Is Atheism Too Inhumane?

by Bill Creasy

When WASH was founded, the founding members intentionally chose to start a secular humanist group, rather than an atheist group. Secular humanism carries a meaning of positive ethics centered on human beings, rather than simply opposition to theism. As atheism is gaining more attention with recent best-selling books, we need to ask, is atheism alone too inhumane in opposing religion without advocating an alternative?

For example, Sam Harris wrote, "

My correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world--specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith. On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right. ["Head-In-The-Sand Liberals," American Atheist, Nov./Dec. 2006, 5-6.]

An even more problematic idea was considered by Robert Price. He considered whether genocide could be justified in warfare between two groups that seem to single-mindedly hate each other. He wrote,

Your implacable foe will have left you no choice but genocide or suicide... We must try somehow to avert it before it gets to that point." ["Toward a Humanist Doctrine of the Just War," Secular Nation, Vol. 11, No. 4, 2006, pp 8-9].

I'm not criticizing Harris or Price as ethical people, but these ideas seem unacceptable for humanism. A humanist can't advocate setting fundamentalist Christians to fight against fundamentalist Muslims, hoping they kill each other. Price suggests that some people are implacable enemies, with no hope of changing minds or finding peace, short of extermination of the enemy.

Isn't there a moderate approach? As humanists, we have to believe that people are similar enough that a peaceful negotiation is possible between enemies who make a sincere effort to come to a compromise, even if we don't know how to convince them to agree. Granted, some people are thugs who only understand force, and they must be met with force. But how can we sanction unconditional religious war and genocide?

It is tempting to say that claims of absolute truth from one religion can only be counteracted by more claims of absolute truth. Are political or philosophical liberals and moderates so devoid of conviction that they can't provide an alternative in this kind of discussion? It isn't an alterative with simple, life-or-death answers, but rather a slower, complex effort to try to get along with people who we may not completely agree with.

There is a key problem that atheists must try to understand: if religion is so irrational, why are there so many religious people? If so many people are basically irrational, what hope is there to convince them by using rational means?

Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, discussed several explanations why religion may be evolutionarily favorable, or how it could happen as a byproduct of something else. For example, Dawkins discusses that religion may be caused, in part, as a byproduct of the human adaptation to fall in love with one significant other person. He wrote,

Certainly, religious faith has something of the same character as falling in love.... The misfiring byproduct [to romantic love with one member of the opposite sex] is falling in love with Yahweh (or with the Virgin Mary, or with the wafer, or with Allah) and performing irrational acts motivated by such love. (pp 185-186)

He discusses other sources for religious beliefs that don't depend on religion being justified by rational arguments.

If religion is based on mental states that are as primal as the emotion of love, is there any hope of expecting most people to try to completely eliminate it? If not, then we need to find out how to co-exist with religious people. But we will need to try to "tame" religion so it is as undestructive as possible.

Many people consider their religion to be part of their culture and identity; they like to belong to a community of others that they know and trust. Most of these people are not committed enough to their religious ideology to kill or die for it. We may even take some comfort that they don't think about religion enough to realize it is irrational and contradictory. Is there any point in antagonizing this kind of religious people? They take a criticism of religion as an insult to their culture or community, not as a rational search for truth.

A better tactic for advancing secular thinking may be to focus on specific issues for which secular humanists and the liberal religious can find common ground. Almost everyone can agree that suicide bombing is an immoral practice. Genocide of religious minorities is wrong. Teaching children religious dogma that turns them into fanatics with no useful social or economic skills is destructive to social order. Murder of anyone for renouncing a religious belief (apostasy) is certainly wrong. People should not be deprived of their human rights.

Humanists can contribute by specific arguments. As we know, religious people can find arguments both for and against many actions in scripture like the Bible or the Qur'an. For example, Muslims have a big problem with the meaning of the word "jihad," that can mean anything, from an internal struggle to be a good person, to a military conflict against infidels. In other words, humanists can work against specific immoral actions that are justified by religion, without expecting a complete abolition of religion.

Bill Creasy is president of WASH and coordinator of the Baltimore chapter. This article was published in the July 2007 issue of WASHline.