Customer Reviews

I Don't Believe in Atheists

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1 star:		(34)

 

 

I might not be the typical reviewer of this book. I am an atheist, but one who is as annoyed as Hedges over the excesses and irresponsibilities of the more dogmatic of "public figure" atheists. But, wait! I gave this book two stars. Why would I give a book whose message I essentially agree with 2 stars?

Well, for starters, I don't agree with much in this book; suprising, because I thought that I would. Of the scores of things Hedges could have challengd these atheists - Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens - on, Hedges manages to miss most of them and add some that are quite illigitimate. Had I written this book, I would have taken the three authors to task on a few things:

a.) their simplistic and baffling view that not only religious extremists, but moderates, are to be condemmed. (Isn't religion a tool? Just as people can do bad with it, so they can do good, depending on their motive?)

b.) these authors occasional faith-driven zeal, that given enough time, sceince will explain all of the things it has tried and failed to explain (like morality, even though science deals with 'is' rather than 'ought' questions. (And don't get me started on the idea of 'memes' as opposed to the older, more sensical, idea of 'ideas.')

c.) These authors' very frequent exhibitions of the type of fanatical extremism and dogmatism they rightly point out as a flaw of their opponents (fundamentalists).

The only of these Hedges hits on is the third. Hedges is not even primarily against atheism. He is, rather, against dogmatism and fanasticism, which he rightly sees exhibited in spades amongst these new 'public figure' atheists.

But in his zeal - and judging by the redundancy, this was a book written in great haste without the benefit of editing or critical thought - he attributes many things to these authors that they, in fact, never actually say. This, of course, renders his books quite superfluous, irrelevant, and unimportant.

His main argument against these atheists is that they believe in moral progress in a utopian sense. Get rid of religion, they are alleged to say, and the world can be a utopia. Hedges says this of them several times. As one whose read all of the authors to which he refers, I was confused, because I don't remember any of them saying this. At least, I figured, he will quote them on this at some point. He never did.

He suggests that these authors do not believe in any idea resembling original sin; that humans have both a good AND A DARK narure. That is funny in a naive sort of way, because if Hedges had done homework, he would have easily known that the whole idea of evolutionary psychology (to which all of our authors subscribe)is ALWAYS lambasted for recognizing that we - evolutionary creatures - have inherited our predecessors' moral virtues and shortcomings. (Hedges should have remembered the uproar at Dawkins' book 'The Selfish Gene!').

For their parts, Harris and Hitchens are also quite clear in their books on the idea that moral perfection and utopianism should not be seriously taken. Hitchens, after all, is a raging fan of the anti-utopian George Orwell, who makes several moralistic appearances in Hitchens' book. And Harris says repeatedly that once religion is out, humans will just as easily fight over other things; the only difference will be that hopefully those things are more solvable and tractible than are beliefs that God gave this group or that group the holy land. (Religion IS in fact a good, but not the only, conversation stopper.)

Quite simply, Hedges' attribution and scolding of atheists that believe in unbounded moral perfectability is arguing against a ghost. Those atheists died out with Stalin. And as dead as they are, so dead is Hedges 'argument.'

Beyond this, Hedges also condems Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens - quite oddly - for the belief that humans can morally impove AT ALL!! Hedges is a pessimist in the fine tradition of those depressed social thinkers like Reinhold Neibuhr and Soren Kierkegaard. Like them, he reminds us that humans have natures and sometimes, those natures are selfish and devious. As such, we should never try to overcome any part of ourselves; we should simply accept the fact that sin exists.

Of course, anyone whose ever read Reinhold Neibuhr - I have, even as an atheist - knows that he never, ever was that pessimilstic. He simply suggested that moral PERFECTIBILITY was a chimera. Try as we might, there is always going to be an ideal that we fall short of, but that this should not keep us from trying for it and striving for it.

Hedges on the other hand reminds us again and again that "we live in a constant state of war," and that it is no good to try and change it. So how dare the atheists suggest that if we try hard, we may be able to gradually move beyond some of the moral quandaries of the day. Of course, we have in the past. At least in Western countries: slavery is outlawed women are no longer property of men; feudalism is gone; monarchy and dictatorship is more and more rare and looked down on; the first bills of rights have appeared on the planet. One wonders: if Hedges were writing 300 years ago, would any of this have happened? Or would he simply have reminded us of the evil that comes when we try to do better than we have in the past. And how dare the wicked atheists for suggesting that progress is a goal to strive for!!

