This is the second part of a longer article. Please note that some criticisms will probably arise later, due to space, your attention span as a reader and because I care about not giving you information over-load.
RJ Eskow’s 15 Questions to Militant Atheists
RJ Eskow, a writer for the Huffington Post, offers us a very brilliant article against ‘militant’ atheism. Entitled15 Questions Militant Atheists Should Ask Before Trying to Destroy Religion, he outlines his position as a defender of reason. He quite impressively says “I hold progressives and secularists to a higher standard of logic and integrity than I do the Pat Robertson crowd, in the belief that they add an important moral and social perspective to our political dialogue.” He is therefore not attempting to caricature and dismember active atheism, as he accuses Dawkins’ of doing to religion. “Dawkins caricatures all religious belief,” Eskow says, “as essentially fundamentalist, then works to eradicate it.”
You immediately understand, dear reader, that I am taking the attack on Dawkins as an attack on active atheism. I do this not to pick fights, but as a way of actively seeking out criticism to dispel misconceptions. We have now come across the first major criticism of active atheism: it caricatures all religious belief and thinks everyone is a fundamentalist. AKA: the Strawman Fallacy.
I will focus on these broad claims later, after we have found them all in our process of investigation. Let us now look at Eskow’s questions against ‘militant’ atheism. I want to answer each question in full in a later article. I will therefore highlight and answer the most poignant ones aimed at this discussion.
One of his questions can be paraphrased as follows: Is religion the sole motivator for the various conflicts, past, present and future? By conflict, here, he suggests the Inquisition and terrorism for example (these are two separate questions but I’ve amalgamated them). Before I answer this, we can look at the next question which is: Is religion the major internal, international and individual drive for conflicts?
To answer both questions briefly I would safely say: No. There is no single factor responsible for conflicts, therefore no single answer will do in either case. What we are suggesting is this: In countries and spaces of conflict, is absolutist belief without evidence helping? India’s independence and subsequent struggle for freedom and confusion is an example of how religion retards the process. Think of any country or people who literally have a ‘God given right’ to be there – and ask yourself: Whose side is the monotheist god on?
There are many reasons for conflict and religion is no doubt an extension of the political othering that occurs on different levels. Indeed, the major thesis of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s Identity & Violence is that the knowledge deficit of human diversity in every individual which encompasses their identity, leads to miniaturisation of people into boxes5 (called the “solitarist” approach, by Sen) thus leading to the loss of the other’s humanity. This makes them strictly: Terrorists, Enemies, Muslims, Christians – when in fact, people have a whole continuum of personality and identity. This thesis sounds basic, but basic does not mean false or impotent. I applaud this economics guru for sounding this trumpet of reason.
Sen himself says:
The world is increasingly seen, if only implicitly, as a federation of religions or civilisations, thereby ignoring all the other ways in which people see themselves. Underlying this line of thinking is the presumption that the people of the world can be uniquely categorised according to some singular and overarching system of partitioning. Civilizational or religious partitioning of the world population yields a “solitarist” approach to human identity, which sees human beings as members of exactly one group.6
Similarly, the miasma of quivering maelstroms surrounding nations is ripe for conflict. Enter religious absolutism to trigger the storming descent. When we are robbed of our identity, good-natured approaches to stopping conflict are hampered by solitarist approaches. And religion is by far one of the worst (if not the worst) virus to incapacitate all efforts at breaking those boxes to reveal a fully formed human being; Religions go so far as to focus on your eating and sexual habits, what to feel guilty and innocent about (guilt: sexual feeling and having a body, innocent: killing infidels, homosexuals, women and apostates). Where is the beautiful diversity, the plethora of iridescent radiance of the ever-changing continuum of identity, that makes us human? If anything retards this, it is religion.
