If you are more or less rational, it will be possible to make a logical prediction about the behavior of people according to the following two principles:

• Religious people will tend to perform “good” actions in greater proportion than people without religious influence.
• People without religious influence will tend to perform “bad” actions in greater proportion than religious people.

This points to religion as a positive influence on personal behavior—one that leads to more good actions and fewer bad actions. A general trend is not exempt from the influence of other variables.

Before going any further, I want to get rid of the immediate argument of some readers. Perhaps they will say that there are non-religious people. Who act with goodness and there are religious people who act with evil.

It’s true, but it doesn’t negate my point, which is to examine general trends, not exceptional cases. And, of course, the contrary ideas that assign religion a negative influence.

Overall Trend

According to these two principles of a general trend, religion has an influence on human behavior – an influence that leads to avoiding the bad and doing the good. This influence is explained by the following causes.

• First, the belief in a benevolent creator who calls for living a life based on the idea of ​​treating others as one wishes to be treated—a religion that preaches the opposite could hardly be considered a religion.
• Second, a general religious belief, of believing that creator has the ability to see all human acts and act accordingly: goodness will be rewarded in the future life, and evil will be punished.

These two causes will act on the religious person with a variable influence, depending on the strength of their religious influence: the stronger the convictions, the fewer bad acts, and more good acts would be expected, everything else being constant.

Center point

It is about proposing the existence of this:

An ordinary person, with solid religious influence, believes that he lives now with the prospect of a future life according to his conduct in this existence. This will move her to improve, make an effort, and try to be excellent.

This behavior will tend to be less intense among those who do not have these beliefs. Assuming that their existence is only the present life, will cause feelings of uselessness and meaninglessness. They will tend less towards excellence and more towards passivity and inaction.

A Concrete Case

Based on the above, I explore a specific situation, that of the person who robs a bank. It could be speculated with good probability that the person does not have clear religious convictions. If he had them, they would have acted as a brake, among several, preventing that robbery.

This is consistent with what is known about crime incentives: if prison terms go up, crime goes down; if the apprehensions increase, the same. The criminal acts logically before what he recognizes as true, the functioning of the police and justice system.

People act with the same logic when faced with what they think is true. With religious convictions, love for the creator, or even just fear of his punishment from him, the person would tend not to rob banks, for example. The key is that word, ‘tender’.

An argument against

It is a keyword because of the danger of somewhat primitive reasoning that is usually found in different authors.

They argue that for a believer the punishment for an offense is eternal. If the creator knows everything, then it would be expected that religious people would never commit any offense such as robbing a bank.

They say, therefore, that the reality that people with religious influence commit crimes is proof that religion has no influence on people’s behavior.

Of course, they do—what I’m saying is that they do them to a lesser extent depending on the strength of their beliefs because they have greater incentives not to do them. Or at least, they are aware of having acted improperly.

Religion No, Science Yes

The quoted text continues with the solution that Russell proposes, that of trusting in science and not in religion.

If for Russell religion is essentially fear, this fear that has been suffered will be remedied with science. It will make it possible to put aside the false creations of religion, which are imaginary sustenances for humans.

Science will make better, by itself, this world that religions have damaged so much. She will be a better influence than the religious one, he says.

There is a lot of clarity here and it makes it easier to analyze what has been quoted. Russell proposes something simple and profound: replace religion with science and that will improve the world. It is an ambitious statement and, it seems to me, somewhat gratuitous. I explain the reasons.

Conclusion

By exploring the above, I wanted to show that this frequently used quote from B. Russell by those who attack religions taking advantage of the qualities of a great philosopher, does not consider that in reality there is more complexity than what appears in that quote.

But the main point is to maintain that religious influence on human behavior is an unavoidable factor. Religious ideas are a part of people’s decision-making process.

So far, no problem, I guess. The controversy is whether this religious influence is good for human behavior, or the opposite.

• If it is good, then nullifying religion would be an action that would lead to a society of more reprehensible acts.
• If it’s bad, then nullifying religion would lead to a society with fewer undue actors.

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