THE TANDEM PROJECT
UNITED NATIONS, HUMAN RIGHTS,
FREEDOM OF RELIGION OR BELIEF
THE NEW ATHEISM AND SOMETHING
MORE
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Issue: The New Atheism and Something More – Human Rights
& Freedom of Religion or Belief.
For: United Nations, Governments, Religions or Beliefs,
Academia, NGOs, Media, Civil Society
Review: The New Atheism, and Something
More, Peter
Steinfels, Beliefs, New York Times,
In these books two
philosophers looking for a secular basis for morality and what hope might mean
today. Ronald Aronson, professor of the history of ideas and reviewer of
authors of books with the “new-atheists” label, in Living
Without God, proposes new atheist books do not address “the most
urgent need” for secularists today: “a coherent popular philosophy that answers
vital questions about how to live one’s life.” Andre Comte-Sponville, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, includes a critique
of classic proofs for God’s existence, but is “similarly less interested in
battling religion than in explaining the basis of a nonreligious life.”
Ronald Aronson –
“A new atheism must
absorb the experience of the twentieth century and the issues of the
twenty-first, he wrote. It must answer questions about living without God, face
issues concerning forces beyond our control as well as our own responsibility,
find a satisfying way of thinking about what we may know and what we cannot
know, affirm a secular basis for morality, point to ways of coming to terms
with death and explore what hope might mean today.”
Andre Comte-Sponville –
“In considerable detail,
he explicates his own immersion in the kind of ‘oceanic feeling” that a
perplexed Freud discussed at the beginning of Civilization
and Its Discontents…Mr. Comte-Sponville does address one political
question, of the broadest sort. While he has no doubt that individuals can live
without religion –he is, after all, a happy atheist – whether societies can
live without religion, he feels, is a more complex matter.” Comte-Sponville was
speaking to the following quote in Sigmund Freud’s book Civilization
and Its Discontents.
In Civilization and Its
Discontents, Sigmund Freud, an atheist, described the meaning of
religion told to him by a religious friend as an oceanic feeling, a sensation
of eternity and one may, he thinks, rightly call oneself religious on the
ground of this oceanic feeling alone, even if one rejects every belief and
every illusion.” Freud commented by saying, “I cannot discover this ‘oceanic’
feeling in myself, but this gives me no right to deny that it does in fact
occur in other people.
It is said religion
explains the ultimate meaning of life and how to live accordingly. If this is
true, the need claimed in these books for affirming a secular basis for morality
and an admission that living without religion is a complex matter, is a hopeful
sign “new atheism” may be moving away from a “take-no-prisoners” approach to
religion and toward a process of inter-belief dialogue.
United Nations Secretary
General Ban Ki Moon, at the Alliance of Civilizations Madrid Forum said; never
in our lifetime has there been a more desperate need for constructive and
committed dialogue, among individuals, among communities, among cultures, among
and between nations. Another writer in a different setting said; the warning
signs are clear, unless we establish genuine dialogue within and among all
kinds of belief, ranging from religious fundamentalism to secular dogmatism,
the conflicts of the future will probably be even more deadly.
Did God create us or did
we create God? This question calls for inclusive and genuine dialogue,
respectful and thoughtful responses, discussion of taboos and clarity by
persons of diverse beliefs. Inclusive and genuine is dialogue between people of
theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as
well as the right not to profess any religion or belief. These U.N.
categories are embodied in international law to promote tolerance and prevent
discrimination based on religion or belief.
International Human Rights Standards on Freedom of
Religion or Belief monitor governments, religions or beliefs, non-governmental
organizations, civil society and individuals living under constitutional
systems such as separation of church and state, state church, theocratic, and
non-constitutional legal frameworks. The concept Separation
of Religion or Belief and State means equal, fair and practical
support for all theistic, non-theistic and atheistic
beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief, supported
by international human rights standards on freedom of religion or belief.
Inclusive and genuine
dialogue is essential as a first step in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights; recognition the inherent dignity and the equal and
inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of
freedom, justice and peace in the world. The leaders of religious
and non-religious beliefs sanction the truth claims of their own traditions.
They are the key to raising awareness and acceptance of the value to
respectfully hold truth claims in tandem with human rights standards on freedom
of religion or belief.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Link: New Atheism, and Something Else, Peter Steinfels, Beliefs,
New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/us/14beliefs.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print
Excerpts: Excerpts are presented under the Eight Articles of
the 1981 U.N. Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and of
Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. Examples of extracts are presented
prior to an Issue Statement for each Review.
