Yesterday, there was a minor victory for cooperation and mutual respect between the religious and the non-believers yesterday, as the Archbishop of Westminster urged Catholics to understand and tolerate their faithless fellow citizens: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7390941.stm. At least, that was how it appeared on face value.
Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said many things about how the relationship between those who believe and those who do not, most of them good. He asked both parties to consider that believers and non-believers interpret the world in different ways: that the scientific, secular criterion of testing a belief does not apply to God. That's what we've been trying to tell you, many atheists may reply, but that does detract from the central argument: dyed-in-the-wool atheists and Christians debating the existence of God is now pointless in real terms, if by 'debate' you mean 'a process by which I wish to convince my opponent of my point of view'. The atheists and Christians will fail to convince each other because they utilise different systems to describe and understand their points of views. There's no point in playing a game if you can't agree on the rules.
This may be valid, or it may not; either way, it amounts to a call to stop bickering, which is probably a good thing. It will have limited success: Richard Dawkins proudly tried to start a squabble with the Archbishop almost immediately, using deliberately offensive terminology such as referring to God as an 'imaginary friend'. But Murphy-O'Connor's statement passes the test as A Decent Thing To Say.
Unfortunately, this was not supported by some of his other comments, presented in the same address. For example, the Archbishop said he wanted "to encourage people of faith to regard those without faith with deep esteem because the hidden God is active in their lives as well as in the lives of those who believe": in other words, God believes in you even if you don't believe in him.
This is a trifle patronising. It reminds me of a woman who claimed that morality came solely from religion; that without religion and its inherent punishment/reward system, you could not be a good person. When presented with a list of atheist philanthropists and agnostic heroes, she explained that these people were religious really, but just hadn't realised it yet. Anyone else see a certain circularity here? Still, the Archbishop's comments along these lines are only slightly condescending; I take umbridge, but I'm not going to get too het up about it.
I am, however, prepared to get extremely stroppy about another of his comments: that societies built on lack of faith, that utilise solely reason as opposed to religious presumption, become examples of 'terror and oppression'. He held up Stalin and Hitler as examples.
This is extremely offensive, and I am, as an agnostic, arguably one of the people he is offending. To present Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia as an warning against the atheist state is mind-bogglingly ignorant. Firstly, it assumes that correlation equals cause, a common logical fallacy. The brutality of the Third Reich was born of poverty and national disenfranchisement and the desire to find and punish a scapegoat, not by its leader's supposed atheism. Using the same fallacious logic, I could say some very unfair things about Catholicism, but I won't. Secondly, it ignores the fact that atheism was not the driving force beneath either society, simply a byproduct or useful propaganda tool. Thirdly, it misses the fact that the blind adherence to the quasi-faiths that did drive these societies - nationalism and communism respectively - have a lot less in common with atheism than they do organised religion, especially a religion as organised as the Catholic Church. This is not to say that any religion somehow mirrors these two dark examples from the world's history. It is just to say that Hitler and Stalin both relied on the masses' unquestioning acceptance of the party line; something that religions tend to encourage and atheism fights to reject. As such, the Archbishop's comments seem, at the very least, to be a bit misguided.
I don't think that the Archbishop intended his words to be seen as an attack on atheism; at most, they were probably a form of aggressive defense, a method of demonstrating that religion does some good in the world. He could have accomplished this more accurately, and less aggravatingly, by mentioning the Salvation Army, or Christian Aid, or the spirit of mutual support found in many local parishes. Unfortunately, Murphy-O'Connor seems hung up on invalid arguments and old prejudices; even in a speech about mutual tolerance, he cannot resist throwing in some tired atheist-bashing rhetoric. As such, what at first sounds like a positive message starts to appear more and more like a Trojan horse, designed to allow more malign ideas to slip in unnoticed. I doubt this was his intention - he probably meant well - but you cannot talk about encouraging respect while simultaneously disrespecting the people you wish to engage. To play the game properly, you have to not only agree on the rules, but follow them.
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