Monday 27 June 2011

Problems With Sam Harris's The End of Faith

I have started a careful re-reading of Sam Harris's The End of Faith and will be writing a longer critique as soon as I have time; for now I just wanted to give one example of the many problems with his work.

And I will just emphasise again that my problem with what he says has nothing to do with his atheism - it is with his 'analysis' of the effects of religious belief.

In his opening chapter, he claims that religious belief results in tribalism and human conflict, and therefore cannot be sustained at a point in history when humans have developed weapons of mass destruction. Others blame violent acts such as suicide bombings on other factors such as politics, economics or personal circumstances, but Harris claims that religion can be isolated and identified as the principal cause of their actions.

He later offers some evidence for this claim - but it is contradictory. We cannot blame acts of violence on economic definciency, he writes, because most suicide bombers tend to be from middle class backgrounds. He writes 'There is no doubt that many well-educated, middle-class fundamentalists are ready to kill and die for God. As Samuel Huntington and others have observed, religious fundamentalism in the developing world is not, principally, a movement of the poor and uneducated' (p. 32).

If it was true that religion can be isolated from other factors as the cause of human conflict, why, as he acknowledges, is there a correlation between Islamic fundamentalism and middle class men of a particular age group? This observation alone brings in several other criteria - class, gender and age - into the mix as well. There are undoubtedly others. Harris's book contains many clear but unacknowledged contradictions such as this which undermine his central arguments.

This is just one that I have picked up on - and I will address some of the other problems with his book as I go along.

Wednesday 22 June 2011

The Differences Between American and British Atheism

New Atheism as an American Phenomenon

It has for a long time been my suspicion that New Atheism's crude characature of religion can be attributed to the American context in which it flowered. Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett are themselves American; Christopher Hitchens is British but has been based in the USA since the early eighties; and Richard Dawkins, although based in Britain, spends most of his time railing against creationists - who are a much more significant cultural and political force in America than they are in Britain.

In this specific American context, faced with a vocal anti-scientific, biblical-literalist enemy in what is otherwise one of the most advanced nations on Earth, I can sympathise with the New Atheists and their analysis of what religion means; I can just see that they have been mistaken in extrapolating this to religion in general. I suspect that for liberal Americans, having read The God Delusion is more about making a statement of anti-fundamentalism and progressive politics than it is about carefully reading and agreeing with Dawkins's dubious claims about the impact of religion in general throughout history.

Atheism as a Statement of Identity

I have been searching on Twitter in recent days for fellow atheists with whom I hope to engage in discussion - my PhD idea is intended to be an analysis of New Atheism and I would like to get a sense of what it means to individuals to label themselves as atheists. As the New Atheists generate a lot of media coverage in Britain, I didn't expect the majority of self-declared atheists to be American, and for there to apparently be relatively few Brits who make atheism a central part of their identity. This is not to suggest there are few British atheists; it just seems that atheism is relatively marginal as a component of identity here.

Questions for Atheists

So, as a Brit to my American readers - what does atheism mean to you? Is it just a statement of your (non-) beliefs? Is it an important component of your wider political views? Are there any self-declared Republican atheists? And what does atheism mean in terms of your close relationships: are you part of atheist groups, or does your non-belief separate you from any religious friends and family? And aside from the general argument that there is no evidence for God, what do you think of what are, to me, highly dubious claims like 'religion is the cause of all human conflict'?

Any thoughts and comments - from Brits and Americans - would be much appreciated!

Tuesday 21 June 2011

We Atheists Should be More Critical of New Atheism

I generally find it quite difficult to explain my stance on New Atheism to both atheists and believers. In an argument with a believer about whether God exists or not, my arguments are pretty much the same as Dawkins and the rest of his gang - no evidence and so on. However, if I try to point out to fellow atheists that there are problems with pretty much everything else that the New Atheists claim - that religion is the sole cause of human conflict, that religion is defined by adherence to a particular text, that it is impossible to practice science while having religious faith - I immediately sense hostility, as if they suspect that I am some sort of religious apologist.

I really want to separate the question of whether or not God exists from the more complex question of how people use religion, or any system of values and beliefs, in their day-to-day lives. To point out the many logical errors of the New Atheists' historical and philosophical claims about the the effects of religion does not weaken my stance on the question of whether God exists or not; I just don't think that that question in itself is particularly important. So this is an initial attempt to outline a couple of reasons why atheists should take adopt a more critical stance on New Atheism.

Note - I would be interested in hearing different perspectives on this from Americans and Brits. It strikes me that the style of the New Atheists' arguments is perhaps more forgivable in an American context where anti-evolutionism is a more pressing public problem than in  Britain.

New Atheism is Boring

The British Humanist Association recently hosted an event in London with Richard Dawkins in conversation with PZ Myers. It started promisingly with some interesting speculations from the perspective of biology about how life on other planets might have evolved differently to on Earth. After about fifteen minutes, however, it took a right-angled turn to issues of atheism and religion. This in itself was fine, but what they were saying was so boringly familiar that I quickly lost interest.

