Brown on Dawkins
Andrew Brown doesn’t admire Dawkins’s new book, despite agreeing on the basics.
In his broad thesis, Dawkins is right. Religions are potentially dangerous, and in their popular forms profoundly irrational. The agnostics must be right and the atheists very well may be. There is no purpose to the universe. Nothing inconsistent with the laws of physics has been reliably reported. To demand a designer to explain the complexity of the world begs the question, “Who designed the designer?” It has been clear since Darwin that we have no need to hypothesise a designer to explain the complexity of living things. The results of intercessory prayer are indistinguishable from those of chance.
Despite all the trillions of words in theological journals, ‘who designed the designer?’ is still a question without an answer. But Brown says Dawkins should get to grips with ‘the important truth added in the 20th century: that religious belief persists in the face of these facts and arguments.’
Dawkins is inexhaustibly outraged by the fact that religious opinions lead people to terrible crimes. But what, if there is no God, is so peculiarly shocking about these opinions being specifically religious? The answer he supplies is simple: that when religious people do evil things, they are acting on the promptings of their faith but when atheists do so, it’s nothing to do with their atheism.
That does sound too simple (but I haven’t read the book, so don’t know if it’s a fair account of what Dawkins says – and people aren’t always fair to him). But a slightly different answer might be that religious opinions lead people to terrible crimes that they wouldn’t otherwise commit, and that is why the fact that they are religious opinions is shocking. If religious opinions generate murders and wars that would not otherwise occur, then religious opinions are a source of bad things, and that’s bad (whether or not it’s shocking, which is a little beside the point). It may well be that a lot of those crimes would occur anyway, that if there were no religion, some other pretext would be found; it may well be that what is basic is rivalry and anger and hatred and heterophobia, and religion is often just the top-dressing. But it may not; or it may sometimes and not others. For one thing, religion can transform and translate an otherwise obviously contemptible motivation into a glorious and pious one, and thus free people to act on it when they otherwise wouldn’t. I can’t kill those people just because I hate them, or just because I want their land, but if they’re heretics or infidels or followers of the anti-Christ, then I’m doing a good and brave thing. Atheism doesn’t exactly work that way – but it may work other ways, so I think Brown is right to say (paraphrasing) that it’s too simple to say religious believers kill people and atheists don’t. But I don’t think it’s too simple to say that religious enthusiasm or a pious sense of duty can motivate crimes that would otherwise go unmotivated.
Brown also brings up the Communist canard in a particularly annoying fashion, claiming that Stalin’s murders of Orthodox priests are crimes that can be laid at the foot of his atheism in the same sense that millions and millions of religious murders can be laid at the foot of various religious belief systems. Except that atheism ISN’T A BELIEF SYSTEM – it is simply the absence of a particular set of beliefs. Communism is, however, a genuine belief system, and it ideologically vilifies priests with no more (or less) irrational vehemence than it vilifies the bourgeousie and other “enemies of the proletariat” (whom Stalin had executed in droves, without any particular regard to their religious affiliation or lack thereof). Communist idealogues’ murders are simply not justified by atheism in particular, whereas religious idealogues’ murders are ultimately justified by their conviction that God is literally on their side: This is so obviously the case that anyone drawing the comparison can only be motivated by genuine stupidity, their own religious ideology, or the desire to obscure and confuse some point they wish to remain unclear.
But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Stalinism wasn’t a religion – but it was a (secular) belief system which led to the death of millions. As was Fascism, etc. Religion isn’t so much dangerous as religion but as an identity-building ideology which lends justification to murder. Which doesn’t let atheists off the hook as atheists – but only to the extent that they relate critically to authoritarianism, identities built on ethnicity, faith, etc. And in the same way it lets religious people off the hook to the extent that they reject those.
I’m willing to admit that atheists are less likely to go on murderous rampages. But for one reason, which strictly taken does not directly relate to their atheism. In any society where theism of different kinds is the norm, becoming an atheist takes intellectual courage and independence of mind. But in any society where atheism has become the norm, I’m afraid people will find other reasons to bash each others’ heads in.
