<underfire> Atheism and Peace

[Melani McAlister]

I’m responding here to Christopher Young’s comments, plus some of the general debates on religion, secular, atheism, etc.

from Christopher:
        "Second, I am hoping that Melani can offer some thoughts around her statement "aren't we invited to do -many- things, from fighting wars to cleaning up the environment, "for the sake of our children." 
 I am a bit concerned with this statement, as it implies that we (Evangelicals) are obligated by some theological rule to fight in wars....hmmm, I do not get a sense this is really the case- if one was to take a biblical standpoint. "


I meant to argue something a bit different here. I was responding to Michael Goldhaber’s comments that atheists are less likely to go to war than religious people. My point was that “we” – not Evangelicals, but all of us – are hailed by ideologies that invite us to strong action. These ideologies are often secular in their language or concerns; for example, we are called to do various things “for the sake of our children,” or “for the future of the planet.” The political content of this commitment to the future may be variable: it might be to save the environment, or to support the “war on terror” so that our children are not endangered, or to oppose nuclear weapons, or to fight the Soviets to prevent the spread of communism. Similarly, belief in God is evoked across the political spectrum, from pro- to anti-war, from pro- to anti-environmentalism.

I am personally an atheist (of which type, I’ll comment below), but I’m a bit shocked by the presumptions here that religious people who believe in God are more pro-war, more easily manipulated, etc. Do you really mean that? I think my religious friends are wrong on the question of God, but I can’t –imagine- arguing that pacifist Mennonite evangelicals, Sufi Muslims, liberal Jews, anti-Zionist orthodox Jews, liberation theology Catholics, or anti-war evangelicals etc. and etc. are, deep in their hearts, politically retrograde (not to mention, apparently, more likely to have children, despite a certain monastic tradition one might want to account for). And meanwhile, what about the lovely non-believers who in fact run the United States (do you –really- think Dick Cheney’s faith is the issue?), and who ran the Soviet Union, and who supported Saddam Hussein? They are what? Above ideology? Animated only by material interests?

I think that, in these various related strands, we might be having (at least) three conversations. To simplify (sometimes brutally):

1) What does it mean to be an atheist? Is atheism a type of faith?

2) What does it mean to be religious? Does it require a belief in God? Does it have an inherent political content? 

3) What is the distinction, analytically, between secular and religious? 

I just spoke to the second of these. I’ll make a comments on 1). (There is a lot more to be said on 3), too, but one has to have life outside of email…)

The stakes in question 1) seem to be, basically, whether atheism is better than belief in god. As several people have said, it’s impossible to prove a negative, so you can’t prove there is no god, and almost every religious person I know would agree that you can’t prove there –is- one, at least not in the terms that would count as proof to non-believers. Believers might cite their own experiences as proof, but this isn’t a rationalist sort of proof. So belief in god does require faith – the acceptance of a particular explanation for whatever experience is at hand. (I prayed and I experienced God’s love. One explanation: there is a god;  another explanation: prayer produces nice brain waves, as does mediation on a flame.)

But neither belief nor non-belief has any given political effect. If we want to argue about the basis of our beliefs in the nature of the universe and the presence or lack thereof of God, then that’s great. If we want to argue about whether we need to go to war in Iraq, then let’s do that. If someone tells me they oppose war in Iraq because God calls us to turn the other cheek, I’m going to have to disagree with their rationale. But I’m happy to have them at my anti-war meeting, and I’m not going to argue theology with them -- unless we all go out to dinner and decide to do so.

People who don’t believe in god –mostly- hold that conviction on rationalist grounds; that is, given the lack of evidence in favor of god, and given a commitment to (some version of) empiricism, we are not convinced. (There are people who are non-believers based on their experience; that is, they feel bereft by a personal loss and believe this proves there is no God, but I don’t consider these to be morally serious persons: you believed in God when millions of people were dying of hunger and war, but not when your wife was killed in a car accident?) 

I don’t believe in God, with a capital G, for the same reason I don’t believe in the Greek gods or in the presence of aliens. It’s not that I could not, under any circumstances, be convinced. If the aliens show up, I’m going to be pretty damn shocked, but I will believe those things which are observable, repeatable (in other words, I’m not the only one who sees them; if I were, other explanations will have to be pursued: like that I’m crazy), and possible to study, even if not to fully understand. 

There are multiple and valuable critiques of Enlightenment rationalism and its assumptions, as well as its products. I accept many of those critiques, including that this rationalism requires and operates from certain assumptions and premises, including the scientific method itself, which is a myth of pure process, but which in fact requires theories of how the world is ordered in order to proceed. But the assumptions and models themselves are subject to revision -- Kuhn's paradigm shifts. And we all depend on this model of rationalism and its dependability SO frequently, from studies of how disease operates to making planes fly, it simply doesn't make sense to me to dismiss it when it comes to the question of God. For that reason, and others, I don’t think it makes sense at all to call atheism or rationalism a faith or a religion. (This is why Durkheim’s model is in fact quite problematic.)

Finally, and briefly, I think people often feel negatively about atheism, as opposed to just disagreeing with it, because 1) atheists can act like real jerks toward religious people; the reverse is also true, and probably has a lot to do with anti-religious feelings; or 2) they think that atheists have no experience of awe. I’ve actually talked to –very- educated people who said they would not call themselves atheists because they had feelings of awe in face of nature -- they are moved to wordlessly by a sunset. I suggested that reading more poetry might help them with that; feeling emotional richness or Kantian sublime is not limited to religious people. But I think this is where the spiritual-but-not-religious junk comes from; people want to find a way to claim their experience of the ineffable. 

