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Lahore, December 9: International Human Rights Day of 2009 falls amidst the cruel realities being faced by Pakistanis.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan is extremely perturbed at the huge suffering of people in Pakistan owing to the lethal brutality unleashed by Islamist militants as well as the destruction caused by internal conflicts in many parts of the country.
A series of bomb attacks carried out by Islamist militants killing thousands of civilians as well as members of the security forces has been devastating. Children and women have been most vulnerable to the accesses of militants. Schools have not been spared and women living in the conflict zones are totally immobilized. Pakistan is facing one of its worst challenges to protect the rights of its citizens.
HRCP recognizes that it is the primary obligation of the government to protect the lives of civilians against the inhuman accesses of militant groups, yet, it calls for respect for human dignity during any armed operation carried out by government forces. Regrettably, credible reports indicate that the security forces too have committed human rights violations during army operations. The so-called counter-insurgency operations carried out by the military and paramilitary forces have used heavy artillery, killing an unknown number of civilians. Access to independent observers and the press is denied by the security forces. According to government sources themselves, several hundred people have involuntarily disappeared and a large number of families of the missing individuals accuse the security forces and intelligence agencies of perpetrating the crime. Torture is used by the security forces as a matter of routine. Reports received by HRCP reveal extremely inhuman methods of torture employed by the security establishment in Balochistan. People are blindfolded, hung upside down, burnt, given electric shocks, whipped, beaten with iron rods; kept under extreme glare of lights and their heads doused in water. Despite, several reports issued by the press, accounts by the victims in courts and to the media, incidents reported by national and international human rights bodies, the government has never responded to these allegations in any constructive or coherent manner. A bland denial is no response – on the contrary it only adds salt to the wounds of the victims.
HRCP is equally concerned about army operations carried out in areas of FATA and Malakand Division. Independent sources have complained about reprisals from armed militias operating under the patronage of security forces. There are verified reports of extrajudicial killings of suspected militants and their family members and arbitrary arrests of several individuals. Mass graves have been identified but the government has failed to investigate these allegations and has not been able to establish the identity of the dead bodies.
It is imperative that in these trying days human rights concerns be expressed in an unambiguous, and impartial manner and watchdog bodies orient themselves with the international humanitarian and human rights law during armed conflicts. It is essential that everyone remains entitled to the enjoyment of human rights, whether in time of peace or armed conflicts. It is important to give particular attention to the education of all members of security and other armed forces, and of all law enforcement agencies, in the international law of human rights and international humanitarian law applicable in armed conflicts. There are limitation on the use of force even during conflict and on opposing forces too. It is prohibited to launch attacks on civilian populations and the use of weapons which cause unnecessary suffering to combatants or which endanger civilian populations in the area of conflict is restricted and in some cases even prohibited.
Finally, HRCP would like to draw the attention of the government that they are obliged, as soon as circumstances permit, to report the number of those killed, injured or missing owing to the conflict. It is also essential that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) be given access to prisoners of the conflict, the UNHCR and relief workers get free and unimpeded access to those in need of humanitarian assistance and that independent journalists be allowed to visit areas of conflict without being followed or directed by government agents.
Asma Jahangir
Chairperson
Source: Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Website
(emphasis added by us)
Why is the honorable Chief Justice of Pakistan and the superior judiciary silent on the atrocities committed by the Taliban and the Pakistan Army? Which NRO covers extra-judicial killings, mass graves and torture? (SA)
Micheal Shermer, in an article on CNN.com, effectively summarizes some of the typical reasons behind the reluctance of some believers in accepting evolution. He argues that belief in both evolution and religion need not be a contradiction.
1. The Warfare Model of Science and Religion. The belief that there is a war between science and religion where one is right and the other wrong, and that one must choose one over the other.
