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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Of Atheist Tribes: A Repost and Riposte in Honor of David Silverman’s Foolery
by rjosephhoffmann
Confused?
Atheism is badly served by the likes of a stammering David Silverman, recently made mincemeat by an intellectual third-rater on Fox News.
Richard Dawkins & Co. invented the term “Brights” to describe non-believers in general. A price on their head for those of us who have been disgraced by this episode.
Now we are confronted with a new phenomenon: Atheist Dims. –Spokesmen [sic] who think an adequate description of religion entails the axiom that all people who take the idea of God seriously actually believe in a great Watchman in the sky who takes an interest in my personal hygiene. They don’t speak for atheists, and they don’t speak for me.
No wonder the billboards are so wasteful, not only conforming to a ‘fifties Impeach Earl Warren aesthetic, but simply dumb, as they degenerate from “You Know its a Myth,” American Humanist Association message to “You Know its a Scam,” American Atheist-style. Interesting and totally cynical change of tone: the sort of thing you get in bad music.
Atheists will not make friends or influence people by suggesting that religious persons are morons. Some are. Many aren’t. Worse, their vaunted intellectual superiority is too reminiscent of the evangelical’s vaunted spirituality. And both claims are based on premises as leaky as cheesecloth.
And then there is the puling defense of this uglification of the landscape: that you are really not preaching to religious people but to people who privately entertain doubts about religion. Please get back to me with the testimonials and statistics when the stats come in. Most of human life is lived in the spaces between what we would like to believe and what we cannot say openly. Everyone who has been married on paper but visited other sheets knows that: Why don’t the American Atheists, and why don’t they know this about religion? Or do atheists leave doubt and skepticism behind when they arrive at their position?
And even if your Dawkins-avatar whispers to you that you are the Brightest shining star, even if at night and in your left ear, be mindful that history has laid to rest countless asserverators of the idea that God is dead, senile, useless, out to lunch, gone fishin’ or the invention of paltry minds.
Silverman does one thing more that I will get to presently: He has also come up with the barking idea that it was all done consciously and with premeditation: as a lie.
Oh my goodness. Can you imagine the apostles or servitors of the Prophet planning the coming millennium around a campfire, when politicians in Whitehall and Washington can’t set policy for the next two years?
I thought not. Religion is a “lie”–maybe–in the sense that many of its cardinal tenets cannot be supported by modern science. A premeditated lie? Give me a break.
The challenge? The atheist “movement” must disown Silverman as a fool. Or acknowledge that what they are now facing is a huge fissure in the ranks between hard, foolish, trendy unbelief, Guanilo-style, and soft, educated unbelief. What we are witnessing is an outbreak of atheist piety, a conviction that unbelief is self-evidently true. We used to call this faith, not logic. Tell me where I’m wrong.
The real Brights are not atheists. They are the ones who know that science is not a messiah but one way of knowing about the good, the true and the beautiful, and a way that cannot exclude religion and the religious imagination.
Shame:
Shame on religion for abusing the gullible, the vulnerable, the innocent, for political or monetary gain.
Shame on the Atheists, old and new, for their copycat tactics in exploiting science, subverting humanism, and convincing ill-educated followers that their argot is supreme and needs no further discussion when, down to an individual, they know this is not true or honest.
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Of Atheist Tribes First of all, I refrain from mentioning any names or organizations that can properly be called atheistically thick-headed. They know who they are. I’ve named them before, without salvific effect. They are proud of who they are. They like their atheism short, sweet, rude, and raw. If they get on people’s nerves, that’s okay because religion gets on their nerves. Who can disagree? The standard cable network service, before they cut you off entirely … Read More
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Published: January 8, 2011
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31 Responses to “Of Atheist Tribes: A Repost and Riposte in Honor of David Silverman’s Foolery”
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Dwight Jones
January 8, 2011 at 8:42 pm
“The real Brights are not atheists. They are the ones who know that science is not a messiah but one way of knowing about the good, the true and the beautiful, and a way that cannot exclude religion and the religious imagination.”
Of course.
If you sat among Christians about a campfire two millennia ago, they would have sensed our human dominance over the planet as much as we do now, perhaps more. There was definitely something about their dusty mammalian lives that was over-the-top, and they had the stars signalling to them, they were winning a celestial poker game.
