I figured that I'd post this, the first chapter of a book I'm writing about atheism... Enjoy!
As I’m writing this, one of the strongest voices and most prominent activists for atheism is losing a struggle with the spectre of Death.
Already, there are voices calling with a hyena like glee at the demise of Christopher Hitchens, convinced that his most definitely earthly affliction caused by many years of overindulgence in the twin vices of smoking and drinking too much is in some way a divine retribution for the temerity for daring to speak out and question not only the existence their divine creators, but questioning the morality of believing in such beings, and questioning the morality of such beings and the systems of thought that go hand in hand with them. There will no doubt be conspiracy theories revolving around fallacious claims that he like Charles Darwin recanted on his death bed and accepted a deity into his life. No doubt, most of these conspiracies will come from Christian apologetics , who in a weird twist for the 21st century, supposedly the era of science, logic and reason are enjoying an aggressive rebirth and expansion in the United States of America, which is in turn funding an aggressive rebirth and expansion in the often abused continent of Africa.
This is as far as I am concerned, one of the biggest indicators of exactly what is wrong with religion, and the religious impulse. These systems of thought, these systems of belief give people an excuse, a layer of armour and a position that is so unassailed, so tip-toed around that human beings may revel in the suffering of a dying man. People are allowed to do this, and seemingly the public at large goes mute at criticising this action, something that can only be described as amoral. It’s about time that the public loosened its tongue. It’s about time we started speaking out more against this sort of behaviour, and when I say “we,” I mean people like you, people like me, people like the guy sitting next to you in the bus, or across the office floor at work, or in a bar, or on the street. We have to start making it acceptable to cry halt.
I am not an intellectual with impeccable scientific credentials. I am not a prominent intellectual or journalist whose opinion may not always be respected but is listened to. I am no philosopher with a body of academic work spanning several years. I am none of these things. But what I am, and the edge that I believe that I hold to make my opinion matter, to make my opinion count in this discourse, is an everyman.
One of the biggest criticisms laid at the feet of anyone who publicly chastises or castigates religion, the religious impulse and religious belief is that our side consistently goes after the “easy” target; That we spend too much time debunking the demonstrably false doctrines of creationism, or intelligent design, or whatever hastily thought up moniker designed to deflect attention away from the fact that it is an understanding of the world based on a book written thousands of years ago written by people who by virtue of being ignorant of the world could not possibly know what they were talking about is being used today; That we spend too much time tearing down the beliefs of people who in quite a lot of cases don’t know very much about their own beliefs or have not read their books, their doctrines of faith in great detail... We spend too much time going after the most ridiculous beliefs, too much time going after the everyman.
For a while, I grudgingly accepted this criticism; It is true after all. I’d much rather argue with a street preacher in the middle of Cardiff than spend time locking horns with someone like William Lane Craig, a man whose sole purpose appears to be debate. I don’t know the formal tricks of debate. My level of knowledge when it comes to the arguments for and against are slightly above average, and probably not enough to help me stand my ground were I to find myself in a structured format, so it makes sense that I would leave this thankless task to better educated people, better skilled people, more experienced people, people with a specialisation entirely germane to the discussion, and it did seem somewhat disappointing when these people, so fantastically skilled, witty, erudite and possessed of heads stuffed to the brim with brains debated people who you knew were going to lose, and were going to lose badly. A simple search on the internet can call up clips of nine or so minutes at a time of such debates, and one of the finest and simultaneously cringe worthy clips has Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens annihilating Conservative MP Anne Widdecombe, a woman whose credentials as a Christian apologist are slightly less laughable than a five year old child, and a Bishop John Onayakin of Nigeria. Annihilating is in fact too kind a word to describe the verbal Hiroshima that Fry and Hitchens visited on the desperately outgunned opposition.
However, I was never very happy fully accepting that criticism. I could certainly see the merits of the very best and brightest people, the most skilled and capable pitting their wits in the heat of debate against the cream of religious apologism, the most intellectual and magnificent examples of those speaking for religion and the religious impulse. It is a demonstration of the strength of a position if you can take on and defeat the very best using nothing more than words, but that only seemed to me to be the tip of the iceberg. Finally, I figured out what it was about this criticism I had such a problem with.
Those magnificent examples of religious apologism, those theological scholars, and those professional debaters have a highly developed and highly evolved sense of theology, and a highly developed and highly evolved interpretation of their religion of choice. It’s actually a strength in debate. Say for example that the question of the afterlife is bought up in conversation around the dinner table, and at this dinner table you had the pleasure of entertaining a top Christian theologian; You would find very quickly that mocking the idea of heaven as a place where people would wander around the fluffy clouds meeting with their loved ones and living a life of bliss surrounded with all of the material comforts you may not have had in life won’t get you far; The conversation would very quickly turn to a much more philosophical bent, and you would probably look very foolish indeed for postulating heaven in such crass, limited human ways.
Here’s my problem; That Christian theologian is not representative of the majority belief of Christian people.
It is actually difficult to quantify what the majority belief of any religious denomination is, but you can certainly make educated guesses at what those are. Religions are helpful in that way in that they tell you what you are supposed to belief. There are tenets of faith. There are doctrines to follow. There are certain conditions one must meet if one is to be considered a Catholic, or a Muslim, or a Hindu; With certain religions the conditions begin to get a little more vague and nebulous, such as Shinto, which seems to be a mixture of Ancestor and Nature worship, but scratch the surface enough and you will get to those conditions, those unique beliefs that one has to hold to be a member of that club.
To put it very succinctly, the more sophisticated the religious apologism, the less representative of that religious belief it is.
