This week I’ve been reading through a collection of short essays which is basically just what it says on the tin. Here is the table of contents, which is badly formatted on the Amazon page:
In the Aftermath of the Terror Attacks in France by Stephen Suleyman Schwartz
Free Speech is Free for Whom? by Hussein Rashid
The Paris Attacks: A Moderate Liberal-Atheist Perspective by Massimo Pigliucci
Islam, Violence and the Religious Mind by John Teehan
Islam and Violence: When ‘From Within’ Meets ‘From Without’ by Ozgur Koca
Believe the Terrorists: Religion, Violence, and the Power of Beliefs by Michael Shermer
Science, Religion, and Culture in light of Paris and Charlie Hebdo by Lawrence Krauss
On Terrorism and Blasphemy by Varadaraja V. Raman
When Satire Meets Islamic Fundamentalism: Are We All Charlie? by Frank Griffel
The Dilemma of Islamic Terrorism by Ali Sina
I bought it basically for the Pigliucci essay, but the other ones are all worthy reading, and at 99¢ it’s sort of a steal. You will find some things to disagree with (Rashid, for example, has a go at the Enlightenment in general and French secularism in particular), some things to heartily agree with, and more than a few flashes of insight in these digital pages. Unless you are already a scholar of Islam, you will also come away with a more nuanced view of this world religion.
Teehan’s essay is particularly outstanding, as he attempts to get at the deep roots of religious fanaticism in human psychology:
Human morality evolved as an in-group adaptation—it is a means of fostering pro-social behavior that enabled the group to survive and thrive. Part of surviving and thriving often involved competition, at time lethal competition, with other human groups. This has inscribed a deep bias in our moral psychology—a bias for our in-group, with a resulting bias against, or at least a decreased moral sensitivity to, the out-group. There is an impressive wealth of scientific evidence that supports the species-wide presence and compelling nature of this bias…and recent studies reveal that the brain’s empathy systems are sensitively tuned to in-group/out-group distinctions. Religion, as it became the symbolic expression of our moral intuitions, inherited this morally conflicted system—and this understanding can help us to make sense of conflicting religious voices.
Naturally, a psychological problem with roots this deep isn’t going to be restricted to religion. Even a noble ethical system such as Secular Humanism is bound to fall prey to ingroup/outgroup thinking when the chips are down and the CHUDs are banging away at the gates. Perhaps, though, it is best to say no more on that score.