2. Belief that evolution is a threat to specific religious tenets. Many people attempt to use science to prove certain religious tenets, but when they do not appear to fit, the science is rejected. For example, the attempt to prove that the Genesis creation story is accurately reflected in the geological fossil record has led many creationists to conclude that the Earth was created within the past 10,000 years, which is in sharp contrast to the geological evidence for a 4.6 billion-year-old Earth.
3. Misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. A significant problem is that most people know so little about the theory. In the 2001 Gallup Poll, for example, a quarter of the people surveyed said they didn’t know enough to say whether they accepted evolution or not, and only 34 percent considered themselves to be “very informed” about the theory. Because evolution is so controversial, public school science teachers typically drop the subject entirely rather than face the discomfort aroused among students and parents.
4. The fear that evolution degrades our humanity. After Copernicus toppled the pedestal of our cosmic centrality, Darwin delivered the coup de grâce by revealing us to be “mere” animals, subject to the same natural laws and historical forces as all other animals.
5. The equation of evolution with ethical nihilism. This sentiment was expressed by the neoconservative social commentator Irving Kristol in 1991: “If there is one indisputable fact about the human condition it is that no community can survive if it is persuaded — or even if it suspects — that its members are leading meaningless lives in a meaningless universe.”
6. The fear that evolutionary theory implies we have a fixed human nature. The first five reasons for the resistance to evolutionary theory come almost exclusively from political conservatives. This last reason originates from liberals who fear that the application of evolutionary theory to human thought and action implies that political policy and economic doctrines will fail because the constitution of humanity is stronger than the constitutions of states.
All of these fears are baseless. If one is a theist, it should not matter when God made the universe — 10,000 years ago or 10 billion years ago. The difference of six zeros is meaningless to an omniscient and omnipotent being, and the glory of divine creation cries out for praise regardless of when it happened.
Likewise, it should not matter how God created life, whether it was through a miraculous spoken word or through the natural forces of the universe that He created. The grandeur of God’s works commands awe regardless of what processes He used.
As for meanings and morals, it is here where our humanity arises from our biology. We evolved as a social primate species with the tendency of being cooperative and altruistic within our own groups, but competitive and bellicose between groups. The purpose of civilization is to help us rise above our hearts of darkness and to accentuate the better angels of our nature.
Believers should embrace science, especially evolutionary theory, for what it has done to reveal the magnificence of the divinity in a depth never dreamed by our ancient ancestors. We have learned a lot in 4,000 years, and that knowledge should never be dreaded or denied. Instead, science should be welcomed by all who cherish human understanding and wisdom.
Read the complete article here.
(Hat tip: Irtiqa)
An excellent article by Tom Rees on Epiphenom explaining the results of a study which indicates that people’s view of what God wants is actually a projection of their own beliefs and opinions:
What you want, god wants
Religious people tend to think that they know what their god wants, but how do they come by that knowledge? For me, as an atheist, it’s a fascinating question. The gods can’t be communicating their preferences directly (because there’s no such thing), so where do these beliefs come from?
One obvious source is the various holy books. However, even if you restrict yourself to adherents of a single religion, there are vast differences in beliefs about god’s opinions (and that’s just looking around the world today – when you extend the comparisons back in time the disagreements between believers become even more dramatic).
All this suggests that people must be projecting their own beliefs and opinions onto their god. A bundle of new studies from Nicholas Epley, at the University of Chicago, suggests that that is exactly what happens.
What he and his colleagues did was to subtly manipulate people’s own opinions, and see if that affected their ideas about what God’s opinions were.
So, for example, in one study he had people read two arguments, pro-and anti-affirmative action. In the ‘pro-policy’ condition, the ‘pro’ argument was strong and the ‘anti’ argument weak. In the ‘anti-policy’ condition, the strength of the arguments was reversed.
This had the desired effect on the subjects own opinions. Whether they were pro- or anti affirmative action was influenced by which arguments they read.
Then he asked them about what the average American thought about the topic, and also what George Bush thought. As you can see in the graph, this didn’t change regardless of how their own beliefs have been manipulated.
