Thoughts on religion in America (part II)

It is, I assume, coincidental that I had just started reading A.N. Wilson's God's Funeral when I happened on the article in the post immediately beneath this. The book charts the decline in religious belief, primarily in Europe, at the end of the nineteenth century driven by advances and new thinking in science and philosophy.

At the beginning of the article I discuss below there is a graphic which I found dramatic. This shows the difference in levels of belief, and disbelief, in the US and selected European countries. According to this only 5% of American's describe themselves as atheist v. 92% who believe in god. Despite of having lived in the states for 37 years this high level of professed belief still startled me.

Even the UK's level of declared atheism (20%) I find low (perhaps based on my social circle). Of the listed countries France and Sweden alone have a roughly even balance between belief in god and atheism.

In the preface to Wilson's book he says:

"The God-question does not go away. No sooner have the intelligentsia of one generation confined the Almighty to the history books than popular opinion rises against them. We see this in our own time, and the spectacle is not always pleasant: Ayatollahs call out in the name of God for holy war, or evangelical Christians make their own comparably intolerant, though less murderous, contributions to public debate on such subjects as abortion, the modern marriage and politics."

I believe that this comparison of fundamentalist Islam and Christianity is sound. They share, as he states, intolerance and, in fact, a material subset positively revel in it. Both want to impose their moral beliefs on society as a whole. The sole difference is tactical. (Perhaps there is a hidden truth in the phrase "war on terror". Is it possible that we only wish to defeat the tactic, however improbably that might be, and not the philosophy.)

Wilson goes on to close the preface with this:

"In some parts of our world, particularly in the United States, the battles which raged more than one and a half centuries ago have not gone away. Against patient scholars with no axe to grind who would like to point out this fact or that about the Bible (the high improbability, for instance, that the Gospels contain the actual words of the historical Jesus) the believers can always reply with their unshakeable knowledge that the Bible is the inspired word of Truth, the voice of Almighty God Himself. The Darwinian who points to the mid twentieth-century discovery of DNA as a confirmation beyond reasonable doubt, that the theory of natural selection was correct, can do nothing to alter the beliefs of the Creationists."

One of the reasons I give for choosing to remain in the UK is the tolerance of my atheism. In America, even in the reasonably liberal northeast corridor when I lived most of my life, I was always uncomfortable in expressing my disbelief. I have never had a desire to proselytise and therefore generally kept silent. When I did express my views they were met with a responses that ranged from incredulity to scorn.

In the UK this has never been the case. Even vicars treat it with respect. (Northern Ireland is slightly variant in that they don't care if you're an atheist - just whether you're a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist!)

It is not the extraordinarily high level of belief in god that disturbs me about America it is this level of intolerance. This is clearly expressed in the political sphere in the fact that virtually all politicians wear their religious associations prominently. A muslim stands a better chance of being elected to office than an atheist or (admitted) agnostic.

Of course, in American politics, religious intrusion does not stop at public church attendance. A large segment of the religious (largely Christian) community wants to impose its particular variant of morality on the entire population in areas such as education, sexual preference and marriage, the rights of a woman to control her body, medical ethics and even crime and punishment.

Perhaps it will change it time but on the basis of the data in the Baylor University survey I don't see that happening anytime soon.

I'll have to remain in exile.