Martin Gardner 1914-2010

I went through my phase of militant scientism back when I was in my 20's and early 30's, first as a convinced atheist leftist, and then as a convinced atheist scientist. Back then I loved to read books and articles by Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Martin Gardner and James Randi.

Asimov died in '92, then Sagan in '96, then Gould in 2002, and now Gardner has left us in 2010. It is fitting that as the news of Gardner's death is spreading, many people are referring to the beautiful, heartfelt remembrance of him that has been written by Gardner's friend and comrade in arms, James Randi, under the title "My World Is A Little Darker."

I parted company with the atheist activist crowd long ago. But I am sorry to see the "old" atheists go (and in truth they are not all strict atheists), because they were intelligent, humorous and always interesting.

Good Fences Make Good Religions? On Stephen Prothero's New Theory of Religious Hygiene

.
"There is no Method of Reasoning more Common, and yet none more blameable, than in philosophical Debates, to endeavor the Refutation of any Hypothesis, by a Pretext of its dangerous Consequences."
[David Hume, Of Liberty and Necessity]

In simpler, more innocent times, religion scholars who fancied themselves as having things weighty and wise to impart to a wider audience churned out middlebrow coffee table books on World Religions.

If the author was lucky, and/or well-connected, and if the product was deemed sufficiently marketable (with one of the primary criteria for determining the commercial prospects for any book on religion being its inoffensiveness) the book might be picked up by a Major Publisher. In the most fortunate of cases, the Major Publisher would even deign to promote the book in such a manner that people (well, some people, anyway) would come to know of its existence, and perhaps even purchase it -- perchance to read it.

But things change. Please try to keep up.

In these 21st century times of ours, inoffensive coffee table books on World Religions are quickly going the way of all flesh, or at least the way of the cassette tape and the floppy disk. What Major Publishers want today in middlebrow books on religion is, instead, polemics and controversy.

And the important thing for all would-be religious controversialists and polemicists is not how one stakes out a positive position and defends it. The new business model demands that all authors, regardless of what position they are promoting, must shock and horrify the reader with the presentation of dangerous, irrational enemies who must be vanquished, else we are all doomed. In a word: it is not enough to be right: others must be wrong. Very, very wrong.

Enter Stephen Prothero, professor of Religion at Boston University, and his new book with the ludicrous subtitle: God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run The World.

Prothero's book is actually in many (in fact, most) ways really just another middlebrow popular survey of World Religions. And if that were all it aspired to be, then it's great wealth of distortions and factual inaccuracies could hardly be held against it, since these are no more out of place in the World Religions genre than are straight-faced interviews with Nostradamus "scholars" on the History Channel.

But Prothero takes the usual admixture of information and misinformation and frames it within a polemical narrative against the "dangerous" and "seductive" idea that -- horror of horrors! -- "all religions are beautiful and true."

To be sure, few are able, on their own, to discern the dark menace lurking behind this seemingly innocuous sentiment, but, fortunately for us all, Stephen Prothero has been able to decode and expose the diabolical machinations of Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Huston Smith, Joseph Campbell, and their kumbaya-ist co-conspirators!

And just in time. Who knows what horrors might await humankind if this "well-intentioned" but "ethically irresponsible" "all religions are one meme" were allowed to continue to daze and confuse the tender hearts and minds of our impressionable youth and to further sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids.

Dear Surfer, as you can by now plainly discern, I, too, alas, have succumbed to the newfangled fashion for religious polemics and controversy. For I claim nothing less than that Stephen Prothero is promoting an idea that is indeed dangerous, although I cannot honestly claim to see any way in which it could ever be thought of as seductive, except to the extent that the American upper-middle class serious non-fiction hardback-book-buying readership has seldom, if ever, encountered a simplistic ahistorical hyperbolic confabulation, presented by a Noted Academic complete with footnotes and ideologically stereophonic pimpage by NPR and the WSJ, that it did not like.

However, before going further, in order to explain why Prothero's idea is so dangerous I need to first tell you a little about my grandfather.

"They're just different."

I loved my grandfather -- he was a good man whom I respected and still admire. He was a deeply religious Christian, and he applied himself with enthusiasm to living a moral life, and to being compassionate and generous to others. And he did this without the arid grimness that one might (unfairly) expect from deeply religious people, but rather with an easygoing amiability that was both completely sincere and downright charming.

But my grandfather didn't like Jews. "They're just different," he would say. He also didn't much like African-Americans, whom he referred to as "coons." They were different, too.

Grandpa never finished high school, fought (and was wounded) in WWI, and (except for his military service) lived his whole life in the small factory town in Indiana where he was born and is now buried.

