FAITH IN FAITHLESSNESS
Introduction
Here we are into the 21st Century and we are still obliged to deal with the theme of this book. The obligation has become a renewed political one, as the underlying premise is an admission of failure. It is a failure which recognizes that notwithstanding all the considered arguments of prominent thinkers like those included in this anthology and others like them, and the considerable additional literature that has been written both past and present, monotheistic religion continues to exist especially in North America, and particularly in the USA. Not only does it continue to exist as a belief system but more importantly it continues to exercise considerable political influence shaping public policy in every social nick and cranny it can penetrate. In the face of this threat to reason we have to admit to a wider failure of our education system, of the mass media, and of the avoidance of public personalities to deal with the absurdities of religious belief systems based on a god and which often require despising those who are different and who dissent.
It is only in the last few years that atheism and religion have become subjects of public debate again, thanks to a handful of articulate, knowledgeable and courageous persons. The fact that a public debate is taking place can mean one of two things: either this kind of debate has to take place with every generation, for reasons that are not clear or there has been a failure of a secular and humanist culture that we took for granted with its underpinnings of the separation of Church and State and related resolutions. During this renewed public debate we have to admit that the political Left has been largely absent. Indeed the obligation to deal with this matter is also another failure of the Left which may have erroneously assumed that the issue was settled. The epilogue in this book will deal more substantially with this aspect of our concern.
There is a case to be made that atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a world view. Rather it should be considered as a vital dimension of a broader philosophical world view which incorporates a concern for freedom, human rights and civil liberties, social justice, world peace, economic and political democracy. As such, making of atheism an exclusive position in and of itself is in the end, perhaps self-defeating and counter-productive. Furthermore the argument has been made that one cannot have a position that is based on a negation alone. The only reason therefore for putting together an anthology of atheist writings which is called such is that some very thoughtful persons wrote eloquently on this aspect of the specific problematic of religion which was and still is present in our midst.
The main motive behind the publication of this book is to give rational tools to those who seek to counter the overwhelming influence and power of those religionists who dominate too many important institutions of power in our society, both political and economic. The power elite of North America are either believers in god and religion, (some seek to be actually guided by such a belief system), or they have to publicly go through the motions of practicing religion because the institutions of such belief systems have much more power and influence than other social forces in our society like trade unions, cooperatives, left-of-centre political parties, the social movements labouring for gender equality and the rights of women ,and the protection of the environment among many others. As a single force and body of organized opinion the religionists have power and influence out of all proportion to other movements. Among these, the fundamentalists, especially in the USA, have the predominate influence. Need we add that in the last eight years, their political influence appears to have captured Washington and the White House? When one considers the many terrible decisions that have been made during this last period and the negative effect of these decisions on the rest of the world, the politics of religion have to be considered as a major factor to be countered.
Democracy vs. Theocracy
We know the place and role of the USA in the world. When we also realize that between a quarter and a third of all Americans today are self-described Christian fundamentalists, many of whom reject the separation of Church and State, we have a serious political problem at hand. It has become common for politicians of all stripes to evoke god in their pronouncements, leaving a door open to the conservative politicians and political parties to declare that the USA is a 'Christian nation,' a declaration that appears nowhere in the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Never before have right-wing religious ideologues had such access to power in Washington - indeed, never has the country come closer to a religious government than it has now. Even if a different mainstream political party takes over the White House, the influence of these ideological theocrats will not easily diminish. And with the current reactionary government in control in Ottawa, the route to a theocracy is in progress in Canada as well even though it may take many decades.
The excesses of fundamentalism in the USA rank with any Shiite ayatollahs and the last two American presidential elections mark the deep transformation of the Republican Party into the first religious party in U.S. history. This does not mean that the USA and certainly not Canada are on the brink of being full-fledge theocracies. But we must fear that future social shocks, ranging from wars [note the messianic dimensions of the military goings and comings in both Iraq and Afghanistan] to the economic crisis, could provoke a situation in which those who seek to impose a religious government could suddenly rise to the top.
We have to bear in mind the roots of much of this development in the U.S. began slowly with the John Birch Society followed by the Christian militias of the 1990s, and what can be referred to as the Christian nationalists. Of particular interest is the history of the Christian Reconstruction, a radical theology whose backers seek to impose Old Testament law on the USA. The connections that run from Reconstruction's founding thinker Rushdoony all the way to the Bush White House is revealing. This make over of Christianity, from which Reconstructionism grew, and how it plays out in the right-wing mega-ministeries like D.James Kennedy and James Dobson is most instructive.
