It is important to remember that polemicists like Hitchens are here to galvanize as much as enlighten; his book is a call to arms as much as it is a lecture. He’s challenging the religious status quo, which for most of human history has not been pretty, and in that task, we should applaud him. While many believers are bothered by his strident critique of religion, they should nevertheless heed his warnings about the deleterious effects of fundamentalism, especially in public life. Hitchens had far less respect for religion than I do, but his commitment to human rights and the defense of an open, free society are something to celebrate. Despite his acerbic, tactless appearance on the surface, Hitchens can be read in the best light as a humanist, dedicated to the Enlightenment project of democracy, liberty, and tolerance. At his worst, Hitchens can be read as a cultural imperialist and elitist whose sniveling disdain for religion displays actual intolerance. Like with most people, I think Hitchens is somewhere in the middle, bolstered by his better angels and hampered by his inner demons. Regardless of your feelings on Hitchens, he’s one of the most profoundly engaging, entertaining, and enlightening public intellectuals of the last half century, and god is not Great might be his most enduring work.
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Rejecting Dogma, Embracing Freedom: Mike Rinder’s Journey Out of Scientology
Cults can take so many things from a person— their money, their dignity, their ability to think critically— but the most powerful thing a cult can take is someone’s freedom. If you can take someone’s freedom, you can take anything else. Rinder learned this firsthand being involved in scientology, a cult that destroys families, degrades its staff, and swindles its members, and has dedicated his life to exposing scientology’s pernicious effect on the world. In rejecting the dogma of scientology, Mike Rinder embraced freedom, the most precious thing one can ever have.
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“Steadfast Even in Persecution”: Voltairine de Cleyre and the Legacy of Thomas Paine
American anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre carried the torch of freethought and radicalism exemplified by revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine, an iconoclasm infused with deep moral righteousness and an unrepentant sense of individualism. She defined her struggle for a stateless society in many of the same terms that Paine defined the fight for American independence, emphasizing political liberty, individual rights, equality, and mutual cooperation. She also stressed the importance of his character in her work. de Cleyre wrote of Paine that “he stood firm, proclaiming what he believed, not counting the cost. We may not believe as he; most of us do not. But that is the man we love: who has something in him superior to the judgments of men; who holds steadfast—steadfast even in persecution, even to death.” Likewise, we may not always agree with the convictions of Voltairine de Cleyre, but her own steadfastness echoed the legacy of America’s most underappreciated, and perennially misunderstood, founding father.
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Daniel Dennett’s "Breaking the Spell": 15 Years On
Fifteen years later, do the criticisms of Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell hold up? Are Dennett’s concepts of religion off base, or has new scholarship vindicated him? In this re-review of sorts, I will address the main critiques discussed above and evaluate whether they, or the book itself, stand the test of time. We’ll review whether Dennett’s call to “break the spell” is so revolutionary, if religions are “memes,” if people believe in religion because they believe that belief is itself a virtue, what Dennett calls “belief in belief,” and what we should do with religion in the modern age. In the final estimation, we’ll find that each of these conclusions is deeply flawed and the reviewers were right to call out Dennett for his mistakes. In closing, I’ll also challenge the oft-heard notion that Dennett is the “nice” one of the group. While he’s certainly the more level-headed of the bunch when comparing his book to say, The God Delusion or The End of Faith, Dennett still displays all the usual hallmarks of mainstream atheism in our culture: smugness, arrogance, condescension, and intolerance. In short, Breaking the Spell isn’t a bad book, but it isn’t much of a good book, either.
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“Militant Materialism”: V. I. Lenin, Socialism, and Religion
In his writings, Lenin defended traditional secularist values, such as the separation of church and state, liberty of conscience, and free religious association, while also calling for the political separation of religion from political parties and strategically advocating for the atheist/materialist worldview. While it would be too much to say that Lenin was a “humanist” in the general sense of the term, he was nevertheless a secularist whose insights on religion provide left humanists with clear, tactical advice on the interrelationship between faith and politics in the public sphere.
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