Take this to the larger conflicts and you understand how the solitarist approach is thus engendered by religions. If you accept the thesis of Edward Said, which means we see the east through western-eyes, you can argue that democratic secularists are themselves the purveyors of solitarist approaches. I would not completely disagree, but my point here is that the faithful do this to themselves via their faith. Islam wants you only to be a Muslim and nothing else. You identify yourself as a Muslim. I’ve been called a racist before because of my anti-Islamic stance. I want to see it eradicated because we can do so much better as a species. But this is not racism: It’s attacking a false claim that by definition has no evidence. The fact that people like myself have been called racist for attacking Islam (which I did believe in for most of my life), can only make you shudder in thinking how deep Islam longs to flush out the wavering form of human diversity inherent in every one. I was attacking one aspect of a person: namely their belief system. People forget that the point is not just attacking and questioning and debating: but promoting the inherent humanity and the expression and longing therein to reach the numinous and transcendent as human beings. Pure and simple.
Similarly when we evaluate conflicts and political machinations, as Eskow asks.
We are not questioning the entire process of the politics involved. We are simply asking this: How is absolutist belief (without evidence) in a creator, personal god helping situations in Pakistan, Israel, Palestine? How did it help here in South Africa? When you are backed with a god, you have a “god-mode“: God says I must kill the infidel, God says this land is mine, God says non-whites are inferior. This is not something you can argue against. This is more powerful than nationalism, because you have a “divine” backing: The most powerful being ever! The Dostoevskian saying is thus turned on its head, as Slavoj Žižek pointed out: WITH god, everything is permitted.
It is this we are critical of.
Most of Eskow’s questions can be answered by asking rhetorically: “How is religion helping?”. Eskow rightly asks for data (which I believe is growing in substantial amounts) regarding the extent of individual lives negatively affected by religion (for example, genital mutilation, Christian science, etc.) I will leave my major answer and thesis against Eskow for a later article. Eskow and I actually agree, as he told me via email himself. In the article he also writes: “[M]y personal suspicion is that organised religion is more of a negative force than a positive one. I often hate what people do in the name of faith.”
We slightly differ in that he respects an individual’s religious experience – I find no reason for respecting it. I just don’t bother with it – but perhaps that is the same sort of respect though I would not call it that.
The Divisive Notions of Mr. Orr
I dealt with labels in the beginning of this article. But another recent one, thrown at me, was: “Dawkinite“. This bizarre labelling stems from my defensive stance of Richard Dawkins’ views: his scientific and the atheistic. I am averse to this label and find it childish – name-calling in general is only ad hominem attacks in bullet form. I may be doing nothing to dispel this “Dawkinite” disposition now as I debunk H. Allen Orr’s review of The God Delusion. However, as I’ve stated throughout this article, I am attempting to gather data as to the opposition to active atheism. Orr makes a rather striking opponent and I am rather fond of his writings (in general).
H. Allen Orr is a scientist himself, which makes his very critical review that much more tantalizing. He says Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene “is the best work of popular science ever written”; before reading The God Delusion, he considered Dawkins a “professional atheist”. He also gives one of the best summaries of The God Delusion I’ve read.
But let us sink our teeth into Orr’s terribly Idgaffian notions against the reasons for active atheism (which themselves are against religious bullying). It must be remembered that I do not consider Dawkins to be our “leader”, our “best” atheist or any other silly labels: I am seeking out attacks from intelligent critics. I refuse to reply to bumbling Fundies, with Bible/Quran verses stuffed into their ears and wagging fingers pointing to us accusingly of immorality, debauchery, Satanism and evil.
Orr, first, falls into the major branch of accusatory flimflam: The Courtier’s Reply so beautifully expressed by PZ Myers. Briefly, this means not taking the vast literature of theology and deep religious philosophy into account – or being qualified enough to engage with it. I will, as with Eskow’s first point above, deal with this major point at the end. We can simply debunk it by saying: You don’t need to be an expert on Unicornology, Faeriology, Goblinology to dismiss the existence of Unicorns, Faeries and Goblins.
Orr says for example “The God Delusion … never squarely faces its opponents. You will find no serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology in Dawkins’ book (does he know Augustine reject biblical literalism in the … 5th century?)”. We will see this notion of the Courtier’s Reply enacted again with Terry Eagleton who claims similar silly notions. But let us leave these important criticisms for the end.
