The enduring power of religious belief in the 21st century
would come as something of a surprise to Sigmund Freud, Ludwig
Feuerbach, Karl Marx, and the other long-departed social
theorists whose influence lurks in the background of Tamas
Pataki’s provocative essays Against Religion. These
and other observers of modernity expected that over the long
haul, science and reason would emerge victoriously over ancient
superstition and conservative religious dogma. In the words of
Max Weber, one of the most profoundly influential thinkers of the
20th century, modernity had a "disenchanting" effect on
the world, relegating faith to the margins. Clearly, this has not
happened. How, then, are we to understand the resurgence of faith
-- specially fundamentalist varieties -- in every major religion
over the past half century?
In this self-described polemic, Pataki, Honorary Senior Fellow
in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne,
Australia, and Honorary Fellow at Deakin University, also in
Melbourne, details the psychologically confused motives that
bring ordinary people to believe in God. In doing so, he joins a
slew of recent authors like Richard Dawkins (The God
Delusion), Sam Harris (The End of Faith) and
Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great), all of whom
have been described for better or worse as the "new
atheists. " In seven brief, sharply-worded chapters, Pataki
dismisses religion as philosophically impoverished -- a
"phantasy masquerading as knowledge" -- that derives
from a deeply-seated human preference for error over truth (page
113). Though he acknowledges that religion provides "hope,
consolation, and the sense of being loved and of being worthy to
love" (page 7), he argues in the end that religion is
fundamentally irrational and that little good can ultimately come
from a system of belief founded on a "refusal to think"
(page 110).
Pataki’s attack does not wander into the thick woods of
theology. He does not try to disprove the existence of God or
pick fights over specific doctrinal issues that might be relevant
to one religious community or another. Rather, he takes it for
granted that all religious arguments are
"incoherent" and that proving specific beliefs false is
beside the point. Even if rational grounds could be
discovered in support of religious belief, he explains, the
argument would be pointless because most people adhere to
religion for reasons that are not anchored in rationality.
Instead, Pataki argues that for the "religiose" --
those who view their relationship with God as the basis of their
identity -- powerful socio-psychological forces prop up their
faith. Like many other critics of religion, Pataki asserts that
religious faith derives not from the best of human impulses, but
from the worst. Religion, he argues, encourages violence and
rationalizes cruelty; under a guise of love and generosity, it
masks fear and weakness while producing humiliation and shame for
its believers, who project their own anxieties on to those viewed
as dangerous and demonic outsiders. At bottom, he charges,
religious devotion springs from narcissism, which reveals itself
in
"A central preoccupation with defending individual
and group identity, with self-esteem, ’specialness’ and
superiority, with achieving certainty or a kind of omniscience,
and with sexual morality, which, in the strange logic of
narcissism, is closely linked with these other endeavors. "
(page 33).
Drawing heavily on psychoanalytic theory, Pataki insists that
religion is motivated by fear, promotes violence, distorts
reality, and encourages servility and dependency. Religion, in
other words, does not merely fail to illuminate or enlighten.
Rather, it actively subverts humane values, supplying
"attractive ideological frameworks for organizing and
satisfying the infantile and pathological narcissistic (and
other) needs" (page 86). In our own world, all this leads to
new extremes of religious fervor, leading believers toward
organized aggression and sustaining them as they assert worrisome
degrees of influence over government and the law. Although the
book’s critique is a philosophical one, it is broadly
informed by a sense of dismay with religious conservatives who
play such influential roles in the politics of the United States
and Australia, among other nations.
In drawing out his argument, Pataki adopts a position that
will irk more liberally-inclined believers who do not recognize
the theology of the Christian right as their own. Rather than
consign fundamentalist revivalism to the margins -- to argue that
fundamentalists do not represent the "true spirit" of
any particular religious tradition -- he insists that
fundamentalism expresses that spirit quite adequately and that
fundamentalisms are merely "branches of a noxious tree"
(page 13). Though Pataki hedges his claims by noting that
religious people and their communities do sometimes perform
"splendid humanitarian work" and make commendable
efforts on behalf of the poor, the book’s overall tone is
sharp in a way that some readers will find uncharitable. These
readers will take some comfort, perhaps, in the fact that Pataki
does not wish them to abandon their faith. As the author concedes
in the book’s first pages, his critique is not likely to
persuade anyone that their "wishful and delusional"
beliefs are not worth holding (page 7).
David Noon teaches American history at the University of
Alaska Southeast.
