The atheism/rationalism vs. theism/supernaturalism debate is something Religious Right Watch dips into occasionally, unlike more properly focused religious right-related sites like Talk To Action.
As might be clear from this blog, within the context of that debate--the atheism vs. supernaturalism debate--I find Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris mostly convincing in their defenses of rationalism and observations about the weaknesses of religious apologetics.
But, both authors become far less convincing when they enter the realms of politics. And that is what they do when they attack religious moderates and thereby disrupt coalitions standing against religious extremism.
I think Harris does this more vehemently. At the risk of sounding dismissive of Dawkins' harsh words about religious moderates, we can see him in Root of All Evil? engage respectfully with them. "Music to my ears!" he says to a liberal Anglican bishop who outlines for Dawkins liberal theological points. (We also learn in The God Delusion that Dawkins has friends and close professional colleagues who are religious moderates.)
But Dawkins' and Harris' argument that religious moderates, simply by believing some non-rational things, unwittingly "provide cover" for religious extremists makes little sense in light of the anti-extremism work engaged in--sometimes genuinely heroically--by many religious moderates, including many with Internet presences linked to by this site. (See the Lamp Lighters and Good Shepherd blogrolls just for a start. Read on Talk To Action or Street Prophets about valiant efforts to expose the religious right, including anti-moderate organizations, like the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), within mainline Protestant denominations.)
If religious moderates supposedly provide cover for extremists, then surely it's the case that harsh rhetoric--and it can get quite close to demonizing/dehumanizing rhetoric--against religious believers certainly helps the religious right. It does so in part by fostering division within the ranks of organizations, such as the Democratic Party, that to varying degrees include religious and non-religious members fighting against religious extremism and the religious right in particular.
Frederick Clarkson, a Talk to Action founder, expressed his concern and anger relating to Sam Harris' rhetoric against religious moderates in a good and very heart-felt diary. As he also commented there regarding the Democratic Party specifically:
What divides us is not religion and non-religion. Most religious and non-religious Democrats, have far more in common with each other than with the religious right and the GOP. It is long past time to get over it and find better ways of talking with one another, and working with one another.
He is absolutely correct. And Harris' attacks on moderates don't help. In fact, they hurt. Rationalists and religious moderates need to be unified against religious extremists.
And one thing Frederick Clarkson and Talk To Action have always rightly championed is the important of the very nature of our discourses concerning religion and the religious right. The language and terminology used by Dawkins and Harris and others often fails to be adequately specific or considered.
I'm particularly troubled by this statement in a recent Harris piece on Huffington Post, which another Talk To Action founder, Bruce Wilson, brought to my attention: "Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. . . ."
If Harris had stated that it may be okay to kill someone in self-defense because of their actions (e.g., killing a terrorist who is attacking his or her target), I would have agreed. And he does go on to mention self-defense; but, his original statement remains. Killing someone because of their beliefs? That is repugnant. There are religious extremists who endorse killing people just because of their beliefs. Harris finds that loathsome, I'm sure. But how is what Harris is advocating any different?
Also via Bruce, the Unitarian Universalist Association has a worthy examination of secularism and tolerance. It includes important observations, such as the fact that arguments against religion often uncritically proceed from fundamentalist definitions of religion, and only then is liberalism’s apparent inauthenticity the unsurprisingly result.
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