A Book At Bedtime (3)

This time, it's: "Letter To A Christian Nation" by Sam Harris.

It's billed as a hard-hitting rebuttal of religious fundamentalism and 'blind faith'. So basically we can sum it up as Atheist points out to American fundamentalist Christians where they're going wrong, and it's as dull and boring as every other ‘atheist points out the flaws in, largely, Judaeo-Christian belief’ book.  In this apparently interminable argument, it all seems to boil down to: “What I believe is right and what you believe is wrong”.  Which reduces it all down to playground level and, by association, then devalues the reasoned points in either argument (and, yes, there are many).

I do wonder whether any of these impassioned - some might even say uncompromising - anti-religion authors have actually managed to ‘turn’ any but a small number of individuals away from their faith(s).  I can quite see that they have been very successfully preaching to the already converted; and have probably managed to crystallize, or simply verbalise, the arguments that many more have been having with themselves. But have they ever really hit home amongst the audience they are apparently addressing?  I see no evidence that great swathes of Christians have had a neo-Damascene revelation as a result of their arguments, so I have to conclude not.  Perhaps they need to try a different tack.

Polemical atheism is as wearisome, to me, as its religious counterpart.  The totalitarian slant of “all religion, and everything in it, is bad” is the crude approach of the mindless crusader.  Who amongst us has the right to condemn something that brings comfort to those whose lives are rooted in poverty, hardship, misery and pain: for whom daily survival, rather than, say, being published, is a major triumph?  Certainly not those who live in relative ease as part of the intelligentsia,

and whose argument against religion and for non-belief/science is too academic for the vast majority to engage with.

To be fair, Harris manages largely to steer away from the rabid invective of the more zealous of his brethren in non-belief.  And he does have the grace to concede that some religious belief is benign or, at least, less malignant in his view than Christianity (Jainism seems to rate well for its doctrine of non-violence at least).  He puts forward well-structured arguments against the basic tenets of Christian belief and the fallacious claims of conservative and fundamental Christianity to be holding the moral high ground in terms of compassion, goodness and doing good in the name of God: to wit, his dismantling of the Christian anti-abortion argument in America.  I do think he rather veers into unhelpful mudslinging against the Catholic Church when it comes to the discussion on limbo, though.  And I find the tone in sentences such as: “The cure for obstetric fistula is, as it turns out, a simple surgical procedure - not prayer” snide and condescending, which strikes me as rather self-defeating when it’s aimed at the very people he’s trying to reason with.

Let me make it clear, I have no religious belief and have no drum to bang on behalf of religion(s).  But neither can I find it in myself to support the dogma spouted by Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins and the like.  And deny it as much as they will, Atheism has its dogma just as much as any religion.  Similarly, it has its fundamentalists: Richard Dawkins being the first amongst them (and anyone who can propose the Huxleyesque notion of removing children from their parents at birth and raising them in an environment that is hermetically sealed against religious belief or any other intellectually corrupting influence must, frankly, be several pegs short of a full clothes line).  Still, leaving aside one or two flaws in his own argument, Harris' book just leaves me, once more, shaking my head in despair because it always seems to me that the hard-core of atheism overlooks some of the most basic facts about human nature. 

Despite millennia of growth and progress in human understanding, the vast majority of us alive at any given point in our history believe in some esoteric force greater than ourselves.  Mankind has a desperate, deep-rooted need to understand the world around us; to create some form of belief system to explain it.  There seems to be an innate need in the human species to seek patterns and order where none, in reality, exist.  Which might explain why, with the decline in religious attendance (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say Christian religious attendance) in this country, and others, came a rise in ‘Alternative belief systems’: Scientology; Kabbalah; paganism; even the belief in Faeries.  There should be a strong message for the atheistic die-hards there: when conventional religions fail to provide them with answers, rather than turn en-masse to non-belief or to science large numbers choose, instead, to turn to some other equally non-scientific, requiring-the-willing-suspension-of-disbelief, faith system.

I’ve touched on this already but when a person’s life is little more than a daily struggle for survival; when hideous, irrational events are visited on people without, seemingly, rhyme or reason, the vast majority of us are simply not hardwired in a way that will allow us to take a dispassionate view of the horrors we are having to deal with.  Many, many people simply cannot rationalise what they have lived through, or live with on a daily basis, sufficiently to recognise that nothing more than pure change had any part to play.  And maybe, just maybe, clinging to the belief that there is a better life to come is what makes it possible for some people to live through the one they have without going mad. 

I also feel that many of those who advocate scientific over religious belief forget that religion, for many, is about more than simply faith.  It’s about the ‘warm fuzzy’ feeling of having a sense of belonging; about being part of a wider community.  Aside from at a rather cold intellectual and academic level, science doesn’t have that to offer – and people need it.  More so now, I think, than ever before.   For many, the network of support, security, advice, assistance, and the sharing of values and culture that the traditional extended family unit provided has virtually disappeared. It’s been replaced instead with more individualistic and consumerist values. These, in turn, seem to have fuelled increased feelings of dissatisfaction, alienation and general unhappiness, coupled with a greater striving for more material possessions to somehow fill a perceived void in our emotional wellbeing.  A cold alembic does about as much to make us truly deep-down happy as a brand new pair of expensive designer shoes.  We are a social species and religions taps into our most basic cravings for group inclusion in a way science and shopping can never do.

More than that, I can’t help but feel that were all religions to be swept away overnight, we would find something else around which to draw our tribal lines.  It seems innate.   All the wars and peacetime atrocities that have been perpetrated in the name of religion really have all been about one thing: power.  Religion has been appropriated as the moral justification to support aggression and rapaciousness.  The fact that science is rooted in logic and not faith does not insulate it from being just as easily expropriated to sustain the worst of human desires and ambitions.  The evidence that this is happening daily is all around us.

It does seem incredible and even scary that the majority of people living in the most powerful nation on earth believe Noah carried dinosaurs on the Ark; that  the Bible is the word of God wholly unadulterated by personal or socio-political bias on the part of those who recorded said ‘word’, and should be the sole determining factor in how we conduct our affairs (including suitable punishment for those conducting extra-marital ones); and that in the game of religious Top Trumps, the God of the Christians outranks all others.  But, in many respects, it was ever thus. 

Those who led the charge for the Protestant Reformation can’t have viewed enormous power in the hands of people who believed in Purgatory, or who supported the sale of Indulgences, with equanimity.  And let’s not forget that even in the Late Middle Ages, significant numbers still clung to the belief that the earth was flat.  We make progress in understanding and belief in some areas, only to find new arenas for debate.  Whatever faith system prevails, mankind will find ways to subvert it to its own malign causes.  It comes back to our seemingly inextinguishable need to affiliate along clan fault lines.

Personally, if I have a ‘clan’ in this sense – and I’m not sure that I do – then it is that which has room for the likes of Alain De Botton.  Although I’ve yet to read it, I bought his book ‘Religion for Atheists’ when it was first published on the grounds that he recognises that some religious faiths, at least, have a great deal to offer in terms of their understanding of the importance of community to our mental wellbeing.   And he seems to manage to do so in a good-natured fashion, without being deprecating or demeaning, to boot.  I’ll let you know when I’ve read it!