John Gray on types of atheism

Rather than atheism leading to a liberalism that validates atheism, liberalism has sometimes led to an atheism that undermines the liberalism from which it proceeds.

Theistic tolerance of all God's children has sometimes mutated into an intolerance of what is perceived as God's "injustice" toward his children -- or more precisely an intolerance of what is perceived as God's "injustice" toward one child in particular, the individual atheist intolerant of God.

A theistic moral obligation to tolerate others has often mutated into an atheistic right to whatever one wants, with any limit placed on the gratification of even the basest desires perceived as "injustice."

Frequently those limits are imposed by other children of God with whom the individual atheist must coexist.

Getting rid of God has thus served as a pretext for getting rid of one's obligation to other people.

Which is why atheism -- while it has mutated out of liberalism -- has tended not to be liberal itself, in the sense of being generous or giving as opposed to selfish and self-centered, or, in other words, sinful.

Since "New Atheism" is an admittedly middlebrow project, it's kind of missing the point to lambaste it for not being high philosophy. Dawkins and Hitchens do actually address the issue of the 20th-century totalitarians, so you can't they exactly ignore it. This doesn't mean their arguments are necessarily convincing, but they are there.

I think what Gray is missing (or at least your notes) Deweyan atheism, which is basically what undergirds most of the New Atheism today. Basically, the argument runs that science rests on experiment and questioning (which religion doesn't) and therefore science is the true and proper support for an open, democratic form of government.

But Gray doesn't seek to prove that atheists are uniquely evil -- how could he, he's an atheist himself! -- only that they are a lot more like everybody else than they think. That, and that many of them are often utopians who have a poor appreciation of human nature. How weird, English Student, that you would read me (much less Gray) as saying that atheism is responsible for all the world's evils.

Polichinello: Dawkins and Hitchens do actually address the issue of the 20th-century totalitarians, so you can't they exactly ignore it.

Gray mentioned this, and said that they always fall back on the excuse that atheism in power wasn't really atheism, and that the terrorism of the various communist governments was really a manifestation of tribalism, of culture, of this or that thing. The problem with this, said Gray, is that everywhere officially atheist states have come into existence, they have all sought to violently repress religion and freedom of thought -- this, despite the very different cultural contexts in which the communist regimes have emerged. You have to deny an awful lot to clean the blood off the hands of atheism. Gray said this is like Christians who, when confronted by the crimes and repression of officially Christian states, say that that wasn't really Christianity. Gray doesn't buy that either. He's not saying that Christianity necessarily causes repression, nor that atheism necessarily does either. But in the case of the latter, in our time atheism in power is inseparable from mass murder and repression of those who stood against the regimes.

Also, you can sure as heck bet that all those uneducated peasants in their little traditional rural communities throughout Poland, Lithuania, and elsewhere in the eastern Europe whom the Nazis armed and incited to commit genocidal pogroms against the Jews were not atheists.

Rod: "Gray mentioned this, and said that they always fall back on the excuse that atheism in power wasn't really atheism, and that the terrorism of the various communist governments was really a manifestation of tribalism, of culture, of this or that thing."

But is that not the same argument that Christians make for the violence committed during times when Christianity was united with the State (Constantine in Rome, much of the Middle Ages in Europe, etc.)? Many, many times (and perhaps even some times on this blog) we hear that the Crusades, the Inquisitions, and other violence done in the name of the Church or God was "not really Christianity."

What I think Gray may well be saying is that religious belief (or the lack thereof) is of little use in predicting the incidence of violence when said group obtains power. Atheists are as likely to abuse power as are Muslims, Christians, Jews, Wiccans, and Pastafarians when they obtain it.

Human nature, in other words, has a tendency to abuse power, which does speak volumes against positivism. However, it also speaks volumes about the impotency of religious belief (or lack thereof) in attenuating such tendencies.

Christopher Dawson (see especially Progress & Religion) was making many of these points 80 years ago...

Bill: I never said "Hitler was a Christian and governed as a Christian," rather that his claims to have been a Christian sound exactly like the claims of any other politician. Since your entire subsequent wall-of-text response was misguided and offtopic, I didn't read it. Sorry you wasted all that time, but you will not waste mine.

