Web Letters: Among the Disbelievers

I suspect that many members of the clergy are in the closet in regards to believing in a god. That is the conclusion I drew from the many comments I received from pastors, etc from my photo essay, "Churches ad hoc: a divine comedy."

Herman Krieger

Eugene, OR

How odd that the "atheist" is asked to prove that something doesn't exist when the burden of proof in any rational argument is on the asserter. If I told the reviewer that there were little purple men living on the dark side of the moon, he would doubtlessly ask me for proof, not have faith that I was correct. Of course I wouldn't burn him at the stake for disbelieving me either--but that's another story.

Like others here, I dislike the term "atheist"--largely because there is nothing to be against. Nevertheless, I'll accept the designation, rather than the clumsy "non-believer" or "secular humanist." This is precisely why the premise that atheists need replace religion is false. We are free of the burden of a retributional patriarch and free to experience the world unconstrained. Why superstition and thought control is preferable confounds me.

This is not to imply that we atheists feel free to be immoral. We can not. To insist on one's freedom must imply that you insist on that freedom for everyone or your own cannot be realized. We can't use "god's will" as an excuse for reprehensible actions and beliefs; we prefer to be judged on our own.

This is why the doctrine of separation of church and state is so critical and why it is so painful to see it desolved in these times. (Would that the reviewer had mentioned this.)

In fact, I would argue that the atheist is more likely to preserve religious freedom--he doesn't have a horse in the race--than the believer, especially one of a fundamentalist bent, since it is characteristic of the believer to believe in the superiority of his viewpoint and the legitimacy of imposing it on others. I, as I assume do most atheists, have no goal to convert others to atheism. I would, however, mandate that religion be kept private and removed from the public discourse--the freedom from religion interpretation. Along with this would be removal of governmental sponsorship of religion, including tax breaks and other benefits.

How do I get out of bed in the morning? Free! Free from superstition, control and fear. It's a good feeling!

Mark S. Jacobs

Severna Park, MD

The Merry Atheist

Do you sometimes wonder if your good Christian neighbor ever gets fed up with constant expectations of being positive, strong, forgiving and loving amidst all of life's difficulties? I'm generally suspected of the opposite, and I'll tell you: I am fed up.

By chance, I first came across Daniel Lazare's recent article on atheism on AlterNet.org. (Although my wife and I subscribe to The Nation, where the article was first published, it takes some time for that magazine to find its way to Europe.) On the AlterNet website, Lazare's piece was headlined "What Makes An Atheist Get out of Bed?" Lazare never actually asks that question. Nevertheless, let us briefly look at it, since religious people, especially Christians, have turned it into a cliché and also use it as a sort of proof.

To ask what makes atheists get out of bed is, of course, completely irrelevant. (Probably the reason why Lazare avoids the question.) The answer could be derived from thousands of other questions such as: Why does grandma get out of bed? Or, why does the baker get out of bed?

Furthermore, the term atheist itself is only significant to people of religious faith. It is a negative term, pathetically trying to twist something positive. It is a term used and created by religious people eager to employ the branding iron on those who do not conform.

But why, then, is the question asked so often? I can see three main reasons. It is because asking it helps to keep alive a false stereotype: that of the miserable, pale, hedonistic, nihilistic and lost soul of the atheist and to try to conceal the truth: that a person free from religious faith is a thinking, confident person in no need of divine teddy bear-arms of comfort, or of dogmatic rules, to live righteously. The third reason for asking the question is chilling, quite clever and very sad. Again it has to do with concealment: that of the fact that in reality--the real reality, folks--it is the religious person who indeed is a lost person.

I am sure that a scientific experiment would show people of no religious faith to lead happier lives than people with. And hey, we still ask the big questions like what happens when I die? Why are we here? The difference is that, since we're genuinely curious, we've discarded some of the more ludicrous answers.

Lazare writes that atheism is a purely negative ideology. But atheism is no ideology, and people free of religion do not build their beliefs--oh, we do have beliefs--around opposition. I am not anti-religion--I couldn't care less about any deity. I am a pro kind of guy. I am pro minimal indoctrination, and it is my conviction that religion is a totalitarian system of the worst kind: one with no links to reality. To life.

I am not an atheist. I am a person who has spent considerable time freeing myself from religious bigotry. I have faith in doubt, the mother of creative thinking. I have faith in creative thinking, a blessing (or a curse on a bad day) that the universe has given us and which, by its very nature, we are obliged to try to understand. I believe there is no purpose to life but life itself. Does that make me want to go buy a couple of guns and out of sheer boredom massacre people? No. Does that make me gloomily sit around while waiting to die? No. I believe in life. I love life. I have the greatest respect for life. (Anything that takes a full six days to accomplish must be respected. Oh, sorry, the time thing is meant symbolically. So, perhaps God did spend billions of years to create the heavens and the earth? Although, if I were omnipotent, I would surely get bored with spending so much time on something I could finish in... well, six seconds. But who am I to try to understand the ways of the Supreme? There is actually a way of explaining God. Forget the all-powerful and in His place put a hardworking and for our standards unfathomably skilled scientist whose experiment we are part of. Or, speaking as expected of an atheist: We probably are nothing but a booger in that scientist's snotty nose.) By writing off atheism as a negative ideology, Lazare gives his support to the stereotype. Since he does not seem to have any illusions about religion, his position is disappointing and strange. In fact, I would say, it is an insult to all those people who have devoted their lives to, and died, fighting religion so that Lazare and I can voice our own thoughts.

Lazare's weakest argument against atheism is that anti-religious people, as he calls them, have given little thought to what to replace God with. Here, Lazarre misses the point. He is right in assuming that little thought is given to the issue, but there is a reason for this: The "problem of how to replace God" is quickly solved. It is not necessary to replace God with anything. Just as a 5-year-old, unless indoctrinated by a grown-up, will not see the need to replace Saint Nicholas after having seen through his red frock and white beard.

The claim that God has to be replaced with something is the undue proposition that religious belief is essential. Ultimately, it is intimidation, perhaps unintentional but nevertheless running the errands of sadistic clergymen taking comfort in other peoples' fears, suggesting that without God: brimstone, fire and doom awaits.

