February 19   Peter Bowden:  God, Atheists and Human Values

Examining the  surge in atheist writings in the last 18 or so months, comparing them with  philosophers and scientists on this issue over time. 

A spate of publications on atheism has been thrust at us recently: Richard Dawkins with The God Delusion; Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell; Michel Onfray's The Atheist Manifesto; Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation, a follow-on to his The End of Faith, and Christopher Hitchens' The Portable Atheist. This one is also a sequel, to God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

They raise many questions, the dominant ones being whether they give us any deeper insight into ourselves, our needs as human beings, and ways to conduct our lives, individually and collectively.

On this score I argue that they fail miserably. They are negative, destroying much of mankind's history, replacing it with an empty nothing - and in the process, they avoid a fundamental need of the human race. And some very strong values that we have developed over many centuries.

They, of course, give their answer to a question that has engaged thinkers for centuries. God does not exist, or as Dawkins puts it more believably: "There is almost certainly no God."

This talk presents three concerns with The New Atheists, as they term themselves. I must point out that these concerns are not (nor could ever be) presented by a "believer", for some of the arguments of the New Atheists are irrefutable.   And therefore acceptable. Others of their assertions, however, are totally unacceptable. Three in particular stand out:

1. The books are extremely scathing of religious people, and deeply anti-religion. The viciousness behind their attacks on the fundamental beliefs of the great majority of people in this country is often based on a false premise, and certainly unnecessary. They lose the support of any thinking person concerned with human dignity and well-being. We will return to this point later.
2. If they want a target to attack, it is fundamentalism - fundamental Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as their own particular brand - fundamental atheism.  Their attacks, usually vicious, should have ended there. Instead, they embrace almost the entire human race  over most of its history
3. Their biggest failure however is understanding human nature.  Spiritual beliefs of many types have grown up over thousands of years.  They, along with our fears, our hopes, are intrinsic to human existence. Mankind started on the search for meaning long before the religions that the new Atheists attack were ever dreamed of. That search continues. I argue that the New Atheists have not even begun to join us on this journey.

Religion is a man-made device, they claim, developed from our fear of the unknown and of life after death. Our need for consolation in times of difficulty; to ask for help from a loving God, have also been causes.

Dennett takes our religious history back further, claiming shamanism as the forerunner to today's organised religions. How witch doctors transformed their practices into Christian beliefs, however, or into any structured religion for that matter, and why they waited the greater part of human existence to do so, is not too clear.

From these needs, from our concern with why, our need for reason, mankind has created religious and spiritual beliefs. Some, not all, of the religions created a God. The three religions that the New Atheists target in particular, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, believe in a God who created the universe. A God who created the universe, who is  loving , omnipotent, and who listens to our prayers.

In that we cannot bring convincing empiricism either way to this argument, logic tells us that we can only be agnostic. Agnostic in the sense that we do not know. Dawkins says we cannot prove that there is or is not a God (although he comes down heavily on the atheistic side). But, if we do believe, what sort of God are we talking about?  Most of us suspect that a God who brings such horrors on the world, cannot be a loving God. And for a God that is omnipotent, including unsurpassed rational abilities, creation appears more like an idle game of draw poker than possessing any deep seated reason or purpose. We must also entertain great doubts about personal appeals to God in times of difficulty. It is certainly contradictory to see why he ignores appeals from both sides in wars between Christian nations. Or why the young and innocent suffer, sometimes cruelly, despite the prayers of the faithful.  

But we have equal difficulty with the Atheists beliefs in the creation of the universe. It is, to me, impossible to have a universe without any beginning.  A universe that goes back and back in time, forever, is inconceivable - as unbelievable as the miracles so castigated by the current crop of writers. Nor is our understanding assisted by a universe created out of a "Big Bang". There must have been something there to bang.  The arguments for quantum mechanics are also not so easy to understand. As the Dawkins' quote says, anybody who claims to understand quantum theory does not understand it. Multiple universes - multiverses - in time and space are incomprehensible.

Charles Darwin, whose Decent of Man opened our minds to many possibilities about our origins, states  the obvious "the extreme difficulty, or rather impossibility, of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe ... (as) a result of blind chance ... I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us, and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic".

This writer, like Darwin, and I suspect Richard Dawkins, does not know how the universe was created. And whether there was a why.  Two of us at least admit to being agnostic.

To turn to their attacks on the three religions.

Hitchens' introduction is brash to the point of being offensive. Religion is "irrational" or "evil nonsense". It castigates the "dumb credulity" of believers, characterised by an Archbishop of Canterbury who is an "old fool" or a "cretinous" Bishop of Carlisle.  His strongest condemnation, however, must be from his God is not Great, where organised religion is "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children." Whew! When 80% of the people in this nation classify themselves as religious!

Read their subtitles - they are just as violent..  Hitchens' subtitle is How Religion Poisons Everything!  Everything!? Surely not everything, Christopher?

