As a religion', atheism is as anti-free speech as godly faith

When English philosopher the late Antony Flew, who was once called “the world’s most influential philosophical atheist”, announced his rejection of atheism in 2004, many atheists — including Richard Dawkins — criticised him for being irrational. Flew’s response at the time was that Dawkins irrationally believed that there was no God. He also believed that Dawkins was simply spreading his own convictions and said Dawkins had not set out to “discover and spread knowledge of the existence or nonexistence of God”.

It can be argued that atheism, in its various manifestations today, has evolved into a ‘religion’. Martin Hägglund, a Swedish-American philosopher at Yale University, recently published a book in which he offers an alternative to traditional religion. He calls it “secular faith”. Hägglund says, “what defines secular faith most fundamentally is that the object of faith is totally dependent on the practice of faith”. He says that in religious faith “is the additional idea that there is a special object of faith, like God or eternity or Nirvana, something that ultimately doesn’t depend on the practice of faith, something that exists independently and eternally”.

Atheism’s convergence with religion is ironic. To many atheists, a belief in God is irrational and unsupported by evidence. Yet, many atheists themselves are irrational in their belief which is also not supported by any evidence.

Another example of this convergence includes atheists’ support groups similar to those that are associated with religion. In a 2015 article, journalist Christina Greta observed, “… in the last few years, secular support systems have been flowering like ... well, like flowers. Like flowers in a movie about mutant radioactive flowers, growing at astonishing rates and to colossal size”.

Normally support systems are built around a common system of belief or identity. By building more and more support systems to fill the emotional and psychological needs of humans that for millennia have been filled by religion, atheism is increasingly beginning to resemble a ‘religion’, whose core belief is that there is no God. In the West, some zealous atheist communities have even been attempting to replace prayers in public places with non-religious prayers (which they like to call non-religious ‘invocations’) with religious fervour. Even though atheists claim they do not believe there is a higher power which humans can pray to in times of need or otherwise, they nonetheless want the ability to ‘pray’ just like religious people do.

Atheists are apparently also facing issues that emanate from multiple interpretations of any idea similar to those faced by followers of religions. In a National Geographic article, journalist Gabe Bullard wrote: “Within the ranks of the unaffiliated, divisions run deep. Some are avowed atheists. Others are agnostic. And many more simply don’t care to state a preference ... nones (people with no religion) as a group are just as internally complex as many religions.”

Throughout history, science and religion lived in harmony. In fact, during Islam’s golden age, many Muslim scientists were also religious scholars. Some of the most renowned European Renaissance scientists including Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton were also quite religious. This was true even until the mid-20th century.

Over the last few decades, however, atheists in science have sought to assert their authority by discouraging others from questioning their beliefs, similar to the ways religious zealots have done historically. Earlier this year, renowned Yale computer scientist, David Gelernter, announced that he no longer believed in Darwin’s theory of evolution. He partly attributed his ‘conversion’ to Stephen Meyer’s book, Darwin’s Doubt.

Gelernter lamented the lack of “free speech” concerning theories outside of Darwinism, which has become a ‘religion’ to many academics. In Gelernter’s words, “What I’ve seen, in their behaviour intellectually and at colleges across the West, is nothing approaching free speech on this topic”. He went on to say that by rejecting Darwinism, he was “attacking their religion”.

By arrangement with Dawn