Rod: It's odd to see you complain of "name-calling," since Gray's entire M.O. is to accuse any atheist he dislikes of being some pie-in-the-sky utopian with such a simplistic worldview that he can easily demolish it. Who, specifically, do you really think wants to use atheism to "cure the human soul" (another of Gray's made-up projections)? You are correct that Dawkins is opposed to religious schooling, but I honestly think you are mistaken about his reasoning, which he explains in depth in his "Delusion" book. He suggested that it is wrong for parents to impose religious belief and practice onto minor children, and for minors to be publicly categorized as belonging to a particular religion--the idea being that they should choose for themselves what faith, if any, to adhere to as adults, when they can actually reason their way through it. You may not agree with that idea, but I think his actual argument is a lot less sinister than you're interpreting it.

"...but a Christian wouldn't try to destroy the church like Hitler tried to do,..."

True. Many Muslims make the same claim about those terrorists who say they are Muslim but kill by the dozen with their terrorist acts. They also say that the terrorists like Bin Laden are using religion to advance their political agendas, extend their power, or simply avenge what they see as a "wrong".

Much like Hitler used Christianity to justify his actions, and in doing so did not care if the church was destroyed in the process.

I think it's sad when itelligent people debate and protect an invisible person in there head.........that's ok......speak out.....speak loud...let our voices be heard.....silence is our enemy now.....we will speak the truth and the truth will set us free.

Once again, the "tolerance" of materialists (or anti-supernaturalists) is belied by the snide tone ("making up dumb crap") and ire of TTT's remarks. Nihilism may begin with passion but most often (mercifully)ends in tedious predictability. "Atheism innocent, religion guilty." Certainly no dogma at work there. Strict empiricism for sure. From such illusions deliver us!

A more spirited, constructive critique of the "New Atheists" than Gray provides is available from Orthodoxy's own David Bently Hart in "Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies." But Gray's testimony is powerful and gives hope for the possiblity of self-criticism even among atheists not "religiously" obligated to identify themselves as limited, fallible, in need of all manner of correction.

Better yet, Rod, follow the path outlined by your Orthodox/Chinese guide. Hoist a tankard, light a candle...I salute your continued attempt at reasonable conversation even with those determined to caricature and vent.

Gray's points seems to be part of a red herring argumentation against atheism. I fail to see any persuasive thought, supporting that an anti-supernaturalist perspective is inherently more prone to intolerance and totalitarianism than a worldview based on the assumption of a supernatural authority.
Worse, if accepting his thoughts (despite fundamental gaps in the argumentation), one is left with the conclusion that mankind is just too stupid to live without a super-natural authority (imagined or not does not matter. Will this conclusion carry far once it becomes explicit?

Gray neglects to mention maybe the most common atheist type: the half-hearted or half-ass*d Nietzschean.

This is the sort of person who wants to behave like Nietzsche's Ubermensch, or in other words Lex Luthor, but who wants everyone else to behave like DC Comics' Superman, or in other words Clark Kent.

Atheism simply can't motivate anyone to do anything,

Maybe not, but it can certainly remove constraints on behavior that belief in a higher power provides.

Stalin and Pol Pot were vicious not because they were atheists, but they were atheists because they were pre-committed to another ideology, communism.

Then you will, of course, refrain from blaming the Spanish Inquisition on Christianity, since it was an instrument of the Spanish Crown. And how do you know that Stalin's and Pol Pot's commitment to communism came before their atheism? It appears that in Stalin's case he became an atheist before he was a Marxist.

"Gott mit uns"

"God is with us"

On the belt buckle of every soldier in the German Army during WWII. You know, when They. Were. NAZIS!

Silly Rod. The Armenian genocide, Serbian ethnic cleansing, the Holocaust all occurred in the 20th century and all involved elminating members of minority religious groups after long histories of being demonized by the majority faith group *on religious grounds*. Be clear, Rod: the antismeitism present in Europe that made the holocaust so possible was the product of (1) centuries of official religious persecution sanctioned by Christianity, or (2) NAZIS!? Clearly, these were athiest motivations.

Rod your deep discomfort with sex manifests itself in strange ways.

Geoff G.,

Modern liberal shibboleths like "progress," "enlightenment," "freedom," "equality," "the right to choose," etc., etc. can, have been, and are being corrupted and abused, just like all the other notions that humans have ever devised.

And more liberals are no more inclined to doubt their own first principles, they are no more inclined to skeptical self-scrutiny than anyone else, and often less so.

Modern liberals are fond of questioning authorities *besides* those in which they *themselves* have invested their trust and taken to some degree on faith.

But when it comes to their own sources of authority ... well ... not so much.

For example, can you honestly say that you really doubt or question what you have concluded is your right to have sex with other men and to have your sexual relationships with men recognized by the state as being equal to those that take place between women and men?

Now, most people in the world, most people who have ever lived, would be rathe more doubtful and more questioning about that right than you yourself are.