But let's ignore that crap and instead rejoice in knowing that everyone--hundreds of millions across the world--who is not tied down by religious faith is living proof that God does not need to be replaced at all. No one needs God, but we all need each other, our compassion and solidarity. Sadly, it seems God takes pleasure in coming between us and in creating hatred.

Lazare's text is a critique of the "reinvigorated atheist movement" and some of its more prolific characters, like Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens. The only interesting criticism, though, is the exposure of Hitchens's double standards. Lazare is right to point out that Hitchens's reasoning fails when he avoids mentioning George W. Bush while listing religious evil-doers. (The American president is, of course, one of the more dangerous religious leaders in the world.) It is quite easy, though, to understand Hitchens's weakness. It stems from the shock and anger culminating in 9/11, and although I do not share his support for Bush, it might be interesting to compare Hitchens's reaction with that following the publication of the Mohammed cartoons or with the record burnings after John Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.

So, while Lazare's analysis is legitimate, we have to ask ourselves what he wants to prove. That scientists can be wrong? Well, that's kind of the whole idea, isn't it? Lazare spends a long paragraph making fun of Dawkins's attempts at explaining the reasons for religious belief. But should we not pay tribute to Dawkins for trying? Dawkins has a sincere interest in understanding, something that could not be said of St. Paul, no matter how much Lazare claims otherwise. The second Christian dogmatist had, we must assume, the same brain capacity as the Greek philosophers and scientists before him--like Dawkins, people genuinely interested in life--but was obviously poorly equipped with creative thinking. What other conclusion can be drawn from his pallid and lazy idea that everything be explained through a god? Unless, perhaps, we have to look at the fathers of monotheism as having taken the first brave step towards a theory of everything? I'm not willing to do so.

Lazare, on the other hand, seems eager to defend religious thinking (mainly Judaic and Christian). Is this what he wants to prove with his critique of atheism? That religion is as valid a system of thought as philosophy? That it therefore must be treated with respect? He's wrong. Religion should not be respected. One reason for its, I have to admit, remarkable endurance, is its clergy's success at convincing people that it holds pristine wisdom. Crazily, trying to sway the public is a daily struggle for scientists, constantly bothered by fussy people wanting proof.

Lazare, in his fervor to stand up for religion, contests Dawkins's view that it has stifled curiosity. Here, Lazare is kind of right. Religion, indeed, has stimulated curiosity. But only in the sense that it, like every oppressive force in a dominant position, more or less has a monopoly on the outlet of creative thinking. (The same can be seen in any dictatorship.) We need to ask ourselves what Michelangelo could have accomplished, had he not been forced to incorporate his individualism into motifs of Christian liturgy or into the building of cathedrals. Where would art be? Architecture? Science? Where would we be, if curiosity had been allowed to roam freely?

Religion, boiled down to its essence, is a waste of energy. It can be explained. It can even be comprehensible and accepted under certain circumstances, but it doesn't change what it is: the worst kind of superfluousness. A smug, ignorant, soup of self-indulgent, manmade stupidity, blind to and in disrespect of life and love. (When I speak of love, I refer to that natural, hard to understand, hard to control, sometimes untimely sexually charged and complex love which is one of the main reasons for me to get out of bed--or, often, stay a few more minutes under the sheets.)

Lazare also takes time to mock Nietzsche, whom he describes as every over-wrought 16-year-old's favorite philosopher. I'm pretty confident that it would take any 16-year-old some time, and some creative thinking, to rip Nietzsche's ideas to shreds (not unlikely with quite fascinating results), whereas the work of your typical religious thinker would be dismissed, by the same 16-year-old, with one word: bullshit. (A necessary but not very intriguing result.) At its most beautiful, this kind of dismissal comes as a rebellion against what Christians call confirmation. This perverse, ritualized act of indoctrination is popular in many religions and is fiendishly set around puberty: a time when children begin to test their thinking, individuality and personal freedom.

For the snake to bite its tail, we need to go back to the question about what makes people get out of bed. Contrary to the case of atheists, the question is relevant regarding people of religious faith. Why do religious people get out of bed? It makes no sense, when almost all of them feverishly await the blessing referred to as death--unfortunately exemplified a few years ago by a group of lost believers calling themselves Heaven's Gate. (Who, in the framework of this text, sardonically decided to die in bed.)

Death, after all, is the real beginning. Some will be freed from the agonies of life by becoming a non-being, forever floating around in Nirvana. (At least a fairly truthful view.) Others will be taken to a sort of paradise, where they will live eternal, great lives of plenty and preferably get a piece of heavenly real-estate close to the main man himself.

But cast aside the jokes and you'll see why religious people need to get out of bed. It is not a light read. It is actually a lot of work to prepare for death. You need to pray, light candles, eat wafers, stand with one arm over your head for fourteen years (quite a creative idea, which would have been interesting if done at MoMA without the absurd religious connotations), find ways of pretending to not do anything on a particular day while really being busy as a bee, self-loathingly flog yourself with a mental rod every time you want to masturbate or have sex with the neighbor's wife (let alone his ass), stone your wife to death because she had to go elsewhere for sexual fulfillment, contemplate simplistic questions of morals, read texts by writers whose ignorance--as opposed to the contemporary reader's--can be forgiven, roll your uncut hair into a piece of fabric, burn a goat alive, sweep the ground in front of your feet to avoid killing bugs while simultaneously causing a microbe genocide and begin every day convinced that you know what is right, refusing to look at the world around you.

It can't come as a complete surprise, but definitely with an immense ironic twist, that I find it my duty to try to convert people lost in religious faith. Alas, some might say, it is not out of pure selflessness that I feel the need to do this. No, rather egoistically, I simply want an end to the carnage my planet succumbs to through religious conviction. Yes, I am well aware there are other reasons for unnecessary bloodshed, prejudice and ignorance, but no other comes with a worse excuse.

