The New Atheism, Myth, and History: The Black Legends of Contemporary Anti-Religion

311 Pages·2018·2.91 MB·English

by  Nathan Johnstone

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The Black Legends
of Contemporary
Anti-Religion
The New Atheism, Myth, and History
Nathan Johnstone
The New Atheism,
Myth, and History
The Black Legends of Contemporary Anti-Religion
Nathan Johnstone
North Shields, UK
ISBN 978-3-319-89455-3 ISBN 978-3-319-89456-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89456-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018939753
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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For Jackie Eales
A
cknowledgements
This was supposed to be a short book. In sharing the fate of so many
continuously expanding ‘short’ books, its writing incurred numerous
debts over several years. In particular, I must thank Kat Urbantat, Philip
Hastie, Fiona Hastie, David Grandville, Nikki Veck and Ellen Cutter for
support, encouragement and diversions as required. My family went far
beyond the call of duty, and the book, quite simply, could not have been
written without them.
Richard Eales read a number of chapters and was generous with both
his support and his advice. Andrew Palmer and Wayne Veck, however,
bore the brunt of the book’s evolution. They read material and, at one
time or another, heard, discussed and re-discussed every argument in the
book. It is, I believe, much improved by their nuanced suggestions and
critiques, and I am deeply grateful.
Over two decades ago Jackie Eales took me on as a Ph.D. student and
became the mentor that all aspiring historians should wish for. Her sup-
port, guidance and friendship has been unfaltering ever since, and it is to
her, with gratitude and affection, that this book is dedicated.
vii
c
ontents
1 Introduction: History and the New Atheism 1
A Question Only for Science? 2
Virtuous Evidentialism: Explorers and Hunter-Gatherers 5
The New Atheism and History 7
A Defence of History 8
Part I Black Legends
2 Superstition and the Stake: Witch-Hunting and the
Terrible Consequences of Believing in the Supernatural 19
The Illusion of Polemical Efficiency 20
Rationalist History and Rationalist Mythology 23
Numbers (and Their Meaning) 26
No Witch-Hunt Without Witches 30
The Witch Pyres of ‘the Inquisition’ 33
Christianity and the Witch-Hunts 38
The Lesson of the Witch-Hunt 43
3 Faith and the Stake: Heresy
and Religious Totalitarianism 49
Why Is Persecution Natural to Religion? 50
Medieval Heresy and the Persecuting Society 54
ix
x CONTENTS
What Was Medieval Heresy? 56
Searching for a Newly Old Faith 57
Reform and Heresy 59
The Cathars: Did They Exist, and What Does It Tell the New
Atheism If They Did Not? 62
The Coming of the Inquisitions 67
Politics and Persecution 68
The New Elite and the War Over Orthodoxy 74
4 Chalking Up Six Million Deaths to Religion:
Appropriating the Holocaust 85
Whose Hitler? The Acid Test of Ethical Claims in the God
Debate 87
Hitler’s Bible and the Bible’s Hitler 90
Trusting Historians to Do Their Job 98
Nazism as a Political Religion 100
New Atheism and the Demands of Political Religion Theory 103
The Holy Reich Controversy 108
Part II Minds in Opposition
5 The Rational Tradition and Atomism 127
Epistemological Truths and Weak Minds 130
Filling in the Details 133
Greek Atomism in Context 136
Nightmares of the Christian Mind 143
Christianity and the Revival of Atomism 144
Atomism, the Church and Galileo 149
6 Heroes and Martyrs: Witch-Hunting and the Dangers of
Scepticism 161
How George Lincoln Burr’s History of Dietrich Flade Didn’t
Make It into The End of Faith 163
Friedrich Spee and the Devil 168
CONTENTS xi
Part III The Innocence of Atheism
7 The Hostile Utopia: Atheist Oppression and the
Assault on Religion in the USSR 185
The Soviet Assault on Religion 187
Only Anti-clericalism? 190
The Soviet ‘New Man’ and the End of Religion 193
History with the Cycles Left Out 197
Desacralisation and Didactic Sacrilege 201
Utopian Hostility: The Psychological Oppression of Believers in
the Soviet Union 206
8 From the Spanish Toca to the American Waterboard:
The Strange Yardstick of Ethical Progress 221
Torture: Then and Perhaps Now 222
Torture: Europe’s Rational Innovation 224
The Harris Method: A Superior Rationality? 227
Crimen Exceptum 231
Islam as Crimen Exceptum 234
A New Superior Rationality, or Old-Fashioned Moral Panic? 238
9 Atheism, Religion and the Myth of Cultural Distance 245
The Temptation to Supernaturalism 247
Death and the Temptation to Religion 251
Resistance, Regeneration and Election 252
Belief: The Twenty-First-Century Heresy 256
10 The Moderation of the Unfinished Thought: Militancy,
Polemical Cavalierism and Atheisms 263
Hoping for the End of Religion…and Its Consequences 264
The Moderation of the Unfinished Thought 270
Religion as Child Abuse 272
Viruses of the Mind, Public Health Crises and Containment
Protocols 274
Bibliography 283
Index 299
A
bbreviAtions
AAG A. C. Grayling, Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and An
Essay on Kindness (London: Oberon Books, 2007)
AMfCA Peter Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists (Durham:
Pitchstone, 2013)
AWNtCotH Hector Avelos, ‘Atheism Was Not the Cause of the Holocaust’,
in Loftus, J. W. (ed.), The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails
(Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2010)
BtS Daniel C. Dennet, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural
Phenomenon (London: Penguin, 2007)
FW Hector Avelos, Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence
(Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2005)
GatA Victor Stenger, God and the Atom. From Democritus to the Higgs
Boson: The Story of a Triumphant Idea (Amherst: Prometheus,
2013)
GatFoF Victor Stenger, God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of
Science and Religion (Amherst: Prometheus, 2012)
GiNG Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons
Everything (London: Atlantic Books, 2008)
IDoA Michel Onfray, In Defence of Atheism: The Case Against
Christianity, Judaism and Islam, trans. J. Leggatt (London:
Serpent’s Tail, 2007)
TEoF Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of
Reason (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004)
TGA A. C. Grayling, The God Argument: The Case against Religion
and for Humanism (London: Bloomsbury, 2013)
TGD Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Black Swan, 2007)
xiii