Handout – Secularism – Darwinism, Psychology and Feminism

“Secularism is the move from the enchanted reality to the de-enchanted reality – this freed science to follow its own trajectory.” Charles Taylor

 In 1882 the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed ‘God is dead’. In fact the Enlightenment project had seen a progressive separation of science and religion, and this accelerated in the eighteenth century, for example with the scepticism and atheism of the influential philosopher David Hume. God had been arguably dying for a long time under the assault of rationalism.

It was Hume who first suggested that God’s existence had no empirical or logical justification and that all arguments for God’s existence were flawed. Even the argument from Design (the Teleological Argument) merely revealed ‘an infant deity’, as there were so many imperfections in nature. As Enlightenment philosophy got into full swing it resulted in political revolution (The French and American revolutions of the eighteenth century) and a revolution in the idea of society, led by thinkers such as Locke and Rousseau. Remember that the UK cut off the head of the divinely-anointed King in 1646, emphatically sealing the fate of the idea of a natural moral order.

It is undoubtedly true that two paradigm shifts (as Thomas Kuhn calls it) occurred after the profound shift in cosmology produced by the observations of Copernicus and Galileo in the sixteenth century. Striving for a simplicity, Darwin sought a complete theory for the Origin of the Species in 1859. His proposition was simply this: the origin of all species could be explained by the principle of natural selection. He took an Occam’s Razor to the complex arguments for the origin of human beings and angels favoured by Medieval Theologians.

A second paradigm shift occurred with the arrival of psychoanalysis. What had been the soul/body debate became unified in the simple proposition that all human behaviour could be explained by the workings of the unconscious mind, as revealed in therapy and in dreams, for example. We no longer needed demons to explain hysteria, nor devils to explain sin. The mysteries of the soul could be understood as mysteries of the unconscious mind. The conscience was essentially a product of our upbringing and socialisation. Religion was an illusion and a projection of certain felt needs, such as the need for a father figure.

And in our own century the New Atheists – Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchins, Sam Harris, AC Grayling have continued the assault on metaphysics, joined in the USA by Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and just one woman,  the Islamic author Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

In this handout we analyse particularly Dawkins and Freud’s contribution to the shifts in thinking, and make an important distinction between pragmatic and programmatic secularism in order to slant the religious argument one of two ways: secularism as an attack on religion (continuing in the tradition of Hume) and secularism as a defence of religious freedom. Finally we consider feminist insights that secularism might itself be just another narrow ideology with its own preconceptions and prejudices.

Programmatic or Procedural – A Structure of Thought

 

 

 

Procedural Secularism – Secularism as Guarantor

The Secular Society argues that in an age of multiculturalism, secularism best ensures religious toleration and freedom for all. Their website declares, “The separation of religion and state is the foundation of secularism. It ensures religious groups don’t interfere in affairs of state, and the state doesn’t interfere in religious affairs”.

In the new, fragmented age, no one religious worldview holds sway over any other. It becomes absurd to prosecute people for blasphemy (as happened in the UK in 1977 over a supposedly blasphemous poem). The absence of protection against blasphemy is the price in a secular society for complete religious toleration, freedom of speech and multiculturalism.

In the United States, for example, a prosecution for blasphemy would violate the Constitution according to the 1952 Supreme Court case Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson. Te First Amendment of the US Constitution states that: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”.

In the UK blasphemy laws were only repealed in 2008. The renowned anti-pornograohy campaigner Mary Whitehouse had launched a prosecution against the editor of Gay News, Dennis Lemon in 1977, for publishing James Kirkup’s poem ‘The Love that dare not speak its name”. Lemon was fined £500 and given a six month suspended prison sentence.

The writer Charles Taylor comments about this procedural (non-ideological, pragmatic) secularism:

 “Secularism does not negate the existence of God- it just pushes God into the transcendent realm, which is considered supernatural, and therefore ‘unbelievable’. It pushes God into a realm outside the objective knowable scientific world, making it difficult for belief in God to have ultimate claim on our lives.”

