Chris Hedges - I Don’t Believe in Atheists
May 2, 2008
Chris Hedges is a journalist and author who focuses on American and Middle Eastern politics and society. He is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City and a Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, where he spent fifteen years. He is the author of What Every Person Should Know About War and American Fascists. His newest book is I Don’t Believe in Atheists.
In this discussion with D.J. Grothe, acclaimed foreign correspondent Christ Hedges shares his criticism of the New Atheists, calling them “fundamentalists” in their own right. He responds to their account of the origins of Islamic religious extremism, and he accuses the New Atheists of racism. He explains his view that the New Atheists are proponents of the Neo-conservative agenda and how the American Left does advance secular values in the Muslim world. He also criticizes what he calls the “utopianism” of the New Atheists, detailing his skepticism about moral progress for humanity.
Bob
tildeb
alexandra
darkfabric
sextus
sob1989
taersker
adingu
whognu1
andrewtree
That typo was theirs not mine.
Comment by darkfabric — May 3, 2008 @ 2:12 pm
Hedges’ main criticism of the New Atheists is that they are just as much fundamentalists and believers in utopianism through violence as any other fanatical religious fundamentalist.
What they have done (the New Atheists) was replicated the belief system of christian fundamentalism in secular garb. Included in that is a complete corruption and misuse of science. They do this by how they define themselves, their fundamentalist mindset. What is that? It is a binary worldview of us and them. It is elevating ourselves to a higher moral plane. It is an embrace of catastrophic even apocalyptic violence as a cleansing agent to remove human impediments to, if not a perfect world, a more perfect world in their vision.
(They) embrace the cult of science and then use it (evolutionary biology) to make a leap of faith to talk about collective moral evolution. Why is this a problem? Because It’s utopianism - especially when its wedded to violence - that’s dangerous, and the New Atheists are Utopians like the christian fundamentalists.
His comments about, and false charges of racism against, the New Atheists, his dismissal of Hirsi as a legitimate voice of islamic criticism, his linking of the New Atheists to supporting the neo-con agenda of violence, his bafflement over which Islamic society DJ was referring to, all add up to someone unwilling or unable to discuss or defend the basis for his various absurd positions.
Hedges portrayal of what the New Atheists actually write is such a gross misrepresentation of the positions I’ve read from each of the New Atheists that I think Hedges should be convicted of slander. Unfortunately, he is far more of an apologist for those who are willing to ignore human rights in the name of religion than he is as someone who can comprehend the written word.
Comment by tildeb — May 3, 2008 @ 9:37 pm
Hedges is another “flea” - there are things to criticize about the “New Atheists” but most critics, including Hedges, do not read what they have written. In our earlier discussions [an on site search for "Hedges" brings up a half-dozen] I remember showing how H reads Harris out of context to make his claim about first strike nuke warfare.
Comment by Bob — May 4, 2008 @ 5:40 am
Darkfabric, have you read Hedges’ book? I think Hedges makes good points. He has direct experience and he has historical knowledge.
I believe one of Hedges’ arguments is that the new atheists’ claim that eliminating religion will better society is false. That is because evil is not located in religion, politics, art or any human activity but it is located in the human heart.
Hedges also points out that a suicide bomber is not the product of the Quran. That is, his crime is not to be blamed on religion or his holy book. There is oppression at the basis of his decision.
I agree with both arguments. What do you think?
Comment by sextus — May 4, 2008 @ 7:46 am
I’m making my way through this book now, very slowly. I’ve read Harris, Hitchens, et al, and his remarks against them are interesting.
I *might* be able to agree that the New Atheists are just as fundamental in their thinking as fundamentalist believers, but Hedges rhetoric is a bit much.
Comment by tysdaddy — May 4, 2008 @ 9:28 am
Sextus writes: “Hedges also points out that a suicide bomber is not the product of the Quran. That is, his crime is not to be blamed on religion or his holy book. There is oppression at the basis of his decision.”
As usual when dealing with causes it is a difficult call. I think that it is probably the case that oppression can lead to anger against a perceived enemy, but that it takes a holy scripture to justify the action of blowing oneself and others to bits. Those 9/11 videos made by the men who were involved in that faith based initiative are chilling and tend to support my analysis.
