(Note: the views expressed in this blog stem from personal experience largely gained in one particular country.)
The recent passing of Christopher Hitchens has invoked the lamentations of many atheists I know. He has been described as great, an atheist heavyweight and an intellectual. The loss of such a prominent figure in the New Atheism movement has saddened many ardent non-believers and even some Christians (albeit for different reasons).
Quite frankly, this is baffling to me. I cannot understand all the fuss over this one man who jumped on the literary bandwagon of the so-called New Atheist Movement and made a career of tearing into religion like a vulture. I use the term vulture, because that is what he was; the carcass of religion has been picked apart for 2 centuries by other freethinkers and has only recently been put in the spotlight of the general public by such books as Sam Harris’s The End of Faith (2004) and Dawkins’s The God Delusion (2006). With all due respect to those writers, they don’t deserve the Pope-like worship they enjoy from contemporary atheists – especially Hitchens.
Now, before I get into this rant topic, I shall provide a bit of background concerning my own standing with religion.
I am not an atheist but an agnostic; I do however, have a lot in common with their agendas, such as support for secularism, human rights, freedom from religion etc. This was one reason why I joined my city’s (very welcoming) atheist group. The other reason was that last year, for the first time in my life, I was the victim of nasty religious prejudice and it caused me a great deal of emotional distress. I joined the group in an angry, hurt state, looking for allies and an outlet. I was passionate about changing the current status quo, which is that if a non-believer attacks a person of faith for that faith, that’s bad, but if a religious person calls you immoral for not being part of their church, you can say nothing thanks to the barrier of ‘respect’ we are all told to have for others’ beliefs (no matter how dangerous or insane).
My newly ex-Catholic partner also joined the group and we made a point of attending every atheist and humanist meet-up, debate, talk and convention on offer. We got a crash course in atheist ideas and perspectives; we read a lot, researched a lot and grew increasingly furious at the injustices people, world-wide, suffer at the hands of religious imperialism and fundamentalism. The stark impression we both got was this: Religion is enjoying a powerful resurgence in the Middle East and America, and it is threatening the rights of everyone. People, regardless of whether they have faith or not, should band together to stop the encroachment of religion into politics, schools and legal systems in order to protect each and every one of us from discrimination. Given the alarming actions of the Christian right in America (such as taking away a woman’s right to birth control, or allowing bullying in schools if it’s religiously motivated) and the tyranny of corrupt Muslim leaders in the Middle East, we have every reason to be scared. We don’t need more stuffy debates from old white men in their ivory towers about how religion is all nonsense and pish-posh; we need activism.
And this is what I found frustrating about the atheist movement (or lack thereof). At least on a local level, not much at all is being done to stem the religious tide. There’s a lot of discussion in pubs about the higher concepts (is the belief in God a mental illness? Can atheism co-exist with spiritualism?) but not much at all on what atheists can do in terms of protecting our rights to even BE atheists. In fact, half of the atheists I’ve spoken to are too afraid to confess their non-belief to family and friends; it’s still a dirty word. This isn’t right and of course books like the ones written by the self-titled Four Horsemen of the so-called New Atheist movement (Harris, Daniel C. Dennet, Dawkins and Hitchens) have helped in giving closet nonbelievers a book of their own to bash against those bibles. But this isn’t what Atheism needs. Atheism needs a new PR campaign - one that is portrays nonbelievers not as a hedonistic, nihilistic bunch who prefer to drink rather than pray, but as a rational group of free-thinkers open to having a constructive dialogue with those of faith.
This isn’t what Hitchens does with such books as God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (heavy-handed much?). In fact the majority of the best-selling atheist paperbacks seem to concern themselves with aggressively attacking all aspects of faith, which is very satisfying for atheists and some agnostics to read, but doesn’t exactly win much attention or interest from the very people who should be learning about the destructive nature of religion – the religious themselves. As an atheist, would you read a book written by an evangelical preacher going on about how atheists are evil, immoral and all going to hell? I don’t think so.
