Is it something in the water?
This is the stupidest thing I’ve read since…well since the last eruption from the twins. There’s so much stupid in it that it’s hard to single it all out.
Saying that science has made religion redundant is rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov, says Terry Eagleton in this gloriously rumbustious counter-blast to Dawkinsite atheism…paradoxes sparkle throughout this coruscatingly brilliant polemic…
Brilliant my ass. It’s tricksy, it’s decorated, but it’s not brilliant.
Eagleton is not anti-science or reason. He merely points out that science has produced Hiroshima as well as penicillin.
Because nobody would know that if he hadn’t merely pointed it out, and besides it’s stupid to say that ‘science’ produced Hiroshima.
Eagleton is stronger on reason than Ditchkins, for he thinks carefully about what his opponents say whereas Dawkins & Co prefer knockabout rhetoric to serious engagement with mainstream religious thought.
How would somebody who mindlessly follows Eagleton’s mindless lead in using ‘Ditchkins’ know what being strong on reason even looks like? And how can he claim without irony that Eagleton ‘thinks carefully about what his opponents say’ two words after he’s echoed that very Eagleton in calling two of those very opponents by a stupid schoolyardy nonce-name? Don’t ask me; I can’t begin to figure it out.
This is, then, a demolition job which is both logically devastating and a magnificently whirling philippic. Ditchkins, he says, makes the error of conflating reason and rationality. Yet much of what seems reasonable in real life turns out not to be true. And much that is true, like quantum physics, seems rationally impossible.
My foot my tutor, as Prospero said. Contrary to what Paul Vallely clearly thinks, neither Dawkins nor Hitchens is actually stupider than Terry Eagleton. Neither of them needs Eagleton to explain quantum physics. Neither of them needs him to explain that much of what seems reasonable in real life turns out not to be true. Eagleton is a conceited teacher of English who got way too much undergraduate adulation early in life and let it go to his head. He is not a polymath or a universal genius or a towering intellect. Dawkins and Hitchens aren’t necessarily right about everything (I hope it’s needless to say) but that doesn’t mean Eagleton is the guy to set them straight. Paul Vallely isn’t even the guy to comment on anybody setting them straight.
There’s more, but it’s too sick-making. I’m outta here.
I waded through that review. Here’s a gem:
“Armstrong surveys the intellectual history of religion in a way that is more comprehensive and measured but much less fun. What it shows is that the modern way of thinking about God, as a big bloke with superhuman powers, is a comparatively modern invention.”
Surely you’re joking, Mr. Definitely-not-Feynman. Karen Armstrong cannot possibly have made such a patently ridiculous assertion no matter how sloppy her history often is. And even if it were true, how does that make religious dogma better?
“… much of what seems reasonable in real life turns out not to be true.”
Like, I don’t know, the God hypothesis? I’ve just been rereading Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism and he makes the point that supernatural belief systems “make sense” (in other words, seem reasonable) on their own terms. The problem is that supernatural belief systems are not true, not that they don’t make sense or are unreasonable. Quantum mechanics may or may not be “reasonable” depending on your definition of that term, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. And the one good method we have for determining what’s true is science, not revelation or smoking peyote.
Wow, what a ridiculously unctuous writing style (not you OB– the ruttish earth-vexing nut-hook who wrote the ‘review’)! Sick-making indeed.
“Indeed Eagleton is stronger on reason than Ditchkins, for he thinks carefully about what his opponents say whereas Dawkins & Co prefer knockabout rhetoric to serious engagement with mainstream religious thought.”
Well that’s blown it for good. Blown both the scurvy crew of the SS Ditchkins right out of the water. With luck they’ll make it to some lonely atoll where they can live out the rest of their days: Hitchens eating the oysters and crabs after Dawkins has studied them. Or whatever.
As they contemplate the dreary monotony they can say ‘Well it was good while it lasted… But torpedoes made of bullshit should be banned under the Geneva Convention.’
Actually, it IS something in the water -but only if it’s been “Blessed” by a paedophile priest and declared “holy” …..
Yeah, that was a glib review. But not having read Eagleton (this being the first I’d heard of it), I’d like to hear more about what makes his views right or wrong.