Which doesn't mean that they are right and you are wrong per se.

It just means that you -- as a modern liberal -- have certain first premises that you regard as being settled and beyond debate, just like everyone else does to some degree.

In fact, it probably means that you have first premises that you are even less apt to doubt than many if not most religious people are apt to do.

I suspect that most of those who possess religious faith have had rather more dark nights of the soul about whether or not there is a God than most modern liberals have ever had about whether or not "tolerance" and "diversity" are good things or about whether or not women should be treated the same as men, or blacks the same as whites, or gays the same as straights, etc.

This despite the fact that sexuality and racial equality and equality of sexual orientation are ideas that can and have been contested just like the existence of God.

Which, again, is not to say that any one or more of those positions is necessarily wrong.

It's just to say that they are modern liberal first principles than modern liberals don't doubt.

quote: "Gott mit uns" "God is with us"

On the belt buckle of every soldier in the German Army during WWII. You know, when They. Were. NAZIS!"

I've seen this refrain from a number of atheists/freethinkers. It's completely lame and indicative of the shallowness of the "New Atheists." The Wehrmacht was the army of the German nation and had traditions and slogans that pre-dated the rise of the Nazis to power. Also, having "God with us" on your belt buckle means very little in terms of religious identification. Our currency has "In God We Trust" on it. It certainly doesn't mean that America is a Christian nation or some such.

It's funny to me how "freethinkers" and "brights" seem to use the same bad argument. Moreover, many of the arguments of the "New Atheists" aren't even new.

rr

quote: "Be clear, Rod: the antismeitism present in Europe that made the holocaust so possible was the product of (1) centuries of official religious persecution sanctioned by Christianity, or (2) NAZIS!? Clearly, these were athiest motivations."

Oh, another correction is in order here. Christian anti-Semitism was more religious in nature i.e. viewing Judaism as a false religion and wanting to convert the Jews. Laws discriminating against Jews in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period had nothing to do with their race, but their religion. If a Jew converted to Christianity, they were no longer discriminated against. In the nineteenth century, many of this laws were loosened all over Europe.

Yet a new kind of anti-Semitism emerged, one based on race, Social Darwinism and extreme nationalism. The Dreyfus Affair in France was an example of this. Nazism would arise out of this as well, though the Nazis would add eugenics and neo-paganism. For the Nazism, being a Jew was a matter of race and one could not "convert" to the Ayran race.

Christians have a far from perfect record when it comes to their treatment of the Jews. Nonetheless, the anti-Semitism that lay behind Nazism and ultimately the Holocaust actually is more associated with modern political ideologies such as nationalism and modern science (eugenics was all the rage among scientists for several decades) than Christianity.

rr

It seems that most of the argumentation here boils down to what "atheism" means. Is it a just a lack of a belief that has no other implications for a person's life or behavior (e.g., the fact that I don't believe in the Tooth Fairy has no effect on my life or behavior)? Or is it a vision of the cosmos, which has concrete implications (e.g. Dawkins and Harris, both of whom think that religious belief should be eradicated, though they always get coy about it when people call them on how drastic that would be). I also see a lot of "No True Scotsman-ing" getting thrown around here, even after it's been pointed out that both atheists and Christians tend to do that.

Finally, it's obvious that if Gray and some of the atheists on this thread were put an a room together, the conversation, to say the least, would be extremely contentious and heated! Ditto the Christians, of course. The point is that being atheist no more excuses you from human foibles and weaknesses than being Christian or anything else does. Some Christians might think otherwise (though I don't), but they're wrong. What's amusing is that many atheists try to argue that atheism is all about reason and clear thinking (hence the suggested term "Brights"), and thus stands above such pettiness as the Christians with their squabbles; and thus proceed to get really agitated and p***ed when other atheists take issues with their own views of atheism, their own profane cows, as it were!

Anyway, it's fun to watch.

Atheism as skepticism or Atheism in an evangelistic form - Pick one or the other.

Whether the New Atheism is a *religion* or not is less important to me than the self-evident point that they are definitely true believers who can not tolerate much and do not have the historical wisdom to know that ALL *isms* are subject to self-deceptions and abuses of power.

If the New Atheists were really 'liberal' (i.e. folks who appreciate the value and necessity of pluralism) then they would seek common ground with liberal Christians (or Jews or Muslims), rather than claim that being liberal and religious is an oxymoron.

Tuck: "...but what grounds does and atheist have for saying that he was wrong other than the small w wrong, maybe wrong, sort of wrong."

