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When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists
When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists
When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists
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When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists

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From the New York Times bestselling author of American Fascists and the NBCC finalist for War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning comes this timely and compelling work about new atheists: those who attack religion to advance the worst of global capitalism, intolerance and imperial projects.

Chris Hedges, who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity School, has long been a courageous voice in a world where there are too few. He observes that there are two radical, polarized and dangerous sides to the debate on faith and religion in America: the fundamentalists who see religious faith as their prerogative, and the new atheists who brand all religious belief as irrational and dangerous. Both sides use faith to promote a radical agenda, while the religious majority, those with a commitment to tolerance and compassion as well as to their faith, are caught in the middle.

The new atheists, led by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, do not make moral arguments about religion. Rather, they have created a new form of fundamentalism that attempts to permeate society with ideas about our own moral superiority and the omnipotence of human reason.

I Don't Believe in Atheists critiques the radical mindset that rages against religion and faith. Hedges identifies the pillars of the new atheist belief system, revealing that the stringent rules and rigid traditions in place are as strict as those of any religious practice.

Hedges claims that those who have placed blind faith in the morally neutral disciplines of reason and science create idols in their own image -- a sin for either side of the spectrum. He makes an impassioned, intelligent case against religious and secular fundamentalism, which seeks to divide the world into those worthy of moral and intellectual consideration and those who should be condemned, silenced and eradicated. Hedges shatters the new atheists' assault against religion in America, and in doing so, makes way for new, moderate voices to join the debate. This is a book that must be read to understand the state of the battle about faith.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherFree Press
Release dateMar 10, 2009
ISBN9781439158364
When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists
Author

Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist. He spent nearly two decades as a correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, with fifteen years at the New York Times. He is the author of numerous bestselling books, including Empire of Illusion; Death of the Liberal Class; War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning; and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with Joe Sacco. He writes a weekly column for the online magazine Truthdig. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    What I was hoping for when I picked this up was some help in defending my faith against the arguments of followers of "new atheists" like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, without coming off as a fundamentalist right-wing nut-job. It seems that the extremists on both sides of the "God question" oversimplify their opponents, and we moderates - neither anti-Evolution nor pro-Intelligent Design - get caught in the crossfire.But Hedges is just as guilty of letting a few extremists define atheism. He's not arguing with any of the atheists I know, he's arguing with the loutish, pro-war, anti-Muslim Chris Hitchen and his friends at "Reason" magazine. Worse, he throws moderate and liberate church-goers under the bus by calling us naive for wanting a better world.Hedges sees any attempt to improve human morality as a delusional, destructive and down-right selfish attempt at a utopian society. As if trying to better myself and my community will inevitably lead to my wanting to eradicate the world of all evil. For Hedges there's no in between - if you want a better world (and why would you since according to him there is no chance at that ever happening), than you want to rule the world and kill any one that stands in your way. And, God-forbid, if you're a member of a liberal church you're even worse because you don't even *know* that this is what you want.Hedges also errs in assuming that all atheists share the same beliefs, so to speak, of Chris Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. The atheist bloggers I read are - and always were - against the war in Iraq. In fact, most seem to feel the need to separate Hitchens the Warmonger (and Hitchens the Egomaniacal Drunk) from Hitchens the Atheist - not that you ever truly can, but they try - before praising something he has said on the subject.I was terribly disappointed with this book. Not only does it not bring something constructive to the subject, it uses over-generalizations - in exactly the same way extremists on both sides of the argument do - to confuse the topic even more. I would hope that the next author who tries to tackle this subject would take a few steps back and try to get a better view of the big picture. That would be a refreshing change from everything else I've read on this topic.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I agree with the basic sentiment behind this book, that the new atheists are awfully dogmatic and should get a more nuanced view of religion, but it was sloppily done, like a string of last-minute sermons strung together at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning. The author seems to believe that human nature is fundamentally sinful, which is not where I'm coming from. I skimmed this one -- I think if I'd read every word I would have gotten too annoyed with the author.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Reading the jacket of this book, I was a little puzzled as to its subject. Having read it, I suggest The Misanthropic Wrath of Chris Hedges as a title. Hedges rages about how humanity disappoints him, especially the "West" and the United States. The text is disjointed, internally contradictory, and rambles over a wide range of topics, and I found it very poorly argued. The fury is so intense, that in the middle of the book, I flipped to the smiling jacket author portrait and wondered if Hedges was on drugs when they took it. I read an article once that angry people think that they are demonstrating their sincerity, but most people react to the rage and miss the message. My main reaction to the book is to hope that I am never trapped in the presence of Hedges. One of his particular hatreds is for utopians who believe in the perfectibility of human nature and are willing to cull the least perfect with violence. Actually, I agree with this, and with most of Hedges assessment of the "war on terror", but I begin to worry about the company that I am in. Hedges attributes utopian thinking to "fundamentalists." I don't like the use of this term: it has a meaning with regard to religion, but not with regard to science. I think this is a rhetorical trick by which Hedges takes a term that has fallen into some bad repute and hurls it at people he doesn't like as a piece of invective, as if we needed more of that. I don't that "human nature" is to be confused with cultural traits, which can be changed; accordingly, I think that Hedges misses the boat with his criticism of Dawkins' "memes." I don't necessarily associate religious fundamentalism with "utopian thinking" either. Some believe that the world cannot be redeemed, except by a miracle performed by god, and may actually have to be replaced.Hedges is unclear as to what he means by "new atheists": sometimes he seems to be condemning science as a bad idea altogether, and other times he narrows his attacks down to Ron Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, E. O Wilson, Susan Blackmore, and Daniel Dennett. I should perhaps state here that I am an atheist. I have read at least some of the work by five of these people, and I would agree that four of them are sometimes over the top in their expressions of atheism. Certainly, all of them think that science is a better guide for humanity than religion, but I am not convinced that they are in fact utopians. The best that Hedges can do is to make the case that Harris would sanction violence in defense of his own society, not exactly the same thing. When Hedges attempts to contrast this with Neibuhr, whom I think he admires, and who argues that pacifism can be carried too far, the effect is surrealistic. Hedges also accuses them of ignorance, as when Hitchens argues that the issue of the creation of the creator has never been addressed. Hedges' response to this leaves me more convinced than ever that it hasn't, although he obviously thinks he is making the opposite case.At one point, Hedges asserts that "Reigns of terror are the bastard children of the Enlightenment." This is ahistorical poppycock. In the first place, it seriously conflicts with Hedges own assertion that human nature is unchanging. Secondly, the European Expansion began in 1500, well before the Enlightenment, and was carried out in the name of God and country (not to mention personal profit.) I happen to have read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel immediately before this book. Diamond makes it clear that in times and places far removed from the European Enlightenment, people generally "engulf" weaker neighbors. I think that this is a fair example of the level of Hedges' reasoning. Hedges also ignores the simple fact that some scientists are religious, especially as one goes back in time, and the same can be said of Enlightenment thinkers. In addition, it does not follow that all opinions of atheists are, or must be, based upon demonstrated scientific fact. If a Methodist bishop announced that tutti-frutti is the best sherbet, I don't think that most people would take that as a statement of dogma. Hedges defends religion as a somewhat vague general concept, pointing to heroic believers. The problem is, atheists can point to truly appalling believers, and one is engage in a war of anecdotes. The one accomplishment I would give Hedges is that he points out, to a country chiefly worried about religious-based terror, that terrorists can be atheists, as well. Certainly one can demonstrate that religious belief and activity, or atheism, does not necessarily make one a good and kind person, but are the religious worse? As a friend of mine, also an atheist, pointed out, people are violent, and it may be the religion is used as an excuse and is not really the source of violence. Unless someone can come up with a meaningful study of the effects of religion and irreligion, it is just a lot of hot air.I can't really think of anyone to whom I would recommend this temper tantrum.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I will start by saying that I am sympathetic to the overall idea behind this book: a strict, "militant" atheism has the potential to -and in some people probably already has- become a fundamentalism. Fundamentalism, in any shape or form, is a "Bad Thing" that must be guarded against. I also am already a subscriber to the idea that humans are not morally perfectible, that this is usually a big component, implicit or explicit, of said fundamentalism. I think it evident, as well, that human society as a whole, if such a thing exists, is probably not steadily improving in some absolute moral sense; minimally, that any such gains can be lost in the blink of an eye.

