Gunning for God (3 page)

The logic is simple. “Imagine with John Lennon,” says Dawkins, “a world without religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as ‘Christ-killers’, no Northern Ireland ‘troubles’, no ‘honour killings’, no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money (‘God wants you to give till it hurts’). Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it.”
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This message resonates powerfully in a world rendered fearful by fanatical acts of terror perpetrated by extremists. Which of us, apart from the violent themselves, would not like a world purged of such horrors? Most of us have no hesitation in agreeing with the New Atheists that there are problems, major problems, with aspects of religion. How could we “respect” religious extremists that encourage young men and women to become living bombs in order to gain instant access to paradise? The New Atheists are quite right in drawing attention to this kind of thing, especially in societies that are in danger of having public discourse paralysed by political correctness.

In page after page the New Atheists spell out in lurid detail the tragic history of horror and evil associated with religion — from the atrocious acts of fundamentalist Islamic suicide bombers, killing and maiming their innocent victims, to the unspeakable abuse of children by priests, robbing them of their childhood innocence and often inflicting on them brutal and permanent psychological trauma; from the fearful brainwashing of the cults, to the ethnic cleansing of the Balkans, and the kneecappings and shootings inflicted on each other by extremist Protestants and Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland. Indeed, a cursory glance around the world at the moment shows that not only are there wars between different religious groups, but vicious fighting between various factions of the same religious group. It is a sickening litany. Religion would certainly appear to be a major problem.

Well then, if religion is the problem, then the solution is obvious, say the New Atheists: get rid of religion. Civilized society, they say, can no longer afford the luxury of smiling indulgently at religion that has become far too dangerous and extreme for such complacency. It must therefore be eliminated; and Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg, for one, has no hesitation in saying so: “The world needs to wake up from the long nightmare of religion… Anything we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.”

That is the New Atheists’ stated goal in a nutshell; and the observant reader will not miss the totalitarian sounding word “anything” in Weinberg’s statement.
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Dawkins states the goal this way: “If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down,”
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even though in his next sentence he recognizes that this might just be presumptuous optimism. He wants not only to rally the faithful (atheists) and to encourage them to “come out” for their faith (for such it is, despite their protests to the contrary as we shall see); but also to proselytize — to “raise the consciousness” of others, by describing the attractions of the New Atheism — thus increasing the footprint of atheism on the demographic landscape.

THE RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE

To gain some idea of what that landscape looks like, we refer to a YouGov poll in the UK, commissioned by the BBC broadcaster John Humphrys in 2007. According to it, 16 per cent of the 2,200 polled called themselves atheists; 28 per cent believed in God; 26 per cent believed in “something” but were not sure what; 9 per cent regarded themselves as agnostics, among them Humphrys himself; 5 per cent said they would like to believe and envied those who did, but couldn’t; 3 per cent didn’t know; 10 per cent hadn’t given it much thought; and 3% gave the response “other”.
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It is interesting to set these figures in the wider context of an earlier (2004) international survey of ten countries, again commissioned by the BBC, entitled “What the world thinks of God”.
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Overall, about 8 per cent of those polled considered themselves to be atheists; so the UK came out at about twice that average with the highest percentage of atheists — 16 per cent. In the USA about 10 per cent said they did not believe in God; although a 2005 Gallup poll put the figure much lower, at 5 per cent. An internet trawl through a selection of recent polls seems to indicate that more people are comfortable with making the negative statement, that they do not believe in God, than the positive statement, that they are atheists — however illogical that may seem. For instance, the
American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS)
conducted in 2001 gives the figure for atheists in the USA as 0.4 per cent, although 14 per cent identify themselves as non-religious.
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However interesting these figures may be as indicators of the uphill nature of the New Atheists’ struggle to gain a hearing, the central issue, whether their atheism is true or not, is not going to be settled by mere recourse to statistical analysis. To ascertain truth, we need more robust evidence than that.

THE NEW ATHEISM AND TRUTH

One refreshing feature of the New Atheism is that it is not noticeably influenced by postmodernist relativism, at least in the realm of truth. Richard Dawkins amusingly writes: “Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I’ll show you a hypocrite.”
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Addressing his Christian readers, Sam Harris says, “I would like to acknowledge that there are many points on which you and I agree. We agree, for instance, that if one of us is right, the other is wrong.” The New Atheists believe therefore that truth exists that is accessible to the human mind. They accept the law of the excluded middle — either this universe is all that there is, or it isn’t; either there is a God, or there isn’t; either the resurrection of Jesus happened, or it didn’t. In that sense they are thoroughly modernist in persuasion. This means, in particular, that we can be clear from the start what it is we are talking about; we have at least some basis for rational debate.

IN PLACE OF GOD

In 2006 a conference took place at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, California, on the theme “Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason, and Survival”. Its remit was to address three questions: Should science do away with religion? What would science put in religion’s place? Can we be good without God? Leading New Atheists like Richard Dawkins and Steven Weinberg were among the speakers.
The New Scientist
judged this conference to be of such importance that, in its fiftieth anniversary special edition, it included a report of it in an article entitled, “In place of God”.
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This title reveals that the objective of the New Atheists is not simply to complete the process of secularization by banishing God from the universe; but it is to put something in place of God. And it is not simply that society should replace God with something else; it is that science should do so. Apparently no area of human thought or activity other than science is qualified to contribute anything useful. Science is king. Of course, science is a set of disciplines practised by human beings; so the ultimate objective would appear to be to make these scientists the ultimate arbiter of what is not only to be believed by all other human beings, but what is to be worshipped by them — remember it is God they wish to replace. Do we detect more shades of totalitarianism?

