Bunting replies
Well, the discussion was winding down (or I thought it was), and I was going to leave Bunting in peace…but then she finally posted a comment (and the discussion didn’t wind down after all), so the peace idea was premature. What did she say? Did she admit that she had quote-mined? Did she explain why she is so furious at my (our) putative stridency instead of being furious at the men who murdered a raped teenager while saying ”We will do what Allah has instructed us’? Did she explain what has happened to her since she was so shocked by the Ryan report? Did she apologize for calling me strident, preposterous, crude, lacking in insight, profoundly intellectually dishonest, hysterical, and bizarre?
No. She didn’t do any of that. On the contrary – far from apologizing for calling me a long list of bad things, she complained of ‘personal abuse’ herself. It seems it’s all right for her to call me rude names but not okay for other people to call her rude names. Why would that be, exactly?
For those who loathe my writing I suggest you don’t read it. That’s the point about a newspaper/website. You get to choose what you read… so I don’t understand the personal abuse. Of course there are plenty of people who think I write rubbish – I got that message off CiF long ago. So what.
So what…Well, so they’re right, that’s so what. ‘Plenty of people’ aren’t always right, of course, but they are about this. Bunting does write rubbish, and not only that; she writes personally vituperative, inaccurate, sloppy, careless, reckless rubbish. Bunting writes badly and behaves badly and my opinion of her sinks lower all the time. There is no floor under this opinion, it turns out; it can just keep on sinking forever.
I think outrage about injustice is entirely appropriate, and Benson and I would be completely on the same side about the despicable way patriarchal societies have treated women the world over. But I strongly argue that in a small world where we are jostling up against all kinds of different belief systems, we need to understand something of why religion is still such a powerful impulse in human nature, why it is such a major influence in many parts of the world – as John Mickelthwait’s new book, ‘God is Back’ argues. Does Benson bring insight into that urgent task? I fear not.
That’s interesting, but as I said in reply, she didn’t argue that on Night Waves or in her article, so it’s a bit late to bring it up in a comment two days later.
So that’s that. As I’ve said – I knew she was as woolly as any flock of sheep you might want to meet, but I didn’t know she was so malicious or so reckless. Now I do.
I’m not very impressed by God Is Back. I’ll probably read it again, but my first impression is that it contains a lot of detail about things I already knew in a general way, then ends with a very lame analysis. The authors favour secularism, which is good, but after hundreds of pages that should indicate to them why merely promoting secularism is an inadequate response to the political claims of religion, they never come to grips at all with the enormous real-world problems confronting secularists.
In particular, they never confront the fact that many comprehensive belief systems are not obviously “reasonable” in Rawls’s sense, i.e. it is not obvious why someone inside some of these systems would wish to join in an overlapping liberal consensus in favour of secularism. This is the elephant in the room, but they don’t even notice it.
What’s interesting is that she did exactly the same with Richard Dawkins: he showed her up as shallow and inadequate on the radio, and then she wrote a CiF piece in revenge. It seems to be her standard tactic.
There is certainly enough in the “New” testament to clearly support the subservient position of women in christianity, though they desperately try to quietly ignore it, or sweep it under the carpet these days.
Now, Bunting is, apparently, a catholic, a member of a church which obviously hates women (and little boys).
The position of women under islam is even worse than that under christianity, given that islam is 622 years behind, and that there certainly appears to be no provision for church/state separation under that dispensation.
Why then, should we be suprised that Bunting prefers to side with all of the theocrats, even those of a religion at mortal idiological war with her own, rather than taking a rational stance?
What does suprise, even now, is that a supposedly “liberal” paper like the Grauniad should give such a blinkered reactionary as Bunting a platform.
[ What’s next – a piece in CiF by Nick Griffin? ]
Lastly, you say that she is malicious and reckless, with which I would agree. But that is probably because she is profoundly and sincerely deluded
“For those who loathe my writing I suggest you don’t read it.”
People who don’t take their own advice are comic when they are not in positions of influence.
“outrage about injustice is entirely appropriate … we need to understand something of why religion is still such a powerful impulse”
It’s a game of two halves.
And would this be understanding as in “studying” or “conceding”? Bunting tends to mean the latter, MBunderstanding as I think David T called it…
Greg: “What does suprise, even now, is that a supposedly “liberal” paper like the Grauniad should give such a blinkered reactionary as Bunting a platform.”