As a person free of religious faith, I find myself in a battle defending everything that the universe has brought forth in that most inspiring sexual act--the union of particles. This includes defending peoples' right to test the limits of the human mind: with which even the most indoctrinated individual has the capacity to see through the web of lies fed him or her by religious zealots--parents, priests, teachers--who themselves, of course, are just lost people in need of help. Although their numbers are tragically large, I am positive. I believe a revival is possible. I believe that with education and love, the chain can be broken and people set free to marvel at and be exposed to the unfiltered beauty and tragedy of all things created.

Per Sander

Berlin, Germany

Daniel Lazare's solipsism concluding that "humanity creates meaning for itself by liberating itself so that it can fulfill itself" is a dose of Walmartian, Bush-like ontology; it has nothing to do with atheists being right and believers wrong about God.

The anti-religion irritability of Hitchens and Dawkins is a discharge from meanings created by their own credal certainty. The gospel both have accepted into their hearts is that a physico-chemical process of evolution has produced the matrix for abstractions like "liberation" and "fulfilment."

That conviction is grounded, supposedly, in the testable, the rational, the visible and the natural. Accordingly, the impulse to reduce religion to a fool's errand can rest safely in the arms of science.

However, the astonishing success of operations science in revealing how the creation works has never been reflected in attempts to explain how the creation created itself.

The plain, hard fact beating beneath the testy certitude of evolutionary realists is that their zeal is built upon a slow- motion miracle occurring over incredibly vast eons of time.

Their core meaning encompasses a self-complexifying procedure which has assembled, with mindless, yet elegant concinnity, the phenomena of human consciousness. This is the sacred heart of Hitchen's and Dawkin's irreligious cult.

Evolutionist George Wald once preached, "Time is the hero of the plot. Given enough time the impossible becomes possible, the improbable becomes probable and the probable becomes virtually certain."

Time has since swallowed up Wald, but his evolutionist kindred continue to personify the powers of their belief-object. Evolution selects, rejects, adapts, tweaks, problem-solves and engineers. That's how the plot's hero, Time, was able to raise incredibly diverse living systems from the dead.

The presumption that mentality and intelligence arose "naturally" from an information-generating, micro-thaumaturgy operating covertly within matter is not science. It's time-worship.

At the end of a recent belief.net interview Christopher Hitchens claimed that the religious impulse is dangerous, and he included "the impulse to believe in miracles."

So much for his congenital devotion to eonic autotransformation.

Bruce Riddington

Victoria , British Columbia, Canada

Uh-oh. Exasperated scientists have been trying to tell the Intelligent Design movement for years that real science doesn't do the supernatural, but now David Lazare informs us that it does ("Among the Disbelievers," May 28): the Templeton Foundation prayer study makes it clear that "praying for a quick recovery is on a par with crossing one's fingers and wishing for a Mercedes." Christian disavowals of the study are in bad faith: "People like" British theologian Richard Swinburne--you know, those people--would certainly have trumpeted positive results as proof of God's existence.

In fact, well-known Christian writers have been denigrating the possibility of such prayer experiments for a long time. George MacDonald wrote in 1885, "As to the so-called scientific challenge to prove the efficacy of prayer by the result of simultaneous petition, I am almost ashamed to allude to it.... That God should hang in the thought-atmosphere like a windmill, waiting till men enough should combine and send out prayer in sufficient force to turn his outspread arms, is an idea too absurd.... A man capable of proposing such a test, could have in his mind no worthy representative idea of a God, and might well disbelieve in any: it is better to disbelieve than believe in a God unworthy." (The book is still in print.) More recently, C.S. Lewis said that such a test would be impious and, even if apparently successful, would not "prove the Christian doctrine at all." He was right. Real science doesn't do the supernatural.

The sweeping, jocular ignorance with which Lazare, Hitchens and Dawkins handle theology closely resembles the stock Creationist style of dissing evolution. Intellectual bigotry often flatters itself as common sense.

Larry Gilman

Sharon, VT

For those interested in the reaction stirred up by Lazare's piece "Among the Disbelievers," it should be noted that his piece was also reproduced on AlterNet (under a different title, "What Makes an Atheist Get out of Bed in the Morning?"), where it has provoked many, many comments (over 300 as I write). Anyone interested in reading that further controversy (though much of it may be more in relation to the new, more provocative, title, than the entire piece) can see it at AlterNet.org.

C. E. Emmer

Emporia, KS

Lazare makes a few assertions I disagree with.

First, there is the implicit assertion that the only version of God is the dogmatic, dualistic version. That is hardly the case. When one considers the numerous indigenous views of reality across the globe, you have that many creations and creators.

Which eliminates the second assertion that not beliving in the forementioned version of a Higher Power is negative. Hardly the case. Dawkins may well rest on the case that NO God exists, as do Buddhists. But that doesn't make it negative.

Having spent thirteen years in the Christian charismatic fundamentalist camp, I have fortunately seen the light and emerged from it and recovered. I would argue that their version of God isn't worth believing in, and when one considers the evidence of the accuracy of their holy book, may not exist at all.

I am thankful that these books are emerging to finally put rationality and reason back where they belong in American discourse, and I see it as a necessary change if this planet is ever to gain any semblance of peace.

Rob Harrison

Langley, VA

I went to my local county library to borrow Christopher Hitchens's book, only to be placed number thirty-four in the waiting list. I have been reading the reviews and I, frankly, expected a lot more in a review from The Nation.

Religions are obsolete political ideologies that in the past were used to legitimize power structures and the leadership within those structures. God speaks to Moses from a burning bush, Saint Paul has a vision of the resurrected Jesus, Mohamed hears the voice of God in the dessert. It is the same political campaigg carried out for different constituencies at distinct times in history.

That political template was destroyed in recent centuries by the American Revolution, The French Revolution, Napoleon and, finally, the unification of Italy, which removed the economic base of the Catholic Church.

What passes now for religion are empty and parasitic structures that feed on the day-to-day alienation of human beings.

What non-believers have to find are views of existence that connect people and break their alienation without the need of supreme beings. Political movements do that sometimes, but their effect doesn't last.

