What does it all matter? I’ve been engaging in a couple of blog discussions of that question – about why people get so riled about Mooney and Kirshenbaum, what’s at stake, whence comes all the heat. (I’ve also lost a friend over it, a price I resent paying.)

One way of explaining is to quote a little of the preface to The God Delusion. It starts with Lalla Ward’s misery at school and her parents’ asking why she never said she wanted to leave and her reply: ‘But I didn’t know I could.’

Lots of people don’t know they can, and it is worth letting them know: you can. (You can even invoke ‘Yes we can’ if you want to. Why not?)

Dawkins goes on to talk in particular about the US and its religiosity:

There are many people who know, in their heart of hearts, that they are atheists, but dare not admit it to their families or even, in some cases, to themselves. Partly, this is because the very word ‘atheist’ has been assiduously built up as a terrible and frightening label…The status of atheists in America today is on a par with that of homosexuals fifty years ago…The reason so many people don’t notice atheists is that so many of us are reluctant to ‘come out’…Exactly as in the case of the gay movement, the more people come out, the easier it will be for others to join them. [pp 3-4]

There: that’s part of why. It’s because of that. It’s because of social pressure, majoritarian pressure, the pressure of public opinion and rhetoric and ‘framing.’ It’s easy for me to be an atheist, but I’m a nerd living in a big coastal city; the fact that it’s easy for me doesn’t mean it’s easy for everyone. It’s not. It’s hard for a great many people – it’s not a live option – or if it is it’s one with a huge price tag attached. And that’s bad because there is nothing wrong with being an atheist. It’s not a crime, not even a thought-crime. So Dawkins is right – people in the US at least need to know they’re not weirdos marooned on Planet Theism, and the only way for them to know that is for it to be true, and the only way for it to be true is for more and more atheists to be openly atheist as opposed to bashfully apologetically silently atheist.

This has started, partly thanks to Dawkins’s book. Sure, there’s a lot of irritating bluster along the way – but that’s not the end of the world. There is also a fair amount of worthwhile discussion of what we know and how we know it, and that makes a nice change from legless chat about what ‘God’ wants us to do. M&K have a fixed idea that all this will cause Americans to hate science, or to fail to stop hating science, or to hate science more than they already do, or something like that – but M&K have yet to offer a coherent argument for exactly why they think that and why the rest of us should think it too. Nothing daunted by the lack of an argument, they are trying very hard to persuade everyone that they are right and that atheists should go back to being bashfully apologetically silent. But we don’t want to do that. That’s the whole point – we want to stop doing that and do the other thing instead. We think M&K need a much, much more compelling argument than anything they’ve offered yet to convince us to go back into our little pens.

So that’s what it all matters.

From David Lodge’s novel Paradise News. The protagonist is a theologian who was once a believer but is not any more.

‘He sat at his desk and took out his notes on a book about process theology he was reviewing for Eschatological Review. The God of process theology, he read, is the cosmic lover. “His transcendence is in His sheer faithfulness to Himself in love, in His inexhaustibility as lover, and in his capacity for endless adaptation to circumstances in which his Love may be active.” Really? Who says? The theologian says. And who cares, apart from other theologians? Not the people choosing their holidays from the travel agent’s brochures…It often seemed to Bernard that the discourse of much modern radical theology was just as implausible and unfounded as the orthodxy it had replaced, but nobody had noticed because nobody had read it except those with a professional stake in its continuation.’ [p 29]

That’s good, isn’t it? The quoted bit sounds exactly like Terry Eagleton drivelling away about his left foot and Chekhov and toasters, and the commentary sounds exactly like – well, me, asking how the hell Terry Eagleton knows all that about ‘God’ and what it’s supposed to mean anyway.

And the good news is that now somebody has noticed, lots of people have, because Terry Eagleton and Karen Armstrong and Madeleine Bunting and other windbags have been telling us about it.

A bit more, later on. He’s musing on the Penny Catechism and reciting it to himself then gets creative.

‘When did you cease to believe in this God?

Perhaps when I was still training for the priesthood. Certainly when I was teaching at St Ethelbert’s. I can’t remember, exactly.

You can’t remember?

