COMMENT | The response to a gathering held by a local chapter of the Atheist Republic has been met with considerable vitriol.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Shahidan Kassim wants Muslims who participated in the gathering to be “hunted” down, so that they can be brought back to be “fixed”.

Rizal Mansor described atheists as a “plague of deviant thinking”. It is unclear in what capacity the special aide to the prime minister’s wife made these remarks.

“Atheists are part of the Freemason movement who want a free life. This is dangerous when living without religion or faith, (for) in the end (such practices) will bring human(s) to live a lawless life,” says Mahadi Awang, a representative of Yayasan Dakwah Islamiah Malaysia (Yadim).

Much like the rest of this article, perhaps I am preaching to the choir, but these statements do seem like a little bit of an overreaction, to say the least.

Mahadi’s critique is amusingly ironic, as mainstream Freemasonry actually requires that its members believe in a deity (such a requirement no longer exists in the breakaway Continental Freemasonry).

One of the founding documents of Freemasonry, James Anderson’s Constitutions of 1723 opens with this statement: “A Mason is oblig’d by his Tenure, to obey the moral law; and if he rightly understands the Art, he will never be a stupid Atheist nor an irreligious Libertine”.

Thus, one is unsure how “stupid” atheists feel about being lumped with Freemasons.

I suppose however that none of us are truly surprised to find people in Malaysia (same as most other places I suppose) who mouth off the usual bogeymen without doing even the most basic of research.

More religious, better morals?

On a more serious note, it is more than a little sad that people in such authority react with anger, fear and hate to people who merely have different ideas than the majority.

Especially compared to politicians who rob a country blind, demagogues who stir hatred among communities, or bullies who murder children, I would imagine atheists to be among the least harmful people in society.

Religious authorities like to claim that decreasing religiosity in society is to blame for many of society’s ills.

Academic studies in fact show the exact opposite: that more secular countries/communities have lower crime rates, lower incidences of teenage pregnancy, and less violence.

I am not trying to use these facts to argue that people should be less religious. On the contrary, I am trying to say that we should not be trying to force people to believe in one thing or another either way.

Inquisition to free market

I think that historically, one of the greatest, most dangerous fallacies is that trying to force people to believe in something is beneficial in any way.

The idea of using violence to enforce religious beliefs is hardly a new one. Under the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834), some three to five thousand people were executed, essentially for failure to adhere to certain Catholic doctrines.

Such horrors played a significant role in older European civilisations in encouraging the move towards separation of church and state, and to remove from religious institutions the right to coerce anyone in any way.

History demonstrates that trying to enforce religious beliefs does not augment or improve any religion in the long run. It does not win that religion more followers, nor does it foster genuine growth in any way.

The only way for religions to grow in any truly meaningful way is to compete successfully in the free marketplace of ideas.

In the same way that products protected by economic sanctions lack sufficient motivation to truly improve to point which they are truly competitive (think Proton perhaps), ideas propagated by fear and coercion have no real hold over our hearts and minds.

On the other hand, ideas that are developed and presented in such a way that they can stand out from the sea of other competing ideas stand a much better chance of becoming meaningfully embedded within us.

Nothing to hate

Sadly, as it currently stands in Malaysia, we find ourselves reacting violently - either in words or in actual actions - when faced with ideas that make us uncomfortable.

The fact remains that expressions of violence, such as the fracas at Sunday’s Nothing to Hide 2.0 forum, are far from unheard of in Malaysian political gatherings.

We will have achieved true maturity as a nation when such forums become a place for genuine exchange of ideas, not the exchange of chairs flying across the hall.

As we decry these bad trends, we must be careful not to fall into the same trap. If we foster hate and prejudice towards those we disagree with, then we are adding fire to fire, rather than extinguishing it.

Ultimately, we will only make lasting progress if we - whether religious, atheist, government or opposition - are ready to forsake denigration and hatefulness as a way of propagating our ideas, in favour of intelligent persuasiveness and open-heartedness.

NATHANIEL TAN was recently described as having religious convictions proportional to his intestinal health.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.