Int J Philos Relig (2009) 65:139–151

DOI 10.1007/s11153-008-9188-3

Militant atheism, pragmatism, and the God-shaped hole

Andrew Fiala

Received: 13 March 2008 / Accepted: 23 September 2008 / Published online: 9 November 2008
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

Abstract This paper addresses recent examples of militant atheism. It considers

the theistic reply that describes atheism as deriving from a “God-shaped hole” in the
human soul. The paper will argue that American pragmatism offers a middle path that
avoids militant atheism without suffering from this problem. The paper describes this
middle path and considers the problem that is seen in Rorty’s recent work: how the
pragmatist can remain critical of religious fundamentalism without succumbing to a
militant version of atheism. The solution proposed is tolerant acceptance of religion
along with melioristic criticism developed within shared norms of inquiry.

Keywords Atheism · Pragmatism · William James · John Dewey · Richard Rorty ·

Christopher Hitchens · Richard Dawkins · Sam Harris

Many people think that we should just stop talking about God.
–Richard Rorty, “Cultural Politics and Arguments for God” (Rorty 2002, p. 54)

Militant atheists such as Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens think that now is the time
to finally be done talking about God. Much of this recent critique of religion is based
upon the claim that atheism is true and that the claims of religion are false. Such an
approach is often dogmatic in its assertion of cognitive superiority. The basic struc-
ture of argument found in most of these recent authors is to claim is that since modern
science has discredited the monotheistic idea of the God in the sky, religion should
be thrown onto the rubbish pile of history. The basic—and not implausible—idea of

A. Fiala (B)
Department of Philosophy, California State University, 2380 E. Keats Ave. M/S MB 105, Fresno,
CA 93740, USA
e-mail: afiala@csufresno.edu

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these atheists is that we should avoid activities, institutions, and beliefs that are not
grounded in truth.
But one should note that religion is much more complex than this critique acknowl-
edges. The unsophisticated sky-god theology and the Biblical literalism that is the focus
of much of these atheists’ criticism is a straw man that is easily (and rightly) rejected.
Dawkins and the others who claim to have triumphantly defeated the mythic sky-God
are glorying over a corpse that has been long dead. Indeed, many contemporary reli-
gionists have long been aware of the obvious falseness of literalist anthropomorphism
in religion. To cite but one example, the Episcopalian Bishop Spong (1998, 2001) has
mounted a vigorous attack against sky-God religions while arguing that Christianity
must come to grips with the truths of modern science. Perhaps it is useful to kick
the corpse of the old God around because not everyone yet agrees that the old God
is dead. But such adventures in the crypt of monotheism do not shed much light on
the question of whether other more sophisticated sorts of religion remain of use for
human beings.
More importantly, religion involves much more than truth claims about cosmology
or biology. Indeed, scientific reductionism misses the point of much of religion. The
mistake of scientific reductionists like Dawkins and the others is to think that religious
believers view the symbolic objects of their faith as the sorts of objects postulated by
the empirical sciences. But religion—like art, politics, and even philosophy—is an
imaginative construction of meaning. It is symbolic activity done within a community
of shared understanding that is only loosely connected to the descriptive ontologies of
scientific cosmology, biology, or history. Epistemological inquiries into the question
of the truth of religious belief can cause a certain blindness toward the meaning of its
symbols.
The tradition of American pragmatism helps us avoid this blindness and provides
us with a richer and more nuanced approach to religion. Pragmatism is sympathetic to
empirical inquiry but its falliblistic spirit develops from an awareness of the epistemo-
logical difficulties of reductionistic claims about the truth or falsehood of religion (or
for that matter of science). A pragmatic response to the new breed of militant atheists
would thus caution modesty with regard to the epistemological assault on the beliefs
of the primitive sky-God religion.
But pragmatism is sympathetic to a secondary argument that is made by the new
breed of atheists: the argument from results or outcomes. The new atheists claim not
only that religion is false but also that it is pernicious. This is the sort of claim that
a pragmatic inquiry can sink its teeth into. However, the claim that, as Christopher
Hitchens puts it, “religion poisons everything” (Hitchens 2007) is empirically unsup-
portable because it is overly broad. Some forms of religion are poisonous; but religion
cannot be said to poison everything.
The claim that all religion is poisonous is linked to the final problem with the new
breed of militant atheists: intolerance toward religion. It is this characteristic that leads
me to call these new atheists “militant.” Although there are differences among these
thinkers, intolerance toward religion is a common feature of Harris, Dawkins, and
Hitchens. They each claim that we should no longer be tolerant toward religion. This
conclusion follows if one accepts the two premises that religion poisons everything
and that religious claims are false. We should not tolerate a set of false beliefs or

