The Early Days of a Better Nation

Posted 7:01 pm by Ken

21st Century Atheism

I went out walking
With a bible and a gun
The word of God lay heavy on my heart
I was sure I was the one

- U2, 'The Wanderer'

In comments below, Renegade Eye asks why I haven't said anything about the new atheists. I've read the new atheist books by Harris, Dennett, Dawkins, and Onfray. I haven't read Hitchens' book yet but I've read and listened to enough of Hitchens on religion to have some idea where he's coming from. I've also read David Mills' Atheist Universe, the first (self-published) edition of which preceded them all as a surprise success. I don't really have much to say about them, so instead I'm going to give lots and lots of links.

But first, I should mention that I clean forgot a third atheist paperback, and one I'd written about elsewhere at that: Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity, (1970, translated 1971.)

The first 21st century atheist books were popularizations of atheist arguments that had developed within philosophy. (A few humanist philosophers in Britain had become Guardian columnists: Julian Baggini, Simon Blackburn, A. C. Grayling. In the US it was a bit different: atheist columnists felt isolated. (Via.)) Daniel Harbour's An Intelligent Person's Guide to Atheism (2001, paperback 2003) and Julian Baggini's Atheism: A Very Short Introduction (2003) were both well-written and, in their differing ways, original. But the only way they prefigured what was about to break was that were each published as part of a series of brief guides to large subjects. Baggini explicitly counselled against atheist militancy: "Religion will recede not by atheists shouting condemnation, but by the quiet voice of reason slowly making itself heard."

On September 15 2001 the voice of reason, or at any rate of Richard Dawkins, made itself heard in a very different tone. Dawkins followed this up within days with a call to stop being polite about religion, repeated here and here, and reprinted in his essay collection A Devil's Chaplain (from which I quoted it after Beslan, which was my moment of having had enough of being polite - though what actually got me to rejoin the National Secular Society was this (PDF).)

OK, on to the links.

Michael Fitzpatrick puts forward materialist arguments against, as he puts it, baiting the devout. Ronald Aronson has a more sympathetic radical take. Terry Eagleton wrote a hilariously pretentious review of The God Delusion, which called forth P.Z. Myers' memorable Courtier's Reply, as well as some patient and puzzled commentary by my fellow SF writer Adam Roberts.

The charge that Dawkins et al are 'atheist fundamentalists' led to the formulation of Stacey's Law. Stacey is not the only one bored with the anti-Dawkins backlash.

The prominence of the new atheists has led to more atheists coming out. One reporter who worked the religion beat for years explains how he lost faith. (Both via.) Dawkins himself has a very civilised conversation with one of his Christian critics, the eminent scientist Francis Collins.

Another scientist, David Sloan Wilson, criticises Dawkins' speculations on the evolutionary origins of religion, to which Dawkins gives a spirited reply; their disagreement is discussed here. There's further intelligent commentary on the cognitive and behavioural roots of religion by Abbas Raza, Pascal Boyer, and Paul Bloom (these two via an earlier good piece by Raza.

Former fundamentalist New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman is interviewed on the documents. Taner Edis, a physicist from Turkey and harsh critic of Islam's relation to science, warns secular humanists against their own simplistic interpretations of the Muslim world and Islam, particularly the egregious tripe peddled by Sam Harris.

If you make through all these, you may be relieved to hear from John Emerson: I’m surprised that people are still talking about “God” any more. I disproved his existence a couple of weeks ago. Despite this amazing feat of logic, the discussion will, no doubt, go on.

35 Comments:

Fair point - there was some fancy footwork in Eagleton's review (although I don't think it was anywhere near as fancy as Adam Roberts made out). But this comes back to my point - if your starting-point is that the whole idea of believing in a divine being or beings is stupid, you need to come prepared for debate with intelligent people who find such a belief possible.

Dawkins could do some useful - and genuinely controversial - work by applying his universal corrosive* to religiously-validated stupidity; there's plenty of it around. But that would put him on the same side of the argument as Terry Eagleton - and Rowan Williams, for that matter - which I sense he would resist.

*Or is that Dennett?

By Anonymous, at Friday, July 27, 2007 1:03:00 pm

Phil and ejh: it would seem that my reading of The God Delusion is a bit different from yours. The way I read it, anyway, Dawkins puts forward various arguments against the more sophisticated forms of theism, and also against fundamentalism, which, let's face it, is the only form of the religion worth his while arguing against, because that's the form that is causing all the trouble. As Dawkins says in his introduction to the paperback, if all or even most believers were like the liberal and radical theologians he would have written a different book. In the world we live in, people like Jerry Falwell and Ian Paisley, and their equivalents in other religions, are far more influential than the likes of Terry Eagleton, Richard Harries and Rowan Williams, not to mention Richard Holloway (all of whom I very much admire, and the last of whom I know slightly and like enormously). These aren't the guys who are censoring biology textbooks, flying planes into skyscrapers or rooting for nuclear war in the Middle East. (Check out the current Joe Lieberman and Christian Zionism blogospheric kerfuffle.)