How can you say that it’s both obviously true and ludicrous to say that science produced Hiroshima? There’s the obvious sense that scientific invention was necessary in order for those devastations to happen, but that science as a cultural practice isn’t destined to produce such cases of destruction. We (rightly) see science as a disembodied tool, full stop. Unlike religion or political ideology, which arranges the death squads, science only gives us the knowledge that is required to make the guns and so on.
But does this come down to a difference between doing and mere allowing — and, if so, does that matter ethically? Obviously it does. Moreover, the idea that ethics matters at a procedural level is the working consensus among professionals. But what if that was Eagleton’s point? If that were the case, then what first seemed like a gross oversimplification might actually be a banality for Eagleton’s purposes. (Of course, to the historian of science, it is viewed as quite a bit more than a mere banality — the relationship between ethics in professional science over the 20th century was by no means uniform.) But I need to hear more about it to find out.
Ben, in this case just because it’s such an incredibly stale trope. Have you read much litcritty and/or ‘postmodernist’ criticism of science? Or much journalistic echoing of same? Hiroshima is never far away.
I think we scientists should record a few to the point/pointed replies to the stalest statements and just “rewind tape” whenever they come up.
Example: “There’s more to reality than scientific theories.” Or: “Scientific theories are just that, theories.”
Reply: “If you truly believe this, jump out of an airplane without a parachute.”
Ophelia,
I am a big fan of your blog and I also agree with you, Jerry Coyne, PZ Myers, etc. on the merits of this whole Mooney/Kirshenbaum kerfuffle but is it really necessary to call them “Colgate/toothpaste twins” just because the pictures on their blog show them with a smile?
Look, I understand that given some of the invective in any given internet comment section this may seem overly sensitive on my part, but is it really necessary to get so petty and ad-hominem?
I am sorry, but I simply bristle at bringing up someone’s appearance in an argument, in whatever form it may be.
Paul Vallely said “Yet much of what seems reasonable in real life turns out not to be true. And much that is true, like quantum physics, seems rationally impossible.”
This should be:
Yet much of what seems reasonable [at first glance] in real life turns out not to be true. And much that is true, like quantum physics, seems rationally impossible [to those who do not understand it well enough].
Since quantum mechanics entered the discussion, here is my view of how the New Theists use it to obfuscate:
“Keeping an Open Mind Is a Virtue, but not so Open that Your Brains Fall Out.”
http://www.starshipnivan.com/blog/?p=386
Ophelia, yeah that stuff is a graveyard of bad ideas. I was amused to find out, courtesy of M/K, that pomo was just a distraction as opposed to the main impediment to the dissemination of science and consistency. Coulda fooled me. But of course putting that stuff aside, there’s genuine and interesting ways of phrasing real problems with science as a cultural practice and in its relation to technology that don’t have to the epistemically muddle-headed cabbage that you find with the poststructuralists. I must confess being relieved to make it through that review/article without having reason to suspect that Eagleton is *that* kind of Marxist.
A Comtean-positive attitude towards science and technology does us no good, obviously. I doubt very much that “Ditchkins” have this attitude, but it should certainly be at the center of the debate. But if we take this fact seriously, then there are two interesting ways that we can defend the “new atheists”. First, by pointing out that, just it is fair game to criticize the cultural practice of science on the basis of its manifested consequences, it is also fair game to criticize religion in exactly that way. So for all her quiestism, Armstrong is not safe. Second, an interesting thing happens as soon as we think in terms of consequences: namely, NOMA collapses. While supporters of NOMA might have Comtean-positivism as their foe, these very same defenders are actually both demanding that science and ethics be incompatible — for that is the very point of separate-but-equal magesteria! And for those of us who like our ethics served up with a side of consequentialism, the “new atheists” are both better compatibilists than the “new accomodationist” counterparts, and are actually in an intellectually viable place when they criticize episodes of science as a cultural practice.
If anyone hasn’t read PZ’s review of “Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate”, I suggest that you do so. He read it twice during an 8 hour plane journey, so that we don’t have to. Well, unless you want to, of course.
This is how to write a book review, in my opinion: The Eagleton Delusion
Marc
“is it really necessary to call them “Colgate/toothpaste twins” just because the pictures on their blog show them with a smile?”
No, it’s not really necessary, of course, but it amused me – and it’s not completely irrelevant, because a big part of their schtick has to do with being Nice and Friendly and Not Like all those mean noisy atheists.
“is it really necessary to get so petty and ad-hominem? I am sorry, but I simply bristle at bringing up someone’s appearance in an argument, in whatever form it may be.”
