Full Disclosure
All right, we’ve made this separation; we’ve put the veracity or epistemic question on one side of the line, and the consequentialist question on the other. We’ve further said that the epistemic question comes first: that is, that for the sake of clarity, it ought to. So then what happens on the other side of the line? How does that discussion go?
One way it goes is to say that even if there is no good reason to think religion is true (unless religion is defined so thinly that it bears no resemblance to what most people mean by the word), it still doesn’t do to say so, because saying so would (to put it somewhat hyperbolically, as people occasionally do) ‘rot the fabric of our civilization.’ Or it doesn’t do to say so because saying so might rot the fabric of our civilization. Or it doesn’t do to say so because what if saying so rotted the fabric of our civilization? Or it doesn’t do to say so because it is possible to imagine that saying so could rot the fabric of our civilization. Or some such variation on the theme. Which is a way of saying No, the epistemic question should not come first, the consequentialist one should; or else it’s a way of saying the separation is a bad separation, and the two are not and should not be separable: that one should consider the epistemic question and the consequentialist one simultaneously.
But how? How is that possible? Especially for people who don’t have an ingrained habit of thinking that way? Or for people who once did, but have learned not to, and are damned if they want to start again. It’s not an easy trick. If you don’t believe in Santa Claus or God, it’s very difficult – probably impossible – to convince yourself that you do for the sake of some other goal. It’s easy enough to lie about it, but not to believe it.
But that’s all right, belief is not required, lying is all that’s expected. All Philip Dodd was urging Hitchens to do, apparently, was to shut up – and burn his essay on Bonhoeffer. Not to change his own beliefs, just to keep silent about them. That’s easy enough, surely?
Perhaps, in a sense, but why is it expected? Because religion is a ‘pillar of society,’ because religion is good for social cohesion, because religion is the anti-fabric-rot of civilization. Therefore people ought to lie, at least by omission.
But first, how does anyone know that religion is any of those things? How does anyone know it’s those things more than it’s their opposites? How does anyone know, in short, that religion does more good than harm? It would take an enormous amount of counting and surveying and compiling to know that, surely. And what of the opposite argument? That religion causes wars, hatreds, genocides, persecution, oppression, and therefore should be undermined by noisy atheists without delay?
And second, isn’t it rather sleazy and condescending to tell people not to disclose, not to put into circulation, their opinion that there isn’t much reason to think religion is true, because it might upset the poor weak masses who haven’t heard the news yet? And isn’t it also slightly absurd? ‘Psst – they can hear you!’
And then – how does it work anyway? Or how would it work? How would, for instance, various scientific endeavors go forward if the deity always had to be taken into account? They wouldn’t, would they. So then what? How do we arrange all those complications.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying I don’t think these arguments that we may be atheists ourselves but we shouldn’t say so in public, are at all convincing or persuasive. (Philip Dodd said he was a secularist himself – in the midst of his rather vehement rebuke.) I can think of arguments I do find persuasive, for why we shouldn’t always give voice to our atheism in personal contacts and relations. But for shutting up about it in books and journalism and on websites? Nope. Nothing so far.
You continue to articulate my thoughts perfectly. Great job.
Here’s another addition to the list of reasons it might not do to say so: we sure don’t know that it will save the fabric of our society.
Just as you said, the ethical net worth of religion is damned hard to determine. This is because, unlike most other real or proposed worldwide ills, it’s not on people’s hit list because its consequences are bad–it’s there because it isn’t true. Disease and famine have nothing to do with truth: we damn well know that when people have these things, they are much less happy, and we want to maximize happiness (roughly–all utilitarian quibbling aside for now). Same with television or video games or consumerism or whatever everyone’s blaming things on now. People don’t hate these things because they’re false (whatever that would mean); they hate them because, as they see it, they have bad consequences. This is why I’m wary of the proclamations that the world would be better without religion. These statements originate with the idea that religious teachings are false, and the net ethical cost is a convenient but unproven add-on. Unproven but plausible, yes, but there are plenty of things which do have proven ethical costs and which are worth the limited time and energy we have. (I’m not saying this argument is conclusive, or even endorsing it completely. Just throwing it out there.)
Good points all OB, but for one thing: It is probably a strawman argument to say that you can’t put the question of ‘whether religious truth-claims are true’ to the masses.
Most individuals in our society, whether gloriously educated or not, have had exposure to both the truth-claims of religion and the alternative of atheistic rationality. I suggest that the question is not ‘verboten’ at all.
