A while back, after New Atheism took hold, I remember somewhat of a backlash, mostly directed at the atheistic books of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Dennett (they could also, with the possible exception of Dennett’s book be called anti-theistic). The New Atheists, so the plaint went, were angry and wanted to take away people’s toys, i.e., the comforts of faith.
In fact, this criticism mistook passion and argumentation for anger, as rarely did any of the Horsemen lose their temper. This “anger” trope was so pervasive that there were tons of such articles criticizing New Atheism, many written by atheists who nevertheless saw religion as beneficial as a sort of “social glue”. These people were called “atheist butters”, because of their arguments that included “I am an atheist, but . . . ” or, as Dennett called them, exponents of “belief in belief.” (Dennett also felt that free will, like religion, was a belief necessary for social cohesion.)
A counterargument for religion, one I have made, is that you can have perfectly well-functioning societies without religion and its detriments (e.g., divisiveness, proselytizing, terrorizing of children, and of course the trope of faith—the idea that one doesn’t need evidence for what one sees as true). There’s no doubt that Judaism and Christianity are disappearing from the West, as we see from the rise of “nones”—and yet the world is morally and materially better off than a century ago, much less five centuries ago. Here’s a new tweet from Pinker documenting it (and read his two big books on the subject):
Believers, especially Christians, respond to this progress by saying, “Well, Western values were taken from and built on Christianity, so even atheists have benefited from religion.” But Western values are built on Enlightenment and humanistic values, which come from the rejection of religion. But we don’t have the controlled experiment of seeing what the world would be like had religion not arisen. Still, we do have an experiment, at least in the West, of seeing what countries would be like when they lose religion, and the answer does not support the societal benefits of faith. (I do agree that the lives of some people are improved by their faith. I’m talking about the net societal benefits, or lack thereof, of the institution of religion.)
In the end, religion, as opposed to other ideologies and superstitions, including Marxism and flat-earth-ism, still seems relatively untouchable, as if criticizing it is somehow distasteful. You can’t take away other people’s toys! (Hitchens’s response to that was “it’s okay if you play with your toys, but don’t try to make me play with your toys.”) I’m not sure why it’s considered as “angry” to criticize the tenets of faith (and faith itself); perhaps it’s because, for believers, religion has more far-reaching implications for their lives than does any other ideology.
But I digress. The article below, from Quillette, was written by Kushal Mehra, who was brought up as a Hindu in India. He’s identified as “host of the Cārvāka Podcast”, and has new book, Nastik: Why I Am Not an Atheist.
Mehra is a non-believer, but is still exploring religion. Yet he can’t comport the sacred texts of the Bible and Qur’an with their supposed message of love. Below he also gets in a lick at those Angry Atheists:
I felt a sense of bewilderment, as I struggled to reconcile the image of a benevolent, loving deity with the wrathful God that emerged from the pages of both books. God was constantly exhibiting rage, jealousy, and vengeance. For a while, I became one of those angry young atheists we all sometimes encounter on social media.
As I continued to explore and question, however, I sought out alternative interpretations of these texts, hoping to find a way to reconcile the conflicting images of God they presented. Growing up as a Hindu child, I was raised with a different understanding of the divine. Most schools of Hinduism, with their vast pantheon of gods (devatas) and goddesses (devis), and emphasis on the interconnectedness of all things, presented a more inclusive and tolerant worldview than I encountered in the Bible or the Quran.
So much for Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s claim that the message of Christianity is “love”! It may have morphed into that after going through the liberal theological sausage grinder, but remember that the message of secular humanism is also love, and was from the get-to. No sausage grinder needed!
Here are few more licks at the Angry Atheists from Mehra, who seems to see himself as superior because he’s “questioning and introspective”, something, he says, that comes from “India’s ancient cultural traditional of religious tolerance.” (Well, Modi’s getting rid of that!):
Without getting into all of the interactions I had in these spaces, I will report that I am one of the few people (I know of) who’s been banned from atheist forums for not being sufficiently angry at religion. I’d believed that atheists were my people, but, in fact, our perspectives diverged—as their intolerance toward non-atheists seemed to mirror that of religious puritans.