    So far, so good. Now, lets walk through how Hedges goes wrong.

    Chapter One, a couple of Major Issues:

    On page 20 Hedges quotes nearly a paragraph from Sam Harris. He cuts the quote to being with what reads like Harris proposing that "we" be prepared to kill other people if "we" deems their beliefs to be too dangerous.

    But this not at all what the section in Harris is actually saying; if you go back to the source and read it, the paragraph (and preceding paragraphs) are talking about how beliefs shape our actions. Harris then he goes on to say, as quoted by Hedges, that, "Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them." But this is in a section discussion beliefs, systems of beliefs, and so forth! Including how much belief can motivate us, up to and including killing people!

    Strike two. Page 36. Quotes Harris as, again, proposing that we nuke an Islamic regime that acquires long range nuclear weapons. Which is not at all what Harris is saying! He *clearly* states that this would be ridiculous outcome, and moreover a crime against humanity, but that some future US government might feel they have no alternative. He then goes on to say how this could result in a counter strike against the US, and this would lead to -obviously- more mass death, and all because of irrationality.

    But Hedges doesn't present *any* of that. He again cuts the quote to make it sound like Harris is actively proposing we go out and nuke e.g. Iran as soon as we think they have a long range nuclear capability. In fact, the scenario describe is morally complicated; there is no "good solution." Again, all of which Hedges either missed completely or disingenuously ignored to better make his point.

    Note: In the passage in The End of Faith Harris places blame squarely at the feet of "religion" for what would be a US first strike against a fundamentalist state. Which seems, well, not at all fair. It is *this* reasoning that Hedges seems to really, really get angry over. And I would say understandably so. This is also couched in page after page of Harris "demonstrating" how Islam is a religion of violence. Which strikes many as more than a bit bigoted. Here of there Harris walks this back a bit, saying that, more or less, e.g. Christianity was a religion of violence at one point. But that gets lost in his repetition of, "Islam, Islam, Islam" everywhere else.


    In chapter two, Hedges discusses science and religion and how he sees scientists and atheists misusing "science" (e.g. turning it into what Hedges calls the "cult of science.") I, again, am sympathetic to some overarching ideas here: e.g. it seems ridiculous to me that there are some fairly smart people talking about "the singularity" in 10 to 50 years. This is fantasy dressed up as religion dressed up as science.

