Dawkins and Harris are hacks, at least when it comes to religion. Dawkins pretends no one has ever tried to disprove the existence of God, then resurrects an old Humean argument and pretends no one has ever thought of it before. Harris, who argued in an interview at Alternet this past winter, in favor of the torture of Muslims precisely because they are Muslims, as well as claiming that torture is efficacious (which is demonstrably untrue) all the while insisting that religious people forfeit any claim to ethical teaching is worse than a hypocrite; a self-promoting nincompoop who deserves only derision would be my fair-minded judgment. As for Hitchens, I am neither surprised nor particularly interested. Years ago he published an attack upon Mother Theresa, Missionary Position, and even as he aligns himself increasingly with the most immoderate religious forces in the United States (who have said a thing or two about drunkenness Hitchens might imbibe between bourbon-and-waters) he now comes out with the usual indictments of the usual suspects. Yawn.
Aronson, however, asks the right questions - especially concerning the sudden popularity of the views expressed by the latest incarnation of Laplace ("We have no need of that [God] hypothesis") - and I think he strikes the right note when he takes in to consideration the trouble with the definition of "God" in all those surveys that show 91% of Americans believing. I have always felt that number inflated, as well as irrelevant, and Aronson does some good work deconstructing it. He also addresses the religion-saturation of the past generation as a factor in the rise of the new, militant, atheists. I agree that their voices are welcome to a certain extent - they certainly pop the self-satisfaction of many a believer with their arrogance, self-assurance, and militancy - and my arguments with them are more about the details of their arguments, as well as their pretensions that they actually are saying anything new; I think it is all to the good that we address these questions publicly.
Yet, the question continues to be begged, and Aronson addresses it head on, forcing me to confront a problem I have wanted to avoid: Where do we go from here?
Living without God means turning toward something. To flourish we need coherent secular popular philosophies that effectively answer life's vital questions. Enlightenment optimism once supplied unbelievers with hope for a better world, whether this was based on Marxism, science, education or democracy. After Progress, after Marxism, is it any wonder atheism fell on hard times? Restoring secular confidence will take much positive work as well as the fierce attacks on religion by our atheist champions. On a societal level, as Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris point out in Sacred and Secular, living without God requires creating conditions in which people are free from the kinds of existential vulnerability that have marked all human societies until the advent of Europe's postindustrial welfare states. Markedly more religious than any of them, the United States provides a life that is far more unequal and far more insecure.(emphasis added)
I think Aronson is taking for granted something in this argument that is in fact not necessarily true. One can not accept the existence of God, one can have no beliefs that anyone could remotely call religious, and still live a joyful, loving, morally centered existence. Aronson's argument, at least here, smacks of Eisenhower's "I don't care what they believe" agnosticism. To argue that belief in a larger reality is necessary to erect barriers against existential vulnerability - and to see in the failings of the US to provide the kind of social safety nets that might mitigate the greater exigencies of life - pushes more begged questions upon us, not the least of which is whether this in itself is an argument against religion, as the US seems religion-soaked, yet the least officially compassionate industrialized nation on the planet.
I do not believe that religion functions this way; nor do I believe that human beings find it necessary to "turn towards something" should they turn away from religion. I will merely assert this without elaborating
Continuing directly from the excerpt above, Aronson writes:
The surprising response to the New Atheist offensive should thus inspire us to think politically as well as philosophically. As a first step this demands creating a coalition between unbelievers and their natural allies, secular-minded believers. I am speaking first about many millions of Americans who nominally belong to a religion but effectively live without any active relationship either to it or to God, or belong to a church and attend services but are "tacit atheists," living day in and day out with only token reference to God. And I also include the many believers who accept the principle of America as a secular society. These include members of the liberal Jewish and Christian denominations, who have long practice in accommodating themselves to science and the modern world and who, as the National Council of Churches website tells us, may remain inspired by Genesis while not needing to take it in "literal, factual terms." Many of these turned up in the most significant finding of the Baylor survey, namely that more than one in four American "believers" does not mean by this a personal God at all but a distant God who has little or nothing to do with the world or themselves. This sounds very much like the deist God of "unbelievers" Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.