And here’s his familiar argument of why atheism is bad because it provides no substitute for religion, leaving that famous “god-shaped hole.” As Mehra sees it, that hole was filled by wokeness (bolding is mine):
By focusing on these Indian approaches to expressing religious doubt, I hope to make readers aware of the limitations of the “neo-atheism” movement that emerged over the last two decades, thanks largely to the influence of prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. While the movement has become popular, it also has created a vacuum of meaning and purpose in society. And since nature abhors a vacuum, it isn’t surprising that the resulting void has been filled by political and ideological trends that function as ersatz religious movements (such as the fanatical form of social-justice advocacy known as “wokeism”).
There’s no doubt that if someone gave up a faith that comforted them, and had no community of like-minded believers to fill their need for a social group, they would feel bereft. And it may be true that, for some, part of that lacuna was filled by wokeness. After all, John McWhorter’s book was called Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.
But I’m not going to pin wokeness on atheism. The arguments of New Atheism didn’t include a plan to replace religion with a new system of belief. Rather, they were arguments showing that the tenets of religion, which are foundational beliefs, were not only empirically unsupportable, but generally harmful. They were meant to show that faith—belief without evidence—is not a good way to deal with life, especially when there can potentially be evidence supporting one’s belief. As the late Victor Stenger argued, the absence of evidence is evidence for absence if that evidence should be there. And for religion, that evidence is simply not there.
And Mehra’s rationale for why religion is a net good:
Religion has long been a source of both solace and strife for humanity. And any discussion of its role in society—including a discussion among non-believers—should be informed by its status as a cornerstone of human culture, art, literature, and morality. Yes, religion has been used to justify wars, persecution, and discrimination, as well as the suppression of scientific progress and critical thinking. But it also promotes altruism and compassion, and gives people a framework for coping with life’s challenges and the inevitability of death. Scientific studies suggest that the religious impulse is deeply encoded in our evolutionary upbringing. It cannot be purged from our collective history simply by browbeating believers in books or YouTube videos, or by mocking them with clever memes or slogans.
First, I’ll reject the idea that “the religious impulse”—I’ll take “religion” to mean, as Dennett did, “social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent whose approval is to be sought”—is “deeply encoded in our evolutionary upbringing”. To me this means that human DNA contains genes directly promoting belief in supernatural agents. I know of no such genes. Yes, religion could be a byproduct of other evolved traits, like our tendency to obey authorities or look for agency, but that’s not the same thing.
Beyond that, we again have no evidence that religion is necessary for good and cohesive societies. My argument has but four words: “Northern Europe and Scandinavia”. Also, as religion vanishes from the West, our well being and morality increases. As Pinker argues, religious belief was simply an impediment to societal well being, and the Enlightenment simply shoved it aside.
I’m not denying that humans benefit from social interaction with others. We are, after all, social animals who evolved in small groups, and I’m pretty sure that this is why people get lonely and even depressed without other people around. It is also why people do tend to become part of groups, like book clubs, soccer fans, and yes, woke-ism. It is something that escaped Richard Dawkins when he argued with Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
What I argue is two things. First, that religion is not the best form of “social glue”. It is divisive, harmful to children, something that often demands to be forced upon others through proselytizing, and has many other detrimental effects you can see in the books of the Horsemen. I’d argue that secular humanism, if it’s really acted on by society and informed by data and reason, is the best form of social glue.
Second, I claim that people usually don’t seek an explicit “meaning and purpose” for their lives. Rather, they seek what they find fulfilling and like to do: having families, reading books, having a fulfilling job, and so on. Then, post facto, you confect these into your “meaning and purpose”. If you’ve been brought up as an evangelical Christian or fundamentalism Muslim, then that becomes your “meaning and purpose. ” If you’ve been brought up without religion, but in a big family that makes you family-oriented, then having your own family becomes part of your “meaning and purpose.” If you love to read and learn, then reading and learning become part of your “meaning and purpose.” Or, if you’re like me, you could answer the question of “what’s the purpose and meaning of your life?”, with “I don’t have one that I’m aware of.”