    Hedges then goes on to commit a whole series of mistakes that reveal how little he understands both what he is criticizing directly, as well as the underlying science. He waves his arms at "Darwinism" being applied outside biology, and says this is a mistake; he seams to mean that theories that are part of modern, neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory are applied outside biology, and this is (universally?) bad. And then he talks about Nazis.

    He waves his arms at Quantum Mechanics, talking about how processes at the particle level are irreducibly random, leaps from there to the fact that the world is unpredictable, and says viola. Of course, the two have nothing to do with each other. Quantum processes are inherently random, and at the sub-microscopic scale this randomness becomes evident in certain situations; "life" is random because we don't have enough information. Theoretically, at least, you could drive cars around from now until the heat death of the universe and not have an accident, given sufficient information; car accidents are not inherently random. International politics, driving cars, religious debates, and day to day life are not quantum processes, not inherently random either; just really, really complicated/information laden. Two different kinds of randomness, and never the twain shall meet.

    I could go on in this vein, but will stop. I really have a pet peeve with people dragging out QM to explain stuff, as they nearly, nearly, nearly never have the foggiest idea of what they are talking about.

    I'll just do one more chapter. In chapter three, I see much that I agree with. Yes, there is a brittleness to the "New Atheist" program, though I think Hedges overplays this somewhat. I began a couple of years ago to become dissatisfied with what I was hearing from e.g. "The Four Horsemen" because it was invariably to simplistic, or just illogical. To claim that "religion" is responsible for all wrongs committed in the name of one or another particular religion, while "atheism" is not responsible for anything is a severe double standard. To say the least. To dismiss, essentially, all other causes for discord, war, murder, etc. other than religion is, well, stupid.

    However, Hedges overplays this a bit when he, in turn, simplifies and flattens the feelings of "new atheists." He sees them merely as yet another group of fundamentalists; he doesn't seem to even consider that they are reacting to the increasingly politicized fundamentalist religious movements in the US, or the hubris and privilege that "the religious" often express when confronted with the fact that some people are in fact not religious. He seems to lean toward blaming atheists for the misunderstanding and stress that the existence of two distinct, probably incommensurable, world views causes. E.g. that for a person who does not believe in a "higher power", anthropomorphic or not, it is actually often fairly *disturbing* to deal with full-grown adults *who have an invisible friend.* Add to this that said invisible-friend-having people also run, essentially, the whole world... it is difficult to simply accept that as an alternative world view. And I imagine it must be very disturbing for those who do believe in a God/god/gods/power to have people around who hold the very concept -not just your particular belief, but the concept itself- as invalid.


    And that none of that has got anything to do with Empire or Globalization of the vapidity of middle class life. Which clearly are Hedges true concerns (and, to an extent, again, I have to agree with his views.)


