Another one
Here is another…can we say quisling? If they call us aggressive new atheists, can we call them quislings? Here is another quisling atheist moaning about how boring and boring the gnu* atheists are. It’s Caspar Melville of the New Humanist, I’m sorry to say – I like the NH.
He doesn’t say anything of substance – just offers a strawman version of gnu atheism and says it’s bad, even though it did some good, but now let’s move on. It’s lazy, tiresome stuff, which is particularly annoying coming from someone who is, as far as I know, an atheist himself.
Paula Kirby sums it up nicely:
It is disappointing when someone who is meant to be on the side of reason and humanism simply regurgitates the sillier claims of those who are desperate to oppose them.
Yes it is, and it happens every few minutes, these days.
*Insincere apologies to Michael De Dora
Indeed! it looks like the temptation to show the world that you are morally superior to both, the evil gnu atheists and the gentle believers is too hard to resist.
Yes, you can say quisling.
I’m seeing a pattern. It seems to be those who are ego-tripping on personal embrace by “interfaith” coalitions.
It’s deja vu for me, having been watching in dismay for years now the Democrats making the same mistake. Forever thinking if we just give a little more ground… just a little more ground… the Republicans will love us and suppor our bills. So we censor courageous speech by our own movements, mouth unity pablum, give away the farm, and become our own worst enemies. How’s that workin’ for us?
Our very existence offends our opponents. Chasing some perfect tone that will charm them is a hopeless enterprise.
And insulting so many of us who’ve given so much energy and momentum to profoundly serious issues… because he’s BORED? If he’s bored, he needs to quit blaming others for it, accept he’s a burn-out, step down and get a shiny red convertible. There’s plenty of us who would be happy to fill his privileged spot, who think fighting for a more rational and just world is pretty damn important.
Good God—I can’t believe this. He’s making the Courtier’s Reply:
Has Melville actually read The God Delusion, God is not Great, or the other works of Gnu Atheism? Because if he did he would see that they do in fact deal with many, many theological arguments despite what Dawkins quipped about the relevance of theology. And I’ve read Eagleton, Haught, Armstrong, and other more “sophisticated” theologians, and I haven’t seen them come up with any arguments for God that are better than those demolished in G.A. books.
In the end, no matter how sophisticated the theologian, the faithful can adduce no convincing evidence for their beliefs, nor can they explain all the different contradictory things that the failthful see as “truth”. Perhaps Melville can direct us to some of the convincing evidence for God, Jesus, and Mohamed that Dawkins et al. have overlooked?
As Hitchens said, what can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof. The Gnu Atheists have, in fact, gone a lot further than that, dismissing religious arguments after due consideration.
Melville is a huge disappointment.
I think these guys are a little bit in love with faith. They still believe in belief even though they’re atheists.
Each time this happens, I more and more appreciate Hitchen’s call to arms. Faith is a vice, not a virtue.
In his recent debate with Berlinski he very elequently condemns faith for what it is and ranks as the “one thing” if could do just one thing, separating the idea of faith from virtue, “once and for good.”
Cripes — he starts off reasonable, then loses his mind.
The thing is, it’s very true that Gnu Atheism is good for some things, and lousy for others. So is a hammer, and I certainly wouldn’t advocate using a corkscrew to drive in nails. That’s all fine.
Where he loses it is when he, like so many other well-meaning but strategically-challenged individuals, starts thinking that atheists can “make an alliance” with religious “moderates” against the fundamentalists. That’s an obvious approach, and one that seems, on the surface, to be the most reasonable one — but it’s also doomed from the start.
Because an alliance implies semi-equal partnership, which means acceding that religion is a “valid way of knowing.” And if that’s the case, then the people who “know” best from it would be the fundamentalists — the ones who practice the actual method, in other words, not the ones who subscribe to a watered-down, pastel version. And if that’s the case, what we’re really agreeing is that the fundamentalists and the Gnu Athest scienc-y people need to continue to duke it out, because the “moderates” have no input other than sheer numbers and votes.
Now, numbers and votes are important, but they’re looking to others to tell them what to do with those things. If we tell them that religion is a “valid way of knowing,” well, there are any number of hard-case fundamentalists who are happy to explain why a woman’s body belongs to God, rather than to her.
The only way out of that pickle, in the long term, is to deny that religion is a “valid way of knowing.” And that means angering the “moderates” (what a lot of people like Melville and DaDora like to call “throwing out the baby with the bathwater”). And that’s the Gnu Atheist approach.