Harris's subtitle puts Religion & Terror together.  Dawkins' TV series that accompanied his book is titled The Root of All Evil?  All Evil? With a question mark. Thank the Lord for the question mark, Richard.

First prize in this slanging match, however, must go to the philosopher Michel Onfray, who writes with an overblown turgidity, without references, footnotes or an index; presumably to avoid us checking his sources for  the "nonsense" and "man-made foolery" he ascribes to today's religions; and the "deceptive, travestied and hypocritically" promulgating of their beliefs.

Sitting in front of your TV, watching Dawkins' mounting aggressiveness in his interview with an evangelical preacher elicits sympathy for the preacher, not support for Dawkins. Even when you know that evangelising fundamentalists are the root of much distress in this world. 

For fundamental Christianity is of great concern. But the approach of Dawkins and his Four Horsemen - aggressive confrontation is not the answer. The Christian Right in the US is one of the causes, along with fundamental Judaism, behind the successive Middle East crises and the rise of terrorism.  It should also be noted, of course, that Hitchens supports the war in Iraq, and has been publicly embraced by the neo-conservatives. For him to saddle all believers in this world with being "allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry" and Dawkins to describe religion as "the root of all evil" are leaps that no balanced person could make.  They are statements which makes one doubt the intellectual honesty of the New Atheists and their condemnation of those with religious beliefs.

The bellicose history of religion is a common theme of attack. "The assertion of one God, violent, jealous, quarrelsome and intolerant, has generated more hate, bloodshed, deaths and brutality than it has peace", Hitchens tells us. Dennett, perhaps the least intolerant of these militants, is still not above describing the "fanatical" ... "delusion" of believers, nor of placing responsibility on religion for the genocides of mankind.

The Four Horsemen (also their term for themselves, excluding Onfray - I presume because he writes in French, not because they consider his vitriol excessive) do have substance in asserting this evil face of religion. Nevertheless, none of them admit that the cause of war may equally be in the winning of territory, power or resources. Nor in the megalomania of unfettered rulers. The two great wars of mankind - the world wars - did not have their origins in religion.

It is true that Christianity has much to apologise for: the Conquistadors, the Inquisition, the mass killings by the Crusaders. That they are of an earlier age appears to be irrelevant, for it is all lumped together with today's Islamic terrorism. And despite there being much today in Christianity that all of us can be proud of.

Hitchens issued a challenge: "Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed, by a believer that could not been ...performed by a non-believer". His challenge, of course, is nonsense. Ten minutes walk from where this writer lives is a church that feeds the lost and homeless daily. Scattered over this city are church-run refuges, homes for the elderly, and community assistance programs. In the pubs members of the Salvation Army collect money daily for their charities. There are no similar atheist charities

Is the Salvation Army collector that we are all so familiar with, "the root of all evil"?

This talk is being given at a café who profits go to the Third World and whose start up funding was given by a church based organisation. Is that "evil nonsense"?

If I may introduce a personal note. A few weeks back I attended the funeral service of a woman who had lived in a rural community for close on 50 years. It was at one of those small white wooden churches that we see across the Australian countryside. Her neighbours and friends over the years with that church were there, and they spoke of this small community. It was difficult to see the "violent, irrational, intolerant" side of those people.

Hitchens' challenge in fact, is easily reversed: To identify any organised atheist charity, replicated many times over, that cares for the disadvantaged. I do not know of any in this city.

There are, of course, secular charities, many of them. Human beings are naturally moral. Some claim that altruism, or at least cooperating with others, is wired into our genes. But a point should be made clear - secular charities are not atheist charities, and cannot be claimed as a win for atheism.  In any case, it is fortunate perhaps, that the New Atheists are not into helping others in any organised way, given the evangelical vitriol with which their current writings condemn the majority of the human race.

And although it is irrelevant to the argument, it is interesting to note that many secular charities, often put forward as arguments for atheistic secularism, are far from atheistic in their origins:  The Red Cross, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Greenpeace among those so claimed.

Henry Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, came from a very devout Calvinist family

Bill Gates, the world's largest philanthropist, often claimed by atheists as one of their own, is actually agnostic.

Interviewed in 1995 on PBS by David Frost, Gates stated:

I'm not somebody who goes to church on a regular basis. The specific elements of Christianity are not something I'm a huge believer in. There's a lot of merit in the moral aspects of religion. I think it can have a very, very positive impact.

.....In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid.

Melinda Gates is valedictorian graduate of the Ursuline Academy of Dallas, an independent Catholic college for young women sponsored by the Ursuline Sisters.

On environmental issues, we have Greenpeace, along with many other secular movements. Wikipedia tells us that Irving Stowe, a member of the Society of Friends, can probably be described as the father of Greenpeace.

