In the May 30th Globe and Mail, Ms Lorna Dueck offers us "Challenging Atheist Manifestos", a review, of sorts, of some some recent atheist books: "The End of Faith", by Sam Harris, and "The God Delusion", by Richard Dawkins. Ms. Dueck came away from those books with the impression that her particular beliefs are targetted by these authors:
Yes, I've been insulted by these authors who fanatically argue that I am free to believe in anything I want as long as it's not God.
I think the authors and Ms. Dueck would agree that one can draw inspiration from many places, from Dickens or other works of fiction, as well as the stories told by science. Belief, as inspiration, is as wondrously varied and as individual as every one of us. When belief turns into action, however, society has a clear interest and role. I am confident that Ms. Dueck and the authors would agree:
- One is not free to act on the belief that blowing yourself up in a marketplace will send you directly to paradise.
- One is not free to act on the belief that shooting an abortionist is justifiable defense of the unborn.
- One is not free to park a truck near a government office building and daycare, and blow it up, killing hundreds.
- One may not kill one's sister if she decides to leave her abusive husband, or has a boy friend before marriage.
- One is not entitled to push someone into oncoming traffic to save them from being crushed by what you believe to be a pink elephant falling from the sky.
All of the above acts are reprehensible. All of them harm others. All of them are illegal. Most of them are justified by the perpetrators on religious grounds. While few have any compunction in discrediting the assertions of a Timothy McVeigh, or the believers in flying pink elephants, assertions made in the name of religion are accorded special immunity from reasoned criticism in the name of religious freedom.
Yet the illegality of those acts is a tacit admission that there are practical limits to freedom of religion in a civilized society. No-one may act on any overly destructive beliefs, including religious ones. The authors' argue for eliminating the special exemption we have for religions to spout nonsense and be accorded respect, even in cases where no such repect is deserved. There are limits on what you can do in the name of any belief, be it about flying pink elephants or meddlesome and insecure omniscient beings. There is no right to freedom of intolerance.
One is not free to believe in anything except god, but rather all beliefs, including those about god, need to be subject to common sense tests for likelihood to result in acts which we would all regard as evil. If a small group establishes a community school and begins to turn out thousands of children with no useful skills, and who absolutely believe in the need for violent action to support a cause, that is not acceptable. On purely practical grounds, the need to respect and protect others in society from violence easily trumps such groups' freedom to speak of their inspired revulsion of other groups, and egg students, who cannot truly consent to indoctrination, to violent acts.
The cause could be the need for an independent sikh or French Canadian homeland, the need to extirpate homosexuality, or the jewish faith, or the palestinians, or to establish shariah hegemony over the human race, or that the world will end in our lifetime, and so wanton pollution is irrelevant, or even helpful for hastening the advent of the rapture. It does not matter what the nature of the belief is, what matters is whether it is destructive enough not
to be tolerable.
Atheists hold religious assertions to be subject to the same scrutiny as any other assertions about the world. It is God that is singled out as an exception by religionists. As Mr. Harris puts it, where do you stand, Ms Dueck, on Odin, Zeus, Poseidon and Mithras? It is the religious who make exceptions, rejecting thousands of other deities as ridiculous, but holding their own conception as uniquely accurate, and in modern societies there is a need to agree to disagree with followers of other religions living in the same society or even neighbourhood. Atheists simply add one more set of beliefs to the pile of thousands of superceded ancestral mythologies, and are completely consistent in rejecting all of them.
In former times, it was reasonable to simply disagree, and have people simply find another place to live when their religious differences were too extreme. Many of the founders of the United States were deeply religious dissident groups. That was a luxury of former times. In the 21st century, a small group of people are, by dint of modern technology, more empowered than ever to wreak havoc, and to do so anywhere in the world. If you educate enough people in dangerously mistaken ideas, sooner or later, something dangerous will occur.
How much tolerance can we, as a society, have for intolerance? For simple or willful ignorance? In order to have a discussion at all, One needs to discuss religious beliefs and determine what is acceptable behaviour and belief. If beliefs fly in the face of facts, then what happens when practical decisions need to be made, about tranfusions, biological teachings, about physics? Freedom of religion does not extend to the freedom to murder your child by refusing blood transfusions. Such beliefs should be challenged daily, and not allowed to be freely asserted in the name of freedom of religion until a crisis occurs. If people bring religion into the discussion as justification for behavior, then it has to be as open to critique as any other justification. It is not acceptable to close down any discussion, ignoring consequences or iniquities on the grounds of religious dogma or freedom.
