Is life better without God? Authors say yes, but....
Is life better without God? Authors say yes, but....
Frank King
Columns
June 12, 2007 12:13 AM
Frank King
God is great? No way, Christopher Hitchens says. In fact, the whole idea of God is a dangerous delusion, Richard Dawkins adds.
Books by Mr. Dawkins (The God Delusion) and Mr. Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything) are bestsellers. Both have earned major attention, Mr. Hitchens’ book has been excerpted in The National Post and the movement these men seem to be spearheading was a Maclean’s magazine cover story.
What’s going on is no secret. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, critics of religion have had a field day firing at glow-in-the-dark targets: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
Of course, none of this is new. Heavyweights such as Bertrand Russell have argued against the existence of a creator for many decades.
That said, not only do Mr. Dawkins and Mr. Hitchens blame religion — or, more specifically, deeply religious people — for the world’s present tumult, they claim it contributes to everything from child abuse to violence against gay people to Africa’s HIV/AIDS crisis.
Besides having what they believe are damaging viewpoints of sexuality, gender relations and the future of humanity, the problem with religion, in their view, is its tribal nature. Each faith group considers others misguided at best and evil at worst, they claim.
Call me crazy, but this kind of talk sounds like God-hating fundamentalism. Simply the flip side of religious fundamentalism.
And that doesn’t wash with Rabbi Mendel Kaplan of Chabad Flamingo, a Thornhill synagogue.
“I’m at a loss at how people who are not experts in theology suddenly become experts,” he told me, adding some people seem to think while rocket science and brain surgery are sophisticated, figuring out God is as easy as counting your toes.
“It’s a ridiculous idea,” he scoffed.
Terrible things have been done in the name of God, Richmond Hill United Church pastor Warren McDougall readily admits. But the problem is not religion, it’s fanaticism.
“What happens is people make God in their own image,” he told me. “We project our biases on God and say ‘This is what God is like’ and then look to back it up in our sacred books.”
But what about people such as me, who have a deep interest in faith, yet resist fundamentalism? We don’t escape blame, either.
For a start, Mr. Dawkins and Mr. Hitchens don’t understand why moderates bother with faith and wait for them to give up and climb aboard the atheistic ship.
More seriously, they claim moderates enable fanatics by providing a space for religious arguments to exist in the first place.
“That statement gives me food for thought,” Mr. McDougall says. “I never thought moderates gave fanatics a platform.” But Mr. Kaplan does not buy the argument either.
“It’s patently ridiculous,” he says. “It’s like saying good doctors allow a space for quacks.”
In fact, when I look at things objectively, good doctors do, indeed, allow a space for quacks. But that hardly justifies doing away with doctors and that’s Mr. Kaplan’s point.
Nor should it justify doing away with thoughtful, generous people of faith who appreciate the planet’s religious mosaic and work to make this broken world a better place for all of us.
Take away such people and we lose a vital force against poverty, racism, religious intolerance, sexual abuse, climate change and sexism. In other words, the very things for which Mr. Hitchens and Mr. Dawkins blame religion.
So what’s behind this? The Macleans essay suggests it’s a fear God is winning and atheism is losing. And I agree, to the point of believing if you ask most people, they will say there is a creator behind all we experience. They may not have a conscious relationship with that creator, but they still know he (she? it? they?) exists.
Frank King is an assistant editor with the York Region Media Group. He welcomes comments at fking@yrmg.com