Author: Ophelia Benson

It really doesn’t matter what you believe for no good reason, as long as you believe something for no good reason.

The Parliament of the World’s Religions has brought together representatives from 80 nationalities and more than 220 faith traditions for seven days of debate and dialogue…The parliament could hardly be accused of failing to account for the broadest possible range of spirituality and religious experience. Pagans, Zoroastrians, and even atheists make up the rich mix of perspectives. Organisers have faced some criticism for giving a platform to the Church of Scientology – which some accuse of being more of a business than a conventional religion. But this is an event which is prepared to given even the most unusual new religious movements a fair hearing.

Because – because – because if somebody somewhere believes it, it deserves a fair hearing. And notice how atheism becomes not a denial or rejection of theistic religion but simply one more ‘perspective.’ Even atheism gets a fair hearing. No real attention, presumably, but a fair hearing.

Concerns have been also raised about whether religious perspectives are taken seriously, particularly by secular governments in the West.

Which is a fundamentally absurd concern, since a secular government that took ‘religious perspectives’ (see? there it is again) seriously would not be a secular government any more.

Prominent American rabbi David Saperstein told delegates that religious leaders must work hard to make their voice heard, particularly concerning the moral questions facing the world…”In a world in which you can do everything, what you should do – the moral question – is the fundamental challenge facing humanity. And on that question, the religious communities have urgent, profound, indispensible wisdom to offer” he said.

No they don’t – not as religious communities they don’t. As people they do, but no more so than other people, and in some ways less so. Religion doesn’t bring anything useful to moral reasoning, and it often does impede it or misdirect it.

Quote for the day, from Oliver Kamm.

I reject – in the sense that I’m antagonistic towards them, not just that I don’t accept them – all religious claims to truth.

Precisely. That is no doubt what put the ‘new’ in ‘new atheism’ – the addition of antagonism to non-acceptance. The move from plain unbelief to unbelief plus dislike. The adoption of Kingsley Amis’s ‘Yes [I’m an atheist] but it’s more that I hate him.’ The brazen unapologetic frank hostility to all religious claims to truth, because they are religious claims to truth, and therefore not only worthless but also harmful, because religion is not the way to get at truth, and pretending it is just trains people to learn bad non-functional ways to think.

We are allowed to do that. Call it new or call it old, it makes no difference; we are still allowed to do that. Othering, shunning, name-calling, finger-pointing, ‘framing’ – none of them are going to convince us otherwise. Genuinely good arguments might, but all that other crap isn’t going to do the job.

Have a nice day.

When othering the ‘New’ atheists, there is no need to be too nice about accuracy. Robert Wright gives a demonstration of that to join the growing stack of such demonstrations from otherwise liberal commentators.

[T]he New Atheists’ main short-term goal wasn’t to turn believers into atheists, it was to turn atheists into New Atheists — fellow fire-breathing preachers of the anti-gospel. The point was to make it not just uncool to believe, but cool to ridicule believers.

The usual thing – exaggeration (to put it charitably), malicious rhetoric, sheer invention. (Who says the point was to make it cool to ridicule unbelievers?) Childish stuff – in Foreign Policy. What next, Rush Limbaugh writing for The Wilson Quarterly?

Even on the secular left, the alarming implications of the “crusade against religion” are becoming apparent: Though the New Atheists claim to be a progressive force, they often abet fundamentalists and reactionaries, from the heartland of America to the Middle East.

And then we get several paragraphs about how the ‘New’ Atheists do that sinister thing. It’s sleazy, McCarthy-like stuff, as so much of this kind of thing from the ‘we hate New atheists’ crowd is. I hear the Senator’s whining voice, I see his blue-whiskered mug.

[T]here’s a subtle but potent sense in which New Atheism can steer foreign policy to the right…Most New Atheists aren’t expressly right wing, but even so their discounting of the material causes of Islamist radicalism can be “objectively” right wing.

Uh huh. They claim to be one thing, but they ‘abet’ another; there’s a subtle but potent sense in which they can do something very sinister and creepy which I can’t quite explain; they aren’t actually right wing but in fact they are, and any Stalinist would see it the same way. (Wright quotes Orwell for ‘objectively’ but Orwell was using the Stalinist term with considerable irony.)

Then he just flops all the way over into Armstrong territory, where compassion has always been at the heart of all religion.

All the great religions have shown time and again that they’re capable of tolerance and civility when their adherents don’t feel threatened or disrespected.

Bullshit. All the great religions have shown time and again that when they have unquestioned power, they use it, and they don’t use it for tolerance and civility, they use it for social control and for their own protection and well-being. Robert Wright should take a few minutes to ponder the tolerance and civility of the Irish Catholic church.