Salman Rushdie (via AL Daily) demolishes the “Atheism Lite” proposed by Dylan Evans:
Evans has written an article for the Guardian of London deriding the old-fashioned, “19th-century” atheism of such prominent thinkers as Richard Dawkins and Jonathan Miller, instead proposing a new, modern atheism which “values religion, treats science as simply a means to an end and finds the meaning of life in art.”
Indeed, he says, religion itself is to be understood as “a kind of art, which only a child could mistake for reality and which only a child would reject for being false.”
Evans’ position fits well with that of the American philosopher of science Michael Ruse, whose new book, The Evolution-Creation Struggle, lays much of the blame for the growth of creationism in America — and for the increasingly strident attempts by the religious right to have evolutionary theory kicked off the curriculum and replaced by the new dogma of “intelligent design” — at the door of the scientists who have tried to compete with, and even supplant, religion.
A staunch evolutionist himself, he is nevertheless highly critical of such modern giants as Dawkins and Edward O. Wilson.
Evans’ “Atheism Lite,” which seeks to negotiate a truce between religious and irreligious world views, is easily demolished.
Such a truce would have a chance of working only if it were reciprocal — if the world’s religions agreed to value the atheist position and to concede its ethical basis, if they respected the discoveries and achievements of modern science, even when these discoveries challenge religious sanctities, and if they agreed that art at its best reveals life’s multiple meanings at least as clearly as so-called “revealed” texts.
No such reciprocal arrangement exists, however, nor is there the slightest chance that such an accommodation could ever be reached. […]
If religion were a private matter, one could more easily respect its believers’ right to seek its comforts and nourishments.
But religion today is big public business, using efficient political organization and cutting-edge information technology to advance its ends. Religions play bare-knuckle rough all the time, while demanding kid-glove treatment in return.
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