    Anyway, since this review is quickly becoming as long as the book, I will stop. I will say that I've rarely read something that I found myself so much in agreement with while simultaneously so strongly in disagreement with. Part of it is that Hedges is somewhat sloppy in his reasoning, part of it is that I just don't agree with him everywhere, part of it is that I think he is a bit hypocritical. But he does well point out the overreach of the "New Atheists." He is not as successful at explaining the idea behind the lack of absolute progress (I'd say go read John N. Gray if you are interested in this.) And I think he fails to address that his entire book is a call to a higher morality, a call for moral progress in effect, or that he is choosing to define religion and cherry-pick authors and beliefs (in Hedges case, in to case a good light) in just the same way that he accuses Hitchens and Harris of doing (in their cases, to cast in a very nearly uniformly bad light.)
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Good subject, lousy execution. I should have dropped it as soon he wrote something re how people in Third World countries aspire to a lifestyle "like ours" or like that of developed countries. No, they don't. Wait a minute--didn't this guy live overseas? In poor countries, poor people and middle-class people aspire to the lifestyle of their own upper-class, most certainly including their politicians. That means servants, chauffeurs, expensive jewelry, gigantic houses; they sure don't want to take the commuter trains, even if they're sparkling and bear no resemblance to the Japanese variety. Doesn't Hedges know these Mercs cost hundreds of thousands of dollars? What about the minor functionary or cop with a $30,000 car? Hasn't he noticed that the politicians in developing countries have a hell of a lot more assets than ones in Japan, Europe and the U.S.? He's not a good observer and is shockingly ignorant of great historical events, such as the Japanese war on and occupation of China and other Asian countries.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a rant against the scientistic fundamentalism of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, etc. Hedges mounts a perfectly valid attack against this shallow and deluded propaganda. This materialistic bigotry wearing the clothes of science and critical thinking deserves the dressing down dealt by Hedges and really much more. Hedges founds his criticism in Christianity which is doubtless a fine foundation for the majority of his audience. I though am a Buddhist so for me the book doesn't quite work. This book presents several challenges for Buddhists. What would a Buddhist criticism of belligerent scientism look like? Hedges is constantly referring to the original sin or the essential imperfectability of humans when he criticizes fundamentalism. But in some sense the perfectability of humans is at the core of Buddhism, i.e. the third Noble Truth of the Buddha, the Truth of the Cessation of Suffering. Indeed, shallow interpretations of Freedom and the Path to Freedom can get Buddhists stuck in various forms of fundamentalism. Indeed, various modern forms of Buddhism even seems to ally themselves with scientism and thereby flirt, at the very least, with fundamentalism and similar forms of conceptual grasping that thereby stray from liberation. This book presents more of a question than an answer for Buddhists. This book as a critical itch, as the start of a significant project, is probably how it will appear to most readers with a reflective bent. Hedges opens the door to a deep subject. He motivates further thought in a very effective way. He brings up an urgent and central issue of our time. This is an important book, not so much because of its arguments, but because of the questions they open up.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book provides the best critic of the so called "new atheism" that I've encountered thus far. The book articulates the position that seeking the transcendent experience is an integral part of the human experience. Suggestions that progress in human knowledge and science make religion unnecessary is labeled as arrogance out of touch with human nature. The author comes from a Christian background; He even has seminary training. However, this book is a defense of all religions, not just Christianity. The author indicates that he seldom attends church services, and when he does he rolls his eyes at the things said which indicate that the members consider themselves to be honorary sinners. So he's certainly not defending any religious organization as an institution. But rather he's defending it from the standpoint of human psychology, sociology, politics and history.To my tastes, the author was a bit guilty of demonizing the targets of his criticism. He describes Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris as being irrationally extreme to the same degree as the radical religious fundamentalists on the other end of the spectrum. Apparently Hitchens and Harris have made comments that indicate that it may be necessary to make a preemptive military strike against radical Islamists to save civilization. (I don't think Dawkins has said anything like that.) Comments such as those don't deserve support. But I'm inclined to feel more accepting of atheist with a humanist inclination than I am of conservative religionists who seem to hate everything human. By painting his opponents in the worst possible light the author makes discrediting them easier. Ironically, that's the same tactic that Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris use against religion.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not what I expected when first browsing it in the bookstore, this is still an interesting book, though sometimes it lacks clarity and organization, especially in opening chapters. Hedges attempts to combine two very important topics into one tiny volume: (a) the ideological battle between religious fundamentalists and the new scientific Atheists (such as Dawkins, Harris, etc.); and (b) the American "war on terror" and the idea of a "clash of civilizations" with the Islamic world that allows us to commit atrocities in the name of preventing them. This latter topic dominates the second half of the book, and clearly Hedges has more experience in discussing its nuances and details (to be expected considering some of his previous published works).This book begins, however, with an impassioned discussion of the "new atheists" and their hypocritical attack on religion. It reminds me of a comment I once left on Sean Carroll's blog, Cosmic Variance, in which I said that "listening to the new brand of scientific Atheists argue with Christian fundamentalists about the nature and value of religion is like watching Pepsi and Coke attack each other over their respective nutritional value." (That comment did not go over too well, in case you were wondering.) The point Hedges makes, eventually, is that modern fundamentalism shows up in many forms, among them as a blind faith in scientific rationalism, and that the "new atheism" and the religious fundamentalism it attacks are made up of largely the same stuff (such as the myth of human progress/perfectibility, the justification of violence in the name of ideals, the dehumanization of dissenters and disbelievers, and the anti-intellectual rejection of complexity and subtlety in debate and discussion).The connection between these new Atheists and the American "war on terror" is made by statements by scientists like Harris and Dawkins, who side with American military power in exterminating all those who threaten the triumph of reason and its supposed embodiment, Western civilization. Before reading this book, I had been only vaguely aware of the racist and anti-Muslim tendencies of these scientists' writings (having usually encountered them while discussing Christianity and religious tolerance more generally). Some reviewers have suggested Hedges willfully robbed Harris's statements in particular of their appropriate context, but the quotes themselves (for example, about our right to use torture and death as a means of protecting our own superior society in the name of "reason") often seem straightforward enough to make me wonder exactly what kind of context or argument could have made them sound even remotely justified or reasonable.All in all, an interesting book, though Hedges often leaves something to be desired in terms of clarity of thought, so overwhelmed by disgust and frustration does he seem at times. It's hard to blame him for this (and I can certainly relate), but one would hope that such jumbled insights could have been refined a bit during the book's revision and editing process. In the midst of his outbursts, Hedges even sometimes makes a few controversial or seemingly intolerant remarks of his own, so readers are cautioned to take the book with a grain of salt. Still, he raises some very important issues and provides plenty of food for thought.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    So sloppy and lazy. Atheism isn’t an ideology, just the starting fact that there is no god. Everything else is learned through reason.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I read Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens before reading this book, along with Stephen Hawking and Brian Greene. I would recommend reading this book after reading theirs. Chris Hedges debated Hitchens and Harris, inspiring him to collect the arguments in this book. Hedges is a foreign correspondent, covering multiple wars and directing the Middle East bureau of the NY Times. He is no evangelical, he grew up a liberal Presbyterian that rejects certain parts of the Bible as literal (This creates some logical errors for him, see below.) He is critical of fundamentalist, right-wing American Christianity and sees it as equally grievous as the New Atheists.

    Hedges writes that American Christians have grown wealthy via America's prosperity and globalization, and this prosperity has lead to arrogant behavior and churches that "love the poor but hate how they smell." Liberal Christians err in thinking that by becoming all-inclusive and standing for few things in particular they can make everything better. Hedges is not a neocon but rejects Christian liberals who embrace pacifism and believe, like the New Atheists, that mankind is progressing toward some more-englightened utopian future of its own accord. He likewise points out that the religious right and secular humanists both hold up America as a light to the world-- a place of blessed freedom and enlightenment. But this is problematic, as history tells us our country was made prosperous in part by slave labor, breaking treaties and massacring Native Americans, and that our enlightened civilization killed hundreds of thousands of women and children by intentionally dropping the atomic bombs on civilian populations in WWII. These actions were supported both by Christians who believed God created certain men superior to others as well as social Darwinists like Herbert Spencer who argued that evolution demanded survival of the fittest races. In other words, we have no moral high ground to stand on.