Non-believers do not need to offer a replacement for religious beliefs. But they could offer processes of inquiry, speculation and ways of validating the findings. Rather than reading sacred books, non-believers should offer the reading of Socrates according to Plato as a starting point.

Nestor A. Arroyo

East Windsor, NJ

While hardly as "educated" in the elite sense of the word as many of the others here, I too, however, have an opinion worth stating. (Bear with me, as I am the king of long sentences.) Having spent several of my earliest years growing up in a Mennonite Children's home, then a few years living with my non-"religious" mother, then in a Lutheran Children's Home in Topton PA, then becoming a born-again Christian at 12, then living in one foster home after another and experiencing Catholic, and Protestant versions of Christianity until graduating HS at 17, then having given religion and Jesus up by my second year in college, then having flirted with the idea of atheism, then having danced with Native Americans while preparing the Lakota Sundance in Piscataway Maryland, then having discovered Joseph Campbell, then having ignored God for years, then having my anger and sarcasm towards God surface, which is where I have been since 1993, I have earned the right to speak as if an intellectual on this subject. So here are a few of my thoughts.

In the early 1990’s, I figured out for myself that the story of Adam and Eve was ridiculous. My first clue was realizing that prior to eating from the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” (our conscience), neither Adam nor Eve had a conscience and therefore, could not discern between a supposed good god giving them good advice and a supposed evil serpent (or devil if you will) giving them bad advice. Hence, how in the world could they be held responsible for disobeying God when they had no clue that’s what they were doing? Furthermore, they did not understand the consequences (death) of their actions because they did not know what death was. Remember the other tree? They had not eaten from the “Tree of Everlasting Life.” The significance of that being, had they understood what it meant to die, they would have rushed over to that tree first and after eating from it, gained immortality. Then they would have gone over to the tree holding the key to their conscience and eaten from it without fear of reprisal from God. But they were clueless, like monkeys or infants that have no moral or intellectual understanding of right from wrong. My conclusion from this revelation was that God tricked Adam and Eve. He set them up. I surmised then that if God tricked them, then God must be exactly what he says the devil is, the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

WOW! I said to my self. How more perfect could it get? Further down the line, some 4,000 years later, the devil concocts this incredible story about God sending His only begotten Son to die for the sins of man then Satan sends his only son claiming he is born of a “Virgin Mary,” calls him Jesus and the rest, as they say, is history. Satan sits back and watches a little television while we Christians, never realizing the plan, worship his son. Beautiful! Perfect! The perfect deception committed by the perfect deceiver.

That one crack in the Christian foundation led to my seeing many more cracks but instead of taking me to the world of atheism, it planted me firmly on the side of God haters. You see, you can’t hate God and be an atheist. The excitement around my discovery fueled my continued search for more proof of this sick sadistic God and His plan. Sure enough, I see the “evidence” of His madness everywhere I look.

I’ll accept the believer’s version, that there’s a god. Of course, there’s a god and yes, He is the one spoken about throughout the Bible. But now that I’ve accepted all that, you believers have to listen to my interpretation of the God from that Bible and with what I know, you can’t win an argument with me about whether or not your god is good or bad, for God is the great deceiver.

God pointed at His alter ego and called him the Devil or Satan. Lucifer, like Jesus, brought light to the world but the father, their evil father, is what their light exposes. Good luck with that, fellow believers.

John LeVan

Thorndale, PA

Two Points:

First, Lazare was not entirely fair to the Dawkinsian anti-religious view. Where, except briefly at the beginning of his article, is any mention of Daniel Dennett's work? No evaluation of modern atheism can be a good one without a serious look at Dennett's work. This oversight cripples Lazare's writing: It's like an analysis of the Bush Administration that names Cheney, but otherwise fails to account for him. It just doesn't work, nor does it make any sense.

Second, Lazare's criticism of atheism, that even if it is right, that it has nothing to replace God with, is silly at worst and short-sighted at best. Is atheism a "negative" ideology? It seems that it might be, if we were to presuppose that it serves the same role as a religion. As an answer to the question, "What is your religion?", atheism is not a proper answer. Judaism, Islam, Christianity etc. are all good answers, because each of those things are religions. Atheism is not. Nor is it some kind of anti-religion. Atheism à la Dawkins, at its core, is the view that inquiry about religious questions will give us answers that have as much justification as any other answer. Absolutely no religious hypothesis like "You can fit 99 angels on the head of a pin," or, "Sinners go to hell; believers go to heaven," can be falsified. So, there is no way to make sure that the body of relgious beliefs we have are the right ones. That is, there is no religious knowledge. There is only religious belief, and these beliefs are entirely unjustified.

Is Dawkinsian atheism really just a college-educated tantrum that offers only criticism? Decide for yourself. Does this sound like a "negative ideology" to you?

Edward Wells

Bloomington, IN

I've been thinking lately on this question of God existing. I even wrote a letter to God on myspace.

He looked better than ever but I never heard back from him. He lived somewhere in Utah and had a voice of sedated tanning butter like Mitt Romney. I hear the Devil is seductive, so my next presidential choice shall be an ugly loser that will get sympathy from people in other countries who hate our guts for bombing the crap out of them.

Well, the right-wingers believe that George W. Bush is God. So if you throw out God, then realize that in this Right-Wing Dictatorship that God is indeed George W. Bush.

We know that the Devil exists (e.g., George W. Bush), so God must exist because without the Devil, there is no God! The whole Good-versus-Evil thing only works if you have forces that are polar opposites. Sort of like George W. Bush being Darth Vader and John Kerry being Luke Skywalker.

Does this make any sense or am I nuts?

May the Force be with us all...

Marina Gipps

Fort Lauderdale, FL

With the growing synergy between politics and religion, there is a lot of sensitivity among all sides, whether Christian, Jewish, Islamic, atheist, etc. You either believe that God created the world in six days, or you see that the earth has been around for the past 4-6 billion years...The most sensitive issue of this matter is whether one wants to assert his views on others based on faith which cannot necessarily be proven.