When he came back from the war he was still a very young man, and for most of the next decade the state of Indiana was dominated by the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan's grip on the state (they even controlled the Indiana delegation to Congress) ended by the late 20's, but that was due to sex and money scandals, not because of any disenchantment with the racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and anti-immigrant message of the KKK, a message which continued to be very popular and continued to be championed by Republican and Democratic politicians of the Hoosier state (who were often the very same politicians previously backed by the Klan).

To me it seems overly harsh to label my grandfather a racist and an anti-Semite, but factually speaking that's what he was. It is, however, also a fact that he was a product of the time and place that he lived. And it's also a fact that he wasn't all that different from Barack Obama's grandmother, whom President Obama once characterized as a "typical white person."

A very great deal of what comes under the headings of racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism -- and bigotry generally -- can be summed up in those words of my grandfather: "they're just different." And this emphasis on differentness continues to be at the heart of the often more subtle (although not always so) forms of bigotry that are still alive and well in America in the 21st century.

The closest present-day equivalent to the KKK is the infamous CCC, the Council of Conservative Citizens. These fine citizens claim that they are not racists, but, instead, their Statement of Principles says that they advocate "cultural, national, and racial integrity", and also that "the United States is a European country." Interestingly, the very first principle of the CCC is that "the United States is a Christian country."

Sam Francis, the author of the CCC's Statement of Principles, has been called "the philosopher king of the American radical right". Francis edited Pat Buchanan's 2002 book The Death of the West. Far from trying to distance himself from Francis, Buchanan literally eulogized him upon his death in 2005 with these words: "When God created him, He endowed Sam with a great gift—one of the finest minds of his generation."

Francis, although proud to call himself a "paleoconservative", was actually very typical of the new approach to race among radical rightists generally: emphasis is placed not on the inferiority or superiority of races, but only on the essential differentness of races. Of course this is very little, if at all, different from the typical racism of the Old South, which emphasized segregation while demonizing "race-mixing", all the while proclaiming a benevolent, loving, Christian attitude toward "the negro".

"As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various)"

By this point you might be asking: what in blue blazes do my grandfather, the Klan and the CCC have to do with Stephen Prothero and his new book God is not One??

Well, Prothero has taken his title from William Blake's very first illustrated book: All Religions Are One. Blake's "book" was in fact a little poem with only about 250 words altogether, so we can look at the whole thing before proceeding further:

The Voice of one crying in the Wilderness

The Argument.
As the true method of knowledge is experiment, the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which experiences.

This faculty I treat of.

Principle I. That the Poetic Genius is the true Man, and that the body or outward form of Man is derived from the Poetic Genius. Likewise that the forms of all things are derived from their Genius, which by the Ancients was call'd an Angel & Spirit & Demon.

Principle II. As all men are alike in outward form, So (and with the same infinite variety) all are alike in the Poetic Genius.

Principle III. No man can think, write or speak from his heart, but he must intend truth. thus all sects of Philosophy are from the Poetic Genius adapted to the weaknesses of every individual.

Principle IV. As none by travelling over known lands can find out the unknown, So from already acquired knowledge Man could not acquire more; therefore an universal Poetic genius exists.

Principle V. The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nation's different reception of the Poetic Genius, which is every where call'd the Spirit of Prophecy.

Principle VI. The Jewish & Christian Testaments are An original derivation from the Poetic Genius. This is necessary from the confined nature of bodily sensation.

Principle VII. As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various), So all Religions , &, as all similars, have one source. The true Man is the source, he being the Poetic Genius.

With Blake's words in front of us, it is now much easier to make clear the reason I have brought up the unpleasant subject of racism: because racism is, in its essence, the denial of human equality. And human equality is the underlying theme of Blake's All Religions Are One!

Prothero is completely clueless about the implications of his insistence on the essential differences between religions, and in particular the way that he frames his argument with respect to William Blake. To see just how potentially dangerous this is, it is first necessary to recognize that Prothero insists on denying (or at least minimizing to the point of exclusion from any serious consideration) any essential unity to Religion itself, while being equally insistent that religions, plural, each possess a great degree of internal coherence, and that this internal coherence within each religion creates fixed, neatly separated, mutually exclusive religious identities.

In other words, Prothero is conceptualizing religions in exactly the same way that 17th, 18th and 19th century Europeans conceptualized races. And Prothero's theory of Religious Hygiene (that is, that the separate religions should be kept separate for everyone's good) can be deconstructed in exactly the same way that so-called "scientific racism" was finally debunked conclusively following WWII.

Whence the urge to create fixed, neatly separated, mutually exclusive religious identities?

Before I go any further let me be clear: I don't believe that Stephen Prothero is an evil man who has intentionally written a book with a racist subtext. But I do believe that he is a stupid man who has unintentionally written a book with a racist subtext.

