The Politics of New Atheism

Stuart McAnulla, Steven Kettell, Marcus Schulzke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317198338
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

New atheism is best known as a literary and media phenomenon which has resulted in the widespread discussion of the anti-religious arguments of authors such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, yet it also has strongly political dimensions. This book analyses the political aspects of new atheism and offers an analysis that is informed by insights from political science and political theory.

The authors locate new atheism within a diverse history of politically-oriented atheisms. It is argued the new atheist movement itself contains a considerable variety of political viewpoints, despite coalescing around forms of secularist campaigning and identity politics. New atheist views on monotheism, public life, morality and religious violence are examined to highlight both limitations and strengths in such perspectives. Conservative, feminist and Marxist responses to new atheism are also evaluated within this critical analysis.

The book rejects claims that new atheism is itself a form of fundamentalism and argues that the issues it grapples with often reflect wider dilemmas in liberal-left thought which have ongoing relevance in the era of Trump and Brexit. It will be of great interest to researchers and scholars in the fields of new atheism, political atheism, secularism, non-religion, and secular-religious tensions.

1 Atheism and politics

Introduction

The central aim of this volume is to study the politics of new atheism. Indeed, we argue that the political aspects of the phenomenon are amongst its most distinctive features. However, in this chapter we contextualise later analysis by examining some of the modern historical ways in which atheism has been expressed politically, or in which atheism has been tied to a broader political and often anti-religious agenda. The emphasis of discussion is on political movements rather than purely intellectual expressions of atheism, but there are of course significant overlaps in that regard. Our focus is on Anglo-America, but some attention will also be given to relevant developments in Europe. The chapter makes no pretence to offer a complete overview of the ways in which atheism and politics have been linked, but rather it seeks to identify some of the main forms that this relationship has taken. As we will see, the emergence of atheism has political significance, often overtly so, as it has frequently been tied to wider perspectives that seek to challenge the social and political status quo. The discussion reveals a number of issues and dilemmas for atheists which continue to resonate. Four broad types of political atheism, not entirely exclusive, are discussed:

i Esoteric political atheism crucially shapes a political worldview, but is not itself publicly promoted.

ii Secularist-oriented atheism provides a grounding for a politics emphasising the separation of church and state and the rights of non-believers, often linking to wider demands for progressive reform.

iii Individualistic atheism rejects monotheism and helps ground a politics championing individual liberty and the pursuit of self-interest.

iv Substitutionist atheism seeks to fill the perceived ‘gap’ left by religion within an atheist political worldview.

Each of these types is discussed using prominent examples, before offering brief reflections on how these strands of political atheism compare with new atheism. It is notable that at various times new atheism has been interpreted as sharing characteristics with each of these categories. Indeed, many of the arguments made for and against new atheism refer back to the history of atheism itself, replaying tensions and revolving around different interpretations of that history. The chapter also brings out some of the sheer variety of political views which have been tied (to a greater or lesser extent) to atheism. This analysis indicates the kind of reception that atheist views have historically had, which again establishes a precedent for some contemporary reactions to new atheism. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the variety of associations between atheism and political projects.

i Esoteric political atheism

It is important to note that some individuals or groups may be atheists, but for various reasons may choose not to publicly express their lack of belief. In some cases this may be because they do not consider the debates around God or religion to be particularly useful or interesting. However, in others it may be that they fear that openly advocating atheism could potentially have harmful consequences for themselves or others. In the past numerous authors have obscured their atheism due to justifiable concerns regarding their own safety or reputation.

David Berman (1990) suggests that until the late eighteenth century, atheism was Europe’s most fearful and threatening belief. He argues that authors such as Alberto Radicati, Charles Gildon and Anthony Collins may be read as esoteric atheists – i.e. writers who had atheistic beliefs or tendencies that were expressed (to an extent) in their texts, but that were then suppressed or camouflaged. Certainly, any authors prior to the nineteenth century (and often beyond) knew that an association with atheism carried great risks, as it was considered to be a threat to the social and political status quo.

