Demonic epistemology
About this exorcist guy…You know how the pope likes to put up this front of being rational and scholarly and reasonable? Well…the church he’s at the top of has exorcists. The Chief Exorcist of Rome is very emphatic on the point that Satan is for real and that anyone who says otherwise is engaged in ‘true heresy.’ Satan is not a metaphor, or an abstraction, Satan is a fella. Father Gabriele Amorth wants everyone to make no mistake about that.
Those modern theologians who identify Satan with the abstract idea of evil are completely mistaken. Theirs is true heresy; that is, it is openly in contrast with the Bible, the Fathers, and the Magisterium of the Church.
So much for all those people who keep trying to say that the ‘New Atheists’ go after crude targets that no one actually believes in. I think the Catholic church and its hierarchy count as someone? Someone with a fair amount of influence?
The other interesting point here is the question of how the exorcist knows what he is so confident that he knows. Apparently because of the Bible, the Fathers, and the Magisterium of the Church – but why does he think those are reliable sources of knowledge? Because he thinks God wrote or ‘revealed’ the Bible, presumably – but the question is why. Frankly I never really understand that – why grown-up people believe that with, apparently, no qualms. I don’t understand it because what would a Bible that wasn’t written or revealed by God look like? It would look the same. There is nothing about the Bible that makes it unmistakable that it’s a book by God rather than by humans. What is it that makes the exorcist and his friends so sure that it was? How do they know what they know? They don’t, of course, but why do they think they know?
And another thing. Why do we hear so much indignant complaining about ‘the New Atheists’ and so little about the Old Theists? Why do so many putative intellectuals treat unapologetic atheism as some kind of outrage and blithely ignore the combination of nonsense and mental torture that believers in Satan sprinkle around the landscape? Why does not Tina Beattie criticize the exorcist instead of talking stark nonsense about atheism?
The demonisation of religion that is perpetuated by a certain, very dull kind of anglo-american atheist materialism, allows us to escape our own responsibility for a burgeoning global climate of violence and confrontation.
Why does Tina Beattie say that kind of thing (and a lot more of it) instead of rebuking Father Gabriele Amorth? I’m genuinely curious. Why do people like Tina Beattie get outraged by explicit atheists and not by explicit demonologists and exorcists? Why does she think (apparently) that the former do more harm than the latter?
Now I ain’t no filosofer, but… If God is omnipotent, it means He has control over both good and evil, thus poor old Satan is on a hiding to nothing right from the start ‘cos the big fella controls everything. It would seem to my small brain that if the big fella exists, logically old Hughie can’t. Confused, perhaps Fr A is too. IF Old Hughie does exist, then God isn’t omnipotent. Which is it?
Perhaps he exists, is all powerful, but just likes to torture and play his “fallen” creatures. Boy…that makes ol Jehovah worthy of worship, no?
I’m not “outraged” by explicit atheists, but I am concerned by the lack of intellectual rigour, historical awareness and psychological insight evident in the recent writings of Dawkins and Hitchens, and I am concerned that they are fighting fire with fire in dangerous times.If we genuinely value reason in the service of meaning and truth, rather than imposing rationalism or religiosity as opposing ideologies which close down vast dimensions of human experience and desire, then we must strive to maintain a reasoned debate about these important issues informed by a spirit of courtesy and an openness to dialogue and informed disagreement.
There is a vast spectrum of intellectual ambiguity and possibility between religious and atheist extremes, and surely that affords us a space of encounter where we don’t need to position one another with extremists at either end of the spectrum in order to perpetuate misleading oppositions? Isn’t it a little simplistic to suggest that just because I criticise certain forms of atheism I am therefore in total sympathy with papal pronouncements on Satan and the antics of exorcists?
For those interested in exploring these ambiguous positionings in which we find ourselves in late modernity, I would highly recommend Charles Taylor’s book, A Secular Age.
Tina Beattie.
All this talk of “militant” atheism, of lack of courtesy amongst the “new atheists”, all this “we’d have no problem with Hawkins or Hitchens if they weren’t so damn rude!” smacks of hypocrisy to me, I am afraid Ms Beattie. Read your Voltaire again…
As for the lack of awareness and insight in Dawkins or Hitchens (I note you didn’t mention Dennett…), the pope and Armoth are not interested in dialogue or maintaining a reasoned debate when they are re-affirming the Church’s position on the existence of Satan; what they are doing is laying down the orthodoxy. They are saying that the existence of Satan is an indisputable fact; not that much room for ambiguity here… What YOU are telling us is that, confronted to that position, we should walk half of the way…
I have to confess, Ophelia, that having faced half a dozen breathtakingly unsubstantiated assertions in the first paragraph of Fr Amorth’s article I could read no further. So thank you for having done so at no small risk to your blood pressure and sang froid.