Search not for the Dark Matter until first you discover the Bright Matter – Life, and then harbour it.
These we will call the Brights, for what should it profit a man…
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FreeThoughtCrime
January 9, 2011 at 11:02 am
“recently made mincemeat by an intellectual third-rater of Fox News. ”
“The tide goes in, the tide goes out. There is no mis-communication.”
Yup, sound like mincemeat to me.
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steph
January 9, 2011 at 2:37 pm
‘Atheists’ are not particularly bright.
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Seth Strong
January 10, 2011 at 1:57 pm
I definitely think the best thoughts are well reasoned and I like my beliefs to work like that too. But I think you’re asking too much of atheism if you’re asking it to avoid providing social trappings that suggest in crowds and out crowds. I certainly agree that not believing in beliefs “just ’cause” is no better reasoned than believing in a religion “just ’cause”. However, to the dismay of all thinkers out there, there are a lot of people who, in my opinion, not motivated by thinking it through and they are motivated by knowing there is a crowd behind the position.
Whatever position you are behind, it’s always better to be learned and reasoned but there will also be a dumbed down Twitter-ready version. I don’t have the issue your type of Humanist has and I don’t think we’re losing our battle for it. For the impatient, there is no god and let’s move on. For those willing to do the lifting, we can do our research and double check our math.
But you’re asking the average atheist to be a post grad in a world where higher education is too expensive. I think you’re asking too much. I’d be happy to reign in the reflexive atheist comments if someone else would take over rebelling against the American love of religion.
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steph
January 10, 2011 at 3:21 pm
Seth: Atheists are supposed to be humans too aren’t they? I don’t think it’s too much to ask people of mediocre intellect, like Silverman, not to be rude. Their rudeness demonstrates not only ignorance of religions – ie religious people are not all liars, but I think it’s slanderous too. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. to understand that.
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Pseudonym
August 25, 2012 at 11:18 pm
There’s a famous line about bankers from the political sitcom Yes, Prime Minister: If you’re incompetent, you have to be honest. If you’re dishonest, you have to be clever.
I think there’s something similar going on here. If you’re dumb, you have to be nice. If you’re nasty, you have to be intelligent.
Of course, even Christopher Hitchens wasn’t above evidence-free nonsense, but at least when he spoke in bumper sticker-worthy cliches, he was clever about it.
Seth Strong
January 10, 2011 at 4:36 pm
I too think religion is a scam. I don’t think Silverman was out of line. He wasn’t calling people morons and he responded directly to Bill when Bill said that’s what Silverman is saying. Being bamboozled or scammed doesn’t imply anything on the part of the victim. The youtube for the newscast is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BCipg71LbI .
Dave had one minute within a conversation to describe his position for his actions. Silverman accomplished that. His motivation was to put up an atheist response to the Christian billboards. There are plenty of Christian billboards, church signs and random Calvary crosses in the area I live. It’s fair and I didn’t hear Dave Silverman take it over the top.
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steph
January 10, 2011 at 8:59 pm
I actually gave you more credit than that. I thought you knew just a little on the history of religions, not to mention history and society and cultures generally I can’t believe – or express – how enormously sad you’ve just made me feel.
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steph
January 10, 2011 at 9:00 pm
oh and I saw all stations reports on the day he was interviewed. Awful.
Seth Strong
January 11, 2011 at 8:58 am
I’m not suggesting for a second that you aren’t entitled to your opinion or that I’m standing on an absolute truth. I do know something of religious history but I wouldn’t make that point confidently against Joe. I’m a person for which spirituality of any flavor simply doesn’t resonate. It’s almost a full-proof way to say that I am definitely not created with the built in capacity to follow a religion. But casual observation would suggest there are different kinds of people all around me who are spiritual.
And I don’t know how things are where you live but on government highways, we literally drive past random plots of land that are connected to no church and simply display three crosses. I can imagine in areas other than Virginia, North Carolina, and West Virginia that flagrant denial of religion is not necessary. Maybe your area is more peaceful for example. But perhaps my strategy is right for me and for my area. And if it is, then it’s not hard to believe Silverman is living in a similar place.