I found myself raising an eyebrow when Orr asks rather juvenile reactions to philosophical arguments. I have encountered such questions from high-school students myself in presenting unbelief/nonbelief/atheism as rational. Dawkins correctly says the notion of a designer is question begging: Who then designed the designer? Orr then states: “Why, for example, is Dawkins so untroubled by his own (large) assumption that both matter and the laws of nature can be viewed as given? Why isn’t that question begging?”
As laughable as it may appear to some, this is a serious question Orr asks. Orr of course misses the important weapon of Ockham’s Razor. The point (pun intended) is that we do not keep questioning ad infinitum, as this leads as nowhere. We can postulate the reasons for why we are here, where the universe comes from, where the laws come from and so on. Those are reasonable and incredible questions. But the fact is: We can test and use the laws of nature, but there’s nothing we can do with a designer god. We are not worried with where the laws come from – there are various hypothesis such as the multiverses or bubble-universes. But there is nothing to do with them! We must never forget the parsimony of knowledge depends on what is necessary: The infinite weathering of the stone of obtained knowledge leads nowhere, except to eventually destroy that stone. Whilst we should be using Ockham’s Razor to slice out a correct, economical usage of knowledge, Orr’s postulations lead nowhere except to render the stone into dust. From a fine craftsman’s blade to a sledgehammer.
Therefore, the reason why we see “matter and the laws of nature as given” is because they rightly are, because we can test them. We do not have to do anything else with them. Religions would have us wonder where they come from (a good question) and provide the answer to it (a bad answer) – and every time they do, I can’t help being reminded of a sentence by John Stuart Mill: “The exclusive pretension made by a part of the truth to be the whole must and ought to be protested against.”7
I will give Orr’s Idfaggic notions of Stalin a pass, except to point out that Orr does invoke it to show Dawkins’ double-standards. Orr states it without justifying it. Hypocrisy runs rivulets through this flowing diatribe of misconception.
Orr also accuses Dawkins of not taking into consideration “[o]ther more nuanced possibilities [like] varieties of deism, mysticism, or nondenominational spirituality”. That is not the aim of this or other “best-selling” anti-religious tracts. Dawkins himself does deal with deism briefly, but that is truly missing the point of the whole enterprise. The focus is on the majority of the world holding the view of a personal, omnipotent celestial being and following the rulings and dogma of organised religious systems. I find critics who attack writers on what they leave out, the worst kind: We could all accuse any writer of leaving something out of their essays. The scientists, philosophers and writers of the calibre that are the vocal and so-called “poster-boys” of anti-religious and active atheism, all very clearly state their aim is organised religion. They all highlight their targets in the initial stages of their books: Daniel Dennett, for example, states he has little knowledge of most religion’s intricacies and his focus is on the moderate-to-fundamentalist Christianity that the majority of his fellow Americans believe in. Accusing him of not addressing Islam is tantamount to accusing the first edition of the Oxford English dictionary, in 1933, for not having the world “muggle” in it. When critiquing we must focus on the aims of the writer – if his aim is not to criticise Tarot card readers, angel-therapists, and psychics, then we can not accuse them of not taking these into consideration. Orr’s argument falls flat here.
Dennett says, in his letter to New York Review of Books:
[Orr] notes that [The God Delusion] is “defiantly middlebrow,” and I wonder just which highbrow thinkers about religion Orr believes Dawkins should have grappled with. I myself have looked over large piles of recent religious thought … in the course of researching my own book on these topics, and I have found almost all of it to be so dreadful that ignoring it seemed both the most charitable and most constructive policy. (I devote a scant six pages of Breaking the Spell to the arguments for and against the existence of God, whilst Dawkins devotes roughly a hundred, laying out the standard arguments with admirable clarity and fairness, and skewering them efficiently.)
Dawkins ignores [recherché versions of these traditional arguments] (as do I) and says why: his book is a consciousness-raiser aimed at the general religious public, not an attempt to contribute to the academic microdiscipline of philosophical theology. The arguments Dawkins exposes and rebuts are the arguments that waft from thousands of pulpits every week and reach millions of television viewers every day, and neither the televangelists nor the authors of best-selling spiritual books pay the slightest heed to the subtleties of the theologians either.
My apologies for quoting so extensively but I found this passage to be an important point against Orr.
