With the start of another calendar cycle, I'm returning to the blog with renewed motivation to keep my occasional musings on record. So much of farm life is cyclical that one can lose a sense of movement and progress without taking deliberate effort to mark down the current state of things. Even if this state is subject to change, it offers a sort of mental datum for future reference. So here we go: what follows are reflections on where my mind has been these last few years, starting with that most exalted topic, theology. Bear with me if you don't care much for theology, because I promise to tie this into sustainable agriculture soon or later.
Remember the New Atheists? I nearly had, until recently...
A little history lesson, for anyone not up to speed on theological debates. Sometime around 11 September 2001--and not merely by coincidence--certain atheists became persuaded not only of the widely proclaimed death of God but also that this anti-theistic gospel required urgent evangelism, in order to secure the (un?)belief of all thinking people. The so-called 'Four Horsemen' of this New Atheism (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens) published hugely popular books in the aughts, at least in terms of sale numbers. I'll risk over-simplifying their arguments by summarizing that a common theme in all their works was that 'religious' belief is positively bad for individuals and for society, and that we would all be morally improved by embracing secularism and laying God to rest once and for all.
I'll confess that I haven't personally read every book in question. My familiarity with their arguments is mediated by reading reviews and by the fact that when these volumes were being published, I had the distinction of being TA to one of the Anglophone world's most notable scholars of the philosophy of religion. He hasn't given me permission to discuss his private conversations here, so I won't quote him extensively on the New Atheists. But I will share this: While his Welsh mien and British education made him customarily reluctant to give his frank view on a topic of professional interest (such as theology), he did once offer a concise opinion on one of the books in question. He'd finished reading it the night before, and when I reported to his office, he asked me if I had ever read the thing. I said I hadn't yet, and to paraphrase him, he told me not to bother. Then he summed up that the book showed clear evidence that its author is very intelligent. But the pages were filled with either truths that were trivial and obvious to almost anyone, or with claims about religion that clearly weren't researched and were almost universally quite "stupid."
And yet these books flew off the shelves, and acolytes of these writers began to proliferate online. Major conferences of self-described Free Thinkers drew attendees in the thousands. But then, almost as suddenly as it emerged as a cultural juggernaut, this New Atheism fizzled starting around 2011. What happened? Why did this movement arise at all, and why did it then decline?
My interest here is especially piqued because in recent months, I have encountered numerous references to the cultural moment surrounding these New Atheists. In their bluster and swagger, they surely kicked up a lot of dust around the--perhaps overly self-satisfied, even smug--facades of religious folks. But with some time to mature and settle down, even atheist stalwarts are looking back on this period with some embarrassment. More than that, some prominent atheists have converted to religion, sparking conversation about whether we are seeing a resurgence of religion in the West. On this question of religious revival I have some thoughts...But first, let me offer my accounting of this phenomenon called New Atheism.
A Theory of the New Atheism's Rise and Fall: or, Why Atheism's not Great
If my professor was correct in deeming New Atheism to be, shall we say, on a flimsy foundation intellectually, then why were the arguments of the early century Four Horsemen so persuasive? I trace it to two key features of life at the turn of the millenium, one intrinsic to established religions and the other intrinsic to modern society.
1) Modern society is thoroughly secularized.
If this thesis seems at all controversial, I would refer you to the learned scholarship of Charles Taylor who surely has better qualifications than I do to make such pronouncements. The idea here is that to live in Western, post-colonial societies just is, in part, to interact with other citizens as though their religion is irrelevant to whatever is at hand. Religion isn't erased, but it is inessential to a person's proper social self. Values that enter into the public domain must be scrubbed of the trappings of religion, and preferably should be expressed in terms that the market can evaluate. Sacred ideals and divine claims lose their power when money is the measure of all things. A person can't set a price on the ecstasy of worshiping God on the mountaintop. But corporations can buy the mountain and throw its top into the valleys to scrape out a bit of coal, not to be burned in ritual sacrifice but to feed the
demands of the market.
By 2001, the process of secularization--in my estimation--reached a sort of saturation point, which may be evident in the fact that a child could be reared absent any familiarity with a religious tradition or even an observant family member. Supposing this is true for enough people, an intellectual could become an adult and have no direct knowledge of what religion is in practical terms, or even what might motivate a religious person to be faithful. I state this hypothesis without having sufficient empirical data to support that such saturation really happened, but it is a condition for the possibility of books being written about religious belief that exhibit no experience with what that belief is or isn't, i.e., the books by the Four Horsemen. It's also a condition of the possibility of there being a reading public who will applaud the views of an evolutionary biologist, a neuroscientist, a philosopher, and a journalist on a knotty topic like religion, about which neither the writers nor the readers have any evident authority.