I write this lengthy review, quite simply, to give prospective readers an idea of how poor this book is both in intellectual quality and message. If one wants to argue against the 'new atheism' for things like their dogmatism, and morally simplistic judgments against all things with the hint of religion, then do that! (I will welcome it myself!) But to suggest that the new atheism is evil because of a belief in moral perfection that none of its authors write about, and for the audacity to claim that humans can be decent if they try hard - what? Who?

Interesting that all of the reviews posted so far are either 5 star or 1 star. It seems that people are rating the book based on whether agree with what the author has to say or not. That is no way to judge a book. A book can be excellent even if don't agree with one conclusion the author comes to, and a book can be poorly written even if you agree with every word in it.

I think the title of "I Don't Believe in Atheists" is plain stupid. Beyond that, Hedges has some very interesting things to say about the interaction of religion (and nonreligion) with politics, and it's worth reading by anyone who has read any of the other recent literature about atheism.

But Hedges did himself a disservice by framing the book as a critique of Dawkins, Harris, etc. because in many cases he's totally misrepresenting what they wrote. He should have just stuck to writing his own ideas on the topic, as he has in his other books, and this book would have been much better. As it is, it just sounds like he's mad because the so-called "New Atheists" don't like what he believes in. Hedges is a better writer -- and thinker -- than that. It's a shame he didn't do his best writing in this book. But, then again, believers tend to become irate when people insult their gods.

I saw a debate between Chris Hedges and Sam Harris on this topic on TV a few months ago, and Hedges was completely incoherent. I had read some of his other writing (books and online) in the past and was hoping he'd do a better job in writing about this topic than he did in debating it.

Oh well. I bet his publisher was pushing him to rush his book to market. Too bad.

My interest in this book came from a nasty experience in college some years ago. I was talking about Christianity and its effect on my life. Apparently my views were too conservative and/or orthodox to suit two people I was talking to. They started to get in my face and insist that I was wrong. No matter what I said, they would take turns interrupting me and insisting that I was wrong and that Christianity had "changed," and that I needed to change with it. That I had been raised in the home of an ordained minister and had just about cut my teeth on a Bible didn't matter - to them, I didn't know that I was talking about and they wouldn't listen. I was bothered by this - not so much that they didn't agree with me, but that they wouldn't listen, and at one time they were almost shouting and backing me up against a wall - literally! Later on I thought, "If a so-called "fundamentalist" Christian had acted like that, they would have had his/her head on a platter!"

When I first found this book, I wondered if Chris Hedges had the same type of experience I did. Probably not - but his message rang true.

In my opinion, the title of this book is misleading. Hedges doesn't necessarily disapprove of atheists, if they have reached their position with an honest heart. His issue is with the "fundamentalist mentality" which he claims can happen as much with atheists as with believers in God.

This book contains a badly-needed two-fold message. First of all, that we need to come back to the idea of human corruptibility - a truth that we don't need to be Christians to accept. The other part both religious and non religious people need to reject the idea that we can perfect ourselves. In other words - we need to understand that the biggest evil is not outside of us, but rather IN us. I appreciated his use of quotes about human fallibility from sources who do not claim to be Christians (e.g., Sigmund Freud).

I found the book useful, and Hedges explained some things which I had felt on a gut level but couldn't articulate the way that I wanted to. I also appreciated the background information on how the tension developed between the United States and the Islamic world. I think that the chapter "Humiliation and Revenge" was worth the price of the whole book. He does not try to whitewash either professing Christians or Moslems, showing that both sides did some dreadful things.

As to what Harris, Dawkins, and the other atheists are like as people or what is in their minds and hearts - well, I can't say. I have checked out Dawkins' book and need to read it entirely to know exactly what he says. And in all fairness, I need to do the same with Harris' book. However, the quote on page 122 that Hedges gives from Harris' book THE END OF FAITH makes my blood run cold. I truly hope that . . . "facilitating the emergence of civil societies everywhere else . . . " doesn't consist in forcing something on other societies. The rest of the quote strikes me as implying that in some cases, a benign dictatorship will be necessary, and maybe even from outside. However, I'll need to see the entire Harris quote in context.

