Take That, Leon
Now this is satisfying. A lot of people telling the infuriating smug NY Times what a crap review that review by Wieseltier was. It would be all the more satisfying to see Wieseltier admit as much and express remorse and embarrassment at the horrible juvenile abusive spittle-flecked tone of it – but this is satisfying all the same.
Sam Harris:
Wieseltier writes with triumphal smugness about the “excesses of naturalism” that apparently blight Dennett’s work. He might as well have pointed out the “excesses of historical accuracy” or the “excesses of logical coherence.” If utter naturalism is a sin, it is one only from the point of view of religious faith — a faith that has grown ever more blinkered in Reason’s glare.
A philosopher at Duke:
There can be few better examples of the sort of protectionism about religion that Daniel Dennett wrestles with in “Breaking the Spell” than Leon Wieseltier’s shallow but interminable ad hominem rant…Nothing makes plainer the extent of Wieseltier’s protectionism about religion than his willingness to pay the price of treating science as just another optional philosophy…[I]t is a symptom of the millennial protectionism that Dennett so patiently and eloquently urges us to forgo at least long enough to examine religion as a natural phenomenon.
Dave Barash:
Asking Leon Wieseltier to review Daniel Dennett on religion is like asking Karl Rove to review Ralph Nader on politics. Wieseltier is one of those who, in Dennett’s terms, has “belief in belief.” Such individuals are hardly likely to provide a balanced — or even interesting — assessment of what it takes to break the spell that holds them in thrall.
And I love this one – Philip Blond and the millions like him, please note:
In his review of “Breaking the Spell,” Leon Wieseltier couldn’t resist the reflexive accusation that building a worldview on a scientific base is reductive, and as is often the case, he trotted out the existence of art to capture our sympathies. As a composer, I am weary of being commandeered as evidence of supernatural forces.
Ha! Yeah. That’s only a sample; read them all; very satisfying.
Yes, that last one is very good; slightly reminiscent of Brian trying not to be acclaimed as the Messiah in “Life of…”
I’m only sorry that NYTBR didn’t publish my lettr in praise of Wieseltier’s demolition of Dennett, but these ineffectual defenses of Dennett are almost as good in praise of Wieseltier. If Sam Harris thinks that naturalism is on the same footing as historical acccuracy or logical coherence, perhaps he is too blinded by “reason’s glare” to see naturalism’s blinkers — good for keeping investigations in the physical sciences from getting off topic, but not much else.
And please let us retire the flimflam that Dennett is only proposing the scientific study of religion: that’s been ongoing for some centuries now. Dennet’s proposal is that his version of Darwininian fundamentalism (the late S.J. Gould’s phrase) be taken as the story about religion. It is eminently possible that Darwininian fundamentalism and Ev Psych will go the way of Marxism and General Semantics, and be recognized as pseudo-science within a few decades — but I venture to predict that Jews will fulfill the mitzvah to regard themselves in every generation as if they themselves were redeemed from Egypt and celebrate the Passover for millennia to come. He who laffs last…
Why flimflam? Isn’t he saying we should stop making certain things off-limits to investigation? To be triumphal over the likelihood that religion will survive attacks on it for a long time to come is far from evidence that there is a reason not to subject it to extreme scrutiny.
Nutter alert! Who was that masked man who just puked on our blog?
Whatever, and I say again, *whatever* happens to science over the next few decades, it will never offer evidence to accept the tenets of any of the world’s major religions, because they are all offensive to a basic understanding of human reason and physical existence. What people *think* about that doesn’t matter at all. If it did, I’m sure Xians would already be on their way to solving America’s future energy needs with a prayer-powered SUV…
It may be, indeed, that the world descends into an abyss of unreason in the future. But the only people laughing about that would be the nutters, which gets us back to where we started.
Stewart, read again: scientific scrutiny of religion has been attempted for centuries (I am not excluding the Geisteswissenschaften) — ever read e.g. James or Durkheim? It is disingenous, at best, for Dennett to pretend that he is breaking a taboo or breaking new ground by proposing scientific investigation of religion when that’s already ongoing.
What’s new in his proposal is that memeticism and Darwinian fundamentalism (and possibly some ongoing neuroscientific research) are assumed to be the canonical approach to the subject. Remember too that this is supposed to be a proposal, however intrepid, for research — but that would hardly warrant taking for granted the results, except that Dennett has already fixed the outcome by stipulating that it must fit the Procrustean bed of his memeticism and Darwinian fundamentalism, which he does not call into question. Moreover, Dennett himself is more sports coat than lab coat: he has done no science in the book, which is belles-lettres, armchair storytelling — and the raconteur himself admits he is not well informed about the history of religion.