See above. Also, I completely agree with you in the sense that I would never in a million years bring up someone’s appearance from the other direction – i.e. to say someone is ugly or fat or similar. I also probably wouldn’t have called SK that if it had been her post and book alone, because I wouldn’t want to encourage other sexist prats. But it’s the two of them – and they’re both splendid specimens, so I’m not going to be hurting their feelings – and what I was teasing was not their appearance but their presentation of self. They didn’t have to pose with such gigantic Friendly Kids grins. They chose to. Given how…malicious they have shown themselves to be (yes, malicious: the Newsweek article is the final nail in that coffin) I think a little mockery of their self-presentation is fair enough.
Are you the Marc who argued with me about Jesus on their blog?
Damian: Thanks for the link. Life has taught me at least two things. The first is that there is nobody that from whose words, deeds or antics I cannot learn something. The second is that one thing leads to another. So I followed your link to PZ writing about his situation on the plane, and it was well worth while. Recommended.
PZ also drops a link there to a piece in praise of Eagleton by Stanley Fish. http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/god-talk/. Fish has taken the bait dangled by Eagleton, and treats him seriously, which is his undoing. But PZ at least should be thankful that it was not Fish’s piece from the NYT that was his sole reading matter for the 8 hours on the plane.
Approvingly from Fish: “Science, says Eagleton, ‘does not start far back enough’; it can run its operations, but it can’t tell you what they ultimately mean or provide a corrective to its own excesses. Likewise, reason is ‘too skin deep a creed to tackle what is at stake’; its laws — the laws of entailment and evidence — cannot get going without some substantive proposition from which they proceed but which they cannot contain; reason is a non-starter in the absence of an a prior specification of what is real and important, and where is that going to come from? Only from some kind of faith.”
And so on up this creek swims Fish, to conclude at last “…Here, as many have noted, is where religion and postmodernism meet.” I could not agree more.
Ironically, both Eagleton and Fish have to start with reason, and both try to reason their way as best they can to wherever it is they are trying to go. No matter their declarations to the contrary or how reluctant they are to admit it, the primary assumption of both of them is that reason has priority over faith. Otherwise Eagleton would never have decided to write his book about how reasonable Christianity is and how unreasonable and inconsistent Dawkins and Hitchens are; nor Fish to read and review it, and to praise it for its perceived validity. All conscious decisions are based on reason. (I had yoghurt on all-bran for breakfast because I’ve had it before and like it. I don’t think I’d like all-bran and raw egg, though that is an inference; I’ve never had it ever.)
PZ again: “If we want a signifier for the human condition, imagine the culture we would live in now if, instead of a dead corpse on an instrument of torture, our signifier was a child staring in wonder at the stars. That’s representative of the state of humanity, too; it’s a symbol that touches us all as much as that of a representation of our final end, and we don’t have to daub it with the cheap glow-in-the-dark paint of supernatural fol-de-rol for it to have deeper meaning. We atheists, contra Eagleton, have aspirations, too; aspirations for humanity in all the meanings of that word. But we also expect that those aspirations will be built on reality.”
Well said.
After reading Myers’ excerpts of Eagleton I’m not left very impressed by the reviewer from the Independent.
The Chekov v. Toaster analogy is presented in the review as meaning to show that science did not make religion redundant. That’s an interesting and respectable argument you can have, as far as morality goes. But in context, Eagleton says: “But Christianity was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place.” This is a very different claim, an epistemic claim, and not at all plausible. Evidently we’re supposed to believe that the history of Christianity is decidedly quietistic, never literal. But obviously that’s complete nonsense. The divine right of kings does not find its origins in “let’s pretend”; this is to be expected, since the placebo effect doesn’t work when you know your pill is a placebo.
Nope, I am not that Marc. I have never commented on their blog – plus I am pretty sure my thoughts on Jesus align themselves rather nicely with yours.
Until now I hadn’t read any of their recent blog posts or responses to PZ or Coyne in depth, just skimmed them. So maybe that’s why I am somewhat uncomfortable to see the whole discussion escalate so much, e.g. you calling them malicious.
Even now, the problem remains that I haven’t read the book yet. When I read only their blog posts it sounds like PZ et al are just out to get them and misrepresenting everything they said and when I read Pharyngula or B&W I see them presented as disingenuous self-promoters and hacks.
