CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS LECTURE. FEBRUARY 23rd, 2004
THOMAS SULLIVAN LECTURE. MARCH 8th, 2004
Are There Good Reasons To Believe In God?
I. Christopher Hitchens: "The Moral Necessity of Atheism." Convocation Hall February 23 at 4:30 p.m.
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Preview of Hitchens' Argument: "The Future of an Illusion," Daedalus, Summer 2003
Christopher Hitchens' writings available on the web
Short Biography
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II. Professor Thomas Sullivan, Aquinas Chair in Philosophy and Theology, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota: “Is Faith a Vice? A Refutation of Dogmatic Atheism; Some Advice for Agnostic Inquirers." Convocation Hall on March 8 at 4:30 p.m.
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posted by How, Then, Shall We Live? @ 11:24 AM
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A)Hitchen’s critique – summation
Christopher Hitchen’s short essay, The Future of an Illusion, outlines the reasons why atheism or anti-theism is a healthier option than religious belief in helping us negotiate social and political life together in the public square.
From a theist’s position
I am going argue that his charges against religion on the basis of its unsavory tendencies towards absolutism and totalitarianism are correct (line of connection between faith, murder and slavery). And that the ethics of pluralism of the secular state is the best option available to keep these tendencies in check
I will then give my own analysis of why and where his argument falls short, specifically in regards to his definition of religion, his (and Freud’s) proposed solution as it relates to the options of response available to the religious practitionerB) Where he is right on issues of barbarism, totalitarian, religious authoritarianism, theofacism that seeks to squelch dissent and otherness by many means, among them, forced conversion, repression, torture or annihilation of those who disagree or are different. He argues that religion is inherently an illusion designed to render the believer secure in his fantasy, that religion is coercive, repressive and prone to power-mongering, especially when it is wed to state power.
Nietzsche as well as Freud seem to stand behind his critique of religion, in that religion is often the vehicle for a perverted will to power, that religion is a neurotic expression of the “authoritarian, if not the totalitarian, personality.” What Hitchens calls the “false modesty” of religious absolutism that claims it is only doing the will of God is evocative of Nietzsche’s analysis of religious moralism as “malice spiritualized.”
In my understanding of the historical record and the present global political situation, scourged as it is by extremist claims of right-wing religious absolutism, in this country and abroad, offers ample proof that his jeremiad against religion holds water.
But why? Aside from the Freudian infantile needs, what precisely makes religion so prone to this phenomenon? Part of the problem lies in a (not the) common rhetoric of religious truth, which casts my worldview as absolute, right, pure, essential, holy and incontrovertible, implies that alternative worldviews, of other religions or even of our co-religionists are partial, wrong, impure, unessential, unholy and hence, so the reasoning and historical record goes, wide open targets for my persuasive attention. It’s not just that I disagree with someone, but their beliefs, practices, even their existence is an affront to the holy and must be dealt with accordingly. Within religious absolutism is the inherent disrespect of those of another faith or even those who understand the same faith differently – The totalitarian logic can and often does go as far as the political means will allow. It is this monster, the Grand Inquisitor, lurking just barely beneath and sometimes explicitly upon, the mask of absolutist religious piety that makes Hitchens, and me, nervous regarding theofascist political aspirations.
Related to the Absolute Religious Truth issue, and here I depart from Hitchen’s argument proper in a way that both bolsters it and critiques it, is what I like to call the Platonic Form Theory of Religion. This is a theory of religion that is not unique to absolutists and religious imperialists, but common parlance even among religious pluralists and atheists. The theory goes as such: Religion or a particular religion has an Essence, a Pure Form, anything that departs from that Essence, that does not live up to what I perceive to be the religion’s orthodox purity, is, to use Charles Kimball’s phrase “corrupted religion.”
Using the Platonic Form Theory of Religion, one can say that Baruch Goldstein, Muslim suicide bombers, Christian conquistadors and Nazi and New Identity Christians, are not real Jews, Muslims and Christians and are deviating heretically from the essence of the tradition.
What’s the matter with this? What’s the matter with simply tossing the bad apples out of the bag if they don’t represent “real” or ideal religion? Let me stick to my tradition here and give an example of why the Platonic Form Theory of Religion is problematic.
On Purim, 1994, an American immigrant to Israel, an orthodox Jew named Baruch Goldstein walks into a mosque during Friday prayers and proceeds to mow down with a submachine gun dozens, nearly 30, Muslim men and boys praying at a mosque in Hebron. He does this as a religious act, an act mandated by God who states unequivocally at several points in the Bible that the Israelites should enter into and take possession of the whole of the land of Israel and that the others should be driven out or slaughtered outright.
