Fundamentalist atheism concentrates on the most extreme forms of beliefs and behavior, exalting fundamentalist religion as the pinnacle of true belief. This is done to fit the facts to a grossly simplified thesis: that religion is the root of human evil and atheism is humanity’s only viable savior. This conclusion is the basis for fundamentalist atheism’s argument that the long-standing principle of liberal tolerance of religious belief must be renounced. In doing so, fundamentalist atheism exhibits an apocalyptic vision that we normally associate with religious fundamentalism.
Like many ordinary atheists, fundamentalist atheists believe people are naturally good, a nod to (optimistic) Lockean social theory as opposed to a (pessimistic) Freudian or Hobbesian view of civilization destined for torment. The corrupting force is ignorance, principally in the form of religion. Without religion the world would be a kind of utopia where dogma would be a matter of history and violence would be replaced by rationality. Here one begins to discern an apocalyptical ideology closely akin to religious millenarianism. Since religion is the root of all human horrors, argues the fundamentalist atheist, it must be destroyed to transform the world from one of blood to one of peace. For the millenarian, perfect peace on Earth will not occur until Jesus returns and either converts or punishes nonbelievers. For the fundamentalist atheist, the savior of “peace and goodwill” will not greet the world until God and religion have been evicted from its domain. This apocalyptic vision or ideology is indicative of the fundamentalist nature of this brand of atheism.
Just as some fundamentalist Christians believe perfect Earthly harmony will not occur until Jesus returns to reward believers and punish nonbelievers, Freedom from Religion Foundation co-president, Annie Laurie Gaylor, believes that peace on Earth will not reign until religion has been totally dethroned. In her view, religion is “the source of the greatest violence in the world”; and that “more people have been killed in the world for religion over any other reason” (Quoted in Dan Harris and Paul Beban 2007). While this statement ignores the complex impetus for the world’s many conflicts, Gaylor clearly believes that religion stands in the way of world peace. According to Kelly O’Connor, also known as Kelly “M,” co-organizer of the atheist group, Rational Response Squad, her group shares Richard Dawkins’s and Christopher Hitchens’s mission: “The fact is that we all want to end religion. So that’s what we really want to get together with these people to do”.
Echoing Gaylor’s belief that religion is at the root of violence in the world, Harris blames religion for being the “explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in the last ten years,” in numerous global conflicts (2004:26). According to Dawkins those who wish to save human life should focus more on the maniacal nature of religion than on commonly discussed diseases. “It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, ‘mad cow’ disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world’s greatest evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate”. Harris argues that religion is the principal destabilizing factor in the India-Pakistan conflict over nuclear weapons.
A nuclear war between India and Pakistan seems almost inevitable, given what most Indians and Pakistanis believe about the afterlife…One might argue that no group of people can quite be ‘trusted’ with the bomb, but to ignore the destabilizing role that religion plays on the subcontinent is both reckless and disingenuous (2004:28).
Harris maintains that Muslims are mandated to loathe the west. “It is clear, however, that Muslims hate the West in the very terms of their faith and that the Koran mandates such hatred”. Moreover, he views Muslims as thoroughly other: “Any systematic approach to ethics, or to understanding the necessary underpinnings of a civil society, will find many Muslims standing eye deep in the red barbarity of the fourteenth century”.
Having supposedly established the irrevocable and necessarily destructive impulse that characterizes the entirety of religion, fundamentalist atheism moves to bring an end to tolerance itself. In his New York Times bestseller, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Harris arrives at the significant conclusion that “belief is not a private matter, it has never been merely private”.
He argues “Given the link between belief and action, it is clear that we can no more tolerate a diversity of religious beliefs than a diversity of beliefs about epidemiology and basic hygiene”. Viewing the abuse of what are believed to be absurd religious ideas, atheist writers and activists have decided that “bashing” of beliefs is necessary to further secularist goals for a more enlightened society.
In the preface of his book, Atheism: A Reader, Joshi writes: “Even ridicule of religion is an entirely valid enterprise”. Joshi is not alone in this opinion. In an article on the American Atheist website, Tabash defends the right to “bash” other religions: “Establishing the social acceptability of ridiculing (emphasis mine) the absurdities of religious claims is an integral part of gaining acceptance for secular humanism.” In 2005, the Atheists of Florida had among their stated purposes: “To promote the concept that believers of any faith, are the deluded (my emphasis) victims of unfounded dogmas toward whom sympathy and under-standing should be extended.”
In “An Atheist Manifesto,” Harris suggested “the incompatibility of reason and faith has been a self-evident feature of human cognition and public discourse for centuries.” Harris further declares “interfaith dialogue” and “mutual tolerance” futile. The only way to banish religious warfare, he writes, is to eradicate “the dogma of faith.”