QED.
‘Terry eagleton says, “Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.” Put this way, Eagleton seems right. I agree with him, too.’
I thought Dawkins was arguing about the existence of God, not theology.
Exactly. I’m used to hearing this silly criticism from theists, as if we objecting nontheists are busily debating the pre-and post-Vatican II views on transubstantiation. But it’s really disturbing to hear an atheist make the same illogical, false analogy.
Theists claim they want everyone to contemplate the existence and nature of their god, by no means wishing it left in the hands of theologians… unless someone reaches an undesirable conclusion. The perfect catch-22 — only theologians are equipped to challenge popular notions of the existence and nature of god — the very group least likely to be objective.
@ 4 & 5
Precisely right. The whole point Dawkins makes—the point that so many of us make time and time again—is that Theology is essentially a fraudulent “discipline.” It’s woo, plain woo. It’s like arguing about just how humankind should address itself to the underground Leprechaun population. Write all the tomes you want about the nature of our little friends who mean us no harm—but the fact is you haven’t demonstrated that such a population of Leprechauns even exists. Leprechaun “theology,” therefore, is neither here nor there. Being an expert in bullshit should impress no one. It’s surprising that someone who writes for New Humanist doesn’t get this.
In Melville’s (and, sadly, Eagleton’s) defense, I’ve heard any number of atheists trying to debate specific points of Biblical doctrine as lacking internal consistency, and failing miserably because they lacked even a passing knowledge of what the Bible actully says. They come across equally as pathetic as the Creationists who spout nonsense about junkyard 747s do.
That’s a very far cry from what Dawkins is talking about.
So the moral of the story is, if an atheist is going to use the Dawkins Defense, he or she needs to stick to religion as a general construct. If for some reason a nonbeliever have to start looking at individual parts of the Bible and pointing out specific problems, then that person has already descended to talking theology, and the Dawkins Defense no longer covers him or her. At that point, they’d need to take a hint from Melville and make sure they actually have some knowledge of the topic they’re trying to debate.
Otherwise known as “R.W.S.” (Robert Wright Syndrome).
I submitted ‘gnu atheist’ to the Urban Dictionary but it got rejected, presumably because it didn’t refer to arcane computer jargon or a bodily function.
Spoil sports!
I think it is important to keep these things in perspective, and I think there is a temptation — I feel it myself — to think of this as a matter of “sides”, in Paula Kirby’s words, “the side of reason and humanism” and the side of those who are opposed to reason and humanism. But, surely, no one can count Richard Norman as someone who is opposed to reason and humanism. And Caspar Melville quotes from Norman to reasonable effect, I think. Not the business about alliances with moderate religionists, but the matter of religion as a human creation, of holding a mirror up to humanity, and seeing themselves reflected in it. Even moderate religionists are scarcely going to be convinced by this interpretation of their beliefs, unless they happen to be like Richard Holloway or Don Cupitt, both of whom see religion as a human creation, and (in precisely Norman’s way) as reflecting something of the nature of what it means to be human.
I have said before, and I will say again, that I think Dawkins is wrong in supposing that theology is completely empty. He compares it to Fairy-ology, and there may be some truth in this, but even the stories of fairies and gnomes may contain something of human interest, as Grimm’s fairy tales still do. As with any myth, the Christian myth or the Muslim myth, or the myths of the Hindus, reflect something of our humaniy, in the same way that Freud or Jung used the Greek myths to understand something of the structure and complexity of human existence. Dawkins, I think, mistakenly thinks of theology as a matter of proving the existence of god, and most theology isn’t about that at all. It’s a reverent study of the religious myths as told in the religious scriptures. This is perhaps no recommendation for the truth of theology, but it would odd to deny that there is, within theology, a long history of humanity’s wrestling with its own nature.
What is less forgiveable, however, is Melville’s interpretation of what he calls the “New Atheism”.
As I say, I think perhaps Dawkins, for polemical reasons, mischaracterises theology. But surely it is not wrong to say, as Hitchens does say, that “religion poisons everything,” in the sense in which Hitchens says and means this, namely, that religion, understood in a reasonably normative way as belief in supernatural entities and their intervention in human affairs, opens itself at once to the criticism that it encourages belief in entities for which there is no evidence, using forms of thought which seriously undermine people’s ability to think rationally and critically. For the problem is, if there is no critical basis upon which to hold any particular religious belief true, how does one go about making distinctions between acceptable and unacceptable forms of belief? Some might suggest basing acceptance of belief on the basis of the religion which provides the most morally acceptable face of belief, but if you tie morality to belief, how is this to be done?