However, even in more recent times, esoteric atheism has arguably had influence within the political outlook of some prominent thinkers, particularly the neo-conservative political movement. Nowadays neo-conservatism is most associated with a particular kind of Western foreign policy approach. Neo-conservatives have argued for the use of military force to replace dictatorships with liberal democracies, most notably in the case of the Iraq war in 2003 led by the United States and the United Kingdom. Prior to this, neo-conservatives made waves by attacking what they saw as the regressive effects of cultural changes emerging from the 1960s, articulated famously in Alan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind. The ‘father-figure’ of neo-conservatism is often taken to be Leo Strauss, a philosopher who argued that when reading classic works it was important to distinguish between exoteric and esoteric readings. Indeed, he argued that philosophers tended to be consciously duplicitous in their writings. This is because philosophers often grasp ‘truths’ which do not fit with the conventional wisdom of the day, and that to speak them directly would risk persecution. Moreover, ordinary people would not necessarily be able to cope with such truths, hence a need to obscure them. In Strauss’s view, leading philosophers since Plato have tended to be atheistic and highly rational in their outlook, but have adjusted their writings to sufficiently coincide with the moral stances of the societies they lived in. Strauss worried that revealing the truths of philosophy would promote nihilism and moral relativism (Drolet, 2011). Some later neo-conservatives appeared to take a similar attitude to religion, with Irving Kristol (1995) contemplating:

a double standard of truth. Let men believe in the lies of religion since they cannot do without them, and let the handful of sages, who know the truth and can live with it, keep it among themselves. Men are then divided into the wise and the foolish, the philosophers and the common men, and atheism becomes a guarded esoteric doctrine – for if the illusions of religion were to be discredited, there is no telling with what madness men would be seized, with what uncontrollable anguish.

This approach fits with a broader neo-conservative emphasis on the need to supply the general population with ‘myths’ to help maintain order and social morality. Ordinary people are deemed to be incapable of grasping higher philosophical truths, and it is assumed that they will tend to engage in unhealthy or anti-social behaviour unless constrained by clear moral codes. Thus, it is argued that political leaders need to encourage ideas of self-sacrifice, military service and commitment to the ‘public good’ to prevent people from falling into selfishness, decadence and the pursuit of low-brow cultural activity. Capitalism alone cannot do this (indeed it can foster the opposite) because individuals are not otherwise encouraged to defer gratification. Neo-conservatives tend to strongly defend the role that Christianity plays in Western society for helping to sustain cohesive social relations, and promote notions of democracy (or in the case of the United States, American exceptionalism). Of course, many neo-conservatives are also committed Christians, but what is notable is that even those with atheistic-inclinations greatly value the social role that religion can play in providing order, discipline and a suitable mythology. Neo-conservatism’s aggressive foreign policy approach partly derives from a belief that notions of democracy must be actively defended and expanded to survive against more barbarous political tendencies.

Drury (2007) suggests that for some neo-conservatives, atheism expresses a ‘truth’ that must be masked, at least in part, by the myths of religion. Indeed, Leo Strauss was critical of public expressions of atheism, which he feared would further fuel moral relativism and nihilism. This elitist belief that the masses could not deal appropriately with an atheist worldview stands in clear contrast to the new atheist emphasis on popularising Godlessness and publicly attacking religion. New atheists argue that religions do indeed promote myths, but often harmful ones. They reject the idea that society will suffer from the decline of religion, indeed they suggest it will gain substantially. Furthermore, new atheists fear that ‘moral relativism’ is more likely to take root when different religions are allowed to exist unchallenged, leading to multiple unquestionable ‘truths’ to be available in the market-place of ideas. Consequently, atheist neoconservatives and new atheists tend to be polarised their approach to advocating disbelief, a point that is insufficiently acknowledged by commentators eager to link these schools of thought. One caveat here is in the attitude expressed by Ayaan Hirsi Ali towards the spread of Islam. She argues that she has come to accept that many Muslims will not want to convert to atheism, in which case she hopes that Christian groups can compete more effectively to win people away from Islamic belief. This apparent advocacy of a ‘lesser evil’ fits uneasily with the broader new atheist narrative, though arguably has some consistency with the view, common within new atheist thought, that Islam is the most dangerous of the world’s dominant religions. Of all the prominent new atheists, Hirsi Ali has the clearest link with neo-conservatism (Oudenampsen, 2016), notably through her work for the American Enterprise Institute.