These believers, along with those who think of themselves as "spiritual," as well as professed unbelievers, help to explain why according to the Pew study so many Americans -- 32 percent -- want less religious influence on government. Twenty-four percent say that President Bush talks too much about his religious faith and prayer, and 28 percent deny that the United States is a Christian nation. Most dramatically, a whopping 49 percent believe that Christian conservatives have gone too far "in trying to impose their religious values on the country." This, then, is an unreported secret of American life: Considerable numbers of Americans, religious and secular, are becoming fed up with the in-your-face religion that has come to mark our society.
Until now the most vocal left-of-center response to the Christian right, for example by Sojourners, has been to call for more religion in politics, not less. In early June the group organized a nationally televised forum at which John Edwards, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton testified to their faith, talking about the "hand of God" (Edwards), forgiveness (Obama) and prayer (Clinton).(emphasis added) Few loud-and-clear voices have been agitating in the mainstream on behalf of the separation of church and state, for secular and public education, or demanding less rather than more political discussion of religion. Yet tens of millions of Americans worry about such things.
Whether most of them continue to believe in God matters much less than that they are comfortable with secular knowledge and America's secular Constitution. Barry Lynn, for example, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, is a Protestant minister. Although Harris and Dawkins castigate all believers for sharing the premises of conservative Christians, the fact is that many believers could easily be working with out-and-out atheists and agnostics on key issues.
I think Aronson is on to something here, but I want to address the highlighted portion first. I do not believe that Wallis' position is either tenable or welcome. I have written pretty plainly that I think Wallis is to religious and Christian progressives what Falwell was to the right - with all the negative implications such a judgment entails. I also thought the recent Sojourner's forum featuring Obama, Edwards, and Clinton was actually a step backwards; I am with that 24% who think we need to talk less about religion, because, frankly, I don't care. This separates me from many progressive Christians, but I accept that separation because I think that discussions over personal belief are irrelevant. It smacks of George Bush constantly arguing that such-and-such a person in his administration is a "good man"; I honestly don't care whether or not he is, and the constant failures of the Bush years should be all the proof we need that moral goodness and professional competence in matters of public policy are not the same thing.
Yet, how do we move beyond discussions over the over-saturation of our public discourse with religious imagery to working coalitions between believers and non-believers? It is easy enough to set aside Dawkins' and Harris' assertion that religious believers of any and all types are no better than the worst offenders among their faithful counterparts with differing views; for two people who screech about "evidence" and "science" so much, one would think such blanket assertions would embarrass them, but I do not believe embarrassment (or self-knowledge) is something with which these men are acquainted. We are still left with the possibilities and problems of various coalitions.
Part of the solution, it seems to me, is to look at denominational statements, rather than individual Christian's pronouncements. The United Methodist Church has a Social Affirmation, and various resolutions within its Discipline in regards to social issues, some of which are still under debate. For example, the UMC is officially pro-life, but there is enough wiggle room to allow for people of conscience to disagree. We also affirm the dignity of sexual minorities, as well as affirm the necessity for equal civil rights for sexual minorities. It seems to me these are good places to start.
The militant atheism creates many problems, and solves few. Religion and religious belief are not going anywhere. Degrees and depth of commitment vary, but we still have to consider the reality that there are faithful among us, faithful with whom many secular folks might just be able to work. It is all well and good to take on the brain-dead and worst aspects of our faith; we are still left with how we work together to move our country forward, and to that end, forming coalitions of the willing, as it were, is part of the answer. Militant atheism is certainly interesting, but it is, in the end, apolitical, even antithetical to a politics of coalition building that is necessary if we are to move forward.
