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Essay 9
The Battle Rages On
The battle rages on between religious believers and those with alternative belief systems. This battle has been raging for hundreds of years and will probably continue for hundreds of years. At least in the United States, by and large, the battle is no longer abusive and violent. Of course there are always nuts with guns who take their beliefs to the extreme but in general an individual can openly believe whatever he/she wishes. This first decade of the 21st Century, it seems quite obvious that a known atheist/agnostic/deist would not be electable for a top political office in the United States. If a candidate could dodge the questions of the media concerning this topic and keep his/her views private, then perhaps the possibility exists. I expect an increasing liberalization of attitudes towards alternative believers in the future due to the prominence of the scientific community in our country and in the Western World in general. To realize the progress that has been made these last few hundred years we need only to dip back into history and examine the terror of the Inquisition. Martin Luther always considered himself a devout Christian but he challenged some of the practices, procedures and beliefs of the Roman Church. If he hadn’t had the protection of the Elector Frederick the Wise, he probably would not have survived. Here is a quote from the book, "Martin Luther" by Martin Marty, published by Thorndike Press, page 92 (large print edition):
"As pressure on Luther increased, those monks who chose to associate with him took risks. Rome knew that when he attacked canon law, the legal formulations of the church that were a foundation of so much of European life, Luther was disobeying the church as well as its secular counterpart, the civil authority that enforced ecclesiastical edicts. Officials could seize him in the name of church and empire and put him to death"
Thanks to a growing temperance and an increasingly sophisticated society in theWestern World, we are not subjected to the terror of those dark centuries of the Inquisition. Some Muslim communities where there is a radicalized Islamic movement are not so lucky. Depending on the degree of extremism within the Islamic community, Christians, Jews, alternate believers (which would include all non-Muslims) and also some temperate Muslims, are considered heretics and can be put to death. At the present moment in history, this extreme movement within the Muslim community is a deeply worrisome threat. However, with modern communication and the internet, it will be increasingly difficult for that extreme movement to maintain its radical posture. I hope we can muddle through these next few dangerous years and hope the radical wing of the Muslim movement will join the historically large, peaceful segment of the Muslim community.
The battle that is raging in the United States is mainly between the fundamentalist segment of the Christian community and many of the science oriented, evolutionary based thinkers throughout the United States. The more moderate Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church are not so overtly involved in this controversy. The main flash point of the debate is the concept of creation. Fundamentalist churches have been promoting the intelligent design version of creation which does not fit well with the evolutionary developments of the past 150 years. The concept of intelligent design is based on the belief that the stunning complexity of the human being is beyond the possibilities of any natural development and is the result of God’s intervention. The scientific community from Darwin on (Origin of the Species 1859) considers that the development of Homo sapiens is a result of natural selection operating over a period of millions of years. And so the battle is joined. There is little room for compromise if the meaning of creation from Genesis in the Bible is taken literally.
Most of us in the United States have been around the various religious sects and are acquainted with their beliefs. What is not so common is to be acquainted with the heavy hitters from the other side of the controversy. There are many thinkers from the scientific community that could be mentioned as important contributors but there are four authors that are particularly prominent this first decade of the 21st Century. They are called the "Four Horsemen" and all have had books published recently that are gaining much attention.. The writings and lectures of the four authors, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Dan Dennett are easily available in bookstores, libraries and on the internet. Their writings, in general, are complex and have wide ranging references, so that at times the reading is challenging; challenging not only from the complexity of language but also from the subject matter. As avowed atheists, they do not pull any punches and their ideas may seem abrasive to readers with traditional beliefs. The following are the recently published books by these authors.
"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins was published in 2006 by the Houghton Mifflin Company. Dawkins has been quoted in several other places in this book, so I will say only as a reminder that he is a preeminent scientist and author of many important books. "The God Delusion" is a widely ranging examination of the sources of common religious beliefs and attitudes and how these beliefs and attitudes have had deleterious effects on individuals and societies. In another chapter, there is an extensive refutation of the concept that without God and religion, mankind would slip into deplorable patterns of behavior. The following quote is from the preface, page 5. It helps to understand the title of the book and Dawkin’s attitude towards religion.
"The word ‘delusion’ in my title has disquieted some psychiatrists who regard it as a technical term, not to be bandied about. Three of them wrote to me to propose a special technical term for religious delusion: ‘relusion’. Maybe it’ll catch on. But for now I am going to stick with ‘delusion’, and I need to justify my use of it. The Penguin English Dictionary defines a delusion as ‘a false belief or impression’. Surprisingly, the illustrative quotation the dictionary gives is from Phillip E. Johnson: ‘Darwinism is the story of humanity’s liberation from the delusion that its destiny is controlled by a power higher than itself’. The dictionary supplied with Microsoft Word defines a delusion as ‘a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of psychiatric disorder. The first part captures religious faith perfectly. As to whether it is a symptom of a psychiatric disorder, I am inclined to follow Robert M. Pirsig, author of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", when he said, ‘When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion’."