There have been other working links between particular new atheists and neo-conservative thinkers. Sam Harris, for example, has sustained friendly relations with the British neo-conservative, Douglas Murray (Murray, 2006). They have agreed on the perceived need for Western leaders to describe recent terrorist attacks as being linked to forms of Islam, and have condemned sections on the left for having political associations with Islamist sympathisers. Both have asserted the need to be critical of Islam and to open-up public debate on its impact. Indeed, Murray himself became an atheist after reading Islamic texts. Having concluded that these were nonsensical he came to the view that he should be equally critical of his own religious heritage of Anglicanism – quipping that he could not sustain a position of ‘Your guy didn’t hear voices, but I know a man who did!’ (Murray, 2008). Murray and Harris also have a shared antipathy to political censorship, again attacking the ‘regressive left’ for no-platforming commentators who may speak out against religion, or have been accused by the left of holding unacceptable attitudes. Harris has also had cordial relations with another neoconservative, David Frum. Following Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. President, Harris quoted Frum in his account of why Trump may have had political success: ‘When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals won’t do’ (Harris, 2017). Thus, whilst new atheists and neoconservatives tend to emerge from highly contrasting intellectual trajectories this does not act as a barrier to discussion on shared areas of interest. However, the significance of these links should not be overstated, as commentators like Harris also maintain links with many progressive commentators and authors.

ii Secularist atheism

As discussed in the introduction, it is often difficult to clearly separate atheism from other types of non-theism, non-religion, anti-clericalism and non-belief. The progress of atheism in the West came from operating as a strand within broader social and intellectual movements that posed challenges to traditional religious authority. With the emergence of Enlightenment ideas came a new emphasis on ‘reason’ and the questioning of knowledge obtained through received wisdom. Challenges to the social and religious status quo were a feature of eighteenth/nineteenth-century politics in Europe and the United States.

The religious attitudes of the Founding Fathers of the U.S. constitution have been much debated over the last two centuries, as indeed have the beliefs of later key figures such as President Abraham Lincoln. However, several of the founding fathers were influenced by forms of deism, which challenged revelation and authority as sources of knowledge. Deists argue that it is through observation, experience and reason that one comes to know God. In The Age of Reason Thomas Paine advocated a form of deism that rejected Christianity, Judaism and Islam, earning him hostility from religious conservatives. However, Paine’s belief that ‘my own mind is my own church’ gained some traction, especially as it became linked to opposing British colonial rule which was backed by John Wesley’s Methodists, the dominant Protestant church of the time. More generally, it is clear that the spread of literacy and public discussion of ideas from Enlightenment philosophers were important factors in challenging traditional religious and political authority. Atheism itself was very much socially unacceptable, and blasphemy was subject to strict legal punishment. Yet the challenges to established power during the revolutionary period meant that more spaces opened-up within which it became possible to express disbelief in God. Peter Manseau comments that: ‘Over time, the more it became linked with political opposition to the religious authority established by the mother country, the more atheism itself began to be seen in not entirely negative terms’ (Manseau, 2015). Author Eilhu Palmer played an important role in promoting deist ideas beyond elite intellectual circles during the United States’ early years, launching two newspapers, but his renowned friend Thomas Paine was to suffer ignominy. After being a celebrated influence on the creation of the Republic he was subject to a huge backlash against what were deemed to be his anti-religious views and was labelled ‘vile’, ‘loathsome’, ‘drunken’ and ‘atheist’ (Schmidt, 2016: 4).