I’ve written two posts on this topic that you can see here and here. In the second link, 373 comments were addressed to this topic:
If a friend asked you these questions, how would you answer them?
1.) What do you consider the purpose of your life?
2.) What do you see as the meaning of your life?
I won’t go through all the comments, but, as I recall, few if any of the answers involved religion.
I don’t feel at all angry as I write this. The question of the value of religion is an intellectual question, but one with huge societal implications, and I find it absorbing. It’s foolish to dismiss atheism, New or Old, because its proponents are angry, and even more foolish to dismiss it because it doesn’t come with alternatives to religion. Atheism is simply the belief that there’s no evidence for supernatural beings that we must worship and brown-nose. Once we give up unevidenced beliefs, then we can figure out whether (or how) we need to fill that “God-shaped hole.” My own view is that, under secular humanism, the hole is self-filling.
Secular humanism is cool albeit a bit parochial in putting us humans at the center of a worldview. More encompassing is worldview naturalism which has all the practical, ethical, and existential resources of faith-based religions but no requirement to believe in things for which there’s no evidence.
Glad to see this highlighted – saw it on eXtwitter.
I think it is worth saying :
we are not god.
I think atheism left that as an untidy end of the rope … yeah, James Lindsay wrote a piece on that theme, and I found it striking.
I like that Hitch quote (“it’s okay if you play with your toys, but don’t try to make me play with your toys.”) I would add: don’t force our kids to play with your toys either.
Religion should be an activity for consenting adults in private.
“Religion should be an activity for consenting adults in private.”
I like that statement and agree with it. I was raised without religion and never had any use for it. (I did post here the other day that I tried “playing” with religions in a desperate attempt to ward off depression. That was a very short lived and doomed experiment. I mention it again so I don’t appear to contradict myself) I never much cared what others did or didn’t believe in, but I’ve always had a fiercely negative reaction others’ attempts at evangelism — regardless of what they were pushing. Back in my wilder days I literally CHASED Jehovah’s Witnesses off my property. “And don’t even touch that gate”, I’d yell at them. I was very close friends with a gal who was quietly Catholic, but moved to Texas and got caught up in the born again movement. She and I have butt heads ever since. I bring her up in light of the word “private” (used in Steve’s statement). She “feared for my damnation” and began sending me bibles and crosses. When I objected she claimed I was “intolerant” of her beliefs. We are no longer friends though she continues to send me religious cards at Christmas and Easter which I throw away. I view her brand of religiosity as a sickness. Otherwise I’m still pretty “live and let live”. Are there evangilizing atheists? If there are, I’d react the same way to them as to the Jehovah’s Witnesses —leave me be! Keep your personal beliefs to yourself where they belong.
Debi. I’m amused by your jest about Atheists’ Witnesses – knocking on doors and asking whether ‘I’ve ejected God from my heart’ and offering me their magazine ‘Pooh-Pooh Tower’? In my experience such evangelists are widespread among friends and internet commenteers. As with the Jehovah’s I’ll happily ask them in to chat.
You’re not the first person to tell me that they welcome that sort of thing. I wish I had such energy and interest. I just don’t. I’m exhausted with this life
Oh sorry. Respect. I guess these conversations are a good substitute for getting on with my ‘to do’ list (:))
Excellent post.
The values specifically associated with the West — reason, science, democracy, human rights — were not derived from a mystical religion which talked about love and compassion (as well as Hell and damnation) — but from Greek philosophy. The New Testament shows some evidence that it was influenced by significant ideas coming from the west, but the overall emphasis was on faith and revelation.
