Letters to the Editor
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Christopher1988
Have you read Hitchen's book? He specifically targets Islam and Mormonism; with Scientology one would strike the trifecta of religions with transparent and laughable origins. Educating people on the realities of this, especially the two truly pernicious cults of Islam and Scientology, is a very useful exercise - I am missing your point about Hitchen's bombast.
As to your assertion about declining religiosity in Britain, I was really trying to point out that what I think you mean is the decline of Christianity. Islam is alive and well, and is growing like a virulent bacillus in the welcoming petri dish of your island. Have you seen the surveys that show how a large percentage of Muslims in Britain would not report terrorist activity to the authorities? Does this worry you at all?
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Very good review
Just wanted to say that your review of The Hitch's book was very good but what was even better was your spot-on observation that he and other Atheist Talking Heads aren't truly analyzing why people need Religion and how, if possbile, to form a bridge from Religious-to-Non-Religious belief while still satisfying the needs that drove a person to religion in the first place. Finally, the quote by Iris Murdoch on God was excellent.
Thanks.
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Belief and Disbelief
Spirituality is not inherently bad. The belief in God is not inherently bad. Nor is rejection of spirituality or disbelief in God inherently bad. I have known many good people who were believers and many who were not. I have never seen a clear association between goodness and any particular set of beliefs or disbeliefs.
The problem seems to come when a set of beliefs is organized by people who then appoint themselves as guardians of the belief system. Then we have dogma, and that leads to turf wars, but this has nothing to do with God or spirituality. Catholicism is a dogmatic religion. Islam is a dogmatic religion. Soviet Communism was a dogmatic religion. In all these examples, a codified set of beliefs is used to bestow temporal power on the priesthood, or Politburo, or whatever the group in charge decides to call itself. But the beliefs they proclaim are irrelevant except as they can be used as a club to keep the members of the gang in line and prevent them from joining a rival gang.
I don't care which gang you belong to. If belief in God or feng shui or astrology--or disbelief in the above--helps you get through the day, that's fine with me. All I care about is how that is manifested in who you are.
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The Communist Canard
@xeynon:
It's somewhat of a pointless distraction to tar atheism with the misdeeds of "actively atheist" countries and movements, such as the Khmer Rouge, Maoist China, Stalinist USSR, Revolutionary France, etc, etc. That is because those movements' sins had nothing at all to do with their professed atheism, and everything to do with their policies of "believe what we decree or die a painful death".
I don't care if you're a progressive, a conservative, an atheist, an evangelist, my friend, my enemy... any leader who declares that all followers MUST believe the offical dogma, unquestioningly, at pain of death or torture, is wrong wrong wrong. I'd say that Maoist China had less in common with the predominantly atheist 21st century Sweden and Japan than with the aggressively Catholic Spain of the Inquisition (and to a far lesser extent, post-9/11 "watch what you say" America). "Conform or Die" is not a part of the skeptic's toolbox.
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Hating the thing that we despise in ourselves
Humanity, throughout its existence, has consistently done two things well: tell stories and destroy societies. Both, I would argue, are related to the fundamental religious impulses to make meaning of and control the world. And these are, for the most part, very rational responses to life.
Religion is many things, and in much of its history, it has been specifically about reasoning out human experience, be it to come to grips with the power of sheer beauty, or the arbitrary cruelty of history or nature, or why some people live while others die. Even something as anti-rational as many forms of religious fundamentalism proceeds with a rigorous logic from certain, not completely unreasonable observations about the word: the real is less than the ideal, people are prone to selfishness and destructive behavior, and certain texts impart the feeling that there's a solution available to these problems.
The scholar Ninian Smart categorized seven dimensions of religion: experiential, doctrinal, ritual, legal, social, material, and narrative. To pull a very specific kind of belief (doctrine), emotion (experiential), or morality (legal) out of the larger context of any religious tradition is intellectually dishonest. I am as professionally and personally concerned as Hitchens with the destructive and coercive direction of much of what we see in the religious world today, but to play as if no one can figure out why these "religious nuts" do what they do and think what they think is as bad is claiming that 9/11 happened because terrorists "hate our freedom."
And on that note, how can Hitchens be so committed to a faith-based proposition like Bush's invasion of Iraq and yet proclaim the danger of others' irrational beliefs? He may have rejected Marxism, but that part about the powerful manipulating the powerless to achieve their own material ends has got to be ringing a bell right now.
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@rosenkavalier
..who wrote:
Yawn. I'll pay attention to an atheist talking about theology when they, well, understand the basic precepts of the modern theological, scholarly discourse.
-- Rosenkavalier
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Uh, if there is no God. If there is only an uncaring Universe, then all theological discourse is nothing but a waste of time. And THAT is the point.
You want to discuss moral philosophy in the absence of any supreme being, then you have my attention. But if you think, as I do, that there is no "god" of any sort, then all theological discourse is just a lot of hooey. Some useful observations in some of it, without question. But until you take "God" out of it, it's hopelessly tainted.
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Hooray for Hitchens
I have yet to read the book, although it has been eagerly purchased. I have a problem with the review, however.
It concerns the reviewer's notion that Hitchens is like "a vainglorious father running rings around a young son" in his attack on fundamentalism. The implication is that fundamentalism is so over-the-top it barely needs commenting on by someone so erudite as Hitchens. Poor little religious fundamentalists, like children attacked by some verbose Brit who intimidates everyone with his intellect and diction.
Since when has fundamentalism, in all of the major religions, been seen as a small child in need of protection? Isn't the very nature of fundamentalism the thing that needs to be exposed and derided?
Hitchen's main issue, I think, is that the most corrosive political movement in the world is not a religious movement led by people who derive their spirituality from Blake and Weil and muse upon the metaphysical universe, but from fanatical, apocalytic, religious fundamentalists of all stripes who want to fly planes into buildings.