The archpriest of this form of secularism is David Hume, who died a convinced atheist, still cracking jokes about St Peter and declaring ‘there is nothing fearful about oblivion’. In summary – the age of autonomy, of human rights and religious toleration is only compatible, argues the secular society, with the rights backed by a fully secular state.

Programmatic Secularism – Secularism as Ideology

Programmatic secularism as illustrated by Dawkins in his application of Darwinism, and Freud in his discovery of psychotherapy and concepts of psychic disturbance, take a more hostile view of religion. The assumptions and practices of religion are fundamentally against the common good of humankind – either obstructing freedom of thought and speech, or creating neurotic feelings of guilt and self-hatred (Freud).

The Rise of the New Atheism

The New Atheists (a term coined in 2006 by the journalist Gary Wolf) extend and deepen a debate that has simmered during the Enlightenment: whether superstition, irrationalism and religion should be grouped to together as tendencies which are fundamentally contrary to human well-being. They include (In the UK) Richard Dawkins, AC Grayling and the late Christopher Hitchins and stand firmly in the tradition of Voltaire and Hume.

In fact today’s atheists bear an uncanny resemblance to atheists that have gone before them – such as TS Huxley (who preferred the term agnostic), and Bertrand Russell. In 1927 Russell had published his anti-Christian thesis “Why I am not a Christian”. In it he declared:

“I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them. There are a great many ways in which, at the present moment, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world”. Bertrand Russell

In 2007 the four horsemen of the non-apocalypse (as they were later described) met for a two hour discussion. They included Dawkins, Hitchens and two Americans, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. We should add one horsewoman, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali was also invited to the famous 2010 meeting but declined at the last moment. She is author of a radical critique of Islam, Infidel and Caged Virgin, and also the film Submission which resulted in the murder of her friend and co-producer Theo Van Gogh.

The Darwinism of Dawkins – Secularism in Conflict

In his Channel 4 documentary The Root of All Evil, and then his book the God Delusion (2007) Dawkins argues four things.

1. The Creation Myth is harmful and unnecessary as an explanation for the origin of human beings and natural world. Evolution is a complete and adequate theory.
2. Christianity (and religion) has had harmful social effects due to its intrusion into Politics, justice and moral thinking.
3. The teleological worldview that everything has a designed purpose, is unempirical and redundant. It is a throwback to a defunct worldview.
4. Religious education is a form of child abuse.

The Adequacy of the Darwinian Revolution

Darwin’s empirical observations, taken from his travels, led him to conclude that one hypothesis fitted all the facts: that life on earth had evolved by a series of mutations (sudden changes) and adaptations to the environment caused by millions of years of natural selection whereby those best equipped to adapt to their environment (such as humans) prospered and those ill-equipped (such as Dinosaurs following climactic change induced by a meteor strike), died out.

In periods of human history, such as 70,000 years ago when a gigantic volcano in Sumatra blew up, our ancestors shrank to as few as 10,000 (about the size of todays’ gorilla population). A volcanic winter lasted six years. Was this eruption an ‘act of God’? Our survival cannot be attributed to God but merely to a successful adaptation to the ensuing ice ages and then a further period of global warming.

How then does a Darwinist explain religion? For Darwinists the survival of the idea of God and of religious practice is interesting as it seems to serve no greater purpose than reducing stress and worry about death. Dawkins argues that religion’s persistence is explained by socialisation – the fact that humans, being physically weak, use socialisation as a means of propagating the species and finding collective strength through co-operation.

Particularly Dawkins explains religion’s continuance by the bond between parent and child that is built upon trust. We learn not just by experience (sticking a fork in a light socket) but also by shared wisdom (light sockets are dangerous). Religion, to use Dawkins’ own rather mysterious term, is a ‘meme’ or culturally induced genetic predisposition to believe in God.

Moreover, according to Dawkins (following studies by Paul Bloom), children are inherently teleological – they look for a purpose even if there isn’t one. They are also dualistic, tending to agree that the mind and body are different. These childish beliefs are (echoing Freud) a form of infantilism. Adults simply never grow out of them. They also to some extent promote survival of the species (the co-operation and trust points).