I think that a lot of the problem many people have with Dawkins is that he’s simple a little bit too, you know, strident. He doesn’t politely back down after making his point, but instead keeps worrying his quarry like a particularly tenacious terrier.
That may be why people call him a bully and such. But I disagree with this assessment; he doesn’t stop people from responding to him or shout down his opponent like an intellectual bully would do, he’s just a very tough debator with a great gift for clear thinking combined with the ability to communicate these thoughts.
G, I admire the way you leap to the point – that anyone who disagrees with you is corrupt.
No shonky pretense at rationalism there!
Merlijn de Smit: “But in any society where atheism has become the norm, I’m afraid people will find other reasons to bash each others’ heads in.”
The available evidence suggests otherwise (see link at bottom of post).
GS Paul: “In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies. The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly.”
Please note that the study only examined “prosperous developed democracies”.
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
But, isw the causality there? One could argue that it is indeed poverty and family disfunction-partly caused by economic systems and ideologies-that may lead tom more fervent religions. The socioeconmic factors are “to blame” for the social problems, not the religion. Without having read the study, I question the causality of religion for disfunction-fundamentalist religion could be seen more as a symptom of said disfunction?
In the absence of an atheistic belief system that corrresponds to communism or fascism, you can’t blame atheists for things done by communists or fascists. What else needs to be said on that subject? Anyone claiming the absence of religion causes violence should relate to whether the presence of religion does so, too.
[Despite all the trillions of words in theological journals, ‘who designed the designer?’ is still a question without an answer.]
oh come on Ophelia. This is one of the questions in those theological journals which definitely does have an answer. The answer is that, like “what happened before the Big Bang?”, the question is ill-posed because God is coterminous with every point in time and space. As I mentioned on the other thread, this argument was actually picked up by the physicists and it is equally valid when they use it in their theory.
I think that Merlijn’s argument is quite clear; that religions fill a psychological need for an ideology and identity, and that people and countries which don’t satisfy this urge through religion will end up satisfying it through some other ideology, like communism or capitalism, both of which have been vastly more bloodthirsty than any religion.
I hate to admit it, but the critic (Brown) has half a point.
WHY does religious beleif persist?
It is a load of blackmailing codswallop, and yet it persists.
Oh, and the re-statement about “belief systems” in the first post, merely confirms my (and Bertrand Russel’s) opinion that “Communism” is a classic religion.
Must get the book, though.
Amongst the many reasons that religion persists is that the human brain has evolved with an affinity for the construction of narratives and the assignment of motives, both traits far more useful in constructing survival-efficient groups than logical argumentation, which only a society with a significant number of people outside the ‘struggle for existence’ can afford to make room for. Like the appendix, male nipples, and the funny nerve in your head that loops round your collarbone and goes back up, it is a darwinian relic. Which is pretty gosh-darn ironic…
Thanks Dave, it’s not often I read something posted with concision and humour without it seeming a tad trite, especially before I’ve had my cornflakes. In what ways should we be tackling this condition ? Should we even bother, just hoping we survive long enough to evolve out of it in a few thousand years ?
My personal view is that Dawkins’ militancy clearly winds people up sometimes, but while the overcongested sound-bite world of religious politics is so full of bone headed dogmatists, flaring at the slightest remark, it’s hard to get the message over without scorching a few craven idiots.
This is one of the questions in those theological journals which definitely does have an answer.
And that answer is what exactly? “God is all.” That’s the aporia equivalent of artexing.
The answer is that, like “what happened before the Big Bang?”, the question is ill-posed because God is coterminous with every point in time and space.
How have we decided this? It sounds like an anthropomorphisation of Physics.
But anyway, let us assume that God is indeed watching you when you go to the toilet. The problem is so what? The universe doesn’t need God to be coterminous with it. And even if God is all-powerful (which the wrong kind of armour incident may have some bearing on), or all-knowing (which would make Bathsheba’s story even more bizarre) and morally righteous (which Abraham might have something to say about) He will cause trouble moving from one frame of reference to the next, dodging Godel, and avoiding being part of his own set.
The moments where He has intervened in the running of His universe have led only to strife, and you think He’d have got convincing people about revelation right after the third time. His “miracles” seem limited to fiddling with people’s neurons. Which are usually governed by the physical universe, and so occam’s razor says hi.