1. 3 Freedom to manifest one’s
religion or belief may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by
law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, morals or the
fundamental rights and freedoms of others.
2. 1 No one shall be subject to
discrimination by any State, institution, group of persons or person on the
grounds of religion or other beliefs.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Beliefs
If the label “new atheists” has been accorded to a
fistful of polemicists who set out to counter in-your-face religion with
in-your-face atheism, then Ronald Aronson must qualify as something different:
a new new atheist perhaps.
This is slightly odd,
because it is Mr. Aronson, a professor of the history of ideas at
In the end, of the books
by seven authors that Mr. Aronson was reviewing there, only “The End of Faith,”
by Sam Harris, which Mr. Aronson criticized for “intolerance” and “zealotry,”
emerged as a best seller in the wave of take-no-prisoners new-atheist books.
Mr. Aronson proposed that neither it nor the other books under review provided
“the most urgent need” for secularists today: “a coherent popular philosophy
that answers vital questions about how to live one’s life.”
A “new atheism must absorb
the experience of the 20th century and the issues of the 21st,” he wrote. “It
must answer questions about living without God, face issues concerning forces
beyond our control as well as our own responsibility, find a satisfying way of
thinking about what we may know and what we cannot know, affirm a secular basis
for morality, point to ways of coming to terms with death and explore what hope
might mean today.”
“Living Without God” (Counterpoint,
2008) is now the title of Mr. Aronson’s own effort to provide such a popular
philosophy. It is meant to take up, he writes, where books like “The End of
Faith” leave off.
Mr. Aronson makes a good
argument that Americans are far more secular — or at least less religious —
than is often recognized. But, he says, contemporary secularism has lost the
buoyant confidence it once gained from “its essential link to the idea of
Progress, which promised so much and came to such grief during the 20th century.”
“To live comfortably
without God today,” he says, “means doing what has not yet been done — namely,
rethinking the secular worldview after the eclipse of modern optimism.”
Indeed, “religion is not
really the issue, but rather the incompleteness or tentativeness, the thinness
or emptiness, of today’s atheism, agnosticism and secularism. Living without
God means turning toward something.”
For Mr. Aronson, that
“something” is not the ideal of an autonomous individual striding confidently
into the dawning future but the drama of an interdependent humankind embedded
in complex systems of forces, knit into networks of natural environment,
historical legacies, social institutions and personal relations.
From this larger story of
interdependency, he draws a ground, not surprisingly, for responsibility and
morality: a recognizable left-of-center commitment to collective struggle
against “domination, inequality and oppression, rooted in scarcity.”
More originally, he argues
that this interdependence should summon gratitude — gratitude “for,” even if
not “to.” Giving thanks, he recognizes, has been central to religion, and
secular culture needs to be enriched with an equivalent.
Mr. Aronson’s is not the
only recent example of a new new atheism. “The Little Book of Atheist
Spirituality” (Viking, 2007), written by André Comte-Sponville and translated
from the French by Nancy Huston, is another.
Like Mr. Aronson, Mr.
Comte-Sponville is a philosopher, and though his book includes a critique of
classic proofs for God’s existence, he is similarly less interested in battling
religion than in explaining the basis of a nonreligious life. He does not
hesitate to avow that much of what he is and does, “even my way of being an
atheist,” bears the imprint of the Roman Catholicism to which he adhered
through adolescence.
Where Mr. Aronson is
sturdy Jewish rye, Mr. Comte-Sponville is Gallic croissant: personal,
conversational, charming, quick with phrases like “Christian atheist,”
“cheerful despair” and “atheistic mysticism.” From the notions of immanence and
immensity, he coins “immanensity”; he melds eternity and nullity into
“eternullity.”
In considerable detail, he
explicates his own immersion in the kind of “oceanic feeling” that a perplexed
Freud discussed at the beginning of “Civilization and Its Discontents.”
It occurred during a
nighttime walk with friends in a familiar forest, the starry night and
surrounding trees suddenly erasing all cares, fears and boundaries, suddenly
transporting him into a state of timelessness and bliss, a plenitude of reality
rendering both life and death inconsequential.
It is fascinating how
closely this resembles experiences that many believers have described as their
gateway to religious faith. Yet for Mr. Comte-Sponville it removed all need of
dogma, hope, eternity, salvation, “even the longing for God.”
Sharp-eyed philosophers
may locate loose joints in the arguments of these books. Theologians may be
more intrigued by how thin a line divides the outlooks of these new new
atheists from things many serious believers hold.
