I don't believe in God, I don't follow any religion. And yet, there was a time in my life when I could have said to be more of an atheist than I am now. In some ways I contributed to the new atheism movement, and in fact, for a little while there, Christopher Hitchens was my lord and savior. I greatly admired his extensive literary knowledge, his eloquence, his wit and his bravery. But now I've come to realize his eloquence was his double-edged sword, and because he criticized religion mostly from an ethics standpoint, greatly enhanced by his journalism background, some of the more philosophical questions and their implications were somewhat forgotten, or even dealt with in a little bit of sophistry. And now it's sad that he died... I for one would have loved to know what he would have said in these times when atheism seems to have gained territory, and yet people are deeply craving meaning and direction in their lives. In a nutshell, I think Hitchens versus Peterson would have been very interesting indeed, even if only in spirit.
The man himself
At any rate, while I still retain most of the ideas of atheistic thinking and I still view the world in largely the same terms, I've come to realize that some of what I believed in at that time was somewhat fallacious, or at the very least misleading. So I drew up a list of ten of those arguments, some of which a lot of atheists defended and others that perhaps were mostly mine. Thus I won't attempt to thrust all of these faults onto the new atheism movement itself. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear, I guess... In any case, I'll explain my reasoning with an appeal to the royal we because I see myself as having been a part of the movement, philosophically at least. If you still support new atheism, then maybe you can elucidate my criticisms, if you don't support it per se but remain an atheist, then you might agree on some points, and lastly, if you are a believer, then you might agree with most of them.
Let's begin.
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10. Religious laws and teachings don't conform to our modern sensibilities.
A lot of debates centered around the idea that some books of the Bible, namely Leviticus but perhaps some of the epistles as well, contain a series of rules and regulations that in our day and age we find rather unpleasant or downright repulsive. That may be, and in most cases it seems correct to think so. But why would it then make religion untrue? If God does exist, then why should we assume that he would only impose laws that appeal to our common sense, or rather, our culturally determined common sense? Why would our vision of a true god have to be that of a very good politician?
I think I understand the argument at hand though. The point is that when thinking of those rules under the lens of them having been brought down from an omniscient mind they don't make much sense, whereas they do make sense when understood under the lens of a certain culture in history. So we study the ethics of that era and conclude that it is more likely that those laws are indeed man-made. Still, what if they are true? If God exists, why wouldn't he get to decide whatever he wants? Or better yet, why would he only get to decide upon things that we collectively agree are good to us?... Would we still have vehemently criticized religion on those points if we had lived in a different time? Because our modern sensibilities are just that – modern. Yet people in olden times called themselves modern too. So why did we assume such a strong sense of moral superiority from the very start? The truth, as I now see it, is that we passed a judgment on religion that we wouldn't always hold to. Did we not criticize its outdated historical teachings with our own historical teachings that will most definitely be outdated at some point as well? Do all of us atheists think the same, or do we think based on a certain paradigm? And if that paradigm shifts, what happens to our judgment of religion?
At least it is very true that a lot of atheists today strongly believe and defend things that they didn't a mere ten years ago.
9. Think of the children!
This one I admit isn't all that strong but it has recently struck a nerve with me. The faithful say religion is meant to be for everyone, therefore we logically assume it is meant for children as well. But religious books detail countless stories of wars, slavery, famine, pestilence, infanticide, genocide, and so on. In fact, I remember being a child and hearing about Herod killing every child from two years old and under, and for some obvious reason, the idea of a group of soldiers breaking into a house in the middle of the night in obedience to their king has never left me. But I suppose that says more about me than about the issue at hand, no pun intended... Nevertheless, is there any weight to that view? Religious people hold the belief that religion is simply factually true, but just how many of them take a warts-and-all approach when teaching it to their children? I think we were chasing ghosts with this rebuttal, or at least I was. And even if The Passion of the Christ were to replace Toy Story why would that make religion untrue? Why would we ever assume that the manifestation of God in this world would be entirely child-friendly? It all strikes me now as a very sneaky attack based on feigned concern... It was never about philosophy, it was politics.