No one is suggesting, as Melville does, that only science can answer our questions, if by that is meant physics, chemistry, biology and the other natural sciences. But they are suggesting that critical thought, which is reliant on evidence, even the evidence that can be required of someone in their interpretation of a poem, for exmaple, is the only reliable basis upon which to found our lives. Even theology must restrict itself to this, and if it chooses to go beyond it, to make claims for which there is no reasonable or critical evidence, then it is right to hold it up to severe criticism.
And this is precisely where the question of the foundation of modern theology comes in, for modern theology, insofar as it seeks to be a critical discipline, uses interpretation or hermeneutics as a way in which to reestablish forms of thought which have been undermined by science and philosophy. It has taken texts which, on the kindest of readings, are texts of terror (as the biblical scholar Phyllis Trible called them), and interprets them in ways that tries to make these primitive and often brutal tales beathe the air of sweet reasonableness. As Hector Avalos points out, it would be quite possible to take Mein Kampf, and with clever hermeneutics, show it to be relevant to our times. This has been done with some of the most bloodthirsty passages from the Hebrew Bible or the Christian New Testament, so it is not an absurd proposal, but if it is not, then it shows that theology itself is without any critical basis.
To take a simple example, consider the story of Abraham and what has come down to us as “the sacrifice of Isaac,” what the Jews call the Akedah, or binding of Isaac. Many interpreters will tell you that this is an especially important text, for in this text we see a movement from the belief that god requires the sacrifice of our children to the contrary belief that this is not required, and that a substitute sacrifice will do. But this misses, as Richard Holloway points out, the whole point of the story, which is to make it clear that when God commands we are required to obey. The fact that the Jews can read this story as the story of the substitutability of child sacrifice by animal sacrifice, misses the point, that Abraham is shown as prepared to do, in obedience, what god commands, and that what god commands is a horrible, inhuman deed. And it should never be forgotten that, even so, the first fruits are still required, only that now a substitution may be made for children. The reinterpretation of the story hides the more troublesome claim that obedience to god is our first duty. There is nothing in the story to suggest that at some time god might not require of us the full measure of obedience once again, and demand the sacrifice of our children. The story, however interpreted, is still one that carries with it the taint of servility to the unverifiable commands of unverifiable beings telling us to do immoral things, and how we must be willing to obey.
And is it not child abuse to impose such a belief system upon a child, many of whom are told, in all seriousness and horror, that for the failure to obey god’s commands, they will suffer in hellfire for ever? Is this not an abusive thing to do? And the present pope is one who has reiterated the Roman catholic belief that hell is a real place of torment, not just a state of non-being. For if the righteous are raised to everlasting life, the damned must be raised, it seems, to a life of torment. Is it not a form of abuse to teach a child such a horrific thing?
And, have any New Atheists ever said — and, if so, where have they said it — that “moderate religious believers are worse than fundamentalists because they prepare the ground for extremism”? Or what New Atheists have simply said — and I am speaking of those who have written books on the subject, that all believers in god are basically stupid? Caspar Melville, while defending and attacking, should get his facts right, and if they have said these things, he is bound to provide evidence for the claims being made.
