The Reactionary Utopian
May 8, 2007
THE SANCTIMONY OF THE ATHEISTS
by Joe Sobran
The most beautiful religious movie I've ever seen is
the 1947 French film MONSIEUR VINCENT, which dramatizes
the later life of St. Vincent de Paul, best known for his
organizational genius in ministering to the poor.
It ends with a wise insight. The dying priest,
played by the great Pierre Fresnay, tells a young nun
always to keep her lovely smile: "Unless the poor know we
love them, they will never forgive us for helping them."
Excellent advice. I've known devout but obtuse
Christians who have soured their own works of charity by
unconsciously humiliating the people they meant to help
-- with scolding or moralism, or by wounding their
fragile self-respect. No need to act morally superior to
a starving beggar.
Sometimes I think the other side could use a bit of
the same counsel. Too often today, the high and holy
cause of unbelief is threatened by the smug sanctimony of
the atheists.
Consider Christopher Hitchens, author of the new
book GOD IS NOT GREAT: HOW RELIGION POISONS EVERYTHING,
whose title is perhaps self-explanatory. Religion poisons
everything? Everything? Bach and Mozart? Thomas Aquinas
and John Henry Newman?
And what about atheists like Stalin? Hitchens is
ready for that one, citing Orwell: "A totalitarian state
is in effect a theocracy." Besides, we may note, Stalin
went to a seminary, where maybe he picked some bad
thinking habits, which he couldn't shake off when he
stopped believing in God. Even bad atheists, it seems,
can be chalked up to religion.
Now Hitchens himself, born English and naturalized
American, is a learned and eloquent man. (I've debated
him on politics, and I have the scars to prove it.) But
when he gets on the subject of religion -- any and all
religion, mind you -- he turns plain silly. Like so many
of his breed, he seems to think he can settle an argument
with a combination of British suavity and British snot.
After reading him, I'm always surer I know whom he hates
(or, less often, loves) than what he thinks.
And being erudite, he argues with impressive
inductiveness, citing the usual horrors and then some --
crusades, inquisitions, wars, jihads, Jim Jones, Jimmy
Swaggart, 9/11, et cetera, filing them all under the same
heading, Religion, as if they were all instigated by the
same agency. (And let's not forget the Scopes trial.)
It may seem ironic that Hitchens, a fierce defender
of the Iraq war, blames religion for war, when the last
two popes have opposed both Iraq wars; but then, he also
seems to blame the popes for opposing them. As Huck Finn
might put it, and as Hitchens would surely agree, popes
is mostly a bad lot.
When you come right down to it, Hitchens's case
against religion is a more impersonal form of the old
Phil Donahue argument, which may be summarized thus: Mean
old nuns whacked my knuckles with a ruler, ergo God does
not exist. This is less inductive reasoning than simple
free association with a grudge. Religion reminds
Christopher Hitchens of a lot of bad memories, even if
they are historical rather than autobiographical. That
is, they are bad things he's read about, not necessarily
experienced himself. Somehow I'd expected a more rigorous
argument.
Now taking the broad view, I agree that, as a
historical matter, a lot of boys, over the centuries,
have had their knuckles whacked by a lot of nuns. But,
waiving the question whether some of those boys brought
it on themselves (especially if religion has an inherent
tendency to produce bad boys like Donahue), we still
await a demonstration that mean nuns can be traced to the
Sermon on the Mount. And here, unless I am mistaken, lies
the fatal lacuna in Hitchens's thesis.
And here I return to the practical problem. If you
really think belief in God or gods has always caused so
much suffering (such as the Trojan War, a quagmire which
I, as a Catholic, would have opposed from the start),
then it seems to me that you ought to propagate atheism
seriously -- not just out of vanity to show how clever
you are, but out of those same humanitarian motives to
which you say religion is repugnant, and by which you
claim to be driven. No need to humiliate the poor
believers, is there?
But Hitchens still believes in Darwin and the Iraq
war. Me, I still run with the popes, but I must say I
admire his faith.
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