Posted on 28 Comments on Chris Hedges on Atheism

Chris Hedges on Atheism

(Postscript: I changed the title of this post from “Faith in the Unknowable” to “Chris Hedges on Atheism” to more accurately depict the topic of the post.)

Chris Hedges was on “The Hour” with George Stroumboulopoulos last night promoting his new book I Don’t Believe in Atheists. In the book, Hedges speaks against the rise of the “new atheism,” as we see in books from the likes of Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great), Sam Harris (The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation), and Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion).

Hedges, who spent time in the seminary before leaving to become a journalist and writer, is not against atheism per se. But he opposes what he sees as a radical breed of atheism that is, he believes, as bigoted and as dangerous as the Christian Right. Hedges spends much of the interview pointing out parallels between people like Hitchens and Harris and the people he spoke against in his previous book, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

On debating Sam Harris and Christoper Hitchens:

I was stunned at how the very chauvinism and bigotry and intolerance that they condemn in the Christian Right, they embrace under the guise of atheism.

It was a good interview. I consider myself to be essentially an atheist, yet I found myself agreeing with much of what Hedges said even though that would appear to be a contradictory stance. But the truth is, I have never been completely comfortable with the rabid and entrenched anti-religious positions that people like Hitchens take. I’m not comfortable with any extreme opinions that declare, unequivocally, that they are right and those who disagree are wrong.

Among the points that Hedges discussed was his idea that by pointing the finger at religion as the root of many evils, it externalizes those evils instead of getting to the heart of them, which is, he says, human nature. In other words we should not blame religion for wars and other crimes; we should blame the individuals, the people, who commit them. He points out examples of extreme atheists making war cries and calling for mass murders in the same vein as those who do so in the name of religion.

One of the most interesting points that Hedges made was in his comparison of religion and art. If I understood correctly, Hedges said that you cannot be against something simply because you cannot prove or quantify it. Beauty, for example, is not always quantifiable. Sometimes a thing is beautiful for reasons you cannot define; it takes a leap of faith to accept the thing’s beauty even when you cannot explain it.

My interpretation of Hedges’ argument is that the extreme atheists take an overly Cartesian view of the world; placing everything of value in the squared off box of reason and logic, full stop. However, the Christian Right, radical Islam, and other extreme religious movements take an equally Cartesian, cut-and-dried, black-and-white view, but in the other direction. (This brings to mind John Ralston Saul’s 1992 book, Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, although that book tackled different themes.)

Hedges seems to feel that if there is such a thing as “reality,” it lies somewhere between these two extremes, that just because we do not, or cannot, fully know or understand a thing, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that we can’t acknowledge our faith in it.

That doesn’t mean the religious people are necessarily right either; but it does mean that we cannot fully know, nor does anyone have the right to arbitrarily declare, that they are fully wrong.

You can watch the interview (10:20) at CBC’s Web site.

28 thoughts on “Chris Hedges on Atheism”

  1. This is a subject that has been close to my heart for over 20 years, and is especially so now, as an atheist recently married to a muslim.

    So are the “new atheists” really as “bigoted and dangerous as the religious right?”

    Members of the religious right:

    – Obstruct human rights in terms of access to birth control and equality for gays and lesbians
    – Lobby (sometimes successfully) to insert religious dogma into science classes
    – Drive wedges between groups of people by insisting on the truth of revelation over observation and reason
    – Perform genital mutilation
    – Kill people by denying them medical care (such as blood transfusions) on faith grounds
    – Fly airplanes full of people into office buildings

    The “new atheists”:

    – Write books
    – Deliver educational (or, if you prefer, proselytizing) lectures

    Quite the moral equivalence, there.

    …we should not blame religion for wars and other crimes; we should blame the individuals, the people, who commit them.

    Back in the early 1970s, there was a psychology experiment performed at Stanford university in which the psychological effects of prisons were studied. Undergraduate students voluntarily played the roles of both guards and prisoners living in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Within days, the students had internalized their roles to such a degree that many of the guards had started brutalizing the prisoners. The experiment was ended abruptly.

