I’m going to start off by assuming that anyone wandering in here has a pretty solid understanding of who Anders Behring Breivik is. If you don’t, I’ll trust that you’ll use Teh Google to catch yourself up.
I dare say I would not be unique in labeling this person a ‘monster.’ But expressing that sentiment is hardly worthy of a diary. I wish to delve deeper into this man and his acts from the perspective of an atheist. I am writing this because I feel this person and his heinous crimes can lend to a discussion about religion and morality. Just to be triply clear, I, in absolutely no way whatsoever, condone what he did. I do not relish the circumstances that led to this discussion, and I am not here to rub it in anyone’s face. Please read my whole diary carefully before jumping to any conclusion about what you expect me to write. I will not engage in a pie fight with anyone in the comments that takes up an argument against a point I didn’t intend or attempt to make. Go fight your straw men elsewhere.
Come and jump into the squiggly pool head first with me.
Here are some facts:
- Anders Brevik is a mass murderer.
- Notwithstanding Bill O’Reilly’s near perfect rendition of the “No True Scotsman” Fallacy, Anders Brevik is a Christian.
- Anders Brevik, may, or may not be mentally unstable.
Here is the point I’m NOT trying to make: Anders Brevik killed people because he is Christian. Believing that there was a man named Jesus born to a virgin two millennia ago, who was the son of, and also part of the one true God does not make one decide to kill people or blow up buildings. Nope, the teachings of his professed religion had almost nothing to do with what he ultimately did. What did?
Tribalism. This can come in many shapes and colors. Given the right circumstances, even atheists could become susceptible to the potentially catastrophic influences of tribalism. Human social structure fosters and reinforces this phenomenon. People cannot feel a strong social bond to six billion other people, so they seek comfort in similar moral, mental, or physical attributes of people within a smaller defined group. Most people feel more comfortable knowing they are part of a group that shares their perspective and experience. These are normal urges for people.
The problem with tribalism comes when one or more of the small groups begins to vilify members of other groups. When someone feels a strong bond to a tight knit small community of likeminded people, and those people all begin to espouse the demonization or dehumanization of another group of people, that person does not have to be insane to commit a violent act against others outside the tribe. Insanity is a convenient excuse apologists use to dismiss these sorts of tribalistic terrorism.
The reality is that there are many, even some mainstream, tribal groups that are capable of spurring violent acts against those they paint as enemies of humanity. To be honest, if liberals were less prone to rational skepticism and non-violent approaches to solve problems we would likely see many more left wing extremists out there committing violent acts against those they perceive as destroying our country. Fortunately, that does not happen often.
Returning from a little bit of a tangent, lets get back to the religion aspect of this. There are many sub tribes within the Christian community that espouse and reinforce the kind of hatred Brevik internalized. This is not an indictment of all Christianity or all religion. Just as 9/11 was not a result of all Islam, Christianity as a whole did not commit these crimes. Religion does, though, provide a handy and potentially powerful framework on which to build this kind of hateful, violent tribalism.
Herein lies the difference between those acts of violence carried out by those who called themselves atheists, and those who called themselves followers of a major religion. Many, though not all, of the wars, genocide, terrorism, etc. carried out by those who proclaimed themselves members of a religion were done in the name of that religion or against some group with views antithetical to those of the perpetrator's religion. Historically, atheists who did similar things did not do so under the banner of atheism. Spouting some false equivalency nonsense like “Atheists do it too” conveniently ignores the true motivation. Lack of belief in something is a very weak basis for a group to be lead to commit dehumanizing acts of violence.
The fact is that not all religion creates violence, and not all violence is motivated by religion. But what we can say is that religion is one large example of a human social structure that has a strong potential to incubate hatred and violence towards others. A big part of the dynamic at work is the perception that the scripture and those trusted to interpret it are infused with divine infallibility.