TB: “If we genuinely value reason in the service of meaning and truth, rather than imposing rationalism or religiosity as opposing ideologies…”
So, what you’re saying is that, if we genuinely value the truth, we should find it somewhere half way between fact and myth?
Tina Beattie,
Thanks for replying!
But I didn’t say (or mean to suggest) that you are in total sympathy with papal pronouncements on Satan – I just wondered, and asked, why you find atheism worthy of attack (and quite strongly-worded attack, which is why I take you to be outraged) when there is belief in Satan still thriving and active. Let me put it this way: one of the projects and motivations of atheism is to relieve people of needless fears; one of the inevitable results of promulgation of belief in Satan, whether or not it is the motivation (and I suspect it is), is to reinforce and magnify needless fears. In other words the exorcist’s words are horribly cruel in a way that the atheists’ are not. Have you never known anyone who was or had been terrified of hell for self or loved others or both? Because I sure have.
In what sense does rationalism ‘close down vast dimensions of human experience and desire’? Are you saying that forthright arguments that there is no good reason to believe that either God or Satan exists ‘close down’ anything? What have Dawkins and Hitchens done to close down anything, apart from offering forthright arguments? Why would an academic equate forthright arguments with closing things down? Don’t most academics live by forthright arguments? (Or is there something I’m missing? Do Dawkins and Hitchens have legal powers that I’m unaware of? Have they closed down churches and mosques on the quiet?)
The spectrum idea is interesting – at one end 2 + 2 = 4 and at the other end 2 + 2 = banana. Banana certainly looks more imaginative and can give a greater feeling of “fullness”. Those who insist on 4 are just dry ideologically driven dogmatists.
Is this a variant of Dan Hind’s notion that one should not waste time criticising homeopaths when Haliburton causes more harm? One can see the truth in this, but it can then degenerate into turf battles over ownership of “the enlightenment project”. The idea seems to be that by focussing on the homeopath one gives the corporation a free ride, and that rationalists are therefore undercover agents of “the man” and antidemocratic. I didn’t say all the steps in this make sense, but you can sort of see where he is coming from, and at least Dan Hind’s book is short.
Ah right, I hadn’t thought of Dan Hinds. And of course I’m doing the same thing – I’m saying ‘why fret about this while ignoring that.’ It’s a stupid question, in a way – we don’t all have to fret only about the most pressing issues; we think about what interests us; etc. But on the other hand, Beattie does use some pretty heated language about the ‘New Atheists’ – she talks of ‘atheist extremists’ for instance. Given that, I think it’s reasonable to ask if ‘the new’ atheists are really ‘extremist’ compared with The Exorcist.
(One problem with Hinds’s book, in my view, is that he neglects to mention people who do both, like Ben Goldacre, or he mentions them but neglects to mention the fact that they do both, like [cough] Benson and Stangroom.)
Anyone describing the genteel critiques of religion put into the mass-market today as the work of “extremists” is clearly short of a context or two. Try the USSR in the 1930s, the PRC in the late 60s, Albania under Hoxha….. Now *those* guys knew how to be uncompromising in their refutation of the epistemological claims of clerical magisteria…
Just so. Of course that’s what the epithet is meant to make us think, without actually spelling it out – that today’s atheists are comparable to your Pol Pots and Hoxhas. It’s an annoying shell game.
“They don’t, of course, but why do they think they know?”
Because, they were, in all probability from childhood, brainwashed into think they knew.
I remember a child in Goldenbridge who had beautiful bambi-type brown eyes. The sister in charge always told her she had the devil’s eyes. She, thereafter, always kept her head held low.
If children did anything (of a minute nature) out of line – they were automatically told by the sister’s they were doing the devil’s work.
Yes, the devil was a very real fella indeed. Children lived with him (and the knowledge of him) all their young lives in Goldenbridge. He was a handy-man to have about the place in times of trials & tribulations. Sure, no wonder exorcists are by the Church needed to get rid of the daemon chap. Did it not first invite him into the lives of children?
There were devils at Golderidge Marie but they were not the children!
