religion, fundamentalismBoth Dawkins and Hitchens argue that the greatest dangers posed by religion, come from fundamentalist churches, but that the more liberal religions do little more than enable the conservative ones. As a result, they (the liberal religions) are also enemies of reason and rational thought.
If you talk to those who practice the liberal religions, they will say that they aren’t enablers but rather a line of defense against the fundamentalists. Some Unitarian Universalists might even joke that their religion is effectively “atheists with children”. When you look at the motives behind the shooting at the UU church in Knoxville, TN a couple of years ago, it becomes harder to rebut this assertion.
So… Which is it? Should atheists support or reject the more liberal religions if we share a common goal of refuting fundamentalism?
I think that in the short term, the liberal, or moderate religious groups is rather harmless, many accept evolution as the fact it is and do not try to impose their beliefs on non-believers.
However in the long run, the goal should be no religion whatsoever and that means the “harmless” ones as well.
The liberal groups do protect the fundamentalists as well. For example, a sect as nothing but fundamentalists without backup.
Religious moderates do protect for the fundamentalists. Religions, whether the interpretation is liberal or literal, are based on the belief that proofs are not necessary as far are religion is concerned. If they started criticizing other religions on non-theological grounds, it would put their own belief in question as what their believe rests on the same assumption.
Now, if religious fundamentalism is an evil then religious moderates are, at worse, a necessary evil. People rarely change from one extreme to another over night. Usually, it’s a slow process where each believe is being analyze and criticized, one after the other.
Look at the history to see that very principle in action:
Slavery was once widely accepted, then it was abolished and now it outlawed in nearly all countries. However, at that time, women were once deemed inferior to men. That has changed in all Western civilization. Yet, by the time feminism entered in its second wave, homosexuality was still illegal in many Western countries. However, today not only is same-sex sexual activity legal, but same-sex marriage is even legal in several countries.
Liberal theism is a refuge for those who agree that some socially conservative values are wrong but are not yet ready to renounce all of their religion. If the choice was a dilemma between atheism or religious fundamentalism, there would probably be less atheists than there are now.
Sam Harris explains why he believes that religion is an invalid intellectual pursuit in his book, The End of Faith. It is his claim that a valid pursuit of human intellect must result in change. For example, the pursuit of science causes us to change the way we view reality as we gain more knowledge. He compares this to religion and concludes that because it hasn’t changed in 2000 years, it’s not a valid intellectual pursuit and doesn’t help the human race grow.
Although fundamentally I may agree with the latter part of that conclusion, that id doesn’t help the human race grow (I’ll explain why in a bit), I can’t agree with the conclusion as a whole because I can’t agree with the premise. The very first thing I thought of when reading that argument was, “What about the moderates and liberal theists that you’re currently dismissing?”
Many of our secular ideals where first argued by theists. John Locke for instance is considered one of the foremost and first philosophers to argue effectively for religious tolerance. Not the kind that Harris wants us to get rid of, “conversational tolerance”, but political tolerance. Before this age, governments and religion where tightly coupled such that there was only one accepted religion in a country. There where a few exceptions, but on average this is how it was. If you did not hold the accepted religion you where often subject to persecution by the government, possibly even torture and/or execution.
It could be easily argued that Locke didn’t take it far enough because his tolerance only extended to those who HAD religious beliefs. It was his contention that atheists couldn’t be included because they had nothing holding them to oaths, honesty, and other things necessary for a solid, healthy community. It must be accepted though that even if Locke wasn’t the FIRST, he was one of the most effective; so much so that much of the philosophy that formed the United States is directly traced to him. John Locke’s arguments where 100% theistic and he based the whole thing on scripture; it’s one of the main reasons that actually trying to read his argument can’t hold my interest…I can’t be convinced or consider it actually relevant beyond basic history because it’s all based on theistic garbage think.
It of course could be argued that any and all theistic arguments for toleration are, and have been, inspired by secularism rather than religion. This of course may very well be true. One of the main pieces of arguments like Harris’s though is that you can’t effectively argue within theism; that moderates “protect” fundamentalism by providing a breeding ground that can’t weed them out because you can’t argue against them within that framework. Truth of the matter though is that it must be possible because, historically, it HAPPENED. We would not live in the largely secular, liberal world today if it couldn’t be done because, point of fact, religion held all power in the Western world for centuries and one of the large components of change from that where religious arguments for secular, or at least tolerant, government.
In other words, religion DOES grow and it DOES change, and it is the liberals and “moderates” (not all of them are actually moderate at all) that guide that change. In this regard they actually play a very important role in society because like it or not, most of society is religious. There are a few, lucky countries in which this is not the case, but most of the world is not only religious, it’s VERY religious. We need the moderates and liberals who sway minds not pre-disposed to our kind of thinking. We need the moderates and liberals who are converting a religious world to a secular ideal. We atheists can now play a larger role in hopefully getting more recognition and acceptance, but we still need the moderates or it’s just us screaming at a wall of popular misconception.
Ultimately, I do believe that religion holds us back rather than aid our development. It would be better if all forms of mythical thinking where disposed of. Even though religion does change, and that change is guided by the moderates, I think it is more due to secular pressures than pressures from within. Furthermore, religion is slower to respond because of the fact that it’s neither consistent nor based upon evidence; you can as easily argue to accept your neighbor as they are, without judgment, as you can argue they should be stoned by the community. Neither is most of the world’s population either though and this is why I think that moderates are helpful and ultimately necessary to actually changing the world. Convincing people is only remotely attached to evidence and does require that you speak the language of the audience; atheists simply don’t.
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