Hitchens – God Is Not Great XXVIII
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In my extended review of Christopher Hitchens book “God Is Not Great,” I have finally reached chapter 17. At this chapter Hitchens has finished his main arguments against religion, the vast majority of which were examples of religious people behaving badly. Of course this leads to a natural question of what about atheists who have behaved badly. So here Hitchens attempts to show that same standard he has used to attack religion, somehow does not apply to atheism.
He sums up the situation writing, “When the worst has been said about the Inquisition and the witch trials and the Crusades and the Islamic imperial conquests and the horrors of the Old Testament, is it not true that secular and atheist regimes have committed crimes and massacres that are, in the scale of things, at least as bad if not worse?” (pg 229)
Hitchens begins his defense with one of his typically sarcastic and false, comments that “it is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists.” (pg 230). Hitchens “inexpensive observation” (pg 230) makes a number of errors key to this entire discussion. The first is that the argument against secularism is not that the crimes of the secular regimes equaled those of religion, but that in a single century they far exceed those of Christianity in 20 centuries. The Spanish Inquisition one the classic examples of the crimes of Christianity resulted in the deaths of about 2000 people. While a terrible crime these number hardly even compare to the 11 million dead in the concentration camps of Hitler, whose crimes don’t even compare to those of Stalin and Mao who were responsible for the deaths of well over 100 million people.
More importantly whereas the crimes of Christianity were the result a mixture of corruption in the church and barbaric nature of the past, the crimes of these secular movements occurred in the enlighten modern times, and were much more inherent to these regimes, than corruptions within them. So there is hardly any equating going on.
Primarily such arguments against secularism are aimed at showing the problems with atheist attacks in two ways. First, even if everything atheists said were true and characterized correctly, this would not argue in favor or secularism as secularism’s record is far worst. Second it shows the inconsistency, and thus illogical nature of the secular arguments, for the same reasoning can equally be used against them. Thus in reality it is not so much an attack against atheism per se, but rather atheist’s reasoning.
Following his initial remarks Hitchens proceeds with his main line of defense by first attempting to link these secular regimes to religion, writing, “For most of human history, the idea of the total or absolute state was intimately bound up with religion.” (pg 231) There are a whole range of problems here, not the least of which are historical. But there is more fundamental problem with this whole line of argument, for no matter how one attempts to make it there are tremendous problems.
First is the question of whether these secular movements were religious. If these secular regimes which were strongly anti-traditional religion were in fact religious, then one must have a definition of religion that is broader than just a belief in one or more Gods, a definition of religion that would include atheism.
Now, as I discuss in my book , Christianity and Secularism, I believe such a broader understanding of religion to be more accurate, and that atheism is at least fundamentally religious. But if this is the case, then atheists are either arguing against their own views, or their arguments must only apply to some religions, not all. Either way there are problems. The only other option would be to try and claim that their brand of atheism was not religious like these other types of atheism, but that would certainly involve special pleading.
On the other hand if these secular regimes were not religions, but only adopted a characteristic of religion, there are still major problems. For such characteristic to be found outside of religion would mean that these characteristics were not and of themselves religious but rather something that could be found in religious movements or non-religious movements, and thus could not be held against religion.
This in fact is a problem with most atheist arguments against religion, and is found throughout Hitchens’ book. That such evils can be found in religious people, in the end is little more than a confirmation of the biblical teaching that we live in a fallen world corrupted by sin, and that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Rom 3:23)
However if this latter line is taken, the argument against secularism remains, for while these evils can be found in both religious and secular people, the secular regimes of the 20th century rejecting religious morality, and instead looking to science as there guide committed the greatest evils the world has ever know.
Based on Hitchens’ discussion, he seem to fall into the latter category, ultimately arguing, not so much against religion, but against “the totalitarian mind-set” that has “‘total answers to all questions.” While it allows Hitchens to distinguish his view of atheism from these other type of atheism, it likewise excludes all traditional religions that do not share such views. In short, we find that most of his arguments against religion have really been again something else.
This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.
