fatvegan

A few people have noted, with mild panic, the publication recently of some particularly bigoted anti-religious books. Perhaps buoyed by their success in discrediting extremism, militant atheists are turning to critiques of softer religious sorts. They're targeting those people who have managed to reconcile the nastier aspects of their faith with gentler ideas and interpretations. Apparently the "moderates" are now providing rhetorical refuge for religious fundamentalists. They give "faith" an undeservedly good name.

I read the excerpt from Christopher Hitchens new book in the Good Weekend the other day with faint horror. I've read some of his other attacks, and occasionally find myself agreeing with him. But this latest piece is all generalisation and hyperbole. The book is called God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. I'm quite sympathetic to the idea that religion gets most things wrong, but I was amazed at how unpersuasive he was. He did not have a single criticism of what I would call moderate religion. He seems to have based his conceptualisation of faith based on religious history that is 100 years old. The mood of his book bore a fascinating resemblance to that of some of Tony Abbott's opinion pieces. There is a complete failure to really understand the "enemy". They both end up looking naive and out of touch, because their mischaracterisations are so complete. They attempt to get you worked up about an issue and explain it simply, but for most people it comes across as hysterical.

Hitchens becomes ugly in his desperation to push the advantage. People have been convinced to be intolerant of the intolerant. Now he wants us to be intolerant of anything correlated with intolerance. And religious faith is certainly correlated with intolerance. But correlation isn't causation, and nor is it determination. People have tried before to attack social problems by attacking the measurable aspects most likely to predict the problem. But they seem to mostly miss. Although it might seem very modern and practical to just abolish religion as a cult, abolishing people and ideas doesn't work that well. And you very rapidly become the greater social problem.