On The Media: Transcript of "God No!" (December 15, 2006) In response to the global challenge posted by religious extremism, a small group of impassioned atheists has taken a new approach. They target the tolerant with both reason and ridicule. "The New Atheists", as they were dubbed by Gary Wolf in a recent article in Wired magazine, condemn, quote, "not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong, it's evil."

Let's be clear on one thing! There is no chance that there is a god of the sort any of the world's major or minor religions envision. There is not even a universal spirit or anthropic principle that the uncertain or pathologically polite like to claim. There is no need to be agnostic about this, no 'wait-and-see' approach is necessary! There is no God! Might as well be atheist. However, there is also no evolution, individual potential or basic humanism (see Rousseau to Arendt) that secular humanists profess a faith (rational certainty) in. All of these are social constructs, that is, they don't exist like cars and trees exist (well, even cars and trees are social constructs in a way but they are more closely tied to tangible objects as you discover when one falls on you).

Sidenote: Now, there are a few things that might be worth being agnostic about. For me the foundation of agnosticism about the transcendental rests on a quote from St Agustin about time: “God created the universe with time, not in time.” That, by analogy, defines the boundaries of agnosticism or that is how I would choose to interpret the anthropic principle. We are limited by our humanness in how we see the world. If something “exists” outside these limits (such as 4 dimensional beings - see sci fi) there is no way it can ever enter into our sphere of relevance in its essence. In fact, even the very concept of existence may only apply within our own conceptual world as do all notions of causality, so to assume that for instance this hypothetical 4-dimensional world will have any impact on or relevance to our own world with paltry 3 dimensions, is to say too much. This is my reading of Wittgensteins “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” (Although he probably meant something else by it. So I would replace the second part by ‘thereof one is inevitably silent’ and ‘speak’ in the first part by ‘conceive’.) Also, where Parmedides sings of the totality of existence he probably means something similar. All that we can do about the truly transcendent is refer to it as something that is completely beyond our grasp. However, there is nothing mystical or wondrous about this as some postmodernist seem to be inclined to suggest. Neither does it mean that we should consciously avoid exploring certain areas that are presented to us by the inclinations that limit our world. However, when something gets within our grasp that previously appeared beyond it, we cannot conclude that we’re slowly ‘bit by byte’ eating away at the unknowable until there is nothing left. It just means that our own conceptual inclination isn’t very good at exploring its own boundaries and unequivocally point outside them.

The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof condemned the New Atheists as obnoxious and militant and in your face. And he wrote that this, quote, "charge of the atheist brigade" in its treatment of conservative Christians is, quote, "often just as intolerant and mean." ... SAM HARRIS: If you think the creator of the universe is letting people fly planes into our buildings because we are tolerating gay marriage, or he's whipping up hurricanes in the Gulf because we're tolerating gay marriage, you have to try to legislate against gay marriage. ... PAT ROBERTSON: What we've got to recognize just there in this case is that the evolutionists worship atheism. I mean, that's their religion. So this is an establishment of religion contrary to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

This is a debate that might be worth investigating in some detail (although it is not nearly as crucial as it might appear). Is atheism a form of religion? Equating religion and atheism may seem oxymoronic by definition (although in languages Czech it is also oxymoronic in vocabulary, náboženství - lit. ingoddiness) but the Latin-English etymology of binding suggests otherwise. In fact, religion has much less to do with God than with social and political consideration. Religion is a strong determinant of social identity and although some intellectual and faith baggage does come with it that might fall within the purview of clinical and/or cognitive psychology, it is much more profitable to study its social aspects at the group level. While there must have been many individuals who converted as a result of private revelation (cognitive dissonance or licking the wrong/right kind of mushroom) the majority of conversions of populations in history happened for political or economic reasons. On some level, belonging to a religion is not psychologically and socially that different from supporting a football club. The God thing really only muddles the waters. So once we dispense with the ecstatic bit of religion, atheism in the form presented below (and most of the expressions in faith of science) qualify as religious.

ELLEN JOHNSON: It's demeaning to atheists. It's saying that under very dire circumstances or frightening situations, atheists will stop being atheists. They will start believing. And this is really just a wish on the part of the religious, because it's not based in fact.

JOHN BURNETT: I thought it was a good line for the tape.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: NPR’s John Burnett.

JOHN BURNETT: And I didn’t realize that it was so offensive to atheists. And I learned that in spades after this story came out. They spammed me for weeks with e-mail, saying, we’re outraged. So now I know.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And did you sort of see their point?

JOHN BURNETT: I do see their point. I literally hadn’t thought about it before. And, frankly, I will think twice about using the phrase again.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What's an atheist to do? American Atheist President Ellen Johnson, says they have to organize.

ELLEN JOHNSON: Until the atheists start voting their atheism and be identified as a voting block in America, the politicians aren’t going to listen to us. We’re not going to have any influence in the public schools. We’re not going to have any influence in the media or anywhere else.

If things can be demeaning to atheists, if they can organize and vote in blocs, and all of this to opposition to religion, how different are they from religion? Not very. There are two arguments against atheism as religion position that might be worth taking into account. First, atheism is not an organized institution with a guide to personal behavior. In this it is more useful to look at it in opposition to monotheism or religiosity. Second, by blithely reducing religion to not much more than a tupperware party with the occasional crusade, we need to deal with the fact that now almost everything can be a religion. Why should we then even bother pointing out its religious aspects when we don’t do it for the Women’s institute?

