Author: Ophelia Benson

Do atheists crave a replacement for church?

Atheism’s great awakening is in need of a doctrine. “People perceive us as only rejecting things,” says Ken Bronstein, the president of a local group called New York City Atheists. “Everybody wants to know, ‘Okay, you’re an atheist, now what?’”

Nah, thanks – I’m not in need of a doctrine. In fact the very idea is kind of…how shall I say…idiotic? Part of the point of being an atheist is not having to sign up to a ‘doctrine.’ It’s not a matter of thinking those other doctrines are no fun but our doctrine is just the ticket. It’s a matter of not liking doctrines in the first place.

The most successful movements in history, after all—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc.—all have creeds, cathedrals, schools, hierarchies, rituals, money, clerics, and some version of a heavenly afterlife.

Yes…but atheists don’t want creeds, hierarchies, clerics, or fairy tales about the afterlife. I’m down with pretty buildings, schools are good, some rituals are okay if I always have a right of refusal, money is just fine if anyone wants to give me some, but the rest of it is a good deal too churchy for me, thanks.

The article goes on to give a toe-curling picture of pseudo-church (Secular Jewish church; go figure) that illustrates just why the idea is so unappealing. Singing secular hymns…noooooo thank you.

When Tim Gorski, a Texas physician, approached Paul Kurtz, an influential atheist who now chairs the Center for Inquiry, an atheist think tank, about his plans to start the North Texas Church of Freethought in the nineties, Kurtz discouraged him, on the grounds that atheists don’t need church.

Just so. Tim Gorski should have started an atheist think tank, instead. Did I ever tell you about the library at the Center for Inquiry? Biggest library of free thought in the country, or the world, or something. I liked to wander around it drooling slightly.

Dennett sees value in atheism’s great awakening, in the energy and money that come from organizing, but he counsels caution. “The last thing atheists want to see is their rational set of ideas yoked up with the trappings of a religion,” he says. “We think we can do without that.”

Although, as I mentioned, money and pretty buildings are always gratefully accepted if offered.

“In the larger war against supernaturalism, frankly, it doesn’t help to fraternize with the enemy,” [Dawkins] says.

Fraternize with or imitate.

Martha Nussbaum talks to Bill Moyers.

[I]f you look into the religions, they have this deep idea of human dignity and the source of dignity being conscience. This capacity for searching for the meaning of life. And that leads us directly to the idea of respect. Because if conscience is this deep and valuable source of searching for meaning, then we all have it whether we’re agreeing or disagreeing. And we all ought to respect it and respect it equally in one another.

Hmm. I would say, as usual, it depends what kind of ‘respect’ is meant. There are, as usual, different possible levels of respect – recognition respect, substantive respect, and so on. In one way I agree with that (and so, it might surprise many people to know, does that notorious ‘fundamentalist’ atheist Richard Dawkins): I do respect the search for meaning and related projects, I do respect the desire for something more than the purely greedy or trivial or selfish. In another way I’m not sure I do agree with it – though I’m not sure enough that this really is another way to say flatly that I don’t agree with it. I respect the search for meaning, but then my respect goes wobbly if the search is carried on with the wrong equipment, or with self-imposed handicaps, or if it’s declared successful too early. My respect thins out to the vanishing point when the idea boils down to saying ‘people crave meaning therefore God exists’ or ‘people crave meaning therefore it is a crime to say there is no reason to think God exists and any old lies are okay to tell about people who commit that crime.’ Nussbaum doesn’t mean that, obviously; I suppose I’m just registering some caution about the idea because a lot of very vehement and inaccurate critics of ‘new’ atheism do resort to the ‘search for meaning’ defense in just that vituperative way.

Moyers later points out that many conservative Christians believe that ‘without a belief in a supreme being, a person, an atheist, can’t be a moral agent.’

I know they think that. But I think they really should look more closely at the ethical reasoning of people who are agnostics and atheists. And I think it’s obvious that lots and lots of people in this country are– are deeply ethical, do have a sense of the ethically obligatory and of the depth and real requirement of ethical norms, while not connecting that to a divine source.

Yes, I think they should too, but I’m not very optimistic that they will. But I would certainly be pleased if they did, and if Nussbaum’s book gets some of them to do that, very good.

One more bit of Hedges, because Eric mentioned that his (Hedges’s) theological training left him befuddled by the idea of ‘original sin,’ and I was planning to quote him on sin anyway if I got the time. Pp 13-14:

We have nothing to fear from those who do or do not believe in God; we have much to fear from those who do not believe in sin. The concept of sin is a stark acknowledgement that we can never be omnipotent, that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest.

Stark, staring bullshit. Could hardly be more wrong. Obviously there is no need whatever to believe in ‘sin’ to be aware that we can never be omnipotent and that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest. Really it’s mostly non-theists who are aware of that in the most thorough way, because theists mostly believe that we will ultimately be ‘redeemed’ or ‘atoned’ in some way. The rest of us just think we are deeply flawed animals and that’s all there is to it.

The concept of sin is a check on the utopian dreams of a perfect world. It prevents us from believing in our own perfectibility.

But the ‘new’ atheists Hedges is railing at dream no dreams of a perfect world, nor do they believe in human perfectibility – so clearly they don’t need the ‘concept of sin’ as a check on their non-existent dreams and beliefs.

To turn away from God is harmless…To turn away from sin is catastrophic…The secular utopians of the twenty-first century have also forgotten they are human.

And Hedges provides quotations to back up this assertion where? Nowhere. Because there are none, because the assertion is false.

We discard the wisdom of sin at our peril. Sin reminds us that all human beings are flawed…Studies in cognitive behavior illustrate the accuracy and wisdom of this Biblical concept.

Wait – what? It’s catastrophic to turn away from sin because without the concept of sin we don’t realize that humans are flawed, but on the other hand, studies in cognitive behavior (not to mention mere experience of life and humans and ourselves) offer evidence that we are flawed, so we don’t need the concept of sin after all. The man blows his own argument (or rather his baseless claim) without even noticing he’s done it. Where was his editor while all this was going on? Where was Hedges’s brain?