Not a moment sooner, k?
David Barash wrote another pro-gnu-atheist post a couple of days ago, and Jacques Berlinerblau posted a chippy comment there. His comment was rather sinuous, but the upshot was that yes gnu atheists are just as horrible as everyone says so ha.
nsmyth made reference to “critical atheists” and she or he has perhaps finally identified the proper term to describe the many scholars who are nonbelievers themselves but who have serious reservations about New Atheist worldview.
These critical atheists–the list grows longer every day–are subjected to all manner of vitriol and invective by Gnus. Now, the infidel tradition is full of vitriol and invective so I am not entirely opposed to that sort of thing and not averse to giving it a spin myself. But the point raised by nsmyth stands: there just doesn’t seem to be any attempt by many NAs to think through these criticisms seriously.
It’s JUST vitriol and invective, a reflex like a gagging mechanism triggered by any criticism. That’s why it frustrates so many critical atheists (I assure you David this is not a small cohort and not lacking for serious scholars). Again, I have written a fair amount about this. You can read it if you like and if you do I would be more than happy to discuss it with you privately or publicly.
Love, Jack.
You see how it is: The gnu atheists – they do vitriol and invective, and they don’t think, plus they do vitriol and invective. I’ve written about it.
Well who could argue with that? Not I, certainly – but I did ask him for just a little in the way of specifics. Just a crumb, to be going on with.
“Again, I have written a fair amount about this.”What did you say?
Really. Just a hint. Just one little paraphrase. So far you haven’t said a thing, you’ve simply scolded like a crow.
Always great to hear from you. Go to the CHE review I wrote about Hitchens’ God is Not Great. Then a piece in the old Washington Post Book World on Michael Novak’s No One Sees God.Then read the book I wrote Thumpin’ It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today’s Presidential Politics. After that, I would urge you to read The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously (written before the Gnus emerged, but should be of interest to you nonetheless).
There are other sources, but that’s enough for now. I have a book coming out soon on the subject. So head out to your local library, read up, and let’s talk when you have that all read. But not a moment sooner, k?
So the deal here is, anti-gnus get to do any generalized character-assassination they want to about gnu atheists, but if gnu atheists have the audacity to ask, “Like what?” then the anti-gnus are entitled to tell the gnus to go read everything and shut up in the meantime.
This is the sophisticated nuanced vitriol-free scholarship that is supposed to be so much better than what the Gnus do.
Meh.
It’s wonderfully meta. It’s not just that the Gnus aren’t providing sophisticated arguments against religion, it’s that they aren’t providing sophisticated arguments against the accomodationists. When someone calls you a clown or a big silly, you have to understand the nature of clowning, the history of mirth, the cultural tradition of the Harlequin and the Pierrot before you can respond.
I have to say that, on this topic, David Barash personifies that old workplace sign. (Smile. It drives the bastards crazy.) He’s clever, something too rare in these proceedings.
Nice attitude from Berlinerblau. I have no time to talk to you until you’ve taken the time to read everything I’ve had to say. What a prick.
Actually…
I’m willing to assert that no critic of “gnu-theism” is significantly smarter than I am. Period, full stop.
I’m not bragging or claiming a higher level of education than anyone else, other than to say that I know that I’m well above average in intelligence. I hit an acceptable SAT score when I was… 11 years old? I can hold my own, and I know that the writings of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and others are aimed at a general audience. So…
Rather than the general cowardice of the anti-Gnu types like Ruse, Mooney, and Berlinerblau, why doesn’t one of them present an actual argument? If I can’t engage that argument, that’s one thing. For them to claim that their argument is superior without ever presenting it? Not even worth my time. I might could dismiss an argument as being irrelevant, but the anti-gnus won’t even present that much!
I never knew Berlinerblau was a time traveler.
You’d think by now anti-gnus would know that the request for specific examples of gnus behaving badly is likely to come up sooner or later. Yet they never seem prepared for it, its almost as if they are relying on the stereotypical idea of what a new atheist is like, and taking for granted that it’ll be easy to find examples. Then they start flapping when its a bit harder than they think.
He certainly is into self promotion. Buy my books, read them, then we can talk.
Quelle surprise…he has a book coming out.
Shameless self-promotion.
I’ve seen scientific talks in which the speaker is asked a challenging question about their project, and they respond with “Well, this has been published so you can look it up yourself.” No one hears this as anything but a dead giveaway that the speaker has nothing intelligent to say in response to the challenge. If you have an argument, then make the dang argument.
The Barash post led to some conversation about substantive criticism vs tone, insults etc. so I want to focus on substance a little. One commenter raises Orr’s objection to the “Ultimate 747” argument, that Dawkins is using philosophical tricks to support an empirical argument. This is walsh05 in support of Orr:
Why is this an objection to Dawkins, the critic, and not to authors of design arguments? Of course Dawkins doesn’t give priority to logical gymnastics over empirical argument. But in order to show the futility of the approach he takes the argument where it leads. He shows that on its own terms the design argument is bad. For a scientist, though, the empirical arguments are the arguments.