To move onto my third and most important concern. The failure of the New Atheists is less in their levels of intolerance and more in understanding the nature of human beings. That over history the greater part of mankind has sought comfort against the fear of the unknown is acknowledged. That we also seek comfort in difficult times is also acknowledged; and very human. These needs may well be at the root of religious beliefs. But we also seek meaning in our lives. We need to have a reason for being, even though we may be no more than an accidental emergence from the primordial slime.

No acknowledgement of these fundamental needs is put forward. Dawkins gives us ten atheistic commandments. Why ten, I do not know, but it is a start. Hitchens tries with the beauties of science and nature, the consolations of philosophy, with literature, poetry, art, music and architecture. They are presented as absorptions for a lifetime that do not depend on the supernatural, or "ghostly stories" (of religious people, needless to say). Wonderful as these pursuits may be, however, they are pastimes, pleasant fill-ins, without a deeper meaning beyond the normalities of our daily lives.

The failure to recognise the search for meaning is a criticism that must be levelled primarily at the philosophers among them, Onfray, Harris and Dennett. They are from the discipline that has, for 2,000 years, been asking this question of our meaning, our identity. Two of them, Onfray and Dennett, do not even try. Harris has an attempt to examine consciousness, but does not even come close. We will look at that in a minute.

This search for meaning, for purpose, is not new. We have been building our belief systems for thousands of years.  The Neanderthals, before Homo sapiens was fully evolved, believed in an after-life. Jainism, a religion originating about the 9^th century BCE advocated non violence, self control, and an emphasis on the immediate consequences of one's behaviour.  

Half a thousand years after Jainism, Plato wrote The Republic, argued by some as his greatest dialogue, exploring similar issues. The protagonists, including Socrates, debated whether God exists. They also discussed many of today's beliefs and uncertainties:  the immortality of the soul, whether the world below exists for punishment, and the purpose of our individual and collective lives. All this from a world we would call pagan, long before Christianity and Islam, and when the Israelites were far away, still struggling in the desert.  Socrates' arguments emerged as the virtue of justice. Ideal justice is realised in the outward life of the community working through the inner life of the individual. In a state which is ordered to the good of the whole we would most likely find justice. And that state is built on inner virtue. And as Julia Annas argues, this is the end which Socrates urges us to seek.

The debate has continued since. If we are to accept Socrates, then our inner need is beyond ourselves, wider than the ideals of self-fulfillment proposed by so many commentators. Beyond the sales levels and profits of those out to make a fortune, beyond our careers and our life's work, beyond what one commentator describes as "what we put into our own lives and how we interact with our loved ones, our friends and our colleagues."

Dawkins' ten atheist commandments do stretch out beyond the self. Sam Harris in Chapter Seven talks about consciousness.  It is totally concerned with self. Consciousness is self. Many commentators claimed that we have a purpose - our lives, our careers, our loved ones. Yes, they all are our various purposes, as we wish them to be. But it is again all self.  Our meaning, our purpose must be wider.

If we search back through the atheist philosophies of the past, through Mill, Hume, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, we find a questioning - a gentler, agnostic questioning. A clear condemnation of the excesses of religion, yes, along with sincere doubts about a personal God, but accompanied by an acknowledgement that we do not know.

JS Mill in his autobiography draws on his father to document both his upbringing and beliefs. "Concerning "the origin of things, nothing can be known".... "Dogmatic atheists he looked upon as absurd."

But Mill and his father rejected as inhumane some Christian concepts, particularly that of Hell.

And when we need comfort and reassurance? When a loved one dies? Is it meditation? Is it in the beliefs of other religions that these writers did not explore? Buddhism, for instance, that has no God? Or Daoism with its Three Jewels: - compassion, moderation, and humility? Or the teachings of Confucius, who also did not require us to pray to a God?

Or the beliefs and practices of the Druze, Zoroastrians, or many other religions, such as the Jains?

We need to accept that we are a spiritual people. Sam Harris also introduced at The End of Faith, our need for meditation. He believed.  In times of trouble to ask the universe for clarity, for greater understanding, for acceptance, can help us. We can ask for that understanding on a mountain top. On an empty beach. In a crowded, bustling city, an empty church, whether or not we believe that anybody is listening, is ideal.

The two themes, the need for meaning in our lives, and the requirement on us to think beyond our concerns, beyond our fear of misfortune, of the future, have given rise to the world's belief systems. They arose long before the religious beliefs of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that our militant atheists have attacked so vigorously.  Their attacks, vitriolic as they are on the beliefs of so many people, on what can be seen as fundamental human needs held over many centuries, are off the planet. They will not win many converts.

The militants certainly will not replace current beliefs until they give us that deeper meaning. Until they argue if or if not, there is a why. And what it might be. Their arguments, though overblown and grossly offensive, do have a degree of rationality. Nevertheless, I would urge them to go further, to think through their answers to the problems humans face, problems and needs that were at the root of the earliest evolution of religious belief. And to come up with their thoughts. Then they may have made a contribution to human development.

[1] This paper is built on an earlier version that appeared in On Line Opinion http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/ . It has benefited from the many comments on that version.