To sum up, there are some benefits to religion : co-operation, trust and the strengthening of altruistic behaviour for example. But overall the religious mindset is infantile and illogical, taking refuge in such unscientific arguments as ‘maybe God put the dinosaur fossils on earth to test our faith’. The persistence of religion can be explained as a malfunctioning, redundant meme.

Synoptic Point The Teleological Argument

The teleological argument or argument from design is the fifth of Aquinas’ Five Ways of knowing that God exists. However, In the Blind Watchmaker Dawkins argues that the facts of evolution (no longer theory but fact) irrefutably show a world without design. He writes:

“All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind’s eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”

The Blind Watchmaker analogy can be traced back to William Paley. Dawkins professes some admiration for Paley and his ‘passionate sincerity’.  However the famous analogy is wrong, he argues. It is another example of human beings looking for purpose when there is none and avoiding a simpler evolutionary reason for diversity and complexity. But does Dawkins escape metaphysics so easily? In placing his faith entirely in natural selection plus random mutations he rules out God, yet Christians might argue that God is within the apparent chance and mutation and the word ‘chance’ itself is an imposition of human perception – an interpretation of the agreed evidence. This after all was Hume’s argument that we impose causation upon our sense data and infer it from ‘constant conjunction’ – our mental tendency to observe associations between events.

To sum up, Dawkins stands in an Enlightenment tradition which trusts a certain type of reason, as either a posteriori (from experience) or a priori (categories existing before experience) – the tradition of the empiricist David Hume and the logician Bertrand Russell:

“When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience has been able to produce in millions of years.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

 The Idea of Religious Schools

Chapter 9 of Dawkins The God Delusion addresses the question of religious schools, whether or not they should exist at all, and whether parents have the right to bring up their child in a religion they have not chosen. His conclusion sounds illiberal: parents have no right to inflict a belief system on their children, and this amounts to child abuse, and that the advancement of faith schools by Tony Blair was a profound mistake and should be reversed.

Around a third of 7000 state schools now have a religious affiliation. “Modern society requires and deserves a truly secular state, by which I do not mean state atheism, but state neutrality in all matters pertaining to religion: the recognition that faith is personal and no business of the state” (Richard Dawkins, New Statesman. 12/12/11). The argument here is about the superiority of secularism. Secularism breeds critical and dispassionate thinking, secularism is itself unbiased and a guarantor of a lack of bias: secularism does not indoctrinate and have the extreme effects of Religion on the human psyche.

Dawkins believes that this kind of genuinely ‘liberal’ education will do the  trick. He writes:

“Children should be taught to ask for evidence, to be sceptical, critical, open-minded. If children understand that beliefs should be substantiated with evidence, as opposed to tradition, authority, revelation or faith, they will automatically work out for themselves that they are atheists.” Richard Dawkins (Webchat 23 June 2016).

However, his argument in this chapter has certain flaws.

The first flaw is the so-called straw man argument. The straw man here includes very bad examples of religious education which Dawkins has selected to strengthen his argument. There is the case of Edgardo, the small six year old boy kidnapped by a local priest from his Jewish parents in 1858 to be brought up a Catholic. There is the young American, falling out with his Christian girlfriend who accuses him of having ‘no morals’. There is Emmanuel School in the north-east which allegedly teaches creationism rather than evolution, and the American pastor who has small children see re-enactments on stage of what hell is like,  reminsicent of a Hieronymous Bosch painting of tortured souls being pitchforked into flames, and used to scare the medieval mind into believing.

There are no counter-arguments from examples of liberal, rationalistic Christianity working itself in the shires with stories and re-enactment of Jesus’ parables or dressing up for a nativity play. I doubt whether many Christian schools spend long on the doctrine of eternal damnation, or teach creationism. After all, the theory of evolution does not exclude belief in God –and never did (on this issue Darwin himself sat on t fence so as not to appal his devout wife. The straw man here is largely a fictional view of Christian extremism which very few Christians would agree with. It is about as rational as using Adolf Hitler as the archetype atheist.