Their beliefs about what god thought did change, however. In fact, the correlation between their own opinions and what they themselves thought was very strong.
Now, what’s interesting is that their beliefs about Bill Gates’ opinions also mirrored their own. The thing about Bill Gates is that he’s generally admired, but nobody really knows what his opinion is on this topic. So they were free to invent it.
They did another, somewhat more sophisticated experiment that showed something similar. Basically, if you change people’s attitudes to the death penalty, then that changes whether they think God is pro- or anti-death penalty.
This is all good stuff. But it gets really interesting when you look at some of the brain scans they did. In these scans, they asked subjects to think about attitudes to euthanasia. First, their own attitude. Then the average American’s attitude. And finally God’s attitude.
The first brain image shows the difference between thinking about your own opinions and thinking about the average American’s opinions. You can see that some bits light up, indicating that there is a difference between the two thought processes. The brain recognises that the average American has a different opinion.
Looking next the brain image, which shows thinking about God’s opinions compared with the average American’s. Again, some differences. According to this brain, God does not think the same as an average American.
Now look at the last brain image in the panel. This takes the brain activity of someone thinking of their own opinion, and subtracts that from the brain activity of that same person thinking of god’s opinions. And guess what? They are exactly the same.
‘What would jesus do?’ It turns out that what Jesus would do is exactly what ‘I’ would do – at least in so far as figuring out what Jesus’s opinions are. Thinking about God’s opinions and thinking about your own opinions uses an identical thought process.
This is a fascinating result. It suggests that people use God not to inform their own decision making, but to reinforce it. Here’s what the study’s authors conclude:
People may use religious agents as a moral compass, forming impressions and making decisions based on what they presume God as the ultimate moral authority would believe or want. The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing. This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God’s beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing.
Now, this doesn’t show that religion has no influence on attitudes and opinions. Other research has shown that it does. But it does show is that people can and do reinvent their god to suit their own beliefs.
They make god in their own image.
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Epley N, Converse BA, Delbosc A, Monteleone GA, & Cacioppo JT (2009). Believers’ estimates of God’s beliefs are more egocentric than estimates of other people’s beliefs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America PMID: 19955414
As somebody who likes Musharraf and more-or-less supported his Presidency, I don’t mind that the American media has recently taken to asking him for advice in the war on terror. Not to mention his advice is decent enough, or at least seems so to me.
Anderson Cooper interviews Musharraf
Musharraf in the Wall Street Journal
Musharraf seems to repeat that the Pashtuns are alienated, and that all Taliban are Pashtun. All Taliban are not Pashtun, however. Other than that, I won’t comment on his advice, given that I know little about how to run a counterinsurgency 
.
Ahmed Rashid in his recent column on the BBC website makes a point that the Pakistani media, with their conspiracy theories and obsession with demonizing the civilian govt., is undermining the state of Pakistan. At a time of war and instability, this is an alarming occurrence as it diverts public attention away from the pressing issues that plague the country. The following is an excerpt from his column:
Pakistan is going through a multi-dimensional series of crises and a collapse of public confidence in the state. Suicide bombers strike almost daily and the economic meltdown just seems to get worse. But this is rarely apparent in the media, bar a handful of liberal commentators who try and give a more balanced and intellectual understanding by pulling all the problems together.
The explosion in TV channels in Urdu, English and regional languages has brought to the fore large numbers of largely untrained, semi-educated and unworldly TV talk show hosts and journalists who deem it necessary to win viewership at a time of an acute advertising crunch, by being more outrageous and sensational than the next channel.On any given issue the public barely learns anything new nor is it presented with all sides of the argument.Every talk show host seems to have his own agenda and his guests reflect that agenda rather than offer alternative policies.
