The Problem Isn't Religion or Atheism, It's Fanaticisim

Dinesh D'Souza, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, defends organized religion from criticism that links it with violence and wars:

- In recent months, a spate of atheist books have argued that religion represents, as "End of Faith" author Sam Harris puts it, "the most potent source of human conflict, past and present."

Columnist Robert Kuttner gives the familiar litany. "The Crusades slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The Inquisition brought the torture and murder of millions more. After Martin Luther, Christians did bloody battle with other Christians for another three centuries."

In his bestseller "The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins contends that most of the world's recent conflicts - in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Northern Ireland, in Kashmir, and in Sri Lanka - show the vitality of religion's murderous impulse.

The problem with this critique is that it exaggerates the crimes attributed to religion, while ignoring the greater crimes of secular fanaticism. The best example of religious persecution in America is the Salem witch trials. How many people were killed in those trials? Thousands? Hundreds? Actually, fewer than 25. Yet the event still haunts the liberal imagination.

It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be about 10,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in jail due to malnutrition or illness.

These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inqu/isitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.

D'Souza's argument is fundamentally the inverse. It is not religion that is the problem, but atheism. I would argue that it isn't either of them -- fanatically taking any creed to its farthest extension to the exclusion of all else predisposes to violence.

But let's discuss his argument a little more. First of all, the reason for the disparity in the numbers of people killed has nothing to do with the creed for which the individuals were fighting. It wasn't that the Crusaders were less motivated to kill than the Red Army; we just have better, quicker ways to kill people.

Second, D'Souza uses some just ridiculous and ahistorical arguments to dissociate religion from culpability.

One finds the same inanities in Mr. Dawkins's work. Don't be fooled by this rhetorical legerdemain. Dawkins and Harris cannot explain why, if Nazism was directly descended from medieval Christianity, medieval Christianity did not produce a Hitler. How can a self-proclaimed atheist ideology, advanced by Hitler as a repudiation of Christianity, be a "culmination" of 2,000 years of Christianity? Dawkins and Harris are employing a transparent sleight of hand that holds Christianity responsible for the crimes committed in its name, while exonerating secularism and atheism for the greater crimes committed in their name. (Emphasis mine.)

I can think of a couple reasons why the Middle Ages didn't produce a Hitler. Hiltler was the product not only of insane racialism and antisemitism but also radical nationalism. Nationalism had not been invented in the Middle Ages. Asking why the Middle Ages produced no Hilter is like asking why the Romans produced no Gandhi. It is just irrelevant. And it skirts the issue that 2,000 years of antisemitism in Europe culminated in the views the Nazis had about Jews.

Third, while he acknowledges that many crimes have been made in the name of religion, he asserts that only crimes have been perpetrated in the name of atheism. He ignores any tendency of secular philosophies towards redemption.

The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. Using the latest techniques of science and technology, man seeks to displace God and create a secular utopia here on earth. Of course if some people - the Jews, the landowners, the unfit, or the handicapped - have to be eliminated in order to achieve this utopia, this is a price the atheist tyrants and their apologists have shown themselves quite willing to pay. Thus they confirm the truth of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's dictum, "If God is not, everything is permitted."

Whatever the motives for atheist bloodthirstiness, the indisputable fact is that all the religions of the world put together have in 2,000 years not managed to kill as many people as have been killed in the name of atheism in the past few decades.

It's time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief has been the greatest source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.

I am amazed that D'Souza would sincerely believe that if we all went back to organized religion violence would somehow magically decrease. For the moment let's put aside the diversity of religions in the world. There are diversities within particular religions that have been more than enough to cause conflict.

Furthermore, his statements reveal the ridiculousness of the entire debate between atheism and religion about the causes of violence. Both religion and atheistic creeds have been used to justify violence, when the urge towards uniformity overcomes the urge towards decency. But both atheistic and religious creeds have made strong arguments for toleration. To deliberately ignore the proponents of nonviolence on both sides of the argument is to create a debate between straw men.

The problem with religion and atheism isn't that they exist or that they naturally push one towards violence. The world is much more complicated than that. The problem is fanaticism: the exultation of one creed to such a degree that every other creed becomes not only fundamentally wrong but a desecration.

Over the last week or so, there has been a big debate on Scienceblogs.com about whether there are two types of atheists -- the militants and the less militant. (Chet summarizes it nicely. I will leave you to find the details.) I don't know whether there are two or fifty kinds of atheists. It frankly doesn't matter to me. What I do know is that any complex creed has the capacity to enforce uniformity -- and I would argue that in this capacity rests its capacity to encourage violence -- AND a capacity to encourage diversity.

Atheism and organized religion were inevitably going to have a thrown down because they deny each other's sacred premises. But that doesn't mean that either of them always makes people more prone to violence. This entire use of this argument is rhetorical -- it is trying to strike a blow against the other side by oversimplifying reality. I don't expect everyone to get a long, but at least acknowledge that the issue is a little more complicated than that.