I don't know, Tuck. Maybe they would end up sounding like some of the Christian pro-life posters did the other day when they could not condemn Dr. Tiller's murder without also pointing out how horrible a man he was.

Yes, this is blatantly off topic, but I just could not help myself. For all those folks who were saying that Carrie Prejean was being persecuted for her Christian beliefs...have a read.

www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525716,00.html

"I told Carrie she needed to get back to work and honor her contract with the Miss California Organization and I gave her the opportunity to do so," Trump said in the same documents. "Unfortunately it just doesn’t look like it is going to happen and I offered Keith my full support in making this decision."

How about this kind of atheism-I don't want to waste Sunday mornings talking to someone who's not there; I don't want to give money to people to pay for their stupid costumes; I think 90% of the clergy I've met couldn't get a real job that would provide them with the same standard of living; every culture I've studied, every nation I've read about, that had clergy as either the main ruling class or as one of its only professions, was poorly governed-Vatican States, Iran, Byzantium, Mother Russia, Saudi Arabia, black ghettos-you name them, witch doctors should only rule tribes.
Become as corrupt as Orthodox Romania, Muslim Pakistan, Catholic Mexico, Protestant Bubba Baptist Belt US-are you kidding? Religion does have a relationship to morals: it makes them much worse.

True skepticism leads to agnosticism, not atheism. Proof of God's existence is hard to find (Kant notwithstanding). But neither can we disprove his existence, because it's not possible to prove a negative.

But for some reason, people want a yes or a no, not a maybe.

For more, see:

http://www.achangeinthewind.com/2009/05/why-cant-agnostics-get-any-respect-.html

Nietzsche wasn't really an atheist. He thought that "the death of god" was a disaster, and wanted to create a world where belief in gods (as opposed to God) would flourish again. He criticized the atheism of his time, and would probably criticize the atheism of our time even more strongly.

Tuck,
If you inject God then you are still left with your opinion: Mormon morality, Muslim morality, Hindu morality, Shinto morality, take your pick.

Even if you settled on Christianity, which sect? Quakers are very different from Southern Baptists - "Thou shalt not kill" which leads to pacifism versus "Thou shalt not murder" which leads to guns in church. Now how does God feel about this? Depends on your opinion.

Excuse me? Don't lay all those bodies at atheists' feet. Hitler was Catholic, and used it in speeches. In fact he was noted to have condemned atheism.

I used to think Rod was just wrong. Now unfortunately I have to conclude he misrepresents the truth intentionally if and when it supports his own crumbling superstitions.

"...the 20th century is littered with tens of millions of bodies of human beings, the collateral damage of atheism in power."

No 20th century power/political philosophy was based on Atheism. Not a single person was killed because they weren't Atheists. Or the right kind of Atheist.

About Hitler, for example. His hatred of the Jews was grounded in and supported by Christianity's 19 centuries of blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus, and the support he received from church leaders and members relates directly to that belief. Jews were victimized in Europe for 1500 years before Hitler, and ALWAYS by Christians.

Rod needs to read more than his fundy Christian pamphlets if he wants to discuss history or religion seriously.

Let's not forget that Mussolini started off as an atheist and converted to Catholicism before his country gassed and then massacred Ethopia, or that the Japanese Empire practiced a right-wing socialism called Shōwa that was a merger of the Shinto religion and militarism that allowed them to butcher the Phillipino and Chinese civilians, or those really charming pro-German Catholic Croatians:

On April 28, 1941, Units of the Croatian Ustashi Army, a militia created by the Croat Prime Minister, Ante Pavelic, surrounded the villages of Gudovac and Brezovica and killed 234 inhabitants who held Serbian nationality. They were told to go home to Serbia or convert to Roman Catholicism, refusal to do so ended in death. In the village of Blagaj, 520 men, women and children, were murdered in the most cruel way by being hit over the head. In the Koprivnica Forest near Livno, around 300 souls were subjected to the most unspeakable acts of brutality before being killed. Hands and legs were cut off, eyes gouged out, heads of small children were severed and thrown onto their mothers laps, breasts were severed and children's hands pulled through and tied together. In the Livno area alone, the Ustashi killed 1,243 Serbs including 370 children. In the Risova Greda Forest, over 800 Serbs were killed and their bodies hurled into ravines. On July 10 in the town of Glina, around 700 Serbs were gathered in the local Serbian Orthodux church, ostensibly for conversion to Catholicism. Locked inside the church, all were beaten with wooden mallets, clubs, rifle butts and stabbed with bayonets and knives before being left to die as the church was set on fire and burned to the ground.

