Neo-theist Hoaxes 2 | Religion, Wars and New Atheism

Introduction

One of the most common hoaxes by neotheists is a strawman fallacy in which Neotheists present New Atheists as asserting something like “majority of the wars have emerged due to religions“. As we will see with-in this article, this myth of neotheists is so well spread that it is now seen as an undisputable fact. In this writing, we will show the following:

1. Neotheists strawman New Atheists in regard to this acknowledgement by New Atheists.
2. That religions facilitating wars, what is something New Atheists have been endersing, is corroborated by contemporary academy.
3. Objections in regard to the truth on religions facilitating wars should be adressed to academy, not new atheists.

The truth is that (as I will show here), no New Atheist has been detected to have asserted that more people have died due to wars over religion or anything like that and Neotheists do not even attempt to demonstrate it – they just quote irrelevant excerpts from the works of New Atheists. Then, I want to emphasise the following:

Now, it is time show the allegations of neotheists.

Myths of neo-theists

This myth is so adhered to by neo-theists that all levels subscribe to this myth, ranging from academic scholarship to amateur, benighted charlatans that pretend to be knowledgeable.

Starting with academy, for example, in his work New Atheism and Its Critics, Whitley Kaufman says the following in regards to New Atheists:

Religion, we are told, is the source of most wars and human conflict, the basis of oppression and exploitation, and also the untold psychological harm involved in feelings of guilt and terrifying fear of being damned eternally.

Keith Ward takes it one step further (2008, 415):

Some people argue that religion is a major cause of violence in human
history. No one can deny that there have been religious conflicts and wars,
but is religion the main cause of violence in the world? Even a brief study
of history will show that it is not.

So, according to Ward, “a brief study of history” is enough to conclude otherwise – in the next section, we will see who need even a brief study of history. But as if these distortions are not enough, Eerdman (2006, 94) takes it into even deeper muddles, he states that “Atheist polemicists” hold the view that political factors should be ignored if religious factor played a role in a conflict:

Atheist polemicists contend that religion has caused wars throughout
history and continues to do so today. Their arguments tend toward
the mono causal, so that if religion plays a role in conflict it must be
the primary or only cause with other factors, primarily political ones excluded.

CARM.org, a site for Christian Apologetics, states that this “myth” is consistently repeated by Atheists and Humanist Secularists (2012).

This myth is so popular, so taken for granted that self-accredited experts among neotheists present it by shouting “eurekaaa“. One example is a neotheist Tim O’Neill. Tim O-Neill, a neotheist from the website historyforatheists.com presents this hoax as belonging to New Atheists. Here are some excerpts from the current version of his blog titled “THE GREAT MYTHS 12: RELIGIOUS WARS AND VIOLENCE“.

The cliché that more people have died in wars over religion than any other cause is a unassailable dictum among atheist activists

Just after the second part of this sentence, neotheist Tim O’Neill states that it leads New Atheists into a paradox:

But, on closer inspection, this idea becomes increasingly incoherent and actually leads several New Atheists into some ethically paradoxical positions.

Unless otherwise noted explicitly, all the emphasis on the quotes are done by me.

What New Atheists Stated

Now, as I have just mentioned above: New Atheists have never claimed “majority of the wars were over religion“. What New Atheists acknowledged is that religion has been some kind of source of wars, violence and conflicts, and it is corroborated by the contemporary academy as you will in the next section. Now, let us proceed into What New Atheists stated. Let us start with the most famous one, Sam Harris (2004, 12):

A glance at history, or at the pages of any newspaper, reveals that the ideas which divide one group of human beings from another, only to unite them in slaughter, generally have their roots in religion

Pay attention – Sam Harris is not asserting “those slaughters were executed/orchestrated due to religious purposes“. What he says is that those ideologies, that ended in slaughters, had their source of legitimacy in religion. As you will see in the section, the contemporary academy approves Harris. The next worthy mention is that of Victor Stenger who in his book (2009, 107) expressed the following:

the strongest case against religion is its unbroken history as a major source of the most horrible evils that the world has seen.

Like Harris, Stenger too acknowledges what the contemporary academy corroborates as we will see in the next sections.

Richard Dawkins is an iconic figure for New Atheism and is considered a militant atheist. He has a documentary named Root of All Evils, which is considered visualized version of his book The Good Delusion. At the second sentence of the aforementioned documentary, Dawkins acknowledges that politics is also influential at the way the wars emerge and nowhere he states that religions are the sole cause or source of wars. Christopher Hitchens has an entire chapter named “Religion kills” in his book “God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” and even that chapter has no assertion like religion being the most prolific thing in kill number, nor does he asserts that majority of wars were over religion.

New Atheists claiming something like “majority of wars were fought for religions” or “most people died due to religion” is a hoax spread by Neotheists deliberately and conveniently. New Atheists have never argued something like that. The closest a neotheist can rise is the following assessment by Harris:

When will we realize that the concessions we have made to faith in our political discourse have prevented us from even speaking about, much less
uprooting, the most prolific source of violence in our history?