I bring this up to suggest why so much of the anti-gnu focus has been on tone. The early attack on substance has not been the walkover anti-gnus hoped for. Dawkins is not as philosophically crude as some critics have said. Dawkins is saying (I imagine) “If you try to solve an empirical problem with a priori logicism, you have no stop sign. If you posit a designer someone else will posit a designer of the designer. It’s too late to say that’s not playing fair.”
It misses the point, I think, to say that Dawkins assumes that infinite regressions are a problem for this argument when they might not be, because Dawkins has a much better point, that the problem with such arguments (infinite regressions aren’t a problem because gods are different) is that they enable everything that’s not logically forbidden, your god, all the neighboring gods in “god design” space and every other imaginable entity.
Is Dawkins wrong? Perhaps his argument needs work. Is he philosophically crude? The verdict is mixed. I think he’s on solid ground in his empiricism, and has raised a problem that should give pause to philosophers who think such logical methods can bring entities into existence where evidence doesn’t. It can rule out contradictions and things built on them, and that’s about it.
That’s an obnoxious evasion. You asked a reasonable question. A reasonable response would have been to summarize or, like you said, give some kind of hint. Imagine how absurd public discourse would be if, in order to debate someone on a point, you had to have comprehensive mastery of that person’s oeuvre. (And I love how citing anything from those works would be unthinkable to him—but plugging them is totally kosher.)
It’s actually a weird kind of appropriation of the Courtier’s Reply, no different than a slick theologian who chastises someone for making the (fairly elementary) observation that the “trinity” is illogical; how dare someone point that out before having read all that theology has had to say on the question for the last 1500 years?! But, we ask, couldn’t you just sort of, you know, paraphrase the part where some theologian actually solves the problem using proper standards evidence and reasoning? It’s funny because, if someone, somewhere, had actually solved the problem, they’d be more than happy to paraphrase it. Shit, they’d have it on billboards.
.
Would it be terribly uncivil, do you think, to answer such mindless condescension with a measured “Go fuck yourself”? Or is that just gnot on?
Evasion is the point, I think. Gnus and gnu critics have very different reactions to opportunities for discussion of differences. The differences have to do with the role of accommodation. Accommodators tend to adopt the tactical armament of their allies in religion. The patterns of evasion, the distant, windy pompous presentation is a close cousin to the what you get in debate from apologists. And most of all, the overwhelming obsession with tone, politeness and mutuality of respect constantly reaffirmed, because, one imagines, so often insincere. In a way you can see why atheists and theists need this oily medium to coexist in. If everyone said what they really thought….
But the intellectual weaknesses and mutual forgiveness of treasured vapidities means that Accomo’s are woefully underequipped to fight it out with gnus, who operate by the ground rules of scientific and philosophical disputation that prevail elsewhere. Even worse, they think, because they know, that their habits have made them soft. What to do, then? They imitate their theistic allies and pound the table and complain about treatment.
Berlinerblau is a real front-runner for the title of “Most OTT Gnu-Basher.” All of his anti-Gnu statements are put in such a sweeping way; last time it was the “all” and “every” to make sure everyone knew it wasn’t just a few Gnus who sometimes overdid it – no all of them are honour-bound to attack everything even faintly religious all the time. This time it’s “JUST vitriol and invective…” And he expects you to think he means it and has done his homework. There are by now literally volumes full of thoughtful insult-free Gnu writing out there, stuff that simply makes the points that are important to us, often in intellectually very interesting ways. The existence of any at all makes nonsense of Berlinerblau’s comment. How are more people not wising up to his shtick? Sure, you can find some examples of Gnu incivility if you look for it, but it’s dwarfed by the serious stuff that’s emanated from that corner, as well as by claims that there’s nothing but vitriol and invective.
@ernie keller in #10: the accusation of wrongly blending empiricism and philosophy is an odd one. Since when is there a border between the two that you can’t cross? Besides, wasn’t Dawkins supposed to rely on science too much? Which is it – too little or too much philosophy?
My library system, which serves over a million people, does not have a single book by Berlinerblau in it. Perhaps his ideas of his own importance are over-inflated.
Looking at his ‘Secular Bible’ via Google Books, I see it complains that modern secularist thought is a ‘trust fund baby’, living off the intellectual capital of Marx, Nietzsche, Russell, Sartre etc. That’s strange – I thought Berlinerblau was complaining that Gnu Atheists weren’t using those earlier atheists enough? Gnu atheists seem to have done what he was asking for back in 2005, and then he’s changed his criticism. But he now points to his earlier viewpoint as evidence for “I already said all this”.