I think the pat accusations of “angry atheists” are partly based on the recognition that faith is fragile because the beliefs aren’t well supported. The assumption is that atheists must be rejecting love and compassion for the believer, as well as renouncing those values in the religion. “You must be filled with hatred” is always an easy excuse pulled out by the uncomfortable whenever they want to ignore a reasonable point.
But wait…there’s more… Almost 100% of Xtianity was derived from
(or “borrowed” if you prefer) from the previous 3000+ years of
the mixing of ancient middle eastern and egyptian religions. I myself have been
cozying up to Enlil recently as my preferred deity.
Down with Christ, up with Mithras!
Greek philosophy includes sophists, gnostics, and heretics. The idea of nous is Greek.
Newton’s library was substantially alchemical – he even produced a translation of The Emerald Tablet. I read Copernicus sold astrological fortunes (I don’t have proof of this).
Thought and knowledge develops in an admixture of valuable and dubious products.
I think people worry that if the valuable stuff follows from the weird stuff, that means we should get into weird stuff e.g. alchemy again.
If we are talking about ‘religion and its detriments’, that is not sufficient; there are other religions, probably more harmful in the modern world.
I was always interested in epistemological questions, not so much about ethical ones. Therefore, I’m not very interested in the issue of whether religion (even if complete rubbish) is good for society. Of course I understand that some populations do well without it.
I’m perfectly happy with no religion and never believed any religion. That I never suffered from the angst of having my religious beliefs challenged is vacuously true.
Carvakas were empiricists. If you can supply empirical evidence that he is wrong, he will have to admit defeat 🙂
That is true for me. There are things that I want to do with my life, things I want to learn. I don’t have a grander purpose in life like that of some Christians who believe that their purpose in life was defined by a lunatic who was crucified for crossing the Romans.
I really don’t think that there’s a God-shaped hole at all. That seems to be a term of art made up simply to deride those who don’t believe in a deity. Few if any atheists would hold that they’re lacking anything. How can one miss something that was never there in the first place?
Similarly, Mehta says that “[atheism] also has created a vacuum of meaning and purpose in society.” Again, he seems to be making this up. Cultural movements of all sorts have taken place throughout history, whether or not religion was available as an alternative. I’d be hard-pressed to believe that wokeness (or Trumpism, or whatever) can rightly be attributed to loss of religious fervor.
The bottom line is that I don’t accept that atheism creates a vacuum that needs filling. Where religion is of low importance, life still seems to go on.
Theosophy is wisdom of god.
Theosophy sets individuals and humanity as parts of a single god and the cosmos as a heaven. It uses sophistry to do this. Oprah has had numerous theosophists on her show including good ‘ol Deepak.
Gnosticism is similar in that humans have the wisdom of god and use that wisdom to reorganize the world to fit the image in gnostic consciousness.
There is no conventional deity in these, but stand-ins like society, and so on.
See e.g. for gnosticism :
Science, Politics, and Gnosticism
Eric Voegelin
1968, 1997
Regenery Press, Chicago;
Washington D.C.
BTW I changed my pseudonym from ThyroidPlanet.
My own view is that some people have a biological ‘yearning’ for greater certainty and ‘meaning’. It’s probably the result an evolutionary process which is rippling through populations.
Two consequences of the ‘yearning’ arising from evolutionary processes:
1) Different people will experience the ‘yearning’ with differing degrees of intensity, from none to overwhelming.
2) Lots of people will try and exploit the ‘yearning’ to their own advantage.
People within the religious industries will claim that god(s) will fill the god-shaped hole. New Age gurus will major on ‘spirituality’. Ideologists will claim their ideology will fill the yearning hole. Snake oil sellers will sell snake oil to fix what ails you.
Non-believers of any of these exploitations will be frowned upon. How’s a person going to make a living if others don’t want to buy what’s on sale?