The most significant sign of God would have to be when the Jewish slaves were leaving Egypt as led by Moses, as well as the parting of the Red Sea, and later on, after forty years in the desert, the thunder at Mt. Sinai, which brings upon a more unified consensus than any other religion. Most other religions happen to be man-made, where only one or a few people claimed to have witnessed something miraculous as an act of God, which is not as convincing as up to 2 million Jews who left Egypt to the promised land of Israel to see God give down the Ten Commandments, with Moses as the secretary... In the Jewish bible (Deut. 13), there is warnings about false and dangerous prophets, as has happened with other religions when man makes up his own religion, as what has happened with the Crusades, Inquisitions, suicide bombings and terrorism, which have often been the case in Christianity and Islam....

Furthermore, getting back to how certain beliefs and faiths shouldn't be shoved down people's throats, to say that if one does not believe in a certain thing or being, then he/she is going to "burn in Hell," seems very much like spiritual extortion, and why would such a loving God want to imply that? God inferrably does not change His mind, which doesn't begin or end with Christianity and/or Islam. Aside from there being only "one true path" to God, there are really two, both for Jews and non-Jews/Gentiles. The information for this can be found on http://www.noahide.org. Thus, religion does not need to sell itself, nor play a significant role in making governmental policies. If this isn't correct, then science, common sense and logical reasoning are the remedies for making sense out of our chaotic world. Each individual must be a responsible steward and citizen for their country and world under the right and reasonable circumstances.

Nick Rosen

Great Falls, VA

Maybe it's time we start talking about religion and politics at social gatherings. general ignorance on both subjects seems immense. It's distressing to see otherwise intelligent writers making arguments based on cartoonish stereotypes and a general misunderstanding of their subject material. One should know the various meanings of the term "fundamentalism" before one wishes to dispute its right to exist. One should appreciate the debt intellectual pursuit owes to religion before one disparages the whole phenomenon. I recommend the works of Ken Wilber to anyone seeking to understand evolution in the light of spirituality.

James Altman

Stanley, WI

Daniel Lazare would have it that religion had become "a kind of minor entertainment" until we big, bad, sans culotte atheists awoke from an unaccountable fainting spell and began to attack the Holy Writ without giving a thought to what we were going to replace it with. All of us, I suppose, screaming in unison, Ecrasez l'infâame!

What Lazare doesn't seem to get is that there are those of us out here in the boondocks who have never believed in God, don't feel the need to replace him with anything at all and don't feel like we're part of a movement.

I can't speak for Dawkins, Hitchens, Onfray or Eagleton, but I suspect that each of us strays off the road to Damascus on his own. Some of us, like myself, were offroad from the very beginning. When I was 9 a neighbor threw rat poison over my grandmother's fence and my dog ate it. I didn't know what to do so I prayed for him. The poor thing died a lingering, painful death. I concluded that God didn't care or didn't exist. Either way, he didn't matter. Of course, it helped that my parents were atheists. But, honest to God, it didn't occur to me that Robespierre and The Committee of Public Safety were involved or that "La Veuve" was poised above my outstretched neck. Sacré bleu!

Mateo Pardo

Denver, CO

Dawkins is an easy target, so I don't begrude Lazare a few shots at him.

However, his criticism of Hitchens's knowledge of history is so transparently silly that only Nation readers who (like Lazare himself, apparently) cannot forgive Hitchens for believing it is a good idea to kill those who want to kill you before they get the chance will buy such rubbish. Hitchens has probably forgotten more history than Lazare will ever know. Does Lazare really think Bush's foolish religious beliefs get a pass from Hitchens? Does he think Hitchens too sees the Iraq War as the triumph of Christ's truth? Can he be that uninformed and dogmatic?

And, in conclusion: Yes, Nietzsche is indeed the philosopher of "angry 16-year-olds" (or whatever Lazare's wooden cliché was)...at least, in the estimation of 17-year-olds who mistakenly believe that, because one more year has passed, they have at last passed beyond all that juvenile stuff and made it to wise intellectual manhood. Intelligent and discerning people of all ages will reckon that 16- and 17-year-olds (and those who think like them) would do better to keep quiet about the value of philosophies they clearly not do even begin to understand.

Alexander Riley

Lewisburg, PA

This article is in my bookmarks. I expect that I will reread it many times. In fact, The Nation is now on my daily reading list due to this article and Mr. Cockburn's article on global warming. Huzzah! A left of center voice that is reasonable, rational, articulate and thought provoking. I've been looking for a long time. I now have a greater appreciation of Diogenes.

I do not pretend to the erudition of Mr. Lazare's nor his command of language so I shall try to be concise without being cryptic. I would like to start with an admittedly simplistic analysis of Dawkins' works then address the logical fallacies of the Neo-Darwinist (not my term) arguments.

Dawkins was initially very compelling in his early works. I believe The Blind Watchmaker was his first. However he was challenged on the basis of information theory by those who have subsequently been termed the "Intelligent Design" school. Their argument was that the genetic variations necessary for speciation were statisically impossible. Most, if not all, observers consider that probabilties of less than one in 10^50 (that's 1 followed by 50 zeros) are, for all practical purpose, impossible.

Dawkins responded in his book Climbing Mount Improbable. He posited that there were "hidden mechanisms" in nature that compelled these improbable changes. I fail to see the distinction between this argument and mysticism.

He furthered this argument in coining the term "meme". This was an attempt to apply Darwin to human experience. He was, in turn, far more vague and far more mystical. I must admit that I have not read his subsequent works. He jumped the shark.

For those of you who are still reading, thank you. My English teacher would be proud. My philosophy professor I'm not so sure of. As promised long ago I turn to the logical fallacies of the militant atheists.

The first of these is most aptly described as "begging the question". The argument presented is that there is a "scientific method" by which we shall judge your arguments. By this standard they reject the truths and insights of Shakespeare, The Bible, Lincoln, Jefferson, Franklin, Dante, Donne, Pound, Eliot, Dylan.. the list is endless. This point was made far more eloquently by Mr. Lazare.

