MLK, Atheism and The Left

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 6:41 AM on January 16, 2007.

Today, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, is a great opportunity for progressives and liberals to recall the pluralism of the Leftist tradition in America.

Dr. King, as you well know, was a devout Christian whose beliefs drove his revolutionary and effective method for changing America's social fabric.

The recent embrace of non-pluralistic atheism exemplified by Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins doesn't serve the Left (or atheism) well and I doubt that many who seek validation in the duo's antagonism toward religion would consider King simplistic, nonthinking, weak or an apologist for the transgressions of this co-religionists.

When Dawkins says things like "I doubt that religion can survive deep understanding. The shallows are its natural habitat," and "I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world," I am quite sure he does NOT mean King or a number of other thinkers whose belief has driven them to do good, to search for answers wherever they lie, to accept those with different beliefs.

The problem is the wideness of Dawkins' net which necessarily catches the good with the bad -- to the detriment of his argument, not to mention possible allegiances and the American ideal of a pluralistic society.

From an early King essay on his religious development:

It is quite easy for me to think of a God of love mainly because I grew up in a family where love was central and where lovely relationships were ever present.

My parents would always tell me that I should not hate the white man, but that it was my duty as a Christian to love him.

Even though I have never had an abrupt conversion experience, religion has been real to me and closely knitted to life. In fact the two cannot be separated; religion for me is life.

You don't have to believe in it yourself to respect that it is a Truth. Welcome to the post-modern era.

Joshua, take it away...

Joshua adds …

Thanks, Ev. Happy MLK day!

There’s much I might say about this post. Certainly its subtle message -- MLK was religious and most lefties liked him --- is inescapable.

And anything written broadly of “The Left” always has a certain entertainment value, if only because “The Left” is like a herd of cats going in all directions at once (and atheism -- and the traits commonly associated with its adherents -- isn’t the exclusive domain of any one ideological camp).

I could point out that nobody argues that everyone who believes in God is a bad person, or that religious thought cannot, or has not, been the basis of some of the most powerful social justice movements in history. I could also note how rarely Dawkins’ critics (I haven’t read Harris), so frequently fail to address his actual arguments, preferring to focus on his style, or his value (or lack thereof) as a leading figure of atheism, or the danger of some ill-defined "pendulum" swinging too far towards a dogmatic brand of atheism or any of a dozen other gripes.

But, instead, I’ll just quote another great thinker -- the man who urged us never to panic and to always know where our towels are -- Douglas Adams, as he explains why people like Dawkins elicit the kind of criticism they do [ht: Dawkins himself] …

Religion … has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? -- because you’re not!’ If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved about it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says ‘I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday’, you say ‘I respect that’.

Why should it be that it’s perfectly legitimate to support the Labour Party or the Conservative Party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows -- but to have an opinion about how the universe began, about who created the Universe … no, that’s holy? … We are used to not challenging religious ideas but it’s very interesting how much of a furore [Dawkins] creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely fanatic about it because you’re not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn’t be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn’t be.

Back to Evan....

Adams' quote is the same old strawman BS. Holding up the way some religious people comport themselves to knock down the whole of it.

Never you mind about the individual arguments... we'll let Alister McGrath deal with that on the pages of AlterNet this week.

By the way -- and this is directed as much to the commenter below who asks about discrediting Dawkins as to Joshua: Alister McGrath, Oxford Theologian and Biochemist, was interviewed extensively for Dawkins' documentary, The Root of All Evil, providing rebuttals on each of Dawkins' major points.

Go on and ask how much screen time the "seeker of truth" gave to Dr. McGrath...

None.

Joshua adds, stubbornly ...

Or at least we know how much screen time the Channel Four producers and/or editors gave McGrath. The video is reportedly balanced, with four "pro-Dawkins" interviewees and four who are "anti-Dawkins."

I haven't seen the film, but according to IMDB, Dawkins hated the title, "The Root of All Evil," arguing that it's silly to suggest that anything, religion included, can accurately be described as such.

Sorry Josh ...

The film was written and directed by Dawkins. To have excluded his most prominent, well-respected critic without mention just doesn't fly. I'm shocked at your lack of skepticism in this particular case.

McGrath wrote a book called "Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes and The Meaning of Life." If the interview with his nemesis were cut against Dawkins' wishes I'd expect a disclaimer and/or some comment on it, if only to forestall the eyebrow raising of critics....

Tagged as: god, dawkins, civil rights, recruit, sam harris, atheism, mlk

Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.