William Lane Craig on Religion and societal harm
Craig argues that Christianity has been a net positive for civilization and that the harms attributed to religion are outweighed by its contributions to moral progress, human rights, and social welfare.
Craig's response to the argument that religion causes societal harm is multifaceted. He begins by challenging the framing: the question is not whether religious people have ever done bad things — obviously they have — but whether the net effect of Christian belief on civilization has been positive or negative. Craig argues emphatically that it has been positive, citing the Christian origins of hospitals, universities, the abolition of slavery, the development of modern science, and the philosophical foundations of human rights.
He draws a sharp distinction between the teachings of Jesus and the failures of institutional Christianity. When Christians have committed atrocities — the Crusades, the Inquisition, the persecution of heretics — they were acting contrary to the teachings of their founder, not in accordance with them. By contrast, Craig argues, the worst atrocities of the twentieth century — those of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot — were committed by explicitly atheist regimes pursuing explicitly secular ideologies. If religion is to be judged by its worst adherents, Craig contends, atheism must be judged by the same standard.
Craig also challenges the New Atheist claim that faith itself is dangerous. He argues that the Christian faith is not blind trust but reasonable trust based on evidence — the historical evidence for the resurrection, the philosophical arguments for God's existence, and the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. The caricature of faith as 'belief without evidence' is, in his view, a straw man that bears no resemblance to the sophisticated epistemology of Christian philosophy.
On specific harms — the persecution of homosexuals, the opposition to reproductive rights, the resistance to certain scientific findings — Craig typically argues from a conservative theological position. He maintains that Christianity provides the correct moral framework and that what secularists call 'harm' is often the natural consequence of applying biblical moral standards that are, in fact, for human flourishing even when they feel restrictive.
“The real question is not whether Christians have done terrible things. Of course they have. The question is whether Christianity's net contribution to civilization has been positive. And the answer is overwhelmingly yes.”
“The New Atheists compare the worst of religion with the best of secularism. A fair comparison would look at the fruits of each worldview when consistently applied.”