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a community founded on those beliefs if those beliefs and communities are actually
poisonous. But I argue that religion is so complex and the notion of harm (or poison)
is so vague that tolerance is called for.
The purpose of this paper is discuss the limits of the new sort of militant atheism
while offering a more tolerant pragmatic alternative to the critique of religion.

The atheist attack on pragmatism

One of the reasons to set militant atheism up against pragmatism is that at least some
of the militant atheists are explicitly opposed to pragmatism. Sam Harris has attacked
pragmatism generally—and Rorty in particular—for being opposed to realism. Harris
writes (Harris 2004, p. 180): “from the point of view of pragmatism the notion that our
beliefs might ‘correspond with reality’ is absurd.” According to Harris, pragmatism
is a kind of relativism that cannot produce the sort of robust atheism he advocates.
Harris thinks that pragmatic relativism is both incoherent and that it tends to allow
unfounded and pernicious religious beliefs to persist. “If a literalist reading of the
Bible works for you on Sundays, while agnosticism about God is better suited to
Mondays at the office there is no reason to worry about the resulting contradictions in
your worldview” (p. 180). According to Harris, pragmatists think that “these are not
so much incompatible claims about the way the world is as different styles of talking,
each suited to a particular occasion” (p. 180). And in a final coup de main, Harris
moves quickly on to claim that Osama Bin Laden’s favorite philosopher, Sayyid Qutb,
thought that “pragmatism would spell the death of American civilization” (p. 180).1
The problem is supposed to be that pragmatic relativists cannot argue against religious
fundamentalism or against terrorism.
This is an important problem. Can pragmatism argue against fundamentalisms; or
must a pragmatist tolerate religious views that are both silly and pernicious? I will
argue that pragmatists can judge and evaluate religion by looking at the practical result
of a ritual or belief. The point here is not however to banish God-talk forever. Rather,
this is a melioristic approach. The goal is to overcome cruelty that hides behind the
name of God.
The pragmatic approach is better than the approach of militant atheists like Harris in
at least three ways. First it circumvents the real difficulty of saying that any metaphys-
ical view is either true or false. Second, it encounters religion where it actually dwells:
in practical concerns, as opposed to merely epistemological ones. And third, unlike
militant atheism, pragmatism strives to appreciate the richness of religious diversity.
Militant atheism is ultimately intolerant. Harris, for example, claims that religious
tolerance, which he defines as “respect for the unjustified beliefs of others” is “one of
the principles driving us toward the abyss” (p. 15). But Harris fails to recognize the

1 Harris derives this from Paul Berman’s book, Terror and Liberalism. It should be noted that the reference
to the supposed connection between Qutb, Bin Laden, and pragmatism is fairly thin in Berman’s book—
only a couple of sentences on p. 170. Berman’s real focus is the connection between Islamist terrorism and
European totalitarianism (not American pragmatism).

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importance of tolerance as a pragmatic tool for avoiding a clash of fundamentalisms