Secondly, Dawkins describes religious education as a ‘form of child abuse’ because it instils in them false beliefs that engender lifelong fear and self-loathing and (as Freud would also agree) irrational guilt. It is true of course, that belief in a literal hell where the unbaptised roast in a very hot flame is distressing – and would not be a great subject for a funeral address. But is this as bad as physical sexual abuse (actual Dawkins seems to imply, worse than sexual abuse?).

The point about belief is that they can and do change with time and often with age. The fanatical evangelical Christian who believes in seven day creation and a literal hell often transforms into the gentle liberal universalist because they recognise that God’s love eventually swallows up judgement. But sexual abuse lingers in the psyche in a terrible way and may never change the associated guilt feelings. Dawkins (who believes in genetically-transmitted memes) seems to believe beliefs are transmitted like genes with inevitable predetermined results. He has become a type of genetic determinist.

There is also a failure to realise that secularism is itself a philosophy and one which denies the existence of the metaphysical as non-sense (much as Hume and Ayer dismissed religious language as non-sense). But Dawkins ideal of the pure liberal education is itself just a transposition of a certain ideal which is itself highly biased. Because the metaphysical exists as fact – and his own theories of genetics are infused with metaphysics. After all, the meme is in the end a metaphysical idea- we can never observe the altruistic gene under a microscope saying ‘after you’ to another gene. His metaphysical theory has been imposed upon observable experience to fill in the gaps (in this sense, the gap is ‘how do we explain moral behaviour and sacrifice?). It is a belief hiding behind science.

In this way neo-Darwinism overreaches itself and becomes its own ‘god of the gaps’. Paradoxically, Dawkins would retain religious education in schools and the study of the Bible as literature (which as a matter of fact seems to have largely disappeared). He would want students to know that there are four gospels, that these derive from the same two sources, Mark and Q  (so-called synoptic gospels of Matthew Mark and Luke), and one is distinctively Greek and infused with Platonic ideas (John). He would want children to learn about Islam and its amazing impact on civilisation and reverence for truth, and Judaism legacy of community, family and the monotheistic God of Justice and Liberation. He would want all children to do Buddhist headspace meditation every morning in their liberal atheistic schools. They might end up being more ‘religious’ than the faith schools of Britain.

Discuss

“Religion is a form of child abuse”. Richard Dawkins

“The bible should be taught, but emphatically not as reality,” Dawkins.

“The Bible is fiction, myth, poetry, anything but reality.” Dawkins

Evaluation of Dawkins

1. The Metaphysics of Dawkins

The crux of the problem, Stephen Bronner argues, is that while the Enlightenment intended to foster human liberation by a rejection of religious dogma, ‘scientific reason ultimately wound up being directed not merely against the gods, but all metaphysical ideas, including conscience and freedom’ (Bronner, 2004: 3)

The scientific theory of evolution appears to include the idea that this process has been unsupervised, unplanned, unintended by God or any other intelligent agent. That seems to be a step beyond an empirical scientific theory. It looks instead like a metaphysical or theological preconception itself.

2. All Religion or Bad Religion?

Jonathan Sacks, author of The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning, argues that Dawkins misses the target by believing the “cure for bad religion is no religion, as opposed to good religion”. He wrote:

“Atheism deserves better than the new atheists whose methodology consists of criticising religion without understanding it, quoting texts without contexts, taking exceptions as the rule, confusing folk belief with reflective theology, abusing, mocking, ridiculing, caricaturing, and demonizing religious faith and holding it responsible for the great crimes against humanity. Religion has done harm; I acknowledge that. But the cure for bad religion is good religion, not no religion, just as the cure for bad science is good science, not the abandonment of science”. Jonathan Sacks

 

3. Misunderstanding the idea of Faith

Dawkins argues that Faith is the great cop – out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and assess observable evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of the lack of evidence. Faith is not allowed to justify itself by argument.

Alister McGrath (in Dawkins’ God) argues that Dawkins’ definition of ‘faith’ is not one that is shared by any major Christian denomination.

