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I Don't Believe in Atheists | 
 enlarge | Author: Chris Hedges
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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Rating:  52 reviews
Sales Rank: 189834
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.2 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 141656795X
Dewey Decimal Number: 211
EAN: 9781416567950
ASIN: 141656795X
Publication Date: March 4, 2008
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Product Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of American Fascists and the NBCC finalist for War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning comes this timely and compelling work about new atheists: those who attack religion to advance the worst of global capitalism, intolerance and imperial projects.Chris Hedges, who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity School, has long been a courageous voice in a world where there are too few. He observes that there are two radical, polarized and dangerous sides to the debate on faith and religion in America: the fundamentalists who see religious faith as their prerogative, and the new atheists who brand all religious belief as irrational and dangerous. Both sides use faith to promote a radical agenda, while the religious majority, those with a commitment to tolerance and compassion as well as to their faith, are caught in the middle. The new atheists, led by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, do not make moral arguments about religion. Rather, they have created a new form of fundamentalism that attempts to permeate society with ideas about our own moral superiority and the omnipotence of human reason. I Don't Believe in Atheists critiques the radical mindset that rages against religion and faith. Hedges identifies the pillars of the new atheist belief system, revealing that the stringent rules and rigid traditions in place are as strict as those of any religious practice. Hedges claims that those who have placed blind faith in the morally neutral disciplines of reason and science create idols in their own image -- a sin for either side of the spectrum. He makes an impassioned, intelligent case against religious and secular fundamentalism, which seeks to divide the world into those worthy of moral and intellectual consideration and those who should be condemned, silenced and eradicated. Hedges shatters the new atheists' assault against religion in America, and in doing so, makes way for new, moderate voices to join the debate. This is a book that must be read to understand the state of the battle about faith.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 47 more reviews...
 Flawed but worth reading! November 27, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is far better than its detractors would have you believe, but not for the reasons that Hedges wants us to believe. Having said that, let me explain that first sentence and why I gave the book four stars.
I have great admiration for Hedges the article-writer, Hedges the foreign policy pundit and Hedges the moral/religious thinker. I don't know what it is, but give him a book-length space to fill and he starts to fall apart.
He had the same problem in "American Fascists". There are moments of passion and brilliance in both that book and this one and yet one comes away feeling vaguely cheated. In AF it was because it was never clear to what extent the fundamentalist Dominionists were running things and to what extent they were pawns of the Republican Party. This lack of precision undermined Hedges' thesis that Christianity was any more to blame for creeping fascism in the US than any num,ber of other factors such as exceptionalism, hyper-patriotism, mindless worship of laissez-faire capitalism or any of the social ills more ably described by Joe Bageant.
In IDBiA, Hedges promises a refutation of the current crop of atheists, but never delivers. His criticisms of Harris as simplistic and xenophobic and of Hitchens as a quasi-fascist do not miss the mark in my opinion, but these are characteristics of these authors that I contend exist independently of their atheism. In fact, supporters of torture and pre-emptive war are not hard to find amongst fanatics of all flavours.
He doesn't lay a glove on Dawkins and (my favourite expositor of the case against belief) Victor Stegner, because he attempts to tar Dawkins at least with the same brush that he use to (rightly) paint the other two.
There is a lot of complaining about religious folks all being lumped together, literalists and nuanced believers alike. Hedges bristles under the association, but fails to see that not only has he not answered the epistemological trouble of believing in a deity, but that he has refused to acknowledge that the authority that permits religious terrorism derives from claimed knowledge about this deity, which derives from human writings.
His main beef seems to be with the arrogant tone of the non-believers, which he handily excoriates. He doesn't address the atheists arguments, which he dismisses as "strawmen". After all, atheists do bad things, too and anyway most believers are not dangerous fanatics. He is being deliberately obtuse here, because he is well aware that the atheists' arguments are valid for an important subset of Christians he warned us against in a previous book as well as for an important percentage of Jews and Muslims who sow death in their wake throughout the Middle East, a region he knows better than most.
So, why would I give this deeply-flawed book four stars?