I have far more respect for people like Maryam Namazie who has gone around the world educating people of the dangers of Sharia law and petitioning governments to change the laws that allows these courts to operate in such countries as the UK. I also admire people like Ian Bryce, who recently attended a convention held by the Uniting Church (who too deserve credit for holding such debates in their college) with a talk titled ‘Building Bridges to the Churches’. That’s what we need: dialogue with the religious. If all that the poster children for atheism do is attack the religions of the world with the books they’ve written then it simply becomes a literary Bible/Qu’ran/Torah bashing.
Another point of contention for me regarding the Four Horsemen is that they offer only one perspective – a white, paternalistic perspective. Where are the Atheists of colour? Where are queer atheists and feminist atheists? Why do female sceptics/atheists who feel objectified at Atheist conventions have to defend themselves against the attacks of people like Richard Dawkins who think that the only type of female oppression to be combated is the overtly violent (and particularly Islamic) kind?
In the atheist community of which I have been a part, I frequently heard the names of the Famous Four get dropped, quite lovingly, into conversation. The enamoured atheists would often reference people like Hitchens with a sort of reverence. I of course grew curious about these writers and my first purchase was Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape. I had intended to read Hitchens but was firmly put off when I discovered his misogyny. In a book titled Man Down, author Dan Abrahams brought my attention to the 2007 Vanity Fair piece that Hitchens wrote, entitled, “Why Women Aren’t Funny”. If there is one thing I cannot stand, it’s sexism. After all I have learned through atheism about how deeply misogynistic religion is, I find it absurd to encounter sexism in a greatly admired poster child for atheism. It’s like hearing of gay republicans; it boggles the mind because it makes no sense. I suppose you could argue that atheists are just people at the end of the day with their own flaws and prejudices, but Christopher Hitchens is on the Grand Stage of Atheism and is often quoted like some sort of demi-god in debates and discussions. If one of the key criticisms Atheists face from religious speakers is that they are immoral and hedonistic, how does referring to a chain-smoking, alcoholic womaniser give them any credit?
I don’t want to be represented by someone who believed women were the ones that should stay home and nurture the newly born children (because, apparently, they’re better equipped to do so) and shouldn’t have to work. “They’re called the gentle sex for a good reason”, Hitchens told one incredulous feminist. “I’m not having any woman of mine go to work.” (Nice one, Chris, specially coming from a man who abandoned his first wife for another woman while she was pregnant.) Hitchens doesn’t even mention the women who supported and loved him in his autobiography Hitch-22. He was against legal abortion and made other stabs at feminism throughout his career. I noted in the flood of obituaries that came out that there was a distinct lack of female voices. I only found one, Katha Pollit, a former colleague of his at The Nation. You can read why she believes Christopher’s death hasn’t warranted much female attention.
After realising what a sexist snob Hitchens was, I started to look at the views of the remaining three of the self-proclaimed Four Horsemen of the New Atheism movement. To my dismay, I found more sexism. Sam Harris once said, in an interview with The New Atheists, “If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion."
Granted, this is taken out of context and what I understood by that comment is that organised religion is accountable for much of the rape we have encountered in modern times. However, regarding human (and moral) evolution, he also said:
“...there are many things about us for which we are naturally selected, which we repudiate in moral terms. For instance, there's nothing more natural than rape" (Science Fatwah? Part 2, ABC Radio National, 20/12/06)
Make of that what you will. Personally, it made me feel a wealth of negative emotions.
Now, before I conclude, I want to make it clear that I am not saying that the work these men have produced should not be considered good/great/excellent in their own right. They did a lot to highlight atheistic thought and get it out there in the mainstream. But there are so many other voices out there and for one reason or another they are not being heard. Additionally, atheism is still suffering from bad press. If atheists continue to be perceived either as stubborn, stuffy old rationalists, or hedonistic, empty people with no purpose in their lives, then they will never be taken seriously. When U.S. presidents declare atheists are not real citizens and when religious courts condemn people to death for apostasy, we have a real, looming, terrifying problem. I’d rather get behind those who are actively trying to change things, rather than elevate themselves by undermining, from an ivory tower, the faith of millions.
Knowledge is power and there’s a fair amount to be gained by reading the works of Hitchens et al, but knowledge is only power if you actively DO something with it.