The theory of race starts from really existing, easily observed variations in human biology. But from there "scientific racism" imposes sharp boundaries separating a few distinct "races" from each other. It bears emphasizing that these "races" are not invented from scratch. In fact, they correspond closely to popularly imagined boundaries separating humans into different groups. The groupings themselves are real enough, to an extent, but in practice, the lines separating these groups, especially when examined closely, are blurred, and all too easily crossed. The essence of scientific racism is that it provided a "scientific" validation and a much needed reinforcement to a popular belief based in part on objective observation, in part on social conventions, and in part on a myriad of psychological and other factors, many of them far from ennobling. In this way, "race theory" provided an objective-sounding pretext for using the belief in separate races as the basis for social and political policy and also as a guide for individual behavior.

It is essential to be able to distinguish between (a) casual observations of human variability, and (b) the positing of immutable "differences" that unalterably separate groups of human beings from one another. In my opinion, the insights gained from the spectacle of "racial science" and its eventual downfall can be applied to better understanding Stephen Prothero's proposed scheme for a scholarly sounding reification of religious identities.

To be honest, prior to encountering Prothero's new book, I had not looked all that closely at the relationship between racial identity and religious identity. But others had:

[I]n the United States and throughout the Americas, from the fifteenth century through the twenty-first -- religion has been inextricably woven into both racial and national identities, to such an extent that "race," "nation," and "religion" have each defined the others. These seemingly distinct discourses of difference have at times borrowed and at times contested each other's rhetorical authority, reinforcing and undercutting each other's social hierarchies, mixing and mingling in unresolved dialectics irreducible to any one term. If we fail to appreciate the relationships among these categories of collective identity, we will be unable to grasp the contours of our own histories -- that of the United States, and those of the Americas more broadly.
[Henry Goldschmidt, Introduction to Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas, p. 5]

What Henry Goldschmidt has to say above is further elaborated upon below by Daniel B. Lee, who contributed a chapter (in Goldschmidt's book, co-edited with Elizabeth McAlister) on A Great Racial Commission: Religion and the Construction of White America:

For the development of an enduring racial self-description, the late nineteenth century was a particularly innovative period for White people in America. The decade after the Civil War significantly changed the racial and religious landscape of the country. For the first time, Native Americans, emancipated Blacks, and new immigrants from all over the world challenged the cultural hegemony of Anglo-Saxon Christians with their undeniable presence. In the midst of an increasingly diverse population, many White Americans turned to religion as a source of racial and national unity . . . .

My analysis ... begins with the theoretical assumption that there is no natural way to be White, act White, or communicate as a White person. There is no a priori metaphysical bond or primordial solidarity between Whites or between the people of any other racial or religious group. White society first emerges when people communicate about sharing "Whiteness." Communities of people construct themselves and their others as they communicate. A society, such as Whites exchanging race talk, for itself and its environment in an entirely self-referential, autological manner.
[Daniel B. Lee, Chapter 3 in Religion, Nation, and Race in the Americas, pp. 85-86]

In my opinion it is far from coincidental that in the early 21st century Prothero has come along with a simplistic narrative reifying the boundaries that reassuringly separate "the rival religions that run the world." Indeed, this is a time when America is facing a crisis of identity of far greater, and far more complex, proportions than anything it faced in the late 19th century.

Up until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, America as a nation still accepted as legitimate the idea that Whites should enjoy de jure political superiority, at least in a large part of the US (the South). Even after 1965, though, White Americans still continue, to this day, to enjoy de facto political and socio-economic superiority. Even if that continues into the future, at least in terms of raw demographics Whites will be a minority in the US by 2050. According to projections by The Pew Research Center, 40 years from now the combined Latino, Black and Asian population of the US will be 51%, while the total White population will be 47%.

Race has become, thank the Gods, completely discredited as a "discourse of difference." But Prothero is now trying to promote a mode of religious discourse primarily based on difference in a way that very closely mirrors the now discarded concept of "race". By (1) emphasizing and exaggerating the differences between religions, (2) denying any spiritual common ground between religions, and (3) ignoring the often vast differences within religions, Prothero is engaging in exactly the same kind of psycho-social engineering as the race theorists of the past.

Because it really is quite fitting, I will end with Robert Frost's poem "Mending Walls." Frost did not himself coin the phrase "good fences makes good neighbors," but it was from him that I learned of it. And it was my 7th grade English teacher, Mr. Mann, a conservative southerner and a Mormon, who was teaching during the early 1970's in a very liberal suburb of Washington DC, who taught me to appreciate this poem. Thanks, Mr. Mann!! [Scroll down below the poem for links to other posts on Stephen Prothero.]

Mending Walls
by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Previous posts from this blog on Stephen Prothero:
Who, if anyone, is Stephen Prothero arguing with, other than himself?
How Stephen Prothero mangles the economics-politics-religion analogy
The basis of universal spirituality
Contra Prothero

More on Prothero: Who, if anyone, is he arguing with, other than himself?

