do the new atheists want to destroy religion

7/29/2019 Do the New Atheists Want to Destroy Religion

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Do the new atheists want to destroy

religion?

Tamas Pataki ABC Religion and Ethics 17 Aug 2011

It has become a commonplace among religious advocates that the new atheism aims to

destroy or annihilate religion: it is perceived as an aggressive existential threat.

See also

Related Story:The virtues of atheism and the vices of religionTamas Pataki 1 Mar2011

Related Story:With friends like these: Atheists against the New AtheismABCReligion and Ethics 4 Aug 2011

Related Story:The poverty of the new atheismScott Stephens 19 Jan 2011 Related Story:Evangelical atheism, secular ChristianityABC Religion and Ethics 26

Jul 2011

Comments (114)

In some of myprevious articles, I noted that although the global religions are undergoing

internal changes that are worrying both their opponents and their mainstream leaderships -

radicalisation, polarisation, the rise of cults to Mammon (the god Prosperity) - they have little

to fear from atheism; at least if the metric of success in religion is increase in number of self-declared votaries.

The fact that global population growth is occurring in poor, religious demographics points to

such increase; and exigent emotional needs will continue to drive people to seek satisfactions

that religions can in their various ways provide, especially, as living conditions and security

decline.

Having broadened my reading a little recently, I would now also add to the motives to

religion the cognitive systems posited by evolutionary psychologists that draw us ineluctably

social beings to inferences about supernatural agencies.
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(Of course, I do not believe that mere number is a useful metric for success in religion and I

doubt that the intelligent and moderate elements of religious leadership believe that either.

What constitutes advance in religion? Well, I'm not a player, but I'd be inclined to say that it

is the extent to which the pacific tendencies in religion predominate over its destructive ones:

the extent to which Eros overcomes Thanatos, in Freudian language.)

I mention these matters to provide a backdrop to a curious feature of the religious response to

the "new" or "Darwinian" atheism represented by Richard Dawkins and company. It has

puzzled me for some time, and though it remains in my mind unresolved I venture a few

exploratory reflections.

It has become a commonplace among religious advocates that the new atheism aims to

destroy or annihilate religion: it is perceived as an aggressive existential threat. There have of

course been brutal, occasionally successful, attempts in the past to extirpate particular

religions - usually instigated by other religions - and unsuccessful attempts, as by

communism last century, to extirpate all religion.

It would seem from some of the pronouncements of religious advocates that the new atheists

were contemplating exterminations on a similar scale. The puzzle is how this perception

could have gained ground, especially in light of the facts mentioned in the opening paragraph,

and the relatively anodyne temper of the new atheism, historically speaking.

Let me consider a few examples. Recently, many senior clerics in sermons and articles have

been deploring the growth in atheism and drawing explicit connections between this (alleged)

development, atheist literary and promotional activities (such as last year's Global Atheist

Convention) and the "godless" activities of Nazis and Communists last century.

Commentators such as The Age's Barney Zwartz are worrying about "the rise of a radical

secularism" which argues "that religion must be expunged from public life."

Cardinal George Pell wasreportedas complaining about "a global campaign of bullying and

intimidation by secular groups trying to drive Christians from public debate and stop

churches providing schools, hospitals and welfare ... 'No one in the West today would suggest

that criticism of Christianity should be outlawed'," he opined generously, but some secularists

wanted a one-way street, and sought to drive Christianity from the public square. "Modern

liberalism," he concluded, "has strong totalitarian tendencies."

The first time I noticed this putative existential threat to religion was in a widely quoted andrepublishedreviewby the distinguished law professor and Jesuit Father Frank Brennan. This

article influenced the tenor of much of the local reaction to the new atheism - its language can

be heard echoing in the articles by Zwartz, Pell and many others - so it still seems befitting to

examine it.

Brennan's immediate targets were "the antireligious rantings" of Christopher Hitchens,

Michel Onfray and myself - although Richard Dawkins as usual received the worst drubbing.

"Dawkins and his ilk think religious belief of any kind is meaningless, infantile and

demeaning, so nothing is lost by agitating in the most illiberal way for the suppression of all

religion and not just religious extremism which causes harm to others ... The successfulmarketing of The God Delusion has now unleashed a steady flow of anti-religious rantings
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from intelligent authors who have thrown respect for the other and careful argument to the

wind, staking bold claims for the destruction of religion. Instead of proposing strategies for

weeding out religious fundamentalists who pose a threat to the freedom, dignity and rights of

others, these authors are proposing a scorched earth policy of killing off all religion."

What struck me at once is that none of the books about which the review is so scathing, norany of the kindred atheist sorties that I have read (and I've read a few), are in a critical respect

accurately described.

None of them engage in anything remotely akin to "agitating in the most illiberal way for the

suppression of all religion," staking a claim "for the destruction of religion" or "proposing a

scorched earth policy of killing off all religion."

