The New Republic

Because people like McEwan, and Htchens and Dawkins and (humbly) myself get so frustrated and angry and sad when people sublimate this life for the false promise of the next.   Yeah, it can be ok, as long as you don't hurt anyone, but how often is suffering considered ennobling and will be rewarded in heaven?   I don't even mean here the justification of violence, but rather the idea that these 70 years are a mere blip in your existence, and you have to- but have to!- do what (X) says or you will go to hell.   These 70-some years are all we have, and it would be better to appreciate them.

I don't think it is arrogance.  I don't think I appreciate life more- if I really did, I wouldn't drink and smoke so much- but it is anger that we feel this world only matters in terms of how much you can scrimp and save to get out of this moral penury into which your birth dropped you.  

I think for me my final straw came when I was in Rwanda, walking through a bone-laden church in which people had tried to hide.   I know it is a limited example, and they would have been fucked over no matter where they hid, but for me that gave final lie to the idea of a god that cares at all.     That's why we get upset.   You hear about how suffering will be rewarded in the next life and we know that there isn't a next life   So it isn't so much I think I am better or more adjusted or anything, but I think we justify so much horror because they will get their rewards.  

- boneill

January 11, 2008 at 1:03pm

Speaking for myself, I've enjoyed life a lot more since becoming religious; although I'm sure this can cut both ways, depending on individual temperament, which religion we're talking about, etc. In response to boneill's very honourable outrage, I'd like to point out that while there are cases where present injustices are ignored or permitted because people figure it'll all work out in Heaven, there are also cases where religion inspires people to fight those injustices: eg, infanticide and bride capture were common and legal practices in pre-Christian Europe, and both were abolished under the Church. Of course there will always be some who want the consolations of religion without doing any of the work, but I don't think you can blame religion itself for that. People always want something for nothing.

- Ivanova

January 11, 2008 at 1:28pm

Good post.

I've been "deeply religious" and I've been, functionally, an atheist. I wasn't particularly happy at either of those poles, nor particularly pleasant.

Everyone has a different midpoint, of course, but I think I'm better off where I have ended up now- religious, but open-minded. I have far less certainty than I did at either of the (what were for me) extremes, and I'm better for it.

- miceelf

January 11, 2008 at 1:50pm

Ivanova- good point, and for every example one gives I am sure the other side can give a counter-example.  But, I quibble, pre-Christian Europe was not atheist as much as pagan, so there were practices that were sanctioned by religious belief.  Yes, Christianity put paid to that- and bully for it, sincerely- but also instituted a raft of other injustices.  

I don't know- this could and I have a giddy feeling will- go on forever.   I will say this, though- although I have not a second's thought that there might be some kind of higher power that cares about human concerns- and know that there isn't one that cares in any real sense- I still don't think like how it has become common now to lump Hitch, Dawkins, Harris, Dennett et al as the opposite side of the Falwell/ Bin Laden/Whomever coin.   The point of being a science-based atheist (as oppossed to an insufferable Got is Mort" goth shithead) is that all we are sure of is that we aren't sure of anything.  It is not limiting not to believe in God in the same way it limits fanatics of faith (and it is clear that neither of you fall into that).  

Just my two cents.  

- boneill

January 11, 2008 at 2:12pm

Well said Greg. On a side note, who the hell are you?

The main problem with the religion/atheism debate in the media (the McEwan article being a prime example), is that we usually only get glimpses of two points of view: The Falwell/Robertson fundamentalists nutters on one hand and the Dawkins/Hitchens atheist thugs on the other. These groups are two sides of the same coin. The media can't get enough of either, and the resulting "debate" is just a giant screaming match where average religious and non-religious people have no voice at all.

McEwan touts "moral values?" How about tolerance? Or humility? I always find it hilarious that so many atheists think that Christians walk around with some kind of a deathwish.

boneill gives us a selection from the theological dilemma greatest-hits list. There are theological responses (not answers), which can be of interest to believers and non-believers alike. I suspect what irks religious folk the most about the "new atheists" is the assumption that believers are uniformly anti-intellectual.

And for the record Mr. O'Neill, there are scads of denominations out there that don't believe that anyone goes to Hell, no matter what they do. The Presbyterian Church (USA), for instance. When's the last time you've heard THAT mentioned in the media?

