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'New Atheists': Enlightened guides to perdition

A warning to the secular left: Beware the new atheists

Date published: 6/21/2008

Chris Hedges, a former foreign correspondent for The New York Times and long a critic of the Religious Right, argues in his new book, "I Don't Believe in Atheists," that the scientific utopianism of modern atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris should alarm us as much as the millennial beliefs of religious figures such as Pat Robertson and James Dobson. Hedges was recently interviewed by John Whitehead, president of the Charlottesville-based Rutherford Institute. An excerpt of that interview, found in full at rutherford.org, follows.

John Whitehead: Let me quote from your book: "There is nothing in human nature or human history to support the idea that we are morally advancing as a species or that we will overcome the flaws of human nature. We progress technologically and scientifically, but not morally." You paint a very dark view of human nature.

Chris Hedges: It's realistic. It captures the wisdom of original sin. And the wisdom of original sin is borne out by studies of cognitive behavior, psychoanalysis, and the fact that we are driven by forces often subterranean that we don't fully understand. We can all be taken over by the irrational.

This is a fact of human nature, and not to see it is dangerous because you fall into these very frightening secular or religious utopian belief systems. "Utopia" is a word that means "no place." Utopian worlds do not exist. And when you build ethical systems based on utopian beliefs, they always descend into criminality and moral depravity. The fascist and communist movements were utopian movements. In many ways, the war in Iraq is a classic example of a utopian movement.

All of us who spent a prolonged period of time in the Middle East and spoke the language never felt that the war in Iraq or the occupa- tion of Iraq was a good idea. I include those in the State Department, in the intelligence community, and in the Pentagon.

JW: But don't we Americans believe we can go about the globe sprinkling seeds of truth, honesty, decency, and democracy?

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Date published: 6/21/2008