Toubabou

The atheist delusion | Review | guardian.co.uk Books

This is a marvelous article exposing many of the flaws in the secularist arguments against religion which have arisen over the last few years. The author is clearly not a theist, yet he is able to see the evils done in the name of Marxist-Leninism as clearly as those done by, say, the Inquisition. Ironically, as he has just pointed out that “liberal values” (in the traditional understanding) are a heritage of Judeo-Christian faith, and has praised the clear-sightedness of Nietzsche in pointing this out, he produces this:

Religion has not gone away. Repressing it is like repressing sex, a self-defeating enterprise. In the 20th century, when it commanded powerful states and mass movements, it helped engender totalitarianism. Today, the result is a climate of hysteria. Not everything in religion is precious or deserving of reverence. There is an inheritance of anthropocentrism, the ugly fantasy that the Earth exists to serve humans, which most secular humanists share. There is the claim of religious authorities, also made by atheist regimes, to decide how people can express their sexuality, control their fertility and end their lives, which should be rejected categorically. Nobody should be allowed to curtail freedom in these ways, and no religion has the right to break the peace.

While, on the one hand, he is arguing that religion is an enduring part of human character, he then goes on to reject religious restraint upon unproductive, unhealthy sexual behaviors, the murder of the unborn and the murder/assisted suicide of the elderly. On what basis? He doesn’t say, but merely states that “no religion has the right”. These ideas of universal rights are also a heritage of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and it is amusing to see a clear perception of this in one area, and a great myopia in another.