    Hedges seems not to have read Francis Schaeffer, which is a pity for his arguments. But he is similar to Schaeffer in his examination of art and culture. For example, WWI occurred after a period in which there was much talk about the evolution of an enlightened people. The post-war art reflected the jaded cynicism and a rejection of those views. Hedges rightly compares Sam Harris et al to Mr. Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899), a highly civilized, enlightened European supposedly above the savages he meets in the Congo who becomes a savage himself. Such a vision is the logical conclusion of the New Atheists world. Harris, for example, advocates pre-emptive nuclear strikes on Muslims who he sees as a major threat to his secular freedoms. Likewise, Christopher Hitchens was supportive of the 2003 invasion of Iraq because it boded well for the spread of secularism over religious fanaticism.

    New Atheists preach a utopia achieved by enlightened human evolution and argue that we're evolving toward a better nature. This leads to a sort of racism, because they purport that it's the religious people who are holding our society back. Eliminate them, and let the intellectually enlightened elite make the rules. (That's the logical conclusion of their vision as pointed out in the 1970s by Francis Schaeffer.) Hedges writes that this is not only dangerous, but absurd, and contrary to what history has shown time and again and that he has observed around the world in various cultures. We're not growing more peacefully enlightened but more violent, and the violence has little-to-nothing to do with religion. Hedges disagrees with Harris that the Balkan war was religious, or that wars are primarily religious. He covered many as a correspondent, and argues that religious systems all over the world have been pluralistic and tolerant of others, contra what Harris & Hitchens preach. Suicide bombers have little to do with religion and more about shame and occupation. Hedges points out that suicide bombings originated with anarchists and communists on the left, and were originally used by groups such as the Tamil Tigers. The first suicide bomber in the U.S. was a Leftist making a political statement. Saudis and Palestinians see this as a way to wage war in the absence of armies, they find their occupation by foreign powers shameful and worth fighting.

    Hedges does well in explaining how Richard Dawkins misuses evolutionary biology, he uses it as a basis for designing the structures in which we should interact; our legal code. This is as grievous as codifying the Ten Commandments. Darwin's theory was not a litmus test for determining whether human behavior was beneficial or not. Darwin in no way thought mankind was evolving into a more enlightened state or to some utopian endpoint. Darwin was a student of Malthus and had his own racist views, but Herbert Spencer took them farther, making social Darwinism into its own religion. This misuse of Darwin has created a "cult of science" that is harmful. Dawkins' world leads to selective abortions, eugenics, and genetic manipulation to weed out the bad elements and make ourselves better, more immortal.

    Real scientific study tells us that evolution is a series of random processes that always finds ways around attempts to control manipulation. Hedges writes that quantum mechanics demonstrates that some things are unknowable, and that there will always be randomness. Psychology (and behavioral economics) repeatedly shows that people do not make rational choices, no matter what amount of information they have. The book concludes with a diatribe against the poisonous obsession with image, status, and wealth that is destroying our society and keeping us ignorant. Hedges writes that these New Atheists are products of this culture, using marketing techniques that play to our fears and ignorance, to hold themselves up as the experts who we should buy the product from. They dismiss our cultural, biological, and psychological realities and promise salvation by science and the evolution of human character.

    More troubling, Harris and Hitchens pretended to be open-minded while having very closed systems. Hedges quotes from a debate where Harris refused to change his views on people in the Middle East despite being shown that he spoke no Arabic, had never lived there, and misrepresented a Pew research poll he was citing. Hitchens, likewise, made all sorts of theological comments but refused to read any theological work because it was all "worthless."

    Forgiveness cannot be explained biologically. People are more than a random compilation of molecules because we have a spirit or soul that is a "mystery." Hedges' weakness is accepting the New Atheists comments on morality. New Atheists use a measure of morality similar to that of Christians, but without the logical underpinnings. If there is no God and we are all just random molecules and there is no such thing as a "soul" or an "afterlife" and no one is made in God's image, then on what basis to we decide right and wrong? Majority rule? The rule of the elite like Sam Harris? This is the biggest weakness of the New Atheists and Hedges misses it. But he does argue that religion is what creates ethics. That there is a soul that is a "mystery," and therefore sacred and to be protected. Biology does not give us any reason to forgive others, or love them as ourselves. The author writes that religious thought encourages human inquiry, to explore our universe.

    Hedges writes that to reject the idea of sin is "catastrophic." The concept of sin is a check on utopian visions of totalitarians. We will never have a final victory over evil or achieve some type of moral perfection. As such, he critiques both New Atheists who proclaim there is no God, no soul, no afterlife, and have no means of defining evil or sin as well as liberal Christians who downplay the depravity of man. He quotes heavily from Reinhold Niebuhr throughout the book.

