Some clarifications on my views concerning religion

A reader of my blog recently wrote me with this objection:

Dear Mr. West,
I find your Blog to be a mystery. It mentions tolerance towards religions yet shows none, if tolerance has anything to do with respect. To modify a concept from Heidegger, I would recommend an attitude of Gelassenheit towards spirituality. I expect future posts to be either more sensitive about religion or at least more honest about your own biases. Thank you sir.

First of all, I would like to thank this reader for taking the time to read my blog and construct a respectful criticism. I shared a couple of classes with this person in college, and I continue to hold his thoughts in high esteem. I hope that this response can do justice to his objection.

I do not believe that I, on this blog, have ever made any pretension of objectivity. The opinions advanced herein are my own. I thought that the very nature of the forum would have made that clear. This blog is nothing more than an editorial outlet for my own thoughts and views, and that is meant to be implicitly understood without my having to write “I think” before every statement I make here.

But although this blog is inherently subjective, I take issue with the contention that it is biased. ‘Bias’ carries the connotation of an unreasoned prejudice or a deceptively subtle favoring of one side of an issue. I do not think that my views on religion are biased. I do not reject religion because of some visceral distaste or underlying prejudice; I reject religion because I find it to be a fundamentally unsound set of ideas.

As I see it, the foundation of religion is faith. To have faith means to believe something without having any reason to believe it – to believe something merely because you want to believe it, regardless of any supporting or contradictory evidence. I can imagine no greater stupidity than that, and I reserve no respect for any system of beliefs founded on such an intellectual farce.

Faith is the most dangerous intellectual precedent imaginable, and it has given rise to much violence and misery over the course of human history. It is primarily because of faith that religion retards scientific and social progress, and engenders the holding of unreason in equal or higher esteem than reason itself.

Moreover, it seems to me that the sociological, anthropological, psychological, and historical records make it clear that religions are social conventions created to satisfy the base needs of human beings to comfort themselves and to explain the mysteries of the world around them. Simply put, religion is born out of ignorance and fear, and as such, in the words of James Madison, it "shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect."

Clearly I make no secret of my opposition to religious ideas. But let us not conflate intellectual opposition with intolerance. The position I take is that of Voltaire, who once wrote to the Jesuits (a people with whom he had fierce conflicts of opinion): “I disagree with what you say, but would defend to the death your right to say it.” I believe in intellectual freedom. I do not believe in banning books, or persecuting people, or forcibly stamping out beliefs (all things that religions have done at one time or another, and not by mistake). I believe in the free marketplace of ideas: you are entitled to your own opinion, and I to mine. But watch out: this also means that I am entitled to my own opinion OF your opinion, and you to your own opinion OF mine! Thus, you have right to believe in God, and I have the right not to. I have the right to point out why I think your belief in God is irrational and cowardly, and you have the right to think that I’m morally and spiritually bankrupt for saying so. And I have the right to think that that’s absurd. And so on. The free marketplace of ideas thus renders intolerance unnecessary, because at the end of the day, reason and logic should prevail of their own accord.

Of course, I’m not always so highbrowed in my criticisms. I often express my opposition to religion with disparaging mockery or sarcasm. But the apparent immaturity of such derision belies the purpose it serves. Religion, after all, rejects reason as an epistemic standard, and one cannot reason with the unreasonable; thus condescension and mockery are sometimes all one can employ against such bankrupt ideas.

I started this blog as a forum dedicated to reason and observation as the only responsible sources of knowledge and the only reliable guides against error. I think that the harsh tone that I take against religion is in better harmony with that ideal than anything else I write here.

So to conclude, dear reader, I will not alter the nature of the position I take against religion. To be, as you suggest, “more sensitive toward religion” would be, I think, to compromise intellectual honesty, which demands that criticism not be afraid of its own conclusions. Intellectual honesty also demands considering arguments opposed to your own positions, and I frequently do this; I welcome any sound rebuttal to my positions, but I have yet to hear a pro-faith or pro-religion argument that was not fatally flawed in its logic. Thus I will continue to give religious faith only the intellectual credit it deserves, which as far as I can tell, is none.