We should cease avoiding these dangerous trends and act with a sense of urgency. It makes no sense to fight religious authoritarianism abroad while letting it take over at home. The rise of religion is fundamentally a response to secular efforts to push religion out of the public square in the 1960s and 1970s. Consider the following: North America is dependent on oil, which drives much of American foreign policy; Christianity coupled with the southerniztion of American mainstream politics, has led to the transformation of the Republicans into a religious party. These facts; the soaring debt, recession and imperial hubris are likely to lead to the decline of American ascendancy.
Consider the political implications of the following:
According to several recent polls, 22 percent of Americans are certain that Jesus will return to earth sometime in the next fifty years. Another 22 percent believe that he will probably do so. This is likely the same 44 percent who go to church once a week or more, who believe that God literally promised the land of Israel to the Jews, and who want to stop teaching children about the biological fact of evolution. Believers of this sort constitute the most cohesive and motivated segment of the American electorate. Consequently, their views and prejudices now influence almost every decision of national importance. Political liberals seem to have drawn the wrong lesson from these developments and are now thumbing scripture wondering how best to ingratiate themselves to the legions of men and women in our country who vote mainly on the basis of religious dogma. More that 50 percent of Americans have a 'negative' or 'highly negative' view of people who do not believe in God; 70 percent think it important for presidential candidates to be 'strongly religious.' Because it is taboo to criticize a person's religious beliefs, political debate over questions of public policy, (stem-cell research, the ethics of assisted suicide and euthanasia, obscenity and free speech, gay marriage, etc.), generally get framed in terms appropriate to a theocracy. Unreason is now ascendant in the United States--in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 72 percent believe in angels. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and the belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world (Sam Harris, The End of Faith, page 230).
After the Scopes trial, where in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925, the young school teacher John Thomas Scopes was acquitted of the charge of teaching evolution in his high school biology class, it appeared that the Christian fundamentalist interpretation of the earth's genesis had suffered a death blow. The last few decades have shown this to be not true. Indeed in recent decades, anti-evolutionism has been on the rise and is gaining ground, especially in the U.S. This creed is now called "creationism," a belief system which takes the Book of Genesis to be literal truth: an example is the Deluge (Noah's flood) sent by Jehovah to punish mankind, and which serves as a precursor to Armageddon (coming soon) and the thousand-year rule of Jesus and the Final Judgment. It's all very well for such beliefs to be held in private, but such forms of blind religious convictions are a worrisome threat to liberal democratic society as we know it. Fundamentalism of all sorts, creationism, intelligent design 'theory'--all pose serious threats, and rouse a level of intolerance attacking the Western intellectual tradition at its core, placing on the danger list the right of dissent, especially dissent that seeks to go to the very roots of a problem: that is radical dissent.
Religion as Politics and its Impact on Politics
There are many parts of the world where religious battles take place in the manner of Medieval and Reformation Europe. In Africa, for example, evangelical Christians, backed by American Church donated money, are pushing northwards clashing with Islamic fundamentalists who are backed by Saudi oil money, who are in turn pushing south. The Christian-Muslim split is only one form of religious competition in Nigeria. Events in Iraq have pitted Sunnis against the Shias; thousands of Iraqis have died in intra-Muslim fighting. On the Christian side, Catholics are in a tug of war with Protestant evangelists in various parts of Africa whose promise is immediate redemption. The many violent conflicts that surround these tensions may seem a trip back in time.
In fact, religious front-lines criss-cross the globe. Recall that the terrorist acts of 19 young Muslims in attacking New York and the USA was used as a pretext for everything worrisome that followed. The West's previous military interventions were supposedly to protect Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo from the Christian Serbs and Croatians. The next war could be against the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the Middle East, even more people are claiming god on their side (with some of the most zealous sorts living a few kilometers from the conflict areas). In Myanmar (Burma) Buddhist monks nearly brought down a military regime, but in Sri Lanka they have prolonged bloody conflicts with Muslims. When India has an election, a bridge to Sri Lanka supposedly built by the god Ram may matter as much as a nuclear deal with the USA.
Religion and faith are again promoting and prolonging violence. Religion is not the exclusive cause of violence but as in the case of the Middle East once the religious arguments are put on the table, divisions become even more difficult to resolve. When one side believes that god granted it the West Bank, or that any more abortions is mass murder, a negotiated settlement over land and power becomes almost insurmountable.