Shall I translate? Because it seems to me that all this amounts to is the following: You should never, ever be so discourteous as to tell someone who is clearly wrong that they are in fact wrong.
The key, I think, is this utter bullshit phrase “impose rationalism” – which means what, exactly? One can engage in legitimate reasoned argument based on evidence and logic or one can fail to do so to varying degrees, period. This is not an “imposition,” it is the basis for the possibility of any meaningful and productive exchange of ideas: Any exchange which does not follow the rules of reasoned argument grounded in evidence can be nothing but noise – full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. If you would argue against this position, to do so you must follow the rules of argument: You cannot give any reasons that would convince someone that giving reasons isn’t the way to convince anyone of anything.
By using this deceptive “imposing rationalism” rhetoric, Tina Beattie violates all the virtues she purports to support: She strives to obscure rather than maintain reasoned debate. She violates the most fundamental spirit of courtesy – for engaging in deception and manipulation is quite discourteous in my book. And she closes down any possibility of legitimate dialogue by deliberately spreading disinformation and confusion.
In other, shorter words: I call bullshit on Tina Beattie!
Intellectual rigour? Both Dawkins and Hitchens (as much as I respect them both) fall short in this area, by failing to recognise, or deliberately ignore, the breadth of “religious experience” ( even if one doesn’t wish to recognise the phenomenon). Both seem to limit themselves to a criticism based on a particular view of Christianity then extend from there. It would be the same as me publishing about the animal life on earth after studying only mammals.
But it wouldn’t be the same, because the breadth of religious experience isn’t their subject. They both write about ‘God’.
Dawkins took that test – he didn’t have a religious experience. A very mild feeling of something or other, if I remember correctly – contentment, alertness, something like that – but nothing he would call religious. Clearly mileage varies.
David, the “breadth of religious experience” is ignored by lots of people – because the breadth isn’t the threat. I have nothing against neopagans and Buddhists and process theologians (except where they bait-and-switch) and so on and so forth. Neither do Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, and Harris – nor Bertrand Russell, for that matter. The breadth of religious experience is not at issue. It is the not the breadth but the BULK of religious culture, thought, belief, and action that is of concern to anyone who’s paying attention – and that bulk is all about believing nonsense as a matter of faith.
There are tens of millions of people who self-describe as “religious” or “spiritual” who could read any argument I write about faith or God or religion and not see themselves in it – and that’s perfectly fine with me, because those tens of millions are not the ones who are guilty of the moral and intellectual failings I argue against. My concern – and that of most outspoken public atheists, “New” or old – is the billions of people who make decisions in the real world based on the opinions and commands of their imaginary friends.
Dawkins et al are not, to explore your metaphor, publishing about books about animals after only studying mammals. Rather, they are publishing books about pathogens after having studied and clearly characterized many, many pathogens – and you are criticizing them for not paying enough attention to benign microorganisms. You might as well criticize oncologists for obsessing over tumors when there are so many other kinds of tissue in the body.
For the record, I’m not merely being polite: Not all religious life requires belief. Some people who think of themselves as religious think faith is disastrous and wrong-headed. Gautama Buddha is reputed to have said, roughly translated, “Believe nothing anyone tells you, not even anything I have told you, unless it agrees with your own good sense and experience.”
Some people have faith without religion (most famously and obviously the several varieties of Communists) and some people practice religion without faith (many varieties of Buddhists and neo-pagans). Since the ills I see are all associated with faith, I have nothing bad to say about non-faith-oriented religious practices or practitioners – but they are in a decidedly tiny minority, so I only feel compelled to make the finer distinction in certain contexts.
Thanks for your considered comments, G. I used the idea of religious experience in an anthropological, not psychological, sense, and at least you recognise that there is a breadth in this experience. However, a point that may need to be clarified is, can a meme be regarded as a ‘pathogen’? I have my doubts about the meme theory overall, though I can see how a meme might be regarded as ‘pathogenic’. However it still doesn’t discount the fact that Dawkins, in particular, has a very limited view of religion, basing his ideas on a view of of a ‘pathological’type of Christianity and extending from there – sorry guys but that is bad scholarship. He needs good data and good logic.
But Dawkins doesn’t have a very limited view of religion, because he doesn’t claim to be talking about all of religion. He’s talking about what he’s talking about. He doesn’t say he’s giving an exhaustive account of religion in general. Why is it ‘bad scholarship’ to narrow one’s focus?
God ist´s Omnipotent In Good …