Going back to the example of the afterlife and our Christian theologian friend, imagine if you will adding another dinner guest. Let’s call him Michael. MIchael is an American. Michael is a Christian and believes in an afterlife. Michael is one of the 45% of Christian Americans that believe that his dog will be there in heaven to spend eternity with him, because as an American, MIchael is one of the 65% of people in the states that lives in a household that has at least one pet. The question of pets in heaven is actually such a pressing one that it has led to a book about the subject called I will see you in heaven by a Franciscan monk called Jack Wintz.
The two theologies at this table are very different, and these lead to two completely different interpretations of the afterlife. It could be argued that because the Theologian has spent more time studying the source texts, and has spent more time engaged in complex philosophical discussion about the nature of faith and God, his is the opinion that should be listened to. After all, he’s the one that has really taken the time to study it in depth, right?
But the obvious problem with this scenario is that how often are you likely to run into such a Christian Theologian? Or an equivalent Muslim, Sikh, or Jewish theologian? Quickly run through your daily routine and think about those situations where you might run into religious people... Granted, not every situation where you run into religious people is going to result in a discussion of the finer points of heaven, but the possibility is there. How often is it that you will run into a person with such a highly developed sense of theology? I’d argue the closest you’ll get is the Parish Priest.
But my greatest misgiving with this criticism is that there is seemingly no problem at least demonstrably for the Catholic world in doing the exact reverse, of picking on the easy target. The Vatican opened up a forum for debate and dialogue in April of 2011, and its inaugural event took place in Paris. This “Courtyard of the gentiles” seemed like a great idea when it was being discussed as early as May 2010, but it was ever so slightly tinged with a bitter disappointment when it was announced by Archbishop Ravasi, the man in charge of the initiative that such forums would not be open to what he called “polemical atheists,” and named people like Professor Richard Dawkins as examples of those who were unwelcome, and was quoted as saying that these people view the ‘truth,’ with “...irony and sarcasm,” seemingly missing the irony of calling his viewpoint the ‘truth.’ Apparently, Archbishop Ravasi is only interested in “Noble atheism,” whatever such a phrase means.
This level of double standard would be sickening were it not so laughable and if it did not appear exactly as it is, which is rather pathetic; A forum for debate and dialogue, atheists conversing with top catholic theologians, but only the sort of atheists approved by the Catholic church. So before any debate even starts, the deck is stacked in favour of the religious, so they may bring the best they have to the table, but we may not... But when any prominent public atheist debates a religious apologist, they must watch for the criticisms that will surely fly thick and fast if they are not debating someone at the very top of their theological game. I cannot be the only person who snarls inwardly at this level of hypocrisy.
The problem is actually more complex than that... Arguing the merits of the atheist position is made more difficult because atheism is the lack of a position. It is simply the lack of belief in God, and doesn’t actually say anything about what beliefs you do actually hold. It isn’t enough to say “I don’t believe in God,” we then have to justify why we have come to this conclusion. We don’t have the same luxury that the religious do, of being religious, having a vague understanding of that religion and a vague understanding of the tenets and doctrines of that religion without ever reading much further into it. Atheists don’t have the luxury of being “culturally religious.” There is no such thing as a “lapsed atheist.” To be an atheist in any sort of public domain in today’s world means becoming literate in quite a few fields; I have a slightly better than layman’s understanding of the Big Bang model of the universe, Abiogenesis, Evolution through Natural Selection, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Planetary formation theory, Plate Tectonics to name but a few... These are all scientific fields, any one of which on their own would require years of academic and scientific training to be fully proficient in them; While it’s possible for someone to specialise in more than one scientific field, no one can be fully academically and scientifically qualified in all of them, and if you are an atheist in the public field arguing for atheism, you will need to be able to competently answer questions pertaining to these fields if not more, so diverse now is the bag of tricks that the professional theological debater will employ... Equally galling is the fact that you will also have to have a reasonably good understanding of the faiths you argue against. At the very least, it certainly doesn’t hurt, at the most, it’s a very convincing and credible of way of winning a theological argument, turning your opponents source text against them. Strictly speaking, all your opponent has to do is know their holy book very well, and while a top theologian is usually well versed in other fields of study and may have a reasonable understanding of certain scientific fields and concepts, there is no need for them to leave the religious forum to argue the case for religion. At all.
But I digress... My point behind all of this is that I find it facile to argue that there is no point in only taking on the easy targets when it comes to religion and the religious. Yes, it might be easy to pick apart the unsophisticated theology of the everyman. It might be the easy target to pick apart creationism (easy in that it is demonstrably false, but certainly a struggle considering how much public support it appears to get from the higher echelons of US government and State legislature; Texas comes to mind... As does the terrifying statistic that as of 17th of December 2010, 40% of Americans believe that humans were created by God in the last 10,000 years), and it might have been something that has been done endlessly, but obviously these are necessary points that bear repeating. It’s necessary to debate the theology of the everyman because the theology of the everyman is what you’re going to meet day in and day out almost every day.
The strength of religion does not lie in the sophisticated theology of magnificent religious scholars and apologetics. It lies in the commonly held beliefs of the everyman, so attacking the beliefs of the everyman is far from taking the easy option or attacking the easy target. Attacking the beliefs of the everyman is attacking religion at the core of its battering strength, because its strength lies in its numbers, not its knowledge.
In levelling the criticism that we only go after the easy targets, the religious have shown us where they are simultaneously strongest and weakest. They have shown us how big the task is of taking on something as intimidating as religious faith, a viewpoint that a majority of the world holds, but they have also shown us how to attack and where. If we seek to curb the worst excesses of religion, to put religion in its proper place in the 21st century, this is where the sword should fall the hardest; The everyman.
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