Religion for Public Order

So once upon a time, when I was a preteen, I saw the movie Kundun, and having been brought up with no religious background, I immediately thought the beliefs/rituals that went on were so strange that no one, especially not someone so apparently intelligent as the Lama, could seriously believe them -- it made sense to me that the Lama was perpetuating the Tibetan religion to stay in power, his real concern was the political future of Tibet re: China. The same would be true for all religious leaders -- all Catholics are being put on by the Pope, all Muslims first by Muhammad and later by the religious scholars and Caliphs...

I've learned better since then. But it was interesting to come across my old "instrumentalist" perspective on Religion while reading (for another class), "The Discourses" by Machiavelli.

In book 1, chapter 11, "On The Religion of the Romans" Machiavelli talks about Romulus' successor, Numa Pompilius:

The Romans of his day were completely wild, not domesticated; he wanted to train them to live a sociable life and to practice the arts of peace. So he turned to religion because it is essential for the maintenance of a civilized way of life, and he founded a religion such that for many centuries there was more fear of God in Rome than there has ever been anywhere else. Such piety was of considerable assistance whenever the senate or one of Rome's great leaders undertook any enterprise. ... Anyone who reads the history of Rome with care will recognize how useful religion was when it came to commanding armies, inspiring the populace, keeping men on the straight and narrow, and making criminals ashamed of themselves."

Well this view is fine, for a Medieval Christian looking back on the pagans, but Machiavelli completely fails to do the things you'd expect of a Medieval Christian -- namely, demerit the Pagans for their idol-worship (he finds Roman religion a great source of order),
call the Christian religion superior (in fact he blames the Pope for a divided Italy),
or claim that REAL Divine support gives the most weight in political matters (he never speaks about Jesus, though he calls Moses a great military leader, and he gives corresponding advice on how YOU TOO can make people believe God speaks to you...)

He emphasizes that the 'front' of religion must be kept up, and while it may be manipulated, that manipulation can never come to light without a political disaster. He criticizes the Christian authorities in Rome for being way too blatant with their corruption and vices -- if the modern Church looked (and 'looked' is all Machiavelli cares about) at all like the early Church, citizens would, in effect, be peer pressured into acting better.

The religious life of the pagans was base on the replies given them by their oracles and on the cult of divination... These oracles came to speak as they were instucted by the powerful, and the deception involved was recognized by the populace. Thus men came to be skeptics, and became inclined to overthrow every good institution. So the rulers of a republic should uphold the basic principles of the religion to which they are committed. ... Everything that happens that fosters religious faith, even if they privately judge it to be false, they should support and encourage; the more prudent they are, the more scientific their outlook, the more they should do this. It is because sensible men have adopted this policy that belief in miracles has taken hold ... since wise men supported them without worrying about the truth of the claims.

While this sort of evenhanded treatment is interesting, because it seems to be a sort (a strange sort) of equality among religions, in Machiavelli's mind, a step more towards actual equality than, say, the post-Reformation equality among Christian sects in the American colonies... I think this view of religion is at least as damaging as Sam Harris's. Not only does it look down on the real religious faith of the many, it sort of denies access to religious faith by the 'ruling class' or the 'intelligentsia" who ought to know better, or think more rationally.