For a lot of Christians, 'atheist' is a label designed to denigrate, not describe. People who don't adhere faithfully to religious doctrines are 'practical atheists.' The broader culture is 'atheistic' because if fails to embody or enforce the religious dogmas which someone deems critical. Is any of this sensible or reasonable? No.

Neal Grossman writes:

Despite avowals to the contrary, we live in a completely atheistic and irreligious culture. To be sure, most people profess a belief in a higher power of some sort, and many people attend religious services regularly. But religion, by which I mean religious values, plays no role in shaping the economic and political forces that structure and control our culture.

Neal Grossman’s first error is that he confuses irreligion with atheism. The absence of “religious values” is not the presence of atheism. Some reigions are atheistic; some theists are irreligious. Grossman may not like the fact that modern American culture doesn’t embody the “religious values” which he values most, but that doesn’t make the culture “atheistic.”

Neal Grossman’s second error — and his most significant one, as keeps popping up — is that he fails to define what he means by “religious values.” You’d think that if he is going to write about how awful it is that “religious values” are lacking in our culture, he’d take the time to at least list them — but you’d be mistaken. Instead, then, all we have is a vague term which may make people feel good, but it has no substantive content. Every religion has different values and different ideals; even within each religion, there is a lot of different values.

This passage from Noah Feldman's recent book Divided by God: America’s Church-State Problem helps make this clear:

Today, most evangelical Protestants support capital punishment on a biblical basis, while many Catholics rely on the late Pope John Paul II’s teaching about the sanctity of life to oppose the death penalty. Protestants and Catholics still differ over the permissibility of divorce — one of the issues that fueled the Reformation in England — even though many American Catholics are prepared to disobey their church’s teaching on the question. Churches differ about whether to embrace same-sex marriage or reject it.

When it comes to holidays, some Jews, especially the outward-looking Hasidim of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, welcome the chance to erect menorahs near public Christmas trees, but many other Jews oppose the celebration of Christmas in public venues on the theory that they do not want to be exposed to the religious symbols associated with the holiday. Their reason to reject Christmas celebrations is not that they have some problem with peace on earth and goodwill to men, but that, like Muslims, they do not accept the divinity of Christ and the virgin birth.

Feldman is criticizing the so-called “values evangelicals” who go on at length about the need to incorporate “religious values” into government and culture without getting specific about what they mean by “religion” and “religious values.” They aren’t specific for a very good reason: the coalition of interests behind them is so diverse theologically that getting too specific on any issue will end upon causing division. At best, many assume that all religions see the most important issues in basically the same way — an error which indicates that they have invested little to no effort in learning about other religions.

Which of the two do you suppose applies to Neal Grossman here?

The “good life,” according to religion, consists not in the pursuit of wealth, reputation, or power, but rather in the pursuit of right relationship with the divine.

Here is where Neal Grossman’s failure to define “religious values” undermines his argument again. There is no single religion that allows one to say “according to religion.” There is no single religious teaching on what constitutes the “good life.” Not all religions even teach that there exists a “divine.”

Religion is a category of belief system that includes an incredibly wide array of beliefs, ideas, attitudes, and doctrines. Saying “according to religion” is like saying “according to philosophy” or “according to political ideology.” No one would accept either of the latter two as valid; indeed, they are so absurd that it’s implausible that anyone would even think about introducing a claim in such a manner. So why would someone do it with religion?

The values of our culture are diametrically opposed to the values of religion.

Once again, there is no such thing as “the values of religion.” Neal Grossman’s statement is only true of some religions — that is to say, the alleged opposition between culture and religion is only true when some religions are consulted. In fact, there are religious positions (including some in Christianity) which appear to place a lot of value on wealth and material goods (which are the aspects of modern culture which Grossman seems to be complaining about).

Success in our culture is measured by wealth, reputation, and power; and the desires that are requisite for obtaining this success are greed and ambition.

In addition to improperly generalizing about religion, we should note that Neal Grossman has also continually generalized about culture as well. What Grossman says here is true of some aspects of this culture, but not all. “Culture” is no more monolithic and one-sided than is “religion.” Some aspects of culture place a lot of value on wealth and power; some do not. Neal Grossman acts as if culture were one-dimensional; as a consequence, his own “analysis” is one-dimensional.

Neal Grossman has a PhD in the history and philosophy of science from Indiana University, and is an associate professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, but this piece is incredibly disappointing. No informed person would generalize about “religion,” “religious values,” or “culture” like this. If he had replaced "religious values" with "Christian values," it still would have been an incorrect generalization, but at least he would have started coming plausibly close to something approaching a valid argument.

I have a lot of trouble accepting the idea that he really doesn't understand that religion is more diverse than he acknowledges in his essay. That, however, would entail concluding that he is knowingly using misleading rhetoric in order to deceive people and get them to believe things he knows to be incorrect.

 

Quick Poll: Do you think that modern Western culture has become atheistic/irreligious?

1. I'm an atheist and I think it's now atheistic and irreligious.
2. I'm an atheist and I think it's still generally theistic and religious.
3. I'm a theist and I think it's now atheistic and irreligious.
4. I'm a theist and I think it's still generally theistic and religious.
5. I don't know.
6. I don't care.

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Read More:

• Atheism 101
• What is Atheism?
• Who Are Atheists?
• Agnosticism 101