In his latest self-promotion campaign, Stephen Prothero has managed to publish more or less exactly the same warmed-over tripe in the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and the Christian Science Monitor.

Also impressive has been the way in which a substance-free "review" of Prothero's new book (God Is Not One) has been picked up and repeated by everyone from the Phoenix Metromix to the Mercury News to the Washington Examiner to the Republic (of Columbus, Indiana) to the Stamford Advocate (subscription required) to the West Virginia Gazette (cached) to SFGate.com (cached), and many more (this puff-piece was originally filed by veteran, and now semi-retired, AP reporter Carl Hartman).

Prothero has also been interviewed or otherwise featured on NPR and a number of other print, broadcast, and online media outlets, and he is scheduled to appear on the Daily Show Colbert Report in June (it will be his second appearance he has previously appeared on the Daily Show).

Every time the ubiquitous author of God Is Not One opens his mouth or puts his thoughts in writing these days he mindlessly intones his unchanging mantra: "all religions are not the same." Like some wind-up political hack campaigning for an open city-council seat, he is never off message.

But who, if anyone, has ever claimed that "all religions are the same"?? Who, if anyone, is Stephen Prothero actually arguing against?

Well, according to Prothero: (1) the "dangerous" concept of religious sameness originated with the Enlightenment philosopher, artist and poet William Blake, and (2) the most "dangerous" contemporary proponent of the idea is religion scholar Huston Smith (whose 91st birthday is coming at the end of this month).

The trouble, though, is that neither Blake nor Smith are guilty of anything like the kind of hamfisted religious homogenization that Prothero imputes to them.

Here is what Huston Smith actually says in his classic The World's Religions:

What a strange fellowship this is, the God-seekers in every land, lifting up their voices in the most disparate ways imaginable to the God of all life. How does it sound from above? Like bedlam, or do these strains blend in strange, ethereal harmony? Does one faith carry the lead, or do the parts share in counterpoint and antiphony where not in full-throated chorus?

We cannot know. All we can do is try to listen carefully and with full attention to each voice in turn as it addresses the divine . . . .

The book does not attempt to give a rounded view of the religions considered, for each hosts differences that are too numerous to be delineated in a single chapter. One need only think of Christendom. Eastern Orthodox Christians worship in ornate cathedrals, while Quakers consider even steeples desecrations. There are Christian mystics and Christians who reject mysticism. There are Christian Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Unitarians . . . .

Every religion mixes universal principles with local peculiarities. The former, when lifted out and made clear, speak to what is generically human in us all. The latter, rich compounds of rites and legends, are not easy for outsiders to comprehend. It is one of the illusions of rationalism that the universal principles of religion are more important than the rites and rituals that feed them; to make that claim is like contending that the branches and leaves of a tree are more important that the roots from which they grow.
[Huston Smith, The World's Religions, pp. 2-3]

Huston Smith does refer to "universal principles" that are to be found in "every religion", and it is important to note that when he does so he directly ties his conception of religious universalism to our common humanity ("what is generically human in us all").

In the book's chapter on Hinduism, Smith gives a specific example of universalism when he talks about Tantra and sexuality:

Tantra's teachings about sex are neither titillating nor bizarre: they are universal. Sex is so important -- after all, it keeps life going -- that it must be linked quite directly with God. It is the divine Eros of Hesiod, celebrated in Plato's Phaedrus and in some way by every people. Even this, though, is too mild. Sex is the divine in its most available epiphany. But with this proviso: It is such when joined to love. When two people who are passionately, even madly -- Plato's divine madness -- in love; when each wants most to receive what the other most wants to give; -- at the moment of their mutual climax it is impossible to say whether the experience is more physical or spiritual, or whether they sense themselves as two or as one. The moment is ecstatic because at that moment they stand outside -- ex, out; stasis, standing -- themselves in the melded oneness of the Absolute.
[p. 141]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Prothero never addresses what Huston Smith actually says. Rather he repeats over and over and over again the claim that Smith and others ignore all substantive differences between religions. As the above quotes demonstrate: that is a lie.

Prothero also stoops to bald-faced lying when it comes to William Blake, whose 250 word poem, All Religions Are One, was the inspiration for the title of Prothero's new book. But in that brief work, Blake twice repeats that "all men are alike (though infinitely various)," and makes it clear that both the commonality and the variability of the human species are reflected in human religion.

Prothero has chosen one of the lowest paths that any scholar can take: the Straw Man argument. Rather than honestly engage with those he claims to disagree with, Prothero only engages with the voices in his own head. Perhaps it is the case that as a young undergraduate he misunderstood some of his assigned reading. And now he is going forth and sharing his misunderstandings with the world.