The second of these is "guilt by association", although I'm not sure that is the correct classification. See the following. They dwell upon the supposedly ridiculous pronouncements of past theologians to discredit the underlying concepts. I offer phlogiston, craniology,... as a counterpoint. We are all seekers of truth. To disparage serious thinkers is an ad hominem argument.

The last, not really, is a serious assault on reasoned debate. They have moved to the judiciary which is ill equipped to decide these matters. In a case in Pennsylvania they persuaded a judge that "intelligent design" was equivalent to "young earth creationism". I fault the court only in that it did not recognise that this was not adjudicable. ID ("inteligent design") is broadly in agreement with Darwinian evolution. The only disagreement is that Dawkins and others have not provided a logical explanation for speciation.

The far deeper issue is that the Darwinists have no explanation for DNA. The simplest DNA comprises about 700,000 base pairs. Human DNA is about 2 billion base pairs. Sparing the details, the probability of 4 distinct base pairs (amino acids) combining in this fashion is beyond the capabilities of my calculator. The Darwinists say "that's not my field, don't bother me with things I don't want to talk about".

If you are still with me this is a good time to exit. Information theory, which is responsible for our transistion from 300 baud modems to your current cable connection, is a direct descendant of the third law of thermodynamics: entropy. This principle states that all systems tend to disorder. In familiar terms this means that your cocktail will assume a temperature that is somewhere betwen the ice and the libation of your choice. Nowhere in nature do we find a tendency towards organisation except in DNA based biology. See above.

I commend you to bring up Google in your browser and search for "unsolved problems physics". It's a long list. I didn't try "unsolved problems biology". I suspect that I would be informed that they found multiple thousands of pages in 1.7 seconds. The point is that our universe is complex beyond our wildest imagination. Those who suppose that they have answers are naive. Serious theologians are quite straightforward in their admission to this underlying truth.

Roy Lofquist

Titusville, Florida

It is understandable that the religious will often attack those who do not subscribe to thier beliefs. Perhaps it is because they realize how flimsy the basis of thier beliefs are. They also realize that many others of the religious do not believe the same things. On the one hand the author claims non believers are hollow without being filled with fantasy. I assure you I don't feel hollow at all. Another claim is that scientism fills that void but anyone who understands science knows that it cannot fill such a void because it in itself is a methodology not a belief. Then there is the claim that non believers have failed to see the great other stated by the religious. Well frankly people who ascribe to themselves special but unprovable knowledge are not particularly a group I would like to join.

The religious spend billions if not trillions to propagate thier beliefs. They try to insure those who don't share thier beliefs do not get political or social power. How many movie heros have been aetheists. Most aetheists don't care what others believe so there aren't billions spent or huge organizations created trying to convert the believers. When authors such as Dawkins publishes they are attacked for reasons that have little to do with thier arguments.

One of the incorrect claims of religion is that it forms the basis of our relationships and morality. The only social/moral institution that is based on the bible is of coarse sharia hardly a system most people would want. If you dissagree reread the old testiment and the places in the new testiment were Jesus states he supports it.

Our morality and social institutions are what's normal for humans. Love, looking after children and the aged come naturally. Unlike the neo-liberal sociopath model, studies show people actually do feel the pain of strangers and that irrespective of culural there is a basic morality built in.

Perhaps more effort should be put into reading Adam Smith's other book. While the basic morality is natural, interpetation does varie. This means there is still room for moral philosophy including Buddha and Jesus. You just don't need some thuggish enforcer ready to send youto hell.

John McEwen

Brampton, Ontario

My nontheism is based on this simple question: Why were the gods very busy meddling in the affairs of humans and making personal visits to the planet until we developed reliable methods of documenting these events?

Robert Minato

Salem, OR

In "Among the Disbelievers," Daniel Lazare grounds the criticism of Richard Dawkins' book with an objectionable and false premise: that those who do not believe in God have a "purely negative ideology"

This is illogical. Would Lazare say that people who don't believe in fairy godmothers have a purely negative ideology? It may be difficult for Lazare to grasp, but in fact, it is perfectly possible for people to live happy, fulfilled and complete lives having accepted that fairy godmothers, tooth fairies, magical wizards and gods of various kinds are fantasies.

By about the age of about six, most children have figured out that Santa Claus doesn't really exist, but nevertheless, they learn that it feels good to give and to make other people happy.

Obviously, people are not tainted by a "negative ideology" having accepted that Santa Claus isn't real. They simply move on, grow up, and make meaning in their lives through their friends and family, without waiting for Santa Claus to come down a chimney and rescue them.

Ditto for God.

Lazare asks: If one does not believe in God, what does one believe instead?" Again, this is a false framework. It starts with the assumption that people who don't believe in God must be "lacking" something or other. They aren't lacking anything at all and in some ways may be even stronger than the believers .

On average, atheists likely possess the same measure of good qualities that God-believers have. They are intelligent, kind, responsible and have great inate capacity for altrustic behavior, even toward those who are total strangers to them. The only difference is that atheists do not need to worship or give credit to a god for that capacity to be intelligent, kind, responsible and altruistic.

In fact, altruism is not even unique to human beings. Studies have shown that individuals in chimp cultures will behave altruistically toward one another too, simply because they have evolved to live, as we have, within complex social groups and in complex social environments where helping one another in times of need is important to the survival of the group, the society and the ecosystem they live in.

Having said all this, I do part ways, at least in some degree, from the authors of the books that Lazare criticizes,

I don't think "spirituality" or a belief in an outside supreme force (be it god or lady luck or angels or whatever) is, in and of itself, necessarily harmful.

It isn't fair for atheists to downgrade or dismiss the feelings of those who say that their religion is a source of great strength. If they feel strongly that they were "saved" by some outside force that they call god, and if they believe their religion motivates them to great action . . . well, atheists don't need to believe it, but should accept that for those people, god is indeed great.

But likewise, religious people have no right to suggest that atheists of lacking in morality or are in some manner flawed because they don't believe in god.

