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At the end of
2011, an obituary of well-known journalist
Christopher Hitchens spoke of his good
writing skills and of his recent book, God
is not Great: How Religion Poisons
Everything, Emblem, 2008. So I felt
I should read it. Reading
Hitchens’ book turned out to be a thought
provoking and helpful experience. It is
indeed well written. The ruthlessness of
his critiques of aspects of various
religions hides the strange paradox behind
the work. Hitchens gives voice to a
“religion” of his own. It is a belief in
pure reason as salvation for the human
family – indeed he ends with a call for a
new enlightenment. Yet
a ruthless singular pursuit of a belief in
pure reason can be as harmful as the
pursuit of the other myths and dogmas he
critiques by reason. Nonetheless Hitchens
is well worth a reading. Titles to
chapters, listed with spelled out
numbers, reveal a provocative intent.
Examples are: Two
Religion Kills; Eight the “New”
Testament exceeds the evil of the “Old”
One; Sixteen Is Religion Child Abuse? These
reveal a bigger range of thoughts and
more penetrating insights than other
books which could be dismissed as
attacking only evangelicals and the
creationist belief. The contribution of
Hutchins is his willingness to critique
and ridicule implausible fabrication
heaped on fabrication in belief systems
(See chapter Ten the
Tawdriness of the Miraculous and the
Decline of Hell and
chapter Eleven “The
Lowly Stamp of their Origins”:
Religion’s Corrupt Beginnings.) However
there are some useful critical
historical insights on the pope and
Hitler and the background of Joseph
Smith, convicted for fraud, who later
began the Mormon faith traditions. The
role of sexual repression is a frank
exploration. However his great
revelation that the religious documents
and dogmas are human fabrications is not
news to many who remain part of human
religious traditions. Some of his
provocative ideas are not convincing. To
blame Ghandi and his emphasis on his Hindu
religion for the calamitous division of
India and mass migrations in 1947 is too
simplistic. As I’ve noted before, religion
is often tangled with politics and is used
or drawn upon by political movements.
Religion can be part of the action when
human societies change, and major social
change almost invariably brings conflict
and deaths. Ghandi can be more fairly
credited with developing a means of
promoting political change through
peaceful protest. He developed a sense of
self-worth in a ruled population which
made a viable new nation possible. Since
organized religions developed alongside
each other they share underlying
positions. Thus it would be equally
reasonable to suppose that drawing on
one’s Hindu tradition to promote political
change would resonate with positions in
the Muslim community, also under the
foreign rule, rather than to presume that
drawing on one religious tradition in this
situation would provoke hostility with the
other. Hitchens is
not convincing when he dismisses some
people of faith who have attracted some
general affirmation. Although
recitations of a formula are required
for joining some religious traditions,
we do not know what the recitation
“means” for each person reciting it.
So we do not know what the more
noble individuals in a faith tradition
really “believed” or at what age and in
what circumstances they believed what.
Nor should it matter. All we can say is
that they were living in a community
with a particular religious tradition.
To dismiss as a humanist in disguise the
heroic Lutheran Pastor Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, killed for his role in a
plan to blow up Hitler, misses the
point. There is a continuing tradition
of humanists within the Christian
religious movement, as well as the
medieval humanist group which included
Erasmus. Like the enlightenment, the
humanists were part of the evolution of
the modern world in the West. That
humanist tradition continues alongside
the tackier aspects of the faith
tradition. Perhaps a call for a renewed
humanist tradition would be a better
call for mixed up unreasonable humans
than Hitchens’ call for a new
enlightenment which pre-supposes we are
all rational? More
dramatically, how can Hitchens even ask
a question whether it is child abuse for
parents to teach children their
inherited beliefs? Canadian society
generally considers it abuse to have
removed aboriginal children from their
families and the related religious
traditions into church run, but largely
secular and more rational, education
systems. This schooling was in part a
possible response to calls like
Hitchens’ for dropping religion and more
enlightenment. His question does deserve
to be answered, but it also needs to be
much more nuanced. Hitchens
claims to be tolerant of people who hold
faith positions as if he himself has
none. Words are metaphors which have
some meaning for some groups of people.