I may be wrong on this, but I believe Dennett is not an ardent supporter of The God Delusion (I believe Dennett’s own book Breaking the Spell better), however, he correctly highlights Orr’s misconceptions. Orr brings up Wittgenstein and William James because “they conceived possibilities – mistaken ones perhaps, but certainly more interesting ones [than] Dawkins“, which Dawkins does not deal with explicitly. We will see this again in dealing with The Courtier’s Reply, and simply ask: Does the average believer really care about Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus? Does the average believer sit with the hundreds of books written about the bizarre Doctrine of the Trinity? No. Why should Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Onfray, Grayling, Harris, et al.? Why should we? That certainly is not the aim of active atheism. The only ones who care about these detailed, intricate notions are philosophers and theologians. I find them fascinating as I am in love with philosophy, but it is not exactly a recurrent topic of conversation at dinner-parties or churches, temples, synagogues or mosques to the masses.
I can already see that some might be stirring with their pitchforks: No, this does not mean I am smarter than other people. It means nothing that I love Tractatus, and others do not. They might love something else. It simply is not important enough for furthering and helping the lives of the billions of people. Not all active atheists like philosophy, not all atheists are even interested in philosophy. The atheism of the monotheist god says nothing about intelligence as far as I know, nor do I think it ever will.
“Our species will never run out of fools,” says Christopher Hitchens, “but I dare say that there have been at least as many incredulous idiots who professed faith in god as there have been dolts and simpletons who concluded otherwise.”8
And now we get to the perhaps the most important point of the entire anti-religious campaigning, gaining voice and shedding fog. That of religion and violence.
I have highlighted what I believe to be a deeply troubling psychological aspect of committing violence and evil – that of believing your divine backing, with the power of unreason as your guiding light, your fists clenched with the power of almighty god and your actions guided by unseen, powerful forces beyond all human interference. Does Dawkins have a case, asks Orr.
Orr does not seem to think so. “[W]e all agree: religion can be bad … But the critical question is: compared to what?”
Do I sense the familiar rhetorical question: What do you plan on replacing religion with? What are we comparing religious horrors and lifestyles with? The fishy smell leads the reader to a tuna factory when we later read: “[Dawkin's] modus operandi generally involves comparing religion as practiced … with atheism as theory.”
Theory? Atheism is a theory? What does that even mean? I wish I could be said to be selectively quoting but the immediate sentence that follows is “But fairness requires that we compare both religion and atheism as practiced or both as theory. The latter is amorphous and perhaps an impossible task and I can see why Dawkins sidesteps it.” And guess where this leads, dear reader. That’s right: Stalin.
The entire 20th century history, says Orr, has been one of secular evil. I side-stepped this before but I feel as though I can answer this simply. I won’t go into the notions of Stalin because it’s a moot point. Instead I want to grapple with Orr’s apparent misnomer of atheism.
As I’ve highlighted above, we can all safely separate the lack of belief in fairies, goblins and gods with the active criticism of belief without evidence, against established religious institutions and removal of the kid-gloves society has sewn around our hands to deal with them (though this includes the lack of belief, too). How is the lack of belief in something a theory? Truly, Orr is not able to comprehend people living without believing in Jesus, Vishnu and Fidi Mukullu. How do you measure for people’s lack of belief, the very notion itself is a negation. Having studied psychology for 4 years, I can safely say this is a very myopic consideration on Orr’s part. He rightly considers it as such, but why then even raise it?
It was not Stalin’s lack of belief in gods, fairies and goblins that engendered the Purges. Similarly it was not Paul Hill’s lack of belief in Fidi Mukullu that caused him to kill the abortion doctor John Britton. The Purges (misrepresented in common knowledge as some short, bloody spell in 1930’s) was enacted to keep pressure in the ranks of the party, to keep control and eliminate any and all forms of opposition9. Paul Hill killed because he believed his god was acting through him, to stop the “killing of babies”, taking his Bible literally.
As Eskow asked above, is religion the sole motivator? No. Is secularism the sole reason for the many horrid acts? No. There is no one reason but again – how was it helping? Dawkins correctly highlights many instances and explains how the de-conversion from established religious dogma enables a fostering of free-thought. We should be wary of anyone who claims to have all the answers and be ready to criticise and tackle head-on anyone who claims to know all.