Who remembers when they stopped believing in Father Christmas? It’s not usually a specific moment – catching a parent in the act of putting your presents at the end of the bed. It’s an intuition, a conclusion you draw at a certain age, or stage of growth, and you don’t immediately admit it, or force the question, is there a Father Christmas? into the open, because secretly you shrink from the negative answer – in a way, you would prefer to go on believing in Father Christmas…

Are you equating belief in God with belief in Father Christmas?

No, of course not. It’s just an analogy. We lose faith in a cherished idea long before we admit it to ourselves. Some people never admit it.’ [p 47]

Quite.

Michael Rosch at Examiner suggest that Mooney and Kirshenbaum suffer from a problem he calls ‘the paradox of paradise’:

They call for a non-confrontational approach to things and desire an ideal world where everyone just gets along, but they themselves create conflict with their own critics because they realize their ideal world can’t co-exist with dissenting views. So those most advocating non-confrontationalism pick fights with those who disagree with their philosophy and see merit in certain conflicts. Hence the fact that in addition to criticizing Dawkins, M&K go after their other favorite targets, PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne, each of whom wrote scathing reviews of M&K’s book. So they gave your book bad reviews because they found your conclusions superficial and naive? Get over it already.

Actually in their case I think it’s not so much a paradox as just not noticing their own inconsistency. As several people have been pointing out, they’re saying something along the lines of ‘God damn it be nice and get along you miserable piece of crap!’ They’re talking about peace and harmony but they’re performing combativeness and truculence. But anyway, it’s the part about the ideal world being unable to co-exist with dissenting views that’s the kicker, I think. It’s sad and alarming that they don’t know this, but that really is the fascist dream. But it’s the liberal nightmare.

Thanks to Jerry Coyne for the link.

And here we go again.

Cowing under pressure from the Hindu Janjagruti Samiti (HJS), the police on Monday served notice on reputed Goan artist Subodh Kerkar to “desist from getting involved in such activities which may insult religious feelings or religious beliefs”. SP (North) Bosco George said Kerkar “should keep in mind the sentiments of the community and avoid creating a law and order problem. We will soon take a decision on whether or not the artist’s graphics hurt sentiments. If it is found to hurt religious sentiments, we will initiate legal action against him,” he said. HJS had petitioned the police last week alleging that Kerkar had published “drawings of Lord Ganesh in various positions”, thereby insulting religious beliefs.

So that’s how it is in India – it is, in practice if not in law, illegal to ‘insult religious feelings or religious beliefs,’ and the police can order people to ‘keep in mind the sentiments of the community’ and can make it their responsibility to ‘avoid creating a law and order problem’ meaning not do anything which religious zealots might take amiss and might get violent about. If somebody draws something, ‘thereby insulting religious beliefs,’ then you call the cops.

What more is there to say?

Oh look, people are reading Does God Hate Women? in the rest of Europe. Someone in Sweden and someone in the Netherlands – in Trouw no less.

I can kind of tell that Elma Drayer in Trouw likes it – she calls it a hilarious pamphlet, which in my book means she likes it. If I’m not mistaken she likes the point we make about the Vatican’s justification for saying all clergy have to be male, which is that all Jesus’s disciples were male; we point out that they all spoke Aramaic, too, but that’s not a requirement for being a priest, and it’s not obvious why maleness should be either, apart of course from the fact that clerical males want to retain their monopoly. I see Jesus and all men and disciples and something about speaking Aramaic in there, so that must be what she’s referring to. But I know some of you out there are Dutch-speakers, so if you would like to translate for me, do go right ahead!

Are any of you Swedish-speakers? I’m not sure – I know there are some readers in Norway, and some Danish-speakers, but I’m not sure about Swedish. I have no idea what the Swedish review says – it probably hates it. Luther’s revenge.

Sound familiar?

The capitulation of Yale University Press to threats that hadn’t even been made yet is the latest and perhaps the worst episode in the steady surrender to religious extremism—particularly Muslim religious extremism—that is spreading across our culture.

Oh yes the capitulation to threats that haven’t even been made yet – that’s what happened with The Jewel of Medina, and it’s what seemed to be about to happen (but, happily, and to the credit of our publisher, didn’t) with Does God Hate Women?.