It is just good manners that one refrains from lining up religious types and giving them what-for with the cluebat. Plenty do, but get discouraged after a few decades of apparently fruitless battering (possibly reaching the point of wondering who is closer to fruit-bat status).
Good manners is about social proof, social conformity; the survival tactic of seeing what the rest of the subject population are doing about an issue to decide your own course of action. We have plenty of religious types in our society, but they are sure as hell don’t force people at knife point to believe or to lie about belief – at least in the West.
Good manners? No knife point force, at least in the West? At the risk of repeating a comment I made in the last few days, just how long is it that we’ve had the freedom to have such discussions openly? Let’s take this in some kind of order. Maybe most of the individual discussions/arguments one might have with believers bear no fruit. The big picture has changed enormously over the last few centuries. It wouldn’t have if everyone who didn’t accept religion had had the good manners not to mention it. I don’t seem to recall us reaching the degree of freedom we now have because the all-powerful authorities of religion one fine day announced, uncoerced, that henceforth there’s no more death penalty for heresy. And if most of the people who contribute to discussions at B&W aren’t being actively oppressed by religion in their daily lives, that doesn’t mean that there’s no violent front line that has shifted several times in my lifetime and could easily come closer if we all roll over and cease to oppose publicly stated untruths, whether for reasons of good manners or any other reason. I don’t want to get too long-winded by detailing what is common knowledge, but none of the three major monotheistic religions are today without their flashpoints where a battle lost could mean the eventual loss of the war. Just the merest of suggestions with a few keywords: The Taliban and Al-Qaeda, ID and Kansas, Moshe Feiglin and the Likud. I mean, what could possibly be easier to demonstrate than that religion is not harmless?
Unlike the believers in an afterlife, for whom deathbed repentance can cover just about everything, the rest of us have to do what our consciences will let us live with right now, or forever give up on that option. If this is my only shot at being here, I’m not going to spend it discreetly holding my tongue in the face of lies in order not to be offensive. Should the unquantifiable possible benefits of religion be considered a good enough reason not to respond to statements that don’t seem to hold any water?
It’s not a question of never letting any good side of religion even cross one’s radar. It may be possible to find a silver lining for every cloud, if one phrases the search in the right way. I daresay some terminally ill people who were suffering untold agony had that suffering shortened by being washed away in the tsunami. Just as the same religious organisation that might help feed the hungry could also knowingly lie about the effectiveness of condoms and make a real contribution to the spread of disease.
Evaluating the good and bad done by religion is too complex and speculative to be empirically possible. Nobody can come up with statistics that show that more people were spared because of a commandment against murder than have been the direct victims of religious violence. And one could easily point to a religious education system and (truthfully) say “these children wouldn’t have gone to school at all otherwise,” while ignoring the indoctrination they receive to be intolerant of anyone not belonging to their faith.
A lot of the harm religion does is easy to see because it can be expressed in terms of a body count. The good cannot be measured that way. It’s while keeping that in mind that one should then recall that there’s no evidence in favour of religion being true. I’m trying to think of an analogy that might work. The best I’ve come up with is a vaccine that’s been used for donkey’s years against a disease. Quite a lot of people die from the vaccine but most take it because they fear the disease even more than that risk. Statistics show no clear advantage for those who risk the vaccine. And then it turns out that the medical knowhow involved in developing the vaccine was non-existent and there are those who continue to argue that this information should not be made public, or discussed openly. Certainly not in the presence of those who’ve survived taking the vaccine, who might be offended (and will probably prefer denial to an admission of fear or stupidity).
To speak and not tell the truth; that is my idea of really offensive.
Your target-selection needs to be refined a little, I think. What “most people mean by” religion is far too loose. Presumably you don’t plan to go for everyone who invokes God now and then. If you do, you will have your work cut out. Einstein couldn’t resist pronouncing on what God does and does not do with the universe. Listening to Mozart, I don’t find the notion that he was divinely inspired at all ludicrous. If you prefer to say that the harmonies were forged in his creative unconscious that’s fine. But it isn’t any improvement, scientifically speaking. If one formulation is claptrap, so is the other. We are nowhere near the point where K551 can be accounted for by chemical reactions in the brain. The same goes for the Sermon on the Mount. Are you gunning for religion of all sorts, or just certain varieties?