I cannot see that the fundamentalist charge can legitimately be laid on the NA!
Comment by Bob — May 4, 2008 @ 12:31 pm
tildeb, you suggest that Hedges is “…unwilling or unable to discuss or defend the basis for his various absurd positions.”
So do you mean that he is trying to divert attention away from the fact that he is unable to defend his position as a religious man by intentionally misreading the NA?
Sextus, I haven’t yet read any of Hedges’ work. I first heard about him when he was interviewed about his book, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America. I found it interesting that he, being a Christian himself, would choose to criticize publicly and so scathingly people who claim to hold the same faith as he.
In this most recent interview I appreciated the way Hedges wouldn’t let D.J. Grothe (whom I think is a great interviewer) get away with lumping all Islamic societies together or even all theocratic Islamic societies. Insisting that D.J. be specific seemed important to me since Hedges would not want to be lumped together with the Christian right in America. On the other hand, I wonder if one motivation for writing American Fascists was for Hedges to attempt to establish himself as a liberal, freethinking person who, because he also had the capacity to look at his own religion objectively and still remain a believer, can also view the NA with the same degree of objectivity.
Comment by darkfabric — May 4, 2008 @ 2:33 pm
Not long ago we had a discussion here about Watts versus Dawkins. Some of us thought that Watts did not fulfill Dawkins requirement because for Dawkins anything “supernatural,” or anything that cannot be proved empirically is delusion. The evidence needs to be empirical. (Is right?). Ok, Is not the total adherence to science as the only means of knowing (epistemology claim?) a form of fundamentalism?
Comment by sextus — May 4, 2008 @ 6:37 pm
I listened to the podcast in hopes that Aislam Hedges would clarify his allegations against the NA and argue from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance. My hopes were dashed so I quoted him instead. I did this to show how his interpretation of what the NAs stand for is so far off base that it must be considered as absurd. Unless these guys - Dennett, Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Onfray - have written stuff I know nothing about, I can assure anyone that none of them promotes violence as a solution to religiosity, none of them holds an us/them racist attitude (what I’ve read is a shared attitude that we’re all people but some of us are religiously deluded and act accordingly), none of them suggests that society must be cleansed through an end-of-days scenario of death and destruction, and the list goes on and on. This basis of incredible dishonesty on Ataoist Hedges’ part on which he has undertaken his ‘counter’ position for his book is, I think, a problem: what follows and any conclusions he reaches must therefore be viewed as, at the very least, problematic.
Without going into too much detail, all of the NAs argue (and I’m taking a huge liberty here) that people don’t need religious belief to make themselves, and the societies/cultures they form, better; in fact, there is evidence presented that religious belief impedes this progress. They also point out that religious belief carries with it a significant cost that they consider detrimental to humanity’s future in the whole. They continue their critique by arguing that this debate - about the respect given to religious belief where none they argue is deserved - needs to happen now because sophisticated destructive technology is becoming easier to get and easier to use, specifically in light of recent terrorist attacks by devoted followers that share a religious viewpoint and defend their atrocities of mass murder as a religious expression. Against this backdrop - of the NAs arguments well stated in their books, no less - our fearless Azeus Hedges comes along and paints them in a particular and very mistaken way: as a form of religious fundamentalists camouflaged in secular garb. They aren’t. They and the opinions they write about do not align with Athor Hedges’ own definition of what a fundamentalist is. They do not write what Asunni Hedges says they write. They do not promote what Amuk-muk Hedges says they promote. They do not use science in the way that Azoroastrian Hedges accuses them of using it. They do not categorize people as Ashi’a Hedges asserts that they do; they categorize religious belief and the acts done in its various names in the modern world as a growing problem and not as a potential solution.
Because the Ahindu Hedges writes fairly well, I can understand how someone who reads his stuff about these ‘new’ atheists thinks that it sounds like a pretty reasonable ‘counter’ argument. It isn’t. As I’ve written before, Abuddhist Hedges is guilty at the very least of gross misrepresentation of the books written by people who are now categorized in a lump as the New Atheists.