A book called The Cartoons That Shook the World, by Danish-born Jytte Klausen, who is a professor of politics at Brandeis University, tells the story of the lurid and preplanned campaign of “protest” and boycott that was orchestrated in late 2005 after the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten ran a competition for cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. (The competition was itself a response to the sudden refusal of a Danish publisher to release a book for children about the life of Mohammed, lest it, too, give offense.) By the time the hysteria had been called off by those who incited it, perhaps as many as 200 people around the world had been pointlessly killed.

And Yale UP has decided not to publish the cartoons in the book, or any other images of Mohammed either. I have a high opinion of Yale University Press, but this is unfortunate, as is the explanation Hitchens quotes – ‘[a]ll confirmed that the republication of the cartoons by the Yale University Press ran a serious risk of instigating violence.’ No – as he points out, ‘all’ have lost track of the meaning of ‘instigate.’

If you instigate something, it means that you wish and intend it to happen. If it’s a riot, then by instigating it, you have yourself fomented it. If it’s a murder, then by instigating it, you have yourself colluded in it…After all, there are people who argue that women who won’t wear the veil have “provoked” those who rape or disfigure them … and now Yale has adopted that “logic” as its own.

In a turnabout which in other contexts is robustly condemned as blaming the victim, but in this context – well it depends on who is talking.

This is all rather like the witch-hunt against the “New” atheists, and the meta-witch-hunt against people who resist the witch-hunt against the “New” atheists. First the “New” atheists are called all sorts of names merely for doing something that ought to be perfectly legitimate and unremarkable, then when the “New” atheists retort, they get accused of a whole new round of crimes for having the audacity to retort to an unprovoked (uninstigated) attack. Heads I win tails you lose. Ho hum.

Would anyone be interested in volunteering to do a little webmastering for B&W? The reward would be B&W’s continued existence. Drop me a line if so.

Just for the sake of keeping track of the twins’ escalating malice and finger-pointing and vindictiveness, let’s have a look at something they teasingly call ‘A Call for Peace in the Science/Faith Battle’ (hahahaha that’s a good one when you see how they go about it). They wrote it in late July, touchingly, for a column at Beliefnet called ‘Science and the Sacred’ which is normally reserved for the boffins at BioLogos.

They start off by saying ‘the supposed “conflict” between science and religion’ is so unnecessary, but they don’t waste much time on saying that because they’d so much rather get down to saying how awful the “New” atheists are yet again. The latest ‘incarnation’ of the conflict is ‘particularly bitter and nasty,’ they say, mopping their streaming eyes. Then it’s down to business.

Today, the conflict pits the so-called “New Atheists”–Richard Dawkins, the science blogger PZ Myers, and many others–against not just conservative religious believers, but many others as well. For the New Atheists are willing to mix it up with anyone, even fellow atheists and agnostics, who question the need to repeatedly challenge the beliefs of the faithful, or to have an ongoing conflict over science and religion.

Who question the need? Hmmmmmmno – I don’t think most “New” atheists feel any need to ‘mix it up’ with people who just question things. Questioning is what the twins don’t do – the twins announce, and then when their announcements are themselves questioned, they ignore the questions and just repeat the announcement about ten more times. It’s at that point that the “New” atheists start to feel like ‘mixing it up,’ or at least, like pointing out how unwilling the twins are to back up their claims when asked.

There is so much important work to do, and in this context, how can it possibly help to have leading scientists and science defenders busy assaulting religious beliefs?

Let’s see…by making some alternatives to religious beliefs more widely and readily available, which would itself do some of that work that needs to be done? That’s how; one how, anyway.

Put simply, it can’t. So we decided to take a stand. It has cost us with some former allies…

Yes you see that’s just it – put simply, you don’t know whether it can or not, and you haven’t made a case, and just saying it – even simply – doesn’t make it so. And what you decided to take a stand on was the legitimacy of atheists saying atheist things, which you want to undermine and do away with, so your stand is a shitty stand, so it’s just too damn bad that it has ‘cost you’ with former allies. Anyway how did you expect former allies to react when you keep pointing your quivering fingers and calling us names in the mass media? With hugs and cups of hot chocolate?

[W]e said it strongly: The New Atheism has become a counterproductive movement, dividing us when we ought to be united…Atheism is a philosophy that goes beyond mere science–a philosophy that its adherents have every right to hold, but that will never serve as a common ground that we can all stand upon.

