| Topic: |
Sociology > Education |
| User: |
"Dana" |
| Date: |
13 Sep 2003 11:28:55 AM |
| Object: |
Atheist fundamentalism a chilling prospect |
http://www.lifesite.net/interim/april98/21athei.html
Atheist fundamentalism a chilling prospect
By Emily Monroy
Interim special
In an article printed in the magazine Humanist in Canada, Randy Wicker, a
gay atheist, writes that "militant atheists are unfortunately often like the
religious harpies they hate." His statement points to a wider truth: that
individuals and groups at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum tend to
have more in common with each other than with anyone in between. As an
example, the former socialist governments of Eastern Europe were frequently
just as repressive as right-wing dictatorships in other parts of the world.
Wicker's words also ring true in a more specific sense, in that militant
atheists ironically do resemble their fanatically religious foes.
To the former group of militants belong a good number of contributors to
Humanist in Canada as well as many members of Canada's organized humanist
movement. Disdaining Wicker's "live and let live" attitude towards religion,
they put themselves in the rather odd position of railing against something
they don't even believe exists. While some of Humanist in Canada's
articles deal with issues such as the environment, others focus on attacking
religion and describing its supposedly unhealthy influence in the world. The
magazine moreover takes an aggressive "missionary position": like religious
fundamentalist publications such as Awake (the bulletin of the Jehovah's
Witnesses), it seeks to draw outsiders into its fold.
Forcing one's views
Although Humanist in Canada's anti-religious tracts strike me, a practising
Catholic, as offensive, I would defend the magazine's right to publish them,
just as I would oppose any censorship of Chick Publications, an
anti-Catholic diatribe put out by a Christian fundamentalist group. A few
humanists, however, have gone beyond the point of spouting insulting
material and hinted at the possibility of forcing their views on the general
population, which includes religious adherents in addition to non-believers
unconnected to the humanist movement.
One such humanist is Wendell Watters, a psychiatrist and author of the book
Deadly Doctrine. In Deadly Doctrine, which discusses the purported harmful
effects of religion on individuals and on society as a whole, he suggests
the government consider waging a campaign to protect children from the
dangers of religion just as it has crusaded against tobacco and alcohol.
Such a proposal is, to my mind, frightening and should be opposed not only
by believers - particularly Christians, at whom Watters takes particular
aim - but by anybody concerned about religious and other liberties.
The central point of Deadly Doctrine is that a religious upbringing harms
children. By being raised in a faith, youngsters come to believe they are
unworthy sinners dependent on an all-powerful God. It follows therefore that
"children growing up in families relatively untainted by Christian notions
of self-loathing will be more likely to develop self-esteem than children in
a 'good' Christian home." These negative consequences persist into
adulthood, according to Watters. For example religion's - especially
Christianity's - erotophobia supposedly makes men and women sexually
dysfunctional. Deadly Doctrine also charges that church-going impairs family
relations because it emphasizes the "human-to-God" bond over the
"human-to-human" bond. Relgious belief ultimately hurts us all, Watters
says, and thus the government should think about taking action against it.
State's involvement
Parents obviously shouldn't work themselves into a frenzy worrying that they
might be forbidden to take their children to church or other places of
worship in the near future. Watters eventually concedes that perhaps the
government should not interfere in private matters such as religious faith
or the lack thereof. His conclusion appears to stem more from self-interest
than consideration for others' freedom of belief, though, as he acknowledges
that similar state intervention could curb the expression of his humanist
creed.
Nonetheless, the very idea of a government-sponsored campaign against
citizens' personal beliefs is unsettling. In light of Watters' comparison of
such a campaign to the current one against smoking, one wonders what form
the former effort might take. Would employees be prohibited from wearing
religious symbols such as crosses and the Star of David in the workplace?
Would young people be indoctrinated into atheism or publicly discouraged
from attending religious services? These scenarios may seem like figments of
a wild imagination, but they're not that far-fetched either.
While humanists like to swell on the more unsavory aspects of religion, such
as the Inquisition and witch hunts, a quick glance at the history of places
like Eastern Europe makes it clear that a fair bit of repression has been
committed in the name of atheism too. Moreover, Canadian humanists, while
not in the same league as yesterday's Communist leaders, are not above
imposing themselves on others. The Humanist Association of Ottawa, for
instance, opposed the teaching in the public schools of a comparative
religion course, which did not advocate any belief system but merely sought
to foster religious tolerance among children, on the grounds that the course
did not adequately cover the dark side of religion. Considering all this, a
Watters-led anti-religious crusade is an ugly prospect.
Watters' comparison of religion to smoking as a potential target of
government intervention contains a serious flaw. Restrictions on smoking
were enacted at least in part because studies have demonstrated smokers, as
well as individuals exposed to second-hand smoke, have higher rates of
illnesses such as lung cancer than do people who neither smoke nor inhale
smoke produced by others. Such studies are known as controlled studies. That
is, they compare two groups: an experimental group, which in this case would
include smokers and/or people regularly exposed to second-hand smoke, and a
control group, which would consist of non-smokers unexposed to tobacco from
other sources. These studies have generally shown that members of the
experimental group are more likely to develop lung cancer than are those of
the control group, a finding that strongly suggests tobacco's negative
impact.
