In doing my usual foray

May 30th 2002 at 11:28 pm

In doing my usual foray into the web without any particular destination in mind a few weeks ago I came across an article and piece of polemic by Orson Scott Card that just threw me for a loop. Orson Scott Card doesn’t like atheism, or books that opine something contrary to his beliefs, or the fact that some people are deeply suspicious of organized religion.

It isn’t surprising. Lots of people don’t like atheists or their viewpoints. In fact, atheists are often the bogey-man for the religious right (or anyone else who wants to misdirect or blame societal ills on any institution but the one they favor).

Here is the article: Is Organized Religion the Enemy?. Card starts off mentioning the NY Best Seller List series of books by Phillip Pullman His Dark Materials, that they have been recommended to him, and that he finally read them. He says:

“it’s a rip-roaring adventure and it’s well told and I wish I could recommend it to you.

I can’t.”

I can guess right away why he can’t. The books basically come from an anti-organized religion, pro-evolution, atheist viewpoint And as Card notes, and I agree, they are pretty much philosophically everything that the fundamentalist book-burners in New Mexico feared their children were reading. And Card is right in that the books reach the conclusion that:

“…the greatest evil in the world is organized religion, and the best outcome of the story would be to destroy and abolish it.”

That is certainly one valid conclusion on reading these books. A little harsh, but one can see his viewpoint. The books had a very rough totalitarian religious group that oppressed the worlds they ruled in various ugly ways, and the characters ended that, in classic ‘rip-roaring adventure’ style, by blowing them all up.

Card even makes a good point:

He can’t tell his story without finding a bunch of people who share a set of beliefs and urgent purposes, and are willing to fight and kill and die to eliminate people with competing ideas.

In other words, even as he attacks religion for all the evil that it causes, he can’t get through his own story without having his heroes duplicate all the evils he deplores…

The main characters in this series eventually kill the bad guys (in this case organized religion). I understand Card’s pain in seeing an openly atheist group take down an openly religious group. But it says a lot that it spooks him so much that an act of fiction representing this compels him to make the next leap and present arguments against atheists and for Christianity. It’s an almost knee-jerk guaranteed set of responses apologetics give that is often documented on various atheist sites. It was surprising to see them here.

I don’t agree with Card in spirit for the first half of his article, but I understand his objections. They’re rational. He’s even given some interesting literary criticism about the morality of the main characters. Thinking about it, I liked the flaws and issues Pullman’s main characters struggle with. I took at as very good open handed writing and sketches of the characters, but Card went another direction.

Card says:

Enough of the literary criticism

He goes on to present the atheist side of the case. This being that with all the religious flavored catastrophes of late (he lists 9/11, Ireland conflict, Bosnia, Kosovo, Pakistan/India) wouldn’t atheists wonder that if religion were done away with, wouldn’t all those atrocities disappear as well?

In a slightly demeaning manner he demurs:

It certainly seems that way — if you know absolutely nothing about history and don’t bother to apply two minutes of rational analysis to the idea.

He goes on to notes that chimps engage in war, primarily for territorial reasons, and that humans do the same (Hutus/Tutsis, Serbs/Bosnians, Palestinian/Jews), and that people oppress those who don’t bow to their authority. Even in America, he says, Political Correctness does the same thing:

In each case, the nonconformist was misquoted, deliberately misinterpreted, or flat-out lied about — but that was all right, because their attackers were “defending the truth” and “standing up for virtue.”

With this done, Card jumps to a new section and begins in earnest.

The history of atheistic religions in our time is far bloodier than the record of atrocities committed in the name of any god. Hitler’s atheistic National Socialism, Lenin’s and Stalin’s and Pol Pot’s bloody-handed Communism — shall we get a body count and compare it to the number of deliberate murders committed in the name of Christianity or Islam, during any similar time period?