“Dawkins also interprets a Christian’s ‘faith’ as ‘blind trust’. To him, ‘faith’ means ‘running away from evidence’. But that’s not a Christian definition of faith. Christians will say that faith is about believing in a God who not only exists but who may also be relied upon utterly, someone into whose hands I can entrust myself, knowing that he’s going to guard me and keep me”. (Alister McGrath, interview, faith v science).

Moreover, Dawkins is arguably inconsistent in his rejection of faith. He appeals to faith in science “Put your trust in the scientific method. Put your faith in the scientific method, There’s nothing wrong with having faith . . . there’s nothing wrong with having faith in a proper scientific prediction”. [Christmas Lecture 1] Christians would argue their faith based on evidence, including history, personal experience and observation of the world around. Basil Mitchell has argued these pieces together form a cumulative case,

“Like the clues in a detective story, no individual items of evidence may be totally compelling on their own, but together they may build up a convincing case, sufficient for action.” Basil Mitchell

The Challenge of Psychology – Freud

In the Future of an Illusion Freud presents a powerful secular critique of the way religion is used by a dominant elite to bolster its own power over the majority, and is also a source of comfort and reassurance for an individual stuck in an infantile stage of psychological development. Civilisation in a sense requires, says Freud, people to be coerced into believing in values and behaviours which bolster the stability which is necessary for civilisation’s survival. And in a psychological sense, Freud argues individuals are compensated for the renunciation of instincts, for sexual liberty and for violent revenge for example, by being offered certain hopes for reward in afterlife.

Freud sees it is a fact of life Freud argues that civilised society requires certain forms of control because an anti-social minority always exists. For example, Freud would see the mass rioting which broke out after a criminal known to the Police was shot dead in Tottenham in 2011 as evidence of the simmering violence that lurks just under the surface of society. Society reacts either by harsh repression (in this case courts stayed up all night and  sentenced people to a year in prison, in some cases, for simply stealing a bottle of water from a looted shop)  and by altering desire itself. It is here that religion comes in.

It is better and less expensive if society through education encourages privation – the voluntary sacrifice of destructive or anti-social urges. For example, most people in Britain have a belief that incest and paedophilia are absolute evils. Other prohibitions are less successful: for example, no-one is prosecuted for having sex below the age of consent (16) unless an adult is involved. Nor is thee a penalty for underage pregnancy. It might however, save society a lot of social disutility (and money) if these taboos were also as strong.

Imagine a world in which there were no legal or cultural prohibitions on sexual relations. Severe conflict would rapidly break out, Freud might argue, between parent and alleged abuser. As society exists to protect us from nature, fate and from one another, religion has a usefulness, for example, in providing consolation in the face of death (the belief in an afterlife) and some defence against the randomness of fate (prayer and a belief in a loving God). In Britain today people regularly say ‘everything happens for a purpose’, a kind of residual belief in a meaning to life.

To Freud God himself can be bargained with or bribed. We say “if you cure me of this disease I promise I will devote my life to you’, In the Middle Ages we bought (paid for) indulgences or masses for the dead. By placing a human face on Satan we have target to blame for our own or society’s failings. Freud argues we also need a human face for God (Jesus) and human face for the devil (Satan) which helps bring re-assurance to a compex and rather meaningless reality.

Linking with Darwin, there is also a survival use for religious belief, Freud believes. Just as a bow and arrow helps us to hunt, so the invention of gods or a God figure helps human beings co-operate, improves our confidence in the world and (as in the religious Reformation of the sixteenth century) actually propels us on a path of scientific discovery. Science becomes ‘thinking God’s’thoughts after him” as another philosopher once observed. Religion actually empowers the human psyche – it becomes a force for progress.

Finally, religion satisfies a psychological need in us quite independent of religion’s social usefulness for civilisation and progress. Adults need a freedom from anxiety and the desire to play and be liberated remains strong. The Father figure gives us permission to be infantile again – to be dependent, to know joy and wonder and be liberated from the responsibility of being like little gods ourselves, bearing the weight of the world on our own shoulders. God becomes an enduring father substitute and is there long after our own father have gone.