Both sides of the argument raise some questions for me:

First of all, is the problem actual religious belief - or is it how some people try to force it on others? Real Christianity does not "force" people to believe.

Second, is the problem Utopianism? Or is it what we feel we have to do to achieve it?

Also, I believe that both sides need to come to a common definition of the following words:

1. FUNDAMENTALIST. When I was younger, a "fundamentalist" was someone who wanted to return to the "fundamentals" or basic ideas of a belief (usually a religion). It did not necessarily refer to a pushy mindset.

2. LITERAL interpretation of a sacred text. A "literal" interpretation can mean that the text says what it means while acknowledging that some passages are poetic, mythical, etc.

3. FAITH. In my opinion, faith does not mean believing something without questioning. In fact, "faith" is what makes me able to get on an airplane and travel even though I can't see the air that's holding it up. The Bible Itself says, "We walk by faith, not by sight." It doesn't say "We walk by faith, not by reason."

We live in a time where many people who claim to be religious are not behaving well. I also remember a time when atheistic governments were mistreating religious people.

For all of us, a big dose of thorough self-examination is in order.

After reading this, I went to Hedges' 'War is a Force', and read a few pages. I still like it, and would recommend it, but after reading this book I think it is fair that no one would ever read anything by Hedges ever again.

Hedges writes out of insecurity, and rage, which are non-existent in his other books. He lumps Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins together, cherry-picks a few of their quotes, and then starts throwing stones at them.

The first few pages made me think I might like the book, Hedges is often right on when criticising evils in the world, and I respect him on this. But this book attacks the weakest, and non-existent threats, as presented by atheists. Atheism is not a belief. It is disbelief.

Bertrand Russell wrote 'Why I am not a Christian'. Hedges does not have anything to say about Russell, or other humanitarian athiests such as Col. Robert Ingersoll, or Mark Twain. He goes after the weakest arguments, not after the strongest. Hedges embodies what he despises in this book - a lack of critical thought. Hedges would have been better off writing 'Why I am not an Athiest'. He, in effect, has written a judgmental book that, hopefully, will be forgotten.

Unfortunately, it will also diminish his entire body of work.

I read Chris Hedges' previous book, American Fascists, because I agreed with its thesis, but nevertheless found it highly disappointing. Giving the author the benefit of the doubt, I chalked it up to plain ineptitude. But when I saw this book, I began to suspect that Hedges was not just inept, but dishonest--and upon reading the book, those suspicions were confirmed.

Contrary to the misleading title, this is not a "there are no atheists in foxholes, everyone secretly believes in God and people who claim to be atheists just hate Him" kind of book--believe it or not, it is even worse than that. It is basically an attack an what Hedges calls "New Atheists." When I first heard this term a couple of years ago, I was skeptical about its validity, as one should always be wary of neologisms particularly in the political realm. "New Atheists" are those who not only are arrogant enough to actively disbelieve in God, but also have the effrontery to try to publicly defend their views--as opposed to the somewhat less unacceptable old atheists who kept their mouths shut and stayed in their place. Actually, there's nothing new about outspoken freethinkers, and they're in good company, joining the ranks of such radical skeptics as Socrates, Aristotle, Thomas Paine and several other Founding Heroes, etc.

Hedges' strategy is to single out the authors of several recent bestsellers promoting atheism, namely Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. To be sure, there are good grounds on which to criticize all of these people--Sam Harris, after claiming that religion is bad, then advocates Buddhism (he says it's more "scientific" than other mystical beliefs) and Dawkins, though a good polemicist against Creationism, is actually not a very good evolutionary theorist (he continues to advocate "gene selectionism," his defense of which in The Selfish Gene made him famous, despite the fact that most other reputable biologists dismissed the theory shortly thereafter)--but Hedges probably does not mind these flaws. What really makes him angry is the fact that these atheists claim to be certain that theism is wrong. This certainty, Hedges argues, places them in the same camp with the Christian fundamentalists he attacked in his previous book, their flaw also being that they held certain convictions--that is, it is not the content of their beliefs that is bad, but that they really believe them; not how they came to hold their views (by reason or faith? though it turns out there is no such question for Hedges, as he says the atheists' views are equally faith-based), but that they actually think that they are true.

