Leah Hitchens' most recent column in The Post, while well-written, makes a number of dangerous assumptions that require illumination. As my own most recent letter to The Post promoted a few assumptions that needed clarification (thanks to Kevin Grimm for his wonderfully eloquent response) I feel that it is appropriate here to contribute to the discussion in an opposite direction.
First, Ms. Hitchens' article contains a few contradictions. The criticism of Dawkins and other prominent atheist intellectuals for use of dated or older material in establishing their New atheist movement seems to ignore a number of similar precedents in Christianity. The Bible does not combine the New and Old Testaments without good reason; they are meant to serve as continuations of one religious heritage. New atheism might be a misnomer - modernist literature has been out of the picture for quite some time - but it does not necessarily need to make completely new arguments. It is fitting that atheism might find trends in thinking that stretch back into the Enlightenment; the reversal of many oppressive policies within Christianity by individual denominations (for example, the abandonment of the geocentric solar system, or the inclusion of female clergy) are because of progressive values instilled in the Enlightenment and after.
The second, far more dangerous assumption Hitchens makes in her article is this worn-out, utterly fallacious idea that if a religion doesn't fill someone's heart, then it is empty. Intellectualism does not provide all the solace needed to confront the problems of life, it is true. But then again, Ms. Hitchens assumes that it is intellectualism that drives the life of an atheist, and not something else. Intellectual arguments for the refutation of a God are not intellectual arguments for the refutation of emotion, and it should be obvious, by reading the other literature of Bertrand Russell, or other noted atheists, such as Ian McEwan, Dawkins, (the other) Hitchens, etc. that their lives are filled with love, satisfaction, emotion, fulfillment and happiness. Russell remarked, in fact, the good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Notice how this life is not based upon knowledge, upon intellect, but rather guided. I will not be told that my life is without meaning, even to myself, because I do not profess a specific God.
A third assumption is that such public intellectuals as Dawkins and his peers speak for atheism. They do not, I agree with Ms. Hitchens, constitute much of an ideological basis for approaching the world past attempting to brush off those areas where religion attempts to become oppressive. It should be obvious, from my own letter indicting the futility and childishness of many public atheists, that atheism is not as monolithic as it might appear to be. This is why I, an agnostic, find sympathy with both atheist and theist thoughts on the universe as a way to construct a picture of life based upon multiple perspectives. What Ms. Hitchens does, much like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens do in their own right, is to make an image of the world that must be either-or, right-left, black-white. The truth can and must reside somewhere in the middle.
Jesse Pyle is a sophomore studying English.
4 Opinion
Letter to the Editor
