"New Atheists" and the experience of the twentieth century

In recent years, there have been more and more reasons to discuss the relationship between religion and society (the latest being discussions around the possible transfer of St. Isaac's Cathedral to the Church), and it is not surprising that more and more often these discussions are developing into disputes about religion and atheism.

In these disputes, there is often a temptation to rely on the “latest achievements of science” - that is, on the work of the so-called. "new atheists" such as Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett. But their position in many cases seems to me counterproductive and does not bring us any closer to solving the question of how to build relations with the Church. It helps especially little to those who have no reverence for this institution and are inclined to at least question the existence of God in the form in which representatives of the largest religions talk about him.

During rare discussions with followers of the “new atheists,” I often encountered the conviction of my opponents that any criticism of the views of Dawkins and Co. is carried out in the interests of religion and the Church, so I would like to say right away that I do not belong to any church and do not practice none of the existing religions. The question of the existence of God does not seem to me so important that I would strive to answer it at any cost - that is, for a religious person I will most likely look like an atheist. And, of course, I advocate the secular nature of the state and the complete separation of any religion from it.

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Now, a few words about what I don’t like about the position of the “new atheists.”

Let me start with the fact that their very rhetoric and appeal to scientific knowledge as the highest truth identify them as followers of the Age of Enlightenment and positivist criticism of religion. When it comes to refuting the “morality” of religion, they almost literally quote the works of 18th century French philosophers, from Voltaire to de Sade, citing examples of crimes committed by religious fanatics, and drawing attention to how monstrous the Old Testament prohibitions or “role models” look " Today, this list can be supplemented by pointing out the patriarchal, homophobic and xenophobic character inherent in most fundamental religious texts. From here, Dawkins, following Voltaire, concludes that the world will become a better place if we “crush the reptile,” that is, destroy religion and the Church.

This conclusion seems unconvincing to me because it ignores the experience of the twentieth century, which showed that the worst features of “religious obscurantism” can exist without belief in God and the immortality of the soul - just remember the history of the USSR, China or Kampuchea. At the end of the 20th century, it turned out that xenophobia, intolerance and ideological narrow-mindedness exist perfectly well without God and belief in the supernatural - that is, they have a different source and other reasons. Perhaps these reasons lie in the field of animal psychology or the theory of social systems - but, one way or another, in a country where an atheistic dictatorship existed for seventy years, it is a little stupid to say that xenophobia and the destruction of dissidents is primarily the result of faith in God and life after death.

The same is true of many of the other arguments of the New Atheists: they ignore much of the evidence and humanities research of the last hundred years.

Take, for example, the introduction to Dawkins’s book “The God Delusion,” where the author writes that he will not consider the God of Einstein and other pantheists at all, because in fact all these people, of course, were atheists. Firstly, we are very familiar with this method of conducting polemics: let’s first come up with an opponent who says stupid things, and then prove that he is a fool. If our opponent says something smart, then we will exclude this smart thing from consideration. Secondly, it was the realization that faith in God can exist without institutionalized religion that was one of the important results of the twentieth century, along with the fact that a person who believes in God is not obliged to believe in the God described in the Bible, the Koran and other traditional texts.

In addition, Dawkins postulates that any religion is associated with belief in a supernatural creator God. This thesis sounded good in the 18th and 19th centuries, but today we know that at least one of the world's largest religions - Buddhism - is an atheistic religion, that is, a religion that does without the idea of ​​an omnipotent God who created the world. Buddhists, of course, like to say that this is not a religion, but a teaching, but a traditional atheist easily finds in Buddhism most of the religious features: church hierarchy and rituals, belief in the supernatural and in life after death. In other words, here too Dawkins follows the Enlightenment and reduces criticism of religion to criticism of Abrahamic religions, ignoring the knowledge accumulated in the twentieth century about non-European religious systems.

It is generally accepted that Dawkins's main innovation in the critique of religion is his theory of memes (also cited by Dennett and Boyer). For all the appeal of this theory - especially in the era of social networks - it should be noted that it does not answer an important question: why did different religions form in different parts of the planet, nevertheless united by common ideas about the supernatural harmony that permeates our world? Meanwhile, the neurophysiology of the brain and numerous studies conducted over the last half century show that there are certain neurochemical mechanisms that ensure the appearance in the human consciousness of what is commonly called mystical experience.

Ignoring this scientific evidence allows Dawkins to persistently appeal to Russell's "cosmic teapot" metaphor, expressed by the English philosopher in a 1952 paper: "If I were to assert that there is a porcelain teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit around the sun between the Earth and Mars, no one could disprove my statements, I add in advance, are that the small size of the teapot does not allow it to be detected even with the help of the most powerful telescopes. However, if I further stated that since my statement cannot be refuted, rational humanity has no right to doubt its truth, I would rightly be shown that I am talking nonsense. But if the existence of such a teapot was confirmed by ancient texts, its authenticity was repeated on Sundays from the pulpit, and this idea was drummed into the heads of schoolchildren from childhood, then disbelief in its reality would seem strange, and doubters would be transferred into the enlightened age to the care of psychiatrists, and in The Middle Ages are in the experienced hands of the Inquisition."