To sum up – religion has proved useful for the advancement of humankind, according to Freud. It is useful for the ruling powers in the state because the morality that ensues tends to encourage passive acceptance and obedience in the name of a greater good (or God). The shortcomings and injustices of a class system or (in Britain today) growing inequality can be obscured and even justified by appeals to a natural divine order. Certain practices (violence, rebellion or rioting) can be universally condemned as sinful as well as proscribed by law. The state can judge the miscreant in the name of God. Sometimes (as in the Christian USA) taking life in the name of divine justice, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (Leviticus).

But in the end Freud sides with Dawkins. To the psychologist religious belief is an infantile illusion bolstered by myth and projection, a form of escapism incapable of rational (empirical) justification. Much the same criticisms of Freud’s view could be made as of Dawkins: that there is implicit faith in the secular worldview which is itself unjustified, and that Freud’s own view of the workings of the human mind are as much imbued with metaphysical beliefs as the religions he criticises.  Dawkins has his memes, Freud his ego, id and superego. Is there also straw man argument? Freud argues beliefs need protection only in the sense that it is cruel to demythologise Santa Claus. To persist in the belief when we are adults that Santa exists and comes down the chimney is irrational and infantile. Such illusions are merely the projection of wish-fulfilment. Yet is belief in the Christian God not historical, and so profoundly different, in the sense that Santa Claus is just fairy story?

Religion can be replaced by something better and more reasonable. Does Freud mean the belief in the value of psychotherapy? In the Future of an Illusion he is not explicit on this point. Freud offers an analogy: Just as a child goes through a neurotic stage before reaching a civilised stage, so a civilisation goes through the same neurotic stage before liberating itself and reaching maturity. The neurotic stage of a civilisation’s development is its religious period; maturity is gained when religion is abandoned.

And finally, agreeing with Dawkins’ thesis about religious schools, Freud argues that religion in presenting a form of indoctrination, actually harms a child’s educational development. We should as Dawkins points out, have the courage that a truly liberal education free of myth, superstition and illusion is actually going to promote the advancement of civilisation, not lead to its decline into barbarism. Or at least, that is part of Freud’s and Dawkins’ own somewhat uncritical ‘faith’.

The Challenge of Feminism and Gender Identity

Here we briefly consider a new criticism coming from Islamic feminism which challenges the division of thought that equates secularism with progress and religion with regression. The debate mirrors the rebuke delivered by the black feminist Audre Lorde to Mary Daly in which she accuses her of taking a narrow binary perspective (male-female), excluding the voices of black female theologians and their experience of oppression.

Is the secularist worldview just another white, male, enlightenment projection onto reality which claims the superiority of a certain view of rationality? Do we see this, for example, in the debate on Islamic headscarves and the full veil – and its ban in France as being against secular values? As A.A. An-Ma’im observes:

“There is no doubt that if a woman is coerced to dress in a particular way, to conform to a religious code, her human rights are violated. However, prohibiting Muslim women from wearing different forms of head covering in public settings to enforce a ‘secular’ vision of European modernity, or security, objectifies Muslim women as victims without agency, or as instruments of terror, with equally profound human rights implications”. (An-Na’im, 2007).

As Sara Silvestri notes:

“Forbidding by law a ‘symbol’ of perceived oppression does not equate with solving the oppression problem [where one exists]. It might even produce another form of oppression, of coercion of conscience on the part of the state which would go well beyond reasonable concerns and security priorities”. (Silvestri, 2010)

Some sociological studies (such as Peter Berger’s 1999, or Linda Woodhead’s recent research on those who have ‘no religious affiliation’) call into question, empirically and philosophically, the secularisation thesis – the narrative of a single modernity wherein religion is expected to become a diminished and private aspect of our lives. Most sociologists of religion now agree that, viewed from a global perspective at least, the presumption of secularisation as an inevitable or uniform process is no longer tenable. And it is almost certainly false to argue that the interest in metaphysical mystery has diminished with the rise of rationalism – although it may be true that this quest is less and less occurring by means of organised religion.