Hedges, while failing in his attempt to critique atheism, hits a home run in identifying perhaps the two most pernicious trends in thinking about how to save us from ourselves. These are that humans are somehow improvable in some fundamental way and that the ideas of "evil" or "sin" are relics of pre-Enlightenment superstition and can be jettisoned with no ill effect.
Hedges correctly identifies the first idea as an Enlightenment creation that came about in part as a reactuion to the doctrine of Original Sin and in part as a natural conclusion that thinkers drew as scientific thought enabled technological achievements that increased the standard of living, life expectancy and options available to the beneficiaries of the Enlightenment, particularily in Europe. It was refined by a mis-application of Darwin's ideas about evolution and other cultural forces and was twisted to serve the ends of racists, eugenicists, Communists and Fascists.
The science-driven improvements in intra-species slaughter and destruction of the planet should be ample evidence that increased scientific competence and human perfectability are unrelated, and it is probable that the improvements in standard of living globally have peaked, at least in the West, and will peak soon all over the planet, if they have not already done so.
Following this line of reasoning, Hedges correctly points out, that even if we were to all become atheists and rationalists overnight, the idea that we would somehow "improve" as a species is naive at best. The conviction that this is so, would lead to forced deconversions and all sorts of oppression of believers in the name of reason.
Although Hedges doesn't state it explicitly our history, both written and evolutionary shows that our aggressive and dominating nature is what has selected us to be the alpha hominids from our possible rivals such as Homo erectus and the Neandethals.
This brings us to "sin" and "evil". I understand, as does Hedges, that these terms are symbolic, metaphorical. The worst human impulses, which lead to torture, genocide, oppression and destruction comprise an inseparable part of human nature and if we wish to better society, we have give up on the Utopian notions that promise us "Ubermenschen", "Rational Man", or "Spiritually Evolved Woman" and come to terms with what we are, rather than how various ideologies tell us we should be. We are not going to solve our problems by trying to force people into a Procrustean bed built on the ideal-du-jour. Down this path lies the totalitarian nightmares of Hitler, the Inquisition and so many others.
People are intrinsically co-operative, loving and empathetic; we are also territorial, aggressive and selfish.We evolved from apes. Our closest relatives are socially manipulative and sexually calculating bonobos and the hierarchical, aggressive chimpanzees. Neuroscience shows us that we are driven by emotion, not reason and that the main function of the latter is to rationalize the social and moral decisions we take because of neural activity in the emotional centres of the brain.
Holding up a mythic "Rational Man" as an ideal to which we should aspire in order to achieve Utopia is as wrong-headed as thinking that we should all convert to Jainism in order to achieve the same goal. In the end, we will still be the same old Homo sapiens with a different set of cherished beliefs to fight and die for.
This is what this book is about, whether Hedges knows it or not and it is that book that warrants 4 stars. As a critique of atheism, it has a misleading title and really doesn't even try.
 Cynical Conflagration Creates Commerce November 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is a staw-man-fest. The author knows little about what Richard Dawkins and Dennett have actually said. Much of his criticism is tangential and based only on an exaggeration of the pro-iraq-war beliefs of Hitchens and Harris, who do not represent most atheists.
One of his biggest points is to make anybody who's eager to improve the human condition into the "utopianist" boogeyman, and to blame most of the ills of history on "utopianism". This does not follow from historical fact, and this is a self-defeating philosophy besides. Some have done more harm than good in the name of improving society, but that is the exception rather than the rule.
 We all live our life based on faith! September 13, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Religious people, or theists, depend on faith. They believe in a God whose existence cannot be scientifically proven. In other words, there is no evidence that God exists. Atheists also depend on faith. They believe that God does not exist since there is no scientific evidence of His existence. But there is also no scientific evidence that He does not exist. Both theists and atheists therefore depend on faith. We all live our lives based on faith.
According to the author, both theists and atheists are organized groups. Theists have religions, such as Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Atheists also have organized groups, such as Nazis, communists, fascists, and liberals who base their faith in science and science alone. Atheism is a system with beliefs and an ideology. It is a system based on faith.
There have been many atrocities committed throughout history in the name of religion. There have also been many atrocities committed by non-theists groups, such as Nazis and communists. Scientific progress brings both peace and destruction. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, the majority of them women and children.
