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The Anti-God SquadAuthor(s): Robert WrightSource: Foreign Policy, No. 176, 100 TOP GLOBAL THINKERS OF 2009 (Special December 2009),p. 54Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20684960 .

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26

Aung San Suu Kyi for being a living symbol of

hope in a dark place. ACTIVIST I NATIONAL LEAGUE FOR

DEMOCRACY | BURMA

Taking inspiration from Mohandas

Gandhi and Buddhist principles of nonviolence, Aung San Suu

Kyi built a mass movement in op

position to the Burmese junta and has spent 14 of the last 20 years under house arrest since winning a general election in 1989. In a

famous 1990 speech, Aung San

Suu Kyi argued that when "fear is an integral part of everyday exis

tence," political leaders inevitably

give in to corruption, and called for a "revolution of the spirit" in Burma.

Instead, she was thrown in prison and today is rarely able to commu

nicate with the outside world. Her

sentence was extended this year after a bizarre incident in which an

American man swam to her house

to meet with her?violating the

terms of her arrest. But in a major shift, Aung San Suu Kyi changed her stance on the international

sanctions against Burma this year,

offering to help the junta's leaders

get the sanctions lifted.

27

Robert Wiigfrt for envisioning a kinder, gentler

new "New Atheism." JOURNALIST I NEW AMERICA

FOUNDATION | PRINCETON, N.J.

God is becoming more angelic ?more patient, tolerant, and

compassionate. Just ask Wright, author of The Evolution of God, a dazzlingly well-researched new

book that traces how social trans

formations are reflected in popular

conceptions of the divine. His core

argument is that as civilizations

grow more prosperous, they also

become more open-minded.

Wright is often wrongly lumped with the so-called New Atheists, a group of provocateurs that

includes Richard Dawkins (No. 18) and Christopher Hitchens (No. 47) and has grabbed headlines in re

cent years for arguing that religion is inevitably and forever a force

for ill. Wright, himself an agnostic, argues that the future will bring not a grand clash of civilizations, but a dynamic and relatively happy marriage between modernity and religion. As Wright explains,

"People are capable of expanding tolerance and understanding in

response to facts on the ground; and even mandates from heaven can change in response."

Reading list: America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story, by Bruce Feiler; Superiusion, by Zachary Karabell.

Wants to visit: China Best idea: A grand bargain between America and Iran that would entail Iran not getting the bomb, Iranian

acquiescence in a resolution of the Palestinian conflict, American

security guarantees for Iran, full economic engagement, etc.

Worst idea: Bombing Iran.

Gadget: Facebook; iPhone for now, but flirting with the Palm Pre.

The Anti-God Squad Three years ago Wired magazine popularized the term "New Atheism"

with a cover story about the "crusade against belief launched by Richard

Dawkins (No. 18), Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. (Christopher Hitchens, No. 47, filled out the roster later.)

Now the crusade is encountering powerful and possibly pivotal resistance. It isn't that the citadels of faith are rolling back the tide of unbelief.

Among intellectuals?a target audience of the New Atheists?professing traditional faith is no more common than it was three years ago, and may even be less common.

But the New Atheists' main short-term goal wasn't to turn believers into

atheists, it was to turn atheists into New Atheists?fellow fire-breathing preachers of the anti-gospel. The point was to make it not just uncool to

believe, but cool to ridicule believers.

And this year doubts about that mission have taken root among the New Atheists' key demographic: intellectuals who aren't religious and aren't con

servative. Even on the secular left, the alarming implications of the "crusade

against religion" are becoming apparent: Though the New Atheists claim to be a progressive force, they often abet fundamentalists and reactionaries, from the heartland of America to the Middle East.

If you're a Midwestern American, fighting to keep Darwin in the public schools and intelligent design out, the case you make to conservative Christians is that teaching evolution won't turn their children into atheists. So the last thing you need is for the world's most famous teacher of evolution, Richard Dawkins, to be among the world's most zealously proselytizing athe ists. These atmospherics only empower your enemies.

So too with foreign policy: Making "Western" synonymous with "aggres

sively atheist" isn't a recipe for quelling anti-Western Islamist radicalism. And there's a subtle but potent sense in which New Atheism can steer foreign

policy to the right. Axiomatic to New Atheism is that religion is not just factually wrong, but the root of evil, which suggests that other proposed root causes of the sort typically stressed on the left aren't really the problem. Sam Harris, in discuss

ing terrorism, wholly dismisses such contributing factors as "the Israeli occupa tion of the West Bank and Gaza," "the collusion of Western powers with corrupt

dictatorships," and "the endemic poverty and lack of economic opportunity that now plague the Arab world." The problem, Harris states, is religion, period.

Most New Atheists aren't expressly right wing, but even so their discount

ing of the material causes of Islamist radicalism can be "objectively" right wing (as in George Orwell's assertion that pacifists were "objectively pro-fascist"

regardless of their views about fascism). Dawkins, for example, has written that if there were no religion then there

would be "no Israeli/Palestinian wars." This view is wrong?the conflict started as an essentially secular argument over land?but it's popular among parts of

.the U.S. and Israeli right. The reason is its suggestion that there's no

Ipoint in, say, removing Israeli settlements so long as the toxin of

religion is in the air.

All the great religions have shown time and again I that they're capable of tolerance and civility when their

adherents don't feel threatened or disrespected. At the </>

k same time, as some New Atheists have now shown, you | A don't have to believe in God to exhibit intolerance and

incivility. ? ^ Maybe this is the New Atheists' biggest problem: |

As living proof that religion isn't a prerequisite for | divisive fundamentalism, they are walking rebuttals to ?

their own ideology. ?Robert Wright S

?l O

54 Foreign Policy

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