Hedges says
Another entry in the ‘religion makes people nicer’ contest – Barney Zwarts, religion editor of The Age, offering a subtle, thoughtful, elegant rumination on the ‘new’ atheists.
This brilliant book highlights what is obvious to most reasonable observers: that these fundamentalist atheists, with their vapid, complacent self-righteousness and their facile and unjustifiable certainties, are the precise mirror image of the fundamentalist Christians, Muslims etc they so despise…Like Christian radicals, the new atheists have built squalid little belief systems that serve themselves and their own power, that seek to scare people about what they do not understand, and to use this fear to justify cruelty and war. “They ask us to kneel before little idols that look and act like them, telling us that one day, if we trust enough in God or reason, we will have everything we desire.”
He goes on that way for the whole review, and offers not one word of evidence. He doesn’t quote so much as half a sentence to back up any of that frenzied nonsense – that last quote is Hedges, not any of the sqalid little atheists who ask us to kneel before little idols in their image.
Hedges finds the agenda of the new atheists – Hitchens, Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and others – equally intolerant and dangerous. It is intolerant because it is based on a closed worldview that dismisses all other views without even examining them. It tries to reduce sacred texts to instruction manuals. It tells us what is right and wrong not according to God but “the purity of the rational mind”, allowing no dissent – and wraps the intolerance in Enlightenment virtues. It is dangerous because, like religious utopian views, it believes that if it can eradicate other views, this will lead to a perfect society – which justifies butchering or expelling those with other views.
Those are pretty strong claims to offer in a major newspaper with no trace of quotation, especially when the charges are not in fact true. What those quotation marks on “the purity of the rational mind” are supposed to refer to I don’t know, and I strongly suspect they’re just slapped onto a phrase pulled out of the air – and the childishly ridiculous charge that any of them think anything so stupid as that ‘if it can eradicate other views, this will lead to a perfect society’ is 1. not true and 2. simply taken undigested and unexamined from Hedges’s book. Hedges makes that charge ad nauseam in his toe-curlingly bad book, as I pointed out last April, and this religion editor (ah, so that’s it…) at The Age is simply recycling them as if they had been handed down on gold plates by the Angel Moroni – for real. None of the ‘new’ atheists is anywhere near stupid enough to think that an end of religion would produce ‘a perfect society.’
The new atheists, Hedges says, know how to make humanity perfect and must therefore eradicate the competing visions that pollute society and lead people astray. Harris calls Muslims deranged, Dennett would allow aspects of religion – its art and music and rituals – to be preserved only in some sort of zoo.
Well now he’s just admitting it himself – Hedges says. Yes, Hedges says, but Hedges is 1. wrong and 2. in a frothing rage, so maybe it would be clever to check what ‘Hedges says’ before repeating his grotesque claims as if they were well-known facts.
I wish I could be his editor for just five minutes.
What a terrible article. The Age being what it is, it was probably ‘edited’ for punctuation only and published to infuriate the subscribers. Both of them.
Yes very odd, I guess what he means by all that crap about butchering and war is a coded reference to Hitchens support for the Iraq war?
Dreadful article and that book sounds so awful I’d almost like to read it. Anybody got an e-book copy? No way I’m buying it.
Re: “Hitchens, Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett.”
“How atheism is being sold to America” runs in a similar vein.
“Religion including Christianity and Judaism is “violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive …”
http://www.topix.com/religion/atheism/2008/12/the-cost-of-the-new-atheism
Unlike the lumpen-atheists and apologists on this site, Chris Heges speaks out against the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/20081229_party_to_murder/
‘Before the air assaults, Gaza spent 12 hours a day without power, which can be a death sentence to the severely ill in hospitals. Most of Gaza is now without power. There are few drugs and little medicine, including no cancer or cystic fibrosis medication. Hospitals have generators but often lack fuel. Medical equipment, including one of Gaza’s three CT scanners, has been destroyed by power surges and fluctuations. Medical staff cannot control the temperature of incubators for newborns. And Israel has revoked most exit visas, meaning some of those who need specialized care, including cancer patients and those in need of kidney dialysis, have died. Of the 230 Gazans estimated to have died last year because they were denied proper medical care, several spent their final hours at Israeli crossing points where they were refused entry into Israel. The statistics gathered on children—half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 17—are increasingly grim. About 45 percent of children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth.’