When, in 2006, the Archbishop of Canterbury argued before the House of Lords, what I consider to be a shockingly misguided speech, full of non-sequiturs, and slanderous claims about those who support assisted dying, that those dying in misery should not be allowed to choose to receive assistance in dying, the faith that I had held, deeply wounded as it already was, after many years of trying to play the hemeneutic game, simply disappeared like mist in hot sunlight, and the first act that I performed, the very day that I read the speech, was to cut up into little tiny pieces my theological Master of Divinity diploma. As I did it I said that, since theology is clearly not a field of knowledge, no degrees in theology can be valid. I no longer acknowledge that degree, and I think I am right. I will not say that studying biblical hermeneutics and theologial morality and other things taught me nothing, but it cannot teach what it propose to teach, namely, knowledge of god, which is what the word means. To this extent Dawkins is undoubtedly right, and since he did not propose to do anything called theology — though it might justly be called philosophical theology (and how well or ill he did it might be subject to debate) — it is ridiculous of Eagleton to have rebuked him for not having read Scotus or Occam. In this connexion let me quote from PF Strawsons masterful book on Kant, The Bounds of Sense. He begins his chapter succinctly entitled “God” thus:
This has always struck me as richly entertaining, even when I read it first in 1966. The point is an important one. There is nothing here for philosophy to say. Of course, there are all the very detailed arguments worked over by philosophers ever since Plato, which still forms a significant seam in contemporary philosophy, which, because of a resurgence of religious belief is still not able to shake off this incubus. But surely Dennett is right in supposing that there really isn’t much here that is going to convince either side in the argument. It is doubtful that the arguments have ever led anyone to faith, though they may have led many away. This seems to be the implication of the success of Dawkins’ book. But to suggest that he should have added to his book a subtle disquistion on the theological riches of Scotus of Occam is really silly, and Melville should be able to see how silly it is. Eagleton, as is his wont, was showing off, but he didn’t tell us what he thought a divagation through the entrails of Occam would do for Dawkins’ book, and until he has done this, it is just a little piece of fizzling academic pyrotechics that didn’t really work.
What does all this text amount to? Well, to this. Melville is enormously unfair in his characterisation of what he calls the “New Atheism.” And of course, obviously, we can’t go on regurgitating the same things that Dawkins, Harris, Grayling, Dennett and Hitchens have already said. We need to work out new paths to explore, and new ways to recommend unbelief to the enormous numbers of people for whom faith has simply died. There are already such ways available, by the way. Humanism is not a bad option, where people can learn, not only about non-belief, but how non-belief can provide a basis upon which to live a good life. Grayling’s books, What is Good?, and To Set Prometheus Free, are not bad places to start, as is Richard Norman’s book on humanism. I am particularly taken with Peter Cave’s Humanism, in the “Beginner’s Guide” series of books published by Oneworld. For the editor of New Humanist to suggest that the “New Atheism” is simply a ceaseless recapitulation of the views of those who made atheism a household word is silly. This was just the beginning, and some of the fruit of that very successful beginning can be seen in the great protest against the pope in London, where there was clear evidence of large numbers of people who want to stand up and insist on the continuing value of secularism at a time when religion is increasingly insisting, not only on having a voice in public affairs, but in receiving a kind of respect that it does not deserve.
I have nothing to add to Eric’s excellent comment – I agree with almost all of it and will point my own readers to it. I’ll just add something anyway. :)
It causes me dismay when our own side keeps shooting itself in the foot. I see this every day, and it’s bloody disheartening.
By all means disagree with Richard Dawkins about something specific – I do all the time, and Eric does above (and I agree with Eric on this particular point more than with Richard). If people on our side seem to overreach on something specific, don’t join in with them on that specific thing, and say something quite specific if you really have to. E.g. Julian Baggini didn’t have to say anything in public the other day, he could have just declined to sign the letter about the pope’s visit, and perhaps explained why in private to the people who were organising the letter. But if he really felt he must give a public explanation for his private decision, he could have said that he agrees with various points in the letter but also thinks, on balance, that it’s overreaching to ask that the papal visit not go ahead at all. That seems to be his real point of disagreement, and it’s an arguable one (I don’t think I agree with him in this case, but I do agree that there’s sometimes a temptation for any movement, or whatever, to make overreaching claims or demands, and I wouldn’t have been upset if Julian had expressed the opinion that this was one of those times). Instead, though, we see Julian launching into a generalised attack on his own allies as if we are somehow fomenting ugliness and violence: all of this was counterproductive.
When we start denigrating our own people and telling them they’re not doing it right, must move on to a new paradigm already, etc., as opposed to expressing reasonable disagreement on specific issues, we’re being destructive of our own cause.
Sure, much of what Richard, for example, is saying is not new. Um, that’s (one reason at least) why we’re wary of the expression “New Atheism”. What’s new is the interest of major trade publishers, the mass media, and the public in the sorts of viewpoints that are being expressed by the gnu atheists. Each individual, such as Richard, adds only incrementally to the accrued wisdom of our “side”, but each increment is valuable, and the current opportunity, which we’ve had for only about six or seven years so far, to get our message out to the public is too precious to squander on quarrels with each other. There are plenty of people who’d like to put the lid on that opportunity, partly by attacking our credibility. Every time someone as significant to our cause as Caspar Melville or Julian Baggini buys into that, it’s not just one more opportunity lost to communicate our real message: it’s one more bit of unnecessary damage done to the people who are seizing the opportunity and doing the job.
