John Gray had a very powerful piece in the Guardian's Saturday Review section on the rise of secular fundamentalism and the follies of Dawkins, Grayling, Hitchens etc.
Dawkin's groupies won't be persuaded by Gray's argument but anything that takes a decent pop his brand of militant secularism is fine by me. And I say that as someone who usually describes themselves as an atheist - because one of the least appealing things about militant secularism is its readiness to distort the meaning of the word atheism itself.
Atheism used to be simple - it was a denial of the existence of God and an eminently reasonable position given the lack of evidence. But these modern proselytising atheists seem eager to launch a full-on assault on the whole psychology of religious belief itself and actively set out to dismantle the very idea of religious devotion - they also cast anyone of a religious bent as completely deluded and mistaken. This amounts to a fundamental misunderstanding of what religious devotion means or how most religious people experience their faith. Trying to deny or invalidate the very idea of religious belief is like trying to deny the existence of love or jealousy - they have no objectively verifiable cause, can't be 'scientifically' proven to exist. They're emotions which can easily be dismissed as irrational or nothing more than psychological reactions to certain stimuli. But to do so is to fundamentally misunderstand their importance. It's not the objective truth of those emotions that matter but their subjective impact and the behaviour they elicit. What's more, however ephemeral the emotions themselves their outcomes are often all to real and to ignore such outcomes because they were prompted by something that in and of itself can't be proven is daft.
Dawkins only response to this line of thinking is to dismiss it by drawing parallels with belief in 'fairies and goblins' - if individuals choose to believe because it comforts them then that's OK but it doesn't prove an objective truth about those beliefs. In one sense he's right but the attempt to draw a parallel between several thousand years worth or religious devotion, the art & literature or moral framework inspired by it and a belief in 'fairies and goblins' is a startlingly naive position.
Another feature of militant secularism is the tendency to characterise people who act according to a deeply held religious conviction as somehow inherently more dangerous or unstable than those who act according to a particular secular doctrine (usually liberalism). This is nonsense since it assumes that secular motives are, by default, scientific in nature and free from any element of faith or belief - clearly this isn't the case. A belief in racial or sexual equality for example, or the efficacy of free markets is no more scientifically verifiable than a belief in Jesus Christ. The secular politician who claims to be guided by lofty liberal values has no more scientific basis for their beliefs than the overtly Christian politician. Dangerous ideologues can rise from the ranks of committed socialists or free-marketeers as surely as they can among Christian or Muslims.
Like many people happy to call themselves atheists I'd shrink from lending my name to this more militant and fundamentalist strain of it. Attacking religious belief with such ferocity might actually bring about the very thing they're hoping to avoid - religiousity taking stronger root in our public life. In the US, where religion and the state are legally separated, it's hard to envisage any politician achieving significant office without a very public claim to religiousity (usually Christian) and this applies to both Democrat & Republican politicians. Here in the UK we have an established Christian church but religion is far less important in UK political life and the electorate would be suspicious of an overtly religious politician.
It feels like we have the balance about right so I wish the likes of Dawkins, Hitchens etc. would think carefully before they start moaning about religion all the time....
"Not everything in religion is precious or deserving of reverence. There is an inheritance of anthropocentrism, the ugly fantasy that the Earth exists to serve humans. There is the claim of religious authorities, also made by atheist regimes, to decide how people can express their sexuality, control their fertility and end their lives, which should be rejected categorically. Nobody should be allowed to curtail freedom in these ways, and no religion has the right to break the peace. The attempt to eradicate religion, however, only leads to it reappearing in grotesque and degraded forms. A credulous belief in world revolution, universal democracy or the occult powers of mobile phones is more offensive to reason than the mysteries of religion, and less likely to survive in years to come. Victorian poet Matthew Arnold wrote of believers being left bereft as the tide of faith ebbs away. Today secular faith is ebbing, and it is the apostles of unbelief who are left stranded on the beach."
Dawkin's groupies won't be persuaded by Gray's argument but anything that takes a decent pop his brand of militant secularism is fine by me. And I say that as someone who usually describes themselves as an atheist - because one of the least appealing things about militant secularism is its readiness to distort the meaning of the word atheism itself.
Atheism used to be simple - it was a denial of the existence of God and an eminently reasonable position given the lack of evidence. But these modern proselytising atheists seem eager to launch a full-on assault on the whole psychology of religious belief itself and actively set out to dismantle the very idea of religious devotion - they also cast anyone of a religious bent as completely deluded and mistaken. This amounts to a fundamental misunderstanding of what religious devotion means or how most religious people experience their faith. Trying to deny or invalidate the very idea of religious belief is like trying to deny the existence of love or jealousy - they have no objectively verifiable cause, can't be 'scientifically' proven to exist. They're emotions which can easily be dismissed as irrational or nothing more than psychological reactions to certain stimuli. But to do so is to fundamentally misunderstand their importance. It's not the objective truth of those emotions that matter but their subjective impact and the behaviour they elicit. What's more, however ephemeral the emotions themselves their outcomes are often all to real and to ignore such outcomes because they were prompted by something that in and of itself can't be proven is daft.
Dawkins only response to this line of thinking is to dismiss it by drawing parallels with belief in 'fairies and goblins' - if individuals choose to believe because it comforts them then that's OK but it doesn't prove an objective truth about those beliefs. In one sense he's right but the attempt to draw a parallel between several thousand years worth or religious devotion, the art & literature or moral framework inspired by it and a belief in 'fairies and goblins' is a startlingly naive position.
Another feature of militant secularism is the tendency to characterise people who act according to a deeply held religious conviction as somehow inherently more dangerous or unstable than those who act according to a particular secular doctrine (usually liberalism). This is nonsense since it assumes that secular motives are, by default, scientific in nature and free from any element of faith or belief - clearly this isn't the case. A belief in racial or sexual equality for example, or the efficacy of free markets is no more scientifically verifiable than a belief in Jesus Christ. The secular politician who claims to be guided by lofty liberal values has no more scientific basis for their beliefs than the overtly Christian politician. Dangerous ideologues can rise from the ranks of committed socialists or free-marketeers as surely as they can among Christian or Muslims.
Like many people happy to call themselves atheists I'd shrink from lending my name to this more militant and fundamentalist strain of it. Attacking religious belief with such ferocity might actually bring about the very thing they're hoping to avoid - religiousity taking stronger root in our public life. In the US, where religion and the state are legally separated, it's hard to envisage any politician achieving significant office without a very public claim to religiousity (usually Christian) and this applies to both Democrat & Republican politicians. Here in the UK we have an established Christian church but religion is far less important in UK political life and the electorate would be suspicious of an overtly religious politician.
It feels like we have the balance about right so I wish the likes of Dawkins, Hitchens etc. would think carefully before they start moaning about religion all the time....
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