Chapter Two reviews secularism and the separation of church and state, which is particularly relevant to our situation in the United States.
"The genie of religious fanaticism is rampant in present-day America, and the Founding Fathers would have been horrified. Whether or not it is right to embrace the paradox and blame the secular constitution that they devised, the Founders most certainly were secularists who believed in keeping religion out of politics, and that is enough to place them firmly on the side of those who object, for example, to ostentatious displays of the Ten Commandments in government-owned public places. But it is tantalizing to speculate that at least some of the Founders might have gone beyond deism. Might they have been agnostics or even out-and-out atheists?"
This book by Dawkins is quite easy to read with understanding. Some of his other science-oriented books can be quite challenging to understand. My belief system ‘Nature’s Way’ (Essay 2) was greatly influenced by Dawkin’s books, "The Selfish Gene", "The Blind Watchmaker", and "The Ancestors’ Tale".
"god is not Great’, by Christopher Hitchens, was published by Twelve, Hachette Book Group USA, 2007. Hitchens, is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School. He is the author of numerous books, including Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Thomas Paine’s "Rights of Man": Biography, Letters to a Young Contrarian, and Why Orwell Matters".
The title looks like it has a mistake, with ‘god’ not capitalized but this is the way the title appears on the book. It is probably a tip off of what is to come. Hitchens is not gentle in his treatment of religious traditions and practices and the troubles they have caused. This is a book full of references to a wide variety of subjects and is challenging to read. I have chosen the last two paragraphs of the book for a quote, because it sets out the promise of the future, page 283.
"Above all, we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man and woman. This Enlightenment will not need to depend, like its predecessors, on the heroic breakthroughs of a few gifted and exceptionally courageous people. It is within the compass of the average person. The study of literature and poetry, both for its own sake and for the eternal ethical questions with which it deals, can now easily depose the scrutiny of sacred texts that have been found to be corrupt and confected. The pursuit of unfettered scientific inquiry, and the availability of new findings to masses of people by easy electronic means, will revolutionize our concepts of research and development. Very importantly, the divorce between the sexual life and fear, and the sexual life and disease, and the sexual life and tyranny, can now at last be attempted, on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse. And all this and more is, for the first time in our history, within the reach if not the grasp of everyone.
However, only the most naïve utopian can believe that this new humane civilization will develop, like some dream of "progress," in a straight line. We have first to transcend our prehistory, and escape the gnarled hands which reach out to drag up back to the catacombs and the reeking altars and the guilty pleasures of subjection and abjection. "Know yourself," said the Greeks, gently suggesting the consolations of philosophy. To clear the mind for this project, it has become necessary to know the enemy and to prepare to fight it."
"Freedom Evolves" by Daniel C. Dennett was published in 2003 by Viking Penguin Press. Dennett is one of the prominent authors that has become identified with the movement to encourage rational thought. He is University Professor and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. His books include "Brainstorms", "Elbow Room", "Consciousness Explained", and "Darwin’s Dangerous Idea".
"Freedom Evolves" has a quite different approach from the other books recommended in this essay. The book examines the concepts of determinism, free will, consciousness and other subjects within the Darwinian evolutionary context. This thoughtful book is on my read again list; the first time through is just not sufficient to get a grasp on all of Dennett’s writings.
"The End of Faith" by Sam Harris was first published as a Norton paperback in 2005. Sam Harris is a graduate in philosophy from Stanford University. He is now completing a doctorate in neuroscience, studying the neural basis of belief, disbelief and uncertainty.
If you decide not to read the other books that I have recommended, at least read the chapters in "The End of Faith" devoted to the examination of the current situation with Islam and the Middle East. It is a cause for great concern particularly in the United States and Western Europe. Here is a quote on that subject, page 29.
"It is important to specify the dimension in which Muslim "extremists" are actually extreme. They are extreme in their faith. They are extreme in their devotion to the literal word of the Koran and the hadith (the literature recounting the sayings and actions of the Prophet), and this leads them to be extreme in the degree to which they believe that modernity and secular culture are incompatible with moral and spiritual health. Muslim extremists are certain that the exports of Western culture are leading their wives and children away from God. They also consider our unbelief to be a sin so grave that it merits death whenever it becomes an impediment to the spread of Islam. These sundry passions are not reducible to "hatred" in any ordinary sense. Most Muslim extremists have never been to America or even met an American. And they have far fewer grievances with Western imperialism than the norm around the globe. Above all, they appear to be suffering from a fear of contamination. As has been widely noted, they are also consumed by feelings of "humiliation" –humiliation over the fact that while their civilization has foundered, they have watched a godless, sin-loving people become the masters of everything they touch."