I nominate Russell as the official Gnu Atheist Good Cop liaison to accommodationists and related naysayers.
Kirth — (1) Can you provide examples of atheists claiming inconsistency in the Bible that turned out to be actual consistencies? (2) Even if you came across *some* atheists who turned out to be wrong on these points, why does it mean you can support Eagleton’s Courtier’s Reply, even in sadness, as a defense against writers who *have* done their homework? (3) I don’t see what is wrong with rejecting theology in principle *and* pointing out errors or inconsistencies in someone’s specific theological statements.
I have never been tempted to read theology for the same reason Dawkins largely ignores it. In 1962 I had my first debate about the existence of a god. My view then, as now, was that the idea had to overcome initial improbability; rather than being receptive until I’d examined more closely, I was dismissive until I could be persuaded that what sounded like rather ordinary human storytelling was something more.
I say the above because I’m fascinated by what appear to be — at least, very often — great differences between lifelong atheists and those who struggled with belief before giving it up much later in life. I think of it as the “dismissiveness gap”; the longer someone has been religious, the more they seem to make of the “long history of humanity’s wrestling with its own nature”, reading deeply & searching within, only to come out of it with viewpoints closely resembling those of us who never bothered to take religion seriously in the first place, yet still a bit defensive when some of the more strident (Gnu) of us proclaim “Move along; there is nothing here.” (It reminds me of the way apologists like David Hart seem to want us to have suffered along the path to unbelief; mere dismissal seems so shallow.)
The reason versus faith debate is great, and we should continue to fight the fight, but I’d sure like to see a study of the “lifers and the converted” among atheists! Anybody know of one?
I find the fact that Melville views Eagleton’s analogy so persuasive as illustrative of the divide we are seeing in atheism today. Melville comes from a humanities background, something that is common to a lot of who Dawkins has aptly described as the ‘but-heads’. The majority (although not all) of the prominent new atheists are from a science background and I think this makes for an important difference in viewpoint and attitude. I am a scientist too and when I hear Eagletons analogy of someone who is a biologist talking biology to someone who has only read the ‘British Book of Birds’ my first thought is not someone who knows nothing, but someone who has some limited knowledge of a real subject. A more apt analogy would be talking biology with someone who has only read the ‘British Book of Ghosts’ – or to be more fair, someone who has only read Homer, or a book of Scandinavian mythology.
To a biologist like Dawkins, his own knowledge of the workings of quantum mechanics might be so limited, compared to the likes of Stephen Hawking, that it is analogous to the reader of ‘The Book of British Birds’ but Dawkins will know that the subject has been rigorously scrutinized and peer reviewed. It is acknowledged – though empirical testing – to have real and verifiable consequences in the real world and allows for highly accurate predictions to be made and examined. The same is true for many other parts of science – the physicist knows little about the workings of genomics or population genetics but should realize that these are testable subjects of knowledge.
The sort of Po-Mo attitude that pervaded the humanities never reached the sciences (apart, perhaps, from anthropology or history) and indeed was eventually scuppered by the intervention of a new atheist – Sokal (he gave a talk last year in Stockholm where he came out clearly on the side of religion being incompatible with science – so I’m including him on our side). I do wonder whether the demographic shift in public atheism – from a humanities based philosophy to a more scientific based philosophy is causing a gnashing of teeth from the old guard and that is what we are seeing in the recent spate of tut-tutting articles.
But it hasn’t been scuppered. That’s no small part of the problem. It’s escaped into the media and politics where it is doing harm in a way that, for all their fantasies of revolution, academics really couldn’t.
I would recommend some reading of theology to all. I dip into it occasionally, and it can be very entertaining. It may not have any subject matter, but then neither do studies of how many times Dr Watson was married or how long it would take for the Enterprise to cross the galaxy. Think of it as the fanzine productions of god fandom. It also helps when reading the likes of Eagleton, because if you find him funny without being familiar with theology you will find him hilarious once you’ve got some Aquinas under your belt.
To follow up on what Ken recommends, I would suggest reading “A History of Western Philosophy” by Bertrand Russell. He covers many of the historically famous theologians – Augustus, Aquinus, Dunn Scotus, etc, that are frequently referred to by modern apologeticists. The book is also interesting as a historical text in itself, being written during the second world war and having several references within it to the regimes of the USSR and Nazi germany (strangely enough, Russell doesn’t seem to consider Germany as being an atheist state!).