As a rationalist and an atheist, I know that immaculate conception isn't biologically possible. I know that creationists are deluded. I know that there is no more evidence for God than there is for Thor. But this is stuff that an intelligent eight-year old can tell you. Indeed, my eight-year old niece has declared herself an atheist having worked each of these things out for herself, but she hasn't made millions by writing a book about it. Dawkins, however, has been churning out these same basic ideas at least since The God Delusion came out.

In a sense, he's a bit like Oasis - one release with some simple and derivative, but basically enjoyable ideas, and then a subsequent repetition of the formula for years afterwards, with no artistic development and increasingly tedious results. And yet there is a hardcore fanbase who will not hear a word said against him. I have attended a few similarly themed events in recent weeks, and they seem to me to function not so much as a forum to debate ideas, but as a social occasion at which humanists and atheists sit around and congratulate each other about how rational they are and laugh at how stupid religion is. This is a perfectly valid position to take, but the endless repetition of the same basic ideas is becoming increasingly tedious to me.

And yet, judging from various declared atheists I follow on Twitter, there are many other people who, rather than seriously examining the issues and problems around religion, are happy to just repeat aphorisms over and over again - such as 'The Holy Bible. Turning the sin of intellectual indolence into a virtue for nearly 2000 years.' Things like this are fine in themselves, but it doesn't get any more sophisticated than this, and it indicates to me that many atheists have an over-simplified idea of how people select from and draw on religious traditions in their own lives. In the 'atheist community', if such a thing exists, there appears to be no attempt to examine the issue in any more detail - there just seems to be an unthinking circulation of the same basic ideas.

What the New Atheists Get Wrong

Aside from the fact that New Atheism has become dull, I think it is important to also point out the things which the New Atheists are just plain wrong about. I am embarking on a project to re-read the central works of the 'New Atheist' canon (The End of Faith, The God Delusion, God is Not Great, Breaking the Spell) and I'll be posting some detailed pieces outlining my take on each of them over the coming weeks. For now, I would just point out a few common and problematic claims. Firstly, they all (possibly excluding Daniel Dennett) claim that religion can be isolated as the sole, or at least, the most significant, factor in causing human conflict. I'd be interested to find out if any credible historian or political scientist supports this view.

They also claim that to be religious is to draw on the contents of a particular holy book. But this would involve ignoring the fact that people can also draw on particular theological traditions and alternative interpretations rather than directly from the source text, and some have a concept of religion that means nothing more complicated than being good to other people. This is no different to what most humanists would believe, whether there is a god out there or not.

They also claim that religion is inherently incompatible with science. This of course makes sense with someone who thinks that there really is evidence for Intelligent Design, but what about someone for whom God is not a scientific entity whose existence could ever be verified, but just exists somewhere, a comforting presence who does not lay down moral dogma or play an active part in the world?

In summary, I want to emphasise that pointing out that New Atheism is crude and intellectually lazy is not the same as arguing that perhaps creationists have a point. Also, it is not to deny the existence of major problems where science is attacked or prejudice grows out of religious beliefs. But it should be the duty of any rational person to subject the claims of Dawkins et al to the same scrutiny as anything else - and not just their claims about whether God exists or not.

Sunday 19 June 2011

New Atheism Blog - Intro: Working Out What the Hell I'm Doing

Welcome to the latest of my many attempts to start blogging regularly!

This blog is mainly intended to be an outlet for ideas related to what will hopefully end up as a PhD project, though I will undoubtedly stray into other territory, be it personal, political or pointless. Feel free to post comments and I'll do my best to respond! Just an intro for now to help people (including myself) work out what I'm talking about.

I'm interested in taking a critical look at the public debate about atheism and the role of religion in contemporary society - not adopting a simplistic stance on whether religion is 'good' or 'bad', but, rather, to trace the roots of this debate and ask why it has become such an urgent issue in our culture. It is often seen as a straightforward response to Islamic and Christian fundamentalism, but I think there is a more complex and interesting story to tell about where it originates from - and it has its roots in a crisis of moral legitimacy within liberalism itself.

A point to make early on about my stance on Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and others associated with 'New Atheism' - I am an atheist myself, and I have no time for for the crazier 'scientific' arguments supporting the existence of God. While I share this position with the New Atheists, I also understand that many people who believe in God don't base their belief on 'scientific' claims anyway, and not all religious people hold irrational moral positions based on dogma. I feel that there is much to be regretted about 'New Atheism', which has had an unnecessarily divisive impact on public debate and has created a crude and over-simplified picture of the role that religion plays in many people's lives.

I also think that there has been a failure on the part of the New Atheists and their supporters to reflect on the foundations of their own intellectual positions. For me, New Atheism is not only responding to an attack on secular liberal democracies by religious fundamentalism, but also to a crisis of moral legitimacy within liberalism itself. The flawed attempts by Harris and Dawkins in particular to claim a 'scientific' basis for their values reflect this, and I think that their focus on attacking religion distracts liberals from examining problems within their own ideologies.

That probably doesn't clarify very much but it will hopefully start to make sense as I slowly work out what the hell I'm talking about. Feel free to argue - I'm open to revising my ideas, though I won't necessarily admit that I was ever wrong about anything.

Follow me on Twitter @Steverini.