Politicians like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or Osama bin Laden, in their extremist condemnations, fuel the passions of fanatics to extremes. When you add to this list the religious fanaticism of Franklin Graham who denounces Islam as evil or American conservatives like Newt Gingrich and Norman Podhoretz who talk openly about world wars between religions and civilizations, a spiral effect leads to violence. Religious fights have always attracted money and militarism, and continue to do so. Muslim enthusiasts have left Europe and elsewhere to join crusades in Kashmir, Chechnya and Iraq. India's Hindutva movement has also attracted fanatics from the Diaspora. All these migrants define themselves primarily through their religion.
Terrorist and counter-terrorist violence once was the battlefield of Marxist guerillas, middle-class Germans, Italians and Latin Americans, or the then secular Palestine Liberation Organization. More than ever Islam exists with sharpening divisions between Sunni and Shia. In its wake, national governments stand naked and, given their recent creation as States, vulnerable. Four threatening flashpoints for nuclear conflicts are Pakistan, India, Iran and Israel, with North Korea alongside as an example of a 'secular theocracy.' One can list a series of 21st century inter-denominational conflicts and religion-based terrorist attacks in Bali, Sulawesi (Indonesia), Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India/Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Xinjiang (China), Chechnya (Russia), Moscow, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Israel/Palestine, Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Kosovo, Morocco, Britain, Spain, Algeria, Nigeria, New York, Washington, Mexico and Guatemala. If one is concerned about religion's effect on politics, there is no more discouraging place to visit than the tiny piece of land that is Israel-Palestine as Rabbi Yaacov Medan and Sheikh Yazid Khader each claim god to be on his side. From a territorial dispute four decades ago we are now facing an intractable fight between the children of Abraham, even though polls show that most people on both sides still want a two-State solution.
Throughout, other forces are often at work in these conflicts, such as tribalism or nationalism, but religion contributes a particular viciousness. Some 68,000 people in Sri Lanka have died since 1983. Outside interests are often present but in the end these bloody fights are local, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, the unbridled politics of revenge. The out and out theocracies are particularly barbaric, although the so-called secular States like Syria, Egypt, certain African States, and China are also brutal.
What needs to be noted is a new twist in the emergence of religion as politics: its growing political influence through political parties of god and thus through elections. This world-wide phenomenon is relatively new in the modern age.
Beside the Current Battle Lines
In the former Soviet Union, an officially godless society since its origins, religion in various forms is on a comeback trail in contemporary Russia with official tolerance; from the president (a former KGB officer) to lesser officials: priests are found blessing everything, everywhere.
In Western politics, too, religion, has forced itself back into public places. The American president begins each day on his knees and each cabinet meeting with a prayer. Susan Jacoby pointed out in her book Freethinkers, that the most dramatic presidential address in the USA in generations took place three days after 9/11 in the National Cathedral. President Bush, surrounded by Christian, Jewish and Muslim representatives spoke warmly about inclusiveness. Symptomatic of this situation is the propagandistic claim that the USA is indeed 'one nation under god.' While there are millions of non-believers in the country, there was not a single public word about them or by them about the content and purpose of the public display on this occasion. Religionists have their fingers on the nuclear button of Armageddon and direct the largest military machine in human history, with military bases all over the planet.
What of the post-Bush era? In early June 2007, during a nationally televised forum presidential candidates John Edwards, Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton testified to their faith, talking about the 'hand of God' (Edwards), forgiveness (Obama) and prayer (Clinton). While a Pew study shows that 49% of Americans believe that Christian conservatives have gone too far 'in trying to impose their religious values on the country' in challenging the separation of Church and State, secular and public education, and in demanding less rather than more political discussion of religion; nevertheless the Christian conservatives themselves take a very large place in the present political debates dealing with the future of American society.
The degree of all this is unusual in the Western world; however the degree of obsession with religion and flag-waving nationalism is at its most pronounced in the USA. Where else would we witness the construction of a $27 million lavish Creation Museum currently being built in Petersburg, Kentucky, which tells us that huge dinosaurs could have existed with humans shortly after time began in 4004 BCE, and that Noah managed to squeeze a male and female of all the world's animals into this boat of only 135 meters long? Where else in the Western world would we witness as reported in a Newsweek magazine poll earlier last year that 48% of those Americans surveyed believed that god created us in our present form in the past 10,000 years?
Politically the Christian fundamentalists have almost taken over the entire Republican Party. Among those elected there are 45 senators and 186 members of the House of Representatives who are given a 80%-100% score of approval by the most influential Christian advocacy groups: the Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum and the Family Resource Council, all right-wing fundamentalists. In addition, some 50% of chaplaincy appointments to the U.S. military come from this school of thought. And at a recent annual convention, National Religious Broadcasters representing some 5500 Christian broadcasters from radio and television, claimed to reach 141 million listeners and viewers across the U.S. Many of these statistics are referred to by Chris Hedges in his book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. The following questions should be asked: where is the American Left? Don't these values serve the interests of the American power elite and should therefore be confronted?