Finally, Huma Ahmed-Ghosh argues that programmatic secularism implies a belief in the superiority of modernity which belittles the role religion plays in civilisation.

“Therefore, the question that follows is, can there be a Muslim modernity similar to Christian modernity in the U.S. and Europe and socialist modernity in Russia and China? The myth of modernity as the brainchild of the West, based only on western social and political principles has been further perpetuated by the constant presentation of non-western states as the “other.”

This confirms a dualistic worldview, itself a form of prejudice, where the West is modern and Muslim states are anti-modern. Ahmed-Gosh concludes:

“It is in this definition that political battle lines are drawn, and women’s lives and bodies are “used” by both patriarchies to claim their superiority and political dominance on the global scene. A change in language may diffuse these political tensions. By disassociating the concept modern from western one can redefine modernity through a local cultural lens.” (Huma Ahmed-Ghosh   Journal of International Women’s Studies Vol. 9 #3 May 2008)

The Challenge of Migration and Multi-Culturalism

From 2003 and 2013 the Uk population grew by 10million. France seemed to declare on the Muslim veil. Cases of schools attempting to ban the full veil in the UK seem to occur regularly – most recently (January 2018) in a  primary school in east London which sought o ban it for the under eights. We are more aware of religious diversity but we also experience a kind of panic, after 9/11 concerning the presence of Islam. Islam itself becomes confused with its primitive and barbaric medieval form as expressed in the works of ISIS. The ‘Muslim headscarf’  has become a powerful symbol either of integrity or the enslavement of women, depending who is looking

There is a paradox here. The Enlightenment espouses equality, freedom and dignity for all and yet the veil is seen by so-called Enlightened countries as something to be banned in apparent contradiction to their own values of autonomy and self-expression. At the same time, authors like Dawkins are arguing for a secular monoculture where there is no religion taught in schools apart from the sociology of comparative religion. Secularism is seen to be superior – but is still mixed in with Christian nationalism, particularly in the United States.

Two senses of ‘Worldview’

In our conclusion let’s consider again the quote from Charles Taylor mentioned in the introduction. “Secularism does not negate the existence of God- it just pushes God into the transcendent realm, which is considered supernatural, and therefore ‘unbelievable’. It pushes God into a realm outside the objective knowable scientific world, making it difficult for belief in God to have ultimate claim on our lives.”

Both Dawkins and Freud are arguing that religion has no rational place within a particular secular, modern worldview. This worldview stands firmly in the tradition of the Enlightenment which sought to elevate rationalism and dethrone metaphysics and natural law. It was therefore in essence an empirical journey into discovery and an analytical journey into the nature of a priori truth. As AJ Ayer observed in another context – religion doesn’t fit in either the world of experience, and a posteriori proof, or the world of analytic truth and the a priori. The ontological argument – an a priori argument for God – was ruled out as illogical by Gaunilo even in the time of Anselm.

But metaphysics won’t die that easily. I have argued here that both Dawkins and Freud slip into metaphysical concepts that  are neither analytic nor synthetic. The idea of a meme, for example, is not provable by empirical methods. Dawkins simply constructs another metaphysical idea to replace the redundant God as an explanation for apparent mysterious facts – such as the fact that humans have a moral conscience.

Secondly both Freud and Dawkins are arguing that the Christian worldview is redundant and even destructive of human happiness. These are two separate points – but suffice to say we can accept unequivocally that fundamentalism of any kind is incompatible with Enlightened secularism – just as fascism and totalitarian political systems are fundamentally against Enlightenment ideals of dignity and equality.

Part of the problem exists, however, because there are two ideas of a worldview as Michael Hand points out.

1.Worldview as a theory of the meaning of life 

A worldview in this teleologcial sense answers ultimate questions such as what happens after death, what is the origin of morality and how did the world begin? Christians commit to a theory of this kind, others may not. But by arguing for a first cause, which is God (the cosmological argument) Christians are providing an explanation where Dawkins has none. The atheist is simply unable to go beyond and behind the big bang. The narratives of creation, Fall and redemption provide flesh to these concerns, even if the stories themselves may only have mythic meaning.