But the most troubling aspect of all this is not the intellectual shoddiness of Prothero's theorizing about religious difference/sameness. Rather, it is the fact that the idea of religious universalism, as is made clear in both Blake and Smith, has always been inextricably intertwined with the fundamental principle of human equality. Prothero's specious argument that "all religions are not the same" is identical to the argument of the segregationist who insists on "separate but equal", or the misogynist who perverts "la différence" into a justification for sexism. This dark side of Prothero's theory of anti-universalism will be addressed in a future post coming soon to a web browser near you.


Previous posts from this blog on Stephen Prothero:
How Stephen Prothero mangles the economics-politics-religion analogy
The basis of universal spirituality
Contra Prothero

"I could release certain emotions through this sinister evil music."

Just a collection of English language videos (mostly interviews) with Nergal of Behemoth. The "sinister evil music" quote is from the first vid. There is some good stuff in here. Explore. Enjoy.

[Also check some more recent interviews with Nergal here: "The Satanist" Is Coming!]









An earlier interview, right after the release of "Apostacies":

New Atheists as Pet Rocks

A tip of the hat to Tom Cheetham, in whose The Legacy of Henry Corbin blog I learned of David B. Hart's review of the latest publishing effort churned out in the name of New Atheism.

Hart's review is titled Believe It Or Not, and in it he looks at 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists. Hart introduces his review with a very nice summation of his opinion of New Atheism:

I think I am very close to concluding that this whole “New Atheism” movement is only a passing fad—not the cultural watershed its purveyors imagine it to be, but simply one of those occasional and inexplicable marketing vogues that inevitably go the way of pet rocks, disco, prime-time soaps, and The Bridges of Madison County. This is not because I necessarily think the current “marketplace of ideas” particularly good at sorting out wise arguments from foolish. But the latest trend in à la mode godlessness, it seems to me, has by now proved itself to be so intellectually and morally trivial that it has to be classified as just a form of light entertainment, and popular culture always tires of its diversions sooner or later and moves on to other, equally ephemeral toys.

To be honest, I think Hart seriously misunderestimates the lasting cultural impact and importance of disco, but other than that, this is pitch perfect.

Now, Hart and I obviously come at this issue from rather different perspectives. He is an Orthodox Christian who is a regular contributor to the conservative Christian journal, First Things, where his review is published. First Things, for those not familiar with it, was founded by Catholic theologian Richard Neuhaus, who had this to say in a speech he gave to the National Right To Life Committee in Arlington VA in 2008:

"We shall not weary, we shall not rest, as we stand guard at the entrance gates and the exit gates of life, and at every step along way of life, bearing witness in word and deed to the dignity of the human person—of every human person. Against the encroaching shadows of the culture of death, against forces commanding immense power and wealth, against the perverse doctrine that a woman’s dignity depends upon her right to destroy her child, against what St. Paul calls the principalities and powers of the present time . . . "

I, on the other hand, am a left-leaning Pagan who is proud of having faced down the likes of Richard Neuhaus from the other side of the property line at many an abortion clinic. I don't want to dwell on abortion or my views of Christianity (or monotheism generally -- let along right-wing Catholic right-to-lifers). I only wish to emphasize that any agreement I might have with David Bentley Hart is a considered one, and not some reflexive "amen, brother!"

With that out of the way, let me return to praising Hart and his assessment of New Atheism. Or, better yet, let me quote Hart at length as he gets to the heart of the matter:

I am not—honestly, I am not—simply being dismissive here. The utter inconsequentiality of contemporary atheism is a social and spiritual catastrophe. Something splendid and irreplaceable has taken leave of our culture—some great moral and intellectual capacity that once inspired the more heroic expressions of belief and unbelief alike. Skepticism and atheism are, at least in their highest manifestations, noble, precious, and even necessary traditions, and even the most fervent of believers should acknowledge that both are often inspired by a profound moral alarm at evil and suffering, at the corruption of religious institutions, at psychological terrorism, at injustices either prompted or abetted by religious doctrines, at arid dogmatisms and inane fideisms, and at worldly power wielded in the name of otherworldly goods. In the best kinds of unbelief, there is something of the moral grandeur of the prophets—a deep and admirable abhorrence of those vicious idolatries that enslave minds and justify our worst cruelties.

But a true skeptic is also someone who understands that an attitude of critical suspicion is quite different from the glib abandonment of one vision of absolute truth for another—say, fundamentalist Christianity for fundamentalist materialism or something vaguely and inaccurately called “humanism.” Hume, for instance, never traded one dogmatism for another, or one facile certitude for another. He understood how radical were the implications of the skepticism he recommended, and how they struck at the foundations not only of unthinking faith, but of proud rationality as well.

A truly profound atheist is someone who has taken the trouble to understand, in its most sophisticated forms, the belief he or she rejects, and to understand the consequences of that rejection. Among the New Atheists, there is no one of whom this can be said, and the movement as a whole has yet to produce a single book or essay that is anything more than an insipidly doctrinaire and appallingly ignorant diatribe.