And yet, secularization is nothing new. How to explain New Atheism's particular moment of ascendence? What's more, the effect of a secular public--if at my theorized saturation point--would be a mere absence of religiosity. This might explain how people could be ready to believe all sorts of "stupid" claims about religion, but not the fervor surrounding such claims nor the fact that many de-converted from their religions during this time, in response to these vocal exponents of atheism.
To explain the zeal and appeal of atheism in the aughts, I must address what the Four Horsemen got absolutely correct: established religions were (and always have been and will be) bad for people. This is my second thesis.
2) Established religions are bad.
This is a sweeping statement, and it is very liable to be misunderstood by a secular public (and surely to be resented by many religious folks). Still, I take it to be obvious enough, if understood correctly. Here is what I mean by this claim: first, I am talking about established religions--not some abstraction like religion in general, having faith, being spiritual, seeking the ultimate Source, etc. Established religions are historically manifest in creeds and rites, and practiced by people in temples, churches, mosques, or what have you. They have varying degrees of hierarchy among their practitioners, and more or less institutional enforcement of uniformity. But whatever their particularities, established religions are traditions within communities of people, and they will bear the marks of human proclivity for both divine self-sacrifice and demonic self-aggrandizement. More than this, since religions captivate a person's deepest longings and inculcate vivid images of spiritual possibility (eternal torment or reward), these established traditions are culturally powerful. And power, mixed with otherwise merely venial characters, precipitates evil. Put simply, established religions are bad in the same sense and to the same extent that people are bad, imperfect, deeply flawed, corrupt, whatever, if you give them long enough observation.
In this light, my claim should be clear. I'm not saying established religions are not good in some ways, or that they must be abolished entirely. Otherwise, by that logic, we must abolish the institution of family as well, as family relations account for so much trauma and abuse. Many may find this comparison inappropriate because, well, how could we get rid of family as such? Isn't family just a necessary part of human existence? To these I would say: family is no more or less necessary than religion is, for those who experience religion from within. What we all must confront is that, just as people can be good and yet capable of being powerfully bad, so too with established religions, which are just groups of people, after all.
But this isn't enough to explain the eruption of New Atheism. Established religions were quietly losing credibility in the secularized West for generations, and they didn't only recently become bad in the way I am describing. What happened was a convergence of many events, as well as the right critics to sound a clarion call at the right time. The events in question are, of course, 1) the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 by 'jihadist Islamists', and shortly after that, 2) the revelation in 2002 that the Roman Catholic diocese of Boston had been covering up abuse of children by priests. Disturbingly, once this corruption was discovered in this single diocese, people began looking elsewhere for child abuse coverups, and the rot was not isolated, being found not only in countries around the globe, but even outside Catholicism and outside of religion proper (e.g., Boys Scouts of America).
Previously, avowed atheists practiced a sort of quietism in the public sphere (like Bertrand Russell). To misquote Ford Madox Ford (in the character of Christopher Tietjens), the long-held rule of atheism may have been stated: "I stand for reason and secularism. And for not talking about it." Well, that's an overstatement. But they spoke politely to religious peers, and they had many personal relationships with observant types. Not anymore. The above-noted events woke atheists from their (un?)dogmatic slumber, and their moral outrage was met with resounding agreement.
So much for my theory of New Atheism's ascendence: generations of secularism wears away the luster of religion's thurible, and then explosive events make even a whiff of religion repugnant to many well-informed and morally self-respecting people. In case my own opinion here isn't entirely clear, let me just say plainly that I applaud the New Atheists and their ensuing throng for their unflinching commitment to a moral and reasonable public sphere, free of violence or secret child abuse cults.
What happened next was not a triumphant spread of atheism to every corner of Western culture, and the beginning of the final chapter for all established religions. Far from it. Unfortunately, the seeds of the New Atheism's demise were planted within it from the start. I will explain what I think these seeds were, but first, I will briefly address the spark that catalyzed the downward spiral of the movement.
Why New Atheism was always doomed
The fateful encounter was: when a dude made an unwanted (perhaps sexual) advance on a younger woman, in 2011. They were in an elevator at 4am during a New Atheism conference, so it's known as 'elevatorgate', a name as ugly as the event it signifies. Say what you will about the degree of impropriety involved here, what is beyond the reach of my own capacity for sympathy is how Richard Dawkins responded. Rather than appeal to unity and use his authority to bring both sides into the fold again, he mercilessly mocked his young female colleague for expressing her discomfort. Consequently, he fomented a schism between a faction that supported taking down the patriarchy (called 'woke' by its detractors), and another faction in favor of staying in the lane of bashing religions but not other forms of oppressive culture.