It has long been a centerpiece of 'progressive thought' that science, education and liberal democracy would put religion to rest. Not only has this not happened but on the contrary the numbers show that the proportion of people attached to the world's four biggest religions--Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism--rose from 67% in 1900 to 73% in 2005 and may reach 80% by 2050 (source: World Christian Database).Although true stats on religion may be untrustworthy, there is clearly a dangerous trend.
More worrisome, it is the more fanatical forms of religion that are on the ascendancy, the sort that claim Adam and Eve met 6,300 years ago. Organized religion has always been at the service of the economic and political ruling class of society. While Pentecostalism is spreading among the destitute of the Brazilian favelas, the American evangelists tend to be educated and well-off. In India, Turkey and Pakistan religious parties of god have been driven by the local bourgeoisie.
Religion is becoming visible in many fields, from business to economic theory. When future historians look back to the early 21st century they probably will see religion as a formidable destructive force influencing political freedom, concepts of community, conflicts and wars. Although the reasons some people are religious may not have changed down through recent times, the role religion assumes in public life has. The place of religion has become plainly more evident in the last few decades. Recall when Time magazine ran a cover story in 1966 titled "Is God dead?" and three years later a human landed on the moon; the juxtaposition was pre-mature.
Religious politics began to arise in the early 1970s, at a time when the high aspirations of the 1960s stalled. The welfare State was targeted when Thatcherism filled the vacuum by going on the offensive, followed by Reaganism; uncertainty spread as avarice was celebrated, and the New Left movement fragmented into various parts not taking the time to mature with a fuller and complimentary agenda for social and political change. While the counter-culture danced around new tribal practices or turned to the mystical East, the secular humanists were unable to institute alternative celebratory rituals so the important sense of community was diluted. The spiritual vacuum was filled by the religionists with their standard and known symbols; at the same time their officially acknowledged holidays and symbols were slowly revitalized.
An Important Historic Split
During this period as the fundamentalists took more and more space in the Middle East, Iran, India and Pakistan, and in the U.S., Western democratic liberalism compounded a historic split. The split took place between the two founding revolutions of the West, an old sore that reopened. In France, the revolutionaries detested the Church, and the concept of god, all crucial forms of domination from their past. From this radical tradition followed a blunt, no-holds-barred attack on religion in all its forms. Following the American Revolution, the founding fathers saw a plurality of faiths, and took a more benign view. They divided Church and State to protect both from each other. Moderation and tolerance were meant to prevail in all interactions between believers and non-believers, at all levels of society and in all of its institutions. Enter the fundamentalists. This split between atheists and liberal secularists is reflected in the current debate over religion and society, and is also reflected in the style of the polemics of those who are part of the debate. There will be sirens all along calling for an alliance with the 'left religionists,' an alliance that has to be rigorously scrutinized. Coalitions can come and go, and reflect a need to fill the numbers for a protest march, petition or public demonstration of one form or another. But cooption into alliances which fudge fundamental choices must be carefully scrutinized. The dynamics of the relationship between liberal Christians and other religionists, and the fundamentalists are often moot. Unless and until liberal Christians repudiate dependence upon all sacred texts (and so far, they have not), their position is a back door into fundamentalism, because fundamentalists always take more seriously the principles that liberals are apparently willing to bargain away in order for an alliance to make religion palatable to fringe members and doubters. Whenever the institutions of religions are critiqued or threaten, the liberal religionists always side with the fundamentalists, witness the recent behaviour of Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury.
Much of history suggests that atheists and religionists cannot work together when it comes to science and politics. The war between science and religion has a centuries old history. In the U.S. and Canada the cold war has become a hot war. What is refreshing is that we see the rise of a new crop of public intellectuals. We can recognize that the religionists continue to make the provocative moves that divide us, and if the faith-based initiatives of much of the American political class are any indication, they show no signs of ceasing these provocations any time soon. As long as personal religious beliefs remain strictly personal, people should be free to indulge. Is moral progress a delusion? Is evil a permanent reality? Atheists do not deny, as is suggested too often by book reviewers, that we humans have a spiritual nature which has nothing to do with religion. We should be humbled, perhaps to the point of spontaneous genuflection, says Sam Harris, by the knowledge that the ancient Greeks began to lay their Olympian myths to rest several hundred years before the birth of Christ.