8. Religion, by virtue of being revealed during a certain historical period, is always contextual and thus beholden to that period.
Almost a tautology but it does raise a good argument – if religion is meant to be for all time, why is it then so deeply ingrained within its own historical context? Perhaps the answer is that it isn't. I've grown to suspect that religion leaves more room for growth than one might realize. It's obvious that religions, and religious texts, go far wider than their main books, all throughout centuries of philosophical thought. And I don't know anything about medieval philosophy but maybe I'm now at a stage where I can admit that I don't know anything about it. Furthermore, and almost in a similar fashion to the previous point, why would we assume that everything in an allegedly divine book has to be either fully historical or fully metaphorical? Because there was a time for me when Jesus saying he would bring a sword was read as a violent statement, but now I realize that, not only was that an uncharitable interpretation on my part, but also a stupid one. If I had argued that way about any other book, regardless of its nature, I would have been laughed to scorn. Truth is, context matters regardless, and the Bible could be said to be a book of at the very least sixty-six different contexts.
7. God is too present, and therefore, tyrannical.
I suppose this one goes out to the Old Testament because there it seemed like God was constantly up in everybody's business. In fact, it always strikes me as odd that faith would wane even at a time when actual miracles and divine interventions were happening before everyone's eyes. So God was indeed everywhere, God was a magical pillar of light in the desert sky, God was a voice in a flame, he was always tilting this or that depending on his will. This is where the Big Brother comparisons came from and I'm in no place to refute them. But it seems to me that whenever God's intervention was spoken of we automatically read it as tyrannical, and I somewhat wonder why. It would seem to me that if your boss is constantly watching over you he might occasionally tell you what to do, as it is part of his nature. But we never made much sense of the concept of God except as a politician, and therefore, God's actions never made much sense to us. His presence was always bizarre, and rightly so, but we never made much of an effort to understand it in a perspective that was not our own. We were never satisfied with it, as my next point will suggest.
6. God is too distant, and therefore, indifferent.
Now for the opposite. It is a recurring theme within religion that God revealed himself to the prophets, then many people witnessed his miracles, and then it all vanished. Religious people might disagree, one way or another, they might believe some specific modern miracles, they might profess that certain unlikely and powerful stories of perseverance, charity or love are divinely inspired, they might believe that the religious texts themselves are a permanent miracle or they might just claim to feel a divine presence. Of course us atheists believe none of that. To us, God revealed himself at a certain point in time, a time when superstition was rampant and, coincidentally, HD cameras weren't a thing, and then he said – Fare thee well, my own true love, we'll meet another day, another time... It is highly suspicious but then again, what would us atheists be satisfied with? What would be an adequate level of divine presence? If God commands us and sets rules for us, we call him a tyrant. If God is silent, we resent him for not intervening. If God is just a feeling people have in their tummies, we laugh at them. At least I know I did... Now I just don't know what would suffice, and if nothing does, then atheism starts making stronger claims than simply lacking beliefs.
5. The Father and the Good Shepherd are for the weak.
If religion is true, specifically, if the New Testament is true, then all human beings have a heavenly father, who is God, and a shepherd, who is Jesus Christ. I'm sure this idea provides a lot of comfort to believers in their times of need, but us atheists have always found such ideas downright odd. The heavenly father was seen as a crutch, a strange kind of wishful thinking whereby one willingly forsook his or her freedom in exchange for guidance. And as it relates to the shepherd, one willingly forsook his or her mind so as to become a farm animal. I suppose this yields some truth but is it a fair interpretation? Maybe some people truly lack meaning and direction in their lives, and if God offers them that, why were we so quick to deny it to them without much hope of giving them something better in God's place? In truth, atheism is good marketing when things are easy, but what about when there is tribulation in the world? We atheists can say ye shall weep and lament, but then...
