The Logical Path from Faith to Extremism

This post was triggered by Richard Dawkins' words in his debate with John Lennox in The God Delusion debate (the relevant portion is from 1:11:56 to 1:15:22). I recommend watching and listening to the full debate. The audio transcripts are available here.

In this post, I disagree with Dawkins, and present my response to Prof Lennox's statement.

Dawkins quotes John Lennon ("Imagine ... a world without religion", etc.) in the beginning of his book The God Delusion. Prof Lennox asked the audience to imagine one without atheism too, in which there would be no Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot (all Marxist atheists) to burn the temples and torture the believers. Prof Dawkins then responds by saying that atheism is less harmful than theism. He says to the effect that acceptance of theism as an article of faith is worse than the acceptance of atheism because there exists a logical path from theistic faith to extremist violence, whereas atheism does not lead one to violence on its own.

I disagree, with a proviso. I think any belief system is separative, whether it be theism or atheism. Now it can be argued - successfully, I think - that atheism is not a belief, it is the absence of a belief in God. However, it is a viewpoint, whether it be a belief or a lack of belief. And this viewpoint has many vehement backers and propagators. Atheism is a movement today which seeks to convert people to its viewpoint just like religious groups seek to convert people from other religions.

Now while I agree with the content of atheistic viewpoint ("There is no God"), what I find puzzling is Richard Dawkins' seeming obliviousness to the hatred many atheists have towards believers. Richard Dawkins himself uses the words "petty", "nutcases", "lunatics" for theists and creationists in his arguments.

Might one not conclude that it is possible for someone vehemently attached to the atheistic view to logically proceed from disapproval to verbal violence to physical violence? This conclusion is possible. I am quite confident that Richard Dawkins won't come to blows with John Lennox, but it is possible for some people (the mentally weak and unbalanced ones, whom Dawkins wants to protect from indoctrination), who choose to wear a cloak of blatant atheism and wish to teach a lesson to the benign and harmless theists in society.

The problem is that our selves are emotionally invested in our viewpoints, and disagreement is an assault on our sentiments. Whether someone believes in God or not, he exists as a separate "self" with certain precious feelings. His feelings and self can get hurt. An atheist's feelings, for example, can quite possibly get hurt if someone criticizes his viewpoint. This emotional investment in our viewpoints is the more important issue facing humanity, and not what our viewpoint is (which is also important). The validity of viewpoints is very important, but a person with a valid intellectual viewpoint is not very different, in his essential animal nature from one with an invalid intellectual viewpoint.

People can come to blows over the simple choice of a hotel room, because they are emotionally invested in their opinions and because they view disagreement as hostile behavior.

Though, to be fair, there is some truth to the fact that religious people fight not just because of an emotional attachment to their belief or viewpoint, but also because their scriptures and leaders actively command them to tame or kill the heretics and the philstines. To that, I say that religious commandments are not ab initio, their perversity is not incidental, their perversity is because belief invariably seeks to infect others, and passionately so.

Atheists are not content with being atheists. Aside from the valid concerns about education, evangelism and about children being denied the virtue of scepticism, atheists are usually quite impudently eager to engage in a debate about the existence of God with unwilling believing adults. If faith be private, let it be. If someone is infecting impressionable others with a questionable belief, then by all means counter it with reason and debate and high level policy changes, but not with vehemence or hatred.

Even then, if the impressionable others be adults, let them be. It is reasonable to do some research about the belief system, or about the scripture, or the spiritual group, and publish one's findings, but to actively seek to convert others to atheism smells like evangelism to me.

Hence, my response to Prof Lennox is: Faith in a commandment and passionately intolerant attachment to a viewpoint both lead to violence and oppression, whether it be an atheist or a theist. Religion is obviously a faith, and doubly, it can be fanatically intolerant at times. Atheism is not a faith (it is the lack of one), but people who are atheists can be fanatical and intolerant as well. The violence in Communist regimes, if due to being Marxist-atheistic, was the oppressive violence of intolerance, and not the violence of atheistic injunctions (there are none).