Why the "New Atheists" are Right-Wing on Foreign Policy

It must strike progressive atheists as a stroke of bad luck that Christopher Hitchens, leading atheist spokesperson, happens to have hawkish views on foreign policy. After all, with atheists an overwhelmingly left-wing group, what were the chances that the loudest infidel in the western world would happen to be on the right?

Actually, the chances were pretty good. When it comes to foreign policy, a right-wing bias afflicts not just Hitchens's world view, but the whole ideology of "new atheism," especially as seen in the work of Hitchens allies Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.

Atheism has little intrinsic ideological bent. (Karl Marx. Ayn Rand. I rest my case.) But things change when you add the key ingredient of the new atheism: the idea that religion is not just mistaken, but evil -- that it "poisons everything," as Hitchens has put it with characteristic nuance.

Consider Dawkins's assertion, in his book The God Delusion, that if there were no religion then there would be "no Israeli-Palestinian wars."

For starters, this is just wrong. The initial resistance to the settlements, and to the establishment of Israel, wasn't essentially religious, and neither was the original establishment of the settlements, or even of Israel.

The problem here is that two ethnic groups disagree about who deserves what land. That there was so much killing before the dispute acquired a deeply religious cast suggests that taking religion out of the equation wouldn't be the magic recipe for peace that Dawkins imagines. (As I show in my new book The Evolution of God, zero-sum disputes over land and other things have long been the root cause of the ugliest manifestations of religion, ranging from Christian anti-semitism in ancient Rome to bloodthirsty xenophobia in the Hebrew Bible to the Koran's gleeful anticipation of infidel suffering in the afterlife.)

The Israeli and American right join Dawkins in stressing religious motivation in the Middle East, and there's a reason for that. The people there whose political grievances are most conspicuously caught up with religion are Muslims. If the problem is that Muslims are possessed by this irrational, quasi-autonomous force known as religion, then there's no point in trying to reason with them, or to look at any facts on the ground that might drive their discontent. And there are facts on the ground in the West Bank that the Israeli and American right don't want to talk about. They're called settlements.

And so too with discontent throughout the Muslim world: If religion is the wellspring of radicalism, why bother paying attention to any issues in the actual material world? Why, for example, would you do what President Obama has done, and address a longstanding Iranian grievance by admitting that the US played a role in a 1953 coups that replaced Iran's democratically elected leader with a dictator?

Sam Harris has been explicit in rejecting material explanations of Islamic radicalism. In The End of Faith, while discussing terrorism, he pondered such roots causes as "the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza...the collusion of Western powers with corrupt dictatorships...the endemic poverty and lack of economic opportunity that now plague the Arab world." He concluded: "We can ignore all of these things, or treat them only to place them safely on the shelf, because the world is filled with poor, uneducated, and exploited peoples who do not commit acts of terrorism."

Yes, and the world is full of people who smoke and never get lung cancer. So, by Harris's logic, there's no chance that smoking is a risk factor for lung cancer -- and we never should have investigated that possibility!

People are survival machines built by natural selection. (This Dawkins gets.) When they sense threats to their interests, they can not only get violent, but wrap themselves in a larger cause that justifies the violence. Here they're as flexible as you'd expect well-built survival machines to be: that larger cause can be religion, yes, but it can also be nationalism or racialism. Hitler whipped up more fervor with the latter two than the first. Whatever's handy.

Of course, when religion is handy, special problems can arise. If there were no belief in paradise, there would be few suicide bombers. Then again, there might be less charity. Whether belief in posthumous rewards has on balance done more harm than good is an empirical question whose subtlety Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens don't exactly emphasize.

Anyway, the question is how to reduce the number of suicide bombers. And I have to wonder: If some Jihadists are motivated partly by fear that the west threatens their religious culture, is the optimal counter-terrorism strategy to have know-it-all westerners tell them their God doesn't exist?

The history of the Abrahamic faiths suggests not. Making Jews, Christians, and Muslims feel threatened by other cultures has often brought out the worst in their religions, whereas doing the the opposite -- putting them in "non-zero-sum" situations, where win-win outcomes are possible -- has brought out the best.

Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris should of course write what they want, even if it's likely to increase the amount of religious radicalism in the world. But if they're going to style themselves as soldiers in the war on terror, that will just go to show that the "God delusion" isn't the only kind of delusion.

Afterthought: It's logically possible for "new atheists" to highlight the Israeli settlement problem on grounds of justice or international law, notwithstanding their implied belief that addressing the problem won't do much good until religion vanishes. And here Hitchens, commendably, has been on the right side of the issue, even if he hasn't invested much energy in it since his turn to the right.

