Atheism and exceptionalism

Christopher Hitchens takes issue with a sophisticated treatment of religion:

[W]hen [Professor Mark] Lilla says that the American experiment (in confessional pluralism and constitutional secularism) is "utterly exceptional," he forgets that there had to be many dress rehearsals for this and that only a uniquely favorable opportunity was the really "exceptional" condition. Men like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine had been eagerly studying the secular and agnostic and atheist thinkers of the past and present, from Democritus to Hume, and hoping only for a chance to put their principles into action. There are many minds in today's Muslim world who have, by equally scrupulous and hazardous inquiry, come to the same conclusion. It is repression as much as circumambient culture that prevents the expression of the idea (as it did for many, many, Christian and Western centuries).

I regret to report that, in the article and not reproduced here, the names of Democritus and Hume are hyperlinked to the relevant entries in - so help me - Wikipedia. It is perfectly obvious that those links were not included by the author but were interpolated by his editor, who must have a low opinion of the magazine's readers and isn't afraid to show it. But this isn't my main point. Rather, I fear that Christopher - whose atheism I share, and whose book God is Not Great I thoroughly recommend - overestimates the strength of constitutional secularism. The American experiment is indeed not exceptional, but it is a chancy historical outcome as well as a propitious one. I put this argument at a farcical "conference" organised by Ken Livingstone earlier this year, and quote myself in preference to trying to find different words for the same thought:

I make no confident predictions of the resilience of Enlightenment values, largely because the Enlightenment itself is so recent and contingent a development. Its spread in the 17th and 18th centuries was to a large extent bound up with the fortunes of Protestantism. The Enlightenment's advocates in England, Scotland and America were rightly perceived to be the opponents of Papist superstition, but they were also (and much less widely recognised as) deriders of the notion of the inerrancy of Scripture. Unfortunately the attractions of religion and nationalism commonly press against the notions of a common humanity, and religious and political liberty.

Enlightenment values were advanced by elites rather than through popular agitation. Those elites gained influence and office in spite of, rather than because of, their wider views. In England, the prominence of the Whigs in the Glorious Revolution derived from their wish for a Protestant succession. The Declaration of Rights and the Bill of Rights of 1689 are great achievements in the pursuit of a constitutional order, but it is a stretch to see them as precursors of secularism. It is partly because the Enlightenment is so recent a phenomenon but also because it's an unlikely one that I am not especially hopeful for its future.

A relevant but not good article comes from Michael Shermer in Scientific American, in which he warns his fellow sceptics against a "new militancy":

A higher moral principle that encompasses both science and religion is the freedom to think, believe and act as we choose, so long as our thoughts, beliefs and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others. As long as religion does not threaten science and freedom, we should be respectful and tolerant because our freedom to disbelieve is inextricably bound to the freedom of others to believe.

This is muddled. Yes, we must be tolerant, and defend militantly the freedom to worship any god or none. No, we need not be - and ought not to be - respectful of religious belief. I can see scant merit in gratuitous abrasiveness to the faithful, for reasons argued by one of my philosophical heroes. But I can see a great deal of virtue in countering religious apologetic where it is offered. The conflict between liberalism and religion, identical to that between science and religion, is not just a misunderstanding. One approach depends on criticism and the other on faith. Nothing of value to us would be lost by the decline of the latter.