    I believe that Hedges has his own logic problem here. He rejects literal interpretations of the Bible yet criticizes liberal Christians for not taking sin literally enough. His argument relies on some absolutes, and since those are biblically-based it begs the question: How much of the Bible or truth does he believe in? How does he decide? He seems to embrace modern cosmology and natural selection. This is problematic because the Bible says death only entered the world because of sin-- you can't have millions of creatures dying in an evolutionary process and hold to biblical teachings about the origin of sin and death. If you reject Genesis, then you have to reject Jesus' quoting of the book, which makes even more things fallible.

    Hedges is mainly arguing against the illogical arguments of the New Atheists and pointing out the danger in following their philosophies to their logical conclusions. Likewise, he is attacking both liberal Christians and evangelicals. About 70% of his critique is on those he debated, the other 30% is directed at Christians.

    I enjoyed this book and agree with Hedges in much, but he has his own formal errors that need to be addressed. He would do well to read William Lane Craig, Francis Schaeffer, and Ravi Zacharias to name a few. 3.5 stars out of 5.

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked this book, somehow I still have no assurance of what the author wants to active, but it gave me an idea that the overall goal of the book was to denounce the exaggeration from either sides, atheists and religious. I would agree with different assumptions made by the writer and also hold some reserves with others.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I read Chris Hedges' previous book, American Fascists, because I agreed with its thesis, but nevertheless found it highly disappointing. Giving the author the benefit of the doubt, I chalked it up to plain ineptitude. But when I saw this book, I began to suspect that Hedges was not just inept, but dishonest---and upon reading the book, those suspicions were confirmed.Contrary to the misleading title, this is not a "there are no atheists in foxholes, everyone secretly believes in God and people who claim to be atheists just hate Him" kind of book---believe it or not, it is even worse than that. It is basically an attack an what Hedges calls "New Atheists." When I first heard this term a couple of years ago, I was skeptical about its validity, as one should always be wary of neologisms particularly in the political realm. "New Atheists" are those who not only are arrogant enough to actively disbelieve in God, but also have the effrontery to try to publicly defend their views---as opposed to the somewhat less unacceptable old atheists who kept their mouths shut and stayed in their place. Actually, there's nothing new about outspoken freethinkers, and they're in good company, joining the ranks of such radical skeptics as Socrates, Aristotle, Thomas Paine and several other Founding Heroes, etc.Hedges' strategy is to single out the authors of several recent bestsellers promoting atheism, namely Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. To be sure, there are good grounds on which to criticize all of these people---Sam Harris, after claiming that religion is bad, then advocates Buddhism (he says it's more "scientific" than other mystical beliefs) and Dawkins, though a good polemicist against Creationism, is actually not a very good evolutionary theorist (he continues to advocate "gene selectionism," his defense of which in The Selfish Gene made him famous, despite the fact that most other reputable biologists dismissed the theory shortly thereafter)---but Hedges probably does not mind these flaws. What really makes him angry is the fact that these atheists claim to be certain that theism is wrong. This certainty, Hedges argues, places them in the same camp with the Christian fundamentalists he attacked in his previous book, their flaw also being that they held certain convictions---that is, it is not the content of their beliefs that is bad, but that they really believe them; not how they came to hold their views (by reason or faith? though it turns out there is no such question for Hedges, as he says the atheists' views are equally faith-based), but that they actually think that they are true.To back all of this up, you might expect Hedges to offer us a lot of facts, as his fellow journalist Hitchens did in God is Not Great, but what we get instead is a lot of quotes from Marcel Proust and Joseph Conrad, among others. Dostoevsky was a great artist, and one of my personal favorite writers, but frankly he didn't know what he was talking about much of the time, and referring to some scene in Crime and Punishment is not evidence for Hedges' case---yet that is what he continually resorts to. He also makes a lot of completely unsupported assertions, such as that, contrary to the atheists' claims, the Koran unequivocally condemns suicide and does not exhort its readers to global jihad. Unlike the atheists, who actually cited chapter and verse of the Koran, Hedges just tells us this---and it may be true, but the point is that, like the Bible, the Koran says a lot of contradictory things that could be taken as justification for a lot of things, and clearly is taken as justification for such things in significant parts of the Muslim world today. For Hedges to blithely deny this insults his readers' intelligence.Worse, he resorts to a lot of ad hominem attacks, based on straw-man misrepresentations of his opponents' actual views---for instance, he says that the "new atheists" advocate a state of perpetual war a la Orwell's 1984. This is utterly outlandish, and intellectual fraud of the worst sort. Hedges tells us that the atheists are bad because they try to dehumanize Islamic terrorists, who are actually trying to kill us, and make them look like monsters---then tells us that the atheists are inhuman monsters.This sort of contradiction runs throughout, but for philosophical Pragmatists (into which camp I'm sure Hedges falls) it's just word games anyway, so they can say or do whatever they want, without regard for the truth, since they claim there is no "truth" in the sense of our minds actually being able to know external reality. That seems to be the underlying premise Hedges is working from, and I'm sure Richard Rorty would thoroughly approve of this mess.Hedges' character could be summed up nicely (and devestatingly) by this passage from Ayn Rand (one literary figure I'd bet Hedges really hates) in Atlas Shrugged: "He was laboring to sound cynical, skeptical, superior, and hysterical together, to sound like a man who sneers at the vanity of all human beliefs and thereby demands an instantaneous belief from his listeners."

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When Atheism Becomes Religion - Chris Hedges

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Praise for When Atheism Becomes Religion (Formerly titled I Don’t Believe in Atheists)

Provocative.