But for Ophelia, Standing, Dunbar etc this is OK as they are ‘bad’ Muslims.
ps The Islamic University of Gaza bombed by Israel had a majority of female undergraduates – any comment Ophelia, a blow for feminism and Western values?
Jesus flippin’ Christ, R. You are so far gone in your obsession you can’t even see straight.
Darn! Darn! Darn! Is Persistor still having problems ‘circumnavigating’? Well, sap that, anyway! would somebody be so kind as to direct the poor ‘gosling’ dude to The Angry Arab.
pikeamus – I read it! I got a copy from the library. It’s every bit as bad as the review makes it sound. The link in the post takes you to one of I think three posts I did while reading the book, so while waiting for your library copy you can get a flavour.
The ‘New Atheists’ are like the fundamentalists only in that they are seriously engaged with religion–precisely the attitude that the founders of Judaism and Christianity demanded. In Biblical times Dawkins might have been one of those voices crying out in the wilderness, inspired by the sublime spectacle of nature, both terrible and beautiful. It is this spectacle which casts the figure of God like a shadow on the wall of Plato’s cave, and it is the shadow, not the reality, that believers idolize. Hedges only wants to challenge the shape of the shadow, not leave the cave. This is why Dawkins and the rest find moderate religion to be false; it respects neither reality nor the principles of the religions themselves.
I have a long standing argument with a friend where I claim that any sufficiently advanced theology would be indistinguishable from atheism. Unfortunately, nearly all theology deals with a subject matter that human beings have no qualification for: absolutes, infinities, the largest of the large. We evolved to understand the middle world, and have only in the last hundred years derived the mathematics to grasp the very large, though not the infinite, and only a handful of humans can understand it, and only with great difficulty. Theology is doomed at the outset. Knowledge converges; the proliferation of theologies marks it not as a body of knowledge, but as a work of imagination. It is the shape of theology, not it’s content, which marks it as a failed enterprise.
Aha – that’s a very good point. Explicit atheists are like fundamentalists in actually taking religion seriously. Quite so.
I guess that ‘Harry’s Gaffe’ is the same Edmund Standing who is cheering on the Israeli bombing of Gaza.
http://www.jewcy.com/post/hamas_israel_and_perverse_inversion_reality#
Standing writes, ‘Compare two announcements following Israel’s defensive actions against Hamas in Gaza’
Yes he describes mass murder as ‘defensive’. What nice friends you have Ophelia.
Chris Hedges is an odd guy. He’s got a degree in religion or theology from Harvard (I think), but he was a war junky for awhile, and thinks war is a force that gives us meaning. Now, he’s turned his limited wit on atheism. I don’t intend to read the book. With Ophelia’s earlier comments, and the gushing of Barney Zwartz, it’s clearly not a worthwhile read.
I still don’t understand it. What’s wrong with Andrew Brown and Barney? They don’t seem to get it. After reading Andrew’s piece in the Guardian (or was it the Observer?), or Barney’s piece in The Age (of Aquarius, no doubt), it’s really hard to get a handle on what they think they’re saying. Who are the ‘new atheists’? What makes them new? How do the differ from unbelievers in the past (aside from being still alive)?
And all this in, as OB says, ‘major newspapers’. Brown makes a show of research (even claims footnotes in one of his comments), but very little show of reason.
It’s a bit like resistor, isn’t it? You lob a few missiles towards people you say you want to wipe off the face of the earth, and then you’re really surprised, and you show it too, when those people fight back.
Funny that. Just like religious people. They keep saying how they’re right, and they know the truth, and everyone should do as they say, and then they’re surprised – surprised mind you – when someone says, ‘Hey, wait a minute. What about ….?’
The Age is published in Melbourne, where I live. Yes unfortunately it gives air time to Barney’s Warts, but thankfully it also publishes Catherine Deveny who is funny as well as clever.
resistor,
People are discussing a book review here. Elsewhere those same people may well be discussing the situation in Gaza. I am, elsewhere.
But it is presumptious to demand that a blog-host divert every thread to your own priorities, however unrelated.