But even that quote does not equate to, nor does it entail, saying “MOST wars and violence”. The most prolific means “more in numbers than all of the rest”, like when we say “Ronaldo is the most prolific goalscorer in history”, it does not entail saying “Most of the goals have been scored by Ronaldo.” As simple as that.

What New Atheists have argued is that religions have been source of destructions and that is what you will find in the contemporary academy. Let us see what the contemporary academy says.

Academy: Religions had been facilitating wars and had been Source of Legitimacy for Wars and Violence

So, first, I am going to demonstrate the first point from academic sources, one of which is the very favourite encyclopedia of these Neotheists: the Encyclopedia of Wars, edited by Alan Axelrod and Charles Phillips. The Neoheists we have quoted in previous chapters, Whitley Kaufman, Eerdman, Keith Ward, Tim O’Neill, carm.org; cited this encyclopedia on their very same writings, for example. An accredited Sociologist and so-called philosopher Neotheist Caner Taslaman from Turkey, who boasts to have ben accredited by Harvard and Oxford, similarly cites this encyclopedia corroborating their claims, and does so in a bragging tone by the way. Unlike the hoax of neotheists, it is academics who spotted that religions were a tool to facilitate and justify wars, as well as people being provoked into wars via religion. Let us start with the same encyclopedia Neotheists appeal to: the Encyclopedia of Wars, edited by Alan Axelrod and Charles Phillips. At the very beginning of the encyclopedia, the 3rd paragraph of the Introduction chapter, the encyclopedia acknowledges that most wars have been justified thanks to religions:

…but for much of the world before the 17th century, these “reasons” for war were explained and justified, at least for the participants, by religion.

Here, the very same encyclopedia Neotheists refer to explicitly state that the wars had been justified and explained by religions. In the previous section, we saw that New Atheists assert the identical truth. It is an academic encyclopedia prepared by 9 PHDs, 8 of whom are professor of history, 6 of whom specialized in either military or war history, the other two being on social history, telling us that the wars were justified thanks to religion. And Neotheists are presenting this fact as a “myth” by New Atheists?

Now, let us move onto another encyclopedia, The Age of Wars of Religions 1000-1650 from The Encyclopedia of Global Warfare and Civilization acknowledges how wars were facilitated through religious believes:

Early Christians living in pagan Rome carefully distinguished between what
belonged to God and what was owed to Caesar, but they fundamentally rethought this discomforting notion once the Caesars became Christian. From
the 5th century, the Latin Church upheld a doctrine that ‘‘Two Swords’’ had
been given to Man by God, one secular and one religious, one for the emperor
and the other for the pope in Rome. For the next 1,000 years Latin Christians
could not conceive of war being waged outside the just purposes of God and
his anointed Church on Earth.

Here, an academic Encyclopedia dedicated to wars acknowledging the truth we New Atheists have been spreading and the very same truth Neotheists have been distorting and strawmanning. The Encyclopedia states that for one thousand years, religion was seen the only legitimacy source of wars! The same encyclopedia’s next sentence is how Islam has been tool to use Muslims as soldiers for war:

The first Muslims spliced war and faith to form a hybrid, the ‘‘jihad’’ (or ‘‘holy war’’) waged in the name of Allah and for plunder.

It is from an encyclopedia for wars. Then, how on earth we New Atheists are stigmatized as having some kind of irrational hatred towards Islam when we say the same thing? But that is not all, the same paragraph of the same encyclopedia goes on to narrate Caesaropapism of the Orthodoxes through which they justified wars, inpired and provoked people into war, and how they facilitated wars. That is still not all, the encyclopedia adds that places like North America and Japan who had never heard of either Islam or Christianity based their wars on divine concepts, how they all viewed the outcome of the wars as the manifestation of divine verdict.

In his academic article named Religion and Violence: Social Processes in Comparative Perspective, Dr. John R. Hall, a professor of Sociology, acknowledges how religions have been source of legitimacy of violence:

Any number of religions have justified violence under certain circumstances, and others have become caught up in its processes. In the ancient world, Zoroastrianism transformed earlier combat myths into a theology of eternal apocalyptic struggle between good and evil (Cohn 1993: 114), and ancient Judaism forged a confederacy under conditions of war (Schluchter 1989: 185, 200). Early Christianity had its martyrs, and the medieval Roman church, its crusades and Inquisition. As for Islam, the close association between rulership and religion — together with the principle of jihad (or holy war) as a vessel of reformation — infuse politics with enduring potential for violence

Similarly, John R. Hall (2013, 3) reiterates the fact that violence lies in some specific religions is a well established point through the works of Emile Durkheim:

That a potential for violence lies in specific religious structures is a point now well established in lines of analysis derived from the foundational work of Emile Durkheim, who famously argued that, for a community of participants, religion differentiates the sacred from the profane. Crucially, the sacred and profane are culturally defined, and thus, it is well within the realm of religious possibility that violence—whether extreme asceticism, martyrdom, war, or some other act—can become sacred duty.