Maybe I should write one more religion post ... just one more ... I can quit any time, you know.

By Ken, at Sunday, July 29, 2007 12:19:00 pm

"the people who have put them forward have completely made them up"

But that's precisely the claim that almost* no believer in a divine being will ever concede - any more than most Marxists would concede that class struggle is just a way of thinking about people not getting on well together. "Why do you subordinate the only life we know about to a notional afterlife?" is a question you can, conceivably, ask a believer. "Why do you believe in a completely made-up god?" isn't.

There are people out there believing some alarmingly closed-minded, reactionary and authoritarian stuff and validating it by reference to their belief in a divine being. And there are people - rather fewer people, admittedly - who believe in the free exchange of ideas, social justice and armed revolution**, and validate those positions by reference to their belief in a divine being. I really struggle to see how the belief in a divine being is the problem here.

*Don Cupitt, maybe.

**Paolo Freire

By Anonymous, at Sunday, July 29, 2007 6:52:00 pm

I think what Dawkins was trying to get at - more than the question of whether fundamentalist religion was bad or whether a moral code can be extracted from the Holy Bible - was that the environment that moderate religion creates, of universal tolerance of religious freedom and the sort of 'no-go zone' it creates in the realm of ethical, scientific and moral discussion (Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria), is one which allows the far more dangerous forms of fundamentalism to flourish and create situations like the ones we've had to endure for... Well, forever.

He wasn't arguing (necessarily) for the abolition of religion, generally, but rather that the subject of faith not be off-limits in civilized discussion. The idea I gleaned from it was that fundamentalism can be blunted by allowing people to freely question the scientific, moral and ethical basis of the various faiths.

It is, of course, clear from his writing that he would like to see the end of religion entirely, but he is intelligent enough to understand that it is far too unreasonable a proposition for it to accomplish anything other than pissing people off.

By Steven Alleyn, at Tuesday, July 31, 2007 8:15:00 pm

the environment that moderate religion creates, of universal tolerance of religious freedom and the sort of 'no-go zone' it creates in the realm of ethical, scientific and moral discussion

Yes, OK - that is a reasonable argument. I'm not convinced it's valid, though. For a start, I dislike the word 'moderate', which seems to divide the world into Southern Baptists and well-meaning Vicar-of-Dibley Anglicans; I think it's perfectly possible to hold an intense, burning conviction that there is a spark of the divine in every human being, and to be passionately committed to social justice and free thought for that reason.

Setting that aside, the idea is roughly that those forms of religion that don't encroach on scientific and ethical rationality shield those forms of religion that do. I'm really not convinced this is true. I think there is too much tolerance of religiously-validated irrationality and injustice, but I don't think this is the fault of people who oppose irrationality and injustice in the name of the same religion[s]. You could make just as good a case for blaming the decline in religious belief and religious education - people tolerate reactionary and irrational variants of religion because they've grown up without much of a sense of what religious belief is, and without learning that religion isn't intrinsically reactionary and irrational.

It is, of course, clear from his writing that he would like to see the end of religion entirely, but he is intelligent enough to understand that it is far too unreasonable a proposition for it to accomplish anything other than pissing people off.

Perhaps if he were even more intelligent it wouldn't be quite so clear - and he wouldn't have been so successful in pissing people off.

By Anonymous, at Monday, August 06, 2007 8:27:00 am

You see, that's free advertising; I've no doubt that pissing people off was at least partially intended - allowing for a much wider dissemination of his book without having to spend terribly much on marketting.

It's easier to plant the seed of doubt when millions of people are acting irrationally about your book, all around the people you're trying to reach.

I'm of the opinion that no one is as stupid as they look, not even people who look absolutely idiotic, at times, like George W. Bush. Richard Dawkins - a man who is at the top of his field and holds a very high post at one of the most prestegious universities in the world does not look stupid, but my experience has taught me that, if anything, he's miles more intelligent than even he appears.

By Steven Alleyn, at Monday, August 06, 2007 6:18:00 pm

I am mystified by the overwhelming number of people who seem to believe there's a coordinated movement afoot to uproot, crush and alienate religious belief.

There's no such thing as anti-theism as an organized movement, although I believe Bertram is noticing the increasing hostility of the non-religious. Ours is a reaction to what has been years - millenia - of religious oppression.

As for his mention of atheist régimes doing lots of killing; in most cases that killing was not done in the name of atheism, but rather in the name of things like "the Glory of the Soviet Republic" or some such, and usually it was at the hands of an impoverished mass acting as puppets for the power-hungry dictators they served.

I've never heard of an Atheist killing a Rabbi because he performed circumcisions in the name of the name of his faith (sorry, closest analogy I could find to that nutjob killing the Abortion Doctor and claiming he was doing the Lord's Work).

By Steven Alleyn, at Monday, August 13, 2007 9:47:00 pm