The metaphor “god” has had a whole lot
of meanings during the evolution of
faith traditions. To suppose that the
metaphor is empty is as simplistic as
supposing that the metaphor applies to a
humanoid clock maker behind a screen
held at some point in the sky. Hitchens
does not show much respect for people
who hold religious beliefs – reasonable
or otherwise. Some people may be
exploring whether and what content the
metaphor “god” has rather than presuming
that there is no content. Affirming
one’s own belief in reason and science
alone and no God is fine. But ridiculing
other beliefs /positions is not always
helpful. Allowing a lot of room for
other beliefs and myths seems to make
sense if one’s primary goal is living
alongside others without coming to blows
or worse. I don’t see why what someone
believes or does not believe should
become a matter for conflict. I draw the
line at what someone does which puts the
safety and well-being of fellow humans
under threat. There is
the chapter which aims to head off the
argument that anti-religious systems
like Soviet Russia did bad things too. I
don’t quite follow Hitchens’ reasoning
so I conclude that it is in fact a
serious argument. Hitchens concedes that
he was a Marxist and feels that this
allows him to have some empathy for
those with religious beliefs. Yet
it is what you do that matters, not what
you believe or do not believe. For
much of the 20th century
many intellectuals and rational people
believed in the Marxist myths, adapted
from religious myths. They believed that
human history hinged on a transformation
of society into one run by workers and a
place was rationalised for the avant
guard to impose this vision on others
until they came to believe it was best
for them. At the turn of the 20th century
some people accepted the visions and the
myths written up from Joseph Smith’s
Mormon revelations. As far as I can
tell, the former Marxist myth hurt far
more humans over far more of the world
for a far longer time in the name of
atheism than Mormonism hurt. I
prefer what I think is a wider form of
Hutchins’ position: that people being
driven by any myths or analytical system
which can set aside views others have
about their own well-being can allow
these people to do terrible things to
the others. In other words, allowing
people to participate meaningfully in
decisions affecting their own lives and
work (advanced democracy) is
fundamental. It seems important to
repeat that politics is an irrational
process about blending essentially
irreconcilable positions in big human
communities so that they do not escalate
into conflicts which kill or enslave or
exile. A belief in pure reason can
qualify as some kind of belief like a
religion and in my view it can be more
dangerous than older faith traditions
which have, by and large, learned to
live within secular politics. In sum then
Hitchens provoked many thoughts. At a
first brush level, the book brought back Gretta
Vosper’s insight
see (March 2009): it
is not what you believe but what you do
which matters. Thus
it is unhelpful to devote energy and waste
time arguing that god, whatever that
means, does or does not exist, or is or is
not great. On further
reflection, humans are not all good but
they are not all bad either. So the human
traditions that gave us the “god” metaphor
gave us traditions which were bad, as
Hitchens enjoys exploring, but also good.
The God
is not Great critique is not
willing to face the upside of a faith
tradition as well as its downside. One
could almost as well write the antithesis
to Hitchens thesis: “God”
is Great: How Religions Have Contributed
to Human Accomplishments. My
own life experience fits better with that
proposition. I did not
feel abused because I was taught
Christian mythology as a child. I have
found it useful background knowledge. As
a teenager, my church youth group taught
me how to work with my peers in running
simple self run organizations. That
helped me move safely through
adolescence. As a university
student, it gave me a place to work with
others in counterpoint with my formal
education programs. Indeed, there I
gained confidence to draw on my
reasoning and to recognize myths as
myths. There I learned the uncertainties
and mysteries of a faith tradition. I
learned that being in a faith tradition
was concerned with continuing the
searching – not about having found glib
answers to anything –including that
there is or is not such a thing as god.
I also noted
along the way some aspects of faith
traditions which deserve more exploration.
Faith traditions seem to be the place
where people who lack links to the power
structure can find their own dignity and
worth. The Jewish Passover haggadic text
for the family seder begins by blessing
God for having hallowed the lives of those
present with traditions and festivals of
joy and sorrow. Little people in society
find it helpful to belong to a community –
and one which provides a structure to life
– patterns and seasons. I have dealt with
the powerful people in my society, but I
am aware that I was not born to rule.
Somewhere in between, my faith tradition
was helpful.
Some faith traditions have
explicitly empowered little people. The
leaders of faith traditions, the Moses,
the Buddha and Confucius were lesser
princes or lesser people in the ruling
class. Hitchens notes this but doesn’t
understand it. In my faith
tradition, a humanist and Wesleyan
Methodist one, one can go where people are
hurting, one can work with others who are
also there and take it from there. If
there is a god, or a great spirit moving
across humanity and instigating movements,
that is where he, she, it might be found -
working with others, rationally,
empathetically, compassionately. The myth of
Jesus as God only has meaning when the
Emperor is called God. In that context it
becomes a radical empowering myth for a
community of followers who are little
people. The myth of Jesus as the ultimate
sacrifice only has meaning when there are
myths of necessary human or animal
sacrifices to keep the sun rising. The
myth of the ultimate sacrifice overcomes
earlier myths requiring sacrifices.
Further, ultimate sacrifice becomes a
weekly symbolic substitution in the faith
tradition. At its best, the bundle of
Jesus myths becomes a quest to include all
outsiders into an all-encompassing human
community of justice, peace and
compassion. That is the vision of the end
of history – not a bloodbath as Hitchens
supposes. Little groups in the faith
tradition form the vanguard pointing the
way. And I haven’t added the role of
religion and religious people in
education. God may or
may not be and may or may not be great,
but religious traditions, like the
humans that relay them, have some good
in them as well as some evil. Top Click:  |