The UK based online magazine, ‘Spiked’, arose in the year 2000 from the ashes of its predecessor, Living Marxism, following the bankruptcy of that publication due a libel case brought against it by the news organization ITN. Despite its name, “Living Marxism” was more noted for its promotion of a corporate libertarian stance – a position continued under its current guise under the editorial leadership of Brendan O’Neill. ‘Spiked’ is known for its promotion of free speech, criticism of hate laws and strong support of the pro-choice position in regards to abortion. If one imagines that such an organization may not be a suitable ally for the arch conservative wing of Roman Catholic Church then perhaps it’s time to remember the old phrase “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. The common enemy of both Roman Catholicism and Spiked in this case is not totalitarian dictatorships, or unfettered capitalism but is, of course, “new atheism”.
For instance ‘Spiked’ senior writer Tim Blacks rant against Oxford chemistry professor Peter Atkins recent book, “On Being – A scientist’s exploration of the great questions of existence” provides a good picture of how dangerous they feel are the ideas of the new atheists. The piece, entitled “The tyranny of science” summarizes their take on Atkins book:
“Atkins’ faithless, shrunken world of energy and entropy is almost triumphant in its nihilism. ‘We shall have gone the journey of all purposeless stardust’, he concludes, ‘driven unwittingly by chaos, gloriously but aimlessly evolved into sentience, born unchoosingly into the world, unwillingly taken from it, and inescapably returned to nothing. Such is life.’ Nietzsche, so wrong when it came to many things, has it right for Atkins and his crew of scientistic New Atheists. In the absence of a will to something, there is only a will to nothing.”
And the consequence of such new atheist induced nihilism on society as a whole?
“Secularism is in crisis. In Enlightened times, progressive secular movements, those which eschewed the guidance of God in favour of relying on mankind to work out what his problems were and how to solve them, were all about having a positive view of humanity. Their vision was both terrifying and extremely liberating: that man alone could master the complexities of life on Earth and improve it for himself and future generations. Today, however, we live in misanthropic, deeply downbeat times, where mankind is looked upon as a greedy, destructive, unreliable force whose behaviour and thoughts must be governed from without.”
Any talk of secularism in crisis is, naturally, music to the ears of the religious, especially when accompanied by a sneering criticism of new atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, whose “campaign to arrest the pope is the product of an increasingly desperate secularism, which can only find meaning through ridiculing the religious.”
Defending the pope and insulting new atheists?
Perhaps an alliance is not so unlikely after all. In any event O’Neill’s ruminations on the terrible new atheists won him an invite to speak in front of the paramilitary wing of the Irish Catholic Church, the Iona Institute in Dublin on the 29th of September.
The Iona Institute describes its role as promoting “the place of marriage and religion in society”, as well as defending “the continued existence of publicly-funded denominational schools and promoting “freedom of conscience and religion.” It is, however, best viewed as the Irish equivalent of Bill Donohue’s ‘Catholic League’. It seeks to promote a blend of conservative values, both religious and economic, under the guise of “religious freedom”.
In contrast to the Catholic League – famously described by comedienne Cathy Griffin as “one guy and a computer” - the Iona Institute, however, has very strong ties with its targeted political and media establishment, with several senior members regularly publishing articles defending Catholicism and attacking secularism in the major Irish newspapers. Its director, David Quinn famously claimed to have defeated Richard Dawkins in an Irish radio debate about atheism – you can judge for yourself whether that was really the case by reading the transcript here. Just last Summer the Iona Institute was instrumental in organizing a conference “Religious Freedom: East and West” which was held at the Irish College in Rome. To give a small example of how religious and political power is enmeshed within the Irish state it is worth noting that the conference was itself chaired by a senior Irish government official, Dermot McCarthy, the ‘Secretary General to the Government of Ireland’ and was attended by Mary McAleese, the President of the Irish republic.
O’Neill’s talk, entitled“'The New Anti-Catholicism; why it's fashionable, why it's gone too far'” allowed him to again target the dreaded New Atheist menace.
“The New Atheism regards not only religious faith but any view which considers mankind as more than a monkey as suspect, strange, deluded.”
“New Atheists' real problem with religion is its treatment of mankind as special and distinctive, as the governor of the Earth, as having ‘dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and every other living thing that moves on the Earth’.
"At a time when we are increasingly seen as mere bundles of genes, little more than DNA, sharing 90 per cent of our genes with bananas, religion's sanctification of man is seen as perverse.”
While it is little surprise that faitheists like O’Neill (yet again an example of an atheist who seems to love belief) are willing to join with arch conservatives to slander and impune the integrity of outspoken atheists, it is interesting to see how far the religious establishment itself has moved to embrace such erstwhile allies in its ongoing battle with the modern secularist movement.
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