Atheism and Violence

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Enlightenment
Post Enlightenment

Atheists who lay claim to the intellectual inheritance of the Enlightenment have traditionally presented religion as intolerant and the cause of much avoidable violence, and atheism as the best strategy for a maximally tolerant and violence-free world. However, the history of atheistic states (especially the ex-Soviet Union) has tended until recently to encourage a more sober assessment by atheists of the relationship between atheism and violence than was hitherto assumed. The leading philosophical atheist Michael Martin, for example, speculating in 1989 about the likely consequences of a widespread growth in atheism globally,[1] stated his belief that there would 'probably' be fewer wars and less violence than there is now; however, he also acknowledged (evidently with the still existent USSR in mind) 'the danger that if atheism became widespread, as it has in the Soviet Union and in other countries of the world, it would become the functional equivalent of a state religion with the suppression of theistic minorities'. Martin notes that this is 'not a necessary consequence of widespread atheism; but it is of course a possibility'.[2] Martin furthermore notes that not only is there no necessity for a religious society to exercise suppression of religions, but that 'there are good moral reasons for avoiding it'; however, he nevertheless acknowledges that there is always the possibility that 'atheists, no less than theists, might want to suppress what they did not believe was true or what they thought was dangerous'.[3]

Against the background of more cautious and historically informed judgements of the relationship between atheism and violence such as that of Martin and others, the more recent pronouncements of the New Atheists generally appear by contrast to recall the optimism of atheistic materialists of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, for whom atheism seemed to offer the promise of bringing about a more violence free world. However, both the history of atheism and the political history of the West suggests that the optimism of eighteenth century atheists as the Baron d'Holbach was misplaced, a point that authors like Martin seem ready to concede but which New Atheists like Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens have generally preferred to underplay.

References

Hitchens, Christopher. God Is Not Great: The Case against Religion. London: Atlantic Books, 2007.
Martin, Michael. Atheism : A Philosophical Justification. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.

Bibliography

Footnotes

[1]↑ Michael Martin, Atheism : A Philosophical Justification (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 455ff.
[2]↑ Ibid., 459.
[3]↑ Ibid., 458.

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