Note the fascism – we ought to be united. All of us, on everything, so dissident ideas – which divide us – must be stamped out. We have every right to hold the philosophy of atheism but we can’t all stand upon it so despite the every right thing we the all-knowing twins got busy trying to stamp it out just the same because we all have to stand on the same ground god damn it.

The common ground, instead, must be science in its broadest sense–a shared body of facts we can all agree about…

Ah yes – none of that pesky inquiring mind business, none of that testing and re-testing and peer review and trying to falsify and checking for bias – fuck no – science is a shared body of facts and we can all agree about it – in the wonderful Gleichschaltung to come.

The New Atheists, although loud, don’t represent all scientists or even all atheists–much less all of the country.

Indeed not – the “New” atheists, the loudmouth bastards, are a tiny minority, so let’s all get together and bully them. We hate minorities! We hate those god damn dissenting minorities that have the gall to not stand on the same ground with the rest of us! Start collecting your stones.

So all we need is for the “silent majority”–often diffident, often drowned out by the extremes on either side–to get louder.

And then we can drown those horrible dissenting monsters out. Hooray!

Next time you see the news media cover “science versus religion” as if it’s a battle, write or call in and say why that’s simplistic. The next time you find a scientist criticizing religious belief, email or call up and ask why it isn’t enough for us all to agree about the facts of science.

Yup – that’s the ticket – next time you find some atheist scientist talking sciencey atheism, get busy and harass that atheist scientist. Pretty soon they’ll all get tired of it and give up and we’ll have universal religious harmony from sea to shining sea. Doesn’t that sound peaceful?

Russell checks in on the twins.

I join with Jason and others in objecting to the metaphors of violence that the twins have taken to using whenever they characterise the actions or speech of the people they have constructed as opponents – all those horrible “New Atheists”, such as Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins. More specifically still, I object to the over-the-top language that has been used to describe the views of the small number of people who have, relatively recently, protested the more religion-friendly statements made on behalf of the the National Center for Science Education (NCSE).

Quite. I think the metaphors of violence have been steadily increasing in the twins’ articles lately; my guess is that that’s a reaction to the strong (but not violent) criticism they’ve been getting. It would be better if their reaction to criticism had been to try to make better arguments, or to admit that their arguments were feeble and take the whole thing back, or even to admit that their arguments were feeble and make more limited and tentative claims. But no. Instead they have simply repeated their claims more insistently and with even more pointing and naming (Dawkins! Coyne! Myers! Myers! Coyne! Dawkins!), and with the addition of increasingly violent metaphors. Let this be a lesson to us all. If we make large claims, and sensible people line up around the block to tell us why the claims are too large and too free of support, the thing for us to do is not, repeat not, just increase the volume or ratchet up the rhetoric or both.

They didn’t do enough thinking while they wrote the book. That’s their problem right there. It’s all too obvious when you read it – you think as you read, ‘Jeez, this is just thrown together, it’s like some sloppy piece of homework a kid does last thing on Sunday night and expects to get a crappy grade on.’ There is no thinking here. It’s very odd that they didn’t notice that – and that their editor didn’t notice it either.

Russell explains what Coyne and he and others have been soberly arguing about the NCSE and then adds:

Regardless whether we are right or wrong about this, we are entitled to express such a view, and it is in the public interest that we do so. The Colgate Twins have – and should continue to have – every legal right to exhort us to self-censorship, but such self-censorship is not in the public interest, and it is morally reprehensible for them to urge it … rather than simply addressing our arguments on their merits. The twins have moved the debate to a meta-level where our actual arguments are not addressed and we are forced to defend our very right to put them. This is a time-wasting distraction. Worse, we are presented as vicious and violent; we are demonised, rather than being treated as reasonable, peaceful people with a valuable role to play in public debate on serious issues.

When faced by this, we quite properly respond with anger and contempt. There is an appropriate time for those emotions – a time when they are healthy – and this is one of them. The twins have shown that they are not just reasonable people who happen to disagree with us on important issues. That would be fine. But they have no rational arguments relating to the issues of substance; instead, they are purveyors of hatred and bigotry who choose to demonise opponents. They choose to treat us as beyond the pale of substantive discussion of our ideas. Well, we are entitled to say what we think of them; we are also entitled to go on making our substantive points, patiently, civilly, and reasonably, as we have done throughout.

It will take more than these two privileged nitwits with bright, toothy smiles to get us to shut up.

Yeah.