I have no issue with you or your differing opinion. Ditto for Joe’s. I simply have an alternate one for myself. I did think Colbert did the whole thing justice with his coverage.
steph
January 11, 2011 at 8:26 pm
Seth – ever since I learned to talk and I heard about God, and asked who made me, and they said ‘God did’ I could never believe. I could never believe and I always wondered how other people could. I was curious as to why they believed, and what they actually believed, and if that made them different from me. But I have no idea what you mean by using the vague term ‘spiritual’. I don’t seek for explanations of reality in religions or supernatural belief and if I can’t understand them rationally, I let it go and it doesn’t bother me. But I don’t reject the term ‘spiritual’ in the sense of the emotional part of our being – that irrational capacity for love, passion, grief and tears to demonstrate their fluidity…
However I agree the youtube link you said was the best of the bunch but I think I probably appreciated it in a different way. The Fox (agghhh) presenter allowed Silverman to make a perfect exhibition of himself. It is as clear as mud that Silverman has absolutely no sense of complexity (or reality) – his concept of what people believe is completely naive and seems to be based on the beliefs of a couple of fundamentalist Christians’ kindergarten aged kiddies. And his accusations that religious people know religion is a scam and religious leaders are liars, are not only ignorant, but blatantly slanderous. I know plenty of religious believers and leaders and all express quite well why how and what they believe, in very different ways, and NONE teach that God is a ‘man in the sky’, or in fact in the sky at all. Anyone who thinks they do must have their head in the clouds.
steph
January 11, 2011 at 2:57 pm
Goodo Seth. I’m well aware of the environment Silverman comes from but that doesn’t give him the right to stereotype religions and the religious on the basis of a the American Bible Belt’s fundamentalist extremists for example or his own religious experience in the past. There are charlatans on both sides of the debate, but religion is neither a lie nor a scam and religious people and practitioners are not all liars, scammers and morons or deluded for that matter, either. A little education can help him understand that. Of course I’m aware of the terrible state of American education…
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ken
January 12, 2011 at 11:53 am
Most atheists are easily baffled by even the simplest question they should know the answer to if they had any basic knowledge of religion.
Like…”Who was Ashoka”?
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gordie
February 25, 2013 at 4:19 am
I know who Ashoka was … are you sure you mean Ashoka???
Methinks you mean Asherah !!!!!!!!
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steph
February 25, 2013 at 4:57 am
Why do you assume that Gordie? I think Ashoka was to Buddhism, a bit like Constantine was to Christianity, converting and perceiving benefits in the religion for expansion of the empire. Or do you not regard Buddhism as a religion. If Ken had meant Asherah I think he would have written ‘Who was Asherah’.
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Seth Strong
January 14, 2011 at 8:55 am
@Steph. I see the sense in Silverman adopting a more social conversational style. Most of the time, my interest is uncovering common ground between myself and others because it’s too easy to see differences. Silverman’s stance is confrontational.
But for Silverman to have a positive effect on his community, the atheist one, that can happen by recruiting new non-believers which probably won’t happen or by energizing the less skeptical atheists. I don’t have a great grasp of history yet, the public denouncement of religion seems new to me. My position is absolutely the fence. I can agree that Silverman’s position is abrasive. But I like the fact that his position is getting more air time.
In my world, the religious nut jobs are trying to sucker us into mega churches, take our tithes, guide our votes, shoot abortion doctors, and wedge creationism back into school when there are actual problems for an educated world to solve. And the problem of how to deal with that is one I could use some answers myself. It’s hard not to think that the cozy belief in a secure heaven isn’t dumbing down those that were already a little dumber and a little more down when we could use some current world aspirations from everyone.
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steph
January 14, 2011 at 2:41 pm
conversational? Sounds like rhetoric to me. ‘Religious leaders are liars.’ yeah Riiiiiight.
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steph
January 14, 2011 at 3:38 pm
by the way Seth, I’m not unsympathetic – I just don’t think his rhetoric is very helpful. It’s easy for me to say, blessed with atheist Prime Ministers and multi moderate religious believers and non believers living without knowing or caring about each other’s (private) beliefs, and even marrying each other without caring if one says their prayers and the other one doesn’t, and my biggest problem with my own society, is people not caring enough about the environment and not planting trees… It’s a little different in the UK but still nothing as awful and incomprehensible as the Bible Belt. Fundamentalism needs to be confronted, but with knowledge, not ignorance.