Eric says “…but it would odd to deny that there is, within theology, a long history of humanity’s wrestling with its own nature.”
While it seems true that human nature supposes itself to be supernatural, it is nevertheless in that regard mistaken. Theology doesn’t wrestle with that mistaken supposition. It elaborates it. It is devotion to ignorance.
Ken illustrates one of the more bizarre problems with debating and such with religionists – each sect has “fan fiction” – stories that go beyond the standard bible or whatever document is “official”. I can’t remember the details, but think of the (mis)interpretation of the bit about James being Jesus’ brother.
Sailor1031. Since what you say is prefaced by a quotation from me, I feel the need to answer you. You say:
Well, if you must be a literalist, there’s really not much to say, and if you think that the question of what it means to be human is merely a question of what point or purpose there is in the “creation” of human beings — since your questions presuppose some sort of teleological notion of meaning — then of course there is no meaning. We are happenstance. That’s fairly evident, and that is one reason why theological tales, such as the Westminster Confession’s: “What is the chief end of man?” — “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever,” as the shorter Westminster catechism has it, really consist in nothing but empty words.
But this doesn’t mean that each of us does not, in some sense, seek to give our lives meaning and purpose, purely human meaning and purpose. And since religion is a human creation, it is not obvious that it doesn’t include insights that may be useful in achieving this personal life project, not in the religious sense of binding ourselves to primitive prescriptions or prohibitions, but in the sense that thousands of years of human effort in understanding what it is to live a good life may not have been entirely wasted, even if the most important thing we can learn from all that effort is how not to do it.
This is at least partly what I take from Hitchen’s point that the criticism of religion is, in some sense, the beginning of criticism, or, as Marx says, the prerequisite of all criticism, but he makes the point in the context of what Marx says in his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, and in that connexion he says:
And then he gives the full quotation from which the oft repeated ‘religion is the opium of the people’ is taken, where Marx shows a great sensitivity to the function of religious believing. He sees how religion functions as “the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, … the spirit of a spiritless situation.” And then he goes on to say how it is necessary to change the condition which requires the illusions of religion, and the purpose of criticism is not simply to destroy the illusions, the halo of this vale of woe. What criticism does is to pluck the imaginary flowers (of religion) from the chains that bind us, not, Marx says, “so that man will wear the chain without any fantasy or consolation,” but so that, seeing the chain (because of critcism), we may throw off the chain, and pluck the living flower.
And Hitchen’s point is very much the same, which is why, perhaps, in the Four Horsemen DVD, he says he would be disappointed if religion were to disappear altogether. The reason is that Hitchens, while thinking of religion rightly as something that poisons everything, also recognises the human function that religion serves. Take his comment on Antigone (in Sophocles’ play of that name), who stood up against the tyrant Creon who had decreed that her brother’s body should remain unburied.
He is remarking on his disappointment that Orwell did not feel some sensitivity about the burning of churches in Catalonia in 1939, and he remarks:
This, it seems to me, is an important acknowledgement that, though we find no truth in what these religions teach, and indeed find much that is ugly, we acknowledge them as human, and as worthy of respect for that reason alone. We do not respect them as systems of thought, for they have no coherence as systems of thought; they are not grounded in reality. But they are grounded in human need, and if we are to provide alternatives to religion which will not bring about the continuing destruction that religion causes, we must both understand what is so wrong with religion, but also what makes religion so powerful as an expression that need.
To address the question of human need: there is a need to belong and it is as distortable as any other need. Hence, that search for the Oceanic Feeling, consensus, not offending, and communism/totalitarianism with a few neglected besides. This is why we are not to criticise: what, deny another’s need to belong! Well, you belong. Family member, citizen, colleague, human being plus a few neglected besides. We might ask if this is operative in our thinking. It is powerful and operating right here, I might add. You just can’t help offending the religious. The religious, however, cannot grasp the offensiveness of “God Wills It”, shaking and quaking before nothing, deference, fawning devotion and obedience to self-styled authorities of zip and zero. But we get along as long as no one abuses and misuses. We get along because of secularism and tolerance, ideas (among others )that are inimical to theology in practice, political theology. Secular democracy, it should be recalled and argued, is a form of government that allows its enemies to have their say. So, we say as atheists what we have to say and in many cases we are genuinely sorry if it offends while in others we might be content with the offense.