The Boston Globe

Hedges brings a powerfully equipped mind and strong credibility to his call to have this new movement carefully scrutinized.

The Globe and Mail

If he is right—and there is much in this book that is compelling—we will soon be faced with a dire new world order, or disorder.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A well-timed response to the recent shelf of new books extolling atheism.

Sun-Sentinal

Praise for American Fascists

"Chris Hedges may be the most credible figure yet to detect real-life fascism in the Red America of megachurches, gay-marriage bans and Left Behind books. American Facists is at its most daring when it enunciates…the perversities that are obvious to those of us not beholden to political exigencies."

New York Observer

"American Fascists…is a call to arms against what Hedges sees as the efforts of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the operators of Trinity Broadcasting Network, among others, to turn the United States into a Christian nation. Hedges reports in fascinating detail what goes on inside churches, conventions, and meeting halls of the Christian right."

Los Angeles Times

This is a powerful book that looks inside some of the darkest movements on American soil.

Time Out New York

Praise for Losing Moses on the Freeway

Telling his own story, Mr. Hedges writes better than anyone else in the game, without sentiment but full of love and hate…He walks out of these pages as a good enough man—better than most, perhaps—but best of all, he emerges as a teller of human tales with the unusual capacity to get them right.

New York Observer

"At a time when the mere mention of religion can excite so much passion, anxiety, and discord, Chris Hedges’ Losing Moses on the Freeway offers a sane and bracing way to think about, and rethink, the whole subject of faith. Each of the deeply felt essays finds spirit lessons in the most unlikely places."

O, The Oprah Magazine

Hedges brings a broad and secular perspective to a deep examination of the principles of the Ten Commandments. He turns a sharp eye toward a variety of human experiences touching on elements of the commandments in ways that are uncommon and insightful…A deeply insightful and moving book.

Booklist

Praise for War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

A brilliant, thoughtful, timely and unsettling book…it will rattle jingoists, pacifists, moralists, nihilists, politicians and professional soldiers equally…Abounds with Hedges’ harrowing and terribly moving eyewitness accounts…Powerful and informative.

The New York Times Book Review

[A] powerful chronicle of modern war…A persuasive call for humility and realism in the pursuit of national goals by force of arms…A potent and eloquent warning.

The New York Times

The best kind of war journalism: It is bitterly poetic and ruthlessly philosophical. It sends out a powerful message to people contemplating the escalation of the ‘war against terrorism.’

Los Angeles Times

A compelling read and a valuable counterweight to the more antiseptic discussions common among strategic analysts.

Foreign Affairs

This should be required reading in this post-9/11 world as we debate the possibility of war with Iraq.

Publishers Weekly

Chris Hedges has written a powerful book, one which bears sad witness to what veterans have long understood…[A] somber and timely warning to those—in any society—who would evoke the emotions of war for the pursuit of political gain.

—General Wesley K. Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, and author of Waging Modern War

No one is in a better position than Hedges to pronounce on the revolting things war does to everyone caught up in it…A confession of rare and frightening honesty.

—Slate.com

ALSO BY CHRIS HEDGES

American Fascists

Losing Moses on the Freeway

What Every Person Should Know About War

War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

FREE PRESS

A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Copyright © 2008 by Chris Hedges

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Free Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

FREE PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Hedges, Chris.

I don’t believe in atheists /by Chris Hedges.

p.     cm.

1. Religion. 2. Atheism. 3. Good and evil. 4. Religion and science. I. Title.

BL85.H35    2008

211—dc22                            2007039173

ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-5836-4

ISBN-10: 1-4391-5836-3

All Biblical quotations taken from the English Standard Bible.

Visit us on the World Wide Web:

http://www.SimonSays.com

For my wife, Eunice Wong,

whose love is the eternal rocks beneath,

the clear natural light,

life itself

CONTENTS

Prologue

1. The God Debate

2. Science and Religion

3. The New Fundamentalism

4. Self-Delusion

5. The Myth of Moral Progress

6. Humiliation and Revenge

7. The Illusive Self

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

What yesterday was still religion, is no longer such today; and what today is atheism, tomorrow will be religion.

—Ludwig Feuerbach¹

PROLOGUE

I flew to Los Angeles from Philadelphia in May of 2007 to debate Sam Harris, the author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, in UCLA’s cavernous Royce Hall. I debated Christopher Hitchens, who wrote God Is Not Great, two days later in San Francisco. This book is a product of those confrontations.

I paid little attention, until these two public debates, to the positions of such thinkers, who sometimes are called, or call themselves, new atheists. After all, there is nothing intrinsically moral about being a believer or a nonbeliever. There are many people of great moral probity and courage who seek meaning outside of formal religious structures, who reject religious language and religious ritual and define themselves as atheists. There are also many religious figures that in the name of one god or another sanctify intolerance, repression and violence.

The agenda of the new atheists, however, is disturbing. These atheists embrace a belief system as intolerant, chauvinistic and bigoted as that of religious fundamentalists. They propose a route to collective salvation and the moral advancement of the human species through science and reason. The utopian dream of a perfect society and a perfect human being, the idea that we are moving toward collective salvation, is one of the most dangerous legacies of the Christian faith and the Enlightenment. All too often throughout history, those who believed in the possibility of this perfection (variously defined) have called for the silencing or eradication of human beings who are impediments to human progress. They turn their particular notion of the good into an inflexible standard of universal good. They prove blind to their own corruption and capacity for evil. They soon commit evil not for evil’s sake but to make a better world.