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Seth Strong
January 14, 2011 at 3:47 pm
I agree with you that there should be better ways to solve this problem. The right path just isn’t as clear here. I do have sensible Christian friends. And if I felt like the community of Christianity at large were more like my friends, I would denounce David Silverman as well. But, some relatives of my close friends actually do not understand why everyone isn’t backing Sarah Palin and they have said so this very week. The people I should be relying on and should be able to rely on me are this far disconnected from reality. Palin, Fox, Rush Limbaugh and company all represent the continued packaging of values as an emotional righteous experience. In reality, maintaining a community should feel boring and trying because despite my viewpoints, everyone else is important and we have cooperative needs to address.
It is very cool to have nonreligious government leaders. If you’ve got a nonreligious society (or religious neutral or polytheistic) then you have my envy.
steph
January 14, 2011 at 8:30 pm
I do understand Seth but I appreciate this comment because I was confused about your defence of Silverman when I had been sure that you knew the difference between fundamentalism and ‘sensible’ religion (for lack of a better expression). But you’re right, in your cultural environment, confronting fundamentalism needs co-operative effort.
I do dread to think what I would do I if I was born there. Apart from the possibility that I could have dropped out of fundamentalist belief myself, with much bitterness, even if I had been born the same happy and unpressured agnostic, I probably wouldn’t have developed such an early fascination, or fascination at all, for religions, and the beliefs of the (multi)religious around me. I wouldn’t have studied history and anthropology and world religions – I’d have despised them too much maybe. Perhaps all I’d know about was fundamentalism as it was on everyone’s letterbox, in every shop window, on car bumpers, in government, in law courts … the nightmare. And guns, a ‘god given right’. And my oldest brother… well he’d be a dead revolutionary.
I’ve only begun to realise the extremity of it all since living in the UK has given me the opportunity to attend international conferences and meet and mingle with american scholars. I’ve developed an interest in american scholarship (as it dominates the contemporary aspect of my thesis subject) which is quite different from the rest of the world as it tends to be divided into distinct groups and be influenced accordingly. This interest and observation naturally led to an enquiry into their cultural context – and religious (or atheistic reactionary) environment. And gradually things unfold … in my small provincial town down under, there is a general quietly assumed ‘anti americanism’. And no gods could be bothered blessing any nation state, especially ones that went to war. I am a little less naive now I hope in that I can better define my anti-ism and it isn’t broad brush ‘american’.
Seth Strong
January 14, 2011 at 3:03 pm
Religious leaders aren’t necessarily aware that they are barking up the wrong tree. But the use of religion is misguided. It’s use as a moral compass is mistaken and poorly inherited from the sacred texts. Of course, I’m always focused on the popular religion in my area which is Christianity. I don’t necessarily care about religions that stay in the pocket of the practitioner. I care that I think Christianity is a default position in my area. And due to its influence, having belief is more acceptable than having no belief. And that there’s no such thing as a non-religious option for a chaplain in the Army (I was in Iraq for a year, it mattered directly).
Religious leaders are an impediment to the way I’d like to see people do business. They aren’t necessarily informed liars, but they are not sage like fountains of truth. Truth is something they lack in spades at the very least because they are looking in the wrong places to find it. I would go that far.
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rjosephhoffmann
January 14, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Just to jump in, I have to agree with Seth that the US may be unique in the way Christianity can be manipulated politically for popular gain. That is what makes it so noxious to so many, why atheism is “different” and perhaps even less temperate in America. Europe is, mainly, post-Christian and American style Christianity is really an oddity there. Religion here is pure Thwackumism and maybe not even that sophisticated because it appeals to the grossest and basest form of belief: bornagainism, biblical literalism, anti-science. So while I often try to talk atheists out of intractable positions, I’m under no illusions regarding why it’s tempting to fight the enemies of reason with plain talk and razors: they are incorrigibly stupid, these Evangelicals, and they are not going away.
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steph
January 14, 2011 at 3:47 pm
No, or rather yes, I have begun to understand that recently. There is a vast difference… and godness knows how I would react if I was born in that environment.
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Pseudonym
August 25, 2012 at 11:27 pm
You’re so right about that.
I’m not American (like Steph, I also have an atheist Prime Minster, though it’s a different one), and whenever I see the likes of Dave Silverman, I have to constantly remind myself that the stereotype of Christianity that they attack is not a straw man. There really are people like that in the US.