and for ending wars about truth and justification.2

Diversity and pragmatic inquiry

Pragmatism reminds us that “religion” is much more than belief in a single set of
claims that are supposed to be true. Dewey, for example, claims that “there is a multi-
tude of religions” and no single thing called religion (Dewey 1934, p. 7). Pragmatism
also reminds us that religion is “justified” in a variety of ways that includes more than
just epistemological concerns. One can celebrate religious rituals and benefit from
participation in religious community without full understanding or genuine belief.
Harris’ dream of a completely coherent set of ideas or identities demands more
than human life requires or permits. We are afflicted with ignorance, self-deception,
akrasia, and other limitations that prevent us from forming our lives into a coherent
and consistent whole. Harris would appear to share his passion for consistency with
the fundamentalist monotheists he argues against: both want to reduce the fragmented
multiplicity of human life to a unity based upon justified true belief. But pragmatists
tend to agree with Emerson and Nietzsche that we cannot eliminate multiplicity, per-
spective, and human fallibility. For this reason, it appears to me that militant atheists
like Harris remain mired in what many theists would call “the God-shaped hole.” To
dream of a completely coherent life story or to aspire for access to the final truth
is to remain trapped in the crypt of monotheism. Harris, Dawkins, and the like sim-
ply substitute scientific realism for monotheism. But as Rorty once noted, “scientific
realism and religious fundamentalism are products of the same urge” (Rorty 1999,
p. 157).
Pragmatism helps us avoid the God-shaped hole by side-stepping the clash of fun-
damentals that occurs in contests about “Truth.” Rorty puts this metaphorically by
claiming that we should rediscover the wisdom of polytheism (Rorty 1998). The point
of this metaphor is to remind us that there are a variety of ways that human beings can
find meaning and satisfaction—as Emerson indicates in the essay “Experience,” there
are a variety of “lords of life.” It is fruitless to evaluate this multitude solely in terms
of truth; rather we must also ask about the practical value that our deep commitments
have for transforming our lives. As Hodges and Aiken put it, religion is “not epis-
temological but practical” (Aiken and Hodges 2006, p. 5); or “religious believing is
not epistemic” (p. 4). Pragmatism reminds us that diverse religious practices, rituals,
communities, and beliefs must be evaluated in piecemeal fashion according to the
tendency of each aspect to frustrate or satisfy the needs of human beings. When prag-
matists inquire into the “truth” of various religious propositions, they do not presume
to think that they can attain the God’s-eye vantage point from which to observe the
Truth about God or His non-existence.
The watchword for pragmatic inquiry is “meliorism.” The pragmatic question is
which practices, rituals, communities, and beliefs serve to ameliorate the human

2 I discuss toleration and pragmatism in substantially more detail in Tolerance and the Ethical Life (Fiala
2005).

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condition; and which do not. Pragmatists do not ask whether “religion” as a whole is
true or false, a delusion or a divine revelation. Rather, pragmatic inquiry focuses on the
concrete details of human needs and interests and on the vast variety of religious phe-
nomena and the polymorphous nature of “the divine.” Such an inquiry must admit that
some aspects of religious life do satisfy some human needs, as classical pragmatists
like James and Dewey realized. Thus it is not useful to make grand pronouncements,
as Dawkins does in claiming that God is a delusion or as Hitchens does in concluding
that that religion poisons everything. It is more useful to focus on the variety of ways
that various religious beliefs either help or hinder human progress.
This is not merely a reductive functional analysis which reduces religion entirely to
its social or psychological functions.3 Rather, in asking “what’s the use?” the pragma-
tist wants to know how a practice or belief is supposed to benefit us. It is important to
note that there is no simple answer here. The goal is to open an inquiry into the variety
of practical implications that a ritual or belief may have. This inquiry must account
for the facticity of the ritual or belief; and it must adequately interpret it within the
context of the system of religious significance in which it is found.
The normative question of pragmatic inquiry focuses on the tendency of a ritual or
belief to contribute or detract from human flourishing. Some rituals are cruel, degrad-
ing, and inhumane based on our best understanding of terms such as cruelty and human
dignity. Thus pragmatism is not simply relativism—rather pragmatism encourages us
to undertake a melioristic inquiry into the meaning and value of practices and beliefs
based upon our shared norms for both theory and practice.
It is important to note, however, that pragmatism does loosen the hold of traditional
monotheism. The pragmatic approach helps us discover that religion has no corner
on the market of need satisfaction. There are a variety of ways that human needs are
satisfied. Some forms of religion do provide satisfaction for some believers. But some
religious practices and beliefs are cruel. And natural science, art, and even atheism
can also create both satisfaction and unhappiness.
Pragmatism reminds us to humbly admit or own limits and the diversity of the
world. This does not leave us without resources to judge religion as Harris fears.
But pragmatism reminds us that our judgments are always local, limited, and entirely
human. And so, pragmatists claim that we would all do better simply to admit this
variety and to leave off antagonizing one another over the question of whether this
or that form of satisfaction is “true” or whether this or that “God” actually exists.
These metaphysical questions are unanswerable by finite beings like ourselves. But
it is possible to know that some varieties of the belief in a loving God can lead to
genuine human good; and it is possible to know that some varieties of religion do lead
to horrors and cruelty.