Note the hysterical idiom: "suppression," "destruction," "killing," "scorched earth policy."

Most contemporary atheists do believe that religion is pernicious and that the world would be

better off without it. But none of the literature that I have encountered recommends pogroms,

shooting bishops, flaming religious institutions, suppressing religious expression, framingoppressive or discriminatory legislative measures or agitating for anything other than public

discussion, intelligent analysis, decent education and a robustly secular state - a state in which

all religions may co-exist but is neutral in regard to all of them.

(Of course there are religious folk who believe that without a religious state religion itself

will wither. And there are others who think that the current opposition to SRI, state-funded

chaplains, and the tax-exempt status of religious institutions is a nefarious atheist conspiracy

to destroy religion. They are wrong. As Max Wallace and others have shown there are

rational economic, educational and welfare grounds underlying each of these challenges. In

any case, Christians should perhaps reflect that there is nothing in the Gospels about Caeser

being obliged to render unto them tax revenue.)

Frank Brennan and his ilk fail to notice elementary distinctions. It is one thing to criticise or

condemn religious institutions, practices and ideologies in the hope that the faithful will

surrender their religion, which the new atheists do in buckets; but that is not the same as

arguing or urging the suppression or extinction of religion, which is altogether different again

from trying actively to suppress or eradicate them by murder, force, threat, or oppressive

legislation.

These are not subtle distinctions and it is a cause for wonder that Brennan and the others

could overlook them.

There was one instance where Brennan seemed to have a case. The French philosopher

Michel Onfray, according to Brennan, "even denies equality of treatment in the public square

to any religious believer," and he quotes thus from the The Atheist Manifesto:

"Equality between the believing Jew and the philosopher who proceeds according to the

hypothetico-deductive model? Equality between the believer and the thinker who

deconstructs the manufacture of belief, the building of a myth, the creation of a fable?

Equality between the Muslim and the scrupulous analyst? If we say yes to these questions,

then let's stop thinking."


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This looks bad for Onfray, for "equality" unqualified is likely to be read as "moral or legal or

political equality," and Brennan milks the passage for all its worth.

"What are we to do - start fighting? Do we not need to accord equality to all these persons in

the public square of the free and democratic society, applying the same rules to each of them

whether or not they are religious?"

Well of course we should. But the curious thing is that there is no such passage in Onfrays'

book. Here is what Onfray wrote:

"Equality between the believing Jew - convinced that God promised his ancestors that they

were his chosen people, in token of which he divided the sea, stopped the sun, etc. - and the

philosopher who proceeds according to the hypothetico-deductive model? Equality between

the believer - convinced that his hero, born of a virgin, crucified under Pontius Pilate, risen

on the third day from the dead, and whiling his life away ever since sitting on the right hand

of his father - and the thinker who deconstructs the manufacture of belief, the building of a

myth, the creation of a fable? Equality between the Muslim - convinced that drinkingBeaujolais and eating pork roast disqualifies him from entering paradise ... - and the

scrupulous analyst ... If we say yes to these questions, then let's stop thinking."

Brennan abridged the passage and (inadvertently, I believe) converted what is clearly an

epistemological frame of reference into a legal/political one.

Onfray isn't considering equality in the public square at all, but equality on the plane of

reason. He thinks that religious beliefs are absurd and violate accepted canons of evidence

and inference. That view may be offensive, but it is not tantamount to advocating political

inequality, banishment from the public square, or, as Brennan concludes, failure to

"understand the rules for civil discourse and engagement in the post September 11 public

square."

What seems to disturb Brennan (and many others), and in part generates their hyperbolic

language, is the manifest disrespect and disdain for religion flaunted by many of the new

atheists. But is that really cause for alarm and surprise?

Such disdain for religion is hardly new and has in fact always reached its apogee in contests

between and within religions. Compared to the rhetoric that emerged from, say, the troubles

in Ireland or from the sub-continent, the atheist critiques wouldn't bring a blush to a Sunday

schoolteacher.

Besides, it is a wonderful feature of effective secular democracies that although citizens may

consider their fellows fools, knaves, or sloths (as I consider the politicians and public

opposed to taxing carbon, for example) they are not, by and large, disposed to "expunge" or

"exclude" them from public life, let alone suppress or destroy their organisations. And the

new atheists are nothing if not secular democrats.

So how could Brennan and the others, of whom I have taken Brennan as representative, have

managed to so exaggerate and misrepresent the atheist menace to religion?


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Tamas Pataki is honorary senior fellow at the University of Melbourne and honorary fellow

of Deakin University. His most recent book isAgainst Religion(Scribe, 2007), and he is a

contributor toThe Australian Book of Atheism(Scribe, 2010).

Source:http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/08/17/3295478.htm
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