I wish to reply to Daphne Caruana Galizia’s article on the first day of the year regarding Christopher Hitchens and religion.

While I can understand where some of her criticism towards anti-religious activists is coming from, I think she is missing the whole point, which is basically, secularism. America, where Hitchens used to live, is ripe with religious conservativism, which can obviously be harmful (some extreme evangelical Christians even bomb abortion clinics every now and then). Malta is no less than America, as we have seen in the divorce issue. I do not think ad hominem attacks, such as when she publicly stated that the non-believers themselves probably have doubts over their beliefs (or non-beliefs), help. Neither is indifference towards the religion and secularism debate fruitful. Being indifferent towards the debate is, well, OK, but why not contribute something to the debate instead?

While some non-believers could not care less about religion, others are concerned about its evidently harmful effects. Indeed, the true liberal takes the ‘live and let live’ approach, and secularists who are against religion are against religion precisely because they are so fond of that approach and not against it. This is fair enough if discussions about religion bore you, but by debating no one is imposing anything on anyone. Caruana Galizia also stated that the world would be a better place if more religions were multifarious. The implication here was that, no, most religions are not multifarious and they are also exclusivist. All one is doing here is highlighting the problem; the point is to tackle it. Daphne also agreed that the “over-riding domination of society by a single religion... is unpleasant and poses a threat to human rights and liberty” and said that a secular democracy guards against this – and this is true. However, how secular is Malta? And what is left of democracy when people pride themselves on being indifferent to debate?

One last point on which I want to criticise her article is on whether forcibly eradicating religion helps. I agree with her that obviously it does not; it is also very immoral and despicable to forcibly convince someone of anything. However, throughout history, whenever this has been the case, religion in the conventional sense was replaced by another religion, usually one of a political nature such as Communism, and not eradicated. Indeed, religion can never be eradicated, but attacking religion is very healthy for a democracy (precisely because most religions are not democratic at all). Hitchen also highlighted this problem in his book God is Not Great and confessed how he used to be a devout and dogmatic Marxist but had to give that up in the name of reason.

In conclusion, while I am an atheist myself (and one who is in no doubt as to whether or not he is convinced of his convictions), I do think that many atheists are slightly vulgar during a debate on religion. However, I also think that, most of the time, this appears to be the case because we put religion on a pedestal in our society, and we do not see it for what it is: i.e. the justification of a “celestial dictatorship” – as Hitchens used to say.

Luke Buhagiar