Recently, one senior retired army officer claimed that Hakimullah Mehsud – the leader of the Pakistani Taliban which is fighting the army in South Waziristan and has killed hundreds in daily suicide bombings in the past five weeks – had been whisked to safety in a US helicopter to the American-run Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. In other words the Pakistani Taliban are American stooges, even as the same pundits admit that US-fired drone missiles are targeting the Pakistani Taliban in Waziristan.
Nobody discusses the failure of the education system that is now turning out hundreds of suicide bombers, rather than doctors and engineers.
Or the collapsing and corrupt national health system that forces the poorest to seek expensive private medical treatment, or the explosion in crime or suicides by failed farmers and workers who have lost their jobs.
Pakistan cannot tackle its real problems unless the country’s leaders – military and civilian – first admit that much of the present crisis is a result of long-standing mistakes, the lack of democracy, the failure to strengthen civic institutions and the lack of investment in public services like education, even as there continues to be a massive investment in nuclear weapons and the military.Pakistan’s crisis must first be acknowledged by officialdom and the media before solutions can be found.
The alternative is a continuation of the present paralysis where people are left confused, demoralised and angry.
Read the complete column here.
(Updated Below)
It was only a matter of time before Jeremy Scahill, the definitive source of news on Blackwater, got to the bottom of the story about Blackwater’s operations in Pakistan. He had been expressing his concern about the sheer number of private security contractors working in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for some time now. The extensive report, which mixes on-the-record credible sources with multiple anonymous ones, appears to be reliable.
This story is bound to garner significant attention in Pakistan given the public hysteria surrounding previous allegations of Blackwater’s presence in Pakistan. The Interior minister Rehman Malik, only a few days ago, said that he would resign if it was proved that Blackwater is operating in Pakistan. It remains to be seen how long he lasts, given that a reshuffle of the federal cabinet has already been publicly announced.
A rather unfavorable consequence of this report will be to lend credence to the likes of Shireen Mazari, Zaid Hamid, Ahmed Qureshi and their ilk. They have been harping on about Blackwater in Pakistan for ages as it nicely fits in with their conspiracy theories. However, this pales in comparison to the impact this story will have on the public perception of the war against the Taliban. With conspiracy theories abound, the sad fact is that it will now be even harder to convince most Pakistanis to take responsibility for the current security situation in the country.
The primary job of Blackwater operatives in Pakistan, according to Scahill’s report, is to plan drone strikes and operations against Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives inside Pakistan for the CIA and the JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) and assist in intelligence gathering. It appears that they do not provide private security service to high value targets inside Pakistan which is what they became notorious for in the first place. There is though a twist in the tale:
A former senior executive at Blackwater confirmed the military intelligence source’s claim that the company is working in Pakistan for the CIA and JSOC, the premier counterterrorism and covert operations force within the military. He said that Blackwater is also working for the Pakistani government on a subcontract with an Islamabad-based security firm that puts US Blackwater operatives on the ground with Pakistani forces in counter-terrorism operations, including house raids and border interdictions, in the North-West Frontier Province and elsewhere in Pakistan. This arrangement, the former executive said, allows the Pakistani government to utilize former US Special Operations forces who now work for Blackwater while denying an official US military presence in the country. He also confirmed that Blackwater has a facility in Karachi and has personnel deployed elsewhere in Pakistan.
