Wonderful session with John Gray yesterday here in Cambridge; it was only a pity that he had to leave as soon as it was over, and we couldn't spend more time with him. Gray, a political philosopher and a self-described "sceptic" about things religious (he said he could be fairly described as an atheist, but he shies away from what has become a politically loaded term), delivered a critical talk about the New Atheism -- broadly, the new form of popular atheism propagated by Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins and others -- which Gray described as a vulgar and intolerant form of utopianism.
For one thing, the power of New Atheism is greatly exaggerated, said Gray, who asserted that it was primarily a phenomenon of the news media and academia. Gray said there's almost nothing new about the New Atheism. It is ignorant of the past, and the history of ideas. This is more than unfortunate, because the 20th century is littered with tens of millions of bodies of human beings, the collateral damage of atheism in power. It is undeniable that atheism, and an ideological suppression of religious belief, was central to communism. Under Nazism, insofar as there was an intelligentsia, it was atheist, though it made tactical alliances with Christian churches, and some of the Nazis believed in reviving a "comic-opera Wagnerian form of pre-Christian European paganism."
Gray pointed out that the durable assumption that modernization and the march of science through society will bring about secularization and the marginalization of religion has been refuted by experience. He brought up the example of Chinese scientists, doctors and other professionals today gathering for prayer and Bible study. Said Gray, "These are not illiterate fools."
New Atheism, in Gray's view, is a cruder version of 19th-century Positivism, the philosophical position holding that the only real knowledge is knowledge acquired through the senses. It's hard materialism, in other words, one that regards metaphysical discussion as simply a matter of subjective preference. In the 19th century, intellectuals generally believed that religion was a phenomenon emerging out of primitive ignorance, a way of knowing that should be discarded in light of science and rationality. This is the basic position of Dawkins et alia, according to Gray
Here's a big problem, though: Liberals in the media take this positivist stance as a normative description of reality, and don't inquire about the connection between atheism, values and politics. And here we get into some very interesting territory, where it is understandable why the New Atheists suppress, consciously or not, the way atheism in power actually acted out its values. The key point, which I get into after the jump: There is no logical connection between atheism and liberalism -- in the sense that all of us in the modern West are liberals -- and in fact, the bedrock institutions of liberalism come out of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
[Read on for more.]
Gray says the Positivists were anti-liberal. Some were fiercely intolerant, because they believed that all knowledge could and should become scientific. Science seeks absolute, clear and logical truth, so once social truth is rationally arrived at, why should we tolerate error? (Compare this, by the way, to the anti-liberal Leo XIII's assertion that "error has no rights" -- a formulation that the Second Vatican Council elegantly reinterpreted to mean that error may have no rights, but human beings do). Gray said the original Positivists hated individualism and critical thinking, and believed that a universal convergence of scientific truth would also mean a convergence of values.
Today, the New Atheists believe that science and materialism will bring us to liberal values of the sort endorsed by Western journalists and academics. But there is no reason to believe this. Correlation is not causation. That New Atheists among us tend to be political and cultural liberals is interesting, but there is no causal link to their atheism. In fact -- and I found this quite interesting -- the atheism we have today is remarkable in how it mimics monotheism in its pattern of thinking -- especially in its view that history is a narrative process of unfolding enlightenment. Anybody who persists in remaining endarkened have to be marginalized and silenced.
Gray identified five strains of Atheism:
1. Science-Oriented Atheism. An atheism that grounds itself in scientific modes of understanding, and the discourse of science. My notes are unclear on this point, so I won't say anything more.2. Ultra-Protestant Atheism. This kind of atheism rests strongly on the idea of individual autonomy, and holds that one shouldn't take anything on authority. Gray thinks this is rooted in Protestantism.
3. Non-Humanist Atheism. Arthur Schopenhauer, Gray says, is a good example of this orientation. Schopenhauer didn't like Christianity or the churches, but he also believed that atheism is its own thing, and owes nothing to science. Science and atheism are, to use Stephen Jay Gould's phrase, "non-overlapping magisteria." One doesn't have anything to do with the other. (It's my sense from reading Gray's work that this would describe his own position -- this, combined with Naturalistic Atheism, see below.)
4. Anti-Liberal Atheism. Friedrich Nietzsche, for example. It as actively anti-liberal, and contemptuous of liberal values. In Gray's view, this is completely logical. Liberal values - ideals of toleration - come straight out of Judaism and Christianity, says Gray. Nietzsche viciously attacked liberalism precisely because of its Christian values (it pitied the weak, for example, and was a slave religion that honored what was contemptible in man, in Nietzsche's view).
5. Naturalistic Atheism. The idea that religion is a normal part of life, that if you try to eliminate the religious sense from life, you're going to get repression of natural instincts. It's a benign or favorable attitude toward religion as a natural expression of what it means to be human. It's interesting to reflect, says Gray, on how atheist regimes -- Revolutionary France, Soviet Russia, the Third Reich -- have quickly adapted a secular sacerdotal gloss, becoming political religions with their own pantheons of saints and sacraments, to speak to the religious sense within man. This sort of atheist isn't threatened by religion, and in fact sees religion as satisfying an important instinct within human beings -- but it must be kept in its place.
Gray further said that the New Atheists cannot deal with the fact that atheism in power has been horrifically deadly, because it would deny the basic dogma of their faith: that atheism leads to liberation and redemption, and that their project of liberating people from their traditions and their history also severs them from their humanity.
"Atheism is like pure Christianity: it can never do anything bad," Gray said, describing their position. "But no religion is like that. They all contain bad things - some more than others."
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Of these points, I see your perspective as having more in common with totalitarians than with secularists, as you share half of them (excepting the first and last point). As I understand it, you claim that there is an absolute authority in god, there are limits to your application of evidence and reason to your beliefs (you ultimately have an underlying faith which is unshakable at some point). Correct me if I'm wrong. But even if you're an exception, it wouldn't be far wrong to make this claim about most of the monotheistic believers in the world, and as such you'd be an outlier.
[second to last one: keep getting "internal server error"]
I'm nearly certain that you won't agree with me, but please consider this perspective in the future before tossing about the "New Atheists are cousins of Hitler". That is a cowardly and illogical rhetorical stunt that employs guilt by association (a logical fallacy), and that association is actually far less strong between New Atheists and totalitarians than between monotheisms and totalitarians. Of course those murderous beasts are miles and miles away from both secularists and religious moderates like yourself, so I'm not trying to say you share any of their murderous tendencies. But, you are inviting such comparisons when you repeat a logically flawed trope as you do here.
[finished]
What atheism points out is that religion is false. Gods do not exist, and there are no supernatural influences which affect the universe. "New" atheism merely refuses to sugarcoat this truth with mealy-mouthed deference to religion.
Now, because gods do not and have never existed, all morality attributed to religion is in fact created by people. Those arguing that religion is necessary for morality are merely saying that the only way people can be moral is if they are made to believe in lies, with farcical assertions about carrots and sticks to be applied after death.
That may very well be true, but it does not make those things real.
Atheism is vulgar, entwined with Nazis...
I'm sorry, but this is column is nothing but religious bigotry. Belief.net should not peddle this intolerance, which is better posted with Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage. This is really offensive.
Well dern it all Rod, I came here with an open mind and was committed to my reading being as such when then across this telling fragment I came:
Really? Historical accounting? Want to get into that?
I can smell an f**'in smear from 150 yds...
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