Just out of interest, which religion do you (or the theologians) believe to be correct about God? The Cosmic Joker has been running around telling all kinds of people all kinds of contradictory things.
religions fill a psychological need for an ideology and identity
No. They exploit that need.
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.”
– Steven Weinberg
and just to pick up one of GT’s persistent riffs, I’d argue that it was Marxism that was the religion and Communism merely its main church.
Is there any literature on religious elements to Hitler’s Nazism ? (genuine request…)
“Is there any literature on religious elements to Hitler’s Nazism ?”
I wrote a chapter on that for my PhD. But you wouldn’t want to read it!
Heh…
The power of the web:
“Who is going to control the present – fundamentalism or freedom? History is being distorted by many preachers and politicians. They are heard on the airwaves condemning atheists and routinely claim Adolph Hitler was one. What a crock! Hitler was a Roman Catholic, baptized into that religio-political institution as an infant in Austria. He became a communicant and an altar boy in his youth, and was confirmed as a “soldier of Christ” in that church. The worst doctrines of that church never left him. He was steeped in its liturgy, which contained the words, “perfidious Jew.” This hateful statement was not removed until 1961. Perfidy means treachery.
In his day, hatred of Jews was the norm. In great measure it was sponsored by the two major religions of Germany, Catholicism and Lutheranism. He greatly admired Martin Luther, who openly hated the Jews. Luther condemned the Catholic Church for its pretensions and corruption, but he supported the centuries of papal pogroms against the Jews. Luther said, “The Jews deserve to be hanged on gallows seven times higher than ordinary thieves,” and “We ought to take revenge on the Jews and kill them.” “Ungodly wretches” he calls the Jews in his widely read Table Talk.
Hitler seeking power, wrote in Mein Kampf. “… I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord’s work.” Years later, when in power, he quoted those same words in a Reichstag speech in 1938.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/john_murphy/religionofhitler.html
Anyone care to blow this out of the water ?
That’s pathetically weak. What the liturgy said when Hitler was baptized? (Need I point out how many atheists were baptized as infants?) Two sentences from Mein Kampf? This is your evidence that Nazism was a theocratic movement? You could make a much better case that Abraham Lincoln was a theocrat.
Although I’m far from being an expert, I don’t claim that Hitler was an atheist. I like to hold up the example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but he was the exception; shamefully, most German churchmen at the time gave aid and comfort to the Nazis.
But we’re off on a silly tangent here.
Dix “This is your evidence that Nazism was a theocratic movement?”
No, it is someone else’s, hence the speech marks. I had picked up on this – just above:
“just to pick up one of GT’s persistent riffs, I’d argue that it was Marxism that was the religion and Communism merely its main church.”
I’ve read a lot of rather tendentious looking stuff about Hitler being an atheist and wanted to start *somewhere*. Maybe this wasn’t the right thread. And I accept that what I pasted in was probably cobblers, but, in mitigation – I asked – straight up – if anyone wanted to blow it out of the water.
As for silly tangents, I wasn’t trying to hijack the debate – and you can ignore them rather than throw your weight around mate !
Whatever, perhaps it should live in a separate thread, so have a good weekend.
Tow points.
1. I recommend this new site (and it is entirely relevant to this thread:
http://richarddawkins.net/
2. Adolf as a christian….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_religious_beliefs
http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm
Thanks GT
Sorry, I took “blow it out of the water” a little too much to heart. You have a good weekend too.
“This is one of the questions in those theological journals which definitely does have an answer. The answer is that, like “what happened before the Big Bang?”, the question is ill-posed because God is coterminous with every point in time and space.”
Yes yes, I know – but that’s not an answer. (Yes it is; no it’s not; let’s skip that part.) For one thing, how do they know? Why is that anything more than mere assertion? Why is that anything other than a hand-wave? For another thing, what difference does such a god make? For another thing is that really the same kind of thing as the god that rabbis and mullahs and vicars talk about in the newspapers? If not, are we obliged to respect both, or just one, and if the latter, how do we know which? If the former, how do we reconcile the two? And so on.