In A Letter to a Christian Nation, Harris acknowledges that he and Christian fundamentalists agree about one thing: “if one of us is right, the other is wrong…”. In nothing short of an apocalyptical tone, Harris writes:
The Bible is either the word of God, or it isn’t. Either Jesus offers humanity the one, true path to salvation (John 14:6), or he does not. We agree that to be a true Christian is to believe that all other faiths are mistaken, and profoundly so. If Christianity is correct, and I persist in my unbelief, I should expect to suffer the torments of hell. Worse still, I have persuaded others, many close to me, to reject the very idea of God. They too will languish in ‘eternal fire’ (Matthew 25:41).
If the basic doctrine of Christianity is correct, I have misused my life in the worst conceivable way.
Harris continues, offering the dissenting perspective articulated by liberal and moderate Christians who reject such a dogmatic definition of true Christian belief but then summarily dismisses them. Addressing the theoretical Christian fundamentalist reader he writes: “So let us be honest with ourselves…in the fullness of time, one side is really going to win this argument, and the other side is really going to lose”. As if to preempt complaints about the vastly incomplete depiction of the religious, Harris and Dawkins are quick to acknowledge moderates exist, but argue that they help breed religious extremists.
These fundamentalist atheists attempt to mop up messy generalizations and artificial treatment of the Christian religion by saying that religious moderation is the slippery slope that wets the rock that extremism slips on.
I have little doubt that liberals and moderates find the eerie certainties of the Christian Right to be as troubling as I do. It is my hope, however, that they will also begin to see that the respect they demand for their own religious beliefs gives shelter to extremists of all faith. Although liberals and moderates do not fly planes into buildings or organize their lives around apocalyptic prophecy, they rarely question the legitimacy of raising a child to believe that she is a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. Even the most progressive faiths lend tacit support to the religious divisions in our world.
Dawkins bolsters Harris’ argument. “As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers…The teachings of ‘moderate’ religion, though not extremist in themselves, are an open invitation to extremism” (2006:306). This assumption is taken on face value. For Dawkins and Harris, the world is divided into black and white, religious and secular, winners and losers. These dichotomies, however, rely on willful ignorance of the way belief has evolved.
Another problematic feature of fundamentalist atheism is that it too narrowly confines its criticism to religious doctrine and institutions. Atheist and academic Robert Jensen contends that the concentrated criticism on the church connotes a failure to equally scrutinize other institutions of power and that religion is not alone in failing to fully articulate “principles of justice, equality, and dignity.”
To my mind, every major institution we live in comes up short. Certainly the organized church comes up woefully short.
The nation state, especially the United States that at this moment is the imperial power, comes up short. The corporation and capitalism comes up short. More systems like patriarchy and white supremacy, which aren’t the same as capitalism and the nation state but are the structuring systems of our consciousness and many of our institutions, they come up short obviously. So I think principled people should apply the same scrutiny to all of the systems they live in (Jensen 2008:198).
While fundamentalist atheists ring the alarm about the danger posed by religion, others see issues such as poverty as the underlying cause of much of the world’s violence. Most significantly, fundamentalist atheism’s thesis that religion is at the root of global strife ignores history. Not religion, but a political and secular ideological struggle motivated both World War I and World War II.
If the Christian world must live down the early Catholic Church, the atheist world must live down the Soviet Union. One can state with certainly that horrific acts of violence have been committed with and without religious justification.
Indeed, many acts of violence have been committed in the name of justice, itself. For it appears that neither the religious nor the secular world has its hands entirely clean.
The most disturbing example of fundamentalist atheism’s intellectual failure and an extension of its apocalyptic tone can be seen in its interpretation of Islam. Fundamentalist atheists offer biased and hypocritical readings of Islamic motives for their recourse to violence. This is most sharply pronounced in fundamentalist atheisms adoption of the September 11, 2001 attack in the United States as its new rallying-point. While many argue that religion is only part of the complex problem of terrorism, fundamentalist atheism sees terrorism as a consequence of religion’s inherently destructive impetus. In Humanism for Parents: Parenting without Religion, atheist writer, Sean P. Curley writes:
The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center have re-shown us just how dangerous true faith can be. The attackers were just following the instructions in their holy book and truly believed they would go to heaven and be welcomed as heroes; really it is hard to blame them if they truly believe (2007:7).
For Hitchens, September 11 and the subsequent war in Iraq are and have been about “defeating religious extremism.” Harris has argued that the United States was wrong to declare war on terrorism, and sees it as akin to declaring “war on war.” Instead he argues that the war is better understood as a conflict against “Islam itself” (2004:28).
