Ruse rhymes with loose, he says so himself
Just a little note to point out the consistent rudeness and inaccuracy (to put it politely) of Michael Ruse.
I read one of the responses to my recent piece on Darwinism and the problem of evil. One of the junior new atheists — that is to say, not one of the big four of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris — took extreme umbrage to my picking on him (even more umbrage at my not naming him by name) and my suggesting that absolute reality might not correspond exactly to his worldview.
No he didn’t. Any “umbrage” he took was a good deal less extreme than the umbrage Ruse routinely takes at (not to: at) a great many people and things but especially gnu atheists. “He” is Jason Rosenhouse. Jason starts by quoting Ruse on Giberson and Collins:
the book is intended to defend Christianity against the critics who argue that science and religion are incompatible. Expectedly, it has got all of the junior New Atheists jumping with joyous ire, and all over the blogs are stern condemnations: “this is not a good book” “the authors’s [sic] frequently murky prose”; “I was struck by just how unserious they are on this issue.” You get the idea.
Jason points out that all of those quotes come from his review of the book. Now that you know that, look again at what Ruse said. Typical of him, isn’t it. “The junior New Atheists,” as if it were hundreds of them, or even three, when in fact it was one. “You get the idea,” says Ruse, sloppily, and no doubt we do, but it’s a wrong idea. We get the idea that there are lots of gnu atheists jumping with joyous ire when in fact there is only one Jason, writing a reasoned review. “All over the blogs are stern condemnations”: by which he means one.
Jason says, mildly,
Apparently describing a pro-religion book as not good, or protesting that its prose is murky, is now a level of rhetoric vitriolic enough to get you dismissed as a New Atheist, if only a junior one. Of course, Ruse might have quoted the context surrounding those criticisms, since I rather clearly expressed regret that I found the book so inadequate and recommended a better book defending the same basic ideas. But that basic nod to fairness would have required conceding that I wasn’t just writing an angry screed.
Ruse doesn’t do basic nods to fairness. Ruse does rudeness and (to put it much too politely) inaccuracy.
Not on the Jason issue, but as a result of reading Ruse’s piece:
If you are violently opposed to stamp-collecting, the subject with which you are occupied is in fact stamp-collecting, which may mean that although you are opposed to the practice and may not actually collect any stamps, you may actually be a stamp-collector.
Hmmmm…
Here’s an attempted segue. (Had to check the spelling in the same dictionary that says rhymes-with-goose is acceptable pronunciation for attempting to deceive someone.) Ruse:
Now, I don’t imagine for a minute that Ruse actually thinks this. A reasonably well educated child wouldn’t actually think this, let alone a philosopher. He just thinks he can get away with it, seeing as he’s addressing regular PuffHo readers. He thinks he can say what he knows not to be true because he thinks he won’t be held to account. It reminded me of something Behe said in his diavlog with John McWhorter (which led Robert Wright to lose the association of Carl Zimmer and Sean Carroll). McWhorter has just raised the objection that the supposedly irreducibly complex bacterial flagellum actually shares components with type three secretion systems. Behe:
The analogy makes no sense whatsoever, and Behe, as a biochemist, would never actually use it. But he calculates that McWhorter will have limited knowledge of molecular cell biology, and that he might accept this crap as somehow dismissing the objection.
Partners in intellectual dishonesty.
Yes, and since I’m a carnivore I’m another kind of vegetarian, the kind that doesn’t not eat meat.
So Michael Ruse basically objects to the fact that people want to be attributed when he quotes them?
*blink*
Is he backtracking from his previous claims. As far as I can remember he was criticised for saying that simply teaching something that contradicted a religious text (for instance stating that the natural biological world came about in a gradual process over billions of years) would be a violation of the church state separation in the US.
Who the hell advocates directly teaching negative things about ‘God’ (or indeed the other gods)in a classroom setting? None of the evolutionary biologist gnus have been advocating teaching atheism in highschool, merely that we should stick to methodological naturalism in a teaching context when dealing with the subject of biology – as we do with the other sciences. There is simply no need for the GOd hypothesis in biology classrooms so there is nee need to mention it, one way or the other.
From Ruse’s point of view, there is negligible difference between the following statements:
1. The age of the universe is about 14 billion years.
2. God does not exist.
3. All Christians must now proceed to the internment camps.
Therefore, he would not consider his recent statement to be backtracking — merely saying the same thing in a slightly different way.
Oh my god, it’s worse than all that. The thrust of the piece seems to be: Rosenhouse’s response was “bitter”, and religious people are bitter about stuff, therefore New Atheism is a religion. QED.
Even leaving aside his gross mischaracterization of Jason’s post, that’s just, just… what is wrong with this guy??!?
Really, Ruse is such a jerk, and his inability to argue simple points simply makes one cringe. But to be so sloppy — ‘you know what I mean’ and all that — is unforgiveable in a philosopher. And for him to say that he thinks the new atheism is a philosophy, though he does not mean this as praise, and not a religion, and that would not be meant as criticism, is simply beyond reason silly. I have a sneaking idea that he thinks that is as clever as Kant’s “Perception without thought is empty, thought without perception is blind,” but, if that is what he thinks, he thinks wrong.