What message is Hedges giving us? Basically, both theists and atheists are organized groups, and both have their flaws. Religion has not been able to deliver a utopian world, nor have atheistic groups. The Nazis tried to create utopia, but they failed. Similarly, communist doctrine promised a utopia. It too failed.
The message I understood from this book is that as much as theists don't believe in atheists, atheists don't believe in theists just as much! Why? Because both doctrines have flaws; because man is imperfect.
The author goes on to say that because most people cannot recognize the ideology of atheism is exactly why it is so dangerous. Atheists want to create a world free of religion, and based entirely on logic, reason, and science. They believe that religion is the cause of evil, and that the world will be a better place without it. Yet, millions died under the philosophies of communism and Nazism, both atheistic groups. The author rejects the ideas that people would be better off if they stopped believing in God, as the atheists Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins suggest.
I really enjoyed reading this book, and it gave me a better understanding on how atheists think.
 Don't judge a book by it's cover September 2, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"Don't judge a book by its cover." That's good advice, especially when dealing with Chris Hedges' "I Don't Believe In Atheists."
If you are expecting a critique of 'the New Atheists', that high profile, heavily media promoted band of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris, then this book may be disappointing. Very little of the book, my guess is well under 10%, directly deals with the trio.
This is a shame as the three are hugely over-rated, over-promoted and don't do their homework. The "Old Atheists" were a tougher breed. The threesome need to be dethroned, or at least to have the tyres of their publicity tour bus deflated. Dawkin's militant atheism is based on his 'meme theory', a concept so dim, and so completely untestable, that it makes Dawkin's creationist bete noirs look like Einsteins. And Hitchen's newfound celebrity as a celebrity atheist seems remarkably opportunistic. In his journey from Trotskyite to neocon his main 'contribution' has been to promote the neologism 'islamofascism'. Hitchens has written about Orwell but apparently didn't grasp the concept of 'newspeak'. For Hitchens the Spanish civil war never ended. Cold shouldered in response to his drive to recruit leftists to the neocon International Brigade, maybe he thinks that by condemning lambs equally with wolves he can restore his comradely credentials. Hedges sees through the front but fails to deliver a knock out blow. Somewhat like Bush in the desert, Hedges is prematurely diverted to a larger campaign, before finishing the first.
Most of the book deals with Hedges' broader critique of fundamentalism, including 'the New Atheists', who he (interestingly) sees as just a new kind of fundamentalist, not much different from the Christian Right that they (and he) despise. Hedges sees the modern fundamentalism (really 'fundamentalism lite') as an intellectually and theologically shallow social and spiritual reaction to the crisis of post-Enlightenment materialism. To Hedges, the Christian Right and the New Atheists are two sides of the same coin, a bad penny, a materialistic civilisation in crisis and denial. Fundamentalism, whether of the evangelical or "New Atheist" variety is denial writ large.
Hedges' argument is intriguing and delivered in jackhammer blows. I didn't find it convincing, perhaps because of it's hammering style. Maybe he takes more time to deliver a more persuasive case in his other recent book. Still his discussion of the concept of "sin" as a necessary social guard rail against the destructive mythology of social and personal perfectability is fascinating. Still this may not be what most prospective readers will be looking for. The book is marketed as a response to the threesome, but in fact it is both less and more.
 Somewhat Disappointed August 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read Hedge's Losing Moses on the Freeway and American Fascists and was very impressed by both. I have also heard Chris Hedges speak and my perception of him was that he is highly intelligent, honest and a genuinely good person. When this book came out I was very eager to read it despite the fact that I am not a fan of the title. (I understand that he is using this phrase because of the play on "I don't believe in God", but the title makes it sound like he is anti-atheists instead of anti fanaticism/fascists) I don't feel that this book was a complete waste of time as it did provoke me to think about the points being made and see a couple things in a new light (like the intended meaning of "an eye for an eye") but I do feel like the same few points were repeated over and over again and that this book could have been easily edited into an essay. The book just didn't have the same neat flow and cohesiveness of his other books which made me think it was rushed for print or not as well planned.
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