As far as this interview goes, please note how Ajainist Hedges avoids DJ’s hard questions. He demands specifics for the questions but is okay using the broadest strokes himself. He refutes well-documented secular advances as simply ‘mistaken’ by countering that religion as a whole played a central role in promoting secular values! This assertion and so many others like it are so far removed from historical reality, and from the very books that explain each of the NA author’s point of view (in understandable terms that clearly are not as Abaha’i Hedges says they are), that I think this book he’s promoting as a ‘counter’ argument is a joke. I just can’t find the punch line, although he probably enjoys it with every royalty cheque he gets.
Comment by tildeb — May 4, 2008 @ 6:55 pm
Sextus, belief (made impervious to criticism by certainty) without any impirical evidence to back it up is simply a statement of belief. As the saying goes, for one person to hold to a belief in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary its called a delusion; if many people do so, it’s called a religion. Don’t you think probability of evidence should play a role in beliefs rather than false certainty without any evidence whatsoever? How does an agreement to that question mean that you are then a fundamentalist? Try fixing your flat tire car with ferverent prayer and see how inflated that tire gets. Empirical evidence is a natural means by which we navigate our world. Why should religious belief be exempt?
Comment by tildeb — May 4, 2008 @ 7:08 pm
Bob says: “oppression can lead to anger against a perceived enemy, it takes a holy scripture to justify the action of blowing oneself and others to bits.”
You see oppression as a cause of anger and holy scripture as the justification of killing.
I think the case of the Palestinians is different. I believe that for many people in Palestine oppression justifies killing the perceived enemy (oppression does not just lead to anger, it leads to action). They surely believe they are commanded by god. It is utopian to think that Palestinians are going to abandon their religion. It is not utopian for Israel to get out of the occupied territories.
Does it take a holy book to justify blowing oneself and others? Probably it is true that blowing oneself requires a very strong belief but that is not the case for the killing of others. The suicide itself is not ultimately the point here. If the person wants to die, well go ahead. What matters is the killing of innocent people. This is where I think Hedges has a good point because it takes many things to commit murder, not only a holy book, and at the end one has to wonder if the root of the evil is the external things or the human heart. During the 90’s Colombia lived the most savage drug war. Bombs were left in cars in the busy centers of main cities which killed hundreds of innocent citizens. In the other war, in the mountains, the guerrilleros would send donkeys loaded with explosives to the town’s park and then activate the detonator at the moment where most people were around; and more and more… They did not need bibles or Quorans. They had greed, or something or nothing. They were a sort of Chigurh with no souls, no tomorrow, no hope. I believe Hedges is (at least in a sense) correctly arguing against the reductionist position of some writers.
Comment by sextus — May 4, 2008 @ 7:14 pm
tilde said “Empirical evidence is a natural means by which we navigate our world. Why should religious belief be exempt?”
This is a self refuting argument tilde. If p: empiricism is the only way to know, then we need to prove by empirical method that p is true. But you cannot.
Comment by sextus — May 4, 2008 @ 7:27 pm
Depends on what you mean by “religious belief” sextus. How does one verify a religious belief? Why are there so many different religions? Belief in talking snakes, talking donkeys, angels, resurrected dead people, - all of that is I suppose someone’s religious belief, but, really, how can anyone seriously believe in such stuff? To do so is, in a word, delusional.
All religious believers cherry pick their scriptures to justify what they have already and for other reasons decided to do.
Most wars are religious wars. Why? The only way to show that one religious argument is correct and another is incorrect is to fight. The winning side will obviously be under the command of the real god. Leaders are good at using religion as motivation for the inhuman act of killing self and others.
The scientific method is self-correcting. All scientific beliefs are on probation. Certainty is demonic.
Comment by Bob — May 4, 2008 @ 8:04 pm
Cute, S, even if you have re-written what I wrote. I said it was a natural means, not the only means. But the question still stands unanswered.
