AMHERST, N.Y. – With shaky hands and a pounding heart I shook the hand of biologist, writer, and British knight Sir Richard Dawkins and told him what an honour it was to meet him. He smiled, and in a soft inquisitive English accent asked me my name. I said Chris, that I came from Canada, and I thanked him for granting an interview.
“What interview?” he asked.
I explained that I had arranged through a media contact, Nathan Bupp, to have an interview with him.
“Well, I have to give a big address tonight,” said Dawkins, “so I won’t have time for any interviews.”
I jokingly muttered that he would have to talk to Mr. Bupp about that.
“Actually,” Dawkins shot back, “I think Mr. Bupp is going to have to talk to me.”
I stammered a thank you, and, overjoyed, beat back to my seat.
As a student of biology, I knew that religious ideas often interfered with scientific development, as in the case of stem cells, cloning, and evolution. Thus I sought and found a philosophy called secular humanism that opposed the impediments religion placed on science and society. I tagged along with members of the Toronto Secular Alliance (TSA) as they drove down to Buffalo, for the 25th anniversary conference of the Council for Secular Humanism (CSH). I wanted to figure out what secular humanists like Dawkins thought of religion and to see if secularism was for me.
Secular humanism argues that knowledge, morals, and meaning come from human minds in the natural world and not from ancient supernatural religious stories. According to the second Humanist Manifesto (1973), “any account of nature should pass the tests of scientific evidence; in our judgment, the dogmas and myths of traditional religions do not do so.”
Secular humanists respect different views and see dignity and worth in every individual, religious or not. While recognizing religion’s historical value, secular humanism argues “that traditional dogmatic or authoritarian religions that place revelation, God, ritual, or creed above human needs and experience do a disservice to the human species,” according to the manifesto.
At the conference, CSH president Paul Kurtz explained the humanists’ perspective best. “We are disturbed by the growth of anti-scientific attitudes in the world. We are concerned with the resurgence of fundamentalist religion everywhere and their alliance with moral, political, and ideological movements to block scientific inquiry.”
Shortly after our awkward first encounter, Dawkins slipped into the seat beside me, warm and pleasant, and answered some of my questions regarding his views on religion.
“I think that religions are essentially scientific theories about the universe for which there are no evidence. I’m prepared to be persuaded that somebody needs religion in order for consolation to keep them happy, but then that’s like saying religion is a drug. It doesn’t make it true, and as a scientist I care about what’s true. As long as nobody tries to say to me, ‘People need religion therefore religion is true’ I’m very happen to listen to ‘I need my religion’.”
To Dawkins, religion is a dangerous drug indeed.
“I think that faith unsubstantiated by evidence is dangerous because it doesn’t admit argument. We can’t say, ‘Let’s sit down and sort out our disagreement’, or ‘Let’s at least agree what it would take to change our mind.’ If you have an absolutely unshakable faith and think it’s a virtue, and the other guy thinks it’s a virtue to have unshakable faith in the opposite direction, there’s nothing but to kill each other. And that’s what’s happened in history over and over again.
“I also think it’s dangerous to child welfare because I think that children are being brought up to not have a questioning attitude to the world, but brought up to believe things because of faith and because of tradition, because of authority, because of private relation and that’s no way to believe anything.”
During the conference I heard many excellent talks criticizing sharia law and Intelligent Design, describing the harmful effects of fundamentalism on childhood, and exposing the media’s portrayal of atheists as curmudgeons. Many logical arguments, spoken by distinguished minds, promoted secularism and denounced religion. However, when I paid attention to people more and logic less, I began to wonder whether the reasonable words of scholars, like Dawkins, fueled religious hatred.
One incident was illuminating. After my interview with Dawkins I lost my pen. My only other pen, which belonged to my religious father, said “Jesus loves you.” During conversations at the conference, the pen usually got noticed and I would receive uncomfortable smiles, uneasy stares, or, “That’s an interesting pen” and the conversation always stopped, even when I explained the pen was not mine. How would people that transferred discomfort with religious ideas to those who presumably held them react to the arguments of Dawkins?
How about the words of Peter Atkins? “God is a synonym for intellectual defeat. Scientifically alert atheism respects the power of human brains to achieve understanding. Religion scorns humanity by claiming humans are intellectually too puny to understand the world around them without a higher power.”
Like Dawkins, Atkins also thought of religion’s use as drug-like.
“It controls people,” Atkins told me afterward. “For the very poor it gives hope. But it should be got rid of. On the whole the evil it causes outweighs the good.”
Not all thought like Atkins at the conference, though.
“I don’t like blanket statements and generalizations,” said Canadian science-writer Eric Grace. “I do think so much of religion is destructive, but I think that a lot of people are uncomfortable with this belligerent form of atheism.”
During one of the talks, for instance, Richard Dawkins stated “the jealous God of the Old Testament is surely one of the … nastiest, most truly evil characters in all fiction,” and compared him to a miserable two-year-old, all to the boisterous laughter of the crowds.
“I think this whole conference just fueled a whole lot of ‘us versus them’ attitude,” said a secularist from Florida. Toronto Secular Alliance (TSA) member Chris Wilmer noted, “They didn’t stress that religious people and religion are different entities. I’m worried this may lead to a generation of hateful secularists.”
Wilmer’s worries seemed justified the previous night, when, in the privacy of their motel room, members of the TSA ordered take-out for dinner. But alas, the restaurant had forgotten to include napkins. What could the TSA use to wipe their hands? Tissues? Toilet paper? From what I could reconstruct from interviews, one of the Torontonians defaced a motel-roon Bible, using its pages as napkins.
“They didn’t give me any napkins with my pizza,” said self-proclaimed “militant atheist” and Ryerson radio broadcaster Jean Hodgkinson on the car ride home.
Although versions varied among TSA members as to the identities of persons who ripped the Bible, back in Toronto everyone blamed Hodgkinson.
“[Hodgkinson] was too fast for us,” said TSA members Jen Harmer and Elaine Cairns, in separate interviews.
“[Hodgkinson] is not representative of this group,” said TSA president Justin Trottier. “He hasn’t participated in any of our events nor has he done anything for this group.”
I agree with the secular arguments presented that religion impedes the development of human understanding and as such the role of religion needs to be deemphasized in society. But I thought the tone of the arguments a tad harsh. I felt that in the minds of some secular humanists, such arguments justified their religious prejudice and their expression of that prejudice. But I also learned that people are responsible for their actions and that promoting secularism does not entail disrespecting religion.
“I don’t think [the Bible] is appropriate to contemporary society,” said CSH president Paul Kurtz, “but it shows us a world of ancient tribes, of humans, in the Middle East, their visions and yearnings. It is of considerable historical interest. I guess this incident shows there are bad, stupid, immature people in all groups, including secularists.”