According to the former executive, Blackwater operatives also integrate with Kestral’s forces in sensitive counterterrorism operations in the North-West Frontier Province, where they work in conjunction with the Pakistani Interior Ministry’s paramilitary force, known as the Frontier Corps (alternately referred to as “frontier scouts”). The Blackwater personnel are technically advisers, but the former executive said that the line often gets blurred in the field. Blackwater “is providing the actual guidance on how to do [counterterrorism operations] and Kestral’s folks are carrying a lot of them out, but they’re having the guidance and the overwatch from some BW guys that will actually go out with the teams when they’re executing the job,” he said. “You can see how that can lead to other things in the border areas.” He said that when Blackwater personnel are out with the Pakistani teams, sometimes its men engage in operations against suspected terrorists. “You’ve got BW guys that are assisting… and they’re all going to want to go on the jobs–so they’re going to go with them,” he said. “So, the things that you’re seeing in the news about how this Pakistani military group came in and raided this house or did this or did that–in some of those cases, you’re going to have Western folks that are right there at the house, if not in the house.” Blackwater, he said, is paid by the Pakistani government through Kestral for consulting services. “That gives the Pakistani government the cover to say, ‘Hey, no, we don’t have any Westerners doing this. It’s all local and our people are doing it.’ But it gets them the expertise that Westerners provide for [counterterrorism]-related work.“
Of all the numerous security firms in the United States, someone in the Pakistani establishment thought it was a bright idea to to go out and hire the one with the notoriously bad reputation in Pakistan. I believe it was probably the Pakistani army that gave the go ahead for such an arrangement. It would be hard to believe such an arrangement could exist without their explicit authorization. I would be interested in learning who among the civilian govt. knew about this and how much did they know. Since the Blackwater personnel were working with the Frontier Constabulary which is under the Interior Ministry surely Rehman Malik knew what was going on.
The Islamabad security firm, through which Pakistan employs Blackwater has been identified in the report as Kestral Logistics. Recently there was a report in the DAWN newspaper about retired special forces commandos who started working for a private security firm thinking that they would be providing security for high value targets. They were, according to the news report, taken to a fortified compound and then trained by American instructors. The story relied on, what appears to be at best, a couple of anonymous sources which is why I didn’t think much of it at the time. It, however, fits in perfectly with Scahill’s report:
The training pushed the retired commandos to their limit and beyond, while maintaining high standards — familiarising them with a new system of combat effectiveness and understanding the importance of being proficient to accomplish collective tasks and missions.
However, the mystery about their objectives gradually started to unfold. “That was when it was realised that their mission was more than just providing protection to Americans heading out into the tribal areas from Peshawar against increasingly violent elements.
“Some of us were getting convinced that the mission may include fighting on the front, if need be,” said a former commando.
Read the complete report by Jeremy Scahill here.
UPDATE: As far as I’ve been able to find out The Nation ( The Pakistani daily) was the first to publicly out Kestral’s connection with Blackwater. This report which was published on the Oct 20th this year accuses Kestral of storing arms and ammunition for Blackwater. This was preceded by a report on Sep 24th about a Pakistani trading company (Kestral Trading it appears) that was blacklisted by the PAF. I have it on good authority that Kestral has not only been blacklisted by the PAF but also the Ministry of Defense meaning that it cannot legally work for the Govt. of Pakistan.
While Kestral may have subcontracted Blackwater to provide counter terrorism expertise to the Govt. of Pakistan in 2006 it is unclear if this arrangement still continues under the PPP govt, as Scahill alleges, because of the blacklisting of Kestral. It also seems that Kestral provided logistical and other support services to Blackwater and its affiliates in Pakistan and probably earned a hefty amount for it too. It is however, not clear whether this continues to date. I have not yet seen any reaction to Scahill’s report in the Pakistani media. It would be great if someone can shed more light on Kestral’s operations in Pakistan.
We should all ask from our state and these right wing politicians: Why?
Cross posted : Sherryx Weblog
Ayesha Siddiqa
Friday, 13 Nov, 2009. With thanks. Dawn online
A few days ago I came across a letter to the editor in Dawn in which the writer had protested against the use of the word ‘Taliban’ to describe the brutal killers currently terrorising the nation.
In the writer’s view, such people should be termed ‘zaliman’. I thought I would advise the writer to watch more television and read newspapers to get rid of his anger against the Taliban.
Perhaps the writer would have benefited tremendously by watching a programme aired recently on a TV channel in which three distinguished maulanas — including Jamaat-i-Islami leader Fareed Paracha — argued that the Taliban were being needlessly maligned since there was no evidence available to prove that the attacks were being carried out by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.
