In Defence of Secular Dogmatism
With the publication of Richard Dawkins’ new book (which I have purchased but yet to read), those who accuse him of being shrill and ‘fundamentalist’ have been once again crawling out of the woodwork. One of these is Theo Hobson who posts regularly on Cif.
His latest post is an essay attacking the so called ‘dogmatic’ secularists. Dawkins, Russell and Hitchens spring immediately to mind. Hobson makes the argument that these acolytes of atheism do more harm than good in public debate; they needlessly polarise things and hinder the battle against religious extremism by lumping the liberals with the fundamentalists.
I agree with Hobson to an extent. He is right to say that liberal religious believers are not as dangerous as fundamentalist members of the faithful. A housemate of mine who describes himself as a ‘Liberal’ Christian is not as likely as Osama Bin Laden to blow himself up in a marketplace for his god, killing hundreds of people along with himself. This much is self evident. On the global scene, there is a civil war going on within Islam between its liberal and literal wings. Bear in mind that the first people to be killed by hard-line Muslims are nearly always other Muslims, not Westerners. It is simple common sense that the West, having been drawn into this war by the Fundamentalists (part of me is glad we are involved; we can help the good guys win), should be backing the Liberal, reforming wing of Islam.
Where I disagree quite forcefully with Hobson, however, is in this rather sinister collection of sentences:
Intelligent secularism has no interest in denying the existence of God. It does not preach the good news that science is all you need. It knows that a simple opposition between faith and rationality is philosophically naive (it is acquainted with Wittgenstein as well as Bertrand Russell). And it knows that there is not a simple opposition between religion and modern liberal thought.
A campaigning, crusading Atheism is needed. Not just to call for the separation of church and state and opposition to politicised religion, but one to actually argue forcefully for humanism and against superstition. A movement which seeks to engage with religious people and dissuade them from their faith; which is strong enough not to be deterred by the massed ranks of clerics and priests and mullahs and not be intimidated by their threats and bullying; and which will not resort to their tactics of childhood indoctrination and pleas to the unknowable and brutal violence. Instead it will use the tools of the Enlightenment: free inquiry, scepticism and the doubt present in all human minds. Humans do tend to know when they are being lied to. They can smell a rat, if their sense of smell is operating properly. Eyes need to be opened, awareness raised and backs straightened. We must stand on our own two feet and look at the world without fear and without making up miracles in a Universe already full of them.
Dawkins looks like he does this very effectively in his new book. Indeed, in the preface he says:
I suspect- well, I am sure- that there are lots of people out there who have been bought up in some religion or other, are unhappy in it, don’t believe it, or are worried about the evils done in its name; people who feel vague yearnings to leave their parents religion and wish they could, but just don’t realise that leaving is an option. If you are one of them, this book is for you. It is intended to raise consciousness- raise consciousness to the fact that to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and splendid one.
Hobson is right that in the short term that religious extremism is the current biggest threat. But he is wrong when it comes to the long game. Religious extremism will continue to rear its ugly head for as long as Faith in the supernatural exists – religious moderation, in other words, is the inevitable wellspring or fundamentalism. A liberal religious person is a hypocrite by definition. He or she has rejected the more absolutist and downright insane demands of the god of their respective religious texts and has travelled half way down the path to humanism.
We must back the liberal wing of all religions simply because we can then convince them of the merits of atheism afterwards. You can’t argue with a man wearing an explosives belt. You can argue with a man who has admitted to himself that he is human and therefore has his built in bullshit detector turned on, rather than forcefully repressed by blind faith.
Dawkins, Hitchens et al perform an extremely valuable public service. Hobson is absolutely wrong when he says that
‘Every bishop must smile when Dawkins lets rip, a little more assured of the intellectual high-ground.’
The faithful never had the intellectual high ground and they have high jacked the moral high ground for far too long. It is time we reclaimed our compassion in the name of humanity and recovered it from the clutches of the gaunt priests and frothing mullahs. Dawkins, I am with you.
-posted by Adam
(a full review of the book will follow when I've read a bit more than the Preface!)
