Guest Post by Morbo
Much to my surprise, books critical of religion having been selling well lately. Sam Harris’ two books, “The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation,” have hit the best-sellers list along with Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion.”
The publishing industry, eager to ride this boomlet, is giving book contracts to more skeptics. Christopher Hitchens has just released “God Is Not Great.”
I’ve read Harris’ books as well as Dawkins’ tome but did not pick up Hitchens’. I doubt I will because I really don’t care for Hitchens. (I used to toy with writing a Carpetbagger post titled “The Top Ten Brits I’d Like to Deport.” Hitchens was right after Tony Blankley.)
Anyway, some people just can’t deal with these atheistic tomes. The Washington Post asked Stephen Prothero, a religion professor at Boston University, to review “God Is Not Great.” Prothero slammed it. This is not surprising, as Prothero believes teenagers should be forced to take courses on the Bible in public schools.
Maybe Hitchens deserved to be slammed. Maybe the book stinks. But I did find one of Prothero’s criticisms especially telling: He blasts Hitchens for focusing so much on the dangerous and bizarre beliefs of fundamentalists. Prothero writes:
[T]he only people who believe that religion is about believing blindly in a God who blesses and curses on demand and sees science and reason as spawns of Satan are unlettered fundamentalists and their atheistic doppelgangers.
If Prothero is saying fundamentalism is some sort of fringe belief embraced by people who are few in number, politically impotent and ineffective in impacting public life, he really needs to get out of the house more often.
The very same issue of the The Post that carried Prothero’s review contained two interesting stories he should read. One was about the creationism flare-up at the Republican presidential contenders’ debate. It noted a 2004 poll that asked Americans if the creation story in Genesis should be taken literally word for word or read metaphorically. Sixty-one percent said literally.
The second story was about Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech killer. It detailed how, when Cho began to lose his grip on reality, his mother dragged him to a fundamentalist church and requested an exorcism.
One could argue that all religions make fantastic claims. The core of many faiths is that a Supreme Being created the universe and that this being has the power to intervene in human affairs and will do so under certain conditions if asked properly. (But at other times, the being won’t. See Greensburg, Kan., tornado.) It’s OK for people to question this. Hundreds of religious books pour out of the publishing houses every year. Four books promoting atheism are unlikely to even the scales.
More importantly, it is permissible — and even necessary — to question the claims of fundamentalism. Such views often have a political expression. The people who embrace them are organized politically and believe that their interpretation of a holy book gives them the right to run the lives of others.
I think even hardcore atheists like Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens would accept living in a world where religion is considered a private matter and most people of faith refrained from trying to force others to bend to their interpretation of ancient tomes. That is not our world today. To the extent that this “unholy trinity” is providing some balance by exposing the dangers of fundamentalism, I say more power to them.