As to whether atheists should proselytise, two considerations come to mind:
1. In many situations it is impolite. Don’t knock the notion of immortality at a funeral.
2. Burke’s point: be careful in your choice of arguments. If you say that there is no scientific evidence for divine grace, therefore we should abandon belief in it, where does that leave human rights? You won’t find them in a test-tube.
You can abide by these, my commandments, and still make your case quite forcefully. Actually the second one is worth observing if only so that some thug doesn’t use your own logic against you. An atheist preacher cannot foresee how a change in beliefs will change society any more than Martin Luther could. All the more reason for thinking about it a bit more than Luther seems to have done, before those revolting peasants shook him up. Incidentally, while I don’t think the what-is-Dodd-saying game is worth the candle, that is what I would probably have in mind if I questioned Hitchens about his atheism. I don’t know much about his beliefs, but he comes across as something of a Roundhead. But since I haven’t read his religious writings, that impression may be quite false.
Freely conceded; generalisations can be tricky, as can thinking, speaking or writing without ever resorting to them.
I have become somewhat sensitised to religious language in everyday life. When OB writes (as she once did) “Oh thankyougod, thankyouthankyouthankyou,” I take it not as an expression of faith, but as a Basil Fawlty moment. I do try to avoid environments where I have to hear god being blessed in the context of everyday greetings. When Richard Dawkins embraced the “Bright” meme he wrote an article that began by explaining how he had progressed from thinking that that kind of thing didn’t really matter and I went through something similar myself.
Einstein is a bit of a minefield (I’m not the expert but know some people who really are), as some of the things he said have been hijacked and equipped with meanings he did not intend. That artists who felt their inspiration to be divine have created works that even I can enjoy is not something I would consider problematic, even though you won’t catch me listing a piece as being a Mozart-God collaboration.
You ask whether I’m “gunning for religion of all sorts,” to which the answer, as I think you meant the question, must be “yes.” Given the lack of evidence for the truth of religion, I find the viewpoint that lives with that fact much more reasonable than the one that promotes anything else. The “anything else” is very unreasonable and therefore I don’t see where it gets off demanding even equal time, let alone official recognition.
Do atheists proselytise? Can atheists proselytise? In all the definitions with which I’m familiar, that would involve converting to something and not just from. I’m not being flippant, the question has been dealt with at length here in the past. Lack of belief does not equal a belief.
Of course, I do not gatecrash religious funerals to mock the mourners’ beliefs. But I hope you’re not suggesting that an atheist should pay lip service to rituals he/she finds absurd, particularly if the deceased is someone close enough to have their death occasion grief in the non-believer. One could tell a child returning from the funeral of a parent that the parent will be back tomorrow, right as rain. This might bring comfort till the next day and then enormous disillusion. One wouldn’t do that, would one? But one might tell a child that one day they’ll all be together in heaven, still get some of the comfort effect and never be found out. If there’s no evidence it’s true, I still wouldn’t resort to it, any more than I would to the first strategy.
On the human rights question, there was a well-reasoned piece a little while back, by Paul Kurtz, I think, about the options for ethics not based on religion. I may have even gotten to it via a B&W link. But let’s pretend it doesn’t exist for a moment. It doesn’t really matter what one can offer as an alternative to what I think you mean by “divine grace,” though it should always be as good as we can make it. If you literally mean divine as in somehow ordained by god or a god, then we part company, because I have taken the lack of evidence for one at face value. However, if by that you mean we should base ourselves on some scripture (and I don’t have any particular religion in mind as I write this) traditionally accepted as divine, but which you concede was, of course, written by a man or men (not much chance it was women, right?), then what sets it apart from any other writing by Paul Kurtz, me, you or my next door neighbour? In fact, the older the scripture, the less actual knowledge of the world (compared to us) the author/s would have had and the more likely they were to be writing with a society in mind that was nothing like ours. Sure, there are certain prohibitions you are always likely to find in codes of law, such as that against murder. What’s more likely, that this is so because the societies that didn’t have them didn’t last long, or that it came from a being more perceptive than we are?
The term “atheist preacher” doesn’t make much sense to me, nor what comes just after it. It almost sounds like a caution that we shouldn’t be doing too much against religion in case we succeed and don’t like the results. Nobody can really predict anything anyway and the best we can do is what seems right at the moment. I would not want to preserve something I consider to be a negative influence in the world just because I couldn’t predict what it would be like without it.