Your thinking tests my wavering atheism. Swift said “You can’t argue someone out of something they haven’t argued themselves into”. I, born in 1942, grew up in a culture (parents, school, peers, public discourse) that defined atheism as the sensible way. I took it for granted. So now I’m trying to argue myself ‘properly’ into atheism and having a bit of a struggle – hence the stimulus I value from your happy and confident atheism (hope that’s right). A sceptical and dear friend is amused by my musings on this. She says “Simon. You’re only interested in these things because you are very old and you will soon be dead.” That could well be true, though I do not – perhaps in denial – fear my end or expect or even hope for continuity, but I do now find atheism (in my limited understanding, but long experience) rather boring, even unimaginative for all Dawkins’ ‘poetry of reality’. There was a time when having faith was not only normal, but where one of our greatest poets – a ‘mad’ visionary genius – could reply to a question about the sun – his words “it will be Questiond ‘When the Sun rises, do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea? ‘ O no no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty'” That’s what William Blake sees. I’m not saying its true for anyone other than the poet, but then I struggle to believe that Quantum mechanics or String Theory are anything but visionary suppositions – although I suspect those able to manage multi-dimensional mathematics (necessary for any exchange on these leading edge subjects of science) do really ‘see’, what I can only read about.
I consider myself to be a happy and confident atheist. What makes me happy is not atheism, per se, since that simply is not meant to give back much of anything. It’s pretty much just a declaration that there are no gods. Full stop. But atheism does permit me to be guilt-free about taking pleasure in life, since I have no soul to tarnish or god to disappoint. What meanwhile makes me happy and fulfilled are my hobbies, and a lifetime spent learning and experiencing all I can about life on this beautiful planet. There is also family, watching the kids grow up, and feeling very amazed that all this is even happening.
Quantum mechanics is a theory of physics that describes natural phenomena quite well within its domain of application. It has plenty of empirical evidence in its favour. String Theory is a speculative theory (or a framework of theories) that might or might not work out.
Do you attach any other significance to these theories?
To me quantum mechanics and string theory are visionary suppositories.
Thanks, Chetiya. I do. As Christians struggle unsuccessfully to understand why God allows suffering. atheists struggle to understand, with equal lack of success, a version of reality in which parallel lines meet, and other quantum conundrums. We are mostly trapped in Euclidean space, but us humans are ever curious about what’s outside those dimensions of limited perceptions evolved in us over millennia. We’re conversing in the narrow limits of English language on this blog bound by the rules of its grammar, that poets often circumvent with another set of ancient rules. Were we mathematicians we’d be debating before a large board exchanging math texts and symbols way beyond my understanding.
I think I understand the general idea that you are trying to put across. I think of scientific theories as being descriptions of nature[1]. I do not attach a deeper significance to them. I don’t expect them to give me a sense of purpose or meaning. I just don’t have religious beliefs. I have found that many religious statements about nature are not sufficiently meaningful to warrant discussions as to their truth or falsity.
I suppose the ‘ism’ in atheism suggests that it is more of a way of living. A Catholic asked me what my religion was. I replied that I was not religious. To her, that meant I was an atheist and that atheism was to me what Catholicism was to her. Not true. I don’t think of it as an ‘ism’ anyway; it’s much more trivial than that.
From the conversations that I’ve had with religious people, it seems that religion satisfies a psychological need much more than a need to describe nature in the way a science does; consequently, religious ideas have different criteria for acceptance. The irony is that, for the psychological need to be satisfied, one needs to believe that one’s religion is true and that it contains knowledge about nature. The words ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’ are important to religion because of what they mean in more rigorous ways of thinking. Therefore, a challenge to their religious ideas is immediately harmful to their emotional well-being. This can hinder their sense of analytical introspection as well: why seek answers to questions when such answers might make one deeply unhappy? It’s perfectly plausible to me that a religious life is good for some people. I know some who have benefited from it in that it has made them happy.
I think that’s a manufactured problem. Suffering exists. If we invent an omnipotent God who is infinitely kind (words that make sense to some people), then we have the problem of theodicy. Religious people, of course, do not believe that the concept of such a god is a human invention; so they have a problem.
