Interesting statistic...
"The number of churchgoers in Australia is about 9% and dwindling, the diversity of spiritual belief is flourishing and atheism is going off like a frog in a sock" writes Catherine Deveny of The Age, back on February 18th 2009. Rather triumphantly.
In case the expression is not universal... "like a frog in a sock" means very active.
The 2010 Global Atheist Convention being held in Melbourne right now.
If you were planning to go... the website notes: "Tickets to the Global Atheist Convention are SOLD OUT".
Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, will be speaking.
His words: "The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science … We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organized ignorance"
I haven't read Dawkins's book and when I read non-fiction I prefer fact to polemic, but I find the rise of militant atheism interesting.
I don't identify with it because I prefer a mode of mutual non-intrusion...
That is: You don't tell me that your faith takes precedence over empirical fact and I won't give you a hard time for believing something I consider riddled with retrograde nonsense.
Or simply put ... I don't like church nor need God, so leave me alone.
Militant atheism appears to be another consequence of 9/11. Dawkins himself said:
"Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakable confidence in their own righteousness."
Okay I get that, but there is a difference between faith and fanaticism - especially of the killing kind.
There was a campaign in the UK in January 2009 which ran with the slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."
I would think some people would resent being told they have to be atheists in order to enjoy life. A lot of people don't even engage the issue - whether God exists or not is not an issue to them. It ranks at the bottom of the "boring" bin while the urgent matters of beer, football and sex dominate conscious thought.
I'm not sure militant atheism helps and, worse, I'm not sure it isn't actually counter-productive.
Magpie I'm not an atheist but I'm not a Bible thumping organized religion type either. Believing in God is a very personal thing I think, and a true believer doesn't have to carry his Bible everywhere like a badge of honor. The extremists(and there are some in my family) think they have to convert all they come in contact with because God tells them to. I could care less if a person is a Christian, Muslim etc, or an atheist. It doesn't mean the end of the world if Atheism takes over like some would have you believe.
ReplyDeleteAlso I do believe extremism in religion does stop a person from living a life of fun. I've seen it first hand, sadly. BTW, fun doesn't mean sin either. Why would people think smoking and having a beer, watching network TV shows be "Godless acts"? This type of person thinks recreation is studying the Bible, I'm talkin' STUDYING! LOL
While Dawkins is British, and Hitchens is of British origin, I think the really militant atheism exemplified by people like, well, me, is largely an American phenomenon.
ReplyDeleteChristianity here is a very different thing from in Australia or Europe. The Christian Right is the driving force of the hard-line right wing which is out to re-criminalize abortion, to drive gays back into the closet (or "cure" them, if not kill them), and in some cases to do much worse.
We get pestered by missionaries at bus stops and on our front porches. The propaganda is everywhere. Religionists are constantly trying to change the laws, which apply to everyone, to enforce their taboos. It's not a matter of both sides leaving each other alone. They won't leave us alone. They wouldn't know how.
As you said:
The number of churchgoers in Australia is about 9% and dwindling,
To an American such a figure seems inconceivable. You don't have the disease, so you don't need the cure.
As for Dawkins's Britain and other European countries, they don't have the kind of control-freak fundamentalist Christians that we do, but the hard-line Muslims there play a similar role.
I'm not sure militant atheism helps and, worse, I'm not sure it isn't actually counter-productive.
This is a view increasingly voiced here, too. I would argue that there is evidence to the contrary. Militant atheism is a phenomenon of just the last decade (2000-2010). During that same decade, the atheist/agnostic portion of the US population went from 8% to 15%. Correlation doesn't prove causality, but I think this is telling.
I think the majority of American Christians actually harbor a lot of doubts, but are afraid to consider them. Hearing somebody like Dawkins come right out and say that garbage is garbage may turn off some people, but I think it's giving a lot more the courage to face the fact that, deep down, they know he's right, and always have.
Thanks for commenting guys.
ReplyDeleteI saw that interview where Jim Wallis repudiated Glenn Beck's tirade against "social justice" (on tnlib's blog actually) and that is kind of dialogue that should be encouraged, not drowned out behind the hymn of militant atheism.
I maintain that a full on assault against all religion in the manner that Dawkins desires is not a good idea.
Answering extremism with extremism is never helpful. We do not want thought police.
A heck of a lot of people believe in God without believing the world is 6 thousand years old, the garden of eden...etc etc and many of them make no efforts against secular life.
Not all these people could transition from an inner life built around their faith to a wholly non-religious worldview quite that easily. We would alienate too many people we didn't need to alienate, or worse drive them further into the manipulations of the Right.
Or even worse than that, they will fill their sudden spiritual void by acts of destruction, either against themselves or others. Or both.
I don't see anyone on Dawkins's side calling for thought police (urging Dawkins to tone himself down, on the other hand, could be interpreted as a bit thought-police-y).
ReplyDeleteAgain, rather than worry about what the results might be, I prefer to look at what the results actually have been. Throughtout the 20th century in the US, we had polite, respectful challenges to religion by well-meaning people like Carl Sagan. There was some progress, but for all the politeness, the Christian Right political reaction happened anyway.
Over the last decade, with people like Dawkins and Hitchens openly calling bullshit on the bullshit, the number of atheists and agnostics in the US almost doubled. Yes, the extreme religious crazies are getting even crazier, but that would be happening in response to the decline of religion no matter what tone atheists were adopting.
Oh, and by the way, the "frog in a sock" expression is not known here, at least to me -- but I intend to try to popularize it:-)