Bryan Appleyard cuts through all the verbiage and sets everyone straight with just a few words – nineteen words, to be exact.

…the new, militant atheism of Richard Dawkins and friends…The disputes didn’t amount to much then and they don’t amount to much now. Put it like this: it is blindingly obvious that claims about a spiritual reality can neither be proved nor disproved by material means. End of argument.

End of argument! So tidy! Except for the tiny little fact that proving and disproving don’t exhaust the possibilities, so there is argument after all. Quite a lot of it, in fact. So much for ‘End of argument’ – and for bossy attempts to end arguments.

In order to make their case meaningful, the Dawkinsians must prove that religion is demonstrably a bad thing…they can’t prove this…because the persistence of religion in all human societies strongly suggests that, even in the most basic Darwinian terms, it has been good for us as a species.

Uh huh, and the persistence of rape and murder and general violence and paranoia and crabbiness in all human societies also strongly suggests that it has been good for us as a species, does it? No complexities there? No issues about what is good for the individual, not to mention the gene, not being good for ‘us as a species’? No issues about adaptations to one environment persisting into a different environment? Nothing to indicate that that claim might be a little simplistic?

The point is not how the watch was designed but the fact that it is designed. Some process has led to its existence and it is that process that matters because the mechanism and purpose of the watch clearly make it different in kind from, say, rocks. Equally, humans also require a different type of explanation from rocks. It may be natural selection or it may be some innate force in the universe. Either way, it is reasonable to associate this force with morality and God.

Or immorality and Devil. Or gymnastics and Energy. Or technopop and Noise. Or – you get the idea.

This is an entirely decent and persuasive argument against the intolerance of the atheists, in that it shows religion makes perfect sense, and getting irritated because you think it’s “untrue” is just silly.

Okay, I give up, this stuff is too sophisticated, I can’t keep up with it.

Now it’s Michael Ruse’s turn to do the ‘atheists are evil’ routine using the numbingly familiar ‘atheists are evil’ weapon of shameless exaggeration and misrepresentation. In short, like all his pathetic allies in this tawdry campaign, he paints the people he dislikes as violent and aggressive when all in the world they are is verbally explicit.

In the past few years, we have seen the rise and growth of a group that the public sphere has labeled the “new atheists” – people who are aggressively pro-science, especially pro-Darwinism, and violently anti-religion of all kinds…

‘Violently’ – in the sense of coming right out and saying that they think religion is a bad thing in many ways. That’s a pretty strained sense, if you think about it. That is to say, it’s a cheap trick, and unworthy of someone who says at the outset that he is a philosopher. Philosophers aren’t supposed to use exaggeration to do the work of argument. That’s a no-no in the trade. Ask anyone.

Recently, it has been the newly appointed director of the NIH, Francis Collins, who has been incurring their hatred.

No – their disagreement. Surely a philosopher ought to know the difference.

Then he complains of Dawkins Coyne and Myers (catch them in the Pineapple Lounge tonight at 9:30) saying things about him, then he explains why they do:

This invective is all because, although I am not a believer, I do not think that all believers are evil or stupid, and because I do not think that science and religion have to clash.

No, it’s because you say stupid things like that. They ‘do not think that all believers are evil or stupid,’ and they don’t over-simplify that way, either.

I engage with believers – I don’t accept their beliefs but I respect their right to have them.

But that just describes us – the “New Atheists.” That exactly describes us. We respect people’s right to have beliefs – duh – but we don’t accept the beliefs. So – the implication that we don’t is just yet more misrepresentation.

Jason Rosenhouse points out another way of looking at the matter:

What is so significant about the New Atheist books is the sheer volume of books that they sold. They have revealed that to a far greater extent than was previously realized, there is a hunger in America for books written from a non-religious perspective. That is a momentous accomplishment, and one that should warm the hearts of anyone who cares about promoting science and reason.

Quite; and in doing that, they have also made it easier for atheists to be frankly as opposed to covertly atheists. That too is a momentous accomplishment, and a useful one. That is one reason it is irritating to have reactionaries telling us ‘No no no no no, you have to be covert about it, all this frankness is a disaster and an outrage, get back in that closet at once.’

This is all just standard scapegoating from M and K. It’s so much easier to focus on a handful of writers who arrived on the scene just in the last few years and to ignore the deeper cultural forces that have tended to make America more hostile to science than other industrialized countries.