[1] Given an objective external world, the question as to which entities of a scientific theory correspond to things that exist as opposed to being convenient mathematical devices might be a meaningful question. But that is a different discussion.
Simon, you are a cis atheist whose atheism matches his spirituality at birth. This fuss over the god-shaped hole is much easier to navigate for us trans atheists. I was assigned Catholic at birth, and transitioned to atheism as a teen when I realized what made-up nonsense it all was. Cis atheists have missed out on that aha moment (cf. EdwardM @ 8), and that may be what makes this renewed conversation more difficult?
That’s a great analogy. In the same spirit (see what I did there?), I was assigned Congregationalist, experimented with Anglicanism for a number of years, and eventually transitioned to atheism for much the same reasons as you.
I vividly recall looking in the mirror and saying to my reflection “You don’t believe any of it any more, do you?” And I expected to be regretful about my confession; instead, I was overcome by feelings of relief and euphoria. And a bit later, I realised that I hadn’t believed seriously – really seriously – since I was about 12 years old. There is no god-shaped hole in my life; and now I know there never was.
Ah ha yes I feel seen! So you were bi before you were trans? Cool! Did your parents get you confirmation blockers, or did you have to go through Congregationalist puberty? I confess (ha ha) I don’t know much about Congregationalists. Christianity is such a spectrum eh?
I like the cis and trans label on these terms!
William Blake’s writing is a prominent gnostic example.
Excellent post. It seems to me that though many of those who have God shaped holes in them, dug those holes themselves, for most people, when they were children, other people dug those holes in them. I do think, as a recovering Catholic, that Sunday School is a form of (unintended) child abuse.
Per the “hateful atheist” meme. As an atheist, it pains me to see that caricature banteried about. Especially after my experince here at WEIT. However. Spend a little time in online athiest groups and it isn’t hard to see where that meme comes from.
I feel that the “angry atheist” comments come from the same people who view any criticism as an attack. As for woke being a consequence of atheism, I think it’s clear that the same tools that have dispatched god as an unnecessary hypothesis will also see us through wokeness.
Excellent response to “Indian philosophical traditions such as Nāstika and Nirīśvaravāda offer the West’s angry ‘neo-atheists’ a more nuanced model for channelling their religious disbelief.”
Apparently, having a difference of opinion constitutes being “angry.”
“I think it’s clear that the same tools that have dispatched god as an unnecessary hypothesis will also see us through wokeness.”
I count mockery as an indispensable tool in that regard.
Woke Marxists think they are atheists, but in fact see themselves as individual units of a species-being sharing the identical species-consciousness.
Those are directly quoted concepts from Marx’ Philosophic and Economic Manuscripts of 1844. He’d have been on Oprah if around in the 90s pushing his theosophy.
BTW : changed my pseudonym.
Speaking of changing pseudonyms, I’ve been meaning to ask if my memory serves me correctly that you were commenting on Friendly Atheist as ThyroidPlanet back when it was “free for any commenters” to that?. (As for me, I spouted all my vitriol there under a different pseudonym there.) I also balked at subscribing because I don’t relish the thought of putting certain account numbers on line. Additionally, while Mehta appeals to me (I still read the free version of FA -and sometimes consider subscribing so I can communicate there) but balked at the sight of some of his (H. Mehta’s) “beefs” with folks (something with PCC(E) here once- and more recently Michael Shermer) that sorta turn me off. I’m toying with th thought (just toying) that I may want to change my “real” name to W.T. Effingham some day.
“… you were commenting on Friendly Atheist”
I’d need a link, but TP was reserved for here.
The Quillette author says that they encounter angry atheists. Do any such claimants ever give specific examples? Were they really angry? If so, were the atheists just angry for no reason or were they provoked?
I would suggest that they were strident and uncompromising. Although, anger is a common emotion, even for believers.