    Certainly, the individuals who perform any kind of antisocial behavior are responsible for their own actions. But we cannot hold blameless the social institutions that provide a distorting framework through which people see and react to the world.

    If the new atheists sound strident, it is because of the carnage surrounding them.

  2. The Cartesian angle is interesting. Descartes actually showed us that the rigorous application of reason will not lead to proof of the existence of God, and will also not lead to the proof of the NONexistence of God. Actual intellectual rigor leads, inevitably, to agnosticism.

    From that point of view, the new class of professional atheists make me giggle, because they are so NOISY as they make the same mistake as the people they vilify.

  3. Megan said: Actual intellectual rigor leads, inevitably, to agnosticism.

    Well said.

    The same can be said about the existence of fairies or leprechauns or Bigfoot. We cannot prove that Bigfoot does not exist, so therefore we must be agnostic about the existence of Bigfoot. But in our daily lives, that means we assume that Bigfoot does not in fact exist until we are presented with evidence that he does.

  4. Well, keep in mind I’m just reporting on what Hedges said in the interview.

    However, Jim, I would add that the “new atheists” (as Hedges calls them) possibly do more than the two items you list. If I can extrapolate from the interview (I haven’t read the book), I (via Hedges) would add:

    – Drive wedges between groups of people by insisting on the truth of reason over faith, culture, and history (the point here is not the percieved “truth” but the driving of the wedge).

    – Advocating war and persectution against those who believe other than they do (Hedges says the anti-muslim rhetoric of the “new athiests” is as racist and dangerous as the rhetoric of the Christian Right. He also claims that Harris says, in his book, that we should consider nuking the middle east to get rid of the holy wars.)

    Please keep in mind I am basically atheist myself. And as I said, I don’t think Hedges is against atheists. What he’s against is radical atheists. It has nothing to do with arguments about or against the existence of God, or talk about belief in fairies or anything like that. It’s about the dangers of radical atheism as a new form of fascism.

  5. Jim, another thing: regarding your list of items that members of the religious right do, Hedges (and others, including me) would argue that you shouldn’t necessarily blame RELIGION for that; you blame humans, and human nature. There is nothing in any religion that justifies those things; those are the acts of whacko PEOPLE acting on a belief system.

    And radical atheism is also a belief system, so there is nothing to keep radical athiests from acting just as badly. You reference the famous Stanford study — that just proves my point. There was nothing religious about that study or their behaviour. That was human nature at work.

    Hedges would argue that many athiests (not just the radicals) are mistaken in their belief that all these behavioural problems will go away if you just remove the construct of religion. Those behaviours are based in human nature, not religion, so if you remove religion the behaviours will remain, but they will manifest under different constructs. Radical atheism, for example.

    Again, there is a difference between religious faith and the drastic behavious of some fanatics.

    On another note, here’s an inventory of some of the things we find in our education system:

    – Teachers who physically and verbally abuse students.
    – Teachers who sexually abuse students.
    – Gang and thug activity based on grade.
    – Hypocritical positions on the teaching of sex education.
    – Injuries from physical education classes.
    – Streaming of underprivileged kids into “cheap labour” career paths.
    – Pyschological injuries from teachers who humilate students.
    – Danger of roof collapse due to too many snow storms. ;-)

    The solution? BAN EDUCATION!

  6. Jim, I don’t know how often the topic of Bigfoot comes up in your daily life, but this that you wrote, “in our daily lives, that means we assume that Bigfoot does not in fact exist” — doesn’t exhibit the rigor we were discussing.

  7. Megan, I beg to differ about intellectual rigor. I chose the example of Bigfoot as an edge case. The principle is about how we evaluate claims.

    It almost never possible to prove the non-existence of a thing, be it Yaweh, Allah, Zeus, Shiva, or mythical creatures such as Bigfoot. There is no reliable evidence for the existence of any of these things, yet this absence of evidence is not positive proof of the non-existence of these things either. So to be intellectually honest, we should be agnostic about all of them, right?

    However, being agnostic does not rule out the possibility of also being atheistic. One can be an agnostic atheist, just as one can be a gnostic theist.