Robert Wright is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of Nonzero, The Moral Animal, and, most recently, The Evolution of God

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Comments

[Emmanuel9]

If anybody is interested, my review of "The Evolution of God" is here. I come from a Baha'i point of view:

http://bit.ly/10Wg9C

[Beechbum]

Robert Wright, I have read your work in "A Moral Animal" and "Nonzero"; To call the experience enlightening would be an understatement. I was planning to purchase your new book but am having second thoughts. Do to the lack of thought displayed in this article, maybe you were having a long day - I've had them, I'm fearing a disappointment.
The main theses of the afore mentioned authors from your article are, in a word, irrationality; of which religion, superstition, God, Vishnu, Thor et al. are symptoms only. In fact, war could arguably, in general, be thrown in this pile do to irrationality's strong link to fear. But arrogance, Robert, arrogance is what over shadows all religion et cetera in the ontology of the inexplicable. The ignorant expressing knowledge of the unknowable, how is that for arrogance? This, I think, is why Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, plus many others, including myself, link 'religion' and war -- that is, irrational world views do not lend themselves to rational discourse therefore violence ensues. Can you feel the power of irrational arrogance in the tone of this comment? Wanna kick my ...?!

Just to make a point.

[PaxMundis]

Actually, war can be embarked upon for reasons that seem very rational. In the past, war was mostly over the allocation of resources and money. If you believe you have a chance of winning, war can seem imminently rational. Look at the great realpolitician himself Henry Kissinger.

[Secularist]

The article misrepresents what Sam Harris was saying. He never claimed that religion should be held responsible for all that religious people do. However, it should be held responsible for the things that are done exclusively because of religion.

[Dbos]

Is New Atheism a new religion?

[113]

i consider myself part of "the new atheists" movement but I do not share the political views of Mr. Hitchens.

In the case of the israeli-palestinian conflict, I think Mr. Wright has created a false either-or choice.

In Mr. Wrights view, religion and conflict is not a causal relationship at all and he cast the new atheists as saying that there is a direct relationship between religion and political conflict...Both positions Mr. Wright presents create this false either-or choice.

Religion is not singularly responsible for the israeli-palestinian conflict. Anyone with a basic knowledge of Ben Gurion and israeli history knows this.

But just because the search for a jewish state did not start out as a religious movement, doesn't mean the israeli state has not become a religious movement. And the palestinian movement, while about nationalism for the Palestinians, is about religion for the Arab nations and groups who support them.

Religion may not be the sole driving factor in this debate but it has become a major one (especially with the likes of gushemonem sp?). Religion acts as a sort of "fallback" mechanism in which when all other paradigms of conflict have been explored and solved cosmic conflict is impossible to solve.

When "we deserve this land because no other place in the world would accept our people" becomes "we deserve this land because god says so" then the conflict has escalated past reason and makes it impossible to solve.

[PaxMundis]

Nonetheless, you cannot deny that Dawkins and others have written that if there was no religion, we wouldn't have these conflicts.

[Secularist]

You misunderstand. They were talking about specifically religious conflicts. If, say, the Orthodox Jews did not believe that God wants them to have the land of Israel, that particular West Bank settlements issue would not exist. If many Muslims did not endorse suicide bombings against civilians who they see as infidels, then that particular problem would not exist.

[missouriwatcher]

There are many factors leading to today's problems in the Middle East. Religion is but a small part, despite what many right-wingers think. (They tend to ignore the fact that different religious groups have gotten along fine throughout much of history--such as Muslim, Christian and Jews in Spain during a goodly part of the Middle Ages; or Hindi-Budd­ist-Muslim relations in India.) They may not always get along okay, but usually there are other issues such as land. Seizing the land that a group has inhabited for a period of time is probably the greatest cause of strife between peoples--think about the U.S. expanding into and claiming land occupied by Native Americans. The "new" atheists are just plain wrong on this issue, choosing to wear blinders rather than see all the contributing factors to hostility.

[DBaltzer]

It is just this kind of defense of the religious fundamentalists that lead Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris to condemn the so-called "moderate" religious groups of all ilk. Moderates defend, to their own discredit, a group of people who do not merely believe in a deity-- they act out on their belief politically and socially in ways that harm and destroy. To ignore this and defend their right to believe what they believe is to condemn the earth. It's time to wake up and realize that people who believe that god is in control and will make all that is right at the end of time do not truly believe they need to do anything to change the way we operate on this planet-- i.e. global warming. It is time for the so-called moderates to stop bullying the rest of us by calling us names and start waking up to the truth of exactly who is destroying what and in whose name. Hitchens may wrong headedly believe that fighting the religious sects will help somehow, but he can't start a war. Zionist, Shiiate and Evangelical governments can... and do.

[Christopher Calton]

Precisely

[PaxMundis]

"Hitchens may wrong headedly believe that fighting the religious sects will help somehow, but he can't start a war. Zionist, Shiiate and Evangelical governments can... and do."

