Apart from this, there is no evidence which can stand up to a scientific assessment to indicate that there is a supernatural life or any of the other mumbo jumbo associated with religious beliefs.