I am having a hard time accepting either narrative – not the former certainly, and, especially given Mooney’s previoius work, not really the latter, either.
I really don’t mean to sound like such a typical split-the-difference, there-are-two-sides-to-every-story equivocator as I probably am right now but I guess I am just too conciliatory by nature.
See, I am somewhat of a “meta-accomodationist” – I think, generally speaking, we should acommodate the accomodationists :)
While I get Sam Harris’ point about moderate believers giving more clout to extremists and fundamentalists, I also believe that accomodationsts à la Eugenie Scott working together with believers on various issues can sometimes (not always) have beneficial results.
The salient point in this particular case seems to be M&K’s direct attack against PZ and various outspoken atheists (nope, not gonna use that “NA” term) in their book. If it is really as bad as you and PZ describe it, then I guess you are justified in your response
Marc, you’re completely justified in feeling skeptical about the mocking of M&K’s appearance. It’s also intellectually responsible of you – even incumbent on you – to reserve judgment when you haven’t read their book, and since you’re new to this long, ongoing debate. I don’t expect you to take anyone’s word for it, but for what it’s worth, this latest skirmish is, for many of us, the last straw.
M&K’s intellectual dishonesty has gone on – and has gotten worse – for more than a year now. Many of the major commenters on this – PZ Myers, Ophelia Benson, Jerry Coyne – have asked, pleaded, and begged them (in intellectually moderate tones, initially) to defend their point of view. To answer direct, reasonable charges that their posture is political, not intellectual, and that they’re treating sincere critics very badly. This has been to no avail. Others of us (mere commenters and ordinary people) have done the same with no results.
You’re coming in to the tail end, the last exasperated gasp where even the most stoic, genteel people have. ..well, lost their fucking temper. For good reason. You can only get played so many times by people who affect to be “nice,” but who are calculatedly dishonest and political, before you have to call them on it using blunt, Anglo-Saxon words.
Again, I don’t expect you to take my word for it, I’m just offering an explanation.
And for what it’s worth, here’s what I wrote in another thread about the Toothpaste Twins:
Marc, for my part, I so far find the book unremarkable. I don’t agree with much of it, but I don’t agree with a great many authors. If I had read it in another context, I’d likely only express ambivalence. I probably wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
However laudable (and necessary for rational critique) it is to try to reach a mutual understanding, one does have to give arguments their due. And it’s in this respect that I find M/K disappointing. And I say this without having yet reached their Liebermanic war-cry against PZ Myers.
For one thing, the first criticism that M/K refer to on the Intersection, regarding “trailing phrase notes”, is entirely right: this is simply the craziest way of doing citations I have ever seen. It’s as if the intent was for accuracy to be sacrificed for the sake of aesthetics. But it cheapens the work a great deal, and makes it more difficult to follow up on their views. Style issues aside, the citations themselves are sometimes incomplete. For example, as a Canadian, I found it interesting that they cited Preston Manning (a former politician) on communications studies. Go to the back of the book, and they cite as follows:
61 “source-oriented communicators” and “receiver-oriented communicators”: Manning, “Communicating Effectively with Politicians.”
Not only does Mr. Manning lose his first name, we have no idea what the source of “Communicating Effectively with Politicians” was. A speech? A book? I don’t know. Of course, I don’t think they made it up, but I don’t think they spent a lot of time wrangling with the endnotes either, which is a disappointment.
The content of the book seems to oscillate between the bizarre and the anodyne. After reading the first chapter (and the infamous Pluto analogy), and I think it’s pretty clear to most readers that they’ve not put their best foot forward. Pluto is implausibly brought in to make a plausible point about the intellectual’s responsibility to reach out to, engage with, the broader public. But Pluto is brought in half-heartedly, lasting only a few pages, without especially powerful arguments to make their case. For most of the chapter they forget about Pluto entirely, until the last sentence in which they reiterate the importance of its reinstatement as a planet (which they later explain was just meant to be a joke). Well, fine. Then the second chapter comes along, and we find it’s more introduction. Then chapters three and four, which provide an extremely brief look at the history of the third culture debate, and some of the foibles along the way, along with irrelevant, inconsistent, and unsubstantiated commentary.
