From two different sources in recent days has come an idea I
had previously not considered: that religious control of a State may affect its
economic performance. How was it, one asks, that the Middle East went from being
the intellectual and artistic powerhouse of the World, via the vagaries of
history, to being an under-performing group of still tribal countries which
perform economically less well than their neighbours to the North in Europe? What
happened to that intellectual drive? The second source suggests something
similar in respect of Spain in the 18th century: a State watching
without emulating the scientific and artistic dynamism of France and Britain in
the Enlightenment.
The answer posited by the respective authors lies in
religious power in both cases: the Caliphate in the former; the Inquisition in
the latter. In each, the defence of dogma is said to have prevented acceptance
of new ideas, especially in science and technology, which elsewhere transformed
communications, leading to economic growth among adopters. Religions, being
based on fictions rather than reality, tend to defend the teachings of their
hierarchies. Take the outlawing of Tyndale in the 16th century as an
example closer to home. Allow the combination of translation into common language
with the printing press, and suddenly the people, or at least those educated
enough to read, can see or hear the words as written in the Bible instead of
being given selective extracts which suit the aims of those in power.
Suppression of innovations can have a dampening effect on uptake and on the
impacts on daily lives which should follow from them.
This analysis seems to confront religion as Luddite, which
may be fair. It also assumes, it seems to me, that economic growth is
all; that a capitalist economy is desirable. Philosophies, including religions,
are not there to support economies but to guide people into a better way of
life. It may be that the ordinary people of the Arab countries in the Middle
Ages or of 18th century Spain appreciated some aspects of the way
they were governed or guided; and may not have been as comparatively badly off
as their modern-day counterparts. Inequality is certainly plentiful in today’s
capitalist model. Happily, modern, democratic Spain is a dynamic and cultural country.
But look at the position of the Arab states, whether engorged with unearned
riches, destroyed by religion-based wars or ruled by bigotry, they show little
sign of restoring their intellectual capital or sharing wealth at all fairly
among their peoples. Nor does secular, capitalist Britain.
