God wars

Moderate Christians, Jews and Muslims come in for particular censure from Harris, because, he writes, they advocate the mere "dilution of Iron Age philosophy" rather than the only sensible course, which is to junk those religions entirely. Fundamentalists are at least true to their precepts: If the Bible and the Koran are the word of God, then all the words in them -- including the many, many hateful, bellicose and savage passages regarding the recommended treatment of infidels -- are as valid as any other. The moderates' smorgasbord approach to those texts, in which only the peace-loving bits are embraced, is self-deluding and wishy-washy. It swathes the Bible and the Koran with a mainstream legitimacy those books don't deserve and creates a nurturing environment for the breeding of fanaticism.

Never mind the fact that most religious fanatics loathe moderates, and would hardly see the evaporation of religious centrism as a reason to abandon their cause. On the role of religious moderates, perhaps the most important aspect of the question of how religion should factor into public life, Harris' polemic is inconsistent even before you hold it up to the facts. On page 45, "religious moderates are, in large part, responsible for the religious conflict in our world" but on page 152 Muslim moderates hold "the fate of civilization" in their hands because only they can "reshape their religion into an ideology that is basically benign."

Harris reaches this contortion because even he must finally acknowledge that forcing secularism on deeply religious people is a recipe for disaster. In fact, the feeling that this has been going on in the Muslim world for the past 30 years is precisely what motivates most Islamist militants. Clever conservatives know exactly how to whip up such resentment in the U.S. as well. Take Roy Moore, chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, who placed a monument to the Ten Commandments in the state courthouse, and who is depicted by Harris as merely a crude zealot. Moore, of course, knew that this stunt was illegal and that he'd never get away with it. Getting away with it wasn't the point. The media circus surrounding the removal of the monument enabled Christian extremists to portray themselves as a minority under attack, even with a born-again president sitting in the White House. Maintaining a siege mentality is crucial to activating this kind of constituency.

How exactly does Harris propose that we eliminate religion from public life in a democratic nation where the majority of citizens believe in God and 35 percent report that they believe the Bible to be the literal word of God? Well, we can "stop listening" to the faithful and stop pussyfooting around pretending to respect beliefs that are patently absurd. (This is presuming a secular "we," which is a big presumption.) But religious people already feel that their beliefs are subject to constant assault and ridicule by mainstream culture, and this only makes them more adamant. There are more of them than there are of us (I count myself a secularist who is also concerned about the encroachment of religion into politics), and if push comes to shove, it may turn out that they are the ones who have been tolerating us, not the other way around.

McGrath points out, in "The Twilight of Atheism," that atheism gains adherents whenever religious institutions hold too much power or fail to satisfy people's cravings for "the presence of the divine in everyday life." Likewise, religions are usually energized by efforts to squelch them. Plus, in the squelching lies another kind of madness, and so Harris finds himself floating the idea that "some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them." How -- despite Harris' strenuous efforts to distinguish good, rational belief systems from noxious, irrational ones -- this differs significantly from executing people for blasphemy and other thought crimes is hard to say.

If the distinction between rational beliefs and irrational ones is important enough to kill for, then Harris needs to do a better job of making it. As much as I favor his vision of a firmly secular society, I have to agree with McGrath (and Stephen Jay Gould) that, ultimately, the existence of God can be neither proven nor disproven by means of conventional empiricism. The natural sciences aren't equipped to evaluate claims that are supernatural and finally unknowable. In a rare moment of humility, even McGrath concedes that agnosticism may be the only truly moral response to the question.

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