It is worth getting beyond the rudeness and offensiveness in which Hitchens so often delights to listen to what he is actually saying, even when one does not agree wholeheartedly. That may be the single most valuable piece of criticism one could level at him, that some people get turned off by the gratuitous insults (someone else might have found a way to deal with the smoking issue during the Hay session with Peter without resorting to the expression “kiss my ass,” for example) and thus miss a lot of very incisive insight.
‘What “most people mean by” religion is far too loose.’
That was a parenthetical point, in passing; I have gone into that in more detail in previous N&Cs. One way some (many) defenders of religion shift their ground is by defining religion as just vague feelings of awe, when that suits their purposes, and as much more than that when atheists aren’t in the room. I was noting and attempting to block that move.
The Einstein thing, as Stewart mentions, is a canard. He used the word metaphorically and was irritated ever after that people took it literally.
“In many situations it is impolite. Don’t knock the notion of immortality at a funeral.”
I’ve already said that. Many times, including in this discussion. Here’s a don’t in return: don’t bang on an open door.
“If you say that there is no scientific evidence for divine grace, therefore we should abandon belief in it, where does that leave human rights? You won’t find them in a test-tube.”
No, you won’t, and I’ve talked about that before, too – I think it’s as well to keep in mind that human rights are something humans agree on, not something that exists in nature. But in any case you’re mixing categories. I haven’t said anything at all about ‘divine grace,’ I don’t talk in such terms. But religion makes much more mundane (however supernatural) truth-claims than that, and it’s those mundane claims I’m saying there’s no evidence for. There is however plenty of evidence (test tube not required) for human needs and wants that make agreed-on human rights desirable or a good idea. Argument is still required, which is why it’s always going on, but one can adduce empirical evidence that human suffering is suffering. What sort of evidence one could adduce for something called ‘divine grace’ I don’t know.
“An atheist preacher cannot foresee how a change in beliefs will change society any more than Martin Luther could.”
And nor can an anti-atheist ‘preacher.’ Nor can an anti-atheist ‘preacher’ foresee how an absence of change in beliefs will change society. As a matter of fact, no one can foresee anything. We can all make more or less educated guesses, and that’s about it. So what’s your point? That relgious beliefs should have the benefit of the doubt? Well, why? Why should they have it more than unreligious ones?
You’re arguing like anti-GM campaigners. ‘This change in the technology is fraught with dangers.’ Okay, but don’t leave the dangers of not adopting it out of the ledger.
You say you have dealt with a couple of points before. Apologies for not wading though the archives. As to Einstein, a remark like “God does not play dice with the universe” is much more than a metaphor. It expresses a preference for a particular way of doing science. But unless you assert the contrary I will assume you have no objection to cosmological speculation even when there is no hope of testing it empirically.
Of course human rights are “something humans agree on.” But religious beliefs play a part in the “negotiations”, which often get quite rough. Undermine the beliefs and you change the balance of power. It won’t do to say that “one can adduce empirical evidence that human suffering is suffering” and leave it at that. Pol Pot didn’t need anyone to convince him that his victims were suffering. He meant them to. His values caused the trouble, not some superstitious notion that a scientific education could have debunked.
“As a matter of fact, no one can foresee anything. We can all make more or less educated guesses, and that’s about it. So what’s your point? That relgious beliefs should have the benefit of the doubt?”
I don’t recall making any such suggestion. I am for educated guesses, making due allowance for the risks. At the moment I don’t know whether I disagree with you. It depends on where you are heading. Maybe you just want people to treat the views of Christopher Hitchens with the same show of respect accorded to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Fine by me, that’s pretty much what I already do; i.e., listen long enough to check that the message isn’t new. Or maybe you have plans for taxing church collections. I recall an economists’ debate as to whether that kind of spending should be classified as current consumption or long-term investment. Clearly if it is investment in the hereafter it is highly speculative. Should it therefore be treated like gambling?
Presumably your policy proposals will emerge in due course. I await them with interest.
KD, you’re getting tiresome. Enough with the condescending tone, please. No, of course I don’t expect you to comb the archives, but you could realize that since I’ve said a lot of this before, I can’t repeat it all every time I post, out of consideration for readers.
‘I don’t recall making any such suggestion.’
Really? I do. Perhaps I misread you – but then again, perhaps you’ve shifted your ground. Perhaps you’re not really discussing, but just taking your consdescension out for an airing.