George Duncan's Massacres and Atrocities of WWII
http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres.html

This insistence that Christians are better then everyone else - especially atheists - is pointless and diversionary.

Just to put the Catholic Croat contribution to WWII in perspective

...The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which has devoted more time than anyone to the study of the Holocaust, estimates the Ustase murdered 30,000 Jews, 29,000 Roma and some 600,000 Serbs.

...In a 1990 interview, Simon Wiesenthal confessed, "I must admit that I have been obsessed with the criminal character of the Independent State of Croatia. Even the Germans were appalled by the crimes committed in it." This is true. High-ranking German officers, such as General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau, repeatedly expressed their feelings of anger, outrage and disgust, provoked by Ustase atrocities. After an inspection of one of the Ustase's concentration camps, Glaise von Horstenau wrote that "Such places have reached their peak of abomination here in Croatia, under a Poglavnik installed by us. The most wicked of all must be Jasenovac [a Croat concentration camp], where no ordinary mortal is allowed to peer in."

http://pavelic-papers.com/features/essays/remembrance.html

Bill Butler,
I would think when most people learn of the Civil War or the Civil Rights movement a century later, the kinds of questions you ask are considered. After all, it was American versus American and so the obviousness of right and wrong are in question at the start.

But I do agree that modern liberalism (like modern conservatism) prides itself on questioning the conventional wisdom of the other side while excusing similar behavior from their own.

In general I'd say there does appear to be a correlation between ideology and self-doubt -- the further from the center one is, the less likely they are to question their beliefs.

Re: On the belt buckle of every soldier in the German Army during WWII.

And used as German military paraphernalia going all the way back to Emperor Friedrich von Hohenstaufen. The fact that Nazis didn't bother to remove this insignia (which was 800 years old) is somehow evidence that they were on a Christian Crusade?

Re: the antismeitism present in Europe that made the holocaust so possible was the product of (1) centuries of official religious persecution sanctioned by Christianity, or (2) NAZIS!? Clearly, these were athiest motivations.

Actually, anti-semitism antedates Christianity by some centuries. The Greeks and Romans regarded the Jews wqith distaste, bordering on disgust, and sometimes persecuted them too. Look up "Antiochos Epiphanes" for an example.

Re: Vatican States, Iran, Byzantium, Mother Russia, Saudi Arabia, black ghettos-you name them, witch doctors should only rule tribes.

During its heyday Byzantium was in fact the best governed European state, excepting, maybe, only the Umayyad Caliphate at Cordova. Granted autocratic monarchial rule is not much in vogue these days (and, yes, for good reason) but back in 900 AD it sure beat chaotic anarchy replete with marauding barbarians from the steppe-lands. By the way, what's with the inclusion of "black ghettos"? Last I checked such places are not self-governing enclaves, but are part of larger cities, which in turn are under the governance of their states and ultimately the Federal government.

Re: Jews were victimized in Europe for 1500 years before Hitler, and ALWAYS by Christians.

As per my post above, lengthen that out to about 2300 years, from the days when Alexander first brought Judea under Greek rule. The antipathy between Jew and Greek is older than Christianity's quarrel with it parent.

We have had atheistic regimes kill millions of people and restrict the civil liberties of millions more in the 20th century. We have had religious movements kill many people and restrict the civil liberties of many others in the centuries prior to the 20th century as well as the 20th century. It should be obvious to even a half-wit that the philosophical root of this kind of BS is the notion that the individual does not own his or her own life, that the individual is required to serve some greater purpose or movement. This has been obvious to me since I was in high school and nothing I have experienced since then has changed my opinion one bit.

R Hampton,

I don't quite follow what you're driving at about the Civil War or the Civil Rights movement.

If you mean that -- in general -- the rightness of their outcomes should not be in doubt, then I agree.

But, then, I'm not one inclined to elevate doubt or skepticism per se to the highest moral good -- it's Geoff G.'s "modern liberals" who claim to do that.

But the fact that most of us are in general agreement about the underlying issues in the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement just goes to show that there are limits even to modern liberals' much-vaunted "skepticism" and "doubt."

For many of us -- for most of us, in fact -- the underlying issues in what David Hart Bentley calls the Christian Revolution are no more fundamentally in doubt than the underlying issues in the Civil War and the Civil Rights are in doubt for modern liberals ... or almost anyone else.

The rub comes in with the fact that so many modern liberals cannot tolerate firm conviction with regard to the underlying issues involved in the *Christian* Revolution, as opposed to the underlying issues involved in earlier ones -- especially those involved what one might call the ongoing *Liberal* Revolution, broadly construed.