    My point was that in our everyday lives, the agnostic and atheist are virtually indistinguishable from each other. One position is not really more defensible than the other, IMHO.

    Ed, you’ve given me a lot of process in your two replies. I’ll collect my thoughts and post my own reply to you a little later.

  8. I consider myself an athiest and it’s been a long time since I did anything remotely ritualistic in an attempt to hedge my bets against what is or is not in store after I am dead and gone. I am removed from the indefatigable family influences that would evoke those actions. So, why is it that I felt signifigantly moved once again in attending a funeral today? And why was I brought to tears yet again by listening to the thoughtful and heavy words of the padre at the event? Why did I go through the motions willingly and gesture & respond by rote. Peace be with you – And also with you.

  9. Jim, I think we must have differing understandings of what the terms “atheist” and “agnostic” mean. And their indistinguishability in practice to the casual observer doesn’t make them the same thing.

    Merriam-Webster gives the following mutually exclusive definitions:

    Agnostic: person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable

    Atheist: person who believes that there is no deity

    And yes, if we’re going to use the rigorous application of reason as our sole method of determining belief (as the emerging class of professional atheists takes such strident pride in doing), then we should in fact be agnostic about all the elements you mention — and, tracing it back to Descartes as Blork started us off, about everything except our own consciousness’ existence.

  10. I think that the line between atheist and the people that Hedges is talking about is drawn at the point where you go from “I don’t believe in god but anyone who wants to and leaves me be about my (lack of) belief system is ok by me” to “anyone who believes in god is a fricking moron and should think like me”.

  11. Cameron, that farther side of the line you mention (“anyone who believes in god is a fricking moron and should think like me”) is what Hedges would say is indicative of the “new athiesm.” It’s not just a matter of having your own athiestic beliefs, it’s a matter of heaping scorn upon those who DO have religious faith. That, he says, is potentially dangerous and fascistic.

    He seems to have the most scorn for Harris, with Hitchins taking the number two spot. (I actually really like Hitchens as a writer, but I do acknowledge that he’s a total nut job on certain issues.)

  13. Hedges is a very smart and thoughtful man – a longtime war correspondent who is also a graduate of Yale Divinity School. I heard him speak live once, on Palestine (he had just had an article about the subject published in Harper’s) and he was not only excellent but it was fun to watch him coolly field every attack thrown up at him from the zionist hecklers who had packed the hall. I’m looking forward to reading this book, where I’m sure he takes on the new atheists just as coolly.

    I beg to differ with Megan, too. Strict rationalism may lead to agnosticism – and I am certainly a religious person who leans toward agnosticism myself – but the world contains realms of experience that are absolutely real while not scientifically verifiable. I’m as rigorous as any intellectual, I think, yet I’m forced to consider the profound, yet inexplicable, breakthroughs in consciousness that have occurred in my life (and in the lives of other people whose rationality I accept) that have led me to doubt my own religious skepticism. We cannot understand everything in the universe with our rational minds alone, and this is the fear that drives the most vehement of the new atheists, I think.

  14. Ed, here’s my reply to you:

    Back in November, there was a story in the papers about a young British woman — a Jehovah’s Witness — who died in hospital shortly after giving birth to twin girls. She had started to haemorrhage. Her husband and family refused to allow her to receive the blood transfusion that would certainly have saved her life.

    When I heard about this case, I was literally shaking with rage. This man deliberately chose to let the mother of his newborn daughters die. And why? Because although he could deal with the death of his wife, he couldn’t deal with being labeled a sinner before god.

    This horror happens all the time. Every couple of months, there’s another case. More recently was a 14-year-old boy with leukemia who died because of the refusal of the family to accept medical care for him.

    And of course, we only hear about the rare cases where someone actually dies. When the outcome is mere pain and anguish, which is far more common, it never makes the papers.

    Or consider the case of missionary workers who tell African AIDS victims that condom use is a sin. There are entire villages in some African countries where the heads of families are all children, because every adult has died. And yet the Pope decrees that using a simple technology that could save millions of lives is a mortal sin. And far, far too many believe him, and die.

