Category: Atheism

The British writer Douglas Murray contributed an eloquent essay to The Spectator on how he became an atheist. The title – deliberately provocative, I suspect, in these times of confusion over the role of Muslim culture and law in Britain – was “Studying Islam has made me an atheist”.

Gradually, scepticism of the claims made by one religion was joined by scepticism of all such claims. Incredulity that anybody thought an archangel dictated a book to Mohammed produced a strange contradiction. I found myself still clinging to belief in Christianity. I was trying to believe — though rarely arguing — ‘Well, your guy didn’t hear voices: but I know a man who did.’ This last, shortest and sharpest, phase pulled down the whole thing. In the end Mohammed made me an atheist.

What I found particularly interesting was his discussion of the concept of “cultural Christianity”.

My final fear was one which I think a lot of Christians in this country feel, particularly as they see Islam re-emerging and gaining adherents in spite (or perhaps because) of its intransigence and intractability. It is, I suppose, a sense of cultural abandonment. We know how much of what we enjoy and relish comes through Christianity. Can we really go on without it? Doesn’t it leave our building without foundations? Slowly I discover that it doesn’t. I still can’t pass a country church or cathedral without going in. The texts are still essential to me. They are just (and ‘just’ hardly does the job here) no more divine than Shakespeare.
The question of how, without believing it, we transmit the good of our historical faith to another generation is certainly problematic. Perhaps like many Jewish people who rejoice in their identity but don’t believe in God we could be better — and franker — at being cultural Christians.

This all seems very reasonable. And many atheists are happy to be “cultural Christians” – Richard Dawkins has often written of how he cheerfully celebrates Christmas. And I know many Jewish atheists, who don’t seem to get involved in public debates about whether their atheism is compatible with their Judaism. So what’s the problem?
It’s the Christians. Or, rather, the enthusiastic Christian believers who see the arcane but beautiful texts, rituals, and music as barriers to creating the kind of religious communities that they want. When I, like Douglas Murray, go into a wonderful old English country church, I delight in the experience right up to the moment that the service starts. And then the beautiful, timeless space is filled with banal language and trite (and ephemeral) music.
I have no problem with believers indulging in their rituals, ancient or modern. Chacun à son goût, and all that. But most of them seem actively opposed to the concept of “cultural Christianity”: they insist that if we are to enjoy the Christian heritage of England, we should do so on their terms. The rest of us are merely day-trippers, to be hit up for cash and then pushed out of the way when they want to exercise their “authentic” Christianity.
For the most part, I can ignore the enthusiasts and enjoy the culture. But it’s annoying to be treated as a tourist in your own country.

Via PZ, a nice parable. Free-thinking beats any one book (especially contradictory mashups of bronze age myths).

One of the commenters on the PZ thread recommended this TED piece by Jonathan Haidt.

I’ve just finished reading three books on a common theme: losing one’s (Christian) religion and becoming an atheist. All three are excellent, but each approaches the topic from a very different perspective. I thought I might review them all together, and post the combined review on each book at Amazon. I don’t know if this is consistent with the Amazon review policy, but never mind.
The first book is Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists by Dan Barker. I was slightly put off by the subtitle: “How an evangelical preacher became one of America’s leading atheists.” After all, one of the key points about atheism – and one that we have to keep reminding theists about – is that atheism is not an organized body of belief, it’s no more a religion than “bald” is a hair colour. So how can anyone be a “leading atheist”? Who’s being led? However if one substitutes “prominent” or “influential” for “leading”, we can let that pass. And Barker is certainly influential: he’s co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which is one of the most active groups working to uphold the Constitutional prohibition on church-state entanglement, and seeking to counteract the negative image of atheism in this country.
The second book that I considered was William Lobdell’s Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace. Lobdell is an award-winning journalist who covered religion for the Los Angeles Times. After writing about many aspects of religion for many years, he finally decided to write about his own journey.
The last volume in this trilogy was Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, by John Loftus. Like Barker, Loftus was also an evangelical preacher, but although the arc of his experience was similar to Barker’s, the result is a very different kind of book.
Let me begin by saying that each of these books is really good, and deserves a place in the library of anyone who is interested in the contemporary debate between religion and atheism. I hesitate to rank them, or recommend one over another; nevertheless I find myself compelled to do so. Of the three, Lobdell’s “Losing My Religion” is the most essential, for two reasons. First, he is an excellent writer, and his prose is simply a delight to read. Secondly, he concentrates on his personal experience in a way that I haven’t encountered before in books by atheists. Both Loftus and Barker set out to tell their story and argue their case, albeit in different ways, and each draws on writers as diverse as Dennett, Wells, Price, Martin, Shermer, Carrier and Nielsen in setting forth their arguments. Lobdell just wants to recount his own story, and what he has learned from it. He’s not interested in converting anyone, or scoring debating points. As he writes,

