Rick Warren and the "New Atheists"

Pastor Rick Warren, author of the best selling The Purpose-Driven Life and praised by some as the "anti-Jerry Falwell", was asked by a Jewish woman at the Aspen Ideas Festival if she was condemned to burn in hell. 

Warren's answer --"Yes."

Such absolute certainty should be troubling to all Americans, religious or otherwise.  The fact that presidential candidates Obama and McCain submitted to Warren's  faith inquisition last Saturday should be more troubling yet.  But the Warren interrogation raises a deeper question:

Can an professed atheist ever be elected President of the United States?  Probably not.  Is that a bad thing?  Not necessarily.

I say that because atheists are every bit the "true believers" that Bible thumping Christians are, as sure of their belief in rationalism as fundamentalists are in the divinity of Jesus.  Both are convinced of the correctness of their beliefs.  They allow no doubts or uncertainties to seep into their worldviews.  No "true believer" of that sort should ever seriously  be considered for high political office.  Absolute certainty leads to almost certain political and humanitarian disaster.

Marx's dismissal of religion as the "opium of the people" led to Leninism and then Stalinism.  The Roman Catholic insistence on "papal infallibility" led to the Inquisition.  Different sides of the same "true believer's" coin. 

Chris Hedges, who calls Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins the "new atheists" (he debated both Harris and Hitchens), said of Harris in an interview with Salon:

"The danger of Sam’s simplistic worldview is that it does what fundamentalists do: It creates the illusion of a binary world of us and them, of reason versus irrationality, of the forces of light battling the forces of darkness.  And once you set up this world you are permitted to view as justified military intervention, brutal occupation and even torture, anything, in short, that will subdue what is defined as irrational and dangerous."

Like Stalin.  Or Torquemada. *

In the  symposium with Obama and McCain, Warren posed a question about evil, and what should be done about it.  Evil is a religious construct.   And when the term is used to characterize Arabs and Muslims,  it becomes a  racist epithet and religious  slur.   What Warren should have asked first is, do you accept the notion of evil? 

There's no certainty in my mind that evil does exist in this world, either in the religious sense --as in possession by the devil-- or in  psychological terms -- as in cases of  socio- or psycho- pathology.   Individuals so diagnosed supposedly lack a conscience.  But how does anyone know for certain?  The problem posed by the existence of truly "evil" persons admits only one solution --their elimination.  That's how many justify the death penalty.

Pastor Rick Warren's questions were designed to elicit overtly religious responses.  Well, I say that  religion  has no place in a political campaign.  As I was reminded recently,  Presidents take an oath to uphold the Constitution.  They do not pledge their adherence to a  particular religious belief.

Insofar as the Constitution separates religion from state, what Warren enticed candidates Obama and McCain to discuss Saturday evening was clearly un-Constitutional.   Or, as Kathleen Parker wrote,  it was  "supremely wrong."  And certainly un-American.  

*(Much like Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, Sam Harris supports "water boarding", and other forms of torture, for America's "evil" enemies.)

Comments

[Rob Kremer]

Terry:

Is there anything that you know to be true, to a total certainty?

[Terry]

I'm pretty certain that 2x2 =4. But in the realm of values and other abstractions, uncertainty is my constant companion.

How about you, Rob? Which certainties guide you?

[Anne T.]

Terry-
Great post. I was stunned when I learned that both candidates were pandering to Warren. NPR had hours of (non-critical) coverage of Warren on Sunday on the "Speaking of Faith" program and Monday on "Fresh Air". Listening to how Warren and his wife work with AIDS orphans, I was beginning to get lulled into passivity, that is, until I read your post. Warren's anti-Semitism should unequivocally dismiss him from any political arena.

[Steve R.]

Terry, your characterization of atheists as "true believers" is logically incorrect.

The refusal to believe in a supernatural theory is not the same as believing in a supernatural theory. You could argue that agnosticism -- the refusal to take a stand one way or the other -- is just as absurd as believing in the unprovable supernatural theory.

But a person demanding reason, logic, and scientific proof is not of the same ilk as a person who believes fantastical supernatural stories just because they're written down in an ancient text that his parents taught him to be true.

Reason does not rule out doubt. To the contrary. It's intellectually lazy to suggest this.

(I'm sure you're familiar with Bertrand Russel's celestial teapot analogy.)

Sam Harris is a fundamentalist of a different sort. It's called neoconservatism. He and Christopher Hitchens have given atheists a bad name recently with their support of preemptive war and torture as a bulwark against radical Islam.