I’m not dismissing the importance of the issue, but other conversations continue. What exactly is it that you want? Make a serious point that is open to a serious response.
Well, if someone chooses as their pseudonym a component that impedes flow, generating unwanted heat as a side-effect, then what more could we really expect?
The point I am making here, and have made elsewhere, is that this site has demonised Muslims while ignoring the mass killings of Muslims by the ‘enlightened’ west in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Gaza. The site praises warmongers such as Christopher Hitchens and carries opinion pieces by apologists for Israeli war crimes such as Max Dunbar and Edmund Standing.
The ‘new atheists’ are nearly all in the pro-war camp and get uncritical support from Ophelia Benson, who never seems to find time to attack the theocracy in Israel or the religious justifications for Zionism.
I do this because I like ‘fighting fashionable nonsense’.
Uninformed as usual ‘resistor’ – I have criticized both theocracy in Israel and the religious justifications for Zionism. I don’t do it on your command, to be sure, but that’s a different matter.
Hey, resistor, fight fashionable nonsense if you like, but, like all good things, it starts at home. You’ve read the story of the 13 year old girl stoned to death in Somalia for adultery, after having reported, with her father, a gang rape by three men? You’ve heard, I daresay, of the young women in Pakistan buried alive because they would not obey the tribal elders. It happened twice, I believe (something to do, I recall, about marriage). Or the girl raped by villagers for some offence by her brother (I believe – correct me, if I’m wrong). That was his punishment! Or the offer that made by a Palestinian gentleman to the shoe thrower in Baghdad of his daughter for a wife. Or the little girls of nine and ten married to men over sixty – no, change that to sold to men over sixty. You’ve just read the story about the school children killed in Afghanistan by a Terrorist bomb, or the threat made on school girls if the dare (imagine that?! – dare!) to go to school? Or the teachers killed, because they taught girls? You must have heard of all the women hanged – slowly and painfully, from a crane – in Iran for various offences. Or the women beheaded in Saudi Arabia for minor sexual offences. Or the girls who were burned to death in a school fire in Saudi Arabia, because they were not appropriately dressed to appear in public. Or the honour killings by the hundred every year. Or how about all the terrorists blowing themselves up in Iraq, killing innocent Muslims by the score? So, get off your high horse and talk sense. Fight fashionable nonsense, by all means. One of the most nonsensical claims is that Islam is a religion of peace and love. Let’s see you fight that bit of nonsense for awhile.
Again, the old tired complaint that science has “produced slaughter on an industrial scale.” Actually, that would be ideology, without which the killing would never begin (and religion is ideology too.) Yes, they used technology, but the guys who come up with technology are engineers, not scientists–engineers would be the guys working in the arms industry, too. Technology is a tool; hammers aren’t evil because you can use one to brain someone. But I guess this is too subtle a distinction for these folks.
Religion is a tool too; a social technology. All those nice moderates who shop for religion a la carte are choosing their brand based upon preexisting moral and philosophical preferences. But if their morals predate their religious choice, why the claim that their values are based on their faith? Transcendentalization! If you hate fags, you’re a bigot–unless you’re a Christian, and then, well, you’re a Christian, and God hates fags too. I’ve never heard of a scientific paper defending the bombing of Hiroshima. Religion, on the other hand, can be used to defend just about anything.
Odd that Hedges, who hates both Fundamentalists and American foreign policy, has never quite grasped what an ethically neutral tool religion actually is. He still thinks that there is a True Christianity to return to which will solve all our problems (Utopia, anyone?) Religion may incorporate ethical positions, sometimes as a mask, sometimes for genuinely benevolent reasons, but it does not originate them, it only co-opts them.
(Oh, resistor: Hamas WANTS Israel to bomb their fellow Muslims. The goal of Islamist extremists is to enrage the West enough to push all of their fellow Muslims into a corner where they will have to fight, in a war they can only lose. That is their way of making their fellow Muslims take their faith ‘seriously.’ So other Muslims are their primary targets. Lovely bunch. The heart bleeds. This is probably the best reason for Israel not to retaliate. And you missed it.)
Fournier says, ‘Hamas WANTS Israel to bomb their fellow Muslims.’ You are a liar.