And about the sheep comparison, weren't we being deliberately uncharitable? Wasn't our criticism based on a very superficial interpretation of the metaphor? I think it was. Because there isn't much to go on with the shepherd analogy as far as the free will rebuttal goes. The Gospel doesn't proclaim its adherents should be mindless sheep but we still took the metaphor as a point of derision. I still remember during my early college days, when my atheism was in full swing, an instance in which I had a chuckle at hearing an acquaintance openly say, due to his faith, that being called a sheep wasn't an offense to him. I kinda mocked him and he were he a more impulsive man he would have punched me.. But anyway, Christopher Hitchens rather disliked this flock comparison, but did his criticism stem from an impartial view of the text? Was it at all philosophically honest or morally wise to scorn people who came to us in humility, asking – If the shepherd is gone, whom will I follow? Follow no one except yourself, we might have said. But can everyone, or even anyone, afford to do that? I've begun to think we can't. Was atheism really as sustainable as we thought? No, and at some point we began to see it as a means to end... but what end?
4. Religion is absurd and whoever believes in it deserves mockery.
Freedom of speech ought to reign supreme, and no person should ever be allowed to suppress your speech, mockery included. The righteous believer who uses violence or threats of violence to defend his faith is indeed worthy of further ridicule. But is that what we mostly saw? Were the faithful that violent and disrespectful, at least here in our half of the world? I start to think they weren't, and having said that, if religion did bring them comfort, why would we mock it? Because our mockery was true, I guess... But from a moral standpoint it was mean-spirited, and from a pragmatic standpoint it just wasn't effective rhetoric. If you had hopes to make people see the benefits of living a religion-free life then why not advertise atheism instead? Why mock and insult those who need some kind of support that goes beyond this world? Because did we not do exactly that? I know I did. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
And going a bit further, the people in deep need of religion for spiritual purposes, why weren't they convinced by the conclusion of atheism? Why did they proclaim that, lacking belief in God, they wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning? My suspicion is that atheism has very little to offer in that regard. It's a rejection of God and religion, which hopefully opens many pathways to things better than God and religion... but which pathways? The questions almost keep begging themselves... Indeed, I've come to see atheism as a dead end, as I hope my last three points will demonstrate.
3. Atheism is just a lack of belief.
This one is maybe a bit more philosophical in the sense that it aims to clearly define and state what this particular proposition entails. And it's also more defensive. Because it does seem to me now that atheism was an all-out attack. And I dunno about you guys but I'm gassed out... Anyway, while it is true that atheism is simply the negation prefix attached to the word that designates a belief in God, namely a creator involved in human affairs, I don't see how accurate this deflection really is. It's the word “just” that gets me, it's this idea that whatever atheists believe in has nothing to do with the fact that they lack God and religion. I used to think that way, yet now this is perhaps the point to which my objection is most concrete. Looking at the real world rationally, we can glean certain aspects and traits from atheists, especially those within the new atheism movement. The way we thought, the views and values we held, they all had us fall into specific boxes. Doesn't it then seem that atheism made us, for the most part, accept certain beliefs without much thought? Doesn't it seem like atheism, in a pragmatic sense, was more than just a rejection of belief in God? We talked a big game about reason and logic, about questioning everything, but were all of our values really all that carefully researched? And was atheism really that much of an empty thing?
And what happens next? Atheism was very good at tearing down the castle walls because of the bad men who built them, but what would we build in their place? Or, approaching the metaphor differently, if we kill the men who built the castle because the castle is already built, will its walls still stand tomorrow? I start to think they won't, and as far as I can understand, secular attempts to build meaning and morality have always come up lacking, as per the next point.
2. It's insulting to think that atheists can't be moral.
Were I a betting man, I'd bet the house on the fact that every atheist has been guilty of this one at one point or another. This fallacy might as well be our original sin. I mean, yes, it seems likely that morality is possible without God. After all, atheists aren't fighting one another in total Mad Max anarchy. At the end of the day, variations of the golden rule apply to everyone. Of course religious people would argue that the reason for it is that God wrote those rules in our hearts, whether we believe in him or not. Rejecting that, we can still find some sense of morality through biology, we can reason what is good and what is bad by way of what each individual human being hopes to achieve out of his or her brief life. We reason that working together is better in the long haul, so we create rules that assure our mutual existence. And that is all fine, it's basic common sense... up to a point. And that fine point is that there is no objective basis for secular morality. It's like a spinning wheel that we accept has momentum without anyone having first spun it, it's us accepting to play a game of chess with objective rules even though we invented those rules and change them over time. But what if the rules break down completely? Or what if an individual realizes he doesn't wanna play anymore? Or if he realizes he could bribe the opponent's knight to stab the king in the back? Or if he realizes that smashing the clock against the opponent's face is as good a way to win as any other? Or what if he don't even wanna play chess at all?