Furthermore, it was said that the TTP’s claiming responsibility for terrorist attacks inside Pakistan did not add up to much since anyone could make those calls just to malign the organisation of non-state militants.
The above interview came a couple of days after the army claimed to have found evidence of India’s involvement in the conflict in Waziristan. Islamabad should take the evidence to the International Court of Justice since it does not hope to get a fair hearing from anyone else in the world, certainly not the US. Since India and America are viewed as being ‘hand-in-glove’, Pakistan cannot afford to share the above information with Washington as New Delhi did in the case of the Mumbai attacks.
The evidence of India’s involvement should be sufficient to put the aforementioned letter writer’s mind at rest. Now we no longer need to search for internal sources of violence.
Since the responsibility of the conflict in the region is now the responsibility of the US followed by India, we need not even look at the fact that Pakistan witnessed about 45 terrorist attacks before 9/11 which many in this country view as the sole cause of strife and bloodshed in the entire region. We can no longer argue that 9/11 just expedited the process of bringing to the surface all those elements or networks that later caused violence in the region.
I would go further and apprise the writer of another crucial fact that technically, there are no home-grown terrorists in Pakistan since there has never been any conviction in a major case of terrorism. The significant names that are associated with extremist terrorist activities such as Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, Riaz Basra and Malik Ishaq of the Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP)/Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ), Qari Saifullah Akhtar of Harkat-ul-Jihad-ul-Islami (HuJI) or Masood Azhar of Jaish-i-Mohammad (JM) and many others are foreign concoctions.
The country’s legal system is such that the onus of proving an individual or organisation’s responsibility in an act of terror lies on the state. So, if the police are unable to bring concrete evidence before the court it is difficult to convict those accused of terrorism by the law-enforcers. Moreover, the legal procedures take so long that the prosecution (being the state) is unable to hold on to witnesses. They either die, are killed or are too scared to give evidence against organisations and individuals with a particular reputation.
Technically, it is but fair to let people go if nothing can be proven against them. This was essentially the position which Pervez Musharraf took for not pursuing action against those who were swapped for the hostages of Indian Airlines flight IC 184 which was hijacked to Kandahar in 1999. Why arrest someone if even the enemy had failed to convict the people after keeping them in jail for so many years?
Hence, it is not surprising that there are hardly any convictions. In a couple of cases where this has happened, as in the case of American journalist Daniel Pearl’s murder, the death sentence has not been carried out. We now know that Khaled Sheikh Mohammad of Al Qaeda and not Omar Saeed Sheikh committed the murder. Probably, it was in appreciation of Sheikh’s innocence that his jailers in Hyderabad allowed him access to several SIMs and mobile phones that he then used for very naughty activities, which we will not report here as acts of potential terrorism.
One might just wonder about the killings of Shias in the country, which have been going on since the mid-1980s when the SSP was reportedly established to fight the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Fiqh-i-Jafria by the state. We hardly notice that last year there were systematic killings of Shias in Dera Ismail Khan and before that of Shia doctors in Karachi. The killing of Shias in Balochistan by the Taliban also goes unnoticed by the media and the authorities.
Surely one cannot discuss Balochistan at all where there is much more serious evidence of India’s involvement. The maulanas might argue again that sectarian violence in Balochistan is an Indian/American conspiracy.
The person who wrote the letter might decide to respond to this piece and might argue that the behaviour pattern of the Pakistani establishment and the bulk of the people remains the same. We accused the East Pakistanis of being Indian agents and said the civil war was caused by Hindu teachers in collusion with the Indian state. Any signs of India’s involvement very naturally mar our ability to look at other possibilities or threats.
In East Pakistan’s case, for instance, the internal crisis had nothing to do with the unfair treatment of the Bengalis by the West Pakistani civil and military establishment. The only truth about that era was that the Mukti Bahini was trained by Indian intelligence.