“To borrow Buddha’s analogy, I’ve just spent eight years crossing a river in a raft of my own construction, and now I’m standing on a new shore. My raft was made not of dharma, like Buddhism’s, but of things I gathered along the way: knowledge, maturity, humility, critical thinking and the willingness to face the world as it is, and not how I wish it to be. I don’t know what the future holds in this new land. I don’t see myself crossing the river back to Christianity… [or] adopting a new religion. My disbelief in a personal God now seems cemented to my soul. Other kinds of spirituality seem equally improbable. Besides, I like my life on this unexplored shore.”

For Lobdell, the thing which provoked his crisis of faith was people: the yawning gulf between the ideals of a religion and the lives of those who practice and – especially – lead it. The horrific abuse of young people by Catholic priests, and the way it was covered up, refutes the claims of religion in many different ways. In particular, it challenges believers to justify theodicy (the “problem of evil”), as well as the Dostoievskian idea of religion as a bastion against the chaos of amorality. In contrast, for Barker and Loftus, the unravelling of their fundamentalist faiths was due to ideas: to the incoherence of religious dogma, and its incompatibility with science and reason.
Both Loftus and Barker were preachers. There are many distinct aspects to being a preacher: the performance artist, leading a collective act of worship; the scribe and teacher, explaining and interpreting the texts and practices of the faith; and the counsellor and confessor. All of these roles have roots in the shamanic and magical. As a believer, Barker was a performance artist, and he remains so in his newly found unbelief. He encourages the closeted skeptic, and fights fiercely for the rights of the non-religious. Loftus is a scribe: the apologist, the teacher. He was the defender of faith against its critics, and with the detailed knowledge that he acquired in this role, he has become the sharpest critic of religious apology.. Each of their books reflects the way that they interpreted the role of preacher.
Both Barker and Loftus seek to encourage those who seek affirmation of their skepticism or unbelief. Barker concentrates on the emotional, the social: “you are not alone”, “you are not a bad person”. Loftus focuses on the ideas, the dogma: the Bible is riddled with inconsistencies, the supposedly biographical accounts in the New Testament are demonstrably fictitious, the attempts by contemporary theologians to construct a coherent interpretation of the contradictory mess are failures, and so forth. If you have read some of the authorities that Loftus cites – Mackie, Martin, et al – I would still recommend his book, because he pulls all of the threads together in a compact and accessible manner. If you are unfamiliar with the literature, Loftus may be all you need. (Add Hitchens for spice, of course!)
I recommend all three books.

Oh bugger. One might hope that one of the most non-religious countries in the world would reject this nonsense, but apparently not:

True, it is embarrassing to be the only western democracy that has theocracy built into its legislature. The 26 bishops in the Lords interfere regularly: they are a threat on abortion, and their campaign sank the Joffe bill, giving the terminally ill the right to die in dignity. Of course they should not be there, when only 16% of people will grace the pews on Christmas Day, and Christian Research forecasts church attendance falling by 90%. But a dying faith clings hard to its inexplicable influence on public life.

Labour has encouraged the power of the religions to a remarkable degree, consulting them on endless committees. To be an atheist is now unacceptable in a political leader: when Nick Clegg confessed his non-belief, he had to recant and re-define himself as an “agnostic”. The BBC is increasing religious broadcasting; Radio 4 already does 200 hours. Is this by popular demand? No. An Ofcom survey put religion last in the public’s interests.