Well there is already one flaw here to point out. Hitler wasn’t an atheist. It is an often repeated historical mistake, and it isn’t true. Hitler was quite religious, his rhetoric grounded in the words and admiration of Martin Luther’s anti-semitisim among other things. Here a few long discussions and articles about the strong grounding and support that Nazism found in Christianity:

The Holocaust’s foundation in Christian Anti-Semitism
Catholic Reaction to the Holocaust
" onclick="javascript:urchinTracker('/outbound/www.ffrf.org/fttoday/back/hakeem/holocaust5.html_br_/');">Protestant Reaction to the Holocaust
Hitler’s Religion:

Here also is a link to an old OCR’d newspaper article from Lansing, MI in 1933 mentioning the Nazi party’s denouncement of atheism.
click here

Hitler had mandatory prayer instituted in schools, and his soldiers marched into battle with the words ‘God is with us’ on their belt buckles. It’s puzzling why everyone assumes Hitler (and by that reach Nazism) was atheist when all you have to do is read Mein Kampf to realize he was far from a non-believer, or realize that in most Western countries no matter what, the majority (90+ percent? depends on where you look) of the people are religious. That figure didn’t suddenly drop and disappear when Nazis came to power (like the day after Nixon was impeached you could find no one who voted for him, in similar manner christian apologetics suddenly reduce the predominantly Christian nation of Germany to a nation of sudden atheists when the Nazis came to power. But the numbers are still there).

Card also mentions Stalin and Pol Pot. What he is doing is following, step by step, the usual outline for Christian apologists. Check out this link here on how that is done in detail.

So Card is launching a classic ad hominem attack, using all the usual names (a tri-fecta of why atheism is bad is Stalin, Hitler, and either Pol Pot/Mao Tse Tung) that Christian apologetics use.

He also invites a body count between Christianity and atheism.

Okay. Notice this deft turn. First he notes that there have been lots of atrocities committed in the name of religion (for a running count of current ‘religious conflicts’ go to http://www.religioustolerance.org/curr_war.htm, for a quick list of past atrocities in the name of the Christian god hit http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5195/victims.html), then says, okay they’re bad, but they’re not done in the name of religion -really- they’re done for territory and politics. That was the whole point of his Goodall/Chimp aside.

Then he names 3 fascist leaders who were atheists and says ‘these people are bad, but they’ve done it in the name of the ‘atheist religion’ (which is a confusing and slightly misleading statement in and of itself, atheism is not a religion, and if practiced as such, is inherently self contradictory)’ and draws the conclusion that atheism is inherently evil.

Notice that switch? One set of standards applies to what he believes, but then it is removed totally when he turns it over to regard the track record of atheism.

So not only is there a moving goalpost of standards there for atheism, suddenly atheism is treated as a religion! Atheism is a lack of the belief in gods/god. State enforced totalitarian atheism and fascism had damaging effects, but as Card noted, those seem more rooted in politics of dictatorship. And in the lands these atrocities happened, there was a long history of such things before, as well as a still sizeable majority of religious individuals.

Here is an article on how many churches and institutions operated in Russia and aided the government in its facism.

Pol Pot’s legacy is a horrific one. The Khmer Rouge killed anyone who did not adhere to their ‘forced collectivism.’

But they did not follow an ‘atheistic religion’ as Card claims. They were nasty men who didn’t believe in gods and were also dictators. This same logic would allow a statement like this: Pol Pot doesn’t drink Coke. Neither do several million Chinese. Pol Pot is evil. Therefore that same number of Chinese is evil. Some atheists are secular humanists, some are former communists, some are libertarian (there are even atheists for Jesus who believe we should live life according to Jesus’ principles without believing in god). The world is more than just black/white dichotomy. Card urged us to realize that just a few paragraphs earlier. If Card argues that the communists replaced their religion with a fascist/communist religion/worship religion, then that wouldn’t make them atheists, would it? But that’s using that more tangly apolegitic logic. It isn’t hard to find that Pol Pot and Stalin did not believe in god/gods (thought I refute that Hitler was).

For some more information on what an atheist is and what exactly they aren’t can be found here

Then Card says:

In fact, those of us who’ve actually studied history recognize something that the people who decry “organized religion” always seem to conveniently forget.

Notice the use of the world ‘acutally.’ Card has almost veered off into sheer arrogance. He is very contemptous of those who fail to share his opinion.