Chris Mooney is now conceding that there is new (or gnu) evidence that New Atheism does positively change attitudes:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/04/21/psych-evidence-that-supports-new-atheism/
It is a silly thing to cite evidence to back up your prejudices in the first place, otherwise known as conformation bias. It is a good thing to concede to the evidence, and yet the prejudice he has continues, and that equally applies to many other anti-atheist atheists. And yes, it is prejudice and not anti-atheist sentiment.
Perhaps we can view all these sour grapes, eructed by these petulant little pipsqueaks, as a positive sign.
It shows that Sam, Richard, Christopher, Daniel,Ophelia, P.Z. and Jerry are truly changing the debate.
And these, hey-hello-over here-me too weasels are proof of the Gnu’s success ,as evidenced by their petty, poorly veiled envy.
Yeah I can definitely see how Berl’s reply to you was annoying and unhelpful.
Still, I guess in the interests of giving him a fair shake I looked up Berl’s core arguments (vs Hitchens in CHE):
– H is supposedly an essentialist (treating religions as a natural kind),
– H supposedly makes a moral equivalence between religions,
– H is supposedly a formalist (focusing too much on the texts, not enough on practices)
– H overdraws the boundaries of what counts as religion so that it includes non-religious activity, like Stalinism
– H fails to take his own argument seriously: if religion is toxic, then why not go ahead and ban it?
– H’s rhetoric is hurting the Democrats, America, etc.
You tried to talk about it?! How does a mere gnu find the gall to speak?
I looked at the video of PZ in Australia last year and it struck me that people are waiting for him to say something outrageous all the time, the way people used to treasure being insulted by Groucho Marx. At some points he’ll oblige them, usually after making quite clear why the insults are deserved.
It’s a fact that there is a lot of bullshit out there demanding to be taken seriously. We have two main options: we either say it’s bullshit or we kowtow to the expectation that we permit bullshit to go unidentified as such, giving it a respect it does not deserve. I think the fact that people have a right to spout bullshit ought to be the maximum we have to put up with, not any limitations on our right to point at it and say “bullshit.”
Well, imagine if debates went like this:
MODERATOR: Let’s start with a question for Mr. A. Mr. A, Mr. B disputes your claim about X. What do you have to say about that?
MR. A: It’s all in my new book. But, if I may, I’d like to point out that Mr. B’s own claims about Y are ridiculous.
MODERATOR: What do you have say about that Mr. B?
MR. B: It’s all in my new book.
… AND SCENE.
That’s Ms B, dammit!!!!!
Thanks for doing Berl’s chore for him Ben.
The penultimate one is especially absurd – as if it were a slam-dunk that everything arguably “toxic” (of course including figuratively “toxic”) can and should be banned! Does Berl actually think that himself? I’d be amazed if he did. (But then I’m often amazed by the anti-gnus, so maybe I wouldn’t be amazed to be amazed.)
Reminds me of all the times I’ve been told that I cannot object to or reject a religion or any of its claims because I have failed to devote my entire life to studying it, fluently learn every language that something somewhere about it has been expressed or just haven’t absorbed every last bit of information about the religion but I don’t even have to know what ideals are espoused by the religion, or anything else about it for that matter, to accept and believe it.
The penultimate thesis does sound pretty dumb when I phrased it in short form. But in fairness it was meant as a kind of reductio of Hitchens’ views on Stalin. Here’s the relevant passage:
If we think that Berl had gotten Hitchens right when it comes to theses 1-4, then maybe it would seem strange that Hitch should stop short on thesis 5. But I doubt Berl got Hitchens right. e.g., Hitch is many things, but he is no essentialist.
* Also, It’s not clear to me that Berl has accurately represented Marx’s views from ‘On the Jewish Question’. In that work, Marx’s aim is to incessantly chide Bruno Bauer, who appears to be a rough sort of Gnu Atheist from Marx’s time.
It doesn’t help that Marx’s rhetorical point is often hard to pin down. So, e.g., when he says “the state can and must go as far as the abolition of religion, the destruction of religion”, it is only in order to say something about how violent revolution will lead to the (temporary) abolition of religion. Permanent abolition of religion would require the abolition of the underlying material conditions of the religion — in other words, you would need to arrive at a communist paradise in order to get rid of religion, which is a distant hope. But Berl makes it sounds like Marx was clamouring for abolition here and now.
I’ve got Berlinerblau’s “The Secular Bible: why nonbelievers must take religion seriously” in front of me right now.
It’s not actually a bad book. I remember quite liking it when I first read it. I’m not sure retro-fitting it for service in the gnu-wars is credible.
The first sentence of the introduction is: “In all but exceptional cases, today’s secularists are biblically illiterate.” And his point is that “indifference to all things religious is no longer a viable option for secularists.” There’s a pressing need to understand the persistence of religion, and the precariousness of secularism, and that means learning about religion. We don’t have to, he says, but it would be a good idea.