This is spot on. For the old school Atheists of days gone by, attacking Christianity was a labor of love. They lingered over passages from scripture, quoted Papal Bulls and other church documents from memory, and knew the breadth and depth of western history. For them it was not simply the case that "even the Devil can quote scripture", but that the Devil must know his Bible backwards and forwards, as well as his theology, his Apologetics, and, of course, his Church historians.

By far the most damning thing that Hart has in store is his extended comparison of the "sheer banality" of the New Atheists with the "force" and "intellectual courage" of Friedrich Nietzsche:

The only really effective antidote to the dreariness of reading the New Atheists, it seems to me, is rereading Nietzsche. How much more immediate and troubling the force of his protest against Christianity seems when compared to theirs, even more than a century after his death. Perhaps his intellectual courage—his willingness to confront the implications of his renunciation of the Christian story of truth and the transcendent good without evasions or retreats—is rather a lot to ask of any other thinker, but it does rather make the atheist chic of today look fairly craven by comparison.

Above all, Nietzsche understood how immense the consequences of the rise of Christianity had been, and how immense the consequences of its decline would be as well, and had the intelligence to know he could not fall back on polite moral certitudes to which he no longer had any right. Just as the Christian revolution created a new sensibility by inverting many of the highest values of the pagan past, so the decline of Christianity, Nietzsche knew, portends another, perhaps equally catastrophic shift in moral and cultural consciousness. His famous fable in The Gay Science of the madman who announces God’s death is anything but a hymn of atheist triumphalism. In fact, the madman despairs of the mere atheists—those who merely do not believe—to whom he addresses his terrible proclamation. In their moral contentment, their ease of conscience, he sees an essential oafishness; they do not dread the death of God because they do not grasp that humanity’s heroic and insane act of repudiation has sponged away the horizon, torn down the heavens, left us with only the uncertain resources of our will with which to combat the infinity of meaninglessness that the universe now threatens to become.

Of course Hart cannot help but try to enlist Nietzsche as a witness to the "immensity" of the "consequences of the rise of Christianity." One gets the impression that Hart does not have the Dark Ages, the Inquisition and Colonialism in mind. But those are subjects I have covered elsewhere.

Pagan Ethics According To Socrates: The Quick And Dirty Version

In his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius wryly states of Socrates, "he was the first philosopher who discoursed on the conduct of life, and the first philosopher who was tried and put to death."

In other words: the teaching of ethics is a dangerous business and not for the faint of heart!

The core of Socrates' ethical teachings are contained in two of Plato's major works: the Republic and the somewhat less well known Gorgias. The presentation in the Republic is far more complete, and that work is therefore much longer.

Perhaps surprisingly, though, it is not that difficult to quickly summarize the main points of the Socratic ethics of Plato's Republic:

1. In the opening scene of the dialogue Socrates insists that (a) even as heat cannot produce cold, a good person can never cause harm, and (b) Justice is good, and, therefore, acting justly cannot cause harm.

2. Socrates also insists that it is always better to act justly than unjustly, even when there appears to be advantage in injustice and disadvantage in justice.

3. Glaucon (Plato's older brother), states that while these ideas are very appealing, Socrates has yet to prove that they are true. The remaining 90% of the Republic is concerned with taking up this challenge. As is typical of Socratic dialogues, no absolute conclusion is ever arrived at.* Despite the absence of definitive proof, however, Socrates and Glaucon remain convinced (in fact, more convinced than they were at the beginning) that (1) good people avoid causing harm, (2) Justice is always beneficial, and (3) no matter what the apparent consequences, it is always better to act justly, and one should never act unjustly.

4. At the end of the Republic Socrates recounts the famous "Myth of Er", according to which each of us receives a tenfold return for all of our just and unjust deeds. The "Myth of Er" also presents a very Pythagorean view of reincarnation (or, more precisely, metempsychosis) according to which spiritual progress is (at least potentially) made over the course of many lifetimes, and that in each incarnation we choose (within certain limitations over which we have no control) beforehand the life we are to have. Socrates uses Odysseus himself as the prime example of this: after the life recounted in Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus has learned to avoid all desire for fame and wealth, and chooses, wisely, in his next life to live as "a private man who had no cares."

5. One of Socrates' main concerns in the Republic is disputing the contention that acting in accordance with Justice is at odds with self-interest; that is, he argues against the idea that a person who acts justly will often suffer on that account and therefore be deprived of true happiness. According to Socrates there is no greater "self" concern than the proper care of the soul. Acting justly is always beneficial to the soul, and, therefore, is the only way to pursue genuine happiness. Conversely, acting unjustly is always harmful to the soul and can never lead to happiness.