(From Polly Toynbee in Comment is free; emphasis mine.)

Now here’s a treat! Pop over to the New Humanist Blog and check out their Advent Podcasts. The first is by Stephen Fry.

Over at Slate, Paul Bloom takes a look at a seeming paradox. On the one hand, American atheists seem to be less happy than believers. On the other, mostly atheistic societies like Norway and Sweden are much happier and healthier than the US. He suggests that it’s the result of community and exclusion.

American atheists, by contrast, are often left out of community life. The studies that Brooks cites in Gross National Happiness, which find that the religious are happier and more generous then the secular, do not define religious and secular in terms of belief. They define it in terms of religious attendance. It is not hard to see how being left out of one of the dominant modes of American togetherness can have a corrosive effect on morality. As P.Z. Myers, the biologist and prominent atheist, puts it, “[S]cattered individuals who are excluded from communities do not receive the benefits of community, nor do they feel willing to contribute to the communities that exclude them.”

The sorry state of American atheists, then, may have nothing to do with their lack of religious belief. It may instead be the result of their outsider status within a highly religious country where many of their fellow citizens, including very vocal ones like Schlessinger, find them immoral and unpatriotic. Religion may not poison everything, but it deserves part of the blame for this one.

Coincidentally vjack has a piece up at Atheist Revolution endorsing the idea that philanthropy may be a good organizing principle for atheist community.

The award goes to Dan Henninger, writing in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. (Well, it had to be there, or the NRO, or the Weekly Standard, didn’t it?) So, what caused the financial melt-down? We’re talking about a crisis brought on by Republican-inspired deregulation, and overseen by a government of Republican Christianists, whose power base lies in the southern parts of the USA…
Dan starts off well:

What really went missing through the subprime mortgage years were the three Rs: responsibility, restraint and remorse. They are the ballast that stabilizes two better-known Rs from the world of free markets: risk and reward.

Well, that makes sense. After all, the absence of “responsibility, restraint and remorse” has defined the Bush years, from foreign policy to deficits, to energy and taxation. And as Dan emphasizes…

Responsibility and restraint are moral sentiments. Remorse is a product of conscience. None of these grow on trees. Each must be learned, taught, passed down.

Very good. And the reason why responsibility and restraint have failed us is…? (Fasten seat belt: prepare for neck-snapping non-sequitur.)

And so we come back to the disappearance of “Merry Christmas.”
It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people. Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.
The point for a healthy society of commerce and politics is not that religion saves, but that it keeps most of the players inside the chalk lines. We are erasing the chalk lines.

Breathtaking. I guess he subscribes to the notion that if you’re going to say something silly, make it outrageously silly. I particularly liked the idea of how dangerous secularizing “flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people”. (What else would they be – apes? Oh, wait….)
(Tip o’ the hat to PZ.)

A couple of my expat-Brit friends are becoming US citizens this autumn. They’re not giving up their UK passports; that’s not necessary any more. Dual is cool. It’s so much more convenient to enter the EC on a British passport and the US with a US one; and you get to vote and serve on juries too! And they ask me how long I’ve been a “Green card” holder, and I tell them (27 years), and they’re incredulous. Why haven’t I got US citizenship? It’s no big deal: a bit like carrying both a Visa and an Amex card, or joining the United Airlines and British Airways frequent flier programs, or owning a PC and a Mac. It’s no big deal; it doesn’t mean anything.
Well, yes, for me it does. It’s very simple. I don’t feel that I can, in good conscience, affirm any kind of allegiance to a country in which I am, politically, a pariah. Sure, I live and work in the United States, but so what? People live and work all over the world, often in countries where they wouldn’t dream of becoming citizens. If I hadn’t come to the US back in 1981, I’d probably have gone to work in Saudi Arabia. I’m sure that there are many delightful Saudis, and I’d have many friends and colleagues there – but would you swear allegiance to a barbaric, misogynistic theocracy? Me neither.
OK, so America doesn’t burn schoolgirls to death in the name of “modesty”, and when it kills its criminals, it does so in private with technology rather than in public with a sword. But it’s still the case that most Americans don’t believe that I could be a citizen. Remember Bush senior?