- marcellusw101

January 11, 2008 at 2:18pm

First of all, I wrote my first post before boneill's second. Second, we seem to be having a definitional issue between agnostics and atheists. Technically speaking, agnostics, not atheists, are the ones who are unsure about God. Perhaps not coincidentally, I find them a lot more agreeable.

Also, I'm not sure if boneill is British, but it seems like a lot of the new atheists are (McEwan as well?), and I wonder if that doesn't have something to do with the types of religions prevalent in Europe. Phillip Pullman's "Magisterium" is clearly an homage to the Catholic Church. We Presbyterians have nothing of the sort (and have a laundry list of issues with the Catholic Church ourselves),  so it's frustrating to hear non-believers lump us in with some of the more hierarchical religions with more poisonous pasts.

- marcellusw101

January 11, 2008 at 2:27pm

My word, what nice common sense. Yes, let us agree that Dawkins and Hitch have chosen to attack a form of idiocy that religion has take lately while acknowledging that the religious belief is a lot more complex. It's not, after all, true that nobody had come up with these ideas for the last 3000 years...they have been debated, cogently, for centuries. Hell, for millennia...did you think that Jacob wrestling with God was supposed to be taken literally?

When the universe is not only more complex than we understand but more complex than we CAN understand, modestly held religious and atheist viewpoints can almost converge.

- AlanK

January 11, 2008 at 3:53pm

Wow, another PC(USA)er on the lists?  I'm floored.

Of course, official positions of any denominational body are certainly not unanimously held by all of their members.  I have no doubt plenty of Presbyterians believe in hell no matter what this or that confession says.

Also, marcellus, I fear that much of the lumping happens because its the hard-right types who have been loudest in the public sphere in the last few decades.  The Falwells, Robertsons et al have been on the airwaves, in front of microphones and generally being noisy at every opportunity, and even the younger crowd -- Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, etc. -- keeps spewing stuff onto popular bookshelves regularly.  The old "mainline" types don't do so much of that, and don't carry numbers that get us heard.  It's not good and it's not right, but still it is.

- cspencef

January 11, 2008 at 4:08pm

See wolfweb.unr.edu/.../montaigne.htm --excerpts follow:

Yet here we find a tension in Montaigne, for in fact he sharply attacked traditions, customs, and all human institutions, including political institutions, pointing out their contradictions and stupidities.  He emphasized human fallibility, our mistake-proneness.  We are not infallible.  We do not have the capacities to ascertain the truth about the world with any assurance.  We are weak, both epistemically (that is, on the side of cognition and knowledge) and morally.  Only faith and God's grace will save us.  This position is one variety of fideism, the view that, at bottom, we must rely on faith rather than reason, on trust rather than on rational evidence.  In fact, knowing that reason is powerless to prove anything, realizing that we are ignorant, makes us better able to receive divine revelation.  

Yet Montaigne's skepticism did not make him anti-rational in the way that some writers were.  He was not irrationalist.  He did not embrace faith with the religious fervor of the later Pascal (who regarded Montaigne as a cold fish, basically an atheist).  Montaigne did not reject reason and observation as totally useless.  Rather, he used reason as a weapon, a machine de guerre (war machine), in his critique of cultural institutions and human habits.  The sharp edge of reason served very well to destroy, deconstruct, or dismantle the world of supposed givens.  It unmasked the incoherencies, the contradictions, the rationally unjustified dogmatisms and ingrained habits, the foolishness that characterized human behavior and society.  

- arutenberg

January 11, 2008 at 4:38pm

Marcellus- no, not a Brit, though I did used to want to be a chimney-sweep.   But my church disapproved.  That is the root of all of this...

I think in terms of complexity and beauty, for me the universe is a lot more complex and goose-flesh inducingly gorgeous without the idea of a creator, loving or otherwise.   I think I have found myself more open, but perhaps that is just me.  And I fully concede that, unintentionally, I lumped everyone in with the worst, and for that I apologize.  

- boneill

January 11, 2008 at 5:24pm

AlanK:  "Humbly," to use boneill's gracious word (and I think, by the way, he comes, like myself, from that den of iniquity known as Chicago), I don't think we can "all agree" on what you say.  The atheists are not limiting their critique to extreme religious belief.  Rather, they're saying that all religious belief -- the nature of it; not the amount -- is both important to people and fundamentally irrational and therefore very troubling, and certainly not worthy of social approval and recommendation and indoctrination.  My new favorite quote -- which I think should be plastered in every school and every public building -- comes from Thomas Jefferson:  "A man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind."  The argument advanced in these books is that the little surrenders -- the moderate, "complex" surrenders -- enable the bigger, simpler, more counterproductive, more hateful, more lethal ones.

