Guardian UK: Societies without God are more benevolent

[marmar]

Writing sometime around the 10th century BC, the furious author of Psalm 14 thundered against those who say there is no God. "They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good." If the denunciations of wicked atheists coming from today's apologists for religion are any guide, the spirit of Iron Age Israel is abroad in 21st-century Britain.

In advance of the pope's visit, clergymen and commentators are deploying every variety of bogus argument against those who advocate the superiority of secularism. Edmund Adamus, director of pastoral affairs for the Catholic diocese of Westminster, led the way when he denounced the "wasteland" secularism produced. If he had been condemning the atheist tyrannies of communism and fascism, I would have no complaint. However, Adamus was not objecting to Cuba, China or North Korea, but to the wasteland of secular, democratic Britain "with its ever-increasing commercialisation of sex, not to mention its permissive laws advancing the 'gay' agenda".

Rightwing columnists and, depressingly but predictably in these appeasing times, leftwing journalists have joined the moaning chorus. The arguments of Geoffrey Robertson QC and Professor Richard Dawkins that the cops had grounds to ask the pope to account for his church's failure to stop the rape of children in its care drove them wild. "The hysterical and abusive nature of some of the attacks on the pope will do nothing but discredit secularism," said Andrew Brown in the Guardian. "I accept, of course, that lots of secular humanists are tolerant and reasonable people," says the more restrained and judicious Stephen Glover of the Mail. "But there is a hard core which embraces and promotes atheism with the blind fervour of religious zealots."

Not all of those who condemn atheism are pious themselves, as the presence of journalists among their number suggests. Rather, they believe in piety for the masses and fear that without religion the lower orders will lose their moral bearings. "All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician and ridiculous to the philosopher," said Lucretius. And behind many of the demands of today's religious apologists that we "respect" Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism and even the Scientology cult lies a desire to keep the plebs in their place by protecting their ridiculous but politically useful beliefs. Although I am proud to be on the board of the National Secular Society, Britain's most urgently needed pressure group, I am not a militant atheist. I have seen too many vicars being moved by their Anglicanism to dedicate their lives to others to agree with Christopher Hitchens's bald statement that "religion poisons everything". ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/12/pope-benedict-atheism-secularism

[MisterP]

1. Cohen has 111 hits on www.islamophobia-watch.com. might as well ask Beck or Coulter what Western Civ

should be