Eric MacDonald demonises more that a billion people with a handful of bad examples. I could do the same with Canadians called Eric MacDonald.
e.g.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/06/27/suicide-assisted.html
‘The RCMP are investigating the case of a Nova Scotia man who took his wife to an assisted-suicide clinic in Switzerland where she died.
The police force said Tuesday it has opened a file into the case. It intends to question Eric MacDonald about his wife’s death on June 8, and will then decide if it can lay charges.’
What does that prove? That all Canadians called Eric MacDonald are wife-killers?
As for Ophelia, what better time than now? No, I expect another half dozen posts attacking Muslims.
‘resistor’ – you don’t get to call people liars here. And boy do you ever not get to attack Eric in that way. Get lost, you loathsome excuse for a human being.
Thanks, Ophelia. Of course, we knew he was loathsome from the start.
I should have added, for the record, that it was catholics who sent the RCMP after me. The police were genuinely kind. It was religious fanatics who showed hardness of heart.
I tore up my Bibles this Christmas, and smashed a crucifix (it was valuable – I thought I might sell it, but then thought better of it), and threw them out with the Christmas trash (not mine, my neighbours’ – unlike some atheists, I know what Christmas stands for: it’s not pretty). The Koran can go too, as soon as I’ve finished with it. Beware holiness. It’s closely allied to madness. Dawkins was right. Andrew Brown linked a page from Dawkins’ Selfish Gene. This is what it says:
I disagreed with that when I first read it, and marked it so. But then he said something which I have always held, year after year, as Thomas came round in the lectionary: “Doubting Thomas … [is] the only really admirable member of the twelve apostles.” (both quotes from p. 330)
Of course, Thomas was shown to be doubting in John’s gospel, because the Thomas Christians did not really believe in the resurrection or the incarnation, and had to be showed the folly of their ways. (Well, it probably had more to do with those who might be tempted in such a direction. There’s no real cure for religious beliefs.) But the Thomas Christians believed something even more ridiculous, that Jesus (a god) only appeared to be human, and his death and resurrection were only appearance too. (The heresy is called docetism.) So Thomas wasn’t so admirable after all, though the idea of doubting was.
To return to Brown. His second point (of six) is that the new atheists hold that ‘the cure for faith is science.’ Of course, science itself will never do, as numerous religious scientists show. The cure is reason.
I was wrong to think resistor was worth responding to. Careless of me.
Eric
For what it’s worth, if I ever find myself in the position that you were in, then I hope that I’d have the courage to do exactly as you did.
Resistor is indeed loathsome.
resistor is the scum of the earth.
I agree using Eric,s personal tradegy to make a cheap point is beneath contempt.
Thank you, Jeremy (and Ophelia). As Elizabeth said to me: If you love me, you have to let me go. So I did, and she died in my arms. I never thought of it as courage. It was just an act of love. I died too, in many ways, on that day.
Scum of the earth is a bit to grand for resistor. Scum on a little pond would do. It comes from lack of oxygen, I think. It has to be running to stay clear – though Don is right. He really isn’t worth responding to. I fall into the trap every time.
Resistor –
If I didn’t read it with my own eyes, even I couldn’t have believed the disgusting level to which you’d be willing to stoop. You are a vile, mean-spirited, nasty son of a bitch.
Why don’t you reveal your name and real email address to us, resistor? If you’re such a damned revolutionary, what the hell are you doing using dodigt.com as a throw-away email address?
Eric you dont need to explain we all kmow you acted out of love.
Well Eric, then I hope that I’m able to love as you love and loved.
Eric, my condolences on the loss of your wife. Not knowing either of you, I can only be glad for the past happiness and love you had in your life together.
You’re a mensch, Eric – but then we knew that.
Wow, someone says, Hamas WANTS Israel to bomb their fellow Muslims.’ and I get attacked for calling him a liar.
Well its nice to know where you all stand.
I didn’t know that the Eric MacDonald who posts here was the same as in the case cited, but seeing his – and your – total lack of for the loss of life in Gaza, it all makes sense. Clearly the Israeli airforce are on a mercy killing mission.
Don’t be an ass, resistor.