OB, if you think I argued that atheists should always bear the burden of proof as regards the effects of proposed reforms then you did misread me (or I miswrote). Perhaps that is because (a few posts back) I put forward warnings issued by Orwell and Burke as examples of the concerns people have. (You were looking for such examples.) I didn’t mean to endorse their fears in full, only to say they had a point. I do agree with Burke, though, that when we present a case for radical change we should consider how our arguments will be used by people whose goals are different from ours.
Or maybe you are referring to the fact that I thought the onus to explain was on Hitchens in the interview with Dodd? My take on that is simply that Hitchens was the one being interviewed.
Anyway, my own position is that of a typical live-and-let-live, more-or-less-centrist liberal. I don’t hold with gagging atheists but I also don’t understand why people express the kind of hostility to religious believers that Hitchens does: “I can’t stand anyone who believes in God, who invokes the divinity or who is a person of faith.”
Enough already. I hope none of that sounds condescending. It certainly isn’t meant to.
Nope, none of that sounds a bit condescending. Maybe I did misread you. And yeah, I agree with Burke on that point too. I’ve had the experience of being brought up short by reading Burke – thinking ‘hmm, he has a point.’
Part of the reason for the hostility to believers on my part (can’t speak for Hitchens, because don’t know) has to do with how much pressure there is in the opposite direction right now. With for instance the fact that there is a de facto religious test for running for high office in the US – and that public rhetoric and journalism keep encouraging that. I think people saying the other thing are badly needed – and that they need to say it rather stridently to get through at all. Sure, that repels a lot of people, but it may get the attention of others. It’s hard to resist without resisting.
As a religious person,I don’t object,except on grounds of boredom,to anyone being an atheistic proselytiser.Any proselytiser,including,perhaps even especially, religious ones, ought to be avoided.The atheistic ones are generally just as self righteous as I learnt from having to listen endlessly to my father-in-law.Remember not every atheist zealot will have the profundo voice,verbal alacrity,knowledge and debating skills of a C Hitchens.
What I do object to however is an atheist like Justin Webb,apparently acting for the BBC as a neutral reporter of American events writing on the BBC website; “America is often portrayed as an ignorant,unsophisticated sort of place,full of bible bashers and ruled to a dangerous extent by trashy television,superstition and religious bigotry,a place lacking in respect for evidence based on knowledge.I know that is how it is portrayed because I have done my bit to paint that picture, and that picture is in many respects a true one”.I think every report he does should now be accompanied by those words.And similarly when the BBC’s in house philosopher A C Grayling, unaccompanied, is invited onto the Today programme to discuss who is the greatest philosopher it should be pointed out that as an anti-religious zealot he is unlikely to commend,for example,the thinking of Aquinas.
Well, see, there you go – that’s why atheists get aggressive. Note that you seem to be assuming that Grayling is handicapped or biased because he’s not a theist. Note that you seem to be assuming that theism is the default position, and non-theism should carry a warning label. That’s my point – it should be the other way around, because it’s the theists who are saying someone exists when there is no evidence that that someone does exist.
Atheists do get tired of that assumption – hence the forthright language sometimes.
I think Stewart, you needs a cup of tea, a Panadol and a nice lie down.
Measuring the harm of religion by body count is very cheap rhetoric. There are far worse magnitudes of harm in for instance the oppression of women, and the unfreeness of individuals to test the truth and speak it. The entire human population were historically under that yoke.
It is also a cheap shot to go back to the Dark Ages to start counting harms and force as backing up belief. If you stick to your own lifetime, you can make a more credible argument about what is happening NOW, that OB has such a good case against.
Perhaps you have heard of a religious person called Martin Luther? His action in testing the current wisdom against original sources was the kind of revolutionary questioning (followed by speaking out) that drives human betterment now.
Luther’s good arose out of his practice of religion, and it helped to free a large part of the world from (worse) religious oppression. That habit of independent questioning is the direct ancestor of the current enlightened scientific enquiry.
For RIGHT NOW, you say:
“Unlike the believers in an afterlife, for whom deathbed repentance can cover just about everything, the rest of us have to do what our consciences will let us live with right now, or forever give up on that option. If this is my only shot at being here, I’m not going to spend it discreetly holding my tongue in the face of lies in order not to be offensive. Should the unquantifiable possible benefits of religion be considered a good enough reason not to respond to statements that don’t seem to hold any water?”
