> So all we have to do is promise the faithful eternal happiness in
> Heaven, with the threat of endless torment in hell!
I don't think this is Yoshie's point, but there is another way to go about it, which is to terminate this ressentiment toward religion, and try to engage with the religious rather than writing them off. Marx had an excellent gag at the expense of Hegel and Bauer when he wrote of commodity fetishism: he pointed out that Capital was based on theological suppositions in no fundamental way superior to religious narrowness, and much more rooted in the contemporary structure of class power. Further, the liberal secularist critique of religion, supposedly a scathing indictment of superstition and delusion, dogmatically accepts the theological underpinnings of capital, which is simply accepted as there, as part of the natural order of things, a logical step in a long process of technological development and the specialisation of labour. And that Smithian divine narrative is accompanied by all sorts of mad, quasi-religious doctrines about 'human nature' (which inevitably posits a natural inclination toward trucking, trading and bartering, homo economicus, as well as toward selfishness, cruelty, vindictiveness etc), which not only abound freely in liberal discourse but actually sustain it. The apocryphal tales about the development of capitalism fed to students in Business Studies and Economics classes are underpinned by a touching faith in the benevolence of the Holy Profit and the providential guidance of the Hidden Hand. With devout rectitude, one never questions these assumptions, one simply entertains every silly fable and fairy tale about free markets and enterprise and property rights. Every grotesque result of this grotesque system is externalised: in effect, the theodicy of Robinson and the Robinsonades is that God did it. In fact, watching these documentaries, one can't help but be moved by the immovable faith that Robinson, Dawkins and Baer have in the real earthly power of God. They are true believers. My friend, the excellent Dan Hinds, has a book coming out on The Threat to Reason, published by Verso. On his very occasionally updated blog, he addresses this very topic:
http://thethreattoreason.blogspot.com/
Faith and Reason (Part 1) This is a topic I will come back to, again and again, I suspect, so I thought I would start as I mean to go on.
There has been a spate of books in recent years that have sought to set out a simple division between faith and reason in which faith is understood as being a commitment to Biblical (or Koranic) literalism and reason is a commitment to materialism and the values of the Enlightenment. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and The End of Faith by Sam Harris adopt this central organizing division.
We will have plenty of opportunities to examine this style of thought in the months ahead (Christopher Hitchens and Al Gore both have books coming out that will, I suspect, seek to join a party already in full swing). But right now I just want to ask whether if what Dawkins and Harris say is true - that fundamentalist religion poses a unique and autonomous threat to secular society, even to the survival of mankind - their response is a sensible one. (They are quite wrong of course, let's be clear about that, but like I say, we have plenty of time).
Because faced with this terrible threat to science and reason, both Dawkins and Harris seem to think that a campaign of ridicule makes sense as a response. "My, aren't they all idiots, these religious nuts - they think the world is 6,000 years old! And they are scary too - they want to kill all the witches and the infidels!" That seems to the the sum of their program. Mock them enough and the Christians will finally see the error of their ways.
Wouldn't it make more sense for progressives to recognise the sincerity and decency of many millions of fundamentalist Christians, and stop fantasising about a world where brilliantly enlightened polemic would be enough to make them change their Bible-loving ways? Because if we tried to speak with these Christians in a register they understand, it would be more likely to result in trouble for the religious right, who we can all agree are a trouble to the world.
For example, much has been made in recent years about the unnerving character of the modern, publicly traded corporation. Without wanting to imagine that all the ills of capitalism can be solved by better regulation or reform of corporate law, the corporation is important to the modern system both practically and symbolically. There is no reason why fundamentalist Christians cannot be enlisted in the campaign against corporate power just as secular progressives have. After all, corporations have some very thought-provoking characteristics. Joel Bakan describes them as being psychopathic in his book The Corporation. But we can use another register altogether.
After all, a corporations is immortal and possessed of an inhuman clarity of purpose, to seek profit above all other considerations. An immortal and fictitious person, incapable of any human feeling yet entirely ravenous, a leviathan given form and cover by thousands of human beings: such a monster must surely outrage the faithful. If the evangelicals wish to fight dragons, then let us invite them to join us in a crusade against these demonic concentrations of greed – for what is a thing that does not live and does not age? The overwhelming moral emergency presented by the modern industrial corporation seems more likely to appeal to the evangelical imagination than the managerialist policies of the Democrats and the Labour Party.
It's just a thought. For decades fundamentalists in the United States have been cannon fodder for all kinds of nutty policies. It is high time secular progressives started to speak to them in terms that they will recognise, to show them a way out of the torments of the 'culture wars'. If anyone starts talking about prayer in schools or creationism, you can just point out that Reagan was a warlock and that Bush isn't really born again. Neither of those two factoids are jokes, by the way, they are just stone cold facts that have their basis in the word of the Lord. Hallelujah!
The history of the Labour Party shows that deep religiosity doesn't have to mean hostility to progress. In fact the party was a sight more radical when it was run by born-again Christians than it is now. God knows the left could use a few million people who get up early, do what they say they will do, and who look forward to a better world than this.