* This lack of conclusiveness is in some ways even more pronounced in the Republic than in other dialogues. This is because early on Socrates proposes to talk, by analogy, about Justice as applied to the polis (that is, "the Republic" or "the State", or, more accurately, "the City"), rather than as applied to the individual. Socrates argues that in the State, Justice "is likely to be larger and more easily discernible. I propose therefore that we enquire into the nature of justice and injustice, first as they appear in the State, and secondly in the individual, proceeding from the greater to the lesser and comparing them."

"Religion Is Gay": The New Atheism As A Form of Bigotry

There are a number of striking parallels between the positions taken, the attitudes adopted, and the rhetoric used by the New Atheists and positions, attitudes and rhetoric of the anti-gay-rights crowd, and, in particular, of homophobic right-wing Christians. Below, seven of these parallels are briefly described. (Some, or all, of these points might be taken up in more detail in future posts under the general heading "Religion Is Gay".)

The point is not that New Atheists are necessarily homophobic. The point, rather, is that New Atheism is a form of bigotry, and, therefore, it necessarily resembles other forms of bigotry.

New Atheism is a form of bigotry because it is based on irrational fear and hostility directed at people based solely on their religious beliefs. And like other forms of bigotry, New Atheism doesn't stop at disparaging religious people, but actively seeks to harass and discriminate against them because of their religiosity, and even has the stated goal of eventually ridding the world of religiously minded people altogether.

1. Special Rights/Religious Privilege

Homophobia: The right-wing website Conservapedia in their entry on "The Homosexual Agenda" cites Joseph P. Gudel to the effect that "the homosexual movement":

has been militantly demanding not just the homosexuals' right to do whatever they wish to do behind closed doors, but, more importantly, that society fully accept their lifestyle as both healthy and normal, even demanding special rights and legislation as an "oppressed minority."

New Atheism: Austin Cline, a Fullbright scholar and prominent Atheist blogger wrote a piece for About.com titled "Equal Rights vs. Special Rights":

If a person has a sincere religious belief, they can apply for — and are usually granted — exemptions from generally applicable and neutral laws. Employers, too, are required to accommodate people’s religious beliefs even if this means exempting them from generally applicable, neutral rules in the workplace. Religious believers enjoy a broad array of special rights and privileges unavailable to others who may want exemptions for non-religious reasons.

2. "They don't keep it to themselves"

Homophobia: Scientific studies have shown that even "gay friendly" heterosexuals are often "disgusted" by public displays of same-sex affection. It is hardly news that homophobes often protest that they don't have anything against gay people so long as they keep it to themselves and don't flaunt it. A more specific example: Speaking on the right-wing Christian radio program "Washington Watch Weekly", U.S. Rep. Steve King (R. IA) stated that "If you don't project it, if you don't advertise it, how would anyone know to discriminate against you?"

New Atheism: "We aren't interested in what public officials do in their free time. They can have whatever legal hobby they want, they can favor whatever private rituals they want, they can associate with any non-dangerous group on their weekends that they want, whether it's going to church or gathering to watch football. So what's different about Collins? He doesn't keep it to himself. He is openly and avidly evangelical." P.Z. Myers in his aptly titled blog post "Is it really that hard to understand?"

3. Religion as mental illness

Homophobia: Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and a licensed clinical psychologist, has stated that he "and many others in the mental health field see homosexuality as a developmental condition stemming from a combination of factors — including, but not limited to, dysfunctional family relationships," and that this "developmental condition . . . can be overcome."

New Atheism: Sam Harris: "It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window." Also: "It is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions."

4. Religion as a kind of contagion

Homophobia: A team of University of Arkansas psychologists studied the underlying emotions and attitudes behind homophobia. They used the Padua Inventory (psychological test for assessing "contamination obsessions") and other psychological tests, including the Index of Attitudes toward Homosexuals. They concluded that homophobia is based on "feelings of disgust" and "a perception of contagion".

New Atheism: Jerry Coyne wrote in a blog post titled "Francis Collins pollutes science with religion": "I am more certain than ever that Collins really does pollute his science with his faith. By speaking with the authority of a scientist, by discussing science at length, and above all by describing in the same talk the evidence for evolution and the 'evidence' for God, acting as if they are of similar epistemic significance, he is confusing his audiences about the nature of evidence and the nature of science . . . It’s a disquieting performance, even more distressing because Collins is an affable and genial speaker, conveying his snake oil is with a dose of sugar . . . He is polluting science with faith — and hurting public understanding of science." Also this from Sam Harris: "There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by the accommodations they have made to religious irrationality."

5. Religion as a major cause of societal ills

Homophobia: It is well known that some Christians don't even stop at blaming social problems on the sin of homosexuality. Natural disasters and even terrorism can be caused by God's Wrath Over Homosexuality, according to such varied experts in theodicy as John Hagee, and Jerry Falwell.