    Or consider the Sunday school teacher who tells auditoriums full of children that scientists are all liars, and that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs with saddles, because to believe otherwise is to doubt the Bible.

    Or consider the mother who drags her screaming daughter into a back room to have her clitoris cut from her body because that’s what the Hadith demands.

    Or consider the people who contribute millions of dollars to pro-Israel lobby groups, distorting US foreign policy in the Middle East hopelessly. The largest of these are not Jewish groups, but Christian groups who want to keep Jerusalem out of Arab hands so that Jesus will have a safe landing pad when he returns for the Rapture. Many of these people openly pray for a nuclear conflict in the Middle East because it would signal the start of the End Times.

    I could go on, but you get the picture.

    None of these people are whackos. They can’t be, because then number of whackos in the world would total hundreds of millions at least. Each of them thinks they are following a thoughtful and moral course of action. And if you were to ask them why they do these things, they would proudly state that their faith compels them to do so.

    Ed, you said, “you shouldn’t necessarily blame RELIGION for that; you blame humans, and human nature.” But if these people credit their own religions for their own actions, why shouldn’t I?

    And why shouldn’t religion be considered part of human nature?

    Your analogy of violence in schools doesn’t work because none of the people you mention were inspired to commit their acts by the school or the education system. The horrors I mention are all direct consequences of religious faith, and the people who commit these acts would tell you so themselves.

    Not all reglions are like this. No one has ever heard of an Anglican terrorist. (There’s a joke: A pollster is going door to door in Manchester, performing a survey about religion. He knocks on a door, and a middle-aged woman answers. He asks, “Do you believe in God?” The woman replies, “Oh, no, no, no, dearie! I’m Church of England.”)

    The Shia Isamailis are also a model of a progressive, outwardly-focused religion. Their services have no readings from the Qur’an. Rather, they are read speeches given by their spiritual leader, the Aga Khan. And these are rarely on religious matters. More often, they are about education, finance, general spirituality… secular subjects. And the Aga Khan himself is famous worldwide for building secular schools in the Middle East.

    It seems to me that the most benign religions are those that have almost entirely removed God from their practice, and have embraced a secular world.

    Which brings me the reason I mentioned the Stanford experiment. When you create a social system — a mock prison or a religion — in which reason and evidence are not paramount, ordinary people can become an incredibly destructive force.

    As for your two points about the “new atheists” — I’ll give you the first one. The new atheists definitely can be divisive. Their rhetoric has the potential to harden opposing positions rather than change minds.

    But as for the second point… I have read the words of Dawkins, Harris, Dennet, and Hitchens. I have heard them speak. I have seen them interviewed. I agree with you that Hitchens is an odd duck. He enjoys being a contrarian more than anything, and reflexively starts arguments. But as for the other three… Sure, they can be a touch arrogant at times. But overall, I find them to be among the most gentle, thoughtful, and anti-racist of people.

    I also performed a search about Harris and the “nuke the Middle East” quote. I can’t find it anywhere. Based on what I have heard the man say himself, I suspect it is a gross distortion.

    I don’t blame the “new atheists” one bit for being strident. Neither the women’s liberation movement nor the black rights movement accomplished anything by being polite. Religion once performed a useful social role in unifying individual cultures under a common mythology. But the planet is now too interconnected for that kind of world-view.

    In this country, the Catholic church has been on the decline for 40 years. It is rapidly approaching the status of cultural heritage rather than a living social structure. And I think that is a healthy thing.

    p.s.: A last note about the Jehovah’s Witness who allowed his wife to die after childbirth… He immediately sued the hospital for wrongful death.

  15. Thanks, Jim, for that long and thoughtful reply. Before I respond, I want to point out a few things:

    First, it is not my intention to defend religion, nor to condemn atheism. All I’m doing is raising a few questions based on a ten minute interview with someone who wrote a book that I have not yet read.

    Second, I cannot emphasize enough that I share your outrage over every one of those crimes and injustices you point out. Furthermore, I think you could easily find millions of faithfully religious people who also share in that outrage. Outrage against the crimes of misguided religious zealots is not the exclusive domain of atheists.