John Shuey: No 20th century power/political philosophy was based on Atheism.

That's funny--Marx himself defined Communism as "dialectical materialism", and most Communist states were/are officially atheistic, at best tolerating religions, Christian or otherwise (e.g. the Chinese don't treat Buddhists too well, either).

Not a single person was killed because they weren't Atheists.

That'd be news to millions of Russians, Eastern Europeans, and Tibetans, among others, who were slain for holding to their faiths, renunciation of which would have saved them.

R Hampton: This insistence that Christians are better then everyone else - especially atheists - is pointless and diversionary.

In fairness to Rod, he explicitly denied that he was saying this. The point is not that Christians are better than anyone else, but that atheists are neither better nor worse than anyone else, either. As humans, we all pretty much stink.

Charles Cosimano: Hitchens has had his own warmongering phase, at least in terms of what he has supported at times, so he is perhaps not the best example. In any case, you are right that it was mainly superior technology that made the atheist body count higher. Torquemada did the best he could with what he had. The point being, once more, that no sane, honest Christian (and yes, they exist!) thinks Christians are better than anyone else. If anything, a serious Christian looks at his lofty ethos and then turns to the black pit in his heart and sees just how far he falls short of what he professes. It is perhaps true to say that insofar as Christians set themselves a higher bar, they fail more and are actually worse. Having said that, the Dawkins or Harris type of atheist that argues that atheists are somehow better in that they are motivated by reason and logic, and not base superstition and passions, are kidding themselves. There are atheists who read their daily horoscopes and are convinced that aliens are coming here (which indicates that just being an atheist doesn't make you understand physics!). Let's all repeat this children: all human beings are stupid, petty, vain, venal, hypocritical, and just plain rotten, whether they're Christians, pagans, atheists, Buddists, Jews, Zoroastrians, Scientologists, rock worshippers, or whatever! Equally!!! The human race has its good points, too, and they are also equally distributed. Those of us that belong to the great religions believe that in some future age things will finally get ironed out; those of us who do not, think otherwise; but right now we are in the exact same boat.

Bill, all Hitchens needs is what he has--style. That along would destroy Gray.

Elton John has style, too--let's have him debate them both--as long was we're not worried about truth! Beside, he sings better than Hitchens or Gray!

The weakness of philosophic argument is in the fact that if the other side has the guns, the argument doesn't mean very much.

Which means if the Nazis had won, they'd have been right. Certainly one can consistently hold this, even while deploring the Nazis--but I trust it's apparent why even many atheists would be reluctant to espouse this, preferring "philosophic argument".

Bill Butler,
You missed my point entirely. The Civil War and Civil Rights movement present interesting moral dilemmas that are not obviously right or wrong for either the (open-minded) liberal or conservative.

Do states have the right to restrict individual rights? Does the federal government have the right to restrict states? Does the president have the right to suspend Habeas Corpus? Do communities have the right to dictate laws based on common identity or shared traditions? If so, how do you define these vague concepts that are fair to minorities that live in the community? What kinds of discrimination, if any, are legal? etc.

The least ideologically flexible are the extremes, and thus the least likely to seriously consider the alternatives and consistently blame the other. From where I sit, that describes the Limbaugh and Olbermann camps equally well.

R Hampton,

Both the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement really involved (at least) two debates overlapping one another:

(1) One debate had to do with the scope of equality or "civil rights."

(2) The other had to do with the scope of subsidiarity or "state's rights."

I think (1) is a debate pretty well settled for most everyone where race is concerned, though it ought to be a much more ongoing one than it presently is on lots of other fronts. In general, I don't think either modern "conservatives" (i.e. right-wing liberals) or "modern" liberals (i.e. left-wing conservatives) are sufficiently skeptical of equality of "rights" as a moral or political good, especially when it comes into conflict with other moral or political goods. I also think that neither modern "conservatives" nor "modern" liberals -- but especially "modern" liberals -- have anything but a very weak, because a very *emotive,* basis for their support of equal "rights."

I think (2) ought to be a *much* more open debate than it is, and in terms of subsidiarity manifested not just at the level of the states, but all the way "down" -- or all the way "up" -- to the level of particular families, with the whole panoply of intermediate institutions in between. One of the tragic outcomes of both the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement has been the way in which the defensible overriding or denial of subsidiarity in some *particular* instances has been used by Geoff G.'s "modern liberals" as a pretext for overriding and denying subsidiarity *in any and all* instances where it can possibly be denied, and in a large majority of cases in which it should *not* have been overridden or denied. But "modern" liberals rarely consider the good of subsidiarity, because they rarely entertain doubts or ask skeptical questions about what they perceive to be the essential good of centralized political authority.