I will leave aside the considerations that Russell, as a logician, dealt quite a lot with the structure of the truth of statements with an absent (or unprovably present) subject, and without this context his joke about the teapot loses some of the meanings that he probably had in mind. It is much more important that today religion is legitimized not through “ancient texts” and “sermons from the pulpit,” but primarily through the above-mentioned mystical experience, including chemically stimulated. Today, Russell’s opponent could object to him that when a substance is invented, under the influence of which a statistically significant number of people will “see” a cosmic teapot, then it will be possible to equate the teapot with the God whose presence many people feel under the influence of psychedelics.

Of course, I don't mean that LSD or psilocybin prove the existence of God. The important thing is that even if God does not exist, then he still does not exist in a slightly different way than Russell’s teapot, if only because the idea of ​​God arises in the human brain somewhat more easily than the idea of ​​cosmic dishes.

Concluding the conversation about Dawkins’ book “The God Delusion,” I would like to note that this is a very American book. Perhaps it is important to know whether the Founding Fathers were atheists to combat American Christian fundamentalists. For me, the corresponding chapter is interesting only in the light of the famous analysis of the text of the Declaration of Independence carried out by Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy. But inside Russia, to confront Mizulina and others like her, this book seems to me absolutely useless and even harmful.

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Here I would like to stop in the analysis of Dawkins' book. Let me summarize what I see as the main shortcomings of his approach:

– ignoring the data of social sciences and historical experience of the twentieth century;

– ignoring data from neurophysiological studies of the brain, including those related to mystical experience, meditation, and so on;

– ignoring what became clear in the 20th century: the idea of ​​God can exist without religion, religion can exist without the Church, and belief in an afterlife can exist without belief in God.

Dawkins ignores all this more or less deliberately. Let’s add to this a categorical tone (“No sane person would allow the fact that the fiction of flying teapots and fairies is unprovable to serve as a decisive argument in an important dispute” - an appeal to a “sane person” only makes me personally feel embarrassed for the author) - and it becomes clear that Why does a person who has spent some time understanding the experience of the twentieth century experience a feeling of awkwardness and boredom when reading the “new atheists”.

What is the reason for the popularity of books by the “new atheists”? I think that their audience is people with little education in the humanities who believe in science and do not believe in God. After reading The God Delusion, they may exclaim, “Oh! I always thought so too!” - and experience a feeling of satisfaction.

It is surprising that when discussing Dawkins’s views one often hears a reference to his authority as a biologist - meanwhile, a reference to the high scientific authority of mathematicians such as Fomenko and Shafarevich does not make the former’s “New Chronology” and the latter’s “Russophobia” any more convincing , no more “scientific”.

Of course, all of the above is just a story about my personal reading experience, and I can assume that other people do find important and previously unfamiliar thoughts and ideas in the books of Dawkins and Dennett. It is also possible that some of the works of these authors that passed by me are free from the shortcomings listed above.

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Perhaps the reason for my reserved attitude towards the “new atheists” is that I myself grew up in a deeply atheistic family: my great-grandmother, born in the 19th century, did not believe in God. Unlike the recipient of Dennett's lecture , it is not at all difficult for me to say: “Yes, I am an atheist.” But in my atheistic family, it was customary to treat positivist atheists with slight bewilderment - and a critical attitude towards arguments like “Cosmonauts flew into space, but did not see God” or “If you don’t believe that a virgin could give birth to a child, then you atheist” did not at all prevent my grandparents from remaining atheists. It is important for me to note this also because many fans of Dawkins believe that criticism of his books will lead to the destruction of atheism and the triumph of fundamentalist religiosity in the style of one organization banned in the Russian Federation or Milonov (allowed in the Russian Federation).

Meanwhile, there is a direction of atheistic thought that differs from positivist atheism such as the encyclopedists and Dawkins. We are talking about philosophers and writers who, while denying the existence of God and eternal life, nevertheless acted as continuers of a centuries-old religious tradition. Friedrich Nietzsche proposed the idea of ​​the “death of God,” Georges Bataille explored the connection between the transcendent and the obscene, Albert Camus described attempts to become a “saint without God,” and Jacques Derrida studied the “traces” of the transcendent that we can find in any texts belonging to our culture.

One can name many more names of thinkers who are united by the fact that, while critical of the Church and Abrahamic religions, they carefully examine mystical and transcendental experience, analyzing its influence on human life and culture. In my opinion, it is their works that serve as a good antidote to the primitivism and xenophobia of traditional religions.

I would not write this article if it were not for the alarm caused by the rapid narrowing of the “space of thinking” these days, sandwiched between fundamentalists and obscurantists of all stripes on the one hand and secondary and primitive “new atheists” on the other.

With this article I wanted to urge InLiberty readers to be more attentive and remember that today the main enemies of free thought in any area, from politics and economics to the discussion of religion, are such techniques as simplification, primitivization and deliberate stupidity of the opponent. Let's not use them even for the best purposes.

The author expresses gratitude to Alexander Gavrilov, Gleb Chernyavsky, Ekaterina Kadieva and Dmitry Vinogradov, without discussing with whom Dmitry Uzlaner’s article this text would not have been written.