Nothing about this fracas was inevitable. But I think that New Atheism was indeed bound to fade away. In other words, something like this was always waiting in the wings. Dawkins et al. may have held together a coalition longer than they did, but they didn't have a chance in the long run. I have several reasons for saying this so confidently.
First, as atheists will remind you, they don't believe in some other thing; they just don't have a particular belief that you find important. I will take them at their word, on faith, as it were. That being the case, a lack of belief isn't sufficient to unite a group around a cause. This is why it was so important for terrorists to succeed and priests to be monsters, in order to galvanize a movement around unbelief. But this brings me to my second reason for dooming the New Atheists: they fostered moral outrage without proffering any alternate moral vision. The problem for them is that the moral principle of secularism is specifically formulated to neutralize substantive moral and religious conflicts. It goes like this: Leave other people alone unless they are harming you. Go to the governing authorities for redress if you can prove the harm.
Secular society is, by design, not a cohesive movement of people with a common cause who care about some one thing, let alone each other. It is meant to protect atomized individuals from the presumed selfishness of others, and it makes the State a crucial mediator of this balance. People who want to forge meaningful community outside of the intervention of the State and its legal tests for proof of harm must practice disciplines that date back before Westphalia. These disciplines include ancient and sacred habits like grace, forgiveness, humility, and even chastity in elevators.
And thus, I have come not to honor New Atheism, but to bury it. It turns out that its rising star wasn't a portent of victory but an omen of ill fortune: a brief spell of moral consonance, followed by a cacophony of very human babble and dissension. New Atheism had its hour or so, but it was no rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born.
Subsequently, we are witnessing some who once found solace in atheism turning to belief in God with renewed curiosity, even conviction. There are whispers of a religious revival in the West. So, while I'm on the topic and I have given my indictment of New Atheism, I will finish with my thoughts about such a religious resurgence (and I'll finally connect this to agriculture).
Remember the Great Awakening(s)? Are they a trilogy?
To begin, a word about my opinion of prognostication. Even without affirming human free will against determinism, I take it for granted that we're complicated enough animals to elude even the most sophisticated models of human behavior, on an individual level. As an aggregate, patterns can emerge over large enough samples or large enough spans of time. Such trends are best imagined as fuzzy regions of likely outcomes and not fixed lines of regression, with proper margins for error, and of course, no individual necessarily will fall into a tendency.
I say all of this because my very strong suspicion is that the recent spate of converts from atheism to religion are just a case of exceptions that prove the rule. They don't follow the general tendency, as individual choice is a crucial factor, essential to religious conversions. But studies abound that show Western societies moving further from public religious observance. I hardly feel the need to provide evidence. The prophet of a new great awakening will protest, "But these are early times. The revival is only beginning, so of course our numbers are small in comparison to the tide of unbelievers leaving religion, but the gravity is starting to pull the other way."
That's quite an elaborate theory to fit such meagre evidence, though. Besides, a much simpler theory of the upswing in atheist conversions is possible:
1) The New Atheist movement was intellectually unsophisticated initially, and it went to battle with Christians who have spent centuries debating some of these topics (can God's existence be proven? does evil prove God doesn't exist? does a creation story contradict the scientific theory of evolution? are faith and reason in conflict? I could go on. Seriously, these are conversations with hundreds of years of ink spilled.).
2) When Christian thinkers winsomely took up the atheists' challenges, and they didn't fall cowering or even look the worse for tangling in this arena, some were left wanting to know more about this Christian tradition. In the end, New Atheism put some anti-religious folks into contact with true believers for the first time (recall my theory of secular saturation), and it convinced some of them that they needed to actually know about religion before opposing it. Consequently, some learned about Christianity and found its treasures worth prizing. They left the wilderness of non-belief and un-belonging to enter the kingdom. I get the attraction.
3) Since the New Atheism cranked the volume on what it was doing, none of this went unnoticed. Plenty of religious folks have been putting a magnifying glass on the fallout from these anti-religious books. So when some involved with the Four Horsemen converted, it made headlines in the religious dailies, as it were.
What we're seeing here are a limited number of highly publicized cases of conversion, with a reasonable story as to why they are happening now. No need for grand claims about a counter-trend. The numbers don't support it. I expect that now atheism will continue gaining its own converts on the momentum of modernity, and nothing Christians say or do about atheism will make a difference.
There you have it. I have given my grand set of theories regarding New Atheism and the religious resurgence it may have partially inaugurated. All of this only keeps my attention because I see it within a more expansive framework that includes both the atheists and religious folks, especially Western Christians. It has to do with how both contribute to modernity, just from opposing sides. And modernity is designed to keep these sides at odds, and feed on their energy for self-sustenance. But I can't delve into that pile of excrement at the moment. I'll pick up the shovel next time, and make all of this relate to agriculture, as promised!