There is a traditional, Judeo-Christian - therefore conservative - position on abortion that neatly fits neither the pro-life nor the pro-choice positions.

As a general rule, abortion in Judaism is permitted only if there is a direct threat to the life of the mother by carrying the fetus to term or through the act of childbirth...

Judaism recognizes psychiatric as well as physical factors in evaluating the potential threat that the fetus poses to the mother. However, the danger posed by the fetus (whether physical or emotional) must be both probable and substantial to justify abortion. The degree of mental illness that must be present to justify termination of a pregnancy has been widely debated by rabbinic scholars... Nevertheless, all agree that were a pregnancy to causes a woman to become truly suicidal, there would be grounds for abortion.

While most poskim forbid abortion for "defective" fetuses, Rabbi Eliezar Yehuda Waldenberg is a notable exception. Rabbi Waldenberg allows first trimester abortion of a fetus that would be born with a deformity that would cause it to suffer, and termination of a fetus with a lethal fetal defect such as Tay Sachs up to the seventh month of gestation...

There is a difference of opinion regarding abortion for adultery or in other cases of impregnation from a relationship with someone Biblically forbidden. In cases of rape and incest, a key issue would be the emotional toll exacted from the mother in carrying the fetus to term. In cases of rape, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Aurbach allows the woman to use methods which prevent pregnancy after intercourse. The same analysis used in other cases of emotional harm might be applied here. Cases of adultery interject additional considerations into the debate, with rulings ranging from prohibition to it being a mitzvah to abort.
-- Daniel Eisenberg, M.D., "Abortion in Jewish Law"

I also think that neither modern "conservatives" nor "modern" liberals -- but especially "modern" liberals -- have anything but a very weak, because a very *emotive,* basis for their support of equal "rights."

There is a very strong, rational, legal basis for (natural) rights and their equal protection.

Declaration of Independence - We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

9th Amendment - The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

10th Amendment - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

14th Amendment - All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper #84 - I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colourable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretence for claiming that power.

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia - our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.

James Madison, Property - In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property. In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Oh dear, here we go again:

"the 20th century is littered with tens of millions of bodies of human beings, the collateral damage of atheism in power"

Well first let us look at WW1, death toll estimate 20million, started by Christians, fought by christians.......
The nazis are identified as atheists but it is clear from his writings that Hitler was not an atheist and thought he was doing god's will. Besides, as in the soviet empire, even if atheism was the official line the majority of the population never bought into it (see how easily the orthodox church has regained power in the new Russia...)and most of the people doing the actual killing of those tens of millions murdered were christians. One can bring to mind horrendous rulers of the past and their murders and pogroms.....again christians. Gray does lose credibility with this tired old chestnut...

"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" - correct: religion is not a way of knowing; religion develops from tribal myths simply because the people DO NOT KNOW.

"...the 20th century is littered with tens of millions of bodies of human beings, the collateral damage of atheism in power."

What a terribly uninformed comment. Can you name one dead body that was killed in the name of atheism?

I didn't think so. The most you can say is that Stalin presided over a murderous dictatorship, every bit as dogmatic as the ones that kill in the name of God, of which there are many.

Atheism is not a worldview!

In response to "Atheism is the given...it is a starting point. The faithful make a claim which they cannot prove. Atheism remains."

I just want to point out that this is nonsense. Only Agnosticism is a given, a starting point.

Atheism goes beyond Agnosticism and claims to know something about the nature of the world, that it is a self-creating machine, lacking deities, without any higher intelligence. It is a positive belief about the nature of the universe. I do not believe in the deities of organized religion, but I am not an Atheist because I lack the Atheist's faith in knowing something that cannot be known.

Sigh. Not this again.

It is undeniable that atheism, and an ideological suppression of religious belief, was central to communism

There's no denying that strawberry is central to strawberry cheesecake with cyanide in it. That doesn't mean the strawberry flavour is what killed people who ate it. There is nothing incompatible about atheism and constitutional democratic capitalism.

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

But, as the "New Atheists" have pointed out (or at least Sam Harris has): claims about God are not metaphysical. They are claims that God really exists, out in the objective world. As such they are subject to the same scrutiny as other objective claims.

As regards the "five strains of atheism" - how about the strain that simply doesn't think there is any evidence of a God and makes no claims besides that? How does that fit into your five strains? And how do you suppose that would ever be responsible for anything? It makes no assertions in either moral or political philosophy.