@Quotes from Dawkins and Eagleton – so, the fellow can’t make up his mind about biology and theology! Why pay this much attention to some one who can’t tell the difference between birds, bees, and fairies?
CharlesB, just in case you wonder, I’m not opposed to offending the religious. In fact, I am all in favour of it, which is why I find Caspar Melville’s response to the “New Atheism” so frustrating. And I suppose some of the sense of belonging that religion provides is, as you suggest, a sense of belonging that is, in effect, totalitarian in its emphasis, the satisfaction of feeling that you are on the winning side. And if that is indeed so — and there is some evidence that it is — then we need to do more than offend. But I think we have to show this first, namely that religious belonging is effectively totalitarian, that whatever it is in human beings that religion captures, inevitably leads to totalising social arrangements. And if it is, then it needs to be rather brusquely disposed of. Certainly, in its monotheistic variants, it seems to be so, for monotheism is totalising in a way that polytheism never was.
This may be a task for “New Atheism” to undertake very seriously, seeking, not only to show that belief in “things which made the things for which there is no known maker” is really groundless, as the clever little comic posted by Ophelia makes very clear, but to show that believing in such things is detrimental to human community. Hector Avalos makes a good start on this in his book Fighting Words, (which, by the way, has an excellent account of the relationship between Nazism and religions of the book), but it is probably something that needs to be done at greater depth. And there is presumably lots of scope for empirical studies here as well. I think there is probably also scope for someone to take a look at some recent “non-realist”, liberal theology, to see what it is that still attracts non-believers to religious forms of belief and community. By any standard Don Cupitt and Richard Holloway are atheists, and yet they continue to write theologising books. Is this just nostalgia, or is there something more?
But if Marx is right, and religion is really an illusion to make up for something that can be provided in another way, a way that is more peaceful and satisfying, because not based on false illusions and hopes, then it would be well for us to discover what this is, because, just at the moment, religion looks very likely to make a big mess of things, and it would be nice to head this particular denouement off, if it were possible. Marx was apparently wrong, but not all that wrong, after all, because, if we look at people in places like the Scandanavian countries, which are largely irreligious, it seems that life for them tends to be largely satisfying. It is in places like the US, for example, where there is a great deal of insecurity for millions of people who live on the edge of poverty, that religion seems to be flourishing. This suggests that, to some extent at least, whilst Marx’s particular solution to the problem seems not to work very well, still his diagnosis is not too far off, and that people who are not wage slaves, and have some personal investment in their society, are much more likely to find life in the world more tolerable, and will not put so much emphasis on a life to come, as so many of the religious do.
[…] h/t: Butterflies and Wheels […]
Eric:
Whenever I see posts like this here or over at WEIT, I find myself hoping that you will show up.
I continue to learn from you, and you continue to send me to new places in the furtherance of my own education.
So. Consider this a mash-note, as it were. Not that we’re always in 100% accord, only that what you say always is well thought-out, based on deep knowledge, and resonates.
Thanks.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, Russell Blackford, Jim Nugent, Geoff Robert, Ophelia Benson and others. Ophelia Benson said: Another one http://dlvr.it/5kbNB […]
@Eric MacDonald:
But isn’t that what Religion Studies are for?
Chris, to pick the most obvious and oft-heard one, I can’t count how many times I’ve heard a well-meaning atheist point out the prohibition on shellfish in Leviticus, and then go on to say that it’s hypocritical for Christians to follow some biblical precepts and ignore that one. To the ears of any Christian, that’s a statement on exactly same footing as the pathtically absurd “if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?” canard that I’m sure all scientists are very, very tired of hearing.
Certainly the typical self-professed Christian is hypcritical about a great many things, but in this case the concept of a separate covenant between God and His chosen people, vs. the supposed new covenant between Christ and all mankind, is very basic theology, stuff that it doesn’t take much homework to get right.
In Dawkins’ case, in TGD he points out a number of Biblical incidents — Noah’s daughters’ coduct with him sticks in my mind — and describes the ways in which they are morally repellent. The thing is, Christians ALSO find that incident to be morally-repellent, and almost universally consider that incident to be descriptive (a story that passes for “historical” in the Bible) vs. prescriptive (what God supposedly wanted them to do). In this case, ignoring the Christian theological standpoint merely convinces Christians that Dawkins has absolutely no idea what they actually believe — so that when he goes on to point out legitimate problems, these same people feel justified in ignoring them.
