Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

The Secular Value of Supporting Churches

A very interesting perspective by John Gray here on the proposal for the creation of atheist temples (discussed here).  What struck me about the piece was its recommendation to atheists to support existing churches and religious structures exactly for some of the reasons that Botton describes.  The point might be expanded to apply more generally to secular support for religious institutions — not a reason from autonomy or separation or one of the other usual liberal reasons, but one more merits-oriented, as it were.  From the conclusion of Gray’s piece:

[Auguste] Comte wanted his new religion to be based on science, so the temples of humanity pointed only as far as science could reach. That is why his new church failed. The very idea of a science-based religion is an absurdity. The value of religion is that it points beyond anything that can be known by the methods of science, showing us that a mystery would remain even if everything could be finally explained. The heart of religion isn’t belief, but something more like what Keats described as negative capability: “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”.

Rather than trying to invent another religion surrogate, open-minded atheists should appreciate the genuine religions that exist already. London is full of sites – churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship – that are evocative of something beyond the human world. Better spend the money that is being raised for the new temple on religious buildings that are in disrepair than waste it on a monument to a defunct version of unbelief.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Fortress of Atheism

Here is an interesting story about the vision of the French writer, Alain de Botton, to capture some of what he sees as religion’s “consoling, subtle, or just charming rituals” by erecting gigantic atheist “temples.”  The story relates to Botton’s new book, Religion For Atheists: A Nonbelievers Guide to the Uses of Religion (Hamish Hamilton 2012).  Inside these collossal atheist edifices, it is not exactly clear what would occur, except that people obviously would not worship, but would instead “behave as they would in a museum.”  Proposed Fortress of Atheism at right.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Rancor Follows Decision Striking Down School Prayer

Here is an interesting story about the acute social rancor that has followed a U.S. District Court’s decision to hold unconstitutional the display of a prayer in a Rhode Island public school auditorium.  The prayer, written by a seventh grader some 50 years ago, said this:

School Prayer.

Our Heavenly Father, Grant us each day the desire to do our best, to grow mentally and morally as well as physically, to be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers, to be honest with ourselves as well as with others.  Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win.  Teach us the value of true friendship.  Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West.  Amen.

An atheist student sued to eliminate the prayer as a violation of the Establishment Clause and the court agreed.  Whether the town will appeal is unclear.  The story reports that State Representative Peter Palumbo has said some very harsh things about the atheist student plaintiff.  Justified or not, the anger that he expresses and which the town obviously feels is properly directed against the court.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami · 1 Comment

“Keep Christ in Christmas” Banner Rankles FFRF

A story out of Pitman, New Jersey.  It seems that a local chapter of the Knights of Columbus has hung a banner, attached on both sides to private property but spanning a public street, stating, “Keep Christ in Christmas.”  There is no question that the Knights are responsible for the banner, since it says so right on the banner itself.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, however, has asked the town to remove it.  But as the mayor points out, the banner is actually affixed to private property, so it is not exactly clear that the town has the authority to take it down, even if it wanted to.  (There seems to be some disagreement in the news stories I looked at about exactly what the sign is attached to; some stories say private property, others say public streetlamps and such.  This may be an important fact legally.)

Undaunted, FFRF is now searching for a suitable place to display its own sign: “At this season of the Winter Solstice, may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”  No word yet on whether they have found a banner big enough.

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Faith no More: The Moral Atheist

Professor of Sociology at Pitzer College, Phil Zuckerman, will publish Faith no More: Why People Reject Religion, in October.  This text illuminates some of the suppositions I posited about atheism, atheists, and atheists’ discontent in the first part of my recent commentary on the New York Times’ profile of outspoken anti-religionist, Richard Dawkins.  Faith No More, based on interviews and other studies of persons who have left their faith or otherwise opted against observance, finds that, far from being a uniform bloc, atheists in America are a group with varied and complex reasons for their lifestyle choice.

But perhaps most compelling and relevant is Zuckerman’s revelation that atheists are not the amoral nihilists that politicians have so often found it convenient to portray; rather, as I posited in my first Dawkins post, they are, on a whole, people deeply concerned with morality—perhaps, I suggested, persons who have encountered, and been deeply troubled by, religiosity in one of its more immoral incarnations.  I suggested that for many atheists, their choice of non-religion stems from a deep sense of moral conviction—a belief that atheism is more moral than the religion they have encountered in history books and in their lives.