The point here is that while we can have a basic sense of morality towards one another, secular morality seems to have no answer to the truly evil people or the true anarchists. We keep returning to Ivan Karamazov and, dare I say it, Heath Ledger's Joker. A secular morality is fine and dandy when things are going good, but atheists are only as good as they're allowed to be. Like the Joker says – I'll show ya, when the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other. And what then? What will be the true rule, the true moral standard that will reunite the people under one common banner? If religion is untrue then it is at the very least a necessary phase in human development. Atheism, however, is unsustainable. The argument was never that atheists can't function in normal society, the argument is that if society ceases to be normal, the believers still have to answer to God, whereas for us atheists, if society breaks down, what stops us from being evil if we're allowed to be evil and if we want to be evil, or we have to be evil?
1. The afterlife is an obscene solution to human suffering.
This last one, which was always the first, I attribute specifically to Christopher Hitchens. On a book expo with William Lane Craig, as well as a few other people whose names I don't know, he mentioned this horrific story of a woman who was kept in a basement for years, during which she was abused and tortured by her own father. Christopher flung this story at the face of the believers, very much like Ivan did to Alyosha, as if to ask, first, why would your god allow this? And second, how obscene is your god's endgame if this kind of suffering is the price to pay for heaven? Rejoice! After all your hideous suffering, you'll have a better life in heaven... Christopher passionately told this story as a way to show how obscene it is for a faithful person to offer that kind of consolation to anyone in regrettably similar circumstances as that woman. And while I agree with the general idea, and while I also understand some of the arguments on free will the faithful would employ to explain away the existence of evil, I don't understand why Christopher was so confident when bringing up this story. And interestingly enough, he told it as an answer to the question – What does atheism offer to the weak? So, in effect, Christopher did dodge the question in what I now see as a slimy way, though hidden in eloquence... Maybe the idea of heaven completely brushes off suffering and presupposes a very bizarre “insert coin” idea, but hey, at least there is something to go on. With atheism though, what in the goddamn is there?
I understand Christopher's purpose would be to say that we as human beings need to build strong and happy societies here in this world since we have no hope for the next. But first of all, are the faithful all that careless about their quality of life? That seems like another ghostly strawman. And secondly, what is the secular solution for the crime AFTER it has been committed? Yes, the golden rule, well-being, the rules of chess, all that. But what happens when someone goes rogue and commits such an evil act? You punish him, but then what? The victim is still hurt, the scars will likely never heal, and if the victim was killed there'll be no resurrection. Would you hope to weed out the criminals before the crime is ever committed? Maybe not, both pragmatically and morally because Orwell pokes his head out at that. Or what if the criminal lived a happy life, shrouded in mystery and innocence, until he died of old age? Then there isn't even any punishment at all... Alas, if the faithful notion of true justice isn't perfect, then the secular one is non-existent.
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And there we have it. I think in many ways this essay captures my disillusionment with the new atheism movement in general. I am of the opinion that organized religion needed a wake-up call, as it often did all throughout history. But there comes a time when the fighting is done and we need to build rather than to destroy. But what can a movement based on rejection ever hope to build? Humanist ethics, I suppose, but how? I ask in all humility.
Having said all of this, having criticized atheism in what I hope was clear language and plain honesty, am I still an atheist? Yes, but more than that, I'm a pessimist. I've come to see pessimism as the logical conclusion to atheism. And I'm quite open to being proven wrong about that.
Read a continuation to this article here.
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