The text goes on in like manner and gives the reader a good background of this serious contemporary problem. Also, the separation of church and state is a major theme in this book. The following quote give an example of the kind of thinking that can occur when a religious organization has undue influence over the policies of a country. (page 153)
"For many years United States policy in the Middle East has been shaped, at least in part, by the interests that fundamentalist Christians have in the future of a Jewish state. Christian "support for Israel" is, in fact, an example of religious cynicism so transcendental as to go almost unnoticed in our political discourse. Fundamentalist Christians support Israel because they believe that the final consolidation of Jewish power in the Holy Land—specifically the rebuilding of Solomon’s temple—will usher in both the Second Coming of Christ and the final destruction of the Jews. Such smiling anticipations of genocide seem to have presided over the Jewish state from its first moments: the first international support for the Jewish return to Palestine, Britian’s Balfour Declaration of 1917, was inspired, at least in part, by a conscious conformity to biblical prophecy. These intrusions of eschatology into modern politics suggests that the dangers of religious faith can scarcely be overstated. Millions of Christians and Muslims now organize their lives around prophetic traditions that will only find fulfillment once rivers of blood begin flowing from Jerusalem. Is is not at all difficult to imagine how prophecies of internecine war, once taken seriously could become self-fulfilling."
How important is it to read these authors? If you think knowing the truth of the critical issues of our times is important, then you must seek out the best informed writers available. These authors are not just cranks spewing out a lot of anti-religious propaganda. They are major contributors to the increase of knowledge and represent a movement in our universities, based on sound science and designed to make a better world. You don’t have to believe what they write or the movement that they represent but if you believe that the truth will set us free, then you must at least give these authors a hearing.
Atheism, the belief that there is no God, still has an uncomfortable connotation in our society. The brutal Russian atheistic regime of the past century certainly didn’t help us form a positive opinion of this belief. Also, in 1960 Madalyn Murray O’Hair filed a lawsuit on behalf of her son Bill to stop daily Bible readings in the public schools which led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling which ended the practice of daily prayer in American public schools. The ruling was (and for some still is) controversial but that is not the whole problem. O’Hair was a flamboyant and abrasive person and was not the best representative for this important, serious challenge to these practices and the future of atheism in this country.
Church attendance in the U.S. has been a common tradition for many of our citizens. We have a background of history and opinions relating to Christianity. What we don’t have is a long term acquaintance with alternative beliefs such as atheism, agnosticism and deism. In our US history some of our most respected leaders had alternate belief systems. People in politics have learned early on to not emphasize a belief system that is at variance with their constituency. The result is that we often have only a hazy, incomplete idea of a leader’s true beliefs. That is probably how it should be.
The continuing developments in evolutionary studies and now aided by molecular biology have given alternative believers formidable ammunition to defend their views. Before Darwin in the 19th Century, the seemingly best explanation for how mankind was created came from the Bible. At the present time the sciences, in general, now have a rival explanation for creation that is gaining strength and adherents, especially at the university level where there are few restriction on what is to be studied and the conclusions drawn from those studies. Belief is still a tricky business but the alternative believer is no longer just a leaf flying in the breeze. He/she has the backing of many of the best minds in the world.
The first cousins of atheism are agnosticism and deism. Whereas the atheist states that there is no god, the agnostic disclaims any knowledge of god and the deist, by reasoning only, claims that god created the universe and then abandoned any control of the natural world as we know it. The atheist receives the most disfavor because of the definite stance concerning god. As an agnostic of 50 years, I could easily agree with either the atheist or the deist if there were some convincing evidence that these views were correct. What would be really difficult for me would be to return to the belief that there is a beneficent god operating in our natural world and that that god is worthy of our adulation and worship. I find no convincing evidence for this belief. Rather, what seems much more plausible to me is the recognition that the Homo sapiens is blessed (or cursed, according to your opinion) with a large, flexible brain that is subject to all kinds of belief and attitudes which become a part of his mental processes and personal operating system. The trouble comes when incoming information is not subjected to some kind of rigorous analytical process. History is full of wild beliefs assumed to be true by impressionable, gullible human beings. Science, little by little, is freeing us from this situation.