Hitchens has actually argued that some of the people responsible for the Iraq war (of which he is still proud) are atheists - he has tried to claim Karl Rove as an atheist. In any case, the father of the NeoCons, Leo Strauss, was an atheist.

[Ali Mann]

And it's this sort of paranoia slash utopian idealism that ironically is the foundation for radicalism to begin with. Let us note the materialis­ts-secular­ists ideologies of the 20th century (many being pets of famous Atheist back then) while I admit did not kill in the name of their Atheism were anti-theistic and anti-religious to the core. This simply proves that yours and other New Atheists condemnations of about 90% of the world population and their "delusion" is not going to solve anything, especially in light of the fact that the greatest killers of the 20th century were not motivated by the "will of god".

I'm sure you've read Animal Farm.

Further, as far as I can tell, being a "religious moderate" (whatever that actually means, though I suppose it means being a person who doesn't blow himself up), we don't try to justify the radicals and we are often at the front lines of condemning them. It just so happens that no one cares to hear that side or see it because they're too busy trying to reinforce their blind views that all religion is poisonous.

[Herbert Ragan]

Right-wing, Left-Wing, Centerist! Ridiculous. Atheists span the political spectrum, even the NEW atheists. I am an atheist, and politically, I am a leftist. .There are atheists in my humanist groups that talk about illegal aliens that make my head explode. In religion we are not trying to prove there is no God, that is an impossibility (you can' prove a negative). We see, okay you believe this, that is a positive assertion, where is the evidence?.

If you believe there was a Garden of Eden with a talking snake... Where is the evidence?

If you believe moses split the red sea and the Jewish People wandered the desert for 40 years... Where is the evidence? (really? 40 years and not one piece of archaeological evidence.)

If you believe a virgin had a baby, that baby when older turned water to wine, walked on water, raised the dead, and was resurrected himself... Where is te evidence?

We Atheists love to debate the issues, not just religious issues, but all issues. I like that.

[asgspifs]

You say that, “If there were no belief in paradise, there would be few suicide bombers.” I tend to agree. But to say that if there were no belief in paradise, “there might be less charity.” I think is a spurious claim. Much charity is performed by atheists, but there are NO atheist suicide bombers.

Who is more moral, a person who does good to get a reward and avoids evil out of fear of punishment, OR a person who does good and avoids evil because they know it’s the right thing to do? They know it’s the right thing to do because they have derived their ethics from within. Atheists (speaking for myself now) derive their ethics logically, from basic observations of human activities and interactions (with themselves and with their environment). Basic observations and logical interpretations of human behavior dictate that it is wrong to steal, for example, and that people are happier and more productive if they cooperate and help one another.

HHDD do not claim to be “soldiers” in any kind of conflict (well maybe Hitchens does). It’s YOU who is trying to style them as “soldiers in the war on terror” – although you conveniently leave out Dennett and many other prominent modern atheist authors. If HHDD have done nothing but to open people’s eyes to the fact that faith and religion are not, and should not be, above criticism and question, then they have succeeded.

[PaxMundis]

Hitchens most certainly does. He's also said choice things about how his problem with Christianity is the idea of forgiving your enemies and turning the other cheek. Seriously, I don't know why ANYBODY listens to him.

[PaxMundis]

" Much charity is performed by atheists, but there are NO atheist suicide bombers. "

Absolute, 100% nonsense. The Tamil Tigers, an utterly secular organization, practically invented the idea of suicide bombing.

The common denominator of suicide bombers is not a belief in paradise, but a belief in the despair of any positive change happening in this world.

[stribs]

You're skilled in being emphatic whilst being wrong, PaxMundis.

The Tamil Tigers being a secular organization hardly makes them atheist.
That's like saying the Unitarian Universalists are atheists.

[subordinate]

Your logic is skewed. The Tamil Tigers may or may not be secular, but even if they are, since when does that equate to Atheism? Secular simply means they are acting politically. Even so, can you say they are commiting suicide in the name of atheism? Of course not, it's an absurd notion. Do you also think they would have LESS conviction if religion was a primary driver? Clearly the Islamic Jihadists are convincing proof that this is the case.

[Ali Mann]

I disagree.

The Tamil Tigers perform more suicide bombings on the whole than any religious group and the're Marxists Atheists.

Suicide bombing is a war tactic that is not necessarily reinforced by religious convictions, but moreso by desperation. After you've lost your family and basically everyone you love you're more willing to die for a cause.

[asgspifs]

To say Hitchens is a “leading atheist spokesperson” is wrong - for many reasons, primarily because most atheists are atheists because they are free thinkers. Atheists are a group of people about which generalizations are least likely to be accurate. So, atheists do not have a spokesperson, they all speak for themselves if they choose to speak. (There, I just made a generalization about atheists – atheists, tell me if I’m wrong about that.) Even Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins and Dennett don’t agree on many things.