One argument which he gets so disastrously wrong is where he asks whether those who oppose religion are also religious. He doesn’t come to a clear conclusion, but his words are suggestive — and it shows how important it is to try arguments on other premises. Here’s the point:
Now, this is silly, even by Ruse’s low standards. Try it with commuism. “If you keep harping on and on about communism, even though denying its truth, I suspect you are giving a good clue about whether you are communist or not.” Come on Ruse, the Cold War lasted, what?, 44-45 years, duing which people harped on and on about commuism (or capitalism). Did that make Reagen a communist? Or Nixon? Or JFK? Or Eisenhauer? Really, Ruse must try to do better than this. On the other hand, witnessing his complete inability to deal with simple argumentation, one might see a reason why he does not think calling something a philosophy is not, for him, a term of praise.
Of course, he’s not only a jerk, he’s a nasty one. Why doesn’t he grow up? Or, has he already begun the childhood of old age?
Sorry, double negative in the penultimate paragraph, noticed too late.
This is silly even by Ruse’s standards of intellectual discourse. Such a teaching would obviously NOT be in conflict with the first amendment since it not a religious proposition but happens to be a scientific one and therefore completely outside the scope of the amendment. It seems to me there are two possibilities here: either Ruse is, as Eric suggests, entering his dotage and becoming just a grumpy, disoriented old man or he is angling for a Templeton prize.
Maybe he was remembering all the religious gay-baiters who got caught being non-heterosexual themselves and thought one could extrapolate that to anything.
I just went over the comments, Stewart, and realised that you had already said, in essence, what I did. Didn’t mean to say something that had already been said! Ruse just seems to me to be a sloppy thinker. Since he’s so down on the Gnus, maybe he is one himself without realising it!
It’s well worth saying more than once. We know for a fact that Ruse knows better than this – so it’s well worth saying over and over.
I think the first few of us were saying the same thing because we were all bowled over by the imbecility of Ruse’s attempt, nay, insistence on having his cake and eating it even when he is obviously not in possession of a single cake. His point is, basically, that if the facts seem to favour his take on things, great. And if they don’t, he will simply invent a silly way to invert everything and – voila! – the result he wanted.
And if they don’t, he will simply invent a silly way to invert everything and – voila! – the result he wanted.
Sounds like Freudian psychology.
Wait, does that mean that Michael Ruse (and Josh, and all the other Gnu-bashers) is a New Atheist?
Ha! Well spotted, Scote. Of course it does. Ruse, Rosenau, Brown, Vernon, Fraser, Mooney, Smith – they’re all gnu atheists!
I prefer to think of them as Agnustics. “New Atheists? I don’t know about those folks…”
“Agnustics” is hilarious. Almost too funny to use on that turgid bunch.
“
Now, this is silly, even by Ruse’s low standards. Try it with commuism. “If you keep harping on and on about communism, even though denying its truth, I suspect you are giving a good clue about whether you are communist or not.”
– You’re not doing it right. “If you keep harping on and on about communism, even though denying its truth, I suspect you are giving a good clue about whether you are political or not.”
He’s not saying “If you keep harping on and on about Christianity, even though denying its truth, I suspect you are giving a good clue about whether you are Christian or not.”
but “If you keep harping on and on about Christianity, even though denying its truth, I suspect you are giving a good clue about whether you are religious* or not.”
By which he means “Have a religious position”
Thing is it’s all a matter of definition. And there is no “correct” definition of a word, there are only different definitions, and consistency is the only thing that matters.
It’s ridiculous that he goes to such lengths to define you are religious, and it’s ridiculous that you go to such lengths to define yourself as not religious.
If religion is defined as “Worships a supernatural higher power” then you are not religious, nor are many Buddhists. If religion is defined as “Has an unprovable belief about the supernatural” then you are religious as are the Buddhists.
Uh, no. Atheists have an unprovable **lack** of belief in all gods. Not equivalent. Of course, if you define “Stamp Collecting” as any opinion on stamp collecting then not collecting stamps is stamp collecting.
And, BTW, it **is** possible to disprove many concepts of gods. The idea of an all powerful, all loving and all knowing god is easily disproved by unnecessary suffering. Many people’s idea of the Christian god is easily disproved by this proof by contradiction.
Thanks for saving me the trouble of posting this myself!
<i>”Uh, no. Atheists have an unprovable **lack** of belief in all gods. Not equivalent. Of course, if you define “Stamp Collecting” as any opinion on stamp collecting then not collecting stamps is stamp collecting.”</i>
Sigh. Yes, if you prefer Atheists have an undefendable **lack** of belief in Gods. Ditto the Buddhists in the example. The point being that words can be defined as needed, as long as there is consistency – you win no points by responding “Actually, no, I define them differently here” – yes, yes you do and it’s perfectly reasonable.
<i>”Of course, if you define “Stamp Collecting” as any opinion on stamp collecting then not collecting stamps is stamp collecting”</i>
Despite the likely sarcastic nature of this sentence you are of course entirely literally right. Of course your example is tendentious and could be more readably put: “If you define “Religion” as having an unprovable position whether you should stamp collect then both stamp collectors and stamp a-collectors have a religion”
<i>”And, BTW, it **is** possible to disprove many concepts of gods. The idea of an all powerful, all loving and all knowing god is easily disproved by unnecessary suffering. Many people’s idea of the Christian god is easily disproved by this proof by contradiction.”</i>
Of course it is not that simple. The final sentence is correct. The first two are nonsense – but you will not understand that unless you realise that ‘all-powerful’, ‘all-loving’ and ‘all-knowing’ are not rigorously defined concepts (and definition is of course relative) – and the Logical Problem of Evil can be dispensed of with a simple sentence “Evil exists for a good but unknown reason”. The <i>evidential</i> problem of Evil is far trickier for the individual believer, but has no applicability to the wider case for the possibility of the existence of God.
Jason – but I’d rather read your version!