I sometimes want people to play the same games as I play too, resistor. But this discussion was not about the fighting between Israel and Hamas. I don’t think one person posting on this blog thinks that killing people is a good thing, and we all, I think it is fair to guess, have great compassion for those who are suffering. It is all so pointless and needless – almost always is.
However, I heard the Israeli foreign minister say the other evening on the news that, if Hamas will undertake to stop bombing Southern Israel with rockets, Israel would stop military action immediately. Since Hamas has persistently targeted civilians in Southern Israel since the ceasefire ended, and refuses to stop, what would you have Israel do?
But no amount of fanaticism for one side or the other is going to settle this. Hamas took over Gaza from the Palestinian authority. Their stated aim is the obliteration of Israel. And there are other powers in the region who have sworn to see this happen too. I would like to know, from you, in reasonable terms, what Israel should do in response to this threat?
If you think it is worth discussing, and want to do it off the blog, just click on my name, and you’ll get to address me directly. I must say, however, that I don’t take kindly to abuse, but if you really think you have something to say, try me. I don’t think we’ll agree, but it would be better than the drive by shooting that has been taking place lately, as if you’re the only sane person in a sea of evil.
‘However, I heard the Israeli foreign minister say the other evening on the news that, if Hamas will undertake to stop bombing Southern Israel with rockets, Israel would stop military action immediately. Since Hamas has persistently targeted civilians in Southern Israel since the ceasefire ended, and refuses to stop, what would you have Israel do?’
They have just refused to agree a 48 hour truce, so Tzipi Livni was lying yet again.
The Israelis have broken the truce over and over again while failing to implement any of the agreements such as allowing a free flow of food, fuel, medicines etc into the Gaza Strip.
The Israelis are bombing from the air, shelling from the sea and massing tanks on the border. Hamas have no tanks, navy or airforce, what would you have them do?
Hamas offered a long-term truce “a hudna” to Israel which Israel rejected. All the Arab states offered a peace treaty with Israel based on the 1957 borders, which Israel rejected. There are no rockets being fired from the West Bank, but Palestinians there are still being killed, arrested, tortured, thrown out of their homes, and watching more settlements built on land stolen from them.
If Israel wants peace, all they have to do is obey UN resolutions, the Geneva Conventions and international law. They refuse.
Finally, I have watched two my close relatives and a close friend die – but they died with dignity and minimum pain having the best palliative care. I’m sorry that was not available or possible for your spouse. I must have caused you additional pain by my hasty and stupid remarks above for which I apologise unreservedly. Can I say you responded to them in a way which has made me think a great deal more of you, and a great deal less of myself, for both of which I am grateful.
Resistor, I accept your apology, qualified as it is. I do not think that you understand the issue of assisted dying. Pain is not the only concern. In any event, not all pain can be controlled. Suffering, such as that endured by people with degenerative neurological disorders (of which there are many), even with pain control, is extreme. I know a woman with MS, for example, still alive (I will not say ‘living’) in a nursing home. She can neither move nor speak. The only thing she can do is cry. Palliative care has nothing to do with this. This is a human rights issue, and should be seen to be one. I am glad your friends and relatives could die with dignity. Even with the best palliative care in the world, many cannot do this.
As to your remarks on the Israel-Palestine impasse. It is so much more complicated than you think, and so easily dismissed with a propagandistic flourish about Zionism or theocracy. You might take a look at the wiki page on Israel, Palestine and the United Nations. It is Byzantine in its complexity. And, of course, there are more complexities than that. This is probably not the place to discuss them, however important they are.
Indeed, I should have thought that discussing Hedges’ inanities, all about the vital importance of religion to the world’s well-being, faced with warring factions of differing religious and cultural allegiances, was fairly obviously very important just now. I wonder how many warring factions there would be in the world today if we could just cancel through by religious belief? I don’t know the answer to that, but I’m bound to say that I don’t think Hedges has it.
For an insight into the suffering endured by people with degenerative neurological conditions read the ‘Brainhell’ blog from start to finish. It’s harrowing in the extreme.
http://brainhell.blogspot.com/
What a good thing (to repeat) that the voters of Washington state ignored Martin Sheen and the other Catholics in enough numbers to pass the initiative that made assisted suicide legal here. We join Oregon, Switzerland and the Netherlands as places where that particular nightmare is now securely avoidable.
