Anti-theism and Chaucerian Frauds

I've been debating with myself on the potential merits of a book that would serve as a kind of anti-theist manifesto for a new generation. The book I'm envisioning would be Chris Hitchen's god is not Great combined with elements of Dennett and Dawkins, but refracted through a fictional prism that places the arguments into the context of a dialog between a young man and a fading old televangelist.

The televangelist reflects on his life and his manipulation of his flocks while leading the youth in an intellectual journey through his most cherished beliefs, ultimately arriving at a conclusion of unbelief, and how he is now a scholar of scientific and rational ideas. As the ideas unfold, the young man challenges many of the elder's presumptions based on his own belief, but his skepticism begins to grow as the discussion grows.

I was particularly struck by Hitchens describing Jerry Falwell as a "Chaucerian fraud" during an interview shortly after Falwell's death, and that there is a poverty of fiction that presents fairly basic ideas about skepticism and faith for consumption by young people. Yet there is no shortage of religious tracts that present ideas of faith in simple, easily consumed tidbits, including the infamous Jack Chick tracts.

Many questions remain, though, including whether cartoons and/or verse are the best approaches, much less whether I have the chops to make it happen.

I always read this sort of thing with a smile that even in the 14th century wits were far quicker than it often seems today:

For smalle tithes, and small offering,
He made the people piteously to sing;
For ere the bishop caught them with his crook,
They weren in the archedeacon's book;
Then had he, through his jurisdiction,
Power to do on them correction.

Pools and Editorials

Well, this last week saw my letter to the editor appear in print. My focus was on the incompatibility of various religious traditions and how strange it seems that people are willing to harm others over those incompatibilities. I addressed it as a letter to the children, suggesting that they should be skeptical of the claims of their parents about a great number of things, but that they should be especially careful about claims about the meaning of poetry.

There were several motivators in positioning it as a letter to children. First, I was able to simplify and operationalize the language in a way that points at the difficulties of treating religious texts as fact. Second, I was following Dennett's lead on the notion that young people need to be made aware that there are those who quite happily (and productively) live without religious belief and are smart, moral and interesting.

The responses in the online forum were very mixed, with the obvious "don't believe this guy" to heartfelt worries that popular culture is so negative an influence that only religion is capable of countering the impact on our children. I responded mellowly to all of the non-accusatory points and seemed to achieve the desired effect of being calm and learned at some level.

Saturday's paper contained the first in-print rebuttal, which focused on the author's own re-integration with organized theism following years of "freethinking". Yes, I avoided the A word in favor of a less-culturally charged term that is more inclusive of agnosticism, vagueness, humanism and rationalism. He was slightly antagonistic, suggesting that freethinking is the realm of liberals and people who believe we came "from pond scum." Sadly, it does reinforce the tendency for highly religious people to use debate tactics that are drawn from the shallower side of the gene pool. But I responded mostly positively in the online forum, describing the difference between "public knowledge" (observation, empiricism, experimentation) and "private knowledge" (revelation, subjective experience, prayer), and managed to avoid my own antagonism by not using the loaded phrase "magical thinking."

In fact, though, as we were heading towards Pyramid for Mother's Day lunch, I started processing the whole experience and we chewed a bit on how to escape the desconstructionist argument that there is nothing particularly favorable about private versus public, rational versus irrational, looking at the history of science. Freud, phrenology, alchemy. They all had their day in the sun as matters for learned discourse. Yet, can we still conclude that progressivism in science, history and culture is bankrupt due to classy arguments about a few failed social sciences? Thermodynamics is not nearly so porous.

I was reading Condi Rice's interview in Atlantic the other day and found myself agreeing with her on this notion of progressive, positive historical change, if not on any of the details or outcomes of our sloppy Iraq invasion and follow-up. The essential details, though, are tied to systems of governance that interfere with the urge to power on the part of individuals. Instead of a "Great Man" theory of history, I see a progressive unfolding of the assertion of individual rights and responsibilities through law that is gradually perfecting the inalienable rights of man. It is easy to be negative about this and decry income inequality or social justice, but the most effective players in government are those who find a creative dialog that is essentially positive in outlook, and who maintain a calm way forward that improves on the respect levels for the other players on the field.

I think I did that in my editorial engagement and follow-up, but time will tell.

Hitchens and Simpatico

It's odd. I decided to proceed with a defense of rationalism to my local paper. The timing was right based on some other editorial content that has recently found its way into that august publication. I got a call Saturday asking for a backgrounder to supplement the piece and shot off an email containing the requested information.

The day after I sent the letter in, though, I encountered both the Lou Dobbs interview with Chris Hitchens and Chris' spectacular talk at Sewanee University, The Moral Necessity of Atheism:

What's odd is how simpatico this talk is with the core thrust of my editorial. The only real difference is his depiction of religion as a form of mental totalitarianism, but I was amused by his juxtaposition of Leo Strauss and Ayn Rand, much as I recently did.

I was jazzed all weekend by the whole affair, but nevertheless forgot to pick up a copy of his new book.

Debate and Outcomes

As I wander through Jon Meacham's American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation, I found myself wondering (sometimes out loud, my wife reports) what the potential upshot is of the current public dialog involving atheist thinkers like Dawkins, Sam Harris, and (soon enough) Christopher Hitchens. Dawkins has as one of his objectives to actually help people leave religion by showing them that reason and non-religion are better--that non-belief is morally superior to belief. Sam Harris has a kind of spiritual commitment to community and the world as a replacement for supernatural beliefs. Hitchens? I'll have to wait but am certain that it will be a rollicking and lyrical ride.

Now, Dan Dennett began his foray into the lion's den with his discussion with exceptional high schoolers and coining the term "Bright" as a replacement for the vast sea of terms that we use like agnostic, atheist, humanist, rationalist, freethinker and so forth. I consider the term unfortunate because it does cast aspersions on the religious by antonymy: they are "dulls". Dennett has tried to talk around that comparison, but the semantics are now stuck and I doubt the term will gain positive traction as far as his original goal.

Still, I do think there is merit to Dennett's core goal of outreach to young people to build awareness that there is a community of freethinkers. Far too often I suspect that young people turn their vague feelings that there is something just not quite right about the religious folks around them into equally vague religious professions simply to get along with others. Knowing that there is a public dialog and serious discussion gives them the option of thinking freely, of overcoming the stigma associated with public non-belief. That is probably the lasting effect of the public discussion, but it does need to be both sustained and managed at the local level.

It is the local level--grassroots activism--that needs effort to help overcome the tendencies for vague consumerism to be overlain with vague religiosity. Maybe the calls for studying religion in schools would be enough to demystify some of the core issues that drive this trend by showing the historical and modern facts. An even-handed approach would certainly call into question specific supernatural and moral claims by juxtaposing all of the competing ideas in the world. And then kids would start asking deeper questions.