Unfortunately, Mr.
Aronson’s book, although rich in references to the French left-wing thought in
which he has specialized, is devoid of any reference to contemporary theology.
Living without God often seems to mean living without evangelical biblical
literalism.
Likewise, Mr.
Comte-Sponville’s pithy sentences sometimes wilt upon second reading or turn
silly, as when he writes of losing his adolescent faith: “Such freedom! Such
responsibility! Such joy!” Such exclamation points!
Mr. Aronson himself, in an
interview last month, praised Mr. Comte-Sponville’s book, despite his own
reservations about terms like “spirituality” and his own emphasis, in “Living
Without God,” on social responsibility and political action.
“I want everyone to have
opportunities to explore the spiritual dimensions Comte-Sponville talks about,”
he said. But “his elucidation, I fear, takes flight from all the things we must
do to make the world a decent place.”
Mr. Comte-Sponville does
address one political question, of the broadest sort. While he has no doubt
that individuals can live without religion — he is, after all, a happy atheist
— whether societies can live without religion, he feels, is a more complex
matter.
Some societies, of course,
do. Which is why these two exercises in the new new atheism should be joined
with a discussion of Phil Zuckerman’s new book on Sweden and Denmark, “Society
Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment”
(New York University Press, 2008) — in a future column.
ISSUE STATEMENT: International Human Rights Standards on Freedom of
Religion or Belief are international law and codes of conduct for peaceful
cooperation, respectful competition and resolution of conflicts. The standards
are a platform for genuine dialogue on core principles and values within and
among nations, all religions and other beliefs.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Documents Attached:
New Atheism and Something More - Human Rights & Freedom of Religion or Belief
How Close Are We to Inclusive & Genuine Dialogue on Freedom of Religion or Belief
Dialogue - 2009 Report by UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief
Atheist Bus Ads & Freedom of Religion or Belief
STANDARDS: http://www.tandemproject.com/program/81_dec.htm
The Tandem Project: a non-governmental organization founded in
1986 to build understanding, tolerance and respect for diversity, and to
prevent discrimination in matters relating to freedom of religion or belief.
The Tandem Project, a non-profit NGO, has sponsored multiple conferences,
curricula, reference materials and programs on Article 18 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – Everyone shall have the right to
freedom of thought, conscience and religion - and 1981 United Nations
Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination
Based on Religion or Belief.
The Tandem Project
initiative is the result of a co-founder representing the World Federation of
United Nations Associations at the United Nations Geneva Seminar, Encouragement of Understanding, Tolerance
and Respect in Matters Relating to Freedom of Religion or Belief,
called by the UN Secretariat in 1984 on ways to implement the 1981 UN
Declaration. In 1986, The Tandem Project organized the first NGO International
Conference on the 1981 UN Declaration.
The Tandem Project
Executive Director is: Michael M. Roan, mroan@tandemproject.com.
The Tandem Project is a UN NGO in
Special Consultative Status with the
Economic and Social Council of
the United Nations
Challenge: to reconcile international human rights
standards on freedom of religion or belief with the truth claims of religious
and non-religious beliefs.
United Nations Secretary
General Ban Ki Moon, at the Alliance of Civilizations Madrid Forum said; never
in our lifetime has there been a more desperate need for constructive and
committed dialogue, among individuals, among communities, among cultures, among
and between nations. Another writer in different setting said; the warning
signs are clear, unless we establish genuine dialogue within and among all
kinds of belief, ranging from religious fundamentalism to secular dogmatism,
the conflicts of the future will probably be even more deadly.
Did God create us or did
we create God? This question calls for inclusive and genuine dialogue,
respectful and thoughtful responses, discussion of taboos and clarity by
persons of diverse beliefs. Inclusive and genuine is dialogue between people of
theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as
well as the right not to profess any religion or belief. These UN
categories embodied in international law promote tolerance and prevent
discrimination based on religion or belief.
Inclusive and genuine
dialogue is essential as a first step in recognition of the inherent dignity,
equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family as a foundation
for freedom, justice and peace in the world. Leaders of religious and
non-religious beliefs sanction the truth claims of their own traditions. They
are the key to raising awareness and acceptance of the value of holding truth
claims in tandem with human rights standards on freedom of religion or belief.
____________________________________________________________
Goal: To eliminate all forms of intolerance and discrimination
based on religion or belief.