3 A functionalist reduction would argue that a religious practice or belief can be completely understood in
terms of its role in the social or psychological organization. The pragmatic question is broader since it is a
hermeneutical inquiry into the value of rituals and beliefs that does not aim at such a functional reduction.
The crucial point here is that we can use need satisfaction as a criterion with which to judge religious practices
and beliefs without completely reducing ritual to function. I make this point in response to Frankenberry
who worries that Rorty engages in a functionalist reduction of religion to usefulness (Frankenberry 2006,
p. 90).

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Foundationalism and the God-shaped hole

The main problem of militant atheism is that its strident assertiveness and its primary
focus on cognitive claims makes it appear to be merely the dialectical opposite of
religious fundamentalism. Critics of atheism have long noted that atheists can be pos-
sessed by the sort of fervent enthusiasm and narrow-minded zealotry that atheists
themselves find so contemptible in religious believers. It is this attitude that gives
credence to those who claim that militant atheists speak from within a God-shaped
hole.
Atheists who make foundational sorts of claims about the truth or falsity of religious
propositions end up arguing with religious believers on familiarly religious ground,
for religious believers are quite good at playing the game of foundations and first prin-
ciples. At the end of the day, we are left with foot stamping, appeals to faith, and ad
hominem accusations. Atheists will accuse theists of being irrational and delusional;
theists will accuse atheists of being irrational and delusional.
Theists are thus right to see a God-shaped hole in the heart of the atheist. In the
Pensées (#425) Pascal speaks of this as the infinite abyss that can only be filled with
the infinite object. In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard speaks of the deepest sort
of despair as willful defiance of the infinite. And Maritain claimed that the atheist
simply substitutes worship of Jupiter—by which Maritain means the immanent god
of history and nature—for worship of the one true God (Maritain 1949).
The idea of a “God-shaped hole,” of course, begs the question against atheists who
claim that the “God-shaped hole” felt or seen by theists is itself the product of a reli-
gious culture that systematically carves out a place for God in our institutions and in
our psychological lives. As might be expected, atheists will see a God-shaped delu-
sion in the heart of the theist. Atheists argue that the need for God would disappear if
religion were not such a pervasive and readily accepted cultural force. For Dawkins
and the like, this means that atheists must mount a vigorous attack on the privileged
position of religious belief, so that people would no longer feel uneasy about denying
the existence of God.
This sort of foundationalist squabbling can make no progress. And that is why the
pragmatic approach can prove useful. The pragmatic approach shifts the conversation
from one about the correspondence (or lack of correspondence) between religious
claims and reality to an inquiry into the question of the value that the varieties of
religious phenomena have for human life. A pragmatic approach avoids the epistemo-
logical struggle about ultimate reality by asking about the relative merits of various
practices and symbolic language-games.
Rorty seems to recognize the problem of atheists who remain mired within the
crypt of monotheism. He has argued, for example, that atheists are often “unneces-
sarily intolerant” (Rorty 1998, p. 25). The problem for Rorty is that some atheists
still think in terms of what Rorty maligns as “redemptive truth.” This is “the need
to fit everything—every thing, person, event, idea and poem—into a single context,
a context which will somehow reveal itself as natural, destined, and unique” (Rorty
2001, p. 2).
The pragmatic point is that efforts to deny or affirm the existence of God will not
get us very far. Atheists will demand proof of God’s existence and theists will demand