Public Intellectuals and Public Debate
The sudden emergence of five remarkable public intellectuals and the public debate lancing the boil of silence is a significant event ushering in a new cultural and political period. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Christopher Hitchens, and Michel Onfray have triggered an earthquake. Two scientists, two philosophers and a journalist have claimed a colourful attention thanks to their best selling books and their many public lectures. We single out these five because they have broken the sound barrier loudly, although there are of course others who have and continue to contribute to the debate. The particular success of the five reflects something significant about the slovenliness of the self-conscious non-religious, the humanists and secularists of different strides and the Left especially in North America. These strata of our society, too often comfortable in their university ivory towers, have been a timid minority, without a public voice, too polite and defensive, derided, ignored and rendered politically marginal at best. Meanwhile in the last four decades the zealous fundamentalists of monotheism have politicized themselves into a formidable force, here and on other continents. This anthology and the many other resources that have been brought to public attention are meant to help turn the tide of reaction.
The Parameters of this Book
In publishing this book we state plainly: our concern is mostly with Washington and the dominant public ideology that shapes Americanism and its impact upon the world. In the last decade the policies of the American political and corporate elite have generated a backlash fanning religious fundamentalism and fanaticism of one kind or another throughout the world. Washington is an all-powerful superpower, armed to the teeth, with many inside the corridors of power awaiting the glorious Armageddon.
Why the interest in the 'new atheists'? One reason is a concern about the rise of fundamentalism mainly but also religion in politics generally. There is an explicit political agenda at play, more oftentimes than not hidden from view. Some of this agenda is visible: opposing stem-cell research; gay marriage and abortion; championing State aid to religious schools and faith-based social programme, the list is long... The influences of all these issues are reflected in a Pew Research Center 2006 report on religion which reports that 69 percent of Americans believe that liberals have gone too far in separating Church from State. There is a possibility that in looking at fundamentalism abroad we fall off the political edge. The argument here is that fundamentalism is a danger amongst us here. We on the Left must be careful to not in any way cross the line into racism and xenophobia because our attention is so largely focused on fanaticism elsewhere.
There has to be the widest public debate on religion in all its aspects including the standard attempt to confuse it with spirituality. We have to conduct the debate about our deepest concerns--about ethics, and the seeming inevitability of some human suffering--in ways that are not irrational. We desperately need a public discourse that reflects critical thinking and intellectual honesty. We need to deal with our emotional and spiritual needs without embracing the preposterous and superstitious. We must acknowledge the need for community and hence of rituals with which to mark those transitions in every human life that demand attention and depth--birth, maturing from childhood, association and friendship, partnership, and death--without bowing to the old institutions of Church or State for purposes of 'legitimacy or legality.'
This must be done without lying to ourselves or our friends and families about atheism and our basic beliefs. Living without god(s) is not unlike living without masters. It requires creating a society of democratic participation by the largest number of citizens and thus creating the ecological city. It requires a society that is beyond being vulnerable and most unlike our own which is far too unequal, class-bound and thus deeply insecure. Thus we have to think both politically and philosophically. The crossroads of this thinking is ethics which once again takes centre place. We have to admit that the prospects in the short-run do not seem good, as we try to understand the nature of our failure, in the past and now.
We must not be surprised at the outright hostility or smug bemusement expressed by many liberals or progressive fellow travelers toward the renewed debate on atheism. The renewed or new critiques of religion have broken powerful taboos. There is an ever present commentary that we have gone or are going too far. Atheism and religion are subjects of current debate publicly and the Left must become engaged. It is equally important for the Left to make its own distinct contribution to this debate, hence this book.
We have included in this anthology excerpts from some of the great classics, many of which are hard to find. We have included some of the most outstanding and insightful excerpts from major persons of the early 20th century, followed by thinkers toward the latter part of the century and into the 21st century. We have peppered this exciting ensemble with short quotes from celebrity atheists to both amaze and amuse the reader who did not know that so and so was or is … and out of the closet.
We then include an epilogue which calls for a new Enlightenment as an open letter to the Left. Finally, the book ends with a resource guide of where to find more intellectual nourishment and support.
Enough to the obedience and submission demanded by god as characterized originally by the story of Adam and Eve. There they were, forbidden by the creator of the universe to partake from the tree of knowledge. They were ordered to be ignorant of good and evil and to have but one source of authority. The rest is a painful history for humanity. Another world is possible.
Dimitrios Roussopoulos
March 7, 2008