The first two questions on the La Jolla conference agenda show that propagating atheism is part of a wider goal, the enthronement of science as supreme. This aim has powerful echoes of the similar crusade of T. H. Huxley in the years following the publication of Darwin’s
The Origin of Species
. Huxley saw Darwin’s theory as his main weapon to loosen the grip of Christianity and achieve the secularization of society through the domination of science. In 1874 this theme was evident at a famous meeting of the British Association in Belfast, at which Huxley, J. D. Hooker (botanist), and John Tyndall (President of the British Association for Science — who worked on atmospheric gases), were main speakers. Tyndall said: “All religious theories must submit to the control of science and relinquish all thought of controlling it.”
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THE MORAL DIMENSION

Inevitably, therefore, the New Atheists have to tackle the issue of morality and ethics. That is why the third question (Can we be good without God?) appears on the conference agenda, even though it might seem incongruous at first sight. The conference organizers clearly felt they had to address the incontrovertible fact that for centuries the source of morality, at least in the West, has been the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The New Atheists wish to abolish religion, so they have to solve the problem of giving an alternative source for morality, not least because their main attack on religion is that it is not only intellectually but morally wrong.

We can therefore express the major elements in the New Atheists’ agenda as follows:

1. Religion is a dangerous delusion: it leads to violence and war.
   
2. We must therefore get rid of religion: science will achieve that.
   
3. We do not need God to be good: atheism can provide a perfectly adequate base for ethics.
   

SOME DEFINITIONS

We need first to say something about the meaning of the terms “atheism” and “religion”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), atheism (a-theism) is “disbelief in or denial of the existence of a God”. The OED cites Shaftesbury (1709): “To believe nothing of a designing Principle or Mind, nor any Cause, Measure or Rule of things but Chance… is to be a perfect atheist.” Dawkins (citing Steven Weinberg) defines his concept of God: “If the word ‘God’ is not to become completely useless, it should be used in the way people have generally understood it: to denote a supernatural creator that is ‘appropriate for us to worship’.”
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Dawkins’ stated antipathy, therefore, is only to what he calls “supernatural gods”. They are the delusional gods and are to be distinguished from the God of some (enlightened — according to Dawkins) scientists and philosophers, where the term “God” has become a synonym for the laws of nature, or for some kind of cosmic natural intelligence that, although superior to human intelligence, ultimately evolved from the primitive stuff of the universe like any other lesser intelligence. Thus, the principle target of the New Atheists is the supernatural God of the Bible, who is the Maker and Upholder of the universe.

I use the term “target” in order to draw attention to the fact that the New Atheists are not simply atheists. They are perhaps better described as anti-theists, by contrast with the type of atheist who, though she does not believe in God herself, is quite happy for others to believe in God provided they do not disturb her.

One corollary of their anti-theism is that by “religion” the New Atheists have particularly in mind the great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with the main emphasis being on Christianity. Pantheistic religions like Hinduism, and religions that could reasonably be alternatively classified as philosophies, like Confucianism and certain forms of Buddhism, play little or no role in New Atheist literature.

I grew up in Northern Ireland and can understand those who think that the only solution to the world’s problems is to get rid of religion. But, precisely because I was brought up in Northern Ireland and nevertheless remain a convinced Christian, I may just have a contribution to make in correcting what I feel is a disquietingly dangerous imbalance in the logic of the New Atheists’ approach, both in terms of the diagnosis they make and the solution they propose.

I am not alone in that disquiet. Many atheists share it. Barbara Hagerty, in her NPR report
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mentioned previously, points out that the reaction to increased atheist aggressiveness has not met with universal approval among atheists. She cites atheist Paul Kurtz on the New Atheists: “I consider them atheist fundamentalists. They’re anti-religious and they’re mean-spirited, unfortunately. Now, they’re very good atheists and very dedicated people who do not believe in God. But you have this aggressive and militant phase of atheism, and that does more damage than good.” The interesting thing here is that Paul Kurtz was the founder of the Center for Inquiry, whose mission is to “foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values”, and which is the organizer of a “Blasphemy Contest” that invites contestants to submit short statements critical of religious beliefs. Hagerty reported that Kurtz claims to have been ousted from his position at the Center for Inquiry by a “palace coup”.

Atheists are clearly divided about the aggressive approach of the New Atheists, and some find it positively embarrassing. Their embarrassment echoes that of philosopher Michael Ruse when he penned the following endorsement for the McGraths’ book,
The Dawkins Delusion?
:
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“
The God Delusion
makes me embarrassed to be an atheist and the McGraths show why.” For this reason it is important to realize from the outset that the New Atheists are far from being representative of all atheists. Indeed, many of my atheist friends and acquaintances are, not surprisingly, at pains to distance themselves from the aggressiveness of the New Atheists.