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Aha' moment of the day. I couldn't agree with you more. It seems to me that the is arrogance that people have in actually believing that their view on reality is the only correct one and their path the only righteous one what leads up finally to violence.

if Nazism was directly descended from medieval Christianity, medieval Christianity did not produce a Hitler. How can a self-proclaimed atheist ideology, advanced by Hitler as a repudiation of Christianity, be a "culmination" of 2,000 years of Christianity?

nazism wasn't atheistic. this is bullshit. at the core the leading nazis were probably anti-christian, but they were pagans of various stripes. i did a research paper in college and found data which showed that by 1940 90% of the officers in the SS gave their religion as "God belief." an unspecified theism. some, like heinrich himmler were pretty conventional neo-pagans, he actually commissioned scientists to go discover the hammer of thor and stuff (he thought it might be a super-weapon they could use against the allies). rosenberg was some sort of gnostic. hitler seemed more "new age" and accepted divine providence.

"Atheist" societies of Stalinist communism, Maoism, and Hitler Nazism do have a strong religion component: a cult of personality that effectively worships their leader. Modern day North Korea is a perfect example of this.

By Miguelito (not verified) on 22 Nov 2006 #permalink

Tinni - I see your Aha moment of the day and raise it 2 Ahas! Reasoned approach = Good. Over-The-Top Knee-jerk reactions (extremists on both sides)= Bad.

Two things I'd like to add to this rather good statement:
1) Fanaticism's cousin is blind faith. The two can't exist without each other. We can do well without blind faith - it's just you find a lot of it in religious or pseudoreligious movements.

2) D'Souza's comparisons are apples to organges - he's comparing things inappropriately. A non-fanatic atheist is extremely different than a fanatic, frothing atheist. The fanatic, frothing atheist has MORE IN COMMON with a fanatic, frothing religious nut than with his non-fanatic atheist. Just because two groups of nuts fight each other, it doesn't mean they're different - often, it means they're more alike.

I will be blunt in that, today, I think the majority of the fanaticsm/blind faith pathology exists among religious groups - with an emphasis on blind faith, it kind of welcomes it. But it is indeed important to keep this differencein mind.

By DragonScholar (not verified) on 22 Nov 2006 #permalink

I don't expect everyone to get a long, but at least acknowledge that the issue is a little more complicated than that.

Agreed ; I'm with you on this post.

-Rob

There's another fundamental flaw in D'Souza's argument. He's comparing violence which originated directly from religion (the crusades, inquisition, witch hunts) to violence which originated due to bigotry, and the lack of religion was only incidental.

Lets accept for the moment that Hitler was an atheist--he was persecuting Jews due to racial/social bigotry, not because they would not convert to athiesm or because they did something against atheistic morals. Whether or not he believed in God would never have tempered his bigotry. Hell, preachers in the Confederacy justified slavery through the Bible. Mao, Jong Il, etc--its all the same story. There's never been a regime where atheists commited the kinds of atrocities, FOR THE SAKE of atheism, that Christianity has repeated committed for the sake of their "holy idea". The reason may be that religion cannot tolerate dissent and survive, while atheism can, as it has nothing "to lose" so to speak.

Amen, nice post. I'm for fanatical anti-fanaticism, myself.

One small point: nationalism and Hitler were both enabled by improvements in communication technology. Nationalism couldn't even be conceived of without printing and widespread literacy that made people aware of a world beyond their village. And Hitler relied on radio speeches to whip up his particular hateful brand of nationalism.

And of course killing technology advanced quite a lot since the middle ages as well, as you pointed out.

There's never been a regime where atheists commited the kinds of atrocities, FOR THE SAKE of atheism, that Christianity has repeated committed for the sake of their "holy idea". The reason may be that religion cannot tolerate dissent and survive, while atheism can, as it has nothing "to lose" so to speak.

shelley, your point is not without merit, but some atheistic regimes have engaged in massacres of priests and what not not for specifically anti-religious reasons. this is generally common in cultures where the clerical caste was an 'estate' with a lot of property which elicited envy. but again, i think your point is significant.

also, just to be clear on the nazis, there was persecution of christians and vandalism of churches. the SS when it invaded france for example smashed crosses when they saw them. why? not because they were atheistic, rather, they felt that christianity was a jewish religion which sapped the spirit of the teutonic people. but they replaced christianity with their own neo-pagan religion. some christians, 'german christians,' accommodated this by asserting that christ was an aryan and that race was a sacrament....

Within reason, atheism can and should be "fanatical", or atleast what some certainly call fanatical (attacking religious belief). Someone above said that fanatical atheism is more similar to fanatical religion than "plain" atheism. So, let me get this straight, there can be a fanatical, fundamentalist..rational thinker?? You wouldn't say someone is fanatically scientific (well maybe people who are afraid of science). Saying someone is a fanatical atheist means they are a passionate atheist, within reason. I agree with a previous comment that there was a certain religious overtone to those atheistic socities of the past. But lets not call atheism a creed, or designate one as a fanatical atheist if they are passionate about attacking irrational, diverting ideals (religion). Science is not a creed, atheism is an outgrowth of true rational thought. Religion is a total diversion from progress.

By ericmalitz (not verified) on 13 May 2007 #permalink