Amoebic Intel

Several friends of mine have told me that they ‘don’t believe in atheists.’ That is, they don’t beleive it is possible not to beleive in Divinity: some transcendent force with detectable (and laudable) manifestations in the world. There’s the suggestion here that atheists are deluded—that is, too stupid to know they’re stupid. These friends of mine also say things like: God reveals Himself to nonbelievers.

I find these kinds of statements about infidels to be “smug” (definition: highly self-satisfied; arrogant about the unique truthfulness of one’s beliefs).

Typically, though, I see smugness from the other side: from my atheist friends who see religion as ‘the opiate of the people’ (as Marx infamously said in his analysis of why more people were content with their oppressed positions in capitalist society).

As someone who is agnostic (that is, unconvinced in the claims about Divinity but certain that spirituality is a real force for good in the world), I have to wonder from time to time: what is courageous—–faith, or doubt?

What if your faith means you are able to look the other way at social injustice?

What if doubt means you are able to look the other way at social injustice?

What if your faith means you dont have to worry about global warming?

What if your doubt means you dont have to worry about global warming?

In this (very pragmatist) analysis of religion, doubt looks pretty courageous to me sometimes, particularly if it costs you your family and friends, as well as your peace of mind about the fate of your immortal soul.

On the other hand, faith looks pretty courageous to me sometimes, particularly if it means intellectual humility for someone who has worked hard to acquire knowledge of human history, science and philosophy.

Given my ambivalence about what constitutes courage in our present historical circumstances, I really don’t know what to say to people when they ask me: what are your religious beliefs?

My first thought is to state the obvious: I do not come from a culture where my religion was woven into the fabric of my intellectual and social life, constitutive of my ethnic identity, my sense of home and family and worldview. So, religion for me is not a matter of belonging as I think it is for many Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus.

Religion, for me, is an epistemic discourse (a way of talking about reality) and a social environment (a way of being with others) that makes more likely that I will think deeply about questions about my relation to Others (morality) and my own struggle to answer to the best impulses in myself (integrity/goodness).

Given this analysis, it would be unlikely (but not impossible) for me to believe in miracles and one true religion.

Its not surprising that the only the religions that appeal to me are ‘heretical’ (revisionist and non-dogmatic), socially tolerant and progressive. We’ve recently heard about two religions, Unitarianism and Bahá’í, that match these criteria. These religions, I would think, are attractive to people who feel themselves out of sync with their “religion of origin” but nonetheless still interested in spirituality.

I wonder what people who find themselves apostates or heretics (rejecting all or some of their religions) think about the “new atheists” like Sam Harris and Bill Mahr, who argue that religion is, on balance, a bad thing for humanity. They point to wars in the Middle East and to inconsistencies in people who claim to be reasonable believers in a religions. They say that religion has too little love and too much superstition and moral hypocricy. They argue, with some success, that religion on the whole has had a negative impact on progressive politics, on “peace” and the addressing of socio-cultural issues like women’s equality and environmental crisis, especially when compared to the effects of other aspects of civilization: science, humanism, philosophy, literature.

Maher has produced and starred in a movie (Religulous) where he skewers some of the easy targets of “blind faith” (televangelists and Creationists, etc). As I watched the movie (and laughed at its subjects), I wondered: Is Religulous hate speech? Or just humor? Can it be both?  I have to agree with one movie reviewer who said the film is an “often hilarious but relentlessly shallow attack on religious fundamentalism” (in evangelical Christianity and Islam).

His “serious” point is that people often use religion politically–to shore up alliances with people they need to keep them in power. But his subtext is undeniably that people of faith are often ignorant of the historical facts about their religion and so should be ridiculed.

My rebuttal of the film would come down to this:

Are people entitled to cherry-pick their sacred texts? Of course. Who doesn’t?

Are people entitled to their anti-scientific understanding of Nature? For instance, that Earth was created 5,200 years ago. Evolution is just a theory, etc. Yes. Why not?

Are people who believe in miracles stupid, deluded? (Maher likens the Biblical tale of Jonah and the whale to Jack and the Beanstalk. If you were told both stories as a child, how would you later know which one was ‘just a fairy tale.’?) Not unless anyone who feels convinced that there is some truth to stories that may not be scientifically provable.

SO, back to the question: is it hate speech to make fun of someone? Probably not, especially if its not in a context where you are encouraging violence towards the butt of the joke.

I do think Maher’s film is ultimately a welcome addition to debates about the significance of religion. I mean, as a believer of any faith tradition in a multicultural world, you must comes to terms with the fact of other religions and their right to exist. Or else you are a moral absolutist (that is, you don’t have to justify your behavior towards others on any basis other than what your faith or clergy tells you). The prospects for peace in a world of moral absolutists are not good. (Though we shouldn’t forget that proponents of “free market” capitalism and globalism are also kind of moral absolutists).

By the same token, I want to say that some of my smug atheistic friends who laugh at Maher’s “gotcha” moments on fundamentalists shouldn’t feel too certain that religion has just been debunked. Sure, Maher is right that

• no one who wrote about Jesus in what became the Gospels ever met him
• many of the facets of the renegade Christianity had already appeared in other sects and religions: virgin birth, death/resurrection, etc.

And he does wins some points for progressive people of faith by getting some to testify against fundamentalist or literalists readings of the Bible. For instance,  Father George Coyne, former director of the Vatican Observatory,  to argue that evolution is in fact true: “scriptures are written around/between 2000 BC and 150 AD, and modern science has only come into existence in the last couple hundred years, and thus the scriptures in no way contain any science and should not be taught as such.”

But religion is more complicated than a set of propositions about reality. Maher seems to miss the point, as does Harris and Hitchens and the other new atheists.