“No, I don’t know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”

But that was over 20 years ago; surely things have improved. Hardly. Here’s Joan Smith in The Independent:

In a closely-fought Senate contest in North Carolina, the Democratic candidate reacted with fury and a libel suit when her Republican opponent wrongly implied she was an atheist. Instead of shrugging off Elizabeth Dole’s accusation, Kay Hagan responded as though she’d been branded a paedophile. […] Hagan isn’t an atheist. So what? I’m not a Christian and I’d be mildly offended if someone suggested I was, but I wouldn’t respond as though I’d been called an axe murderer.

Of course, Smith is writing in Europe – specifically, in the UK – where attitudes are different:

In this country, we have Cabinet ministers who are relaxed about saying they dont believe in God, and being an atheist is no bar to getting elected. In the last census, just over 8.5 million people (15 per cent) said they had no religion, and almost 400,000 showed what they thought about the question by declaring themselves Jedi Knights. In France, a poll last year suggested that almost a third of the population describe themselves as atheists. In the Czech Republic, almost 60 per cent say they have no religion.

This isn’t a party political thing, you know. OK, most of the paleo-Christians vote hard right, but even Barack Obama has called for “Christians on Capitol Hill, Jews on Capitol Hill and Muslims on Capitol Hill” to provide “an injection of morality in our political debate”, as though non-believers were incapable of contributing on a moral issue. Check that… OK, yes, Obama said:

…because I do not believe that religious people have a monopoly on morality, I would rather have someone who is grounded in morality and ethics, and who is also secular, affirm their morality and ethics and values without pretending that they’re something they’re not

So he doesn’t want people pretending to be religious, which would be fine if it were not for the fact that such honesty would be political suicide. Smith again:

Atheists are the most despised people in the US, way ahead of Muslims, homosexuals and Jews, according to research by the University of Minnesota. They are regarded as “a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public” and almost half the country wouldn’t vote for an atheist as president. Godless Americans – there were 29.4 million of them (14 per cent) in 2001 – deserve much better than this.

I’m glad when American atheists raise their voices in protest against the bigotry of many religious Americans. I’m encouraged when they point out how unacceptable it would be if a typical rant by a Christianist were directed instead against Jews. I’m happy to help them, and to support things like the AHA campaign. But as long as most Americans view me as an alien, I think I’ll stay that way.
PS Yes, I know that Hagan dropped her libel suit as soon as she thrashed Dole. I think she was only really worried that she might get booted off MySpace. (They do that to atheists, you know.)

(From the AHA campaign in Washington, DC, via the Oz Atheist.)

I left my Kindle at the office this weekend, and I just finished a couple of work-related books (one tedious, one great), and so I’m looking for reading material this evening. I have two new books on the same subject, and I’m trying to decide which to crack first:

• Godless, by Dan Barker
• Why I became an atheist, by John Loftus

Both are accounts by former Christian preachers and apologists of how and why they rejected Christianity in favour of atheism. Both include lengthy justifications, including many of the familiar arguments against Christian faith. I’m more interested in the personal narratives than in the anti-apologetics, however.
One of my favourite accounts of the loss of faith is Anthony Kenny’s A Path from Rome, in which he describes his life from childhood, through becoming a Catholic priest, to the seeking and granting of laicization. This took place during the 1950s and early 1960s, at a time when few Catholic priests left the church, and I suspect that he wrote the book in part as an “existence proof” of the possibility of doing so. Of course, religion was far less potent a social or political force there and then, in England, than it is here and now, in the United States.
I hope that Barker and Loftus present their arguments as aids to the uncertain, to those who are inclined to reject religion but need ammunition to deal with family and friends who might seek to dissuade them. Arguments against religion per se are, in my view, a waste of time: apologetics are all post hoc constructions designed to reinforce a purely emotional commitment to faith, and the hard-choice fideist is unlikely to hear any counter-arguments. People have to find their own way out of the mist; it’s only as they begin to do so that they will be receptive to an account of what the mist is.
Anyway, let me flip a coin. Heads… I’ll start with Godless.