I heard a podcast in which he was asked if he wasn’t just an atheist scientist hostile to religion: he avowed his atheism, disavowed any hostility; and didn’t bother to point out that he isn’t a scientist, except possibly in the sense that James and Durkheim, Weber and Freud were, which is not the sense he’s talking about. Don’t mistake him for one, or scientism for science.
Dabodius – your point is…what? How does the history of storytelling interact with science. Puuuuullllheeeeze. Oh, just in case you think I’m a peripheral fruitcake.. Dennett is a scientist in a sence that your staw men never were. Freud..? For F~~k’s sake?
Dave, the great world religions don’t need the sciences to provide evidence for their tenets. And if “reason” is to be more than a rhetorical flag to wave, which is to say, if it is to be reason, it ought not be an unreasoning confusion of a totalizing naturalism with “a basic understanding of human reason and physical existence.” Our present-day account of the last may be close to unintelligible to a Jewish physicist a few centuries hence who will nonetheless be putting on tallit and tefillin, know why he his doing so, and know it has nothing to do with evidence from the sciences.
MikeS, quickly: Dennett is not doing science, except maybe in the sense that Freud was (and if you take a dim view of religion, you might enjoy his The Future of An Illusion.) He is telling a memetic story about religion, a subject he admits he does not know the history of very well. He isn’t making novel, falsifiable predictions that can be tested and corroborated against hard data, or obtaining such data; a better project might be to see how Darwinian fundamentalism and memeticism stand up under such empirical investigation.
And no, it wouldn’t occur to me to dismiss you (or him) as a “fruitcake.”
A Gutten Shabbos.
While we have a respite from Dabodius till three stars tomorrow night, I’d like to mention that nothing in religion has ever made sense to me. Trying to pick holes in one particular attack on it is hardly about to create sense where there was none before. Religion is a survivor? What’s new? Even an accurate prediction that it will be practiced centuries from now says nothing about it other than that it has a tendency to survive.
‘the great world religions don’t need the sciences to provide evidence for their tenets.’
Exactly, thats the whole point you dolt. They are illogical, contradictory bodies that work absent any real evidence. It’s that phenomenon Dennett was commenting on.
And your wrong about him not doing science, he is trying to set a stage where religion can be studied as a scientific enterprise. He is correct on this.
‘better project might be to see how Darwinian fundamentalism and memeticism stand up under such empirical investigation.’
This is just idiotic. I’m sorry but that is so beyond stupid I simply don’t see how one can hold such a blighted view. First you say Darwinian fundamentalism as if it was a religion. That shows your mindset. Then you ask how it stands up to empirical investigation as if it hasn’t. Ostrich in the sand, or head in the ass. Either way you are parlaying ignorance into vacous arguments and embarrasing yourself.
The further I get into Dennett’s book, the more astounded I am at some of the attacks on it I’ve already read. Maybe in one sense he is “pulling no punches,” but he’s also bending over backwards to be fair to religion, being completely outspoken about its positive aspects and stopping frequently to explain – very reasonably – why it might be necessary to scrutinise something more closely and giving those too offended to follow a farewell with regret and the hope they will reconsider and rejoin the journey. He qualifies things with such sensitivity that his attackers, in my eyes, are branding themselves as fanatics if they refuse to give him a hearing.
Stewart, the sciences have outlived epicycles, vital spirits, phlogiston, and the ether — don’t you think that if memes are ever accepted by normative science, they will sooner than later go the same way? I’m guessing you will outlive me: please rember our exchange in a few decades and ascertain whether electrons have outlived memes in the languages of theory. Dennett asks me to discard or degrade a priceless heirloom for a promissory note which may be traded for some decades, but in the end redeemed for nothing. As for his “sensitivity” and solicitude, he does sound like a gentleman — would that improve his counsel? Ethos persuades in company with logos.
The Babylonian Talmud (Berakot 61a), recounts how, as a measure in the Hadrianic persecutions, the Romans issued a decree forbidding the Jews to study Torah. One Pappus ben Judah witnessed Rabbi Akiba teaching Torah in public gatherings. “Don’t you fear the government, Akiba?,” he asked.
R. Akiba answered with a parable: ‘Once a fox was walking along the riverbank, and saw schools of fish darting about in the river. ‘What are you fleeing?,’ he asked them. ‘The fishermen’s nets,’ they answered. ‘You’d better come up here so we can live together in peace as our ancestors did,’ replied the fox. ‘You’re the cleverest of animals?,’ cried the fish.”You’re not, you’re foolish — and you’re not fooling us. If we are in danger in the element we live in, how much more in the element in which we would die!’ And R. Akiba quoted Deuteronomy 30:20: “For [Torah] is thy life and the length of thy days.”
The Romans took R. Akiba and tortured him to death; the faith of Israel outlasted the Roman Empire, and R. Akiba’s cause has defeated Hadrian’s. The fish are still rebuffing kind invitations from the riverbank by the fox’s posterity, one of whom has tenure at Tufts.