"...the 20th century is littered with tens of millions of bodies of human beings, the collateral damage of atheism in power."

You mean the 20th century (and virtually every century before it) is littered with tens of millions of bodies of human beings, the collateral damage of sociopathic, militaristic dictators in power. As it turns out, whenever bad people get into power they tend to to bad things, regardless of the ideological milieu that surround them. Who would have thought?

If you want to see a counter-example of atheism "in power", look at Sweden. With approximately 80% of the population not believing in a god, Sweden is one of the most secular (and incidentally one of the most liberal) states in the world. Yet somehow they are not butchering millions and attempting to bloodily conquer the world (though they do stand astride the world of cheap, crappy furniture like the Colossus of Rhodes).

@Henry: That misapplication of the concept of "Agnosticism" drives me absolutely nuts, partly because it is so incredibly widespread, and partly because it is so ridiculous it's absurd that it ever became so widespread.

No, agnosticism is NOT a given starting point. You are undoubtdly trying to define agnosticism as some kind of nonsensical mushy fence sitting middle ground between atheism and theism. Where atheism is "there is no god"... theism is "there is a god" and agnosticism is "Ummm.. I don't know" and a shrug of the shoulders. Which is completely wrong.

Agnosticism does not mean you don't know whether there is a god or not. Agnosticism is the belief that the nature of God renders it IMPOSSIBLE to know whether there is a God or not. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with either theism (the belief God exists) or atheism (the lack of a belief that god exists) and does not exist as an alternative third option. Atheism and theism describe states of belief in the existence of a deity. Agnosticism describes a belief about the NATURE of a deity. If someone asks you if you're a theist or an atheist and you respond "neither, I'm an agnostic" you just gave an answer that makes as much sense as if you had said "neither, I'm a ballerina". Or "neither, I'm a Republican".

There IS NO middle ground third option between theism or atheism, it is a binary solution set. You are either one or the other. Period. You either possess a belief in the existence of a deity, or you do not. If you want to declare yourself to be an agnostic go right ahead. But you're still either an agnostic theist, or you're an agnostic atheist.

My take away of this article is "Atheists are ignorant and intolerant too."

Which is true.

I'm guessing this was a response to someone saying "the religious are ignorant and intolerant"

Which is also true.
Truism: there are ignorant and intolerant people.

"...
New Atheists cannot deal with the fact that atheism in power has been horrifically deadly
..."

I would argue that it is ignorance, intolerance, and powerlust which are horrifically deadly in a completely non-denominational way.

When are we going to get past this silly myth that Hitler and the Nazis were atheists? It is a big lie worthy of the Nazis themselves.

Hitler himself said on July 11, 1941, "We don't want to educate anyone in atheism."

Far from being an atheist, Hitler saw himself as a special instrument of God or Providence and frequently said so. When one of his top generals threatened to resign, Hitler chastised him by saying, “I myself, for instance, am not in a position to go to my superior, God Almighty, and say to Him, ‘I am not going on with it . . . .”

It is true that the Nazis tried to make the churches subservient. That is because, like Communism, Fascism is a religion with its own world view. It does not tolerate opposing world views. It either co-opts or destroys them. However, it is abundantly clear that Hitler's world view included a strong belief in God.

Check out the link for an atheist's critique of the "New Atheism". Interesting. http://openlettersmonthly.com/issue/december-absurdity/

Rod,

I'd like you to elaborate on this particular passage you wrote:

"[...] 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."

This is dishonest. This is closer to the truth:

"It is undeniable that suppression of ideological competitors, both religious and secular, was central to totalitarian regimes, rather than an absence in belief in god itself."

[continued]

In common with Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, the most important element is clear, and can be found concisely stated in Exodus 20:3 "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." There is a reason why Arthur Koestler chose the title "The God that Failed" for the collection of essays by ex-communists bearing witness to the reasons they ended their association with the party.

On the other hand, I find absolutely nothing (except the trivial lack of a belief in supernatural deities, which is a state we are all born into before we are religiously educated) in common between secularists, atheists, and humanists in the U.S. and the U.K. New Atheists don't seek to impose control over anyone, they don't claim that there is absolute authority or knowledge (they aren't even absolute about the presence of god even), they are skeptics and consistently praise evidence-based argumentation even when it comes to their own beliefs, and they certainly view democracy and its reliance on freedom of speech and association as essential parts of a healthy polity.
[continued: I hate doing this, but the comments kicks out big things]

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]

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.