I am rather uncertain of Orr’s point throughout his criticism. He says nothing of particular value, except to attempt to poke holes in a book he simply can’t fathom. As a consciousness-raiser, it works. Whether you love or hate The God Delusion (or End of Faith, Breaking the Spell, etc.), the awareness the “poster-boy” atheists raised is important. I believe we owe them a debt of thanks and I have yet to see a criticism worth sitting upright about. It was for this reason I sought out our co-thinkers’ criticisms.
As Orr is one of the best, I was hoping for something more. Lack all Idgafs, he fails in his critique to raise anything that challenges the central arguments of the book and, more importantly, the campaign for reason against faith.
If there is call for it, I will take a closer look at Orr’s article though I imagine that you, dear reader, are either annoyed with Orr, myself, and/or Dawkins by now. It is perhaps best if we progress.
A point from Orr that will be dealt with at the very end is one he raises. I believe it is an important one but not exactly a criticism that makes my breath halt: Who do we think we are, as scientists, psychologists, philosophers, etc. to think we can contribute to this discussion? I think that this also falls into the Courtiers Reply to be dealt with later. It is for this reason I leave it to simmer, till I am able to deal a good portion on your willing, open mind.
END OF PART #2…
REFERENCES
5. Sen, A. (2006) Identity & Violence. London: Penguin.
6. Ibid. p.xii
7. Mill, J. S. (1985) On Liberty. London: Penguin. P. 114. Originally published in 1859 – the same year Darwin published On the Origin of Species. A great year for great thinkers it seems.
8. Hitchens, C. (2008) God Is Not Great. London: Atlantic. p. 254
9. Overy, R. (2005) The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia. London: Penguin. P.149. The purge “was a distinct element of party discipline, not a judicial process. Its object was to tighten central control over local party cadres, and to root out incompetent or corrupt officials.” (p. 151)
The workings in nature of one such outlaw have been witnessed in mud-daubing wasps. The females of this species build their own nests, lay a prey in it for their new-borns to feed upon, lay their eggs on the already dead or dying prey, seal the nest, and then begin the cycle again. As opposed to most other wasps, the males here are also present at the laying and in fact, during it, force the female into a strange ritual dubbed ‘holding’. The whole process begins when the female, having already laid the prey in her nest, goes head first into it with her abdomen facing outside. The male, who is outside, then copulates with her in this position. Then the female turns around, pops her head outwards from the nest and faces her abdomen inside it. She feels for the prey with the tip of her abdomen as if about to lay her egg. At this point, the male grabs her head with his forelegs and proceeds to pull her antennae outwards for about half a minute, to prevent the lady from dropping her egg just yet. Then the female again turns around and copulates with the male, only to turn around again and make another attempt to lay her egg. The male does the same thing. This repeats several times until the female finally gets to lay her egg.
Our Generation Must Make Greater Strides
Saturday, July 25th, 2009We are on the cusp of change. As the era of superstition wanes with the approach of a prevailing consciousness of reason, gods and ghosts fight a losing battle against naturalistic explanations. But the question as to why superstition, unreason, and absolutist mindsets have dominated much of society remains. Perhaps it is because most people follow the religion of their parents. Like a genetically acquired stigma on one’s eyesight, parents prevent their children from seeing the world in its full glory by passing on this virus. The vicious cycle of faith rolls on, quashing reason underfoot.
But now we can throw a wrench into that cycle. By “we” I mean my generation—those who are currently just above or below twenty years of age. It is we who will inherent that brilliance of the scientific method, we who will finally stand up to the ghosts of the past, and we who will carry forth the ignited flame of reason. We are the first generation to enjoy a compounded sentence of life with the sequencing of our genome. We are the first to experience the Large Hadron Collider and the power and potential it beholds. We can experience the wonder and beauty of the macrocosm and the intricacy and complexity of the microcosm.
From one pole to the other, our senses swing in a prevailing storm of wonder. Yet in the gaps between we are faced with those who would wish God into our society. With so much to be in awe of, so much to wonder over, why on Earth (please notice the pun) should we care about a being who is “one but three”? How will knowing how Muhammad drank a glass of water solve the lack of clean water in Muslim African countries? Travailing through the sinuous undergrowth of tortuous theological pap, the easy wonder and beckoning of beauty in the natural world withers into sterility.