“The right to a good death is a basic human freedom”
1991: Washington state: defeated narrowly 54% to 46%
bullet 1992: California: Defeated narrowly 54% to 46%
bullet 1998: Michigan: Defeated overwhelmingly 71% to 29%
bullet 2000: Maine: Defeated very narrowly 51% to 49%.
Michigan: has a very cold climate.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/euthanas.htm
Belated condolences to you, Eric, on the assisted, (rightly, so) passing of your beloved wife, Elizabeth. You are a very brave person. I am sure you must have been to hell and back.
Not back yet.
Had to say that first. Unfortunately, the Oregon and Washington laws do not apply to people with degenerative disorders, only to those with six months left of life. I know a woman with MS who has been completely paralysed for five years. She would not have chosen this, but she didn’t have a choice, though she tried a couple times to take her own life unsuccessfully. No, Oregon and Washington have started in the right direction. They need to go further.
Thanks Marie-Therese for your sympathy. And thanks, Jeremy, for your reference. I’ll read it.
Yeah, it is a bad place to be in, Eric.
But hold out fast! Tomorrow is a new year and I hope it will be for you a much more brighter one.
How come the Catholic Church tells us that we have no right to take our own lives, yet, with the same token, it has already made a saint out of someone who took his own life. (St. Maximilian, who volunteered to die in replacement of anothrer person in a concentration camp.
One cannot even legally seek information pertaining to euthanasia in Ireland.
Feeding/hydration kit regarding terminally ill people should be none of the pope’s business at all.
Ohhhh, it doesn’t apply to degenerative disorders…I didn’t realize that. Should have, but didn’t. Oh dear – that’s a very large omission. Damn.
Sorry Eric. I hope there is the occasional flower blooming in hell.
My condolences as well, Eric. I can’t imagine being faced with that horror, and I think you made the right choice.
Unfortunately, the ability that we have to extend life has brought us responsibilities we could never imagine. We can now prolong life, and suffering, far beyond any natural limit. We are too afraid to take the responsibility that comes with our newly found powers. The problem with playing God (and it is human nature to play God, not something we can opt out of) is that sooner or later you have to play both sides–the giving and the taking.
Not many flowers, but the chance to stretch my old brain once in awhile.
Eric I dont mean to be nosey but was the rejection of your religious faith as a result of the suffering endured by your late wife that you had to witness?
Resistor the only reason the Arab states will sign on to a treaty where Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders is because they are fully aware that the 67 border would be indefensible for Israel. You dont seem to be concerned with Jordan,s ocupation of Palestine why is that?
Mark I so agree, the only problem though is who should make the new rules?
Hi Jery hows Canada?
Also resistor palliative care is only of use for extreme pain and even that will depend on the doctors willingness to pescribe drugs like heroin to releave the pain. A degenerative condition like the one suffered by Erics wife can be helped very little by any sort of medical care,if anything medical care can make things worse by prolonging the life of the person who is suffering.
Richard, I don’t know how to respond to the question about my ceasing to believe. It was a long process, stretched over years. I think it had as much to do with my wife’s very down to earth rationality as with her suffering. As time went on belief became attenuated, ungrounded. She was very wise, and it was her clear-sightedness that liberated me from the bondage of religious believing. She let me down easy. Her suffering did not, and so the evil that she sufferred for so many years clinched the deal.
The last straw of all was the claim of so many religious people (in particular, in my case, the Archbishop of Canterbury) that she had no choice but to go on to die in the way prescribed by her disease. It could not be her choice. To those who say that religious believers do not believe in a supernatural being who is in control of our lives and prescribes our deaths, religious attitudes towards assisted dying give the lie. At its heart religious faith is propositional, and cannot be anything else, theologians like Tillich and Cupitt notwithstanding. And they make their god out to be far more cruel than he/she/it need be. The problem of evil is a serious enough problem for belief in gods. Believing that we must suffer more than we otherwise would need to do makes belief in gods impossible. At that point, faith was dead.
Thanks for that Eric, your late wife strikes me as a very special lady.