Notes from the Underground

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I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it.

All of the ephemera that is far too trivial to be bothered with elsewhere on this site or, depending on your point of view, a meta-commentary on it. This ephemera includes, but is not limited to art, music and literature. Most of the content here will be discussed in terms that are as abstract as possible, reality being a singularly overrated concept.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

 
Rather predictably, there has been quite a lot of discussion of Richard Dawkins's new series, The Root of All Evil:

"With this in mind, Dawkins confronts Pastor Ted Haggard of the New Life Church in Colorado by comparing the show business techniques of his evangelism to those used in the Nuremberg rally... In the programme’s most dramatic interview, an American-born Jew turned Gaza-based hard-line Muslim called Yousef al-Khattab (formerly Joseph Cohen) announces that he hates atheists as much as Zionists and Christians, and tells us with undisguised menace that we must clean up Western society, where 'women are allowed to dress like whores.'

'You’re simply not allowed to attack someone’s religion. You can attack their politics or their football team, but not their faith. I think it’s very important that this should be seen as complete nonsense. Why shouldn’t people be required to defend their religion?' Dawkins refers not just to Islamist terrorists or the Catholic leaders whose dogma allows Aids to blaze through Africa, but to that majority of believers who consider themselves rational and progressive - if his documentary makes a single statement, it’s that 'all religion represents a danger to our society and future.'

'I think moderate religion makes the world safe for extremists, because children are trained from the cradle to think faith in itself is a good thing. So then when someone says it’s part of their faith to kill people, their actions need no further justification, and are almost respected as such."


Generally speaking, I tend to share Dawkins' atheism but not his rationalism. With that said, one of the greatest irritations for me is that we speak of people doing wrong 'in the name of' religion but we do not hear the same being said of crimes being committed 'in the name of' any other ideology. No atrocity was ever done 'in the name of' fascism or communism. Religion occupies a privileged position that largely renders it immune from criticism. The distinction between religion and other forms of ideology seems particularly untenable to me given that of the fourteen characteristics of an ur-fascism identified by Umberto Eco, ten apply quite straightforwardly to most of the major monotheisms (religion as a cult of tradition, rejection of modernity, a cult of action for action's sake, disagreement as treason (heresy, to use the correct euphemism), distrust of disagreement, stemming from individual or social frustration and the provision of a social identity, a cult of heroic martyrdom, and life as a form of struggle). By comparison, Stalin-era communism would qualify for about eight of Eco's characteristics. In such cases as the Middle East and Northern Ireland it seems clear conflict and violence are attributable to a complex mixture of causal factors. But there's no shortage of examples of religious groups persecuting one another without reference to other factors to suggest that religion is perfectly capable of being every bit as pernicious as nationalism, racism, fascism or communism.

This all seems to me something that needs to be addressed, even if doing so apparently seems to violate a taboo. Essentially then, people like Dawkins are necessary and I would rather have Dawkins being intolerant and right than people like the Bishop of Oxford being terribly reasonable and fundamentally wrong.

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posted by Richard 6:04 pm