No doubt this call to arms is made often. Each generation hopes it will at last overthrow the grips of gods and bring liberty to humankind. I make no such claim. Instead what I propose is awareness and realization. We are at point where we can—not completely but exponentially—severe the ties of superstition. Here’s why I am optimistic.
J.B.S. Haldane famously said: “the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” Einstein said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” That is, what we can bring to the forefront of our minds is not limited by the immediate environment. We can make ghosts out of curtains and gods out of stars with all the reckoning of a mad wizard because of the power of our
minds. If nothing else, we can appreciate the creativity behind such claims as walking on water, demons in the sand, and winged horses.
All that need occur for us to render religion as the myth it is instead of the “truth” that believers want it to be is to reduce the penchant for acceptance. I do not mean acceptance of the claims but from where they stem—a need to explain life, the cosmos, beauty, and meaning. Those of us who reject religious explanations have found meaning in other things, but it is meaning nonetheless. By accepting that we all are longing for meaning and answers, Yahweh can be seen as simply another creative concept, like Zeus.
People are not stupid to hold such irrational beliefs; they are fulfilling their role in the cycle of unreason. While we are guided by the realization that the cycle works through natural forces, the believers invoke invisible gods pushing that same cycle along. We are both travelling and going forward, but when the cycle breaks down, who is more likely to know the reason? While we would face and fix the problem, the believers would pray and simply hope things get better.
My generation, those who will be passed the torch from “godless luminaries,” as Richard Dawkins calls them, is in a better position than any to adopt a more assertive approach. How can I be accepting yet strident against belief? I respect people too much to allow irrational beliefs to dominate their lives. I want the members of my generation to bear this in mind as they face a present and future where most of us will not be punished because we do not believe.
We must not squander what the giants of the past have given us. We need to be strident in opposing irrationality for the simple reason that we care about our species. We have science, reason, and the ethics of humanism to achieve a fulfilled life, find meaning, and transmute exclamation points into question marks. My generation has learned that it is not a mark of insanity, pessimism, or distrust to not believe; we know that an attitude of questioning and skepticism is far more satisfying than the backdoor explanations of the faithful.
With this in mind, it is high time that we straighten our backs and walk proudly forward. No, we do not have all the answers and I, for one, would be disheartened if we thought that we did. Answers are full-stops but wonder is an ellipsis. It fills me with hope to keep moving forward, and my generation, those who are the next lot of great scientists, intellectuals, politicians, and human-rights activists, needs to grip the unveiling future with a white-knuckled ferocity. We cannot let the future be pulled from under our feet. We must be stronger and more eloquent in our dismissal of unreason in society, especially when it affects individual lives. We must be less accepting of those who would claim truth in religion, astrology, unproven medical treatments, psychic abilities, divination, and exorcisms.
In this day and age, in a civil society in which parents have let children die because they prayed instead of seeking medical help, we must not be moderate in our approach. When these sorts of parents claim that their child died because “they didn’t have enough faith,” we cannot dismiss it as crackpot and fringe mindsets.
I believe that most human beings are inherently caring, loving, and helpful people and that the religious as well as the nonreligious would be horrified by the actions of such parents. But we must not be passive and tolerant and excuse these actions. No. The need to protect human life takes precedence over the need to be “nice” and accepting of everyone’s beliefs. I urge you, my generation, those who have looked to the luminaries of the past and present—from Nietzsche to Russell, from Sagan to Dawkins—to rise up, armed with the ammunition of knowledge. We can create a better, more beautiful world. But to do that we must be more assertive and not defer to our elders. We must let go of the hands that helped us walk and begin taking our own hard strides into the teeth of superstition and dogma.
It has to happen at some point, and it is better to start right now, while we still have these elders’ support, than later, when they are gone.
Secular Humanist Bulletin Vol. 25, No. 1, Spring 2009
Tags: beauty, dawkins, generation, religion, Sagan, Secular Humanist Bulletin
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