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proof of His non-existence. And neither will satisfy the other. For this reason, athe-
ists acknowledge, when they are at their best, that they cannot simply assert atheism
as a dogma or article of faith. Harris, for example, tries to deflect the epistemologi-
cal challenge by claiming in his “Atheist Manifesto” (2006) that atheism is merely a
name for the “noises that reasonable people make when in the presence of religious
dogma.” The point seems to be that atheism is not a positive dogma that needs to be
proven. Christopher Hitchens says of himself and his fellow “infidels”: “our belief
is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith” (Hitchens 2007, p. 5). And Hitchens
and Harris both often direct their attention away from epistemological questions to
the empirical and historical question of whether religion produces anything of value
in the world. When they seek to circumvent the epistemological problem, atheists do
become pragmatic. Indeed, some—like Daniel Dennett—take an explicitly pragmatic
line of attack. Dennett points toward an empirical inquiry into the value of religion
along lines pioneered by William James. Chapter 9 of his book Breaking the Spell
(Dennett 2006) frequently refers to James; and its title is “Toward a Buyer’s Guide to
Religion.”
At their best, then, militant atheists take up the pragmatist challenge. Thus they
argue that religious belief produces pernicious results such as sexual repression, reli-
gious warfare, intolerance, and hostility to the scientific method. But often they fail to
account for the actual diversity of religious phenomena. Like Harris, Dawkins treats
all religious experience as more or less the same. And he claims that it is uniformly
pernicious. Dawkins claims, for example, that “even mild and moderate religion helps
to provide the climate of faith in which extremism naturally flourishes” (Dawkins
2006, p. 303). And he goes on to state with regard to suicidal terrorists, kamikazes,
and other maniacs that “only religious faith is a strong enough force to motivate such
utter madness in otherwise sane and decent people” (p. 303). The problem is, of course,
that extremism and murder-suicide can exist in non-religious contexts. And religious
life does have benefits and it can be a positive force for restraining violence. Con-
clusions such as Hitchens, that “religion poisons everything” are too broad to be of
use. Such totalizing claims remain an indication of the God-shaped hole within which
some of these atheists operate. The claim that religion is uniformly harmful remains
as problematic as is the claim that God is our only true good.

The middle path of American pragmatism

A pragmatic approach should be more responsive to the diversity and complexity

of life, including religious life. Pragmatic inquiry into the question of whether reli-
gious belief produces good results avoids a battle over fundamentals. Moreover, such a
pragmatic inquiry engages religion where it actually resides. Religious people are often
indifferent to an epistemological inquiry into question of religious truth. Religious
practitioners claim that religion provides a better way of life: truth is fleshed out, as it
were, in practical terms.4

4 In the Christian context, this sort of analysis might focus on Jesus’s claim: “I am the truth, the way,
and the life” (John 14: 6). Tillich interprets this in Chapter 8 of New Being (Tillich 2005) as putting truth

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Pragmatists are primarily concerned with what we can do as human beings—

whether atheists are not—to make life better for one another here and now. As Rorty
puts it, we have recently “learned that the difference of opinion between the believer
and the atheist does not have to be settled before the two can cooperate on communal
projects.”5 The struggle over truth is often a distraction that prevents us from working
together to make progress.
This approach helps us avoid the clash of fundamentalisms that occurs when theists
and atheists square off; and it allows us to appreciate the diversity of religious experi-
ence and the fact that religion is more a communal activity than it is a set of dogmas.
The real question is how we can move forward together. Pragmatism ultimately moves
us away from the question of “truth” and redirects our attention to the question of “jus-
tification” (See Rorty and Engel 2007). With regard to religion the question is, then,
not whether religious practices, experiences, and beliefs are true; but rather, whether
we are justified in engaging in these activities or in having these beliefs. The task
of justification points us toward a broader set of concerns that ultimately has to do
with the question of human flourishing. The pragmatic question is whether religious
practices, rituals, and communities are part of a good life or not.
The melioristic and fallibilistic spirit of pragmatism cannot lead us to absolutely
avow or disavow either theism or atheism. But it can help us to argue against some
malignant versions of both atheism and theism. Dewey, for example, rejected both
supernatural theism and naturalistic and militant atheism. Dewey condemned “mili-
tant atheism” in A Common Faith, for its lack of “natural piety.”6 Dewey claims that