It’s also not an answer because it’s trying to answer an entirely different question. If the argument is that the existence of organisms of a certain complexity (and up) can only be explained by reference to a more complex one, then that more complex one must have an even more complex one that explains it. If that more complex organism is coterminous with every point in time and space… so what? Saying that God is coterminous with every point in time and space is just a nonsequitor as far as the question goes.
And above all it’s an evasion. That’s the part that gets on my nerves. When the questions get difficult, just answer with an assertion, which is exactly equivalent to saying ‘magic,’ which is exactly equivalent to not answering at all. The right answer to questions you don’t know the answer to is ‘I don’t know,’ not ‘God has no parts therefore is not complex’ or similar. I fail to see why it’s ‘sophisticated’ to accept mere evasive word-packets as valid answers to difficult questions.
Re. the Hitler issue, PZ had a relevant thread here;
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/list_of_hitler_quotes_he_was_q.php
Claiming that Hitler was a Catholic, or religious, as some kind of defense of atheism or attack on religion really shows a lack of intellectual hygiene. Because regardless of Hitler’s personal beliefs, Fascism was a totalitarian belief system which made quite secular values (nation, racial purity, militarism) central to its message. It was also a belief system that went straight against everything that the Enlightenment stood for – and that is what matters here. But it was nonetheless quite unreligious as an ideology.
If I were to remark that Christianity makes people more moral, and more caring towards one another, OB would not wait to skewer my argument – and a well-deserved skewering it would be. As I don’t believe such nonsense. But neither do I believe the converse, and do I see any need to make tortured claims about the Catholicness of Hitler. Your belief or disbelief in a certain philosophical category matters not one whit: what you _do_ with that belief or disbelief does.
Merlijn,
Right. The impression I get from reading about Hitler is that he used a mix of nationalism and religion (as well as brute force) to gain and keep power. (He abused science we well.) It was convenient and cynical, not personal.
Merlijn,
But if it is true that religious beliefs sometimes motivate harmful actions, then belief or disbelief does matter. (And if the absence of religious beliefs sometimes motivates harmful actions, that matters too.) Surely it’s all worth inquiring into and looking for evidence for and against.
Actually, OB, I think that’s a highly problematical thing. Because it’s not just individual knowledge claims we’re talking about. But socially shared and transmitted knowledge claims, which can be transmitted in various ways, and, taken as a system, serve a variety of social purposes. In judging the effects of any such thing as harmful or beneficial, you need to make sure that it is the system as a whole, rather than individual knowledge claims within it. Groups of people, when motivated by a certain overarching ideology within a certain social structure, may be behaving more or less predictably. An individual, I’d reckon, whose would behave rather less predictably. But individual beliefs have no causal force at all when taken in an isolated fashion. They may be true, or meaningful, but they don’t do things.
For example, there was a significant wing of the Dutch anti-fascist resistance that was made up of the more strict fringes of the Reformed Church. I certainly wouldn’t praise Reformed theology as such for making a positive contribution to history in this particular instance. Rather, it was courageous individuals who interpreted their beliefs in such a way that they did the right thing at the right time. Conversely, I’d say there is very little positive to be said about radical Islam at this particular time. But the ill effects of that ideology, too, can’t be studied as the effect of individual beliefs. We might make sense of why a man would be motivated to accept a belief system encouraging the enslavement of women. It’s not pretty, but there it is. But taken in isolation, claims such as “Allah is great” or the particular nature of the afterlife do not imply any such result in and of themselves (even a much clearer case such as “women are inferior” may have wildly different results depending on the kind of society they are held in and the extent to which they are socially, rather than individually shared, etc.)
What I’m getting at I think is that you have to divorce questions about the validity of beliefs from the question about the ill or beneficial effects of such beliefs as held by specific historical actors in specific circumstances at a specific time. And because religion has such a hideously complicated task at both granting people an identity, a deeply held set of beliefs, a very structured social network, etc. I think it will be very difficult to generalize on the effect of religion – even if their study, as you indicate, may be worthwhile.
So on the one hand I think there is a danger of regarding beliefs as having some kind of deterministic force. Which I think puts the blame where it ultimately doesn’t belong. Which I guess is the same reason why I dislike the whole idea of memetics so much. Ideas don’t act in a causal, deterministic fashion. I think the accent should be laid on how a certain claim is interpreted into leading to a certain action with a certain goal by an individual who is responsible for his/her actions.