Control groups
Bans on smoking in public places thus make sense in that they protect people
to a certain extent from the dangers of tobacco. On the other hand, the
observation that some smokers develop lung cancer would not in itself be
enough to lay the blame on cigarettes, because without a control group of
non-smokers, it would be impossible to say with certainty that tobacco,
rather than some other factor, was responsible for the disease.
To justify a campaign against religion, Watters should present controlled
studies indicating that children raised in religious households have higher
rates of psychological disturbances, such as poor self-esteem, than do their
peers in less or non-observant homes.
Deadly Doctrine makes no mention of any such research. The reason for the
omission is simple: studies showing a harmful effect of religion on young
people are scanty. In fact, the available evidence suggests youngsters
living in religious homes enjoy better mental health. For example, despite
Watters' belief that Christian teaching damages children's self-concept, at
least two controlled studies have found young people from secular families
have lower self-esteem than do those with more religious parents. In light
of this and other research, the scientific ground for a public campaign
against religion is flimsy.
As to err is human but to admit one's errors is not, Watters tries to go
around the lack of evidence of this view that religion harms children. He
claims that his statements have not been "subjected to rigorous scientific
examination" and that in any case the "methodology for testing these
hypotheses is a long way from being developed" - ignoring research that has
found a positive relationship between religion and youngsters' well-being.
In an attempt to prove his points, Watters reports on patients of his who
were raised in religious households and who subsequently developed
psychological problems. Such an approach is known in scientific circles as
the case study method. This method, however, has a major shortcoming:
individual cases do not always reflect the experiences of the average person
or the general population. The situation of Watters' patients may thus not
necessarily represent that of other people raised in a faith.
There is another serious limitation inherent in the case study method. In
looking at individual patients, it is tempting to ascribe their difficulties
to a single cause and to ignore other factors that may have contributed to
their situation. Watters, as a militant atheist, might have concentrated
solely on religion as the source of his clients' problems and failed to take
account of their other background characteristics. His anti-religious bias
becomes apparent when he tries to explain how religion specifically brought
individuals to his couch or got them into trouble in other ways.
These explanations frequently require - pardon the pun - huge leaps of
faith. For instance, a young woman's suicide following rejection by her
boyfriend is attributed to the fact that by "blackmailing its followers with
the sacrifice of Jesus," Christianity influences people to kill themselves
in order to "blackmail loved ones into a state of ... contrition." He
meanwhile makes no reference to statistics showing lower suicide rates among
the religiously committed. His logic may appear baffling to most people, but
just as some religious denominations adhere to doctrines incomprehensible to
outsiders (the Jehovah's Witnesses' ban on blood transfusions comes to
mind), so does Watters' humanism.
Speculation as fact
Deadly Doctrine relies on another sometimes misused method to bolster its
claims: theoretical speculation. Watters speculates in one chapter that
children in Christian families will develop low self-esteem because various
biblical quotations, such as "not that we are sufficient of ourselves, but
our sufficiency is of God" (2 Cor 3:5), warn believers against pride and
self-love. While many theoretical assumptions have led to important
discoveries, others have collapsed under the weight of contradictory
evidence from controlled studies.
Watters fails to mention a single controlled study to back his theory of a
relationship between Christianity and low self-esteem. One might conclude
that as in his case study approach, his theoretical assumptions are overly
influenced by his militantly anti-religious stance. In any event, they
provide no convincing scientific evidence of the purported harm done to
children by religion.
When I'm in one of my least Christian moods, I find Watters' unscientific
approach not only inconsistent but dishonest. A more honest position on his
part would be to present his arguments as tenets of his individual belief
system rather than as established facts. But that's a stance he's highly
unlikely to adopt. Watters is basically an atheist fundamentalist, and like
any other fundamentalist - whether Christian, Hindu, Communist, fascist, or
whatever else - he cannot admit that world views beside his own are valid or
that his beliefs may be nothing more than personal opinions. Such an
admission would furthermore compromise his mission to turn "Homo religiosus"
into "Homo sapiens" and eradicate religion from society.
Things of this world
After all, an essential part of fundamentalists' pitch to potential converts
is the message that the latter's existing beliefs are not only wrong but
harmful. Whereas the religious proselytizer can assure those who reject his
or her message that they will burn in hell for eternity, Watters can only
promise suffering in the here and now. He therefore thunders about religion'
s negative impact on people's psychological well-being.
Watters and other like-minded humanists have the right to their views as
well as the right to express them. Imposing those views on others, though,
is another matter. Watters has as much right to demand a state-sponsored
campaign against religion as the Jehovah's Witnesses do to legally ban blood
transfusions (the Witnesses have actually never made such a demand; I am
describing a hypothetical situation here). In a pluralistic and democratic
country such as Canada, church ("church" here meaning any belief system) and
state should be separate. And this separation must not be broken by any
fundamentalists, whether of the religious or atheistic variety.
--
Atheism teaches that there is no God, hence no God-given rights. That
ideology coupled with a system that believed in the superiority of the state
at the expense of the individual was murderously synergistic.
.
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