Footnote 4 continued
and practice together: “How do we reach this truth? “By doing it,” is the answer of the Fourth Gospel. This
does not mean being obedient to the commandments, accepting them and fulfilling them. Doing the truth
means living out of the reality which is He who is the truth, making His being the being of ourselves and
of our world. And again, we ask, “How can this happen?” “By remaining in Him” is the answer of the
Fourth Gospel, i.e., by participating in His being. “Abide in me and I in you,” he says. The truth which
liberates is the truth in which we participate, which is a part of us and we a part of it. True discipleship is
participation. If the real, the ultimate, the divine reality which is His being becomes our being we are in the
truth that matters. Boyer seems to recognize this when he claims: “Doctrines are not necessarily the most
essential or important aspects of religious concepts. Indeed many people seem to feel no need for a general,
theoretically consistent expression of the qualities and powers of supernatural agents. What all people do
have are precise descriptions of how these agents can influence their own lives, and what to do about that”
(Boyer 2001, p. 140).
5 Rorty (2004), p. 26. The context here is the larger question of metaphysical and even ethical disputes.
Here’s the whole section from which this quote is taken: “The Kant versus Mill issue, like the issue between
metaphysicians and pragmatists, will seem as little worth quarreling about as will the issue between the
believers and the atheists. For we humans need not agree about the nature or the end of man in order to help
facilitate our neighbor’s ability to act on her own convictions on these matters, just so long as those actions
do not interfere with our freedom to act on our own convictions. In short, just as we have, in the past few
centuries, learned that the difference of opinion between the believer and the atheist does not have to be
settled before the two can cooperate on communal projects, so we may learn to set aside all the differences
between all the various searches for redemption when we cooperate to build Wilde’s utopia.”
6 According to Dewey, for the militant atheist… “The ties binding man to nature that poets have always
celebrated are passed over lightly. The attitude taken is often that of man living in an indifferent and hostile
world and issuing blasts of defiance. A religious attitude, however, needs the sense of a connection of
man, in the way of both dependence and support, with the enveloping world that the imagination feels is a
universe” (p. 53).

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the religious sense of connection—either to our fellows or to nature—is the heart of

religious experience and that it is of value whether we call it “God,” “Buddha,” or
some other less religious name. An epistemological inquiry into the proper name for
this “lord of life” would distract us from actually living well.
Dewey’s approach in A Common Faith reminds us that the question of religion
must be connected to the process of “inquiry.” Religious beliefs and the shared val-
ues of a religious culture or tradition can guide us toward further inquiry. There is
something “real” that can be called religious experience, as James described in detail.
We cannot simply dismiss it as a delusion; rather we must investigate its phenomeno-
logical, psychological, and social significance. The difficulty is in figuring out which
interpretations of these experience are justifiable. Naturalists like Pascal Boyer, Daniel
Dennett, and Richard Dawkins tend to think that religious belief is the residual product
of natural evolutionary processes: that religious experience occurs because of some
vestigial processes in our cognitive machinery.
There is obvious value in this approach. Even James acknowledged that there were
psychological and physiological causes of mystical experience. But the pragmatists
remind us that religion is not only about belief. It is also, for example, about mem-
bership in what Royce called, the beloved community. Royce, James, and Dewey
recognized that there is something powerful that is experienced in religion that can-
not merely be explained away as cognitive malfunction. A pragmatist like James
was willing to describe religion in its own terms, without reducing it to physiology.
And this approach culminates in the spirit of tolerance that is the work of James
and others.7
Genuine inquiry, as I understand it, begins with skepticism and open-mindedness.
This approach leaves us in a middle ground that is neither fundamentally theistic
nor militantly atheistic. The pragmatic approach to religion reminds us that reli-
gion contains much more than merely a set of beliefs. Militant atheists often have
a primarily cognitive focus, as if religion were primarily a matter of assenting to or
denying the existence of God. The real power of the pragmatic approach is that it
reminds us that human life occurs within the shared practices and norms of a com-
munity. Pragmatism begins in the midst of the claims and assertions of ordinary life
and approaches these claims with questions. Pragmatism does not militantly assert
a negative view and thus it does not dig out the God-shaped hole or end up in a
clash of foundations. The pragmatic approach is not to ask, for example, whether a
whole system of beliefs is true or false. Rather, pragmatism focuses on the value of
particular claims, symbols, rituals, practices, and local ideas. It is willing to claim
that some of these rituals, customs, and beliefs are pernicious and even false. But it
would run counter to the spirit of pragmatism to say that a whole religion is delu-
sional—or that “religion poisons everything.” Religions are vast complexes of human
symbolic activity. It would be immodest simply to claim that such a complex social

7 For example, at the end of “The Will to Believe” James concludes: “No one of us ought to issue vetoes
to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to
respect one another’s mental freedom: then only shall we bring about the intellectual republic; then only
shall we have that spirit of inner tolerance without which all our outer tolerance is soulless, and which
is empiricism’s glory; then only shall we live and let live, in speculative as well as in practical things.” I
discuss James and tolerance in more detail in Tolerance and the Ethical Life (Fiala 2005).