Comment by tildeb — May 4, 2008 @ 8:08 pm
ok tilde, cute too. Religious beliefs are exempt of empirical verification for similar reason why mathematical propositions or ethical propositions might be exempt of empirical verification. It is because they come from rational intuition or revelation. You beg the question when you say “Empirical evidence is a natural means by which we navigate our world.” Of course. But there is at least another way to navigate our world: rational intuition. If we did not have it we would not even be discussing this here.
Bob said: “The scientific method is self-correcting. All scientific beliefs are on probation.” I say that all philosophical propositions Including religious beliefs are on probation too.
Comment by sextus — May 4, 2008 @ 8:39 pm
Is the war in Iraq a religious war?
Comment by sextus — May 4, 2008 @ 8:45 pm
16. Yes. “Leaders are good at using religion as motivation for the inhuman act of killing self and others.”
15. Don’t forget that falsification is the most important tool in the epistemological tool box. Fortunately we cast aside false beliefs. The history of science is paved with cast offs. Religious believers seem never to employ the tool. No beliefs are immune from empirical verification except, of course in some sense, analytic statements, which have no informational content. Consider these examples:
“2 + 2 = 4″ is an empirical claim, nicely verifiable with most any bunch of things.
“Murder is wrong” is an ethical proposition that is analytically true. [murder = wrongful homicide, so the proposition cashes out as "Wrongful homicide is wrong." Or, the predicate is entailed in the subject.]
Comment by Bob — May 5, 2008 @ 5:10 am
sextus: “This is a self refuting argument tilde. If p: empiricism is the only way to know, then we need to prove by empirical method that p is true. But you cannot.”
Cool! It is fun to watch a philosophy student at work. This observation is just the kind of puzzle that stimulates the writing of volumes of books in the theories of knowledge.
The skeptic argues that we cannot KNOW anything:
If P is dubitable I cannot know that P.
P is dubitable,
So, I cannot know that P.
The anti-skeptic responds with:
In the above argument let P equal “P is dubitable”
Comment by Bob — May 5, 2008 @ 5:20 am
Thanks for posting this, darkfabric! It has generated lots of discussion.
Comment by Bob — May 5, 2008 @ 5:44 am
Cool too, Bob!. The skeptic argument is self-refuting too. However, there is a way around it. But it does not matter. I think the main point from this discussion is summed up in your phrase: certainty is demonic. All human knowledge (from whatever epistemic source) and even epistemology itself is under probation. I bet this is the motto of the Institute of Expertology!
Comment by sextus — May 5, 2008 @ 7:36 am
Happy to be included, Bob.
Hey, tildeb, in your eyes was it an example of Birkenstock rhetoric when I stated that I appreciated the way Hedges wouldn’t let D.J. Grothe get away with lumping all Islamic societies together or even all theocratic Islamic societies?
Comment by darkfabric — May 5, 2008 @ 10:52 am
Speaking of belief and certainty, I have said that many of the NAs point out that belief (in particular, religious belief) as a mode of thinking contains serious problems for the real world when it is extended into the real world through laws, policies, and acts. Religion does not have a stranglehold on belief but it is its bread and butter.
I was reading an article on the absurdity of the US educational policy through No Child Left Behind whose stated intent is to make every child above average in proficiency in math and literacy (yup, that’s really what the program wants to see happen) and came across something that I have long thought of as true: there is a widespread and misguided romantic belief that through dealing with outside factors like poverty and diet and self esteem and many others, children through schooling that addresses these concerns can magically become more proficient, more able, more intelligent. This position ignores the huge compilation of data that consistently shows that math and reading scores in early primary are the best predictors of math and reading scores in late secondary (regardless of which schools the children attend, be it inner city or private) as well as the best predictors for later academic and economic achievements (as well as low early primary scores as the best predictors for higher rates later of criminal behaviour, poverty, and so on). So I was pleased to come across this tidbit in the article that’s relevant to the real world effects of belief in educational policy:
The good news is that educational romanticism is surely teetering on the edge of collapse. I am optimistic for three reasons. First, the data keep piling up. It takes a while for empiricism to discredit cherished beliefs, but No Child Left Behind may prove to have done us a favour by putting so much emphasis on test scores and thereby focusing attention on how hard it is to budge those scores. Second, we no longer live in a romantic age. Educational romanticism was born of forces that have lost most of their power, and façades collapse when the motives for maintaining those façades weaken. Third, hardly anybody really believes in educational romanticism even now. No one but the most starry-eyed denies in private the reality of differences in intellectual ability that we are powerless to change with K-12 education. People are unwilling to talk about those differences in public, but it is a classic emperor’s-clothes scenario waiting for someone to point out the obvious.