Similarly, Dawkins contends that the July 2005 London bombings were motivated solely by religious faith because “Only religious faith is a strong enough force to motivate such utter madness in otherwise sane and decent people” (Dawkins 2006:303-304). At the bottom of fundamentalist atheism’s apocalyptical assessment of Islam’s destructive agenda is the shallow notion that “terrorist” bombings perpetuated by Islamists have nothing to do with politics and are purely religiously motivated events. Atheist fundamentalism also distorts more complex contemplation of Islamic terrorists’ motives by conflating their reward with their objective, assuming the two are always the same.
Fundamentalist atheism’s apocalyptical view of the world has resulted in a recommendation of genocidal war on Islam. During the 2007 Freedom From Religion Foundation’s (FFRF) convention, Hitchens shocked many in the audience when he recommended carpet bombing Muslims. Responding to Hitchens’ comments a conference-goer asked, “How exactly does bombing and killing Muslims lessen their numbers or limit their fervor?” Rather than clarifying that he did not wish to merely indiscriminately murder Muslims but rather desired to attack strategic targets, he mocked the questioner. “I’m just wondering if I should draw you a picture. You mean how does killing them lessen their number?” He went on to state: “The numbers of those bombed will decline.” He also described the hunting and killing of al Qaida not only as a duty, but a “pleasure” (Hitchens 2007).
Fundamentalist atheism’s apocalyptical analysis and violent recommendations have been rejected by some prominent atheists. Atheist biologist and associate professor, P.Z. Myers, who attended the 2007 Freedom from Religion Foundation convention, criticizes Hitchens’ analysis as “simplistic us-vs-them thinking at its worst” and labels Hitchens recommendation of genocide as “insane” (Myers 2007). Myers was not alone in his disgust.
I could tell that he did not have the sympathy of most of the audience at this point.
There were a scattered few who applauded wildly at every mention of bombing the Iranians, but the majority were stunned into silence. People were leaving—I heard one woman sing a few bars of ‘Onward, Christian soldiers” as she left to mock his strategy.
The questions were all angry or disputative, and were all dismissed with comments about the audience’s intelligence. The answers were always, ‘War, war, war,’ and that we weren’t good atheists if we didn’t agree with murder as the answer. He seemed unable to comprehend that people could despise and oppose all religion, Christian, Moslem, or otherwise, yet have no desire to triumph by causing physical harm to the believers. I’ve noticed the same intellectual blindness in many Christians, actually.
Later that evening, someone in the FFRF was handing out an open letter to the free thought community, one that protested the inclusion of Hitchens and opposing any future speakers of his sort.
CONCLUSION
Fundamentalist atheism’s analysis of religion is colored by an ideological fanaticism often identified with religious fundamentalism. This tunnel-vision analysis of religion distorts the diversity of belief found among religious believers. Fundamentalist atheists have developed a deeply flawed characterization of religion and its believers as inherently irrational, anti-science, violent, and averse to progress, which, they believe, mandate a strident response free of intellectual tolerance. Their critique of religion is based on a series of generalizations and assumptions that neglect both the diversity and complexity of religious belief, as well as fundamental sociological considerations. Thinkers such as Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens create a religion that amounts to a monstrous straw-man which they then burn at the stake. They do not, however, provide sufficient evidence to believe that religion is the root of society’s ills.
Fundamentalist atheists’ adoption of a dangerously apocalyptical mindset, wherein they believe peace will not prevail in the world until religion has been annihilated by reason, is based on a definition of religion that illogically relies on the most fanatical and fundamentalist examples available. In doing so they have violated a basic tenet of rational discourse, that guilt by vague association is not enough to convict; or that just because two subjects correlate—share a religion—does not mean that one (non-extremist believer) necessarily results in the other (violent extremist). One cannot define a mass of human beings based on a handful of others who share similarities. While it is true that violent behavior sometimes correlates with religious belief, fundamentalist atheism has not sufficiently demonstrated that religion is always the root cause of violent behavior on the part of a believer. From what we know now, violent extremist believers are the exception to the norm, not the norm.
If fundamentalist Christians have charged secularism and atheism with responsibility for causing catastrophes and evil, fundamentalist atheists have conceived of religion as the root of all evil in our civilization. This ideological perspective has inspired fundamentalist atheists to proffer the most simplistic interpretation of the facts. To confirm their belief that religion is the root cause of violence in the world and thus deserves to be intellectually eradicated and no longer tolerated they craft a simplistic, stereotype-ridden and generalized understanding of religion as a whole, lending it to easy demonization. The result of this faulty logic is the fundamentalist atheist’s conclusion that democratic-liberalism’s basic tenet of pluralism and tolerance dating back to Enlightenment philosophies, is no longer tenable. So much for reason.
Atheism Messages 