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endeavor is true or false. Rather, one should consider what needs are fulfilled by the
social complex and ask whether individual parts of the complex are productive or
not.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint, a religion that satisfied human needs would
be “true” in the sense articulated by James. In Lecture 2 of Pragmatism (1981) James
claims that “true” means something like “profitable for our lives” or that “we are the
better for possessing it.” And in “The Will to Believe” James indicates that it is pos-
sible that there is something to be gained here and now from belief in religious ideas:
“we are better off even now if we believe” religious claims (James 1964, p. 235). The
militant atheists claim that it is obvious that religion does not satisfy our needs. One
of the primary reasons for this is that religious beliefs are supposed to be either false
or unverifiable. And this fails to satisfy our need for truth. The militant atheists would
appear to agree with W.K. Clifford’s idea (in the essay that prompted James’ “Will to
Believe”) that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything
upon insufficient evidence” (Clifford 1964, p. 206).
James responds to this sort of idea by reminding us that for many important ques-
tions (in James’ language, for momentous, forced, and live options) we often lack
sufficient evidence. Rather than truth we have degrees of verification or justification.
And we have the right to believe or do things without full certainty. Moreover, reli-
gion is often not about belief at all. And this is perhaps the most important thing that
the militant atheists forget: religion is a practice, a community, and a set of shared
rituals. The epistemological emphasis on justifying the whole web of religious belief
forgets this aspect of religion. But the shared communal practice of religion can be
the most important feature of what it is about religion that is so satisfying for so many
people. Religious people often do not inquire into the dogmas of their “faith.” Rather,
they participate in the communal endeavor, share in the rituals, and identify with the
symbols of their “faith.” In this sense, faith is not cognitive; rather it is practical—or
pragmatic.

Conclusion: the problem of tolerance

One might take the pragmatic approach seriously and still be a vigorous critic of reli-
gion. Certain forms of religiosity are harmful; and they should be kept out of the public
sphere (see Rorty 2003). The idea and even the experience of harm is connected to
cognitive claims made within communities of belief. A practice that appears harmful,
such as circumcision, may have a positive significance within the set of beliefs of the
community. Thus any critique will have to take into account the totality of commu-
nal values and it will have to recognize the possibility of conflicting interpretations
of the idea of harm. I do not want to minimize the difficulty here. But my point is
that harms should be defined through a pragmatic inquiry into both cognitive claims
and their practical results—and not in the dogmatic way that the militant atheists (or
their counterparts, the religious fundamentalists) do. Pragmatic inquiry into harm is
much more sympathetic to the importance of context and interpretation. Moreover, a
pragmatic critique should be undertaken with a healthy dose of tolerance and we may

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have to admit—as the militant atheists do not—that we should tolerate some beliefs
and activities that we do not agree with.8
But immoral individuals who hide their misdeeds behind the name of God should
be punished. Terms like “harmful” and “immoral” must be understood in a broadly
humanistic way based upon a developed consensus about our shared ideas about human
flourishing. This shared consensus must be as open and tolerant as possible and it
should be sensitive to context. But there are limits to toleration. Pedophile priests are
immoral because they prey upon and abuse vulnerable children. Homophobia that is
based upon religious texts is harmful because it impinges upon people’s liberty. And
terrorism in the name of God is wrong because it deliberately kills the innocent. More
argument is obviously needed here.9 But my point is that a critical approach to religion
that focuses on the question of harm rather than on the question of truth is more useful
because it confronts religious belief where it actually lives—in the very heart of the
idea that religion makes life better. Although pragmatism is tolerant, there are limits
to toleration. When religion erupts into cruelty or violence, the time for toleration is
over. But aside from these limits, toleration is appropriate.
The new breed of militant atheists go too far when the view that “religion poisons
everything” turns into a call for intolerance of religion. Dawkins may be right that
our society has shown “overweening respect for religion” and that religious tolerance
insulates pernicious religion from criticism (Dawkins, p. 21). But the solution to this
is not intolerance of the sort advocated by Harris, who concludes: “we can no more
tolerate a diversity of religious beliefs than a diversity of believes about epidemiology
and basic hygiene” (p. 46). Rather, the solution is a better form of tolerance: one that
allows for critical engagement and mutual respect but which also acts decisively to
limit harm.
Atheistic intolerance becomes arrogant, spiteful, and hurtful. Harris, for example,
heaps scorn upon those who find solace in religion in times of crisis, such as in the
face of natural disasters. In his “Atheist Manifesto,” Harris mocks attempts to reconcile
the idea of a loving God with the fact of natural calamity as “epistemological Ponzi
schemes” that would only be appealing to “madmen or idiots.” The chief point here
is a variety of the argument from the problem of evil. More pragmatically speaking,
Harris argues that those who attempt to deal with evil by reverting to religious belief
basically give up on the one effective remedy, which is modern science and technology.
But many religious believers would respond by claiming that their religious belief is
the very thing that provides them with courage and hope in times of crisis. Unless
religion produces obvious harm—such terrorism—there is no reason not to tolerate
the consolation it provides.
This spirit of tolerance is rejected—on pragmatic grounds—by the militant atheists.
Harris, for example, concludes his “Atheist Manifesto” by claiming that “the endgame
for civilization cannot be mutual tolerance of patent irrationality…” Such intolerance is
primarily articulated under the banner of a foundationalist and reductionist approach