Religions seem to do a pretty decent job of keeping those evil impulses of human beings under control.

All historians believe this? Apparently Card thinks this. There is no evidence of this anywhere I’ve ever seen, or of any of the big historians that agree with. He names 3 people who’ve done bad things who were atheists, and suddenly religion keeps things under control. How exactly? He just labeled lots of conflicts where it did nothing, because politics and hate and tribalism and territorialism totally rolled over any religious notions of love and acceptance. Card said that. Then he comes here several paragraphs later and says the opposite. One could be confused with this second change.

He furthermore backs it up by going on to say that the only reason native people exist in South America is because the Spanish church stayed the hands of the evil conquistadors, whereas the English church didn’t, so less natives exist in former English colonies than Spanish. Is this an appeal for people to join the Spanish church? I’m not sure.

What is sure is that this totally skips over the fact that the people doing the killing were still claiming to do it ‘in the name of god.’ The priests who opposed the killings weren’t kindly received and often killed themselves by other christians. And if the Spanish church did such a great job, how come there are no Caribs left in the Caribbean (after which the islands are named) and only a couple Arawak villages?

Card is at best re-writing history to suit his needs. Now he deftly moves again to put Christianity in the best light by saying:

Maybe we ought to start giving Christianity some credit for the fact that Christians, even at their most bloodthirsty, have rarely committed atrocities or oppressions at the same no-holds-barred level of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, or Genghis Khan.

Now he’s added Genghis Khan to the list of bad non-Christians. Wasn’t this about atheists? Was Genghis an atheist? A quick search online reveals nothing about Genghis Khan’s atheism. One does find mentions to an animist religion the Mongols practiced, but he doesn’t seem to be an atheist.

What happened in that last sentence, is that Card went from saying -religion- was good, to saying -Christianity- being good, thus making another exclusionary leap about what he believes is ‘good’ and what isn’t. That’s the only way one can account for Genghis being in there. That is unless Card has such an incomplete grasp on what atheists are that he thinks they are just ‘non-christians.’

Again, one could submit that Christians at their most bloodthirsty are -exactly- like the above personalities. You can reference the link of all the atrocities Christianity has committed and draw your own conclusions. But Card is now really choosing what to show side by side by leaving out the other religious atrocities. He is picking and choosing.

Card finishes by saying that if organized religion is bad, just wait until you see what happens when it goes.

By the same logic in the beginning of the article, one based on history and scientific observations, one could guess ‘more of the same.’ Or maybe not, as many of the current rights and freedoms enjoyed in the US have come from a list of deist, agnostic, libertarian, secular humanists like the founding fathers of the US, who were against organized religion, and exactly the kind of people Card is railing against. See this minister’s link about that and this link, again, for some good articles about that.

To force people to believe, or not to believe, is the mark of a repressive society. Either way. An unblinking acceptance of all things church equalling good is dangerous, it has led to the current sex scandals rocking the Catholic church, as well as many other high rates of priesty/fatherly abuse (check out silentlambs.org). The inability of a society to equally critique and bring lawful measure against churchful excess is dangerous (see why priests are ‘above the law’). And therefore, some people are justifiably wary of organized religion and the power it holds. That religious minded people are fearful of anyone speaking up against organized religion to question that position of power, and belittle that criticism, reinforces that need for wariness.

Well, at least Phillip Pullman’s books aren’t being burned yet.

It is shame Card feels so threatened by an alternate viewpoint that he feels forced to use Christian apologetics. It is a shame he feels compelled to attack the atheistic point of view. Either way, a little less polemic and more literary criticism would have made for an easier article to swallow.

Addendum.

Ethical Atheist.com. The study of morality and ethics was being practiced by the likes of the Greeks and Chinese long before modern Christians by Confucious and Greek philosophers. Find out more.

Want to know more about non-theism/atheism/agnosticism/etc?
More about atheists and morals.

In a society drenched with religious assumption, labeling oneself ‘atheist’ only designates a lack of belief in god. But many also follow a system of ethics and morality known as secular humanism. For a little more about secular humanism click over here.

-Tobias B

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