The first argument is only valid in so far as we think of atheism as an independent position. However, atheism is strongly associated with scientific rationalism and secular humanism, which provide the religious part of its ideology (institutionalization, rituals and holy texts). That’s where we find liturgies and rituals (many overlapping with religious ones). Citizenship classes are a great example of a religious-like indoctrination and there are many rituals that many people perform to signify their ‘devotion’. They are mostly enacted through popular culture (any TV series - which is why the claims of a liberal bias in media are not so far-fetched although looking in the wrong place) and modern story-telling is full of them. There are even pilgrimages (eco-tourism), holy places (museum of natural history) and clergy (Richard Dawkins, TV personalities) of secular humanism and rational scientism. Art, universities and scholarship that once used to support religion (let’s not forget that origin of mathematics both in Greece and India were in service of religion) now fully support rational scientism and humanism. There are no places that are full equivalents of cathedrals but there are certainly many monuments build to science (Millenium dome in London). In short, an scientific atheist can lead as fully a devotional life as a religious person, in which no aspects of the religious experience are missing, although they are not concentrated in one place. Anti-religionists, or those who only go to church infrequently, often forget that the ‘religious’ - i.e. connected - life is and always has been much more varied and less monolithic than is often portrayed. And neither do they realize the varied and often surprising role science plays in social and devotional life of atheists (as well as religious people). A long time ago, I noted this short passage from Agatha Christi which I think described the state of modern rational scientism very accurately over half a century ago:

Agatha Christie, A Pocket Full of Rye, 1953 p. 102: Describing the room of a young servant girl: “There were cuttings about flying sauycers about secret weapons, about truth drugs used by Russians, and claims for fantastic drugs discovered by American doctors. All the witchcraft, so Neele thought, of our twentieth century.â€? p. 221: Miss Marple: “It’s interesting, you know, and very instructive–the things these girls cut out of papers and keep. It’s always been the same, you know, all through the ages. Recipes for beauty, for attracting the man you love. And witchcraft and charms and marvelous happenings. Nowadays, they’re mostly lumped under the heading of Science. Nobody believes in magicians anymore, nobody believes that anyone can come along and wave a wand and turn you into a frog. But if you read in a paper that by injecting certain glands, scientists can alter your vital tissues and you’ll develop frog-like characteristics, well, everybody would believe that.â€?

The second argument (i.e. one why not call a kitting club a religion) is fair in so far as we could associate other social group with religious-like nature on their surface. What sets atheism apart, however, is the fact that it deals with the very 'foundational' issues of human existence that religion has heretofore dealt with and it does so in explicit opposition to religion. So it not only invites a comparison with what it attacks, its attempts to supplant it and its proselytizing aspects only make it more similar to religion. If it is true, then, that religion is an inevitable condition of human existence (both personally and socially) atheism, if it wishes to do away with it, must become more like. Rather like the cult of the Virgin Mary and Catholic Saints was introduced to provide an equivalent to pagan spirit and the Goddess. (Islam, being distributed by sword rather than political alliance, was a little more fortunate and remained less influenced in its doctrine, although Sharia law is an example of its blending with local cultural patterns.)

No religion and an end to war: how thinkers see the future | Science | Guardian Unlimited People's fascination for religion and superstition will disappear within a few decades as television and the internet make it easier to get information, and scientists get closer to discovering a final theory of everything, leading thinkers argue today.

This is a good example of religious zeal in the atheist community, although, not necessarily completely incorrect. There is apparently only one good faith and that faith will be revealed to the world and the true and righteous will know it and only the low and wicked will turn away from it. (Presumably they will then be saved by science when the big disaster strikes and taken to new science-built colonies on the moon in a rapture like event.)

Wired 14.11: The Church of the Non-Believers The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking.

...Bad ideas foisted on children are moral wrongs. We should think harder about how to stop them...Dawkins: "the big war is not between evolution and creationism, but between naturalism and supernaturalism." ... Harris argues that, unless we renounce faith, religious violence will soon bring civilization to an end. Between 2004 and 2006, his book sold more than a quarter million copies.

…We discuss what it might look like, this world without God. “There would be a religion of reason,” Harris says. “We would have realized the rational means to maximize human happiness. We may all agree that we want to have a Sabbath that we take really seriously – a lot more seriously than most religious people take it. But it would be a rational decision, and it would not be just because it’s in the Bible. We would be able to invoke the power of poetry and ritual and silent contemplation and all the variables of happiness so that we could exploit them. Call it prayer, but we would have prayer without bullshit.”

What better way to conclude than with a quotation that proves the point. It seems almost too easy. And the author of the Wired article takes the bait (his bias evident from the title):

...People see a contradiction in its tone of certainty. Contemptuous of the faith of others, its proponents never doubt their own belief. They are fundamentalists....The New Atheists care mainly about correct belief. This makes them hopeless, politically.

He is certainly right about the fundamentalism of certain atheists but political hopelessness is much more open to question. In many ways, the new religion of secular humanism and rationalistic scientism (with its dogmas of individuality, democratism, rationalism, scientism and Kantian ethics) has already supplanted the old in many areas (education, mainstream culture, historiography) and it may not be too long before it prevails completely. We can then expect it to develop some features of major religions such as organized ritual that are still partially missing.

To summarize: All arguments for the existence of God are idiotic but most arguments against the existence of God are not much better. The only worthwhile attitude towards the idea of God is indifference. However, given that religion (or something like it) governs all aspects of our life - personal and social (we need those bindings), it is difficult to reject it as something from all daily life. In other words, while God or Science are irrelevant, many of the rituals associated with our belief in them are structurally essential to our life and we would ignore them at our peril. Those are worth subscribing to or fighting against, and, in fact, we have no choice but to engage with them in one way or another if we want to remain recognizably human.