I can cite many sociological academic works acknowledging the truth that religions are the source and legitimacy of violence and wars, but perhaps, it is the time to move into what psychology says. James W. Jones, Professor of Religion and Adjunct Professor of Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University and a senior research fellow at the Center on Terrorism at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, says the following in his academic work titled Religion and Violence from a Psychological Perspective:

In addition, terrorist religions are “totalizing” religions, they make absolute claims on their devotees. Here, too, there is a psychology—the psychology of the need for something absolute, certain, infallible. This partly reflects the psychological need to overly idealize the objects of one’s commitments and devotion. A devotee may demonstrate his or her devotion to an overly idealized object by committing extreme acts of violence and murder. Such totalistic visions erase all doubt and ambiguity and provide a claim of absolute certainty.

As for how and why religions attract those violence/terror minded people, Jones says the following:

From a clinical, psychodynamic perspective, it is not coincidence that such themes often occur together. Something within certain individuals may predispose them to be attracted to and to accept a religion characterized by an apocalyptic view of the world and the splitting of humanity into all-good and all-evil camps, leading to prejudice and crusades against outsiders (Jones 2008, 2006).

Religions polarizing humans into two is academically called “dualistic thinking” (Velji, 2013, 3).

Here, a Professor of Religion and Professor of Clynical Psychology stating that how certain individuals being attracted to and accept religions that provide them ground to crusade against those who do not believe in the same religions. As narrated by Velji, this dualistic thinking has been frequently observed by scholars in religious violence cases.

In his academic work titled “Religion and Violence from a Political Science Perspective”, Daniel Philpott (2013, 8) narrates that religious terrorism has become more common, was the only type of terrorism up until 19th century and the killing and wounding stats of muslim terrorists alone outnumbers secular numbers by fourfolds.

Neotheists have been claiming that religion being a fuel for wars and violence is a New Atheistic myth but there are tons of academic works acknowledging how religions facilitate and dominate wars and violence – Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence would be a good introduction to neotheists.

Conclusion and More

As we have seen again, Notheists make loud-cry-but-no-wool towards New Atheism. Neotheists spread falsehoods, lies and distortions about not only New Atheism but about academy as well. Neotheists claim that what we actually never claimed is claimed by Us, New Atheists.

The fact that religions being legitimacy source and provocation to instigate wars and to provoke people is an academic assessment have been shown here. You may object to to the fact that religions are source of wars but if you have any objection, you have to address the academy, not New Atheists.

New Atheists spread the neglected fact on religions begetting wars, violence and conflicts and these voice is corroborated by the contemporary academy. Neotheists on the other hand besmirch academy just to canopy the fact that religions are a disgrace to humanity.

Neotheists spread many hoaxes about New Atheists, with the intention of discrediting New Atheists. In his article named “What is really new about New Atheism?”, Political Scientist (not sciencist) Steven Kettel notes it:

The construction and subsequent popularisation of the label “new atheism”, then, did not stem from a disinterested attempt at classifying a new form of non-religious thought, but was part of a politically motivated campaign to discredit and delegitimise the views of leading atheist advocates.

But why? one might ask: why need for discrediting and delegitimizing New Atheists? Steven Kettel’s another work features good answers for this question. Because We New Atheists stand against all this oppression of theists, we challenge their self-assigned privileges, we stand against all those cruelties the religious inflict upon others. That is why, since the beginning, they have spreaded all these lies just to be able to dissuade you from us. Here are some excerpts from Political Scientist Steven Kettel’s academic work titled “Politics of New Atheism“:

Claiming that religious views have enjoyed a cosseted and excessively privileged status for far too long, and that they should be accorded no
more respect or special treatment than any other viewpoint or opinion, proponents of new atheism call for religious beliefs to be exposed to scrutiny wherever they are found in precisely the same way that one might critique
politics, literature or art.

These organizations are actively involved in a number of common campaign issues. One of the principal themes is their opposition to religious influence over public policy. Key areas include social service provision, such as the faith-based initiatives of George W. Bush, or the Big Society agenda of the British Coalition government; healthcare, including support for assisted dying
and opposition to restrictions on reproductive rights and scientific research, such as that involving the use of embryonic stem cells; education, largely centering on the issue of creationism in the U.S, and on faith schools and
compulsory worship in Britain; and civil rights, involving religious exemptions from equalities legislation, and discrimination on issues such as housing, employment and same-sex marriage

I can go on. In many Muslim-majority countries, leaving Islam is legally punishable. Muslim controlled Afghanistan banned education for women completely. Everyday, homosexuals are under oppression of theists, pregnant women are under harassment of theists, both Muslims and Christians. Just this month, Muslim Qatar hosted the World Cup, almost largest sporting event, and interfered on sex life, dressing and beverage of visitors, under the Islamic rules – nor Muslims neither Christians are labelled as “intolerant, aggressive, dogmatic” by the so-called critiques of New Atheism but when We New Atheists stand against all of these oppressions, we are labelled “intolerant, dogmatic and aggressive” and that is one part of the answer why these theists spread lies to discredit New Atheists. neotheists want to discredit and delegitimize us because we stand against legitimized psychopathies named religions!

REFERENCES:

1. Axelrod, A. ve Phillips, C. (2005). Encyclopedia of Wars. New York:
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