I’d agree with that, actually.
He also says it’s problematic for nonbelievers to “define themselves” against something they know nothing about. I’m not so sure about that point, as I agreed with his earlier point that apathy was the problem, rather than enthusiastic and active ignorance. At least the latter is enthusiastic and active, and will surely learn something through experience. Surely. And I’m not sure that unbelievers do “define themselves” or “construct their selves” in quite this way.
Berlinerblau also regrets the retreat of “secular intellectuals” from the scholarly critique of religion. Again, I think this is unfortunate, and I agree with him. We need more atheist biblical scholars in the academy.
Berlinerblau’s defines “secularism” in his book in a self-confessedly idiosyncratic way: “an unrelenting commitment to judicious and self-correcting critique.” This reminds me of what Sam Harris was saying when he argued against the use of the “atheist” label. Anyway, Berlinerblau thinks of secularism, at its best, as “elitist and heretical”, and that when it becomes a mass movement it inevitably “betrays itself”. I guess you could see his “secularism” as what others would call “rationalism” or “skepticism”. He rejects any philanthropic humanism, in favour, ultimately of a programme “radical doubt”.
So at the outset this was not a book about “tone” – although he does say an aggressive anti-religious approach is pointless in the context he’s speaking about. But it’s not *about* that. It’s about building or rebuilding an engaged nonbelieving critique of sacred scriptures and religion.
The meat of the book is an attempt to illustrate what this means. I remember being interested in what he had to say.
He returns in the conclusion to the thoughts about “secularism” he was sharing in his introduction. Here he announces that “secularism” is in a state of “intellectual emergency”, with nothing to offer as religion makes a comeback.
And here is where the “tone” argument comes in. Says Berlinerblau:
Except, says Berlinerblau, that secularists are an insignificant minority. “Religious progressives” probably don’t need help from secularists, and anyway, he says, are there are not conservatives or non-liberal radicals with whom alliance might be possible?
He goes on to suggest that secularists have been too occupied with church/state issues. Remember he’s thinking of the academy, really, here. So instead, he thinks they should be challenging postmodernist and postcolonial critiques of secularism: Berlinerblau regrets that
He also points out and regrets the rarity of sociological study of secular culture (something I think is starting to change now). He also recommends looking at secular art and artists, as a way of identifying new ways of talking about secularism.
So far so good. Whatever you think of this, it’s not without interest.
And then we get the lecture:
He gives no examples.
Now, he’s right of course. Secularists don’t always have to be antagonistic. And after all, in so far as his project involves professional academics and researchers, it’s going to need to observe professional codes of behaviour. So, fine, horses for courses. He doesn’t explore the circumstances where ‘antagonism’ might be beneficial, but he doesn’t explicitly say he never can be. What troubles me is his reference to “hatred”. That’s a strong word, you’d think he’d be able to back it up. But he doesn’t.
Again, he wants rigorous secularist engagement, in the academy, in debates that have hitherto been an ecumenical preserve. And that must mean quite a campaign against current practices. So this isn’t an argument for neglecting criticism at all:
Well, I like the sound of that. It should happen.
I understand that these “learned critics” are not going to be debunkers, that’s not how it works. They’re probably not going to much approve of the debunking approach outside the academy. They will probably even attack it. But that’s all OK, so long as they’re doing their job.
It’s worth quoting a few of his final paragraphs:
Agreed. So is Berlinerblau saying that his approach, involving academic elites, will succeed in that?
No. He thinks religious will never be eradicated. All the more reason, he suggests, to try to understand it better.
So OK. What “The Secular Bible” is, is a manifesto for reinvigorating secular intellectual critical study of religion in Universities. And in those terms, his prescriptions are probably the right ones.
I think we do need what he says we need, in Universities. And it will need to conduct itself in the way he suggests it will. It needn’t be antagonistic or debunking, I agree. And it can still “draw blood” that way.
What the book doesn’t have, in the current context, is any kind of detailed argument about what happens – or should happen – outside the academy. Sure, academics will need to behave in a particular way. Fine, I understand. But there’s no prescriptions here about how the likes of us should be going about our business. There’s a reference to “hatred” being bad, and I’m sure we’re all agreed that “hatred” is bad – unless we’re talking about stoning adulterers to death or some hideous crime like that. But Berlinerblau didn’t set out what he meant.
And so, frankly, if anyone does take up Berlinerblau on his rather arrogant “look, it’s all in my books, read them, then we can talk” invitation, certainly this book won’t shed much light. It’s about scholars, not about anyone outside that elite.
And it definitely doesn’t say that nobody should ever draw metaphorical religious blood. Quite the opposite.
Hope this helps.
Dan