Jean Brichmont concludes a recent CounterPunch article:
"The deep reason why progressives should oppose religion is that it is irrational and arbitrary. A better world is necessarily a more rational world, a world where people search for solutions to human problems based on the facts of the world and with the help of reason."
Of course he's right. But I'm not convinced that at present traditional religion is causing much of our troubles. Rather, modern secular ideologies such as neoliberalism are to blame for much of pain we suffer. And, like it or not, much of the most constructive work that is being done on the left in the US is being done be people who profess, honestly or not, their faith.
And, I think, ideologically the worst harm done to the left recently has been from ideologies it has created, such as Marxism* and, more recently and distressingly, postmodernism. Fortunately, Marxism has not enthralled people of my generation and from what I observed in school postmoderism is duly given little respect by students. But it is still the case that discourse concerning politics by people in the west (especially in Europe) who are consious of being "left" remains heavily clouded in obscurantism and fanaticism, to its detriment. Whereas, for the most part, I do not see Christians suffering the same imparement of facts to anything like the same degree on basically every issue aside from abortion (although, personally,--while in practice I think abortion should be legal without qualification--I have certain ethical reservations against it where the is not danger to the mother's life or where there are not serious birth defects) and I see Christians as among the most efficacious in terms of actually taking action against manifold forms of injustice.
Finally, for what it's worth, I'd like to note two observations. The first, that the reason there are so many fanatics in the US is because they were once driven, by persecuting forces, from the Old World. This was the case of my Puritan ancestors and this appears to be the case of my Chasidic neighbors here in Brooklyn. That the solution is not to answer religion, in spite of all that is evil in it, with persecution as is happening now in Europe, usually directed toward Muslims. And second, that religious belief, as distinguished from vain display, is waning. Evidence can be seen in the behavior of the devout: rarely do they behave in manner consistent with confident belief (in the sense you or I believe in China) an omnipotent and punishing entity. In fact, an Chasidic acquaintance of mine confessed to me the only reason he practices the faith is the appease his father.
Religion is a problem and we shouldn't have illusions about that. But I don't actually think it's the most serious obstacle preventing the left in this country (incidentally, atheist Britain has almost the same political structure as the US suggesting, at any rate, abolition of religion isn't going to be the magic bullet many hope for) .
*In spite of his claims to the contrary, I believe that Marx himself was fairly religious and that ideologically his work amounts to Christianity dressed in new clothes. Many fundamental metaphysical principles are carried over more or less explicitly tr such as manicheanism and belief in a millennium.
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