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Michel Onfray, Doctor of Philosophy (a Ph.D. in the literal sense), is a French philosopher born in 1959, and founder of l’Université populaire de Caen. He is the author of many critically and publicly acclaimed titles. In his latest book, Traité d’Athéologie (A Treatise on Atheology), soon to be translated into English, Michel Onfray goes to war against religion. Onfray’s views are provocative, and they generated an intense debate in France.
A response to his book has even been published entitled L’Anti-Traité d’Atheologie (The Anti-Treatise on Atheology). Michel Onfray has an atheistic point of view on current sensitive bioethics issues; this is why Natural Selections interviewed him.
Natural Selections (NS): What is the definition of an atheist?
Michel Onfray (MO): I would like to stick to the etymologic definition: The atheist denies the existence of God. To go further the atheist says, “what you call God can be reduced to the sum of your weaknesses that you transfigure into a superpower in front of which you kneel.” I am limited, I don’t know everything, I am mortal, I can’t be everywhere, I am subject to time and aging, while God is the opposite of all that: unlimited, omniscient, immortal, omnipresent, omnipotent, eternal. He represents the sum of the negation of our weaknesses, and therefore is the expression of an absolute power. According to this definition there are only a few atheists. We often confuse the polytheist who affirms the plurality of gods (Epicurus), the agnostic who concludes to neither its existence or inexistence (Protagoras), the pantheist for whom God is assimilated in nature (Spinoza), the fideist who believes his country’s religion because it comes from his country (Montaigne), the deist for whom God is the supreme being but is careless about the rest of the world, and the true atheist who is defined above. Those confusions are common philosophical mistakes. The atheist denies the existence of God, and believes that morals are more efficient when they go from man to man rather than making a detour through an irrational heaven.
NS: It seems that there is a need for a new word to define the atheist in positive terms. Did you come up with any?
MO: We can use without difficulty the word atheist. Even if it is negatively defined by its privative prefix, it conveys clearly what it represents: the radical immanence of all reality.
NS: Do atheists have ethics? If we take as an example the bioethics laws, most of them originate from the debate between science and religious morality. Nobody intervenes in these debates to give an “atheist voice.” What would be the basis for an atheist’s ethics?
MO: Atheism is neither immoralism nor amorality; it is another moral system that supposes that the rules of all inter-subjectivity should follow a contract between the actors of the relationship. To call for God’s mediation for an ethics question is always the occasion not to hear a hypothetical God, but rather his supposed voice authorized by a member of the clergy. An atheist’s morals remain to be shaped. I have proposed my own in La Sculpture de Soi (Self Sculpture): “une morale esthétique” (“esthetic morals”), because I believe esthetics, in particular contemporary esthetics, is an excellent opportunity to give up the theological model for the foundation of a moral system.
NS: Scientists are often considered to be atheists playing with nature’s laws. One very sensitive topic is embryonic stem cell research. Despite the therapeutic promise that stem cell research might hold, a major objection that has been raised by some people is that it involves the destruction of a life to save a life. What is your view on the scientific progress to cure humankind? Are we going too far?
MO: Bioethics is stagnant because more or less openly or not, it obeys dominant Judeo-Christian ethical laws. Ethic committees often gather Christians, Jews, Protestants, and Freemasons, in general closely following Kant’s philosophy (i.e. religious individuals who speak the language of German idealism…). They refer to philosophical authorities (Levinas, Jonas, Habermas) pronouncing that it is urgent to wait…but if one does not move forward, one moves backward. We are missing the revolution of transgenesis, the only one able to lead us out of the Hippocratic medicine in which we still are! This is to say how held back science is…therefore we are not going too far; we remain stagnant and are being delayed.
NS: The use of GMOS (genetically modified organisms) in agriculture may increase production and promote a pesticide-free agriculture. Do you think food containing GMOs is dangerous? Do you eat GMO food?
MO: I am against the principle of precaution which says that because the worst is possible, always declares that it is certain, and prefers doing nothing to taking the risk. If our ancestors had followed this conceptual, intellectual, and mental nonsense, we would have never invented the airplane because of crashes, the train because of derailment, electricity because of electric shocks, the car because of accidents—and even the first human being because of…its pending death! Unless a substance has been proven dangerous, its use is defendable. I am in favor of the use of GMOs—but not their current liberal use. In the name of a bad political reason one can discredit an excellent scientific discovery, potentially important for the evolution of civilizations. Yes, I do eat food containing GMOs…
NS: In your book A Treatise on Atheology, you argue that religion has delayed the progression of science throughout the ages. Why is that?
MO: Take a simple look at the history of the relationship between science and religion! This is distressing, pathetic: how did we manage to reach such a level of technology despite two thousand years of severe, violent, perfidious, permanent, deliberated, concerted constraints from the Roman Catholic Church? The Vatican has supported the hatred of all science displayed by Saint Paul, and has persecuted all the discoverers of scientific truth—Galileo was the tip of the iceberg.
NS: The Kansas State Board of Education voted on November 8, 2005 on how the theory of evolution should be taught in school. The 6-4 vote was a victory for advocates of intelligent design. Unlike creation science, which uses the Bible as a guide, intelligent design claims to use scientific methods to demonstrate the existence of God. Some places in the US are using pre-Darwinian science standards in their education curriculum. What is the situation in France? The church seems to be more clearly separated from the state than in the US. Is France heading toward an atheist society?
MO: France is not heading toward the proclamation of an atheist Republic, but laicism (in very bad shape lately) has permitted us to avoid catastrophes. We are still teaching Darwin in classes, and creationism is seen as what it really is: the pathetic mental agitation of bigots that science contradicts, and who refuse science or invent pseudo-scientists who give their religious beliefs a scientific appearance with vocabulary and methods borrowed from science.
NS: Religion did not always reject science. For example, the monk Gregor Mendel discovered the existence of the laws of heredity. What type of research is encouraged by religion?
MO: None, I am afraid…nowadays, religion cannot take control, it has no way of inflicting or condemning, neither can it lead or stimulate research. As it has no means for intolerance, thank God, it displays tolerance.
NS: Many contemporary believers in God, sometimes scientists, reconcile their religious beliefs and science. They do not literally follow the book of God, but instead believe that God created the universe, which would be difficult to disprove. In your ideal society is there space for this type of belief?
MO: Why would someone of reason like to, in spite of everything, at any price, incorporate magic thoughts? I am amazed by this permanent desire to invite myths, fables, or magic that one day was thrown out of the window!
NS: How is it possible to replace the community-gathering role of religion, and escape the isolation of the atheist?
MO: By activating a real democratization of philosophical practice. By grabbing from the cast of professional philosophers this great activity that Greeks and Romans, I remind you, were practicing not amongst themselves at the university, but on the Agora and on the Forum.
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