Agree this is often a problem with documented examples or specifics. I don’t doubt Mehra’s sincerity but I wonder about his intentions in writing something like this. On his substack Freddie de Boer keeps a taxonomy of what he calls Good White Men who have carefully curated online personas that align with progressive ideals.
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-good-white-man-roster
Mehra seems to have a similar goal: to show his readers that he’s transcended the angry atheist stereotype, and that he’s become a Good Atheist. Maybe de Boer needs to write up a second taxonomy?
Excellent piece (of yours).
I’d only add a tiny addendum to ““Northern Europe and Scandinavia” – which would be “Australia, NZ and above all Japan.”
I’ve argued this before variously and it is hard to explain bc people jump up and shout “Buddhism and Shinto!” – without an understanding of how things actually work there. It took me years to get it, from living there and speaking Japanese.
And hard to explain how dimly Japanese society views religions and cults.
So…. for the purposes of the greater atheist project Japan is an example that takes too much time to explain.
Loved the Gervais quote at the end.
D.A.
NYC
I’m wondering what is wrong with angry?
“We have a vast selection of made up religions for you to respect and accommodate and navigate as they try to supplant science and dominate the world… What, you’re angry?”
We already have a much, much better social glue than religion or secular humanism: Capitalism, or consumerism. The evidence is everywhere: Tourism, restaurants, sports, music concerts, etc.
Great post!
As for this blather by Mehra: “Most schools of Hinduism…presented a more inclusive and tolerant worldview than I encountered in the Bible or the Quran.”
Well, Hinduism is one of the leading forces of anti-Muslim bigotry in modern Hindu, thanks to Modi and his fellow Hindu-supremacists. And since there is no way of knowing which school of Hinduism is approved by the Gods, it’s no better than any other religion.
Perhaps the brutal truth is that the folks with “the God shaped hole” simply can’t handle or enjoy reality. And like religious zealots, they want everyone else to admit to having the same hole, although that’s clearly untrue. Our society could certainly benefit from increased social cohesion, but the solution shouldn’t involve making everybody turn religious, especially because all the different religions would start fighting again in minutes.
“A counterargument for religion, one I have made, is that you can have perfectly well-functioning societies without religion and its detriments”
Besides the chicken-egg argument about what came first (i.e., Did religion allow civilizations to exist, or did civilizations allow religion to exist?), why does ancient history seem to lack a large, nonreligious society?
Furthermore, the difference between the more atheistic Scandinavian countries and the “religious” United States on the Human Rights Index is 0.03 in 2023. Take Denmark as an example; almost everyone was religious in 1850, with a human rights index of .91, and it rose to .96 in 2023 with far fewer religious people. While one can use this data as a key indicator that religion is not necessary to sustain a high human rights index, it is difficult to argue that religion played no role, especially considering Denmark is monotheistic with a state-sponsored religion that could have led to the unifying culture that made its people willing to sacrifice for a common good.
Trew asks: “Did religion allow civilizations to exist, or did civilizations allow religion to exist?”
There are other social formations in addition to “civilization,” and since small-scale societies of the sort we anthropologists study are pretty much saturated with “religious” beliefs and practices, it might be reasonable to argue that as “civilization” emerged from settled horticulture to larger-scale agriculture, the emergence of occupational specialization included full-time religious practitioners who elaborated basic beliefs and practices around local spirits into more all-embracing theologies, with social as well as cultural correlates. That’s just basic Weber on the evolution of religion, of course, but it might offer an answer to your chicken or egg issue.
Barbara, I understand Weber’s pattern on the evolution of religion, but I am curious as to why there are few to no exceptions to this trend. Why does religion always seem to exist above X number of citizens? Some estimate the number, X, is above one million, while others believe it is a lower population.
Second, unrelated observation: Did the Enlightenment revolt against religion or state-sponsored monotheistic religions, such as the Catholic Church in France? It would seem that Protestants’ claim of individual freedom in matters of faith against the authoritarianism of the Church greatly influenced the Enlightenment.
“Why does religion always seem to exist above X number of citizens? Some estimate the number, X, is above one million, while others believe it is a lower population.”