Just thought I’d mention this because I think what the New Atheists are really talking about regarding the necessity for being more critical of religious beliefs talks to the same kind of romanticism we hold for any favoured beliefs… a romanticism that when channelled through religious beliefs leads young Canadians who are not oppressed at all to consider acts of terrorism on behalf of those favoured beliefs.
I have found that belief (especially accompanied by false certainty) extended into the real world more often than not carries with it a significant cost to the individuals affected by it (think of the probability for the advancement of women’s rights in theocratic islamic countries) rather than provide any meaningful and general social benefit that mitigates, or compensates for, the intrusion. If it weren’t for empiricism to draw our attention to these real world results, there would be absolutely no reason to change our beliefs and/or have any impetus to alter our actions-from-beliefs because we would continue to assume that they were positive, good, and worth keeping around. Religious belief in particular falls into this category because it is these particular kind of beliefs that are carried to extremes in the real world (versus, for example, the absurdity of people from one kind of school board committing mass murder upon those from another) and the empirical evidence to religion’s negative effects is significant. This is what I think the NAs have written about.
Comment by tildeb — May 5, 2008 @ 12:54 pm
DF, you always seem to post just before I submit one of my own. Serendipity?
You ask (7.) So do you mean that he is trying to divert attention away from the fact that he is unable to defend his position as a religious man by intentionally misreading the NA?
No. I mean his starting assumptions are so far wrong that he cannot withstand any serious questions of them. The best he can do is quote Harris out of context, which on its own sounds damning. But the fact of the matter is that this is not what Harris proposes. Hedges’ strong catholic education no doubt plays a part in the usual standard arguments he, and other religious supporters, brings to the table that define secularism and humanism with political atheism by the historical examples of the usual gang of miscreants: Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, Kim Jong-il, and Mao, which means by extension that religion as a whole and politically active religions in particular can be no worse. It’s a horribly inaccurate argument not only by awful definitions about secularism and humanism but also by the badly abused historical references, namely that none of the gang represents very good examples of reason and the supremacy of human rights. To paint them thus is hardly honest. But this is what Hedges does: he paints a picture of what someone didn’t say and didn’t write and didn’t mean and then brings his arguments to bear. That’s why he can’t defend them when the questions are based upon what the authors did say, did write, and did mean.
You also asked (21.) Hey, tildeb, in your eyes was it an example of Birkenstock rhetoric when I stated that I appreciated the way Hedges wouldn’t let D.J. Grothe get away with lumping all Islamic societies together or even all theocratic Islamic societies?
Well, I don’t know think what you wrote was just rhetoric, DF, but I think many people I would call part of the Birkenstock set automatically assume that negative generalities are abhorrent but that positive generalities are the mother’s milk of liberal tolerance. If I recall, at that point in the podcast D.J. was talking about Ali Hirsi as a legitimate critic of islam in particular and the lack of human rights in general in islamic societies, which Hedges then questioned as to which societies, which D.J. then narrowed to theocratic islamic societies like Saudi Arabia, which Hedges then talked about being persona non grata there and how little the NAs actually knew of these places where Hedges had spent much of his professional life and talked instead about the muslims of Bosnia’s Sarajevo, and thus avoided answering the question at all regarding the right wing group that is currently funding protection for Ali from the death threats and the outstanding fatwa directed against her. No mention was made of how Harris and Dawkins and supporters of their web sites have funded years of protection for her, but I wouldn’t expect Hedges to know anything about these guys and how they translate their secularism and humanism into the wider world; it makes them look less… crackpot fundamentalist, and Hedges wouldn’t want that.