Yes. That really galls me. It seems to have handed over the religious/philosophical section to assorted God-botherers: Mad Bunty, Andrew (who claims to be agnostic, but has a peculiar animus against Richard Dawkins), & co. Few of our team get a chance to write above the line. Is it a result of New Labour’s odious pandering to religious interests, as exemplified by Blair?
That’s not only interesting. It’s a vital question. But it can’t be answered by religion as such, because there are so many of them. In order to get the answer, we need to do things like Dennett proposes in Breaking the Spell, things like (and here I speak from ignorance) Ophelia and Jeremy do in Does God Hate Women?. Leaping to the defence of religion just won’t do, that is, if we really want to know.
That’s why exercises like James Hannam’s jiggery-pokery with history simply will not do. They’re much too partisan – which is precisely why there is still a conflict between religion and science, because, despite the fact that scientific studies of cognition and religion – like Pascal Boyer’s and Scott Atran’s work – tend to show that religion is a run-on effect of cognitive abilities that have quite other purposes, religious people haven’t even begun to take this kind of thing on board. And, unless they do, we’ll never really know “why religion is still such a powerful impulse in human nature”. Powerful enough to give Madeleine Bunting lift-off, to take her from her concerned doubting Thomas routine to vituperation and personal animus. How is it, exactly, that religion does this?
Silverwhistle,
Re: your comment at 2009-06-19 – 04:20:40
“New Labour” may have been (and are still) pandering to “religious interests”, but the Guardian hasn’t been favourable to Blair since Iraq. If anything the Guardian have out-pandered Labour in this area, and it’s largely a political thing. They march in drumbeat to the new my-enemy’s-enemy-is-my-friend alliance between a certain left (not the rational, secular group to I have belonged since the age of reason) and elements of political Islam. So while they (rightly) criticize the right-wing faith mongers in the US, they express “understanding” for theocratic thugs at home or in the Middle East. And this “odious pandering” has now extended to the MBunderstanders.
That’s interesting because it means that, like it or not, they have a great deal in common with Blair. Bunting and Blair are all but twins when it comes to sucking up to the Catholic church – more precisely, when it comes to turning a willfully blind eye to its glaring faults, and to pretending that an authoritarian patriarchal institution is in some never-defined sense really liberal and okay at heart.
‘it is not obvious why someone inside some of these systems would wish to join in an overlapping liberal consensus in favour of secularism. This is the elephant in the room, but they don’t even notice it.’
That sounds so familiar. It’s the great bromide of our time, that We Can All Agree On The Basics – which is so obviously not true if you pay attention. But somehow that elephant in the room just blends into the wallpaper (quite unlike any elephants I’ve ever known).
There is good coverage of Iran in today’s Guardian which rather contradicts the suggestion that the paper’s editorial line is sympathetic to theocrats.
I find have mixed feelings about learning in detail about religions mostly because I believe in religious tolerance, and often knowing too much about someone’s beliefs can make that more difficult. On the other hand I’ve always found theology interesting because weird belief systems are interesting, so I read books about Aquinas or Ibn Arabi for the same reason that I have read books by David Icke or classic crank works like “Our mysterious spaceship moon”. Theists often take an ignorance of theology for granted when talking to atheists, which is a bit odd given that the strong reasons for atheism are all philosophical ones. So often no attempt is made to understand why someone might be an atheist, while a lack of understanding on the atheist side is simply assumed.
I don’t believe in religious tolerance in the expansive sense it’s often taken to mean. I certainly don’t believe in attempting to force people to change their religious beliefs, but I also don’t believe in blanket tolerance of religious practice. I’ve learned to be wary of the very phrase ‘religious tolerance’ because you can think you’re agreeing with the first while you’re taken by others to be agreeing with the second.
Alain: “”New Labour” may have been (and are still) pandering to “religious interests”, but the Guardian hasn’t been favourable to Blair since Iraq.”
Perhaps not the main bit. But the religious/philosophical section is Blairite in its pandering to religion.
Oooogh – who is this John Wight? Vot a fule.
Yes, him. It would be fule-ish if the real-life consequences of such attitudes weren’t so sinister.