To back all of this up, you might expect Hedges to offer us a lot of facts, as his fellow journalist Hitchens did in God is Not Great, but what we get instead is a lot of quotes from Marcel Proust and Joseph Conrad, among others. Dostoevsky was a great artist, and one of my personal favorite writers, but frankly he didn't know what he was talking about much of the time, and referring to some scene in Crime and Punishment is not evidence for Hedges' case--yet that is what he resorts to. He also makes a lot of completely unsupported assertions, such as that, contrary to the atheists' claims, the Koran unequivocally condemns suicide and does not exhort its readers to global jihad. Unlike the atheists, who actually cited chapter and verse of the Koran, Hedges just tells us this--and it may be true, but the point is that, like the Bible, the Koran says a lot of contradictory things that could be taken as justification for a lot of things, and clearly is taken as justification for such things in significant parts of the Muslim world today. For Hedges to blithely deny this insults his readers' intelligence.

Worse, he resorts to a lot of ad hominem attacks, based on straw-man misrepresentations of his opponents' actual views--for instance, he says that the "new atheists" advocate a state of perpetual war a la Orwell's 1984. This is utterly outlandish, and intellectual fraud of the worst sort. Hedges tells us that the atheists are bad because they try to dehumanize Islamic terrorists, who are actually trying to kill us, and make them look like monsters--then tells us that the atheists are inhuman monsters.

This sort of contradiction runs throughout, but for philosophical Pragmatists (into which camp I'm sure Hedges falls) it's just word games anyway, so they can say or do whatever they want, without regard for the truth, since they claim there is no "truth" in the sense of our minds actually being able to know external reality. That seems to be the underlying premise Hedges is working from, and I'm sure Richard Rorty would thoroughly approve of this mess.

Hedges' character could be summed up nicely (and devestatingly) by this passage from Ayn Rand (one literary figure I'd bet Hedges really hates) in Atlas Shrugged: "He was laboring to sound cynical, skeptical, superior, and hysterical together, to sound like a man who sneers at the vanity of all human beliefs and thereby demands an instantaneous belief from his listeners."

I had high hopes for this book. Based on the jacket copy, I thought that I'd found an author who shared my opinion that there is a new breed of evangelical atheists, that they are just a dangerously narrow-minded as the fundamentalists they claim to oppose, and that they are cashing in on 9/11 to claim that religion is going to destroy civilization. Sadly, the author is himself just as narrow-minded as those he criticizes. This is a work lacking in any semblance of hope, joy or compassion for humanity.

The central premise of the book is not that fundamentalist atheism is dangerous. The central premise is that humankind is evil and cannot be redeemed. And that premise is never defended or proven in any way. It's just used to bludgeon the read over and over and over again. The word "sin" is used herein more often than it would have been in a Jerry Falwell sermon, and in the same spirit.

The text is as repetitive as the most ponderous segments of verse in the King James Bible. Just as the author does not believe that we are capable of moving forward as moral creatures, his arguments never move forward. They simply move around in circles, draining the will to live from the reader.

No school of thought seems to be acceptable here. Atheism and Fundamentalist Christianity are wrong. A belief in reason, rationality or science is wrong, if it includes the belief that these can make life better for us. Any form of utopianism is wrong. All of these lead to violence, says the author. But pacifism is also wrong, because we need violence to resist evil. Nor is moderation the answer, for the author condemns liberal Christianity as being empty, a spiritual placebo.

The only thing that the author DOES seem to believe is that there are dark days ahead. Environmental and financial disaster are eminent, and they are all our fault, because we are evil. We are to face the future "realistically," our heads hung low, our lips murmuring prayers to God (whom the author barely mentions, and then only as a convenience for helping us to understand that we are sinful), thanking God that we have authoritarian social orders (whose leaders believe in nothing) to keep our violent natures controlled.

By the way, the author -- the "I" of the title -- does believe in atheists. He has no problem with them, as long as they are atheists because they've seen how ugly and painful and pointless life is.

He basically states that Dawkins, Harris and the like have created a new fundamentalism that's as scary and illogical as any religious fundamentalist, which I completely agree with. But his book is just a big pot of ill will he stirs, basically asserting that humans are intrinsically evil and left to their own devices, will destroy one another and eventually civilization.

There's a lot of name calling, a lot of straw man arguments and not much else. Some good thoughts here and there, but mostly a disjointed, disorganized batch of hostile essays.