Also, I think it creates a false dichotomy between “religion” and “atheism”. Because atheism is nothing more than the belief in an absence of God or the absence of belief in God. But what we would agree are the main ill effects of religion are – oppression of women, obscurantism, a lack of individual autonomy and freedom of thought, a lack of a certain set of basic human rights encompassing those. What we would put forward as a counterforce against those and secular belief systems encompassing partially the same horrible things (Fascism and Maoism would come close) would be Enlightenment values such as the autonomy of (male and female) individuals to think for themselves. Sapere aude. These are not synonymous with atheism – even if a certain kind of explicit atheism accompanies them in the case of a lot of people.
People have presented quite a few subtle analyses of the issue and so on above, but isn’t there just a straightforward case to be made here on the side of atheism?
1. People often adhere to unfortunate belief systems, or adhere to belief systems in unfortunate ways, and as a result act very very badly indeed.
2. These belief systems can be pretty much any sorts of things (nationalistic myths, religious beliefs, superstitions relating to golf, whatever).
3. Atheists are just as susceptible to this sort of thing as anyone else (in as much as they are atheists – to the extent that a lot of the above sorts of things go against enlightenment values, and a large number of atheists are so because they adhere to those values, they may seem less obviously so to some people, but this is entirely demographic. And there are plenty of religious folks who also adhere to those values, as well as anyone does at any rate, and the same would be true of them.)
4. But atheists are not susceptible (at least if by atheist we mean more generally areligious) to acting badly as a result of religious belief systems. (This is rather trivially obvious.)
5. So, barring some reason to think that theists, or more generally the religious, are by virtue of being so immune from some serious tendency to act very badly (as compared to atheists or the areligious), there’s an obvious advantage here to the areligious. And while this sort of thing is often argued (atheists can’t be moral!) it’s not generally argued convincingly.
6. So there is an advantage for atheists here. It’s not a great advantage, but it is one all the same (in a sort of playing-the-odds way): specifically, they maybe awful but at least they don’t generally end up being awful in a particular way. And this doesn’t seem to come with any particular down side or creation of some other way to be bad. What more needs to be said here?
(Well – we could add as I’m inclined to that believing false things is morally wrong. And since religious beliefs are not likely (at least as far as the odds go) to be true, and certainly aren’t arrived at by reason it’s just morally wrong to be religious in the first place. But that’s on a rather smaller scale than the arguments in question.)
Nick I am a bit late but let me blow your Hitler theory out of the water for you.Hitler was also a student of the ocult and an obsesive vegetarian,(on some ocasions when eating with his generals he would commpromise and eat lobster,it was said that he would argue for hours with his cook about the most humane way to kill a lobster,while on the other hand ordering the slaughter of jews)taking your logic to its natural conclusion I could argue that vegetairianism or satanism were the reason for his actions!and G.T I still cant see what is so revolting about the teachings of Jesus Christ (I dont accept his divinity but your hostility toward him escapes me)?
I have no hostility to the long-dead Yeshua ben Joseph, the result of the unmarried mother Mary’s sexual intercourse with (?) – a large and fruitful field of possibles have been posited here…..
What IS revolting is christianity, which appears to have very little (if anything at all) to do with the Rabbi Yeshua’s philosopical suggestions.
In this respect it is marginally better than marxism/communism, which is straight wrong, on empirical grounds, and islam, whose teachings are particularly unpleasant, as, so it seems was the so-called “prophet”.
Guys – thanks for the links /comments
“it was nonetheless quite unreligious as an ideology.”
– it was a completly off the cuff notion that I threw in the ring – initial responses go some way to satisfying the view that it was a crock, with which I have no problem at all.
Perhaps Dix nailed it first time !
Richard, stop trolling.
Mary had sex with SOMEONE, to produce Yeshua, and it wasn’t Joseph. A statement of (probable) fact.
I happen to think that Yeshua was a real person, a rabbi of the Essene school, who did have a real claim to be “king of the Jews”.