It’s scapegoating and worse – it’s become a full-throttle campaign to work up hatred and rage against atheism and atheists. Mooney and Kirshenbaum may not even realize that’s what it is, but if they don’t, they’re being very stupid and very reckless. They should be more aware and more careful. They should realize what kind of language they are using, and stop doing it. They should not, for instance, say that ‘The atheist biologist Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago, for instance, has drawn much attention by assaulting the center’s Faith Project’ – but that’s exactly what they do say. That’s very loaded language – loaded, provocative, misleading, and potentially dangerous. Like Jason, I find that vexing.

The twins are back with a vengeance. They are worse than ever. It is as if they have swallowed some terrible slow-acting Kool-aid that is dissolving their brains in tiny increments. Where will they be by October?! Curled on the floor drooling?

It’s the same old thing, only worse – the sequiturs more non, the rhetoric more cranked up and deceptive, the petulance and finger-pointing more brazen.

…assault on their faith…straight into a world of moral depravity and meaninglessness…in-your-face atheist touting evolution…unending polarization around evolution and religion…

Pause to note that Mooney and Kirshenbaum themselves are working energetically and overtime to foster and increase the very ‘unending polarization’ they complain of.

…no tolerating nonscientific beliefs…attack and belittle religious believers, sometimes using highly abrasive language…moderate scientists…the hallowed institutions of American science…politically, spiritually and practically they see no need to fight…regularly blasted for it by the New Atheists…the atheist biologist Jerry Coyne has drawn much attention by assaulting the center’s Faith Project…Coyne is once again following the lead of Dawkins…denounces the NCSE…

Then they finish up by giving in inaccurate account of Charles Darwin’s reply to Edward Aveling then telling us (‘the New Atheists’) we ‘ought to deeply consider’ the difference between Darwin and Dawkins. ?! Why ought we? We don’t belong to the church of either one of them. We know how to think all by ourselves without any training wheels. Mooney and Kirshenbaum cannot say as much.

Update: I’m still banned from commenting on their site. Last time they just left my comments in ‘moderation’ forever, but this time they’ve simply deleted them (after first trapping them in moderation). They’re a sleazy pair.

I wouldn’t want you to think I’ve forgotten the twins. Chris popped his head around the door the other day to say ‘Here’s another favorable review’ (funny how both of them either ignore the bad reviews or pretend they were good reviews). While he was at it he also said ‘and here’s someone who thinks what we think – no actually he said her comment was ‘revealing’ and then said ‘It seems to me that Hannah is our ally in the cause of better public acceptance of science–and I for one, am glad for it.’ In other words, same old thing: keep ignoring what critics say and keep doggedly repeating what the twins say in the hopes that sheer repetition will convince the unconvinced.

Here’s a news flash: it won’t.

Hannah’s comment goes like so (you could write it yourself without even looking):

[A]theists have as much capacity for creating dogma as do religious folks. That is clearly evident in reading comments here. I will say, once again, that it’s insulting to continually read from progressive commenters here and other places that I must be a “crazy” who believes in “fairy tales”, etc. because I am a Christian. For the record, I have a degree in science (from a highly-regarded state university known for its science programs), have worked as a research assistant, am always trying to learn more about the natural world. The Christian denomination I belong to and many others are not like the fundies, and in fact are appalled at what those folks are doing. Many of us speak out against their un-Christian and other actions that harm their children (re education), the country and the world.

So…she thinks it’s insulting to read that she must be a crazy because she believes in fairy tales because she’s a Christian – but she doesn’t mind calling other Christians ‘the fundies’ and ‘un-Christian.’ What, exactly, is the difference? What is the relevant variable here?

Is it whose ox is being gored? Yes; pretty obviously. So she forfeited her moral standing to complain about being insulted.

But more to the point, it’s a silly complaint anyway. Suppose commenters here and there said that people who believe in Santa Claus or Loki or parking angels are crazy. That would be insulting to such people – and that would be just too bad. If you believe fanciful things for no good reason, then you just have to put up with people in the wider world saying those beliefs are silly. Your best friend may humour you, your siblings and colleagues perhaps will too, but you can’t expect all of humanity to oblige. You just can’t. In the public realm, ideas and beliefs have to stand on their merits. If they can’t – then there’s something wrong with them.

