This article is a preview from the Autumn 2017 edition of New Humanist.
Religion and Atheism (Routledge), edited by Anthony Carroll and Richard Norman
If you feel comfortable with a black-and-white view of religion and atheism, this may not be the book for you. The rest of us can find thought-provoking pieces by over 20 serious British thinkers in the field, from both sides of “the divide”.
The co-editors – humanist philosopher Richard Norman and Anglican priest and philosopher Anthony Carroll – each have their own essay, and have co-written the key concluding section. Their objective is to encourage us to talk with those “on the other side”, not in order to persuade them they are wrong, but to develop our own understanding and thinking, and move beyond what they call our individual “ideologies and idolatries”. Social scientist Lois Lee challenges polarisation of a complex landscape: “what defines the UK’s contemporary religious landscape is not its Christianity, atheism or secularity, but rather its plurality.” Not only is there greater diversity among the religious than in the past, but academia is waking up to the huge diversity among the non-religious too.
The core of the book is three sets of essays, 19 in all, grouped under broad headings of “knowledge and language”, “ethics and values” and “diversity and dialogue”, preceded by the transcript of a conversation between Raymond Tallis and Rowan Williams on “science, stories and the self”. Like any collection, the quality varies, and there are inevitably gaps in the range of perspectives represented. There are no conservative religious voices here, for example. And it would have been useful to hear a Catholic, Pentecostal, Sikh or Jewish view. But we do hear from a Hindu, Ankur Barua, and a Muslim, Dilwar Hussain. Hussain directly addresses the core question of how we can live well together, making a welcome case for secularism, and tackling head-on the vexed issue of apostasy and conversion. Stigmatisation of those leaving Islam is, in his view, contrary to the Qur’anic injunction “There is no compulsion in religion”. Amen to that.
While Fern Elsdon-Baker offers a useful trio of conceptual models for the relationship between science and religion, several of the Christian writers, notably Anthony Carroll, focus more on the experiential side of faith and “spirituality” – whether religious or not – rather than the intellectual arguments. That fits with Julian Baggini’s reminder that, however sophisticated theologians are in their religious views or their claims, and however much people argue that religion is more about belonging and practice than belief, the data shows that “the vast majority of churchgoing Christians appear to believe orthodox doctrine at pretty much face value”. In his view, the place to look for common ground is not in the contested area of belief but in our shared humanity and “the virtues of sincerity, charity and modesty”.
Andrew Copson complements that view by providing practical guidelines to make engagement work, including: “don’t make a fetish of the religious/non-religious distinction”, as experience shows that dividing lines often cut in different ways. For those who want to move on from arid debate to productive dialogue between believers and non-believers, this is a welcome and important push in the right direction.