For me to step back in horror and claim that he was not a real Jew or that what he did does not represent “authentic” modern or civilized Judaism or the “essence” of Judaism, is a cheap dodge, it is to defensively protect my tradition and myself from critique. Not only was Baruch Goldstein Jewish, he was a good Jew. He loved and observed Torah, believed in God and was deeply concerned about the prospects of survival of Medinat Israel (State of Israel). But the fact of the matter is that Baruch Goldstein’s Judaism and its mandates facilitated his act of mass murder and continue to legitimate that act in the eyes of the right-wing religious nationalist settler movement in Israel to whom he is a martyr for the holy cause. Whether I want to claim him or not, Baruch Goldstein was a Torah-practicing Jew. Whether I want to claim it or not, the holy texts that were the basis for his act reside within the Jewish Torah/Talmud canon.
My point here is to counterpunch what I take to be the first argument of the theist in defense of her religion in the face of Hitchen’s charge. O it’s not real Islam or real Christianity, or real Judaism, O he just interpreted it wrong, hence my tradition has no accountability when it comes to the murderous and undemocratic acts of its religious fanatics. The Platonic Form theory of Religion is not only the refuge of religious absolutists and spiritual imperialists, it is the too easy refuge of the goodhearted majority of us who simply do not want to do the hard and unpleasant work of bringing negative judgment to bear on that which we love, the traditions that ground our very being.
This is the crucial point at which Hitchens critique falls woefully short and shallow for those of us who stand within religious traditions to which we are committed. Hitchens, like Freud before him, in the same clever, snotty, condescending tone, rules out the possibility of religious practitioners and believers offering any balm or ammunition against the onslaughts of religious totalitarianism and terrorism. Rather, he (they) issue blanket rejections of religion as if it is driven monolithically by the pathological (and from my religious perspective, idolatrous) addiction to power, security and certainty of its practitioners and believers . By simplisticly reducing religion to the unsavory and neurotic impetus to absolutistic belief, Hitchens offers a weak and unrealistic portrait and traps us in the logic, categories and priorities of the Platonic Form Theory. (religion is one, immutable thing, il/legitimate, and the odd agreement between religious fundamentalists and secular modernists like Hitchens, that the objective verifiability of religion’s truth as the only measurement of religious validity)
Hitchens and Freud are also off target in that religions offer us much more than these neurotic and mollifying pacifiers to the soul. Religions are not monolithic, not all traditions or traditions within traditions, require of the practitioner absolute unquestioning faith and militaristic obedience. For many traditions, belief is not even the central mode of piety (a fact that Hitchens does not seem aware in his gatling-gun approach). The cultural inheritance that they give us is more than what Freud assumed it to be, a way to keep the Id and class resentment relatively under control. Some of the most powerful tools of justice and weapons of the human spirit and are embedded within our religious traditions.
To use Judaism as an example again, if Baruch Goldstien had been so inclined, he could have chosen to guide his path with the many sections of Torah that demand that Jews love and do right by their neighbors, even if we find that difficult. Does part of the Jewish tradition sanction mass murder; yes. Does part of the Jewish tradition sanction human decency; yes. Religions contain within them the means of their own healing and self-critique. The fact that traditions are not monolithic, that they are a amalgamation of voices, texts, imperatives, practices and beliefs is for me a measure of hope and ethical prospect. Our traditions, all of our traditions, offer conflicting visions of what our deity or deities expect from us; the fact that they are multivoiced requires of us discernment and judgment, not, as Hitchens seems to suggest, on the one hand either religious absolutism and willed-blindness and or on the other hand, the rational psychological maturity to leave the things of our species’ childhood behind with anti-theism (as if reason and rationality were not susceptible to the motives of power and self-deception)
So, to conclude, Should we take Hitchens/Freud’s cure (our God Reason)? Yes and No
To detach ourselves from religion altogether, neither of them are silly enough to really propose this as a viable solution or to retreat to the domain of a religion utterly privatized,. Neither of these are good options. So what then is the appropriate response of one committed to a religious tradition to Hitchen’s charge. My proposal is Instead of apologetics, instead of defensively denying the bloody obvious, I would suggest that the person committed to a religious tradition take Freud’s cure only to the extent that it allows us enough analytic distance that we can bring ethical judgment to bear on the deportment of our traditions in the public sphere. What I am suggesting here is not self-flagellation or abandonment of tradition but the simple yet sometimes painful act of self-critique, the very self-critique and analysis that Freud and Hitchens seem to suggest is impossible within the bounds of an organized religion.
