The piece ends as follows (emphasis added):
Hitchens is a case worth studying. He is more interesting than Dawkins because evidently more psychologically complex and humanly engaging. If we Catholics are right about God and humanity, why was he so wrong? Or, put another way, what can we learn from his attitude about how to understand our own religious claims and about how our lives reflect them? Hitchens pointed to the record of evil associated with Christianity and with Catholicism in particular. It is glib to reply that humanism has its own tale of terrors, and problematic if we also claim that religious adherence brings transforming grace. If I were to take up Hitchens’s campaign against religion it would be to ask again and again: “Where is your grace and your holiness?”
This challenge has particular force against those who downplay human sinfulness and the extent of depravity. Not until we have taken seriously the idea that the effects of sin and ongoing sinfulness corrupt the soul will we be in a position to fashion an effective counter to the charges Hitchens brought against Catholicism and Christianity more generally. It will not be to say that we are better than he claimed. Rather, we need to explain effectively our failings and those of all humanity in terms of a shared supernatural identity. To which we might add, adapting a saying of Wilde’s, whose style of wit Hitchens sometimes echoed: “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking to heaven in hope of salvation.”
Two comments.
First, I don't find it at all glib to point out the horrors of atheistic humanism which in the 20th century alone are greater than those inflicted over 20 centuries of Christianity. The purpose of pointing that out is to underscore the fact that it is not religion as religion that is the source of the horrors, but dogmatic adherence to a worldview, whether religious or anti-religious, that permits the suppression and murder of opponents. Bigotry and hate have their source in the human heart, not in religion or in humanism. Certain forms of religion and humanism may give carte blanche to the exercise of murderous impulsees, but the animating cesspool and prime mover ansd applier of doctrines is and remains the human heart. It is a fundamental mistake of leftists to seek the source of evil in something external such as religion or capitalism when its source is in a mind made dark by a foul human heart.
But I wholly agree with Haldane that religious people need to explain why their beliefs and practices are so ineffective in transforming their character. We all know people whose fervent religiosity has made scarcely a dent in their fundamental nastiness. Why does religion contribute so little to the amelioration of people? Twenty centuries of Christianity and even more centuries of Buddhism and we are still tearing each other apart, body and soul. As for glib remarks, Chesterton's takes the cake: "Christianity hasn't failed; it's never been tried." (Or something like that; I quote from memory. If you have the exact quotation in its context with references, e-mail me.) If it hasn't been tried by now, it will never be tried.
Of course, one can argue that the religious would have been worse without religion and I don't doubt that that is true. And not only are the religious better than they would have been without it, the irreligious are also better than they would have been without it. For religion supplies the morality that civilizes and humanizes, a morality that permeates the social atmosphere and affects even those who reject the metaphysical underpinnings. Unfortunately, Western civilization now appears to be running on empty, on the fumes of the Judeo-Christian-Athenian tradition, and one fears what happens when they too evaporate. A good question for the New Atheists: once your suppression of religion is complete, what will you put in its place? How will you inculcate morality, and what morality will you inculcate?
Although Haldane does not mention the Fall by name, he alludes to it. The explanation for religious inefficacy anent moral transformation has to involve the notion that man is a fallen being. Although the religious are not much better than the irreligious, they at least appreciate their fallen condition. They at least know they are in the gutter, and knowing this, are inclined to do something about it.
Addendum: My thanks to several readers who have quickly responded with the correct G. K. Chesterton quotation. It is at the end of the following paragraph:
Of course, I mean that Catholicism was not tried; plenty of Catholics were tried, and found guilty. My point is that the world did not tire of the church's ideal, but of its reality. Monasteries were impugned not for the chastity of monks, but for the unchastity of monks. Christianity was unpopular not because of the humility, but of the arrogance of Christians. Certainly, if the church failed it was largely through the churchmen. But at the same time hostile elements had certainly begun to end it long before it could have done its work. In the nature of things it needed a common scheme of life and thought in Europe. Yet the mediaeval system began to be broken to pieces intellectually, long before it showed the slightest hint of falling to pieces morally. The huge early heresies, like the Albigenses, had not the faintest excuse in moral superiority. And it is actually true that the Reformation began to tear Europe apart before the Catholic Church had had time to pull it together. The Prussians, for instance, were not converted to Christianity at all until quite close to the Reformation. The poor creatures hardly had time to become Catholics before they were told to become Protestants. This explains a great deal of their subsequent conduct. But I have only taken this as the first and most evident case of the general truth: that the great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
It is from What 's Wrong with the World, Part I, Chapter 5. I am now inclined to say, having seen the context, that my calling the quotation glib was itself somewhat glib.
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