Religious News

My son, Joshua, sent me links to two pieces of news relating to religion.

First, from Foreign Policy magazine, is a critique of New Atheism. New atheism is distinguished from regular old atheism by its militant stance against religion. No longer content to disbelieve, the proponents of New Atheism call for an active campaign to discredit religion and adherents of religion. The piece, written by Robert Wright, can be found at: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/30/the_anti_god_squad?page=0,1.

The concluding paragraphs of the piece follow:

And there's a subtle but potent sense in which New Atheism can steer foreign policy to the right. Axiomatic to New Atheism is that religion is not just factually wrong, but the root of evil, which suggests that other proposed root causes of the sort typically stressed on the left aren't really the problem. Sam Harris, in discussing terrorism, wholly dismisses such contributing factors as "the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza," "the collusion of Western powers with corrupt dictatorships," and "the endemic poverty and lack of economic opportunity that now plague the Arab world." The problem, Harris states, is religion, period.

Most New Atheists aren't expressly right wing, but even so their discounting of the material causes of Islamist radicalism can be "objectively" right wing (as in George Orwell's assertion that pacifists were "objectively pro-fascist" regardless of their views about fascism).

Dawkins, for example, has written that if there were no religion then there would be "no Israeli/Palestinian wars." This view is wrong -- the conflict started as an essentially secular argument over land -- but it's popular among parts of the U.S. and Israeli right. The reason is its suggestion that there's no point in, say, removing Israeli settlements so long as the toxin of religion is in the air.
All the great religions have shown time and again that they're capable of tolerance and civility when their adherents don't feel threatened or disrespected. At the same time, as some New Atheists have now shown, you don't have to believe in God to exhibit intolerance and incivility.

Maybe this is the New Atheists' biggest problem: As living proof that religion isn't a prerequisite for divisive fundamentalism, they are walking rebuttals to their own ideology.

It seems as if Dawkins, Harris, et al are guilty of making religion the scapegoat for all the problems of the world. Do you buy what they are selling?