First Dennett and Dawkins and Sam Harris, now Christopher Hitchens. Just what is it that's bugging these old-fashioned atheists? Is it just the demise of the "secularization hypothesis" and the evident persistence of religious belief that is driving them wild? In part perhaps, but in all probability what is getting to them is that the evident rationality, as they see it, of the secularist perspective doesn't win the day, and the irrationality of the human race depresses them. At least 90% of American claim to believe in God, and Hitchens and crew don't get it. It just isn't right that reasonable people who make a complex modern society function pretty well are still hung about with the superstitious trappings of the cavemen. Right?
The problem is that the alliances are all wrong. To give an example, the new secularists have a kind of supporter in the unlikely figure of Pope Benedict XVI. Of course, not entirely. For one thing, his papal agenda identifies the secularism of European society as the great sickness of the modern world. Actually, even this isn't as bad for the secularists as it could be, since giving the ills of secular culture priority over such other matters as world hunger or the global warming crisis, child labor and prostitution, forced migration and slavery, takes them even more seriously than they take themselves. But in one important respect the Pope is right with them. As the real subject of his unfortunately notorious Regensburg address (the one that upset so many Muslims, and rightly so) indicates, Benedict is convinced that dialogue among peoples and between religions must proceed on the basis of... wait for it... the exercise of human reason! Yes, reason, not infallible utterances or reading bones or tea leaves, not even poring over the Bible for ahistorically and unhelpfully easy answers to complex modern problems. No, human reason.
The new secularists don't see this because they make assumptions about religious people that are only marginally more accurate than their unfortunately simplistic account of contemporary religion. In both cases, they over-generalize. If, they think, the Taliban are religiously motivated -- as indeed they are -- then religion is always in danger of becoming Taliban-like. Usually it is Taliban-like, as a matter of fact, if not restrained by civilized society. Of course, there are those who not unreasonably suggest that the secular culture elites of which Hitchens and Dawkins are such good examples also teeter on the brink of an intolerance that would similarly know no bounds if the same forces of civilization did not keep them too in their place.
It seems perhaps as if it's intolerance, religious or otherwise, and not religion that might be the problem. And intolerance seems to be a fringe rather than a mainstream phenomenon. Jacques Berlinerblau, himself a non-believer, has coined the term "secularly religious" to describe the great mass of Americans (see The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously), those who say they believe in God and mostly mean it, but who would only be embarrassed to be linked with their more zealous co-believers, busy burning Harry Potter books or insisting on the legitimacy of creation science. David Brooks had much the same idea in a May 25 Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, where he referred to the Catholic branch of this same group as "quasi-religious." It is plain wrong to think of this middle-ground, medium-heat or even lukewarm, majority of believing Americans who cherish the same commitment to freedom of speech and opinion, and who are just as critical of the intolerantly religious as are the new secularists, as the enemy of secular society. On the contrary; secular society in America today is maintained in a healthy state because of the convictions of believers, not as a result of the energies of the few died-in-the-wool atheists.
Jacques Berlinerblau thinks that the problem is not so much intolerance as it is plain ignorance, and Stephen Prothero makes a similar point in his recent book Religious Literacy. Except, of course, that Berlinerblau is lamenting the failures of secularists to learn about religion, while Prothero's target is the religious illiteracy of people of faith themselves. By the way, not entirely irrelevant -- if Catholics knew more about Catholicism than they do, they would still be pretty solidly Democrat, even if they were angry with Democrats for their cavalier dismissal of a pro-life stance on the abortion issue. They would also be solidly opposed to the Iraq War, which they may be, and fiercely against capital punishment, which seems not to be the case.
What might all this mean as we approach ever closer to election season? Willing elections is all about making alliances, not alienating potential supporters. So, for the Democrats, if they want to reclaim the Catholic vote that lost them the last presidential election, the first challenge is to find a way to recognize the complexity of the abortion debate and not give the impression that you are either pro-choice or a dinosaur. Catholics and even some Evangelicals are more than ready to vote for a party that doesn't espouse a staunchly pro-life position, so long as they don't deride it. In any case, most polls show Catholics holding fairly similar positions on abortion to those of the American public as a whole.
The real winning alliance will couple the tiny minority of true secularists with the overwhelming majority of quasi-religious or religiously secularly Americans. Hitchens, of course, would have to do some fast talking to explain his support for the President's war. But the assumptions that secularists are the enlightened minority on one side, facing off against an entrenched religious intolerance, is politically suicidal, historically inept and just plain ignorant. Make your stand, like Pope Benedict in Regensburg, on the role of reason and only the intolerant at either lunatic fringe -- atheist or religious fundamentalist -- will opt out.