Backup from a Southern Baptist
Albert Mohler the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is so obliging and has saved us so much trouble – at a stroke he has rid us of the obligation to keep answering the charge that “New” atheists are all wrong because they ignore sophisticated theology and are talking about a crude old version of God that nobody believes in anyway.
Mohler points out that the Wall Street Journal paired articles by Dawkins and Armstrong were not articles by an atheist and a theist but articles by two atheists.
Armstrong insists that Darwin really did God a favor by forcing us to give up our “primitive” belief in his actual existence — thus freeing us to affirm merely a “God beyond God” who exists only as a concept. Along the way, Armstrong offers a superficial and theologically reckless argument that comes down to this: Until the modern age, believers in God were not really believers in a God who was believed to exist…She makes statements that amount to elegant nonsense. Consider this: “In the ancient world, a cosmology was not regarded as factual but was primarily therapeutic…” So she would have us to believe that, in centuries past, cosmology was merely therapy. She simply makes the assertion and moves on. Will anyone believe this nonsense?
Oh yes – lots of people – people of an Armstrongian cast of mind – people who get thrills from talk about an indescribable transcendent. Along with them, people who want religion and science to lie down together like the lion and the kid, and people who want to be able to insist from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn that science and religion are compatible. But they are not everyone, and they are not even most people. In some places they are outnumbered by people who think ‘God’ is just a dead idea and of no interest, and in other places they are outnumbered by people who think God is a really real person with real attributes who does real things and will really give you a big hug and some ice cream when you die.
Armstrong calls for the emergence of “a more authentic notion of God.” Her preferred concept of God would be about aesthetics, not theology. “Religion is not an exact science but a kind of art form,” she intones. Interestingly, it is Dawkins, presented as the unbeliever in this exchange, who understands God better than Armstrong. In fact, Richard Dawkins the atheist rightly insists that Karen Armstrong is actually an atheist as well. “God’s Rotweiller” sees through Armstrong’s embrace of a “God beyond God.”
Exactly! This is what we keep saying! This is what we’ve been saying ever since The God Delusion came out and five minutes later people started saying but Dawkins has such an unsophisticated idea of God and what about Tillich and nobody believes in that silly idea of God any more and what about Terry Eagleton’s toaster and God is just a word for all our best impulses and what about apophatic theology and Karen Armstrong could set Dawkins straight in an instant. We’ve been saying what Mohler says – yes but all that is not what most believers mean by ‘God’ so it’s just deceptive to pretend that it is. It’s so helpful of Mohler to corroborate! From now on we can just quote him.
We should at least give Dawkins credit here for knowing what he rejects. Here we meet an atheist who understands the difference between belief and unbelief. As for those, like Armstrong, who try to tell believers that it does not matter if God exists — Dawkins informs them that believers in God will brand them as atheists. “They’ll be right,” Dawkins concludes. So the exchange in The Wall Street Journal turns out to be a meeting of two atheist minds. The difference, of course, is that one knows he is an atheist when the other presumably claims she is not. Dawkins knows a fellow atheist when he sees one. Careful readers of The Wall Street Journal will come to the same conclusion.
You betcha.
I’ve already commented on the Armstrong thread but I’ll say it again – respect to Mohler for putting it so clearly. None of that transcendent ineffable rubbish for him. Now if he would only get to work on Eagleton as well. I can respect a robust Christian who doesn’t obfuscate, like C S Lewis, who also tore into the shiftiness of some of the fence-sitting Christians of his day. It’s those who emit clouds of unknowing and ineffability that I want to kick. They’re as slippery and spineless as jellyfish.
In my “non-debate/cozy chat” about the Problem of Evil at the University of Melbourne yesterday, the two theists were very nice people with whom one would love to spend an afternoon at a nice tea party with cucumber sandwiches provided. Seriously, I rather liked them both (I also liked my fellow atheist Lyn Allison … I’d never previously met any of these people).
But one of the theists, Barney Zwartz, the religion editor at The Age newspaper, predictably dismissed the problem with the claim that no one believes in that God anymore.
Wow, talk about your strange bedfellows :)
I haven’t had the intestinal fortitude to visit the Chez Colgate for many weeks now, so I’ll rely on you, Ophelia, to alert us to any profound response they might have to Mohler’s argument.
What the bloody hell does Armstrong mean by asking for a “more authentic notion of God”? The last time I looked, “authentic” meant “corresponding to reality.” Does she now claim to have exclusive knowledge about God’s (sorry, the Transcendent Force’s) nature?
“What the bloody hell does Armstrong mean by asking for a “more authentic notion of God”?”
That part jumped out at me too. I think by “more authentic notion of God” Armstrong may mean historical authenticity as in truthfulness of origins, but then the historical notion of God that Armstrong tries to sell is anything but authentic.
My suspicion is that she thinks she means historical authenticity but in fact means just more to her personal liking.
Well, I wasn’t going to sully the place, but Jennifer brought it up. Check out Mooneybaum’s place. They have an article responding to Sam Harris’ criticism of Unscientific America. I can’t figure out if they’re so truly dimwitted that they don’t understand what they’re critiquing, or if they realize they’re so badly painted into a corner there are no intellectually honest tactics available to them.
Sam Harris accused them of “lying” to people when they insist science and religion are compatible, and there’s no epistemological friction there. Get this – Mooney’s counter-argument is (paraphrase) – “we’re not lying! There are scientists who are also religious! Does Sam want to deny they exist???’
It’s astonishing that they either:
a. don’t get that Harris is slamming them for dishonestly telling people there’s no philosophical incompatibility between science and religion – can they actually be that dense?
b. are willing to pretend to be that stupid, and to actually claim they think Harris is denying the existence of religious scientists!