This conclusion only supports the legitimacy of nonreligious persons’ defensive stance in contemporary society, a stance that could easily lead to Dawkinsesque anti-religiosity and contribute to Dawkins’ widespread popularity among the reading public.  (Note, in particular, the sharp difference between the mention of the non-religious in President Obama’s inaugural speech [see the reference after the jump] and Mitt Romney’s complete avoidance of the constituency in his 2007 Faith in America Speech.)

The publisher’s description of Faith no More follows:

[Update (DRS, 12/26/11): See Louise M. Antony’s discussion of atheism and morality in her recent NYT.com post, Good Minus God (Dec. 18, 2011).  Antony—who teaches philosophy at UMass Amherst—argues that atheism usually has nothing to do with nihilism, but is an alternative moral perspective.  For atheists, she says, morality does not depend on the existence of God; rather, morality and the good are “immanent in the natural world”—right and wrong are inherent in the interactions and reactions between rational, feeling beings.]

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The New York Times on Richard Dawkins’ Evangelical Atheism, Post One

On Monday, September 19, the New York Times profiled the evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, in the lengthy Profiles in Science: A Knack for Bashing Orthodoxy.  (The Times’ online edition also features a filmed interview.)  Though it is beyond this author’s expertise to assess the claim, many regard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (1976) as groundbreaking in its field.

Recently, however, Dawkins has become notorious for the strident atheism he articulated in The God Delusion (2006), an international best seller.  The God Delusion argues that religious faith is not only irrational but socially dangerous.  The NYT profile, though published in the Science Section, devotes substantial page-space to Dawkins’ perspectives on religion.

This Commentary will proceed in two posts.  Post One will characterize Dawkins’ atheistic perspectives—as he relates them in his NYT profile—and contend that (1) atheism’s stance is not without justification and (2) neither is atheists’ sense of defensiveness, which is probably the basis for Dawkins’ popularity.  Yet, despite my sympathy for nonreligious persons and respect for their beliefs, Dawkins’ vitriol and its underlying critical method are fundamentally defective.  Forthcoming, Post Two will critique Dawkins’ unabashed prejudice toward religious devotion from two perspectives: (1) Terry Eagleton’s criticism that Dawkins lacks basic understanding of the variety and fullness of religious belief and (2) Alasdair MacIntyre’s theory that contemporary moral discourse in the socio-political sphere is broken to the point of interminability, a failing Dawkins exemplifies.

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Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Geroulanos’s “An Atheism That Is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought”

A “humanist” or even “secular humanist” view is sometimes, perhaps even often, contrasted with a “religious” perspective.  But in An Atheism That Is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought (Stanford UP 2010), Stefanos Geroulanos (NYU, History) investigates the thought of early to mid-twentieth century French intellectuals and teases out the development of an atheism which was distinctively non- or even anti-humanist.  The publisher’s description follows.  — MOD

French philosophy changed dramatically in the second quarter of the twentieth century. In the wake of World War I and, later, the Nazi and Soviet disasters, major philosophers such as Kojève, Levinas, Heidegger, Koyré, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Hyppolite argued that man could no longer fill the void left by the “death of God” without also calling up the worst in human history and denigrating the dignity of the human subject. In response, they contributed to a new belief that man should no longer be viewed as the basis for existence, thought, and ethics; rather, human nature became dependent on other concepts and structures, including Being, language, thought, and culture. This argument, which was to be paramount for existentialism and structuralism, came to dominate postwar thought. This intellectual history of these developments argues that at their heart lay a new atheism that rejected humanism as insufficient and ultimately violent.

 

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

Atheist Summer Camps

It’s summertime, and even here in secular New York City churches are advertising Vacation Bible Schools.  Around the country, of course, religiously-affiliated summer camps are a familiar sign of the season; one Christian camp association  alone has nearly 900 members.

Until fairly recently, though, atheist and agnostic parents did not have a summer camp for  their kids.  No more.  The Washington Post reports on the phenomenon of the atheist summer camp, such as “Camp Quest,” a chain founded in 1996.  The idea is to allow non-religious kids to mingle and have fun while avoiding religious influence.  One very popular activity is the “Socrates Café,” where campers debate big questions like “What is Knowledge?”  (Maybe Socrates was an atheist, after all).

Although Camp Quest has branches in Europe, the idea of a chain of atheist summer camps seems somehow uniquely American.  In America, as many have pointed out, there is a free market in religion, with products for consumers of every conceivable stripe.  Some of these consumers are the “Nones” – people who report no religious affiliation at all.  In fact, “Nones” are now the third largest “religious” group in America, after Evangelicals and Catholics. A market niche just waiting to be served.  – MLM