You suggest that "modestly" held belief and non-belief are almost the same thing.  Well, no.  They share an insipid tone you approve of, but belief and non-belief remain opposites.  Of course, if your belief is truly modest -- that is, as modest as it should be -- then it's nonexistent, and, guess what;  you're an atheist, but just afraid to say so!  I'm not trying to pigeon-hole people's beliefs or caricature them or force people to take up extreme positions.  I'm just insisting on a debate that uses words like "faith" and "belief" correctly so that we can know what we're talking about.  It seems like a common trick when arguing with an atheist to define religion down to the point that it's devoid of what makes religion religious.  All this serves to do is avoid giving offense, which is sometimes, even usually, the right idea, but there's a side effect in this case:  the ostensible subject, which is an important one, goes unexamined in favor of an anodyne status quo.

I'm convinced that this status quo is dangerous enough (as a way of thinking that, taken seriously, is often an impediment to human progress and an inspiration for "absurdities the most monstrous")  that those of us who take the atheist line should at least feel socially and culturally free to be open about it and free to make our points.  Now, I'm not going up to strangers, or ringing doorbells, or sending unsolicited emails to coworkers urging that they think as I think on this topic.  (Of course, religious people do all of those things on a regular basis.)  I wouldn't do that, because I think it's rude.  But writing a book isn't rude.  There's little reason to hate a book unless you hate what it says, and the Linkeresque "moderate" backlash to these athiest books avoid what they say entirely, or else get them wrong.

I'm not sure, Alan, if you've actually read these books, but their tone is not nearly as harsh as is made out in articles like the Linker piece.  They're not "thuggish."  They make an argument and attempt to make it forcefully, clearly, and persuasively.  Hitchens's book has a sharper edge than the others -- everything Hitchens writes has a pretty sharp edge -- but Hitchens, as McEwan notes, *welcomes* debate, *welcomes* discussion.  He wants to talk about it -- freely and honestly.  What could be wrong with that?

As for the notion that these atheists are "extreme" -- merely the other side of the fundamentalist coin -- I would only note that they do not propose, as the fundamentalists do, to take fantasy to its logical conclusion but rather only logic to its logical conclusion.  Atheists aren't drinking a different flavor of Kool-Aid.  They're refusing the Kool-Aid altogether.  These are qualitatively very different things, and it's pure confusion to say they are the same in any significant way because they reside on opposite sides of an arbitrary spectrum.  It would be useless and strange, for example, to label my uncompromising position that Chicago in fact sits on the shore of Lake Michigan and not the Indian Ocean as "extreme."

With respect to McEwans's reference to eternal life, I don't think his point is unfair.  If you are, say, a Christian, and don't actually believe in an eternal reward, then you're not much of a Christian, are you?  The concept is rather fundamental to the general scheme.  You might say it's what Christianity is all about: the new covenant, the promise of salvation as demonstrated and heralded by what, if you're really a Christian, you regard as the most important event in human history -- the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, son of God.  You might say that no religion is worth its salt if it doesn't promise that ultimate thing, eternal life.  McEwan is recommending a different way of looking at life -- that is, as your only life, because there is plainly no literal eternal reward that anybody knows about.  He's not saying that most ostensible believers treat death without fear or regret or profound sadness -- the inescapable emotions that accompany the almost incomprehensible inevitability that our world, literally as far as we can tell, will end one day.  I think he's merely suggesting that looking at this life as itself the ultimate reward will tend to maximize the value -- the preciousness, the beauty -- we place on it.  He's looking for beauty honestly -- where he can find it -- in life -- without benefit of mood-enhancing claptrap.  I think that's a worthy endeavor -- the endeavor of his profession, in fact -- and one we should celebrate if we care about truth *or* beauty.

- jhildner

January 13, 2008 at 2:35am

Yes, we atheists should recognize that humility is not--or should not be--ONLY a Christian virtue. :)

Specifically, when atheists make the point that we are just as ethical as anyone else, we should not forget that this very fact--our belief in ethical (as well as aesthetic) truths--makes us nearly as irrational as those who believe in the sky-god.

- nancyirving

January 13, 2008 at 10:11pm