If we accept the moral imperative to judge someone else's religio-cultural practices (such as female circumcision, polygamy, or criminalization of homosexuality) as being immoral, then one must be prepared to say
simply why some beliefs are to be given more respect than others. If we accept religion/culture as being absolute, or on a separate plane, free from scrutiny, then we must accept all the brutality wrought in the name of all religions. Freedom of religion, as a kind of truce to avoid violence among religious and cultural groups, simply abandons those unfortunate enough to be born in the wrong cultures to their fate.
One can indeed pass moral judgement on the practices of others. In some cases, it is immoral not to do so. Women's rights mark, independent of social and religious context, and even in spite of religious teachings, social progress. A reduction in the coerciveness of society, such as by the elimination of slavery is, regardless of faith and culture specific arguments for and against, progress. Part of the authors' thesis is that the bland, apparently harmless earnestness of the moderately religious provides a shield which makes it very difficult to eliminate the advocacy of intolerable beliefs by extremists.
It is very likely harmless, and perhaps inspiring for Ms. Dueck's children to go to a religious summer camp. However, the law is a very blunt instrument, and what gets interesting is how to allow her children to go to summer camp, and disallow others' who go to a summer camp in the woods modelled on camps in Afghanistan before 2002. There are similar sorts of camps in North America, so called "militias" and they have already led to, at least, the Oklahoma City bombing. We need, all of us, to agree on societal standards on what is acceptable to teach, about religion or anything else. That is a very difficult thing to do, as we all value freedom of thought and conscience, but the practical reality is that we have to start drawing clear lines to mark the limits of our individual freedoms. ("Perilous Times", by Geoffrey Stone is very relevant on this.)
Thought experiment: Contact leaders of all the major faiths and gain agreement from all of them on common moral values and behaviors. Establish an objective code of conduct for those of all religions in their dealings with one another both within and outside the faith. Once you have that, agree on what sort of deviation is beyond the pale.
If, as I expect, the exercise fails to produce an intelligible answer, then it highlights that, when the subject of polygamy, genital mutilation, honor killings, and other conflicts among views of those of different religions arises, the confusion wrought by morals based on religion is not helpful. There is an arrow of social progress, and reduction of coercion in societies is an absolute indicator of progress. One has no need to resort to religion to inspire moral indignation, and indeed it does not help when religions and cultures disagree.
If, against my expectations, agreement from all the religious groups emerges, then it is doubtful that there will be agreement on which is the real saviour, or even on the subject of homosexuality, or polygamy. Rapid agreement will be achievable in such areas as: one should respect ones elders, do unto others as one would have done unto you, one should love ones family, and be good to others. Those are values which are universal in humanity. You can call them christian values, but it would be just as accurate to call them muslim, buddhist, or atheist values.
Lastly, it is useful to say that, in choosing those works by Dawkins and Harris, Ms. Dueck have come upon some of the least diplomatic works of the genre. They pull no punches in their critique of supernatural beings, and their express goal is to confront religionists, so they understandably do not have room to discuss the positive beliefs of atheists. So when Ms. Dueck complains about a life of facts, she is actually asking for positive answers from atheism, which is not substantially dealt with in those books.
The rest of Dawkins' works, such as "The Selfish Gene", "Climbing Mount Improbable", and "The Blind Watchmaker" are far more positive, revealing the glorious intricacy of evolution and pushing the reader to ever deeper humility before the enormous complexity that nature has wrought. For more thoughtful, positive, and interesting reading, especially with Ms. Duecks' Dickensian qualms, I recommend a reading of Stephen Pinker: either "How the Mind Works", or "The Blank Slate." Those books show natural ways to understand morals, behavior, and emotions that come from our evolutionary past. Pinker's work especially brings understanding far more empowering than the archaic admonitions of religion. When we embrace natural explanations, far from being reduced to cold lists of facts, we are given deeper humility about the world, and stories that bring a far deeper understanding of the inspiring grandeur that is all around us.