James Orr, in The Christian View of God and the World (Orr, 1989 [1897]) puts it like this: “The causes which lead to the formation of general theories of the universe, explanatory of what it is, how it has come to be what it is, and whither it tends, lie deep in the constitution of human nature. They are twofold – speculative and practical, corresponding to the twofold aspect of human nature as thinking and active. On the theoretical side, the mind seeks unity in its representations. It is not content with fragmentary knowledge, but tends constantly to rise from facts to laws, from laws to higher laws, from these to the highest generalisations possible. Ultimately it abuts on questions of origin, purpose, and destiny, which as questions set by reason to itself, it cannot, from its very nature refuse at least to attempt to answer… But there is likewise a practical motive urging to the consideration of these well-worn questions of the why, whence, and whither? Looking out on the universe, men cannot but desire to know their place in the system of things of which they form a part, if only that they may know how rightly to determine themselves thereto”. (pp.6-7)

So where Dawkins claims to take the Occam’s razor of a simple unifying explanation for everything, Christians take a metaphysical general theory that performs the same function. It has the name God. God integrates everything and makes it make final sense. But it remains a God hypothesis – just one that makes more probable sense to the reasonable believer.

The mistake Dawkins makes – and it’s  serious one – is to argue consistently that this is incompatible with science. But it is only his straw man – fundamentalism – which really earns this condemnation.

2. A worldview as a conceptual scheme through which we all view reality

We are indebted to Immanuel Kant for pointing out that all sense data is mediated and arranged by the brain according to categories. The sort of concepts that Kant identifies as categories are unity, plurality, totality, reality, negation, limitation, inherence, causality, community, possibility, existence and necessity. They structure the experience of believer and unbeliever alike. Even the more metaphysically extravagant claims of religion assume these categories rather than posit alternatives to them. Put simply when I hear a ‘bang’ I posit a cause (a bomb, a car exhaust). Again as Michael Hand points out, religious belief has nothing to say about any of these (except possibly cause and effect in the idea of a miracle). This may (or may not) entail a form of cultural relativism – that all worldviews are conditioned by our environments.

And if so, then both Dawkins and Freud are also captured by their own Enlightenment environment where they just can’t see metaphysics anywhere. Metaphysics has been pre-filtered out of how they ‘see” reality. But this is a problem of perception and not a question of the legitimacy of  religions as an explanation of metaphysical reality. And metaphysical concepts endure – truth, beauty, love, consciousness and conscience, to give just a few examples.

Peter Baron January 2018

Reading

Berger, P. (1999) The Desecularization of the World: The Resurgence of Religion in World Politics, Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

Bronner, S. (2004) Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement, New York: Columbia University Press.

Casanova, J. (1994) Public Religions in the Modern World, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Daly, M. (1978) Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, Boston: Beacon Press.

Dawkins R. (2006) The God Delusion. Bantam House.

Freud S. (1927) the Future of an Illusion

Hand, Michael (2011) Is Religious Education Possible?

Nussbaum, M.C. (2000) Sex & Social Justice, New York: Oxford University Press.

Reilly, Niamh (2011) Rethinking the interplay of Feminism and Secularism in a neo-Secular Age

available online at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/fr.2010.35#CR5

Sachs J. (2012) The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning, Hodder.

Sandel, M.J. (2006) Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Silvestri, S. (2010) ‘Europe’s Muslims: Burqa laws, women’s lives’ Open Democracy, 15 July, http://www.opendemocracy.net/sara-silvestri/french-burqa-and-%E2%80%9Cmuslim-integration%E2%80%9D-in-europe,

Video

Michael Hand on Religious Education (9 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPzCMJ_N4y8

Richard Dawkins

The Root of All Evil (Channel 4)

Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (Channel 4)

Web resources

For summaries of Freud and Dawkins and critiques, go to

http://www.peped.org/philosophy/secularism

For a Critical Attack on Dawkins go to

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/the_god_delusion4.html

For a detailed exploration of Dawkins go to

https://www.scienceandchristianbelief.org/articles/dawkinspoole1.php