Maybe you are wrong to think that atheists are an overwhelmingly left-wing group, thus your apparent confusion. Maybe it depends on how you define left-wing. Left-wing politically, socially, economically, etc? Maybe left vs. right is all relative and atheists are travelling up the center. Or maybe you can’t pigeon-hole atheists. You are definitely wrong to suggest that all atheists follow the words of HHDD.

Debating the religious vs. secular origins of the Israeli-Palestinian wars means little today – what matters is what fuels the fire today, and that is unmistakably, mostly religion – even if you try to hide “religion” behind the word “culture” – their cultures are largely defined by their religion.

To say that, “Atheism has little intrinsic ideological bent” followed by mentioning Marx and Rand, is just dishonest. Here’s another generalization, which is really just an extrapolation of my views: few modern, enlightened atheists would identify with these two historical characters.

[PaxMundis]

"To say that, "Atheism has little intrinsic ideological bent" followed by mentioning Marx and Rand, is just dishonest. Here"s another generalization, which is really just an extrapolation of my views: few modern, enlightened atheists would identify with these two historical characters."

Rand is selling more than ever. Few call themselves Marxists these days, but to say that there are few Randian atheists is misleading.

[agnostic atheist]

I think it is a bit of a right-wing tactic to generalize a group of people that share a single common non-belief with the views of one man. I am an Agnostic Atheist who also believes in Secular Humanism that is based on the DIGNITY TEST.... dignity being the unconditional respect of another persons humanity. Frankly the hawkish foreign policy views of Christopher Hitchens do not pass the DIGNITY TEST.

[carolrhill814]

You have to believe in God to pray and all of these titles drive me crazy everyone has to be put under certain titles or nobody is happy.
If you are having a hard time and need strength from someone whom ever they chose why should they feel badly about whom they believe in that is scarey to have to say whom you pray for that should be a very personal thing like what doctor you go see when you aren't feeling well in my eyes.

You know what really surprises me that Mr Obama has never chosen a place to worship yet tor his children to go to and all of us all knew where all the previous Presidents went but Mr Obama I guess is still looking. I am surprised I haven't heard that more on the NEWS when he first entered my house we wondered where he was going to church but I guess that got boring.
My main concern is the children never go to church and when I was their ages I went every Sunday I learned who created us and how to love people through God.

[tandrmcdonald]

Note to carolrhill814;
What business is it of yours where, when, or whether anyone else on the planet chooses to worship? Part of the reason the religious right has such an absymal reputation is that they busy themselves too much with other people's business.
Go read the Christian parable about the man who saw the mote in his neighbor's eye but not the beam in his own. When you've finished that, read the admonition from Christ about "whited sepulchres. " A whole lot of the hypocrisy flooding our media could be eliminated if the very vocal religious right wing tattooed these passages on their forehead.

[Publicola]

"all of us all knew where all the previous Presidents went"

Uh huh. Did you know, for example, that some of our greatest Presidents weren't even Christians?

"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
-- Thomas Jefferson

[LittlePurpleUSA]

What's funny is that if you really read the works of Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins and Dennet (which the author has conveniently left out when he's part of the "new Atheists"), the only one who seems to have pro-Israel (something that's mostly Right-Wing) leanings is Harris.

[bswell]

While religion doesn't help, colonialism is an even more important factor, which "saltpeter" is the only one to touch upon. All these battles stem from colonialism, and as saltpeter indicates, like Sarah Palin, they're all in it for the money.

[tekno2600]

If it was true that Hitchens, Harris & Dawkins had certain right-wing views, Mr. Wright admits that this is not true of atheists in general, which he characterizes as an overwhelming left-leaning group. So, in the worst case, HH&D would just be bad representatives of New Atheism. I am, perhaps, inclined to agree a little regarding Hitchens. While many atheists may accept his criticism of religion, and supposedly sacrosant people like Mother Theresa, Hitchen lost the support of most atheists (from a political point of view) at least 6 years ago when he supported the Iraq War. He gave undue credence to the claims of the Bush administration that it was a war on terror, but has now acknowledged how thoroughly Bush lied. So, it is hardly a timely comment for Mr. Wright to refer to Hitchens as the number 1 voice of the New Atheists. Harris is also far from being respected in atheist circles for his political views. Many atheists are also uncomfortable with his Buddhist mysticism and so-called "atheist spirtuality." Harris even recently said that he thinks people should stop using the word atheist all together. Dawkins is the only one of the bunch who is a prominent spokesman, and although he clearly believes the world would be a better place with less religious fanatacism, he also opposes Jewish settlements and vigorously opposed the Bush administration.