God and the new atheism.

For those of you bored at work, looking for new sources of procrastination.. maybe you'll be interested in a discussion about atheism and religion (specifically Christian religion).

I was inspired to write this by the book "God and the New Atheism" by John F. Haught. It's a very good point-by-point rebuttal of the evangelical atheism of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens & co., and I strongly recommend it to everyone. However, what really caught my attention was one brilliant point about the "new atheists" that Haught mentions only in passing. It is an essential point that both the new atheists and their Christian critics almost universally fail to notice:

"The image of human fulfilment that emerges from their writings [the writings of the new atheists] is one in which our present lifestyles will remain pretty much the same, minus the inconvenience of terrorism and creationists. Our new self-understanding will be informed by Darwinian biology, but we can expect that our moral and social instincts, rooted in biology as they are, will remain unmodified except for slight cultural corrections that will need to be made after religion disappears."

Haught then goes on to explain how this is completely at odds with the vision of serious atheist philosophers, such as Camus, Sartre or Nietzsche, who saw atheism as something that could (and should) profoundly change human life and society, not as a way to continue business as usual except for a few minor differences here and there. Then he reiterates:

"[Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens] want atheism to prevail at the least possible expense to the agreeable socioeconomic circumstances out of which they sermonise. The new atheists' interest is in preserving rather than radically reforming the cultural milieu uncritically reflected in their wishes for a safer world. They would have the God religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - simply disappear, after which we should be able to go on enjoying the same lifestyle as before, only without the nuisance of suicide bombers and TV evangelists."

Nearly every single Christian critique of the new atheism is based on the conservative argument that religion is a pillar of our civilisation, which it would be dangerous and unwise to remove. And, as a result, nearly every single Christian critique of the new atheism is completely off the mark. The new atheists are not Nietzsche. For one thing, unlike Nietzsche, the new atheists are at best philosophical amateurs and at worst philosophical illiterates. But more importantly, the new atheists are not radicals opposed to the status quo. On the contrary, they are its ardent defenders. They go to great lengths to show that embracing atheism would not do anything to upset the affluent, consumerist, self-absorbed existence of their target audience. Their message is not one of momentous change, not one of reshaping culture and society. Their message is one of order and security. They don't promise their followers a new and better world. They promise the same world as we have today, except less volatile, less dangerous. The chief objection of the new atheists against religious fanatics is that they disturb law and order and upset the ordinary, tranquil lives of law-abiding atheists. And the new atheists are quick to denounce all the major projects for social change of the past (e.g. communism) as somehow "religious" due to their hope (or "faith") in a radical improvement of society. When the new atheists say that they are against faith, they don't mean only religious faith. They mean all passionate hope, all burning zeal, all dedication to a great cause.

In a word, the new atheists are conservatives. They are conservatives in the classical, Burkean sense: they love the status quo and oppose any threats to it. They may tolerate some change, they may even advocate it, but only as long as it's lawful, orderly, incremental, and slow. They want to get rid of religion not because they want to change society, but because they think society is just fine the way it is and religion is a threat to the status quo.

And the majority of Christians are baffled by this attitude. They cannot understand why they are being attacked as if they were dangerous radicals, since they think their religion is a pillar of society. Well, they are wrong. Christianity is not - and never has been - a pillar of Western culture or Western civilisation. Lip service to Christianity used to be a widespread social practice, and now it's going out of fashion, but that is no more important to society than the decision to stop wearing powdered wigs. Even in the glory days of so-called Christian civilisation, the world was full of pious aristocrats treating their brothers and sisters in Christ like cattle, devout majesties deciding that grandiose building projects were more deserving of their money than their poor neighbour, and the Church itself either selling redemption like Wal-mart (if you were Catholic) or proclaiming that a just and merciful God pre-destined most people to burn in hell (if you were Protestant).

To be sure, many people were - and are - genuine Christians. But no society anywhere has even remotely approached the Christian moral ideal, and neoliberal capitalism is pretty much as far as you can get from that ideal without adding slavery into the mix. Individualism, the pursuit of private wealth and the willingness to exploit your neighbour are pillars of our culture. And, irony of ironies, the so-called Christian nation of the United States is permeated at every level by the greatest of all sins. No, I am not talking about greed. I am talking about pride. Pride in one's nation (patriotism), and pride in one's own accomplishments (the "American dream", the myth of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" or the ideology of "personal responsibility") are seen as virtues in America.

We do not live in a Christian society. As a Marxist, I believe that the values prevalent in a given society stem from the economic relationships on which that society is built. If unChristian values are prevalent in our society today, that is because our society is built on an economic system - capitalism - which produces those unChristian values. But I digress. The point is that there is a serious conflict between the moral message of Christianity and the kind of morality embraced by most people in our society today. So the new atheists are right about one thing: religion is subversive. It can undermine the status quo. It is true that religion can also be twisted and corrupted so as to be used in the defence of capitalism, but this is a very uncomfortable arrangement. Atheism would be a much better fit. It has always been rather awkward for the obscenely rich to pretend to be Christians while cutting wages and arguing for ruthless competition. If atheism becomes the dominant paradigm, they can use a new excuse - social Darwinism - which fits much better with their actions (and frees them of the obligation to pretend to be charitable).

So the fears of some Christians about the horrible things that might happen if atheism becomes the dominant worldview are unwarranted. The atheist society is already here. We are living in it. The new atheists can see this fact, which is why they have appointed themselves the defenders of the status quo. Many honest Christians, however, are blind to it, and in their misguided conservatism they continue to loyally guard a castle that has long ago fallen to the enemy.