This is obvious in the case of beliefs in Santa Claus and parking angels. Generalized discussion of the absurdity of belief in Santa or parking angels doesn’t generally trigger outrage about militant fundamentalist new aclausists. Christian beliefs, like other religious beliefs, are not fundamentally different from other such fantasy-based beliefs, but people in Christian regions think they are because of long habit and social norms. That’s an illusion. It’s an illusion that ought to be patiently chipped away at until it is gone. It’s not an illusion that ought to be cherished and cuddled and pandered to.

Another comment from Eric.

Based on the linked interview, it seems pretty clear that Karen Armstrong never really left the convent. The mind has mountains, frightful, sheer, no man fathomed, as Hopkins said.

It also has walls. Take her claim that “The golden rule is that you treat everyone with absolute respect and you don’t exclude any creature, even a mosquito, from your radius of concern.” You have to have put up a wall somewhere to be able to say this. These are just empty words, and they reveal something about her use of language. Laurie Taylor says that he noticed “how carefully Karen constructs her sentences, her care with words, her capacity to alight on a perfect phrase with all the effortless delicacy of a sparrow on a washing line.” Well, but that’s not what she does. She sermonises. She uses empty words that “sound good”, that seem to be moved by something deep, but really they skate over the surface of things. I don’t know about you, but I swat mosquitoes! So much for radius of concern.

She sermonises. Every clergyperson has a stock of words and catch phrases that they can use ad libitum whenever the need arises. Listen to a long Baptist prayer, and you’ll hear all the stock phrases making an appearance, and everytime that minister or pastor is asked to say a prayer, the stock phrases are repeated over and over again, through dozens of prayers.

Or take the idea of the Hindus who bow to each other, and thereby acknowledge the divine in each person. It’s like everything that is done by religious people. Whether it has significance or not, it will be given it. Take the use of the word ‘thou’, used traditionally in direct address to God. During the time when liturgies were being modernised, ‘thou’ gave way to ‘you’. People objected, because ‘thou’ speaks of respectful distance. But of course that’s exactly the opposite of what was intended, because ‘thou’ in English is like ‘Du’ in German, used only with your closest friends, and in prayer. It communicated informality and intimacy. But that was only a rationalisation too.

Or take the claim that religious rituals are meant “to remind you that the world is not yours to do with as you choose.” No. The rituals developed because they were believed to be commanded by God. They were acts of obedience. However, environment is in, so it’s in in religion as well. The rituals only make sense in terms of some absolute command. Why would anyone do silly, ritual things otherwise? To remind you that you can’t do whatever you want with the world?

Nonsense. Listen to what she says: “Writing and study are my prayers.” It’s a way of “going beyond” and bringing “about a state of ecstasy.” She’s now like the Jews, because this is what they do when they study. No, it isn’t, because Jews do it because they are studying the words and thoughts of God, and this brings on ecstasy. The recitation of the Koran, says Hitchens, seems able to bring on exalted spiritual states. Yes, not because of the Arabic, though, however beautiful and mellifluous, but because it is thought to speak the words of a god.

“Karen Armstrong is a persuasive talker and writer.” Yes, she means to be. She’s a preacher. She’s picked up the smooth effortlessness of the born preacher, the cadence, the repeated catch phrases, the platitudes. She picked it up in the church. And yes. Of course she’s persuasive. But it doesn’t take us beyond, because it is focused on itself. Going beyond is the illusion of all effective preaching, an illusion of all effective religious language. That’s why changing it is so challenging to the religious. It bursts the bubble of illusion. Karen Armstrong knows the secret.

You can even square the circle and seem to be making sense. Consider her claim that “doctrines are a peculiar disease of western Christianity.” First, this makes a nonsense of her claim that religious beliefs are the effect of modernity. But, second, trinitarianism, christology, and the relationship of the persons of the Trinity were thrashed out in the east, with people like Gregory of Nazianzus, Athanasius, Arius, etc.., in an argument that was scarcely understood in the west. How christology was understood did derive in large part from the way that Christ was adored in popular devotion and liturgy. But the heart of the argument was ontological, and how the being of God and the being of Christ and the being of the Spirit were understood. It is ridiculous to suppose otherwise, and to say that doctrine was a particular concern of the west is nonsense (as Bentham might say) on stilts!