Public solidarity does not help humanism. (Op-Ed).

I found myself profoundly depressed by the decision of American atheists and nonbelievers to hold a demonstration and rally, the Godless Americans March on Washington, last November, and, although I live in the nation's capital, I made no effort to add myself or my family to the turnout. This refusal was for two reasons. First, I am bored by the idea of "Million Man," "Million Mom," or any other sort of manifestation--the "Great Peace March" of the 1980s was an example--that asks to be taken at face value and demands to be called by a name that it can't live up to. This is self-sustaining but pointless publicity, and it evaporates in less than the time of an average news cycle. It is staged for no reason except the vain ambition of attracting media attention, and it also suggests the repulsive idea that there is safety in numbers. This might be true for some ephemeral causes, but it is emphatically not true of any important idea. Atheism can defend itself intellectually against any majority of the credulous a nd usually has to do so. Where is the moral value in proving that there are more of us than they and we think?

This would have been true if there had been many more people participating, but in point of fact the event was fairly thinly attended by comparison to, say, the Promise Keepers (remember them?). The press reported the rally chiefly as a curiosity and inevitably fixed upon side issues, such as the argument over whether Satanists ought to be allowed to join in. (I'd say obviously not, since they believe in the supernatural and have a deity of their own. I suppose a religious person would have to admit that it's better to believe in something rather than nothing. It must be conceded that there is more empirical evidence for the Devil and his works than there is for any other object of worship.)

My second objection is my more serious one. Atheist humanism has no resemblance to a faith, let alone a church. Any thinking person can accept its conclusions independently, without any catechism, and these reasoned conclusions do not require the incessant rituals of reinforcement that are necessitated by a belief in the incredible or the impossible. Our state of mind needs no priesthood, no congregation, no reassurance that we are all of one mind or one body. Leave that to the weak-minded and the insecure. As it happens, the more serious among the true believers have always maintained that their "faith" is a private matter, best pursued in lonely vigils or in wrestling with the evidence of things not seen. Such seems to have been the case from Maimonides to Cardinal Newman, even if these men could not quite do without cult and ritual the rest of the time. Humanism should not sink to the standard of rigor that is set by the faithful, let alone fall below it.

While I am on the subject of demonstrations, I hope I am not the only one to have been delighted at the attitude of the churches to the coalition's struggle against Saddam Hussein. This battle, which is far from over as I write, has always seemed to me to be a just one. Perhaps for that reason, as well as doubtless for other ones, it received almost zero support from organized religion. And the marches were frequently swelled by priests, nuns, pastors, rabbis, Unitarian ministers, and other herders of other flocks. The Vatican received Tariq Aziz, one of Hussein's most disgusting lieutenants, as if he were a peace-loving envoy. The Archbishop of Canterbury spoke as if only Tony Blair and George W. Bush were men of violence and Iraq was the victim. Even the president's own United Methodists felt impelled to disown his so-called rush to war. And all this time, every voice in Iraq was being stilled by terror and violence, and Saddam was able to name mosques because of his own monstrous cult of the personality No ne of the "peace" mantras even bothered to mention this obvious fact, lest it disturb their simple-minded view that force must always be a "last resort."

I attended some of these marches as a witness, and they felt to me exactly like devotional exercises, designed to manifest moral superiority by means of massing together. Indeed, the many Islamic bigots who attended made no secret of their holy intentions, even if they caused discomfort for the other pious marchers, who coped by ignoring them. The sinister element in this, combined with the simplistic one, was profoundly off-putting. One might have hoped that the desertion of the clerics would make George Bush desist from invoking the endorsement of heaven for his own policy, but as ever it proves that one religious fallacy only reinforces other ones. This is why the great latent virtue of freethinking godlessness--its stubborn refusal to be influenced by mass suggestion or mass emotion--should not be dissipated. What the "congregations" have, by way of fatuous togetherness, is not worth envying.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and this semester's I.F. Stone fellow at the University of California, Beekeley. His most recent book is Why Orwell Matters.

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Author:	Hitchens, Christopher
Publication:	Free Inquiry
Geographic Code:	1USA
Date:	Jun 22, 2003
Words:	872
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Topics:	Atheists Demonstrations and protests Humanists Political activity