    Third, you raise a very interesting point when you say “It seems to me that the most benign religions are those that have almost entirely removed God from their practice, and have embraced a secular world.” It seems to me that here in the 21st century, that is the ONLY way to run a civilized religion. I see no contradiction in embracing the secular world while maintaining spiritual beliefs (even if I have few such beliefs myself).

    That said, and again giving a nod to your arguments, the fact remains that it has little bearing on this conversation — or at least its original premise — because my blog post was not about religion. It was about atheists. Specifically, it was about the potential danger of atheists becoming as whacko as some religious people. Therefore, a continuing discussion about the provability of God, or about the excesses of religious zealots, does not move the conversation forward. I’m not saying that to chop you off at the knees or to throw you under the bus; I just want to move back to the topic at hand, which is the nature of atheism, and in particular, the “new atheism.”

    However, your reply is not in vain, and here’s why: you successfully point out how people can take and idea, and their sense of belonging to a certain following, and use it against other people and to buttress their extreme notions of their own propriety and correctness. What I think Hedges is saying (and again, I haven’t actually read the book, which is why I’m being careful not to say that I am saying it), is that atheism, and as such, atheists, are not immune to the same phenomenon.

    There are, I think, two kinds of atheists; those who are defined by what they DO NOT BELIEVE (God, the divine, etc.), and those who are defined by what they DO BELIVE (that the faithful, the devout, are wrong). It’s a fine distinction that has more to do with orientation than belief, as both beliefs are inclusive of the other.

    But that second orientation, based around an active belief that a certain category of people are wrong, is the potentially dangerous one. It is essentially no different from the religious zealot’s belief that the infidels are wrong, or the communist fanatic’s belief that capitalists are wrong, or the fascist’s belief that whole categories of people are wrong. Historically, those groups of people have formed movements that caused an enormous amount of grief.

    Hedges seems to be saying that it is not unthinkable that an atheist movement could develop that would encourage active discrimination against people of faith. That discrimination can manifest in many ways, and all of them are ugly. Perhaps (and this is my speculation now) it is not unthinkable to imagine assassinations of church leaders in the name of atheism. Or internment and “re-education” camps. How about mobs burning down churches and temples?

    Those things sound outrageously silly, but are they really? If I had told you in 1985 that within a decade there would be Nazi-style concentration camps set up in Europe with systematic forced labour, starvation, and mass executions, you would have told me I was insane.

    If I had told you in 1990 that within five years, in the peaceful country of Rwanda, there would be a massive uprising of neighbours against neighbours, and that 800,000 people would be systematically hacked to death within 100 days based on some radio broadcasts, you would have asked me what kind of dope I was smoking.

    If, in the spring of 1989, after the Tiananmen Square massacre, I had tapped you on the should and said, “Hey, within 20 years, the major cities of China will be unrecognizable under all those “Blade Runner”-like buildings and lights, urban Chinese people will be arguing over BMWs versus Mercedes, the country’s economy will be the fastest growing one on earth, China will be arguably the most capitalistic country in the world, and it will still call itself communist,” you would have told me those ideas wouldn’t even fly in a bad speculative fiction novel.

    And incidentally, when I was shoveling the snow off of my roof in January, everyone told me I was wasting my time, that it was completely unnecessary. ;-)

    I’m not saying those things will come to pass. I’m just saying that in light of Chris Hedges’ book and ideas, it’s worth thinking about the dangers of radical, and potentially organized, atheism.

  16. By the way, the bit about Harris’s “nuke the middle east” proposition is, apparently, a distortion of what he said. Unfortunately, I don’t know what he actually did say.

    (Wow, this post and its comments are up to 3500 words. )

  17. This book and this post sound like concern trolls.
    Worrying about the intolerance of those who are opposed to the intolerant?

    “you would have asked me what kind of dope I was smoking.”

    Maybe, but those things are all in the realm of possibility. Now if you told me I should build an arc, or that I my eternal soul may be damned, or 77 virgins might be in my future, well, then yes I might ask what you are smoking.