So I think it’s unfair and, yes, rather Birkenstock-ian of you to be ‘proud’ of Hedges for narrowing the broader question while conveniently forgetting that the purpose for his doing so wasn’t as one might expect, namely, to answer the question; it was done to avoid it!
Comment by tildeb — May 5, 2008 @ 1:54 pm
It seems that D.J. may have been a little intimidated for some reason. When interviewing Harris once he claimed that he didn’t think he was being unbiased enough, which I took to mean that he respects and agrees with the author’s views. Yet, as with other guests about whom he has claimed to feel similarly, D.J. makes valiant efforts to play the devil’s advocate at least in my eyes. Also, I consider D.J. to be a thorough interviewer who often asks questions that show he has given the featured text a careful reading. So I wonder why he wasn’t more assertive in pointing out where, if indeed he thought so, Hedges quoted Harris out of context.
What I guess I’m trying to say is that you ought to start a podcast, tildeb. I would certainly subscribe.
Comment by darkfabric — May 5, 2008 @ 6:57 pm
I also think DJ is a good interviewer, although some of his questions occasionally go a bit wayward. I, too, thought he was a bit intimidated, and this is the fourth interview where I’ve heard Hedges give where he starts off the interview by name-dropping great authors like Nietzsche and Spinoza as well as few lesser known ones (as if everyone should not only have read all their stuff but thoroughly understand their various treatises like he presumably does). Maybe that’s just a coincidence, but if he understands these other authors like he does the NAs then he doesn’t. I think DJ did have good questions that Hedges either avoided or was able to redirect or flat out contradicted as meaningless. That makes the interview rather hard on the host but the show carried on in spite of having Hedges as a guest.
As far as a podcast goes, DF, I can’t even get my articles posted without Bob coming to my rescue. Give thanks for small blessings!
Comment by tildeb — May 5, 2008 @ 8:49 pm
DJ does a good job, but I get bored with him after a time. I wish Point of Inquiry would alternate interviewers; they have some fine people available.
About knowledge and probation: after some period of time exhibiting good behaviour, probation can be lifted. For example, the following religious claims can be taken off probation and put in the category of false beliefs:
1. Snakes talk.
2. Demons cause mental illness.
3. The earth is 4004 years old.
4. Zeus exists.
5. Ra exists.
6. Jesus was born of a virgin.
7. Thor’s hammer weighs 432 stone.
8. The earth is flat.
9. The bible is a single book written by God.
10. God exists.
Comment by Bob — May 6, 2008 @ 6:23 am
You may be right about 2. but their ill-effects aren’t gone quite yet.
I think they may have transferred their base of operations to small digital appliances and networked computers (where even the most highly trained catholic exorcisors fear to tread).
Just a working hypothesis for now, mind you.
Comment by tildeb — May 6, 2008 @ 7:51 am
Now, that’s funny, tildeb! I know what you are talking about…
Comment by sob1989 — May 6, 2008 @ 9:02 am
Re: #9
“NAs argue (and I’m taking a huge liberty here) that people don’t need religious belief to make themselves, and the societies/cultures they form, better; ”
Hedges doesn’t think you can make societies or people permanently better. That’s the crux of his critique - that the project to make progress, whether it be religious or scientific, is misguided and dangerous.
The existence of God isn’t central to his argument. He worries that some people think getting rid of one institution will solve the world’s problems. He uses “sin” to stand for the notion that people will always be capable of evil. He is distrustful of rationality and science because they are used as tools to promote evil. He believes that only by a frank admission of our irredeemable badness can we hope to mitigate (not prevent) disaster.
“To turn away from God is harmless… To turn away from sin is catastrophic.”
I personnaly think Hedges is too pessimistic and hyperbolic, but I think he raises some valid points. There is a strain of atheists that seems to think they have it all figured out. These folks seem intolerant, narrow-minded, arrogant and mean-spirted. People who have no self-doubt do seem dangerous. Calling them on their intolerance is appropriate.
Comment by mcdonaldt — May 9, 2008 @ 2:07 pm
And whose ’sin’ or ‘evil’ might that be, M?
