Moral progression and other delusions

I just finished I Don’t Believe in Atheists, a recent work by Chris Hedges (War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, and Losing Moses on the Freeway). If you haven’t picked up anything of his, they’re usually about the same thickness as a Rob Bell pamphlet, but packed with much more engaging and provocative material (and a serif typeface).

The title is a bit misleading, and I think it probably fooled those who were looking for talking points. It is really a book about the misconceptions and delusions (that all humans share), which lead to different forms of radicalism.

Though it becomes quite evident when you read Hedges, I’ll mention that it is important to recognize his background. He is the son of a Presbyterian minister and graduate of Harvard Divinity School. He was a war correspondent for almost twenty years, writing for NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, and the New York Times.

I Don’t Believe in Atheists is centered around one major premise: that we cannot progress morally as a species, and that the only way to avoid war is to avoid radicalism, which is to recognize the lack of absolutism in this world and acknowledge our fallibility.

Hedges hooks you in the beginning with “The God Debate” and how fundamentalists—the Christian Right and New Atheists—are united by the very practice of their opposition to each other.

They are in show business, and those in show business know complexity does not sell . . . They don masks. One wears the mask of religion, the other wears the mask of science . . . One distorts the scientific theory of evolution to explain the behavior and rules for complex social, economic and political systems. The other insists that the six-day story of creation in Genesis is fact and Jesus will descend from the sky to create the kingdom of God of Earth. These antagonists each claim to have discovered an absolute truth. They trade absurdity for absurdity. They show that the danger is not religion or science. The danger is fundamentalism itself (32).

A third of the book centers around this science/religion/God debate and its usual utter simplicity. Hedges used the remainder of the book to expand on his original premise, bringing in his education and experience. Instead of paraphrasing, I’ll just present sections that I have found to be worth serious contemplation and meditation, or just say things particularly well.

The concept of sin is a stark acknowledgment that we can never be omnipotent, that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest (14).

Any form of knowledge that claims to be absolute ceases to be knowledge. It becomes a form of faith (20).

The new atheists, like all fundamentalists, flee from complexity. They can cope with religion in its most primitive and abusive form. They are helpless when confronted by a faith that challenges their caricatures . . . The Bible, which they are so fond of attacking as incoherent, was never designed to be a coherent book (34).

We are not saved by religion. We are saved by turning away from projects that tempt us to become God, and by accepting our own contamination and the limitations of being human (79).

Where rigid, formal obedience to law allows the adherent to avoid ethical choice, the truly moral life grapples with the inscrutable call to do what is right, to reach out to those who are reviled, labeled outcasts or enemies, and to practice compassion and tolerance, even at the cost of self-annihilation. And all ethical action begins with an acknowledgment of our own sin and moral ambiguity (92).

When Jesus attacks the chief priests, scribes, lawyers, Pharisees, Sadducees and other “blind guides,” he is attacking an authoritarianism as endemic to Christianity as to all institutions and ideologies. The story of Christ’s death is a reminder that what is sacred in life always appears to us in flesh and blood. It is not found in abstract ideas or utopian schemes for human perfectibility. The moment the writers of the gospels began to set down the words of Jesus they began to kill the message (94).

Human evil is not a problem. It is a mystery . . . The forces of darkness are our own forces. If we fail to name or acknowledge these forces, they will destroy us. Acknowledgment means accepting that our encounter with evil is permanent and perpetual (156).

Those who place their faith in a purely rational existence begin from the premise that human beings can have fixed and determined selves governed by reason and knowledge. This is itself an act of faith (160).

Wisdom goes beyond self-awareness. It permits us to interpret the rational and the non-rational . . . those who remain trapped within the confines of knowledge and pedantry do not commune with the larger world (162).

Those who focus only on human communication, who are unable to step outside the realm of prosaic knowledge, sever themselves from the sacred (164).

Detachment without withdrawal, Ecclesiastes writes, is one of the secrets of wisdom. Death awaits us all. We must give up on the notion that one is rewarded for virtue, that we can save ourselves from our human predicament or that we can morally advance as a species (172).

The ancient Greeks held in high esteem the command they believed came from Apollo: “Know thyself.” To know ourselves is to accept our limitations and imperfections (184).

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