Who's afraid of the secular wolf?

There was a brilliant movie called Wag the dog (1997) that basically told the story of an American president who had an indiscreet affair of the heart and crotch, just a few weeks before elections. Consequently, his spin doctors along with an evil genius Hollywood movie producer concocted a war story in some tiny, unknown country, in order to divert the public attention from what was really happening. If it sounds familiar to you, that is because it is. The Clintonesque ball with Belle Lewinsky was lavishly set up only two years earlier.

You might wonder why would I connect Wag the dog and my pro-secularism speech. Simple. I know it is old news but Tony Blair’s anti-secular speech held this year, it is not a discourse that necessarily denotes a personal antipathy towards atheists. Tony Blair is smarter than a religious bigot. Tony Blair’s anti-atheist speech was a political speech. Here is why:

1) The 2009 Global Peace Index was published. The outcome is not surprising, setting a country like Israel on 141st place, Iraq on 144th and Lebanon on 132nd. The first place for the most peaceful country on earth is taken by New Zealand. It's basically a ranking of how turbulent and warlike a country is. Concurrence makes it that the most belligerent countries are also highly religious or where religion is being used as leverage to manipulate politics and people. Something like this was successfully used in the Middle Ages in Europe. It is still used in the Middle East today. 

2) Coincidence or not, the most peaceful countries are also the most agnostic/atheist ones, as religion is defined in the belief of super natural agents. A closer look at the top rankings shows the most peaceful are almost entirely non-religious. Now, experts got to this conclusion and it seems to be several possible reasons for this: a) people living in turbulent countries turn to religion,; b) religion is not a good way to structure modern society; c) another combination of factors (democracy, free speech, education, government welfare) that allows citizens to be both peaceful and non-religious”.

In any case, the findings clearly show that secularization does not lead to social meltdown and mayhem. According to the polls, atheist countries are, in fact more peaceful. (Thanks Tom Rees for putting together the data)

3) A 2006 study by researchers at the University of Minnesota found atheists to be the most distrusted of minorities, more so than Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians, and other groups. How shall we gather votes from the other minorities if not rally against someone that everyone dislikes?

It is merely embarrassing when a prominent politician like Tony Blair blasts out in such a vehement manner claiming that mankind is facing “an aggressive secular attack. We face the threat of extremism from within.”

How can one speak about extremism and instigate people in the same time?

Let's see. For starters, let's address a common economic sense question: how will it serve the politicians a (potential) god free world? How will it serve the world’s economy? Is it by chance he had this speech in 2009 year, when crisis was blooming although some optimists without experience say was in recession? What will the military do? What about army projects and new weapons? How well a peaceful god free world will serve these projects? Who will economically (we are not talking spiritually) benefit a god free world? Who will lose money?

Consequently, in his speech held at the Georgetown University this month, Tony Blair branded the secular people as the new Axis of Evil. Smart, isn’t it?

Here are fragments of his speech:

“We, Christians and Muslims represent around half the world’s population".

Suddenly it is all about WE, an old technique to get audience on the speaker's side by making it identify with him; why didn’t he use this pronoun before he decided to send troops in Iraq? 

Here is a fact. True, Christians and Muslims form together around half of the world’s population. Also more than 1.2 billion people of the same world’s population are dying of hunger. Meaning, one in six people is hungry as we speak. I hope the steak you had for lunch was juicy and tasty and gave you enough energy to deliver such a disgraceful, illicit and false speech about an inexistent scapegoat. In social psychology this is called the "scapegoat theory" and it basically states that when problems occur, "people do not like to blame themselves. They will thus actively seek scapegoats onto whom we can displace our aggression. These may be out-group individuals or even entire groups". What better scapegoat than a non responsive and non threatening secular group? Moreover, the real issue here, the real threat are not the secular people. As we speak, half of the world “lives on less than $2 a day, and 1 billion of them surviving on the margins of subsistence with less than $1 a day; while 1.1 billion people lacked access to safe water, and 2.6 billion did not have access to any form of improved sanitation services. Just 125 countries, with 62% of the world's population, have a free or partly free press. Over 854 million people are illiterate. Since 1990, 3.6 million people have died as a result of civil wars and ethnic violence, more than 16 times the number killed in wars between states. Ninety countries are affected by landmines and unexploded ordinance, with rough estimates of 15,000 to 20,000 mine victims each year. Greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere are accruing at a record rate. In 2007, there were 380 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which exceeds the natural range of the past 650,000 years" ( Info World Stats).