Strawman characterisation of theists above! Theists are absolutely equal to atheists in that right now is when you have to live and face moral choices. The deathbed repentance thing is about as useful in daily life as the ‘divine right of kings’ is to the modern British parliamentary system.
Chris Per –
Hang on – surely that’s not a strawman. Theists do think there’s another world, surely; Christians and Muslims think there’s an afterlife; that does have to make a difference, doesn’t it? Consider all the people who believe in ‘the Rapture,’ for instance. They really don’t think right now is when you have to make moral choices – they think they’re dealing with eternity.
To pick up the point about human rights not being found in a test-tube, that is in part the heart of this, and many other similar arguments. It is simply not ‘scientifically true’ that ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’ — it is a blatantly counterfactual assertion, indeed, but it is the basis of a moral choice about what sort of world ‘we’ want this to be. Religion can be used to promote human equality, or not… Science likewise — science has over the last 100 years veered sharply from affirming to denying the value of inherent racial, sexual, etc differences as ‘legitimating’ inequality. We might like to think of this as a ‘self-correcting’ function absent from religion. But is it perhaps closer to ‘reality’ to say that only a broader context of baseless political assertions, like the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has brought that shift about?
Science, religion, epistemology: in the end is it not POLITICS, in its largest sense, which determines whether any of these things is allowed to matter? Personally I am all for human rights, but I don’t think they have, or can have, a ‘foundation’ in anything other than an assertion of moral rectitude – or am I wrong?
Cross post with OB. Personally, I feel the point is to find meaning and purpose in this life. If you subscribe to salvation by grace, then the question is God’s business, not mine anyway. Anyway, I can’t take seriously someone who feels it’s fine to be a rat bastard all one’s life then repent at the 11th hour. The Rapture is a bunch of nonsense, in my opinion and that of many Christians. I’m reading “God’s Scretaries,” the book about the creation of the King James Bible, and it includes the tantalizing information that some Jacobean preachers and scholars wanted to leave the Book of Revelations out. They were voted down.
Two posts ago I meant to say “qualitative” rather than “quantitative.”
“I’m politically progressive and am outraged as you are about the anti-evolution movement and the rest of the Christian conservative agenda, but it’s a shame that the debate is so polarized, with so little trust or good will demonstrated by either pole.”
I think the point is that there are two different conflicts here. One is the conflict between a modern liberal secular society and a conservative religious fundamentalism. Many of the religious are on the same side as the majority of atheists in this debate. Most atheists don’t want to oppress the religious, through laws, discrimination, or whatever.
But there is a second conflict, a conflict about evidence and science against believing in things, factual claims, which are unsupported. And in that conflict the atheists stand against the religious, and possibly also against the ‘spiritual’, new agers, alternative therapists et al. Fundamentally, an atheist cannot -fully- respect the decision of someone else to believe in something for which there is so little evidence.
So we stand beside religious people in resisting the tides of religious authoritarianism, but we will still point out that we think being religious is silly.
Hi John, and welcome –
I have no idea what Hitchens said about Bonhoefer either. It’s something Dodd said, about Hitchens’ new book – which I haven’t read yet.
“Religion is best understood not as a checklist of beliefs but a worldview, a lens, a framework.”
Hmm. But – the trouble is, that’s not (as I said above – I say this a lot, I’m afraid) what is usually meant by religion. In the usual meaning it does entail at least one basic belief. If it doesn’t – then it’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m not talking about quests for meaning and the like; I am talking about supernatural beliefs which believers try to impose or urge on everyone else. The kind of thing Kerry was often scolded for not making enough noise about during the campaign. What PM said, in fact –
“But there is a second conflict, a conflict about evidence and science against believing in things, factual claims, which are unsupported.”
In cases where the factual claims are off the table and religion is just a worldview – then I have nothing to say against it. Not a word. It’s the attempted enforcement of supernatural beliefs that I have a huge problem with.
I think theists are horrified by any expression of nontheism because their faith depends upon strength of numbers, herd menatality, or mass delusion if you will. It certainly doesn’t depend upon evidence. These folks fancy that their deity is universal and therefore true and thus any braincase without a deity-concept is a serious threat. It means their deity is not universal and therefore true, like the laws of physics are true for every being anywhere on earth and elsewhere in the known universe. For example, quantum theory has yielded computers that work for anyone, regardless of belief. Deities are far, far more fickle. (“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”) This is the source of the global convulsion of religion we are now experiencing, IMHO.