I started Harris’s book when it was published but put it aside. His facile attack on a form of religious belief we all hate, his childish simplicity and ignorance of world affairs, as well as his demonization of Muslims, made the book tedious, at its best, and often idiotic and racist. His assertion, for example, that the war in the former Yugoslavia was caused by religion was ridiculous. As the Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times, I was in the former Yugoslavia, including in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo when it was under siege. While religious institutions and their leaders enthusiastically signed on for the slaughter directed by ethnic nationalist leaders in Zagreb, Belgrade and Sarajevo, religion had nothing to do with the war. The war had far more to do with the economic collapse of Yugoslavia than with religion or ancient ethnic hatreds. His assertion that Muslim parents welcome the death of children as suicide bombers could only have been written by someone who never sat in the home of a grieving mother and father in Gaza who have just lost their child. I did not take Harris seriously. This was a mistake.

Harris, as well as atheists from Hitchens to Richard Dawkins to Daniel Dennett, has found a following among people disgusted with the chauvinism, intolerance, anti-intellectualism and self-righteousness of religious fundamentalists. I share this disgust. I wrote a book called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. The Christian Right in the United States is the most frightening mass movement in American history. We dislike the same people. But we do not dislike them for the same reasons. This is not a small difference.

I was raised in a church where my father, a Presbyterian minister, spent his career speaking out, often at some personal cost, in support of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam antiwar movement and the gay rights movement. The religious figures I studied and the ones I sought to emulate when I was a seminarian at Harvard Divinity School, included Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, William Sloane Coffin Jr., Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, and Daniel Berrigan. It was possible to admire these men and women and what they stood for, yet hold institutional religion in little regard. It was possible to find in the Christian faith meaning and purpose while acknowledging the flaws in the Christian system and rejecting the morally indefensible passages in the Bible. Religion, as Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out, is a good thing for good people and a bad thing for bad people.

The institutional church has often used its power and religious authority to sanctify cruelty and exclusion. The self-righteous smugness and suffocating piety of religious leaders, along with the habit of speaking on behalf of people they never meet, are characteristic of many liberal and conservative churches. The church often likes the poor but doesn’t like the smell of the poor. I graduated from seminary and decided, largely because of my distaste for the hypocrisy of the church, not to get ordained. I left the United States to report on the conflicts in Central America. I rarely go to church now and when I do often roll my eyes at the inanity of the sermons and the arrogance of many of the congregants, who appear to believe they are honorary sinners. The liberal church, attacked by atheists as an ineffectual moderate religion and by fundamentalists as a nominal form of Christianity, is, as its critics point out, a largely vapid and irrelevant force. It may not support the violent projects of apocalyptic killing championed by atheists such as Harris or Hitchens—or by some Christian radicals—but it also does not understand how the world works or the seduction of evil. The liberal church is a largely middle-class, bourgeois phenomenon, filled with many people who have profited from industrialization, the American empire, and global capitalism. They often seem to think that if we can be nice and inclusive, everything will work out. The liberal church also usually buys into the myth that we can morally progress as a species. It, too, accepts, along with the atheists and the fundamentalists, Pangloss’s rosy vision in Voltaire’s Candide that we live in the best of all possible worlds ("ce meilleur des mondes possibles) and that if we have faith and trust in the forces around us, all is for the best (tout est au mieux"). It is this naïve belief in our goodness and decency—this inability to face the dark reality of human nature, our capacity for evil and the morally neutral universe we inhabit—that is the most disturbing aspect of all of these belief systems. There is nothing in human nature or human history to support the idea that we are morally advancing as a species or that we will overcome the flaws of human nature. We progress technologically and scientifically, but not morally. We use the newest instruments of technological and scientific progress to create more efficient forms of killing, repression, economic exploitation and to accelerate environmental degradation. There is a good and a bad side to human progress. We are not advancing toward a glorious utopia.

Religious institutions, however, should be separated from the religious values imparted to me by religious figures, including my father. Most of these men and women ran afoul of their own religious authorities. Religion, real religion, involved fighting for justice, standing up for the voiceless and the weak, reaching out in acts of kindness and compassion to the stranger and the outcast, living a life of simplicity, cultivating empathy and defying the powerful. It was a commitment to care for the other. Spirituality was defined not by how it is with me, but rather by the tougher spirituality of resistance, the spirituality born of struggle, of the fight with the world’s evils. This spirituality, vastly different from the narcissism of modern spirituality movements, was eloquently articulated by King and the Lutheran minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was imprisoned and put to death by the Nazis.

Too many of the new atheists, like the Christian fundamentalists, support the imperialist projects and preemptive wars of the United States as necessities in the battle against terrorism and irrational religion. They divide the world into superior and inferior races, those who are enlightened by reason and knowledge, and those who are governed by irrational and dangerous religious beliefs. Hitchens and Harris describe the Muslim world, where I spent seven years, most of them as the Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, in language that is as racist, crude and intolerant as that used by Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. They are a secular version of the religious right. They misuse the teachings of Charles Darwin and evolutionary biology just as the Christian fundamentalists misuse the Bible. They are anti-intellectual. And while the new atheists do not have the power of the Christian Right

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