His most likely father was one of Herod’s children (or grandchildren – it’s been a long time since I read this stuff), who was later killed by Herod.
He was almost certainly alive, but in a hyssop-drugged stupor when taken off his cross, and lived on, semi-crippled.
“Christianity” has almost nothing to do with “Jesus” except the name.
G.t I am not trolling(I think o.b. would be prety quick to jump on me if I was after the last debacle) I am just commenting on your almost fanatical distaste for christianity. Whatever you think of christianity it is one of the pillars of western civilisation and at least deserves a modicum of respect.Ps your last sentence I would agree with up to a point.
Wouldnt Joseph be Christs most likely daddy?.
There are individuals who would like to feel they have changed the world. Having an ideology helps them to gratify that urge by persuading others. Almost any religion provides a suitable ideology, and so do various political creeds and “good causes”.
There is a tendency for any ideology to be taken to extremes by at least a few of its adherents.
The problems are fundamental to human nature, and it’s hard to see how they can be solved in a multi-cultural democracy.
“Il faut cultiver notre jardin.”
Richard. The Hitler thing was a waste of time, a lazy friday afternoon daliance on my behalf – thought I’d retracted it.
Christainity is a religion.
It is based on branze-age myths and obscurantism. It has killed millions, over the years, in the name of its’ “holy truths”, and is still killing (Think “Mother Theresa”, or no condoms in Africa, or no birth-control anywhere, or Northern Ireland, or abortion doctors being killed in the USA.
Christians are deliberately peddling lies to children in this country – see…
http://www.truthinscience.org.uk
http://www.truthinscience.org.uk/site/content/category/18/52/65/
Why should I respect this load of lies, if comes into the public arena?
What consenting adults do in private (including religion) is their business.
On the street, I’m going to trash it, if I can, because it is lies.
See… WTM, by the way.
I wouldnt disagree with your bad points about christianity,but to dismiss it the way you do is ignoring the reality that christianity has inspired many movements,like the liberal and labour movements,charity,phillanthropy ect, and its influence can be traced throughout western civilisation in everything from wellfare to warfare,I would even argue that christian morality inspires secular humanism! Sorry Nick I didnt meen to pile on your straw man I just came in late to the discusion.
To Richard:
Grow up.
Wake up.
and, unless you have bothered to switch your brain to
Shut up.
Grrrr …..
What you are saying, is “Yes, christianity has, AND IS STILL DOING ( excuse shouting) all these horrible things, but it is warm and comforting and fuzzy, really.
There are two words that are appropriate here, and they are not mutually exclusive.
The first is: STUPID.
You know perfectly well what the other one is, and OB won’t let me use it, without proof.
Or, Richard, are you saying Truth doesn’t matter?
Really?
What I think Richard is trying to say is that Christianity has had such a momentous influence on Western Civilization that you are going to find its influence behind just about all things – good and bad. For a millenium or more, just about everything produced in art and thought in general was done within the Christian paradigm. And whatever one can say about Verdi’s Requiem, St. Peter’s cathedral, Dante or whatever – “warm and comforting and fuzzy” wouldn’t really fit. One does not need to be a Christian or even a theist to appreciate this.
Merlijn..
What you are saying is completely true.
It is also (at least) 100% irrelevant.
It is a non seqitur on the subject under discussion.
But christianity (and even more so islam) are still doing all these horrible things.
Whay should any rational person have any time for this collection of either bronze age or dark ages superstition and oppression?
Because the phenomenon as a whole is just a little bit more complex than that. Christianity is a set of truth claims which may or may not be valid. It’s also a metaphorical system of symbols, a poetical language if you will, which has served to express human doubt and fear and longing and sense of beauty for the better part of the last two millenia. Your dismissal of Christianity as “bronze age or dark ages superstition and oppression” misses that.
Incidentally, Christianity is rooted in the iron age much more than in the bronze age.
M.d.S.Thankyou you said much more eloquently what I was trying to say to G.t.(it is rather supprising how quickly a man of his obvious acedemic ability resorts to insulting me just because I challenged his opinion). O.B if nothing else christianity has provided a general framework of morality throughout the western world.
As for me being stupid,I am a plumber not a p.h.d.
