The atheist delusion

Now, this article is written by an atheist philosopher. One of the better in my opinion, writing today. It may be worth bookmarking this article: The atheist delusion by John Gray. He starts by asking what is going on with the new Atheism:

"Dawkins, Hitchens and the rest may still believe that, over the long run, the advance of science will drive religion to the margins of human life, but this is now an article of faith rather than a theory based on evidence."

I read this guy's book Straw Dogs a couple of years ago. I was particularly interested in his frank expose of the way that much western atheism is parasitic on the Christianity it rejects. He tries to offer another approach that is without the philosophical nostalgia for Christian faith. This shows up in this review article, which therefore can be used as something of a summary of his thesis.For example, mentioning one of the major themes in the Northern Lights trilogy,

But the idea of free will that informs liberal notions of personal autonomy is biblical in origin (think of the Genesis story). The belief that exercising free will is part of being human is a legacy of faith, and like most varieties of atheism today, Pullman's is a derivative of Christianity.

It is an error for western atheists to critique religion (in general -as if that is possible, really) for not being proto-scientific theories,

religions do not consist of propositions struggling to become theories. The incomprehensibility of the divine is at the heart of Eastern Christianity, while in Orthodox Judaism practice tends to have priority over doctrine. Buddhism has always recognised that in spiritual matters truth is ineffable, as do Sufi traditions in Islam. Hinduism has never defined itself by anything as simplistic as a creed. It is only some western Christian traditions, under the influence of Greek philosophy, which have tried to turn religion into an explanatory theory.

. Gray takes a pot at memes, rightly but combatitively:

the theory of memes is science only in the sense that Intelligent Design is science. Strictly speaking, it is not even a theory. Talk of memes is just the latest in a succession of ill-judged Darwinian metaphors.

And he also makes the point that many others have criticised Dawkins and others by;

Dawkins makes much of the oppression perpetrated by religion, which is real enough. He gives less attention to the fact that some of the worst atrocities of modern times were committed by regimes that claimed scientific sanction for their crimes. Nazi "scientific racism" and Soviet "dialectical materialism" reduced the unfathomable complexity of human lives to the deadly simplicity of a scientific formula. In each case, the science was bogus, but it was accepted as genuine at the time, and not only in the regimes in question. Science is as liable to be used for inhumane purposes as any other human institution. Indeed, given the enormous authority science enjoys, the risk of it being used in this way is greater.

This atheist is making 'our' points for us; refreshing eh? In fact, I was delighted to find that he makes a point I have often made informally in discussions about secularity and religion, when I have pointed out the strange way that atheism comes to ape 'religion'

demonstrating what happens when atheism becomes a political project. The invariable result is an ersatz religion that can only be maintained by tyrannical means.

Another point that I really liked, partly because as a child who was interested in science and the meaning of evolution, I was struck by how (to phrase it in terms I didn't then know) people seemed to turn a 'blind' process into a teleology, science-fiction was full of it as were elements of popular discourse. I think that the blindness of the process which made me precociously aware of the lack of meaning and of foundation for morality with atheism. So for me this was good to read;

One does not want to deny anyone the consolations of a faith, but it is obvious that the idea of progress in history is a myth created by the need for meaning.

And he helpfully expands the point in relation to morality and ethics in a way that resonates with my early teens ruminations which eventually drove me towards investigating spiritual 'answers'.

The problem with the secular narrative is not that it assumes progress is inevitable (in many versions, it does not). It is the belief that the sort of advance that has been achieved in science can be reproduced in ethics and politics. In fact, while scientific knowledge increases cumulatively, nothing of the kind happens in society. Slavery was abolished in much of the world during the 19th century, but it returned on a vast scale in nazism and communism, and still exists today. Torture was prohibited in international conventions after the second world war, only to be adopted as an instrument of policy by the world's pre-eminent liberal regime at the beginning of the 21st century. Wealth has increased, but it has been repeatedly destroyed in wars and revolutions. People live longer and kill one another in larger numbers. Knowledge grows, but human beings remain much the same.

And what he says next highlights one of the more frustrating aspects of much contemporary atheism;

Belief in progress is a relic of the Christian view of history as a universal narrative, and an intellectually rigorous atheism would start by questioning it. This is what Nietzsche did when he developed his critique of Christianity in the late 19th century, but almost none of today's secular missionaries have followed his example. One need not be a great fan of Nietzsche to wonder why this is so. The reason, no doubt, is that he did not assume any connection between atheism and liberal values - on the contrary, he viewed liberal values as an offspring of Christianity and condemned them partly for that reason. In contrast, evangelical atheists have positioned themselves as defenders of liberal freedoms - rarely inquiring where these freedoms have come from, and never allowing that religion may have had a part in creating them.

Quite so. Atheists may point to the fact that many of them live morally, but the fact remains that their choice to live so is a kind of existentialist brute choosing without any real ability to say why anyone else (Hitler, say, or Stalin) should choose similarly. Self evident truths may simply be genetically-programmed dispositions or the outworking of 'memes'

Matthew Arnold wrote of believers being left bereft as the tide of faith ebbs away. Today secular faith is ebbing, and it is the apostles of unbelief who are left stranded on the beach

Hmmm. I wonder if he's right.