You are correct that they are just as bad as religious fundamentalists. But please don't conflate their political fundamentalism with their atheism.

Likewise Lenin and Stalin. Trotsky was surely more of a true Marxist than them.

At any rate, it's sickening to see Democrats prostrating themselves in hopes of gaining evangelical voters.

After eight years of faith-based domestic policy (pray like hell you don't get sick) and foreign policy (our God is bigger than their God), I would think the American people are ready for a reason-based governing philosophy.

[Terry]

We certainly agree, Steve, that there should be no role for religion in determining political policy. And that Harris and Hitchens are 'rational' fundamentalists whose beliefs lead them to promote war and torture.

But let me respectfully disagree with you about the nature of atheism. An atheist who admits any doubts about the impossibility of a reality that transcends reason would have to call himself an agnostic. Atheism, as I understand it, is a doctrine that absolutely denies the transcendental, or that which is "unknowable".

(Here, of course, I equate "God" with the transcendent, not with an anthropomorphic, or "fantastical", supreme being.)

Rather than Bertrand Russell, I would refer you to the great Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose one recurring theme was man's fundamental "irrationality". I tend to agree with him, as did Nietzsche.

[Steve R.]

There's nothing rational about Harris and Hitchens and their fear of Islam. Hitchens snapped after 9/11. Harris read too much Alan Dershowitz as an undergrad.

It's not agnostic to wonder if there is more than meets the eye. It is the "leap of faith" that distinguishes believers from atheists. Atheists can doubt, but belief in a theory without proof is outside of the atheist mindset.

Agnostics are just hedging their bets.

I'm an atheist, but it doesn't stop me from doubting that science, as we currently know it, has all the answers. Of course it doesn't, and of course there is a great deal that is unknowable given the current limitations of our instruments and mindsets.

But I refuse to "believe" in any supernatural theories of what lies beyond what is observable and provable, and I refuse to hedge my bets about any extremely unlikely supernatural theories about a supreme being.

[Terry]

At least you admit that some things are unknowable. Next I'll have to convince you that science, limited or not, may not be the only pathway to knowing the truth of things.

Keats wrote,

"Beauty is truth, and truth beauty.
That's all we know on earth,
And all we need to know."

The point is, one can't read and appreciate poetry scientifically. Perhaps it's a leap of faith, but I find more truth in fiction than in the study of science.

There are occasions when it's helpful to suspend one's disbelief.

[Craig]

The default position should be atheism. Believers (transcendentalists?) should be the ones that have to to prove atheists wrong, not the other way around. Not many people these days believe in the existence of Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster. So why should anyone be expected to believe any of the fantastical stories in the Old Testament (Adam's rib, the talking snake, the flood, Jonah and the whale, etc.) or the central fantasy of the New Testament -- that an itinerant preacher was born to a virgin and rose from the dead -- when there's not a scintilla of evidence that any of these things occurred?

But, of course, I'm out of touch with American reality. The Rick Warren interview amounted to an affable Inquisition that was undoubtedly lapped up by most viewers. If either McCain or Obama had blown the questions about evil or their faith in Jesus, they might not be burned at the stake as in the days of Torquemada, but they certainly would have forfeited their chance to become president.

[Terry]

You are out of touch with reality if you conflate Biblical literalism with the transcendental. You erect a religious strawman hardly worthy of comment.

[Craig]

Like Steve, I don't reject doubt, but I do require proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

You proffer the existence of something you define as "transcendental." What is it? And prove to me that it exists beyond a reasonable doubt.

[Terry]

Where are we here? In a court of law?

That which is unknowable, or transcendent, is by definition unprovable. Your "proofs" suggest the sort of "binary" and severely circumscribed thinking that Chris Hedges attributes to the likes of Sam Harris.

If you were open minded, you would acknowledge the possibility that reason isn't the only pathway to knowing.

[Ryan]

"f you were open minded, you would acknowledge the possibility that reason isn't the only pathway to knowing."

Whoa man, that's like totally deep! I mean, what if nothing is real and this all just like a dream of some distant space alien?!?

The fact of the matter is that reason is by far the best tool we have at predicting and understanding the world around us. If everything is nothing and nothing is everything what does any of it really matter? Why not jump off the nearest cliff since gravity is just cooked up in some abstract idea "reality"?

[send gifts to Pakistan]

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