He also seems to be of the opinion that Dawkins/Harris/Hitchens believes that the world will become a utopia if religion is banished. I'm not that well read in these men, but I don't recall any such assertion in what I have read. If anything, it's widely out of character for these guys. All of these guys can be accused of making unreasonable attacks on religion, but the picture painted by Hedges is inaccurate and dogmatic.

This book was written in the aftermath of several public debates that journalist Chris Hedges had with Christopher Hitchens (author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything) and Sam Harris (author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and Letter to a Christian Nation). In this book Hedges continues the debate against Hitchens and Harris, along with other "New Atheists" such as Daniel Dennet (author of Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon) and Richard Dawkins (author of The God Delusion). In this book Hedges does a lot of essentializing and often reduces his opponents' arguments to (at times) absurd conclusions. "They argue, like the Christian radicals, that some human beings, maybe many human beings, have to be eradicated to achieve [a] better world."

Hedges' goal with this book is to argue against the utopian and millenarian "New Atheism", which, he says, claims that if religion was stemmed or abolished humanity would enter a new phase of greatness and peace. However, is this actually what New Atheists argue? I have read Hitchens' "God is not Great" (and I enjoyed it) but I do not recall Hitchens saying that the answer to the Gordian Knot is to simply pull the religion string, nor do I recall reading that it would be better to eradicate the religious. (Doubtless, Hitchens and his fellow New Atheists essentialize and reduce their opponents as well...) At another time Hedges claims that humanity has not progressed morally. This is a bold and interesting claim, but it remains just that: a bold claim. I, along with The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, disagree.

At another point in the book Hedges, in a defense of religion, seems to say that only religion and spirituality can help us answer questions like "what are we, why are we here"; "Science and reason, while they can illuminate these questions, can definitively answer none of [these questions]." I tend to agree, but literature, philosophy and art can answer these unanswerables as well. Countless other occasions of unwarranted rhetoric and fist waving bugged me throughout the first chapter because, alas, the first chapter is all I could take. Hedges repeats himself over and over, which gave me the impression that the book was written in great haste without too much thought. In essence (again with the essentializing...) this book is a poor attempt at what needs to be a careful, nuanced, and thoughtful (and edited!) response to New Atheism. Hedges' gross caricatures of his opponents will not--so to speak--win many converts.

This author wrote a good book in "American Fascists", but flopped on this one. His broad premise that atheists are more or less equivalent to social Darwinists of the Spencerian mold and susceptible to absurdities of the Christian fundamentalist type, is so wide of the mark as to be laughable. As such, it negates the consequent conclusions in the book and obscures anything of real value the author has to say. While individuals of any description may embrace any absurdity from the marketplace of inane ideas, an attempt to lump all atheists into practitioners of some particular common inanity is itself inane. Lousy title, btw.

This book should have been called "I don't believe in moral progress."

I have to admit that Sam Harris is the only "new atheist" that I'm very familiar with, and I really like him. Having read Hedges' "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning" though, I was looking forward to getting some perspective from an intellectual on the other end. Although I'm glad I read this book- it did get me thinking because of my interest in its subject matters- it was one of the worst academic books I've read. If Hedges had some training in human nature studies, or if a significant amount of the references supporting his points were more than others' poetic reflections, I'd give him more credit.

Some of what Hedges argues has merit, and his insight from his experience as a foreign correspondent is valuable. However, he should stick to what he knows. I got really tired of his continual referral to the absurdity of the idea of human moral progress. The book was repetitive, much of it had little to do with his thesis, and it was simply poorly written and seemed to be poorly researched and hastily put together.

Knowing what I do know about Sam Harris, and knowing a little about the others, I thought that Hedges' arguments were unfair, especially the way he lumps all these people together. While he bashes what they've done, going as far as to say that they "ask us to live unexamined lives" and "never investigate or examine" others' values, which is obviously false, it's not even clear that he has adequately studied their works. He speaks of their arrogance and poor academia, while even the language used in his writing is biased- his contenders "suggest" or "insist," but supporters "knew."

I don't think Hedges accurately portrays these atheists' arguments, and I'm not even sure how he connects a lot of what he says to these others at all. Hedges could have talked about the dangers of violence-producing utopian dreams in a book with a different title- and he should have. He also should have taken more time on it. I was not impressed. -Lauren