Are secular people to blame for the world’s drama? Or are policy makers like yourself?

Still, Blair went on with his diatribe, saying “We face the challenge of relevance – showing how faith can be a force for the future, for progress, that it will not fade as science, technology and material prosperity alters the way we live".

If science and technology will fade away, Mr Blair, next time you will deliver your speech in a cave, in front of a bunch of chimps, which believe it or not , are your ancestors.

Blair: We face an aggressive secular attack from without. We face the threat of extremism from within.

(No comment...)

Blair: These challenges are not for Muslims alone or Christians or Jews, Hindus or Buddhists for that matter. They are challenges for all people of faith.

The best hope for faith in the twenty first century is that we confront all of this together.

Tony Blair had a revelation and realised that Muslims, Buddhist and Christians are the same people and we need to unite and confront an invisible enemy together.

Translation: we had our share in the Middle East, I might as well make friends with the Muslims and united with them against some common enemy. Christians? Nope, I am one of them. Let me think. Right, atheists. They believe in nothing, they fear nothing, they cannot be manipulated or threatened through a reward/punishment system, they are disobedient voters, they disagree with our politics. Great: there you have our common enemy.

Blair: But our coming together, will allow us to speak in friendship to one another about our own faiths; and also speak to the world about faith.

So how do we make our relations, so fraught in the past, fruitful in the future? First, we need to understand each other, learn about our roots, how and why we are as we are, learn the essential spirituality, peacefulness and goodness of the others’ faith. This means we educate each other about each other.

Secondly, we need to respect each other. We must do this, not pro forma, to be polite or courteous but do it deeply, beyond tolerance or acceptance.

Tolerance and acceptance should go for everyone, my Blair, secular people included, not only for Muslims and Christians but for Sikhs, Druze, Buddhists, agnostics, etc.

Blair: We say it is Love that motivates us.

We must demonstrate it in our dealings with each other, as indeed both our Lord and the Prophet exhorted us to do.

Love your God; love your neighbour as yourself.

I am your neighbour Mr. Blair. I am a mother, raising my daughter with respect and tolerance for others, with compassion and love for human beings and other living creatures. I am honest, compassionate and I do no harm in thought, word or deed. OK, maybe in thought. I pay my taxes and I offer the seat to older people in a crowded bus, and I teach my daughter to do the same. I share my food and I give money to the beggars. I practice at times random acts of kindness like paying for the coffee of the person behind me in a queue. Or help an old man to buy medication. Or I ask the postman how is his life. Or I anonymously clean the elevator mirror. Or I buy a doughnut or a warm apple strudel and I hand it out on the street to someone who seems hungry.

Yet, I don’t believe in god.

Does this make me a bad person? Do I seem like a person with no moral? Morals, Mr Blair, are usually defined the goodness or badness of human action and character and are an intrinsic side of the human construction. Religion that you are so fond of, hijacked what was naturally human all along. We are hardwired for goodness, Mr Blair, with or without god. Look at you, you had no remorse sending troops to death and still you consider yourself a good person, just because you attend Sunday’s sermon. People have or don’t have morals independently of their religious inclination, Mr Blair. A secular person can be a fulfilled moral person the same way a religious person can have no morals whatsoever.

Am I really a threat to you?

I hope your pro-religion and anti-secular speech didn’t fool many people and most of your readers had the intelligence to read beyond your words and see it for what it was: a political attempt to bridge a way too deeper gap between Middle East and Western world. Which is salutary, but I think first you ought to start with an apology. Blaming an imaginary “common enemy” like atheists and calling them the new secular threat of the 21st century of East and West didn’t fool anyone. 