I don’t mean to be hard on anyone new who has the gumption to set out their opinions here, but my cockles have been all a-quiver over mcdonaldt’s post. I have tried to walk away, to let it slide, to leave it be, to let it just hang there in cyber-land, but I cannot. I simply must respond or I’ll pop at least one of my cockles and I cannot have that.
How do we define ’sin’ or ‘evil’? How do we measure them? How do we compare and contrast them with all the options of behaviour - and thoughts and reasons and feelings that inspire the demonstration - of ’sin’ and ‘evil’? How do we compile our answers and why do so many feel compelled to pass on our various levels of understandings to others? To whom are we accountable for our progression from ignorance of sin and evil to something more informed? Surely this process falls under the banner of ‘progress’ just as much as science or technology or literature or medicine or philosophy or any other area of human concern and interest?
If such ‘progress’ is so dangerous and perhaps catastrophic because, as Hedges argues, humanity is so full of the capability to exercise our sin and do evil, then let’s shut down the motivation altogether and stay as ignorant as we are capable, which means shut down the faculties of reason completely. According to the twisted line of reasoning Hedges follows, this must be where safety - and his enlightened preference - lies. Doesn’t that mean that we should stop listening to anyone else - including those who profess religious answers or any other? But is this what Hedges is really suggesting?
Not on your life. How do we know this? We know this because he wrote this quaint little duplicitous and dishonest book to enlighten others before they secumb to the guile of the New Fundamentalists. Catchy title he came up with, by the way. The sales of his book are good for the ‘progress’ of his bank account - as evil and sinful as that may also be.
As for the strain of atheists you mention, the only strain I’m aware of is the ’strain’ who have come to the conclusion that belief in god is a fault in reasoning because either:
1) There is a god who is transcendent, outside of nature, outside of the universe, or
2) There is a god who is descendent, inside nature, inside the universe, and who makes things happen in our world. (tip to Butterflies and Wheels for this and the following)
if 1) then it’s not possible to know anything at all about such a deity, therefore there is literally nothing to say about it. If it’s outside, it has nothing to do with us, and we have nothing to do with it, and there’s just nothing to say… then it becomes clear that 2) is in fact entirely subject to all sorts of empirical inquiry. It’s also subject to common or garden skepticism, in which one declines to believe every blagger who claims there is an invisible magical being up in the sky answering prayers and punishing sinners.
This raises what I think is an important question: If there’s no god, then can there be sin? To define ’sin’ outside of religious theistic terms I think means that the arena of debate shifts immediately into morals and ethics – particularly human morals and ethics. I have never read of any atheist who thinks that he or she has all the answers to all the questions of human morality and ethics. Far from it. But what I do read are atheists who insist that these topics fall within the purview of human concerns, human reasons, human dignity, human rights, and human freedoms, human discussion. Again, we don’t need any notion of ’sin’ or ‘evil’ to legitimately and honestly explore human moral and ethical concerns unless there is compelling evidence from some divine agent from which to do so. So far, no such evidence has been forthcoming. And Hedges’ skewed opinion hardly fits the bill.
One of the biggest human concerns lately with the religiously inspired and religiously justified terrorist attacks and threats of more to come that spawned the recent writings of the NAs is the behaviour of those who believe that their theistic exploration has led them to answers in the form of religious dogma and their mandated certainties of truth. It is these answers and the effects that these answers have had and shall continue to have on humanity as a whole (as weapons of mass destruction become ever easier to obtain and use) that are the major focus of criticism by the NAs. To paint the New Atheists (and old ones for that matter) as the source of some wholesale replacement answers is simply fiction. This is the fiction Hedges criticizes. But whatever the generally accepted moral and ethical consensus that may eventually be found is, the NAs consistently and without apology agree that the answers are most likely to be found within the realm of nature and not the supernatural.
The nerve!
Go ahead, agree with Hedges, and pretend that such a position is intolerant, narrow-minded, arrogant, and mean-spirited by people who he insists have no self-doubt - in spite of what they actually write, actually say, and actually practice - if it makes you feel any better. But your feelings aside, you’ll be just as wrong in the morning. And that’s appropriate.
Comment by tildeb — May 9, 2008 @ 6:09 pm