Purpose: To build understanding and support for
Article 18, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights –Everyone
shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion - and the
1981 UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and
Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. Encourage the United Nations,
Governments, Religions or Beliefs, Academia, NGOs, Media and Civil Society to
utilize International Human Rights Standards on Freedom of Religion or Belief
as essential for long-term solutions to conflicts
in all matters relating to religion or belief.
Objectives:
1. Use International
Human Rights Standards on Freedom of Religion or Belief as a platform for genuine
dialogue on the core principles and values within and among nations, all
religions and other beliefs.
2. Adapt these human
rights standards to early childhood education, teaching children, from the very
beginning, that their own religion is one out of many and that it is a personal
choice for everyone to adhere to the religion or belief by which he or she
feels most inspired, or to adhere to no religion or belief at all.1
History: In 1968 the United Nations deferred work on an
International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Religious
Intolerance, because of its apparent complexity and sensitivity. In the
twenty-first century, a dramatic increase of intolerance and discrimination on
grounds of religion or belief is motivating a worldwide search to find
solutions to these problems. This is a challenge calling for enhanced dialogue
by States and others; including consideration of an International Convention on
Freedom of Religion or Belief for protection of and accountability by all religions
or beliefs. The tensions in today’s world inspire a question such as:
Should the United Nations
adopt an International Convention on Freedom of Religion or Belief?
Response: Is it the appropriate moment to
reinitiate the drafting of a legally binding international convention on
freedom of religion or belief? Law making of this nature requires a minimum
consensus and an environment that appeals to reason rather than emotions. At
the same time we are on a learning curve as the various dimensions of the
Declaration are being explored. Many academics have produced voluminous books
on these questions but more ground has to be prepared before setting up of a UN
working group on drafting a convention. In my opinion, we should not try to
rush the elaboration of a Convention on Freedom of Religion or Belief,
especially not in times of high tensions and unpreparedness. - UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief,
Option: After forty years this may be the time,
however complex and sensitive, for the United Nations Human Rights Council to
appoint an Open-ended Working Group to draft a United Nations Convention on
Freedom of Religion or Belief. The mandate for an Open-ended Working Group
ought to assure nothing in a draft Convention will be construed as restricting
or derogating from any right defined in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, the International Covenants on Human Rights, and the 1981 UN
Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of
Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief.
Separation of Religion or Belief
and State
Concept: Separation of Religion or Belief and State - SOROBAS. The First Preamble to the 1948 United Nations
Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads; “Whereas
recognition of the inherent
dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human
family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. This concept
suggests States recalling their history, culture and constitution adopt fair
and equal human rights protection for all religions or beliefs as described in
General Comment 22 on Article 18, International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, UN Human Rights Committee,
Article
18: protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not
to profess any religion or belief.
The terms belief and religion are to be broadly construed. Article 18 is not
limited in its application to traditional religions or to religions and beliefs
with international characteristics or practices analogous to those of
traditional religions. The Committee therefore views with concern any tendency
to discriminate against any religion or belief for any reasons, including the
fact that they are newly established, or represent religious minorities that
may be the subject of hostility by a predominant religious community.
Article
18: permits restrictions
to manifest a religion or belief only if such limitations are prescribed by law
and necessary to protect public safety, order, health or morals, or the
fundamental rights and freedoms of others.
International Human Rights Standards on Freedom of
Religion or Belief are used to review the actions of governments, religions or
beliefs, non-governmental organizations and civil society under constitutional
systems such as Separation of Church and State,
Dialogue: International Human Rights Standards on Freedom or
Religion or Belief are international law and universal codes of conduct for
peaceful cooperation, respectful competition and resolution of conflicts. The
standards are a platform for inclusive and genuine dialogue on core principles
and values within and among nations, all religions and other beliefs.
Education: Ambassador
1981 U.N. Declaration on
Freedom of Religion or Belief
5.2: Every child shall enjoy the right to have access
to education in the matter of religion or belief in accordance with the wishes
of his parents, and shall not be compelled to receive teaching on religion or
belief against the wishes of his parents, the best interests of the child being
the guiding principle.” With International Human Rights safeguards, early
childhood education is the best time to begin to build tolerance, understanding
and respect for freedom of religion or belief.
5.3: The child shall be protected from any form of
discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief. He shall be brought up in
a spirit of understanding, tolerance, and friendship among peoples, peace and
universal brotherhood, respect for the freedom of religion or belief of others
and in full consciousness that his energy and talents should be devoted to the
service of his fellow men.