I just don’t believe the evasion and irrelevance of Merlijn’s stuff …
And Richard, please, even a plumber (especially a plumber?) should have a grip (oops – pun not intended) on physical reality.
A few points.
Bronze age. I forget where, but at one point the “Philistines” had iron, and the Irealites didn’t, or only small amounts, and the phils’ tried to stop the Isrealis getting the new technology – I forget where, but it is in the “bible” somewhere.
Merlijn is STILL saying, yes it is a belief system (which is its primary, principal and “justified” reason for existance} … and he is saying…
It’s got all these wonderful works of art, buildings etc.
Well, yes.
I happen to think Chartres and Peterborough cathedrals are wonderful.
So what?
What is christianity doing right now, and what is its’ message?
Like I said, theyt are still killing, and oppressing, like all the other religions, and it is based on fear and superstition.
Keep the art-works, and dump the religion.
And stop trying to evade the subject.
Da capo: I get annoyed, when someone as “sophisticated” as Merlijn so obviously evades the point under discussion.
Like OB says in a more recent post, it is the usual xtian/islamic (etc) bait-and-switch technique, coupled with irrelevancies dragged in to confuse the issue.
Not good enough, I’m afraid.
I’m on the subject, which is that I object to simplistically labeling historical movements that have lasted two millenia as “lies” or as a “force for oppression”. It is not just a belief system. It is more than that. I don’t see how this is an “xtian/islamic (etc) bait-and-switch technique”. I’m not an xtian.
And you can’t “keep the art-works, and dump the religion.” Because to understand the art-works, at least, is to understand the religion, or at least part of it.
At bottom, the whole discussion on whether religion is a force for good, evil or perhaps a bit of both is quite irrelevant because religious doctrines can and have been modulated to express the full spectrum of human desires and actions. That’s what I meant by religion as a “metaphorical language”.
OK, besides a belief system, and the blackmail needed to leep it going, and a system for extracting money and obedience from the rubes, what is it?
And why can’t I say it’s a load of lies.
Where did Yeshua get his Y chromosomes from?
Remebering that parthenogenisis is impossible in mammals.
Did “Adam” have a navel?
etc….
There’s another thing…
“I object to simplistically labeling historical movements that have lasted two millenia”
I’m uneasy about that whole line of thinking. For one thing it implies that something that lasts a long time gains or demonstrates virtue by lasting a long time. But that’s not necessarily true. The subordination of women lasted a long time, for example. It was no doubt useful in many ways, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good thing. Slavery has also been around for many centuries. For another thing, the implication overlooks the role of force in the longevity. Xianity lasted a long time in very large part because it was forcibly imposed and because dissent and even abstention were savagely and searchingly punished. In Shakespeare’s England, you weren’t allowed not to go to church. Christianity lasted the way any thousand year reich lasts: by force.
OB,
On your first post: I absolutely don’t believe history is some kind of deterministic process (if I did, I would contradict most of what I said in other threads). Nonetheless there are some reasons why I think the Enlightenment would be unlikely in 600AD.
First, I think that some key features of the Enlightenment were facilitated by the two centuries of scientific inquiry that preceded it (Galilei, Kepler, Newton etc.). So we would have to assume the existence of Roman Newtons and Huygenses for a post-Roman Enlightenment. Of course, we can do that.
But another thing is that by the time of the Enlightenment, the full spectrum of human diversity became gradually known. The world had become a known place. Which lent content and meaning to the universalist claims of the Enlightenment – that all people had a same set of basic human rights. I think that the idea would have made little sense to the Greeks (who were extremely insular) or the Romans – who were anything but racist, but had a very limited interest in people outside of their own borders (except when those people were well-armed and plunder-happy). I think this was also facilitated by the fact that there was no single, all-encompassing dominant power in the 18th century, as there was in the first.
As far as I understand, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and with it, the classical world, was as inevitable as historical events can be: tribes living at the borders had gotten a bit too much ideas from the Romans and began to unite in far larger, and more threatening federations. The Alemanns and Nemets and Caninnefates and Chauks were something the Romans could handle – but by the 3rd century, they were suddenly confronted by federated Saxons and Francs. At the same time, the centre didn’t hold, and the Empire was divided by Diocletian, after which it became a battleground for warring mini-Caesars. When finally the Huns came chasing the Goths and Vandals and Alans before them in 425 AD, the Roman Empire was on its last legs. I don’t think Christianity had much to do with the fall of the state and the culture it perpetuated.
