richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

F i l l • ( . O O D ' B O O K A N D T H 1:' M O R A L / /.' / 7*c; 1 •/ S ! 2 5 9
receive such favoured birth? Why favour Isaac Watts and those
individuals whom he visualized singing his hymn? In any case,
before Isaac Watts was conceived, what was the nature of the entity
being favoured? These are deep waters, but perhaps not too deep
for a mind tuned to theology. Isaac Watts's hymn is reminiscent of
three daily prayers that male Orthodox and Conservative (but not
Reform) Jews are taught to recite: 'Blessed are You for not making
me a Gentile. Blessed are You for not making me a woman. Blessed
are You for not making me a slave.'
Religion is undoubtedly a divisive force, and this is one of the
main accusations levelled against it. But it is frequently and rightly
said that wars, and feuds between religious groups or sects, are
seldom actually about theological disagreements. When an Ulster
Protestant paramilitary murders a Catholic, he is not muttering to
himself, 'Take that, transubstantiationist, mariolatrous, incensereeking
bastard!' He is much more likely to be avenging the death
of another Protestant killed by another Catholic, perhaps in the
course of a sustained transgenerational vendetta. Religion is a label
of in-group/out-group enmity and vendetta, not necessarily worse
than other labels such as skin colour, language or preferred football
team, but often available when other labels are not.
Yes yes, of course the troubles in Northern Ireland are political.
There really has been economic and political oppression of one
group by another, and it goes back centuries. There really are
genuine grievances and injustices, and these seem to have little to
do with religion; except that - and this is important and widely
overlooked - without religion there would be no labels by which to
decide whom to oppress and whom to avenge. And the real
problem in Northern Ireland is that the labels are inherited down
many generations. Catholics, whose parents, grandparents and
great-grandparents went to Catholic schools, send their children to
Catholic schools. Protestants, whose parents, grandparents and
great-grandparents went to Protestant schools, send their children
to Protestant schools. The two sets of people have the same skin
colour, they speak the same language, they enjoy the same things,
but they might as well belong to different species, so deep is the
historic divide. And without religion, and religiously segregated
education, the divide simply would not be there. From Kosovo to