Deists, atheists and other religious doubters faced the towering cultural dominance not just of Christianity, but a widespread sense of the U.S. having been ‘chosen’ by God to act as a redeemer nation. Arguably the seeds for this were sown back in the days of the early British settlers in North America, with Puritan John Winthrop declaring that they would seek to provide a ‘model of Christian charity’ to the world (Le Beau, 2003). Subsequently sceptics had good reason to keep quiet, given the size and influence of competing Christian organisations which encouraged the idea of a providential role for the United States. Any apparent growth or prominent instance of anti-religious sentiment tended to be condemned as a symptom of moral decline or failure on the part of the sceptics themselves, presenting a danger to the fate of the nation as a whole. Despite the ongoing social costs of being considered a religious dissenter, various limited strands of non-religious or sceptical thought developed in the United States during the nineteenth century. Leigh Schmidt argues that despite the numerous differences and ‘tags’ variously embraced (e.g. freethinker, rationalist, infidel, agnostic, atheist or secularist) these groups tended to share a number of clear beliefs. These included: rejection of Christian orthodoxy; a very strict construction of church–state separation; anti-clerical scorn for the Protestant and Catholic churches; universalistic imaging of equal rights and civil liberties; and a focus on this world alone as the domain of happiness and fulfilment (2016: 13). The feminist activist Ernestine Rose defied those who used her gender and atheism to try to derail her political activities, and just as the civil war began in 1861 she delivered a public lecture titled ‘A Defence of Atheism’, which challenged the idea that religion was needed to ensure moral behaviour (Jacoby, 2005: 109). Three decades later, Elizabeth Cady Stanton co-wrote the Women’s Bible, challenging the way in which women had been made inferior to men within Christian traditions. The links that Stanton made between an atheist, anti-religious stance and women’s liberation were controversial and provoked splits amongst suffragists (see Chapter 4 for discussion of the relationship of atheism and feminism).

However, the most prominent public opponent of religion in the late nineteenth century was the Republican politician, Robert Ingersoll. Despite being a fiscal conservative his dissent against religion and support for some other radical causes, including women’s suffrage, meant that he was not a realistic contender for national office. Yet he was a hugely popular orator, selling-out venues for public speeches and receiving extensive media coverage (Jacoby, 2005). Ingersoll promoted the case for a secularist approach to public affairs, in which rights would be guaranteed to all, regardless of faith. He wanted limited government, but nonetheless government that would uphold rights and serve the people rather than consider itself to be serving under God. His powerful condemnations of religion earned him the name ‘The Great Agnostic’, though in fact Ingersoll himself saw no difference between agnosticism and atheism. His speeches mixed idealistic elements with searing criticism of religious theory and practice, in the cause of promoting free-thought and resisting authoritarian power:

Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book, and creed, and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free. Mankind will be enslaved until there is mental grandeur enough to allow each man to have his thought and say. This earth will be a paradise when men can, upon all these questions differ, and yet grasp each other’s hands as friends … in all countries where Christians have existed, they have destroyed each other to the exact extent of their power. Why should a believer in God hate an atheist? Surely the atheist has not injured God, and surely he is human, capable of joy and pain, and entitled to all the rights of man. Would it not be far better to treat this atheist, at least, as well as he treats us?

(Ingersoll, 1880)

At this point, anti-religious or secularist tendencies did not have exclusive links with particular political parties or groupings, thus Republicans like Ingersoll would often work alongside non-believing Democrats, socialists and others in common cause. Indeed, Ingersoll became the first President of a small organisation called the American Secular Union (ASU), which formed in 1884, after splits in the earlier National Liberal League. The ASU was a key vehicle for promoting the kind of liberal secularism which Schmidt argues was of key importance to the development of American atheism. For more than a quarter of a century the organisation promoted a radical set of principles aimed at removing Christian privilege in public affairs. They called for the end to any legal enforcement of Christian morality or Sabbath observation, whilst also arguing for an end t...