Finally, there’s a reprieve. Chapters 5/6 play to the strengths of the authors: they both have direct experience with politics and media (Kirshenbaum was a political aide/disc jockey, Mooney a journalist/researcher). The quality of writing goes up, and you can tell — there will be more anecdotes, more appeals to distinct facts, more clarity to their insights. There isn’t as much of a feeling of a deadline looming over their shoulders, forcing them to publish something — anything! — before the Pew report comes out.
But now I’m at Chapter 7, and again I get “that Pluto feeling” as they complain about the factual accuracy of the sci-fi/disaster flick The Core. I must admit to certain eccentricities to my personal tastes. I liked the film. It, along with wretchedly implausible but nevertheless entertaining films like “The Day After Tomorrow”, get you interested, and propose things that might be true but aren’t, or illustrate consequences of natural laws gone awry that you otherwise wouldn’t have considered. Want to know for sure whether or not there’s a connection between the magnetic core of the earth and the troposphere? After you watch the movie, read a book.
But more than anything else, M/K’s behavior on their blog (and the article in Newsweek) has been really unimpressive. People have given in-depth responses to them, explaining quite carefully where they have taken mis-steps. In return, they either don’t respond to criticisms, or misrepresent those criticisms (in Myers’ case).
And here’s what I wrote on another blog, Marc:
Returning briefly to Fish on Eagleton:
“One more point. The book starts out witty and then gets angrier and angrier. (There is the possibility, of course, that the later chapters were written first; I’m just talking about the temporal experience of reading it.) I spent some time trying to figure out why the anger was there and I came up with two explanations.
“One is given by Eagleton, and it is personal. Christianity may or may not be the faith he holds to (he doesn’t tell us), but he speaks, he says, ‘partly in defense of my own forbearers, against the charge that the creed to which they dedicated their lives is worthless and void.’
“The other source of his anger is implied but never quite made explicit. He is angry, I think, at having to expend so much mental and emotional energy refuting the shallow arguments of school-yard atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins. I know just how he feels.”
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/god-talk/
Depth of argument is another issue. But the oldest religion around is probably ancestor-worship. It is still going strong, and takes many forms, including the above as outlined by Eagleton.
As for “worthless and void”, I have not read Hitchens, Dawkins or any of the others on the subject, so I cannot comment. But I would not describe traditional religion that way, particularly in the context of the periods of time in which it was providing the most coherent worldview around. I would however, not allow so much slack to the clergy, of whatever faith. But even the modern scholars of Christianity for example, have largely abandoned the simple faith of Eagleton’s ancestors.
It ain’t what it used to be.
Marc –
Yes but I have read their book – and I’ve been following what Mooney has been posting about this ever since his initial salvo on May 31st. So a reaction that comes from someone who hasn’t been doing all that seems a little beside the point.
Ian, I did some posts on that Fish piece and the Eagleton piece he was commenting on, a few weeks ago.
Here is the first post on Fish on Eagleton. There are others after that. That was early May.
OB: I somehow missed that earlier post on Eagleton.
There is a bit of confusion re the dates. Your N&C post of 04-05-2009 leads to Fish on Sunday, July 19, 2009, (19-7-2009) which gives two possibilities: a. either the right URL did not get onto your clipboard, or b. you or your computer has an ability to see into the future. Either way in the latter case, you can set yourself up in business big time.
Vintage Fish would be pretty much as imagined, and the opposite of vintage wine. And Q: what would be worse than being stuck for 8 hours on a plane with nothing to read but a book by Eagleton? A: You guessed it; being stuck on the plane with nothing but 2 books by Eagleton. (Note also that the possibility of having half a book by Eagleton is always there, with the other half hurled forward and lost forever.)
Ian – no it doesn’t. The date at the top of the page is July 18 – but that seems to be just because the Times dates the overall page as current; but the post is Fish’s ‘God Talk’ with May 3 just above it, and lots of May comments below it.
Anyway, you got your taste of how silly Stanley Fish is, and that’s the important thing.
Anyone so concerned about reason and logic wouldn’t conflate the views of his opponents into a caricature of ‘Ditchkins’ – besides being childish, it allows him to mock the two without ever having to substantiate his arguments.
“Oh no, I wasn’t addressing specifics, I was attacking Ditchkins, the artificial punching bag of ‘New Atheism’!”
It’s not intellectual, it’s overtly-verbose posturing serving as a veneer to cowardice.
Well said OB!