New Atheism: Sam Harris sounds a lot like Rev. Hagee in his unhinged essay "The Problem With Religious Moderates": "Religious moderates are themselves the bearers of a terrible dogma: they imagine that the path to peace will be paved once each of us has learned to respect the unjustified beliefs of others. I hope to show that the very ideal of religious tolerance -- born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God -- is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss." Similarly, Richard Dawkins wrote in his The God Delusion that "even mild and moderate religion helps to provide the climate of faith in which extremism naturally flourishes." [p. 303]

6. "Dread of being in close quarters"

Homophobia: Psychologist George Weinberg is credited with first coining the term "homophobia". Part of Weinberg's definition of homophobia is "the dread of being in close quarters with homosexuals." (See his Society and the Healthy Homosexual.) In his now classic study, Homosexuality Reexamined, D.J. West wrote that "when placed in a situation that threatens to excite their own unwanted homosexual thoughts, they overreact with panic or anger."

New Atheism: Of all the New Atheists the worst, by far, are the self-appointed Science Nazis: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, PZ Meyers, Jerry Coyne and their ilk. One of their primary goals is to turn the world of scientific research into a "religion free zone", so that atheist scientists will have a safe refuge where they needn't dread being in close quarters with icky religious people and their spiritual cooties. At the very least they want to impose a "don't ask, don't tell" policy concerning religion among scientists. This aspect of New Atheism was especially noticeable in their frenzied response to Francis Collins' appointment as NIH Director.

7. Creepy obsessions

Homophobia: Rick Warren: "But the issue to me is, I’m not opposed to that as much as I’m opposed to the redefinition of a 5,000-year definition of marriage. I’m opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage."

New Atheism: Richard Dawkins: "Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7/, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as 'Christ-killers', no Northern Ireland 'troubles', no 'honour killings', no shiny suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money."

More on the situation in India

A very substantive interview with Indian Home Secretary P Chidambaram conducted by NDTV. Both a video and a complete transcript are at the link.

India reviews anti-Maoist strategy (BBC.com)

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) being tested now in Chhattisgarh (Times of India)

Naxalite leader (in hiding) releases new video (NDTV)

Maoist "general strike" wreaks havoc in Jharkhand (Times of India)

"Grief and Confusion" in Dantewada (The Hindu)

India Bus Blast: "Dozens Killed"

UPDATE: here is a link to a more detailed AP article, scroll down for the text.

Well, it looks like Arundhati Roy's "Comrades" have struck again.

Naxalite terrorists blew up a bus filled with people in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh today. Initial reports of casualties vary: IndianExpress.Com is reporting 19 killed, The Times of India puts the death-toll at 40, while Al Jazeera's headline says the blast killed "dozens ... up to 50". The western media is a little behind on this story, but BBC.com now has a story that says "many ... at least 20" were killed.

The following is from the Times of India article linked to above:

NEW DELHI: Maoists on Monday triggered a landmine blast in Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh killing 20 police officers and 20 civilians who were in a bus.

Maoists blew up the bus carrying passengers from Gadiras to Bhusaras in Dantewada district using Improvised Explosive Device (IED).

Maoists had killed 76 CRPF personnel on April 6 in Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh.

Text of AP article filed by Ashok Sharma from New Delhi at 11:30 am EDT (this is the article linked to in the UPDATE now at the top of this post):

NEW DELHI — Maoist rebels blew up a bus filled with police and civilians Monday as it drove through central India, killing at least 35 people, police said.

Nineteen civilians and 16 police officers were killed in the attack that took place in the state of Chhattisgarh, which has been the site of fierce fighting between the Maoists and government forces in recent months, said Amarnath Upadhyaya, a senior police officer.

The bus was hit by a rebel land mine, said Rajender Kumar Vij, another top police official in the area.

Police often ride in civilian buses, apparently in an attempt to avoid rebel attack — hoping that the insurgents would not target such vehicles for fear of losing local support.

Amarnath Upadhyaya, another senior police officer, said the front of the bus was destroyed and 40 to 60 people were on board.

The Press Trust of India reported that at least 40 people were killed in the attack.

Television images from the scene showed the bus completely wrecked by the blast and the bodies and police officers' weapons strewn across the road in Dantewada district, about 350 miles (560 kilometers) south of Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh state.

India's Home Secretary G.K. Pillai did not give a death toll but said seven people were taken to a hospital in serious condition.

Attacks by the Maoists, known as Naxalites, have been increasing in recent months.

The rebels ambushed a paramilitary patrol last month, killing 76 troops, and kidnapped and killed six villagers over the weekend, alleging they were police informants.

The rebels, who have tapped into the rural poor's growing anger at being left out of the country's economic gains, are now present in 20 of the country's 28 states and have an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 fighters, according to India's home ministry.

Last year, the government announced its "Operation Green Hunt" offensive aimed at flushing the militants out of their forest hide-outs.

Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram says the government would only hold talks with the rebels if they shun violence and there were no preconditions, such as a halt to the government's offensive.