Is god a game of Twenty Questions?

An apophatic friend of mine claimed that “that religion might arise out of the fundamental enjoyment we feel at being alive and this leads to a sense of gratitude and obligation, and of course a desire to preserve our enjoyment, which all finds its expression in religious practices."

Well, actually not. Lots of other things might come out of "enjoyment of being alive" and being alive is not always an enjoyment, but let's not divagate. Religion doesn't come out from anything fundamental or natural. We are not hardwired for belief. Belief is a set of principles by some which choose to lead their lives. For some might seem it is natural as it shapes on their particular, subjective and personal views on life. The desire to preserve our "enjoyment" is more related to our basic instinctual innate will to biologically survive and thus perpetuate whatever we created and concocted. But it is not religion that motivates us to preserve that joy of being alive, it is our survival instinct. It is more basic than this.

The sense of gratitude and obligation is even more basic than this. A Good Samaritan is urged to perform acts of random kindness. Do we need religion to be good or feel gratitude and moral obligation? No. This assessment is totally wrong because it starts from the erroneous premises that religion is the only one that leads toward a moral behaviour. Morals usually define the goodness or badness of human action and character and are an intrinsic side of the human construction. People have or don’t have morals independently of their religious inclination. An atheist can be a fulfilled moral person the same way a religious person can have no morals whatsoever. There might not be a god centre in the brain and we might not be hard wired for religion, but we are definitely hard wired for good doing. This is how we survived as species, it is called compassion, which is independent of being religious or not. Sure, doing good might be a bit addictive: it is good for the health (helper’s high, diminishes stress, the benefits return, happy thoughts, affiliative connection). Religion is not natural, it is culturally learnt. So is god, which is not an innate concept. We have no god centre in the brain, heart, soul whatever. We are born tabula rasa, unacquainted with theism. An atheist can also be someone who wasn’t exposed to any deity concept and not necessarily someone who rejects its existence.
Atheism is also the absence of theistic belief without a conscious rejection of it. I do not believe in theistic innatism.

Allow me to exemplify: there is an Amazonian society called Pirahã which has no number words at all. The Pirahã uses hói to describe a small number of objects, hoíg to describe a slightly larger number, and baágiso for an even larger number. Basically, these words mean "around one," "some" and "many." For us, numbers seem natural therefore explaining the process of addition makes natural/logical sense. Trying to explain to these people addition when they don't have numbers, would be a bit difficult. However, we need to delimit here what we are talking about as the subject is a bit vague. We are talking god, religion, system of beliefs? And no, they are not the same. Can we be religious without a deity concept (apophatic)? Isn't a bit like loving without the object of love? Can we define love by saying it is not hate? Can we define god by saying it is not satan? Can we define philosophy by saying it is not psychology? Can we define goodness by saying it is not evilness? Can we mention by not mentioning? Can you say you are apophatic by saying you are not cataphatic? Can you say that something is by telling what it is not? Yes, if it is a game of Twenty Questions. Is god a game of Twenty Questions?

My friend went on and forwarded his definition of what beliefs are: not rational, not irrational but rather non-rational. His evident admiration for deconstruction’s pseudo gods like Levinas, Derrida, Vattimo made him declare that he had no idea what god was but this didn’t stop him from having a religious sensibility. Like his fellow predecessors, my friend practices a sort of terrorist obscurantism, which made him declare that if you didn’t agree with him, you simply missed his point.

I agree, the beliefs are totally non-rational as they are obtained through intuition rather than from reasoning or observation. Interesting enough, the word intuition comes from the Latin intueri which means to look inside, or to contemplate. This is what religion does (or it least should do): contemplate. But if this is what it does, then stop using it as a general value system of good and bad, as valid explanations for human life and behaviour, for explanations of our immediate environment or less immediate such as Cosmos, for the ultimate detainer of truth in regards to eschatology. It should definitely not impose beliefs or organize institution, or come with a reward/punishment system, or as dreams/hopes merchant. Just stay aside and contemplate. Does religion and its beliefs do that? The debate goes on as these are not easy questions….