My point was that “religious” beliefs and practices exist in every society, however large or small — by the time, historically, that some communities reached the level of “civilization,” they had been “religious” for thousands of years already. If you wonder why religious beliefs and practices persist as societies move from, say, village organization to “civilization”, perhaps one issue, as I noted, is that the emergence of occupational specialization yields full-time “professional” religious practitioners that ally themselves to political power.
I am not an authority on the Enlightenment, so I will side-step your question about that era, but I should note a couple of things. The Catholic Church then, and now, is not “monotheistic” — Weber (again!) used the notion of the “enchanted world” of Catholicism, in which saints, angels, demons, and other supernatural beings could influence the affairs of humans — surely all of these were theistic beings. The Protestant Reformation chopped out many of these from the pantheon of supernatural beings.
“The god-shaped hole in my heart is best explained by the god-shaped hole in your head.”
Plus, I think you need to define god first so I can see if the shape is right. Catholics first.
Indeed, there are so many gods, but so many people think there is only one god, so they capitalize it and think it’s theirs. I always try to structure any references to gods (like here) to be in the plural. It seems to be a useful way to make garden variety believers think twice.
The only hole I feel happens when I’m curious about something in the universe, and no scientific research has yet addressed the subject.
But given the spectacular success of our constantly improving scientific methods to elucidate so many previously mysterious things, I feel that hole is just a temporary condition that future scientific research seems likely to fill.
Off the topic, but I was struck by the index of human rights graph which shows that South America has surpassed North America since the mid 1980s.
Evidently, my stereotypes need updating. Or is North America a purely geographic (rather than cultural) construct beginning immediately north of the equator, or are my notions of freedoms and rights mistaken?
On the topic of the post, for some years after my realisation that Christian doctrines made no sense I was an angry or aggressive atheist, but for much longer have been more of a Candide, let’s-tend-our-garden atheist. Once you have X reasons for unbelief, there’s not much point debating or searching for X + 1 reasons, just get on with life.
Is “Candide” (lets tend our garden…) a reference that everyone gets?
Theists tend to call atheists “angry” as they feel they must be angry at God, serenely ignoring the fact that atheists are often angry at the theists!
Personally, I had no “Aha!” moment, but a gradual falling away of acceptance of the Anglican beliefs to which my parents had half-heartedly exposed me, exactly like the gradual realisation that Santa Claus was not real a decade before. And in the same way, arrived at alone, the family not being one open for all discussions, so I was never able to ask. Still, the stiff upper lip is better in the long run than letting it all hang out.
As one does, I re-examined all this when my body tried hard to kill me. I never came close to believing any nonsense, but I wanted to die feeling I had an acceptable framework to use for the big concepts like forgiveness and redemption. I can’t say I achieved that, but I did end up feeling more tolerant (less “angry”?) towards those who do believe. I still give very short shrift to JWs on the doorstep, but I don’t mind if they want to be wrong as long as they are willing to be wrong in private, and keep it out of the public square. I was once taught that the Graeco-Roman pantheon of gods expected dutiful sacrifices, but made no demands on individual behaviour and morality, which is interesting, removing the social control aspects of religion. The antics of the Olympians in The Iliad are a very human entertainment, and if it was still current, I’d be happy to send the fragrant smoke of a fat-tailed lamb skyward now and then!
Clearly Mehra has no understanding of how belief in the Hebrew god evolved, from monolatry to monotheism. It did not exist from the start in the form it has now – & without the Babylonian exile might never have reached that state.
I am reminded of the late Jonathan Miller who was ‘”reluctant” to call himself an atheist because “it hardly seems worthwhile having a name for something which scarcely enters my thoughts at all”.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rough_History_of_Disbelief
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L2-1sXJlQ0
in case you have not seen it…
Jonathan Miller’s “A Rough History of Disbelief” is a superb program—required viewing for anyone interested in the history of atheism!
“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” Eleanor Roosevelt