    The only place in our discourse where absurdity gets a pass is when religion is considered.

    Is there really a worry that creationists are going to be persecuted? How would that work?

  18. The old “it can’t happen here” has never been a very reliable argument.

  19. Beth wrote:

    “We cannot understand everything in the universe with our rational minds alone, and this is the fear that drives the most vehement of the new atheists, I think.”

    I think this is precisely incorrect and the exact opposite of the situation. Is there anyone who embraces the mysteries of life more than a scientist like Richard Dawkins? Religion tells us we can’t know and that it has the answers or that god does. Science tells us we can know and to seek the answers, but also admits to what it doesn’t know. And therein lies the danger of religion. It tells you not to seek knowledge. It’s best at telling you what you can’t do. It claims to know the unknown while ordering you not to seek knowledge contrary to its knowledge. Which is to say, religion is about power. And I can’t see how the new atheists in any way are seeking power over people.

    But then again not being bound by faith to these statements, I could be otherwise convinced.

  20. “The old “it can’t happen here” has never been a very reliable argument.”

    Couldn’t agree more. Of course it is plausible (shouldn’t have said realm of possibility) that atheists could organize into a group and persecute the religious. Though, I have a hard time getting my head around the idea. With that in mind, I can look at your list of extraordinary events and come up with a few sentences that get us from A to B. I have a much greater difficulty coming up with a paragraph that describes Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens organizing troops to round up Christians. But then again, Marx probably never could have imagined Stalin. Maybe that’s any answer. Whether talking about religion or atheism, it’s the perversion of the idea that is dangerous. However, to be fair, anything that involves eternal damnation is perverse.

  21. Douglas, in my first draft of that reply, I actually had said something along the lines of “Marx couldn’t have imagined Stalin” as well as “John Adams couldn’t have imagined Dick Cheney.”

  22. Dick Cheney! I think that is exactly why I have had such a hard time getting my head around the argument. A few atheists writing books seem to be the least of our worries while the US government is being run by a fascist of the corporate variety. It’s like the fire department abandoning a burning building to install a smoke detector at the local swimming pool.

  24. In specific contexts of social politics, dogmatisms tend to depend on one another. The content of those dogmatisms matters very little.

  25. I started to read an interview with Hedges a few months ago but got so mad I couldn’t finish it. You do a better job of making his points than he did, I think.

    Although I applaud the new visibility of atheism, I do think that the evils encapsulated in religion are rooted in human nature. If religion didn’t exist (I’m talking about a John Lennon-style imagining that it never even occurred to anyone, not a Soviet-style ban on worship), people would find another reason to hate and kill and play us vs. them.

    One point on “knowing”: I think “hard” atheism is a straw man. I don’t think any non-believer is utterly unwilling to be proved wrong. An atheist simply says, “Why in the world would I believe such a thing? There’s no reason to.” Analogy: If I’m at work and somebody tells me there’s a gorilla in my living room at home, I WILL NOT BELIEVE that. I am an a-gorilla-ist, not an agnostic on the subject, even though I’m fully willing to recant if I go home and there actually is a gorilla there.

    If a bearded man armed with a booming voice and lightning bolts accosts Mr. Hitchens, I have no doubt he will react the same way I would with the gorilla.

  26. As a closing thought, I’d like to offer this talk by Karen Armsrong at this year’s TED:

    http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/234

    This is probably the most profound TED talk I’ve seen. In short, she is appealing to the TED attendees, some of the smartest people in the world, to come up with a universal appeal for the application of the golden rule.

    In doing so, she is — in a way — calling for the removal of God from religion.

  27. Jim, that’s an excellent video, and I think it goes to the core of what we’re both thinking. Thanks for the link. In fact, I think that video is so important I’m going to put it in a new post.

    Incidentally, I changed the name of the current post because “Faith in the Unknowable” really only reflects a tiny part of the whole discussion. I came up with that title very quickly because I originally forgot to include a title. After publishing, I noticed “Yikes! There’s no title!” so I wrote one quickly. The new title, “Chris Hedges on Atheism” is a better reflection of what the post is about.

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