As far as people who *have* done their homework, they are few and far between. I find that, in listening to conversations and debates, the typical anti-theist on the street knows as little about the specifics of Christianity as the average creationist knows about evolutionary biology (close to nothing). There are certainly many exceptions on both sides — I’m in no way trying to make any absolute claims at all here — but my point is that it’s not helpful to claim there’s no need to “do one’s homework,” and then turn around and make statements that demonstrate to Christians we’re totally ignorant of what they actually believe.
If I argue that scapegoating blame is morally repugnant, I’m on safe footing — I can make that argument in basic human terms, without the need to resort to theology. In the other hand, if I claim that the concept of immaculate conception is nonsense, and then go on to argue against virgin birth, I’m merely displaying a level of ignorance that Catholics will deride me for.
I’ve mostly only seen this employed against the “homosexuality is an abomination” type of Christian. And it is hypocritical to insist the part in Leviticus about shellfish is null and void but the part about gays is right on.
There’s also the ten commandments thing. Jesus wasn’t really clear about which parts of the covenant apply to Christians and which don’t (probably because he was actually Jewish, not Christian). Why the ten commandments but not the lobster thing?
I guess my point is, maybe your average atheist doesn’t know much theology. But neither does the average believer. So obviously a nuanced knowledge of theology isn’t required for religious belief. But then why should it be required for disbelief?
Most importantly, why should we have to bend backwards to find a plausible-yet-not-morally-repugnant interpretation of the Bible to discredit when there’s so many plausible-and-morally-repugnant interpretations along the way. The difficulty in interpretation is part of the atheist argument here. Let the theists do their own work.
It’s not required for disbelief, at all! The Dawkins Defense is perfectly valid if we stay on general terms. But some knowledge of theology is needed if we want to debate fine points of theology. Have you ever talked with a creationist who tried to debate you about the junkyard 747 nonsense, and when you explain that natural selection isn’t random, he comes back with “well, I don’t need to understand it, because it’s false!” Admittedly, there is a difference here inasfar as creationism is demonstratively wrong, and atheism isn’t. But the catch is that most believers don’t realize that, so when we use the same type of approach, we sound the same to them as they do to us. But that’s easily avoided: if we don’t want to learn theology, don’t debate specific points of theology.
I agree completely. Let’s stay out of the theology game unless we’re on solid footing. As Dennett’s work on seminary school actively making atheists of people shows, we don’t need to engage in theological discussion at all if we don’t choose to — theology does that work for us. Those of us who have little to no knowledge of it can just stand back, then, and let that happen.
About these Christians, Kirth – are all Christians really that knowledgeable about Christian theology? If they are, why are there so many who talk about “living according to the Bible” and similar formulas? The noisy Christians in the US tend to talk about “the Bible,” period, as if every jot and tittle is Law. If that’s not what they mean – one would never know if from the way they talk.
Ha! No more so than every atheist is an expert in evolutionary biology. Less, I’d wager, because of the general propensity of believers to self-excuse lack of knowledge in favor of “personal revelation” and all that sort of thing. But I don’t think their own lack of knowledge should excuse ours — in the same manner that I don’t belive it’s suddenly “okay” to lie to someone you know is a liar.
And there are a number of Christians I’ve talked with who take their knowledge of the Bible and the apologetics very seriously, and who have carefully-reasoned and internally-consistent answers why the License to Gnork given in Ephebius 27:3 doesn’t actually conflict with the prohibition on Gonking in Accumenicus 57:8. Rather than try and argue Ephebius with them, it’s a lot more productive (not to mention conducive to our sanity) to rely on the Dawkins Defense and nip theology in the bud. If there’s no God in the first place, it makes no difference whether Ephebius and Accumenicus actually agree or disagree.
To me it doesn’t seem a pathetically absurd statement to make if we’re to believe from the bible that Jesus himself made the “not one dot, not one iota” comment.
I’m no theologian by a long stretch so would be interested to hear how that statement should be interpreted.
… and now that the poll results are in, it seems this assessment might have been accurate. I’m especially impressed at how poorly Catholics scored on almost everything — including Catholacism.
[…] the British magazine the New Humanist, who argued for some modicum of accommodation, was called a quisling – after the Norwegian Nazi who supported the Germans in their Second World War occupation of his […]