We in Pakistan are coming close to a point where we can comfortably forget that we have elements within that want to take over (perhaps not physically) the state in pursuance of their pan-Islamic agenda. The war being fought by Pakistan due to international pressure is what has caused all the violence.
I would like to refer to the golden words of Punjab’s Law Minister Rana Sanaullah in response to the allegation of south Punjab turning into a hub of extremism and terrorism.
The minister felt there was no training taking place in the region and if people were getting recruited to fight in Afghanistan or other places, how could the government stop this. After all, we live in a free country. Under the circumstances, my only advice to the writer of the letter is that if he begins to feel unsafe vis-à-vis the presence of the ‘zaliman’ within, he/she should build additional bunkers outside the house. The writer is an independent strategic and political analyst.
(All emphasis in bold has been added)
Movie and soundtrack found on Inspirations and Creative Thoughts.
This film is about being lost and finding one’s way home. It portrays the characteristic urge of philosophies of ascent, of returning to one’s original home in God, and having faith that He will guide your way back to Him. It also shows the sensual and social side to being spiritual, the former of which is most embodied in Sufism, I feel. To the Sufi spirituality can be simultaneously erotic and pious. And of course, there is excellent music:
And in this scene, I highly recommend forwarding to 2:34 minutes.
Lastly: an interesting review.
An excerpt from the article “The New Atheist Movement is Destructive” by Julian Baggini:
Not reading The God Delusion, God is Not Great, Breaking the Spell and The End of Faith is perfectly reasonable. Why on earth would I devote precious reading hours to books which largely tell me what I already believe? These books are surely mainly for agnostics and open-minded believers. In fact, I think atheists who have read these books have more of a responsibility to account for their actions than I do my inaction. As the posters on the sides of British buses rather simplistically put it, “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” God’s non-existence is a fact atheists live with, not something that they should obsessively read about.
But if I haven’t read these books, surely I should have no opinion about them? I think you’d be less sure of this if you had read How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard (or even not read it). In any case, my opinions are not so much about these books as the general tone and direction the new atheism they represent has adopted. This is not a function of what exactly these books say, but of how they are perceived, and the kind of comments the four horsemen make in newspaper articles and interviews. All this, I think, has been unhelpful in many ways. In short, the new atheism gets atheism wrong, gets religion wrong, and is counterproductive.
How does it get atheism wrong? When I wrote my own book on the subject, I believed that atheism was widely misunderstood as being primarily a negative attack on religious belief, on which it is parasitic.
But this can’t be right. Imagine for one moment that atheism triumphs and belief in God is eradicated. On the view that atheism needs religion, then this victory would also be atheism’s extinction. This is absurd.
It is only because of historical accident that atheism is not widely recognised as a world-view in its own right. This world view is essentially a very general form of naturalism, in which there are not two kinds of stuff, the natural and the supernatural, but one. The forces that govern this substance are also natural ones and there is no ultimate purpose or agency behind them. Human life is biological, and thus does not survive beyond biological death.
Such a worldview needs defending, and a special name, only because for various reasons, it is not the one that most humans have adopted. But the view itself is true whether or not there are people who disagree with it. In a totally atheist world, we may stop noticing that it is a view at all, in the same way that most people do not notice that they believe objects exist whether we perceive them or not. But it would still be a view.
So in my book, I tried to articulate the grounds for this view with as little reference to the religious alternative as possible. The new atheism, however, is characterised by its attacks on religion. “There is a logical path from religious faith to evil deeds,” wrote Richard Dawkins, quite typically, quoting approvingly Stephen Weinberg, who said, “for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.” Hitchens goes so far as to explicitly say that “I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist.”
This antitheism is for me a backwards step. It reinforces what I believe is a myth, that an atheist without a bishop to bash is like a fish without water. Worse, it raises the possibility that as a matter of fact, for many atheists, they do indeed need an enemy to give them their identity.
(Cross-posted to A Myth in Creation.)
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