The problem I have with the idea of the classical world perpetuating itself into some kind of early Enlightenment is that on the one hand we have to assume a lot of other things. We have to assume a full-blown classical science. There were some naturalistic impulses among the Ionian philosophers, Epicureans and Lucretius, etc. but the one current that survived into the 6st century – Platonism – is a very different animal already. And I doubt it could have been a fundament for an Enlightenment (but it was an important one for Christianity!).
We would have to assume that some kind of universalism had taken root in the classical world. Which for example the German tribes would have carried into their forests as well. Eventually, an universalist philosophy did find its way there, but by the sword rather than by the free exchange of ideas – and it was Christianity.
So it’s basically because of the universalism of the Enlightenment, and that communications across the world had actually become possible at the time, that I would find its development in 600 AD unlikely.
On your second post: I agree of course about the role of force in the spread of Christianity, and on the evil of slavery, subjugation of women, etc. But yet I think you compare very different categories here. I did not want to imply that the long-lasting nature of Christianity somehow guarantees its virtue. But it does guarantee the complexity of whatever is called “Christianity”. I’d perfectly agree if you claim that Christianity was the main medium through which oppression of women, or slavery, were justified for many centuries. But my point is that Christianity served as a template for all kinds of opposing ideologies – some very oppressive, some quite radical. Christianity served both as a justification to slavers and to abolitionists. It served as a justification for gruesome torture during medieval times and for the gradual humanization of the treatment of prisoners during subsequent centuries. I would regard pre-Enlightenment Christianity as the stage on which historical actors, for good and bad, played themselves out, rather than as an historical actor itself.
Merlijn,
“I think that some key features of the Enlightenment were facilitated by the two centuries of scientific inquiry that preceded it”
Sure. I’m just saying that process could have started a good deal earlier. (Or it could have been retarded instead.)
Agreed about the Enltmt and diversity. One can watch that process getting started with Montaigne. Then again, one can also watch it getting started with Herodotus – so arguably the thought was quite possible even without the New World. (It’s funny – we quoted that well-known passage from Herodotus in chapter 2 of WTM – and since then I’ve seen it quoted in three or four other new books, which has made me clutch my hair and wish we hadn’t. We should have just written ‘[obligatory passage from Herodotus here]’. Ah well.)
Okay, if you meant complexity rather than overall goodness (and the thought did occur to me that you did) then point taken. I probably confused you with dsquared there for a moment.
On the other hand, I would emphatically regard pre-Enlightenment Christianity as an actor as well as as a stage. That baby definitely acted. It was an agent, dude.
Should have mentioned Herodotus, of course. But as I understand, his interest in “barbaric” peoples was quite exceptional at the time.
Anyway, actor as well as stage – fair enough, I think I can live with that. Sounds nicely dialectical, too ;-)
“But as I understand, his interest in “barbaric” peoples was quite exceptional at the time.”
It was, it was, but it was less so once he wrote his book. He had the same kind of effect that the New World had on Monty. That’s one of the reasons I’m so fond of 5th century Athens – they were all excited about things. And then they went to Sicily and lost the war – they blew it. I could kick them.
Agreed. Though I’m not sure I would want to live there. 5th century Athens could be terribly small-minded as well, as Socrates and Anaxagoras found out.
Some quiet, backwater Greek colony in Italy or Asia Minor would suit me more. What would be the ancient Greek equivalent of Sweden?
Yup. Some people were interested in Herodotus, others wanted that horrid Anaxagoras gone. And I know I wouldn’t have wanted to live there, it wasn’t a great place for women.
G.t.another insult!again you lump christianity with islam as equal evils,let me point out one important differance christianity teaches turn the other cheek,islam teaches cut the others cheek, and that is the same to you?
Some of you may be interested in reading my review of The God Delusion at
http://robinphillips.blogspot.com/2006/11/review-of-god-delusion.html
Thanks Robin.