Salman Rushdie, the "Sky God"

It's daunting, critically commenting on an essay written by one of the world's leading self-described atheists.

However, after reading Salman Rushdie's "Letter to the 6 Billionth Person," I was struck by what I felt was an inconsistency in his argument, and I'm going to try and articulate my thoughts as best as I can, while attempting to fully and respectfully understand Sir Rushdie's argument. I would like to say here that if I have misunderstood any part of Sir Rushdie's argument, I am completely open to being corrected, and retracting any part(s) of my following argument that does not remain applicable after being corrected.

In short, I'm not one of those belligerent people who refuses to recant my argument if I learn I haven't even understood the original argument.

I don't think I used the word "argument" enough in those last two paragraphs.

Argument......

Yeah, that's enough.

Anyway, here's my thoughts on what Sir Rushdie seems to be saying.

Essentially, he seems to be asserting that religion is obsolete, and instead of looking to a Higher Power (of any sort) for moral guidance, we should look inside ourselves to understand what is right and wrong, because:

"To my [Rushdie's] mind, religion - even at its most sophisticated - essentially infantalizes our ethical selves by setting infallible moral Arbiters and irredeemably immoral Tempters above us; the eternal parents, good and bad, light and dark, of the supernatural realm."

Rushdie's main point seems to be that we all have natural moral guidance within ourselves, and if we would stop looking to Someone/Something higher than ourselves to dictate our actions, many of the world's troubles would end, because we would no longer adhere to rules mandated by some unseen, omniscient God(s) which can be conveniently manipulated to further the dark plans of mortal men, who might exercise some control over the minds of people who are either too superstitious, too rooted in tradition, or too unwilling to think for themselves.

In short, we should stop listening to people who claim to have the ultimate understanding of what's moral and immoral, and instead look inside ourselves, because we all naturally understand morality.

Do we? Here's where Sir Rushdie's argument falls apart for me:

"How, then, are we to make ethical choices without a divine rulebook or judge? Is unbelief just the first step on the long slide into the brain death of cultural relativism, according to which many unbearable things - female circumcision, to name just one - can be excused on culturally specific grounds, and the universality of human rights, too can be ignored?"

So female circumcision is an unbearable thing? Again, I might be missing his point, or focused too narrowly on one thing, but something seems awry here. Reading on to the subsequent paragraph:

"Well, no, it isn't, but the reasons for saying so aren't clear-cut. Only hard-line ideology is clear-cut. Freedom, which is the word I use for the secular-ethical position, is inevitably fuzzier. Yes, freedom is that space in which contradiction can reign, it is a never-ending debate. It is not in itself the answer to the question of morals, but the conversation about that question. And it is much more than mere relativism, because it is not merely a never-ending talk show, but a place in which choices are made, values defined and defended."

Looking at that first paragraph and this most previous paragraph together, it sounds like he's trying to make the point that, obviously, we can agree that some things are clearly so horrendous we shouldn't dismiss them as simply being an acceptable part of a culture, but we shouldn't wholly scrap the idea of being free to think for ourselves as to what's right and wrong. This kind of mindset will open the doors to discussion and critical thinking on what's right and wrong, and from there we can define what is morality.

Fascinating. Never mind the fact he just made the assumption that if we would look inside ourselves to our own moral compasses, we would all agree that female circumcision is wrong.

Basically, Sir Rushdie seems to assume we all have some sort of higher, inborn moral compass that points to the belief that certain things are just wrong, so while some topics are up for debate, clearly things like female circumcision are not, and should not be accepted as simply being part of a culture. But according to his own argument, he has no business asserting that we should all agree female circumcision is wrong. Isn't that exactly what religious deities and authorities try to do? Give you a set of definite "thou shalt nots"?

If one moral absolute is up for debate and possible removal, then all of them are. For Sir Rushdie to say that everything is subject to a new interpretation but some are not is just doing the same thing we've been doing for millennia: following a moral code laid out by another person. Ironically, that person might be one of the very people who tried to teach us to develop our own set of morals.

As long as it still ascribes to the main tenets of his own morality, of course.


Timothy Keller touches on this same argument and so much more in his book, "The Reason for God." It's a fascinating, intellectual, respectful answer to many questions Christians and non-Christians alike inquire of the Christian faith, and I would highly recommend it to anyone.