Wow, just wow. Watch your step, though, you’re likely to get McCarthy all over your shoes and track it back here.
Heh. Yeah, I saw that.
I am of two minds on this issue. On the one hand I appreciate the clarity with wich Mohler delineates what most orthodox Christians believe, on the other hand I can already see the following charge coming from accomodationists and liberal believers when they see us agreeing with Mohler on this:
“You are agreeing with the fundagelicals! Why do you help to define the “normative” faith as that which conservatives like Mohler believe? You militant atheists are simply their mirror image on the other side!”
While I don’t agree, I can understand where this accusation is coming from, because in real life I actually DO prefer the public stances of liberal strains of Christianity (from the Mainline protestants churches to the more liberal Episcopalians down to the poly-/pan-/atheisitc UUs) over the ones of conservative Evangelical and Catholic stalwarts like Al Mohler or the late R.J.Neuhaus.
And yes, I absolutely WOULD prefer it if more people moved from away from the more conservative denominations towards churches that only have a very vague idea of god, where the preachers are too embarrased to even talk about such conepts as “hell” or “eternal damnation” etc…
Now, I agree that one can pretty much dismiss Armstrong’s school of “theological non-realism” or “apophatic theology” as constrained to academia. However, the more fuzzy, non-specific “therapeutic moralistic deism” (a condemnatory buzzword among conservative Christians who decry the liberal denominations as quasi-heretetics) of most liberal churches is a real factor. While it is true that their numbers are declining much faster than those of the more orthodox churches, they are still a culturally significant presence with overwhelmingly non-threatening positions on the standard culture war issues.
Admittedly, that still leaves us with Sam Harris’ very powerful and convincing argument that these groups give cover and respectability to the fundamentalist factions.
But then it all boils down to a matter of tactics rather than of underlying principles, doesn’t it?
Yes, I would prefer a more secular society with more advocates for non-religious and non-dogmatic positions making themselves heard. But while I welcome the decline in absolute numbers of self-identified Christians, I don’t think one can entirely dismiss the benefit of having the median position inside Christianity move away from the conservative side.
That’s why I am always a little hesitant when it comes to criticizing liberal believers. Basically I only think it is useful in the context of explicitly attacking their misguided defense or downplaying of past and present atrocities committed by their fundamentalist and conservative fellow believers – which certainly fits in the case of Karen Armstrong.
BTW, I apologize for the length of my comment. Probably not appropriate for this forum.
Thing is, Marc, you really do have to watch for when the liberal believers turn into enablers for the non-liberals. Which is kind, of, in a bizarre way, what Karen A is doing. In a logical debate, it would be her vs. the fundamentalists, 15 rounds two falls or a knockout. But it’s not, she puts herself on the side of people who hold precisely the kind of views she denies exist, in order to defend something [and it’s never quite clear what] against clear-thinking materialism. Either she’s doolally, or a monumental hypocrite.
Dave,
I completely agree with you about Armstrong. I even alluded to that in my last sentence above. She is the perfect example of an enabler for religious reactionaries who completely disagree with her, if not outrightly mock her.
Another good example is – unfortunately – Robert Wright. I actually like some of his work, but when I recently listened to him debating a right-wing theo-con on talk-radio as part of his book promotion… well, it was unbearable.
He strongly insisted on NOT being one of those evil “New Atheists”, and prided himself on instead being fair, civil, respectful and whatnot towards religious believers. Well, they praised Wright for that like a good little doggie and then turned around and relentlessly attacked his book, argued forever about some inane details of what the Apostle Paul had “really” meant in his propaganda letters to a bunch of gullible fools, told him he had no idea what he was taling about, that his materialistic worlview was dogmatic and that it made him look at only one half of metaphysical reality etc…
Some people never learn. Funnily enough, I would have respected him more if I believed that he was just a cynic doing everything necessary to promote his book. But that was not how it came across at all.
The problem is that he seemed to really crave their approval or respect. Big mistake.
If Armstrong focused her arguments on opposing fundamentalists, Marc, would you have more respect for her?
I think I would.
Oh boy.
Here we go – that’s EXACTLY what I was referring to.
Andrew Sullivan, the gay conservative Catholic whose meandering and pretentious ramblings about his own rather eclectic “Catholicism” always make my brain hurt, tells us that
“Mohler and Dawkins are both dedicated to the maintenance of a certain brand of doubt-free, doctrinally absolutist, fundamentalist versions of faith. There are other kinds. And fighting for that center is an important task in a world being torn apart by politicized religion.”
(http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/09/where-does-evolution-leave-god.html)
Again, I can understand and empathize with this why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along stance. But his proposed solution is a romanticized pipe dream.
Some position are irreconcilable.
“Dawkins has such an unsophisticated idea of God and what about Tillich and nobody believes in that silly idea of God any more”
Since we’ve been told for years how terribly unsophisticated and philosophically useless Dawkins is, it was mildly interesting to note that the textbook “Classic Philosophical Questions” now lists The God Delusion as one of the books for further reading after the section on the teleological argument. Of course, that isn’t saying much, but still: hmmm!
And here is Fleming Rutledge weighing in on Karen Armstrong:
http://www.generousorthodoxy.org/ruminations/2009/09/stop-karen-armstrong.htm
‘Karen Armstrong and others like her are “religious” without a clue as to the Subject of theology. If she really understands the Church Fathers at any level, one seeks evidence in vain. If she has ever heard of the Reformation she does not indicate it. If she has ever had any serious dialogue with any major Protestant theologian her writing does not show it. If she has ever heard of the doctrine of revelation she shows no sign of it. She is a walking, talking, writing exhibit for Freud’s basic thesis: God is what we have made up out of our own wishes and needs.’
Good to know that it is not just the “New Atheists” that need to do their theological homework.