Religions are big, tough kids, oftentimes the playground bully, my point is that they will not shrivel up and die at the first hint of critique, from within or without. They can hack it. Religions are more resilient than their individual practitioners. They are tough enough to take autosurgery, rebuking and correction
Here, the categories and capacities of judgment are required of us, not for the purpose of lovingly condemning our neighbor to hell out for their beliefs, sexuality, ethnicity, hygiene habits, hair color whatever criteria de jour of religious bigotry, not for the sake of proving with a modernists’ fervor that our version of The Truth with at capital T and that everyone else’s is impure, non-orthodox, weak, heretical, but for the purpose of calling our fellow practitioners and believers and ourselves to account for the intended and non-intentional damage our traditions wreak upon other human beings with whom we have to share this planet whether we like it or not. Not just Tolerance, but Judgment is required of us if we are not to abandon our traditions to their worst tendencies which Hitchens and Freud so bluntly lay out for us in their respective “Futures.”
While contending with our intra religious controversies, it is also necessary to address the overriding norms of pluralism that guide American public and inter-religious dialogue and political activity.
Unlike Hitchens, I have no qualms about religious rhetoric and analysis being used in the public square of social conversation and debate. I cannot and will not set aside my religiously-influenced ideas and judgments. to disagree with each other, yes; find each other’s worldview and way of life repulsive and morally abhorrent, yes; But the litmus test in this nation must be living by the rules of religious pluralism and constitutionally mandated dis-establishment (I confess to a Judaic love for law as that which founds and sustains a social body). I am concerned for the wellbeing of the Constitution and Bill of Rights when I see Christian fundamentalists demanding a Christianization (again, only their version is legitimate) of our laws and institutions. I shudder when I hear the shrill voice of those who would, on the basis of their religious beliefs regarding what is Godly or natural, would rollback or deny the rights of citizenship for gays and lesbians (if these laws of God and Nature arguments sound familiar that’s because they are; they are the same ones that have been trotted out to prevent the emancipation of slaves, the inclusion of women, the poor, people of color in the body politic, to prevent the evils of race mixing and integration, in short, to exclude certain American citizens from full citizenship – {Arendt on the necessity of maintaining healthy citizenship rights as a preventative for religious and political totalitarian repression and scapegoating}
Despite this, I believe that Religion should not and cannot be kept on the sidelines of American public life, not even religious absolutism should be sidelined: the 1st Amendment guarantees the rights of all to believe and practice their religious tradition, no matter what I think of it. But what must be sidelined and restrained is the mobilization of religious absolutism, what Hitchens calls the “stupidity and cruelty of mobilized faith” that actively and intentionally seeks to attack the constitutional basis of religious freedom and to undermine the very foundation of our civil life together.
In this country, we are in no sense immune to these movements, whether they spring from Islamic anti-western sentiment or anti-democratic (lowercase) movements of Christian fundamentalists. our democracy is at risk due to chronic political anemia or atrophy of the capacity and willingness to participate in a form of government that requires citizen activity.
For every act of Islamic terrorism let there be a countervailing act of Islamic salaam. For every act of Jewish ultranationalism let there be a Jewish act of negotiation across the divide. For every act of Christian anti-semitism let there be a countervailing act of interfaith dialogue. And specifically in our American scene, for every political movement on behalf of a theofacist state, let there be a countervailing movement of people of faith who are willing to honor, protect and defend the integrity of their own religious tradition and their own and each other’s religious freedom and basic human and civil rights.
I agree with Hitchens’ assessment that what is foul in our traditions goes all the way down. Not only are some interpretations and sections of the traditions abhorrent, but sometimes the holy texts themselves. Even you don’t want to go that far, if you believe that the Qur’an is the direct speech of God or that Torah and Talmud are both Torah Min Ha Shamayim, the religion, even for the first hearers of that divine word, is interpreted and lived out by flesh and blood people. Religion is lived out on the ground of history, even if its source is transhistorical. Our traditions have blood on their hands and many continue or desire to spill the blood of others in the name of religion.
(epistemological idolatry),
Difficulty of disjunction between personal integrity and goodheartedness that one finds in Christian and Islamic proselytizing, and in Jewish right-wing religious nationalists and the imperialist, unjust and often vicious social movements and politics that they engender. The road to many a hells on earth have been paved with the good intentions of the pious. (cousin Mike and missionizing in Guatemala)
What are needed are new categories of judgment. While I am a fan of the liberal democratic state, the separation of church and state and the 1st Amendment protection of religious freedom – all of these structures seek to engender the ethics of pluralism, of a tolerant live and let live approach to co-existence
But when I seek, due to my religious faith, to forcibly sodomize (legally) my fellow citizens, in such a way that I seek to legally delimit and restrict their very citizenship, the line has been crossed. If religious values are to be brought to the table of public discourse, then I argue that they be subject to the guiding norm of pluralism and peace, prosperity and the pursuit of happiness for all.
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