8 When I presented a version of this paper at the American Academy of Religion, the discussion focused
on the very difficult question of defining harm. I am thankful to the participants in that session for forcing
me to think more carefully about this question.
9 I discuss some of the difficulties of religious ethics in Fiala (2007).

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to truth. Harris’ basic idea is that it is irrational to believe in a God who actually
offers us no concrete help in actual emergencies. Pragmatically speaking, one could
argue following Harris that religion impedes our progress toward satisfying human
needs, while science and technology allow for more and better human happiness. This
approach is a better sort of argument than one that simply claims that religious beliefs
are false—better because it is an argument that is actually verifiable. We can look and
see whether religious belief does make life better.
There is no obvious conclusion to this sort of pragmatic inquiry. Religious believers
do appear to think that their lives are better as a result of their religious belief. And
communities that gather together in the name of religion do contribute large amounts
of volunteer time and money toward making the world a better place. One could also
argue, I suppose, that one of the reasons that people tend not to cooperate in response
to natural disasters is because they lack a genuine religious community which pro-
vides inspiration, solace, and support. The atheists are right that religious is also the
source of cruelty and injustice. But this is not essential to religion: almost every human
cultural endeavor we can imagine can produce cruelty and injustice.
The pragmatist hovers, as it were, neither in the heavens with God, nor in the abyss
with the atheist. Pragmatism avoids God and the God-shaped hole by directing our
attention to the concrete implications of our beliefs on the practices of ordinary life.
The difficulty of this approach is that it can appear unsatisfactory both to theists and to
atheists. Dewey was, for example, seen as both insufficiently religious and too sympa-
thetic to religion—and he recognized that he would be seen as taking a “timid halfway
position” (Dewey, p. 3; see Aiken and Hodges 2006). And atheists like Harris have
attacked Rorty for the same sort of timidity and incoherence.
The difficulty is that pragmatism can appear to be merely relativism and so unable
to argue against pernicious religious ideas. Frankenberry notes that a strain of post-
modern antifoundationalism has been appropriated by religious believers. “Fideists
and fundamentalists, the fatuous and the fanatical alike, exempt themselves from seri-
ous criticism and dialogical engagement on the basis of this philosophy of religion”
(Frankenberry 2006, p. 87). This is exactly the problem that motivates the more mil-
itant atheism of Dawkins or Harris. Militant atheists worry that relativists—religious
or otherwise—can turn private faith into a bastion of self-deception and cruelty.
The solution to this problem is to assert the pragmatic importance of shared norms
of inquiry, especially in the public sphere. We must admit that we cannot “know” the
truth about religion in any sense of that term that will be accepted by both theists
and atheists. But this does not mean that we cannot evaluate the pragmatic impact of
religious beliefs, practices, rituals, and communities. Indeed, we can and must evalu-
ate these phenomena in pragmatic terms by asking whether they satisfy human needs
and whether they contribute to the overall well being and progress of humankind. If
practices or beliefs are pernicious—as for example, the belief that homosexuality is
an abomination or the practice of female genital mutilation—we have good reason
to reject these and work to abolish them. But this does not give us license to reject
religion as a whole. Rather, we must work piecemeal, focused on a long process of
amelioration aimed at producing better practices and beliefs. This process will most
likely be connected with the secular project of privatizing religion that Rorty discusses.
But it seems hard to imagine a time when God talk will simply disappear. Thus the

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pragmatic effort must be to find a common language (a “common faith”?) in which

atheists and theists can discuss the human values that they share.

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