Moreover, the larger problem, until now, has been that atheists have been a little too silent while people in fundamentalist religious groups have used their religion and their false characterizations of atheists as weapons to gain political power and instill their agenda in the classrooms, the courts and systems of government.

That's why authors such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are now trying to draw atheists out of the closet. The language these authors use may sometimes be extreme, but they do have a point: It is time for that large and silent contingent of non-believers to speak up and make their voices heard too.

Rose Simone

Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

Interesting article, I enjoy the conversational value of it. Though I have not read these books, I did catch these authors interviews on TV promoting their books.

Dawkins was rather impressive, but Hitchens seemed to come off as intelligent, but way-too-gung ho. Neither of these men speak directly toward my less complicated view of atheism, which I subscribe to.

Simply put, atheism is not a negative, in fact it is religion that is the additive. One doesn't need to believe in anything, there need not be a moral hole left behind in the absence of religious doctrine, or rather morality is not contingent on religious faith.

My doctrine in life is this: "Maximize the Kind, and Minimize the Mean." Why? because it is undeniable that meaness leans heavily toward destructiveness, and kindness leans toward potential growth/good health. A type of Darwinistic think perhaps.

No more complicated than that.

As far as the argument of the destructiveness of religious faith through history...first off, the greater evil is not the faith but power itself (absolute power corrupts absolutely) apart from other elements potentailly aflicting anyone of any belief (religious or athetistic alike). When looking at the crusades, for instance, one must ask oneself what is the breakdown of motives for these popes, how much is religious and how much is simply imperialistic.

George W. Bush would be a great modern case study on this issue. It appears from my outside eye that the answer would fall greatly into the realm of "These idol-worshippers were simply in my way to get control of the oil." "It doesn't matter what group of people that might be, any disagreeable group occupying the Iraqi sands would be my enemy." thus, the motive clearly becoming imperialistic.

As to the followers of these, at times, destructive-acting religions (e.g., the Crusades) is where the real damage is done, but I believe this is aside from religion itself, and just the greater flaw of humanity itself, the easy ability to believe and act on just about anything. The clearest remedy (though not perfect) being to eliminate the philospohy of "additivism" and buy into the doctrine of "Occam's Razor."

Thomas Yarbrough

Oakland, CA

I have been a non-believer since my twelfth year. Evidently, I was not blessed with possession of a "God gene.” I came to my non-belief by my own reason and not as a reaction to any negative experience that left a lasting sense of bitterness toward religious belief.

I have very fond memories of my church-going years. Religion just never made much sense to me--it requires blind belief in so many things that are clearly wrong or that need to be rationalized through hopelessly convoluted logic. Despite the obvious inadequacy of religion to explain the world as it is revealed to us through science, I appreciate that an absence of religious faith can leave a void in the soul (for lack of a better term) that needs to be filled by a rationally based, life affirming worldview.

Such a worldview does not come easily, and may not come at all to most of humanity unless the best minds on the planet address this issue seriously.

I applaud the recent efforts by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens to push back against the resurgence of irrational faith currently gripping much of our nation. However, their protestations often appear rather shrill and may put off many people who might otherwise benefit from their insights. I hope those on either side of the reason vs. faith divide will benefit from Daniel Lazare’s wisdom, so that we may eventually find a satisfying, rational worldview to take the place of religion.

Robert Austin

Seminole, FL

Lazare and Dawkins again and again seize with ignorant delight on the often inconsequential inanities of particular religious beliefs, determined to believe that if some statements about God are silly, God must be too silly to exist.

So both gentlemen restrict their consideration to those formulations of the divine for which they can muster ready refutations, and conclude that if tithing to televangelists doesn't cure cancer, God's not there.

Worse than the specious logic that pretends to let science see outside the universe, there's a childish gloating to the tone and substance of their arguments: "Nyah nyah nyah nyah, I see your underpants," dressed up in adult clothes.

In the quest for some understanding of how reality came to be here, they've contributed a little roadside litter.

David Knapp

Ko Sichang, Chonburi, Thailand

Lazare states: "Atheism is a purely negative ideology, which is its problem. If one does not believe in God, what should one believe in instead?"

First, I would like to address the idea of atheism as a purely negative ideology. What does that mean? To say that you don't believe in someone else's imaginary omnipotent big brother somehow makes a person negatively predisposed? And is Lazare equating negative ideology with pessimism? Why is putting aside a concept that brought us the Crusades, the Holocaust, genocides in countless countries, 9/11, and currently the American neo-hawks "war on terror", stifles human creativity, and subjugates women, such a bad thing? If you have people who unquestioningly believe that "the end is near" and that life after "the end of everything" will be paradise what incentive do they have in trying to make the now any better, or even actively participating in bringing about that end?

Second, why does one have to "believe" in anything? I believe in my love for my family and my desire to make the world a little better before I'm gone. I don't believe in long-white-bearded old men who willingly sacrifice their children because they just won't concede a point concerning the intransigent nature of mankind, does that make me a bad person, or a negative ideologue? If so, so be it.

I am a firm believer that everyone has the right to "believe" (or not) as they choose. But I also think that for the good of mankind burying organized religion of all stripes in a big, unmarked grave is long overdue.

David Hodges

Columbus, OH

He could replace today's religion with the one that came before this one. That of pagan procreation, that old time religion that people actually practice.

Every time you fall in love, in lust, work for your kids, strive to make them a better life you are practicing that old time religion. It's something done in every culture across the globe, since time began, it's not some vague wispy spiritual thing, it's real, so normal as not to be recognized as a religion at all. But it is!

Try to envisage your offspring as that which is left behind after you go (a living spirit), left in a better place you helped to create (a living heaven). The real holy trinity of you, your mate, and your offspring.

All creatures practice this religion to the level their intellect allows. No God to offend or defend, no nonbelievers to condemn or kill. The meaning and propose of life is procreation, always has been, always will be from the size of a virus the size of a whale. On any planet in any universe.

That that is, is That that is not, is not Is that it? It is!

Steven T. McCarty

Revere, MA

Belief in evolution doesn’t fit the dictionary definition of “religion,” but it is, nevertheless, a core reality-principal that owns its adherents.