Sorry, I know this is terribly long.
MM



Melani McAlister
Associate Professor of American Studies 
 and International Affairs
George Washington Univ. 
mmc at gwu.edu

Mailing address:                Office location:
    2108 G. St. NW                       609 22nd St. NW 
    Washington, DC 20052            Room 203   
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----- Original Message -----
From: christopher.w.young at thomson.com
Date: Monday, November 20, 2006 7:46 pm
Subject: Re: <underfire> Atheism and Peace
To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org


> Mary, Michael and Melani,
>  
> Thank you for sharing your views and opinions of things so important to
> so many.  
>  
> First, can someone define 'absolute value'?  
>  
> Second, I am hoping that Melani can offer some thoughts around her
> statement "aren't we invited to do -many- things, from fighting wars to
> cleaning up the environment, "for the sake of our children." 
>  
> I am a bit concerned with this statement, as it implies that we
> (Evangelicals) are obligated by some theological rule to fight in
> wars....hmmm, I do not get a sense this is really the case- if one was
> to take a biblical standpoint.  When I hear such things, it actually
> makes me fall back on another representation you made- "that poor people
> are being ideologically manipulated by a retrograde state".  Although 
> I
> am not articulating that poor people are being ideologically manipulated
> by a state, I am arguing that theological texts have been historically
> manipulated by the elites, who have changed the inherent meaning of the
> doctrine to fit their own agenda.  
>  
> So, when I see Evangelicals praying in supposedly charismatic tongues
> and worshipping a god, who encourages his followers to fight an illegal
> war - I am definately taking the position that this group of believers
> has been manipulated and perhaps their position in society is not
> physically poor, just spiritually sick.  
>  
> We are coming to a place in society, where all religions will be
> resounded to the same position as atheism - a position where meaning is
> obsolete and belief in a deity is all but gone from history - an
> "McIntyrean" world....  
>  
> CY
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
> ________________________________
> 
> From: underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org
> [ On Behalf Of Michael H
> Goldhaber
> Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2006 4:06 PM
> To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
> Subject: <underfire> Atheism and Peace
> 
> 
> 
> Mary,  et al., 
> 
> Mary Keller wrote:
> 
> 	From this perspective the a-theist is signifying the
> significance of their
> 	location in the world. When someone tells me, as you did, that
> they are an atheist  I hear "I don't need God. I don't count on
> transcendentals. I am happy to become worm food. I'm not looking for
> wings."  From  my perspective the atheist and the theist are both
> exercising the cognitive desire to  map out the significance of their
> location in the world.
> 
> Mary, I mistook your original position, it would seem, but here you
> mistake mine, and that of many atheists. [FOOTNOTE: Taken literally, a
> disbelief in god does not necessitate a disbelief in an afterlife (e.g.,
> the original Buddhism, in which to be released from the cycle of
> reincarnation was a major goal) nor vice versa (Torah Judaism has "G-d"
> but no mention of an afterlife; on the holiest day of Yom Kippur, one
> prays only "to be inscribed in the book of life for another year," i.e.
> not to die within the year.) But ignore these subtleties.]
> Atheists believe there is no god. This has nothing to do with what they
> would like. Further, as an atheist, along with many others, I would not
> be happy to become worm food, in two ways. First, "I" will not exist
> after death (except in the minds of others). My dead body will not
> contain not myself; the self will have ceased. 
> 
> Second,  the prospect of death does not make me happy, but, no matter
> what I might want,  heaven does not seem to be available as an
> alternative.  Many atheists wish to avoid death simply by remaining
> alive. Some, such as Ray Kurzweil, think that we have reached, or
> shortly will reach, a time, when, at least for a fortunate few, life
> expectancy increases by more than a year every year, due primarily to
> medical advances, so living "forever" may become a scientific
> possibility. 
> Thus, for many atheists, life, at least their own, can become an
> "ultimate value." Like other ultimate values, if taken alone, this can
> be dangerous. Some people may ruthlessly harvest others' organs, for
> example. However, most recognize that acting to prevent murder and
> against violence can be mutually beneficial. Thus, I think it is no
> accident that where religion has most waned, in Western Europe, we also
> find, on the whole, quite little support for war, in comparison with the
> past. 
> The commonplace proverb "there are no atheists in a foxhole," can be
> taken two ways. The common one, of course, is that being in foxhole
> under fire leads to prayer. The other is this:  Without religious
> feeling, why give up your life, the most precious thing you have? 
> 
> The fact is that much of western Europe's long history of war and
> conquest was quite explicitly religious: the "reconquista" of the
> Iberian peninsula, the various crusades, the eastward expansion of the
> Teutonic knights, the thirty-years' war, much of the move into Mexico,
> Cnetral  and South America, the Puritans in New England, the American
> Civil War, etc.  Perhaps later the religion of "the nation" (the
> "Motherland" or the  "Fatherland")  or the pseudo-religions of Nazism 
> or
> Marxism (both of which imposed belief)  to some degree held sway. Now
> with social democracy, and no imposed religion, nor imposed atheism,
> Western Europeans seem to have become much more peace-loving. 
> 
> 
> Here in the United States, most military recruits and support for the
> current war come from areas where religion is also strong - chiefly the
> South and Midwestern and other rural areas. But, implicitly, even Bush
> recognized, for all his rhetoric that "we are at war," that ordinary
> Americans are sufficiently atheistic in reality that they do not want 
> to
> make any personal sacrifices whatsoever in this war.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Best,
> 
> Michael
> 
> 
> 
> 
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