One other similar structure is the eliminationist brand of right wing thought present in political groups in this country and elsewhere worldwide. Anders Brevik was involved in a volatile overlapping of these two tribes. Right wing eliminationism mixed with a xenophobic brand of Christianity and they fed off each other.
This killer found himself succumbing to the worst aspects of tribalism. Not only did he care extremely deeply for the future of his country as he ideally saw it, but those he surrounded himself with implicitly or explicitly convinced him of two dangerous, erroneous conclusions: 1) The great existential threats to his country were multiculturalism and left wing governance; and 2) He could be a hero for his country if he could deal the ‘enemy’ a great violent blow.
Now it’s clear he was delusional to think he would be considered a great figure by his people, but it doesn’t mean he was insane. We have seen, in Saturday Hate Mail for example, plenty of right wingers who are mostly not crazy but believe any number of bizarre things. This is probably a result of some self reinforcing, tribalistic, echo-chamber which shuts out rational thought with the simple mechanism of comfort in numbers. “All these people believe this, and I identify with them more strongly than any other people I know, therefore this crazy thing that is absurd to others is probably true.”
Religion is the macrocosm of this phenomenon. It has already established these reinforcements to keep the majority of believers in the fold. That template can be grafted onto by people under the larger banner of the main religion, and then taken off in a direction where the endpoint is far away and out of sight from the point of departure. See Westboro Baptists.
I wrote on this in a diary last year, but I need to revisit and elaborate on the moral consensus as it relates to tribalism and religion. Any society comes, by way of an organic, bottom up process, to a general agreement on its moral values and laws. A smaller group will naturally create a more homogenous viewpoint on these due to increasing social leverage and pressure to adopt the group’s consensus.
Religion, contrary to the opinion of most within it, does not originate morality, but rather adopts that of the society around it. I know most of you reading this don’t believe it. Please see my diary on the subject from last year if you’re having trouble accepting this premise.
The smaller tribal groups in society often have moral structures that differ, to varying degrees, from those of society at large. There are certain moral truths that humanity as a whole has largely adopted. Individual nations add their own, more specific ideas to the tapestry. Smaller geographical regions and cultures within those nations may add or alter those, and so on. By the time you get to the small tribal level you may have people that respond to a completely different idea of what constitutes upstanding moral behavior than the members of another tribe. The age of the internet has blurred the geographic lines of some of these tribal groups. International religion does not guarantee that adherents to that religion do not belong to smaller sub groups which might pervert, add to, or amend the moral consensus of the larger religion.
Anders Brevik believed he was acting in a morally forthright way by bombing and killing people. His smaller, most influential tribal groups led him to believe this type of action was desperately needed and justifiable. Those slightly larger tribal groups he identified with believed he was right about the problem, even if they didn’t agree with his approach to solving it. At a larger level, right wing Christians seek to avoid attaching the stigma of the ‘terrorism’ label to the incident so as to avoid others broad brushing their political and religious institutions. The ironic thing is that most of the same people happily do this to Islam when a member of that faith carries out a violent act.
If we woke up tomorrow to find religion had vanished from the world there would still be violence, and still be terrorism. Religion does, however, provide many more fault lines in the social contract. It helps small groups of likeminded people see other groups as enemies and lights a path to for some to override the broad human directive not to harm or kill others. There are many similar violence inducing forces. Some examples of these include nationalism, political extremist movements, wealth disparity, and bigotry of all types. The existence of these things does not absolve religion in cases where it becomes a catalyst to violence. I will say though, that in the case of Anders Brevik it’s pretty clear that religion was not the only factor in his motivation. It’s impossible to say if he would have acted in identical fashion had he been an atheist or a member of a religion other than Christianity.
At this point I’d like to open up the discussion and give you a chance to add to or take me to task on the points I’ve made here.
Series Schedule
8-5: I Didn't Choose to be an Atheist
Tuesday Evening, 8-16: Atheism and Socialism
Sunday Evening, 8-21: Unpacking the Homosexuality Comparison
TBD: Conclusion