This explains why Richard Dawkins’ scorn for Creator-worshippers carries such rhetorical animus--his prickliness radiates from an atheist whose deepest convictions have been defiled.

Ironically, Dawkins’ defensiveness on behalf of his non-deity, Evolutia, points to the power of the “meme” holding his intellect together. “Meme,” a term he coined in 1976, refers to the cultural counterparrts of genes that transfer, like a virus, from one mind to another.

Memetics includes all intellectual concepts and religious beliefs, and so, evolutionist ideology qualifies as a typical mind-virus.

Dawkins’ viral "truth" was present at the post-Big Bang nucleosythesis, an event wired with an intelligence and designfulness to come. It was just a matter of time, so to speak, that the cosmological, hypernatural idiot-savant of selection brought life to lifeless primordial elements, and then spontaneously generated the elegant complexity of the biosphere. One day it hatched an Oxford-schooled scientist and author who became famous for his Creator-trashing Weltanschauung.

His claim, however, that “genes are the master programmers, and they are programming for their lives” seems to indicate he is doomed to fueling Darwin’s time-worship contraption with engineering skills that are not only mental and clever, but irresistibly personifiable.

Dawkins has written, “It may be that brain hardware has co-evolved with the internal virtual worlds that it creates.” That last word is anathema to his scientistism. It desecrates an idea-virus engaged in spreading the belief that the molecules in the font on the page are the authors of meaning.

Bruce Riddington

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Mr. Lazare has written a lot of gibberish. All the criticisms of religious practices and beliefs, past and present are perfectly valid by the religions' own terms.

Very few religious people will stand up for slavery, or stoning adulterers, even though these practices are endorsed by the holy books. Understanding the historical context of old religious texts and prophets and philosophers is an attempt at a rational scientific explanation of the phenomena rather than an affirmation of religious faith.

Religious, faith-based descriptions of the world were the best available for hundreds of thousands of years, but not any more. It used to be reasonable to believe that the Earth is flat, that the sun revolves around the Earth, that miracles happen (commonly).

Atheists admit we don't have all the answers, but through scientific inquiry we are understanding more and more. The atheist writers in question are consistently right on substance. The criticisms are diversionary. Whether you support or oppose the Iraq war, is irrelevant to the irrationality religion.

Andrew March

Phoenix, AZ

An interesting way to frame religion is with the Complexity dichotomy of top-down order/bottom-up process. Examples would be that capitalism is bottom-up process, the corporation is top-down structure. Democracy is bottom-up process, the Republic is top-down down structure.

What monotheism attempts to do is to define reality as top down, with "God" at the top. It is politically valuable, because it validates top down organization, such as monarchy/divine right of kings.

The problem is that organization is focal and thus subjective. Pope John Paul ll described God as "all-knowing absolute," but absolute is basis, as in zero, not apex, as in one. So the spiritual absolute, the source of that elemental sense of awareness, is the basis out of which we rise, not a model of perfection(like Plato's forms) from which we fell.

Both theists and atheists equate consciousness with knowledge: theists because the spirit is assumed to be all-knowing. atheists because they consider consciousness an emergent property of reasonably advanced knowledge.

What if essential awareness is as much a property of biological life as gravity is of mass? It turns two mysteries into one and explains organic behavior to its base?

The top-down model views the conflict of good and bad as a duel between the forces of light and darkness, but actually they are the biological binary code. Single-celled organisms distinguish between what is good for it and what is bad. It is similar to magnetic polarities, in that what is good pulls it together, increases force, nutrition, positive, etc.

What is bad breaks it down, pushes the pieces apart, negative, etc. Compare that to how religion measures good and bad. What holds the community together, gives it positive direction, etc. What's bad divides the community, is unhealthy to its members, etc. Logic rises out of this emotional base when good and bad become yes and no.

The origin of the concept of God was in the notion of the tribe as some larger being, as individual members were born and died.(The Five Stages of Greek Religion, Gilbert Murray) Individuals were like threads in a rope, tying what came before with what came after.

The nonsense was trying to anthropomorphize the entire universe. Even though it gave cover to political order.

John Merryman

Sparks, MD

Daniel Lazare approvingly quotes from Ricard Dawkins's book "The God Delusion". Lazare writes:

Not one for politeness, he [Dawkins] is the sort of fierce logic- chopper who chuckles nastily when coming across what he regards as some particularly choice bit of inanity. Discussing Arius of Alexandria, for example, infamous in certain fourth- century theological circles for maintaining that God and Jesus were not "consubstantial," i.e., not composed of the same substance or essence, you can almost hear him snicker: "What on earth could that possibly mean, you are probably asking? Substance? What 'substance'? What exactly do you mean by 'essence'? 'Very little' seems the only reasonable reply."

The terms in question come from classical philosophy. Without claiming any great expertise in the subject myself, I think I can help with Dawkins's questions:

A substance is a particular thing, as distinct from a property of a thing: a bird you might see hopping outside your window is a substance, while the color white is not a substance.

Consubstantial just means of the same substance. If you and a friend each took a picture of a bird, and you are comparing them to try to figure out if both pictures are of the same bird, you are trying to figure out if the birds in the pictures are consubstantial.

Essence is the quality or qualities of a thing that make it the kind of thing it is. For example, if a biologist holds that an animal is to be classed as a bird according to whether or not it has feathers, he is holding that the essence of birds is feathers.

Given these meanings, it isn't difficult to understand why Arius stating that Jesus and God were not consubstantial and did not have the same essence would have caused controversy: Arius was stating that Jesus was not God.

Dawkins doesn't understand Arius because Arius used philosophical language in which Dawkins was evidently never educated. That Dawkins regards his own ignorance as a worthy basis for mocking Arius is not something that should give Dawkins's friends any pleasure.

Bowen Simmons

Sunnyvale, CA

I consider that Dawkins suffers from an affliction that appears to infects many scientists: that of being too level-headed to understand when forces other than logic, or physical laws as we know them, are at work.

Poor old chap!

Charles Thornton

Reisterstown, MD