Atheism’s Unholy Trinity
By Jarrett Dapier
In These Times
Last spring, Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, flew to California to see some atheists about God. Over the course of two debates — one in Los Angeles, the other in Berkeley — Hedges sparred with Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, and Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great. According to Aneli Rufus, who reported on the Hedges vs. Hitchens debate for AlterNet, Hedges was “trounced.”
Atheism 2, God 0.
Now, out of these debates comes Hedges’ latest book, I Don’t Believe In Atheists (Free Press, 2008), a relentless, deeply considered defense of the religious impulse.
The book’s title is neither an accurate personal statement nor a reflection of the volume’s contents. As Hedges has said, he is no atheist. Nevertheless, he eloquently defends atheists who are “intellectually honest” — those “who accept an irredeemable and flawed human nature” — and believes “they hold an honored place in a pluralistic and diverse community.” Intended to provoke, the title sets up false expectations for a simplistic “no atheists in foxholes” screed that sells the book short.
Instead, Hedges’ main target is utopia, which he calls “the most dangerous legacy of the Christian faith and Enlightenment.” And primarily in the works of evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins, as well as Hitchens and Harris — the “new atheists,” as Hedges calls them — the author finds a morally bankrupt utopian worldview that divides humanity between the primitive faithful and the civilized rational.
According to Hedges, the new atheists argue that once humanity is delivered from religion — what Hitchens has called “man-made filthy propaganda” — and places its faith in science and reason, we will finally advance morally as a species. But “hidden under the jargon of reason and science,” writes Hedges, this conviction is a secular version of religious extremism. To Hedges, this makes them dangerous.
“Too many of the new atheists, like the Christian fundamentalists, support the imperialist projects and pre-emptive wars of the United States as necessities in the battle against terrorism and irrational religion,” he writes. To make his case, he cites Harris’ justification for a nuclear first-strike on the Middle East and Hitchens’ continued support for democracy-via-bombing in Iraq.
Hedges doesn’t mince words about these atheists: They are “suburban mutations,” “hopeless epicures” and “products of the morally stunted world of entertainment.” Because many atheists conflate radical, literalist religion with all religion — and refuse to see any good that has come from faith — Hedges sees them as intellectually shallow. To him, one must come at faith honestly — through years of sustained thought, reading, reflection and introspection. The same goes for atheism.
One of the strengths of Atheists is Hedges’ authority to write on the topic. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he witnessed how his father’s faith inspired him to fight for social justice, even when it was deeply unpopular in the rural, upstate New York communities in which he preached. It was this model of courage-through-faith that led Hedges to pursue a degree from Harvard’s Divinity School, where he gained his understanding of theology.
Hedges spent the next 20 years covering foreign wars for a host of newspapers, including the Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief. He has witnessed many of the late 20th century’s worst horrors — in Algeria, Bosnia, El Salvador, Iraq, Kosovo and Sudan (where he was imprisoned). Hedges mined these experiences to great effect in his excellent, hard-hitting 2003 book, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning.
In a 2008 interview with Salon, Hedges said, “I spent so long in war zones that I think we don’t know what we would do under repression and abuse. … That’s the brilliance of the great writers on the Holocaust, like Primo Levi. … They understood the humanity of their own killers.”
Hedges spends the first half of Atheists refuting the claim that humanity has advanced morally. “The Enlightenment myth … taught that our physical and social environment could be transformed through rational manipulation. … [But] human history is not a long chronicle of human advancement. It includes our cruelty, barbarism, reverses, blunders and self-inflicted disasters.”
To Read the Rest of the Review
No comments:
Post a Comment