Chris Hedges: I Don't Believe in Atheists (2008, Free Press)

Hedges book grew out of a couple of debates he had with Sam Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason) and Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything), and probably also takes account of Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) -- a trio of recent bestsellers he collectively refers to as New Atheists. John Allen Paulos' Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up may have come out too late to make the group, but it also may not fit as well.

An atheist myself, I was rather excited when I first picked up Harris' book, hoping for something that could explain what I felt. Didn't take long before I put the book down in disgust, mostly due to its simplistic and bigotted muslim bashing. I've never been a fan of Hitchens even when he was allegedly on the left, and have been in no mood to entertain him since he joined Bush and Blair in Iraq. Dawkins is a more convoluted case, but also suspect.

I haven't rushed out to get Hedges book, and probably wouldn't bother at all except that I've read three of his other books, with even the distinctly religious Losing Moses on the Freeway: The Ten Commandments in America making a strong impression. In the meantime, here are a few quotes from an interview in Salon, where he starts by saying:

After reading what they [Harris and Hitchens] had written and walking away from these debates, I was appalled at how what they had done for the secular left was to embrace the same kind of bigotry and chauvinism and intolerance that marks the radical Christian right. I found that in many ways they were little more than secular fundamentalists.

By "fundamentalists" he presumably just means that they were fanatically close-minded -- "dogmatic" was the first word I thought of there, but for that you need dogma, which is scarce in anything primarily defined by negation, as atheism is. The original meaning of fundamentalists was those who believe in a rigid and unchanging set of fundamental tenets -- specifically of Christianity, but the word has been awkwardly analogized to other religions and ideologies. Still, "secular" is an especially awkward adjective, since secularism is not a belief in itself but a protocol for the peaceful coexistence of many personal belief systems, no matter how contrary. That Hedges uses the term suggests that he, like many Christians (especially on the right) thinks of secularism as a distinct religion. Indeed, his book title imputes that atheism is just another religion.

I'm also unclear as to what appeal Harris and Hitchens have for "the secular left": given that secularism it broadly tolerant of virtually all religions, and that the left in general goes further still to combat "bigotry and chauvinism and intolerance," why would the secular left find any appeal or comfort in these books? An even deeper problem is that in picking these terms up in this way Hedges adopts the notion that somehow the left is a mirror image of the right -- that the same aberrations that appear on the right must also appear on the left. (Hitler-Stalin is the usual standard; most leftists find their similarities to be characteristic of the right.)

But these are nitpicks: Hedges is saying that Harris and Hitchens are little if any better than the fundamentalists he reported on in American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. At least I appreciate the next thing he said:

I certainly understand that there is nothing intrinsically moral about being a believer or a nonbeliever, that many people of great moral probity and courage define themselves outside of religious structures, do not engage in religious ritual or use religious language, in the same way that many people who advocate intolerance, bigotry and even violence cloak themselves in the garb of religion and oftentimes have prominent positions within religious institutions. Unlike the religious fundamentalists or the New Atheists, I'm not willing to draw these kind of clean, institutional lines.

Hedges pretty much dismisses Harris, while disparaing Hitchens:

Harris is just intellectually shallow. Harris doesn't know anything about religion or the Middle East. For Hitchens, it's about a performance, and that was true when he was on the left. He hasn't changed. It's all about him. It's all about being a contrarian. He reminds me of Ann Coulter, he's that kind of a figure. He's witty, and he's funny and insulting. You know I debated him, and in the middle of the debate he starts shouting, "Shame on you for defending suicide bombers!" [ . . . ] I think he's completely amoral. I think he doesn't have a moral core. I think he doesn't believe anything. What's good for Christopher Hitchens is about as moral as he gets.