So I understand him and have compassion for him, even if I can’t agree. People from Europe who say the same things… they I don’t understand.
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Herb Van Fleet
January 15, 2011 at 6:21 pm
As I’ve said many times, the atheists are on a fool’s errand. So, it’s perfectly fitting to have a fool for a leader. Trying to disabuse a religionist of her religion is like asking her to cut off an important, but unnamed, body part.
Silverman and his merry band thus seem to be, collectively anyway, atheism’s don Quixote, charging the monstrous myths of monotheism. But, blind are they, or maybe just ignorant. Their’s is a task that requires hardcore believers to readily give up their ticket to paradise for a lecture in metaphysics; or, at a minimum, be willing to accept a little cognitive dissonance for a little common sense. And speaking of cognitive dissonance . . . .
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steph
January 15, 2011 at 7:58 pm
That’s a big generalisation Herb. There is a whole world with atheists all over it with various priorities, educations, backgrounds and goals. Labels are fine when they are clearly defined.
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Herb Van Fleet
January 16, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Steph, this is not a course in composition or rhetoric, and you are not the instructor. In fact, hyperbole and gross generalizations are common literary devises. Consider, for example, Hitchens’ “Religion poisons everything,” or Dawkin’s “Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument,” or Sam Harris’s “Theology is nothing more than a branch of human ignorance.” All these are over-simplifications, exaggerations even, meant to provoke, and are obviously only the opinions of the authors.
I am quite aware that there is “a whole world with atheists all over it.” But, just as Hitchens and Dawkins and Harris have used hyperbole to make their points, I have done the same here. And since this is not a term paper, defining labels is unnecessary. The reader is queued by the tone of the language and understands (or should understand) that each point is implicitly prefaced with, “It is my opinion that . . . “ or something similar.
So, lighten up. If you want to offer counter-arguments, then do so. But if you want to split hairs or indulge in literary criticism, I’m not interested.
Herb Van Fleet
January 21, 2011 at 12:45 pm
Steph, as I re-read my reactionary response to your comments of Jan 15th, I see that I was way over the top and downright mean. What I wrote was both inappropriate and insensitive. Therefore, I humbly apologize to you for my uncalled-for rant.
I hope you will feel free to offer any responses to my comments you think are appropriate and without fear of further attack from me.
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rjosephhoffmann
August 24, 2012 at 10:36 am
Reblogged this on The New Oxonian.
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davidjohnmills
August 24, 2012 at 12:57 pm
Joseph………………..cut the umbilical, man. :)
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Ken Scaletta
August 27, 2012 at 12:22 am
Ironic that is is reposted during an election season that has featured some of the most extreme religionist regressivism in recent memory. Major candidates for the Presidency advocating the criminalization for birth control [i]even for married couples[/i], parsing of what constitutes “legitimate rape” (soon, they will be talking about rape in the city vs. rape in the country), Global Warming denial (or at least obfuscation) from Romney and Ryan, state after state putting anti-same-sex marriage referendums on ballots, which panders to religious bigotry and nothing else. We also have the Texas GOP actually stating in their platform that they oppose the teaching of critical thinking skills in school. I’m not paraphrasing. This is the language.
“Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
That is from the official platform of the Texas Republican Party.
This is what atheists are up against in the US. Ironically, while our Constitution forbids the establishment of a state religion, religion is still functionally more “institutionalized” than a lot of countries who DO have state churches.
How about this, out of 535 members of the US Senate and House of Representatives combined, we have a total of one (1) who admits to being an atheist. It is all but impossible to get elected to higher office unless you praise Jesus. Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA), the sole atheist member of Congress I mentioned above did not come out as an atheist until after he was already elected.
The only person I can think of to actually get elected as an open atheist was a former Governor from my own state, the illustrious Jesse “the Body” Ventura, who was such an anomaly in every way that his atheism almost didn’t get noticed (what other US politician could ever get away with saying that “religions is for weak minded people who need strength in numbers” and get away with it? There is a certain kind of freedom in already being thought of as a loon).
It is unthinkable that an open atheist could be elected President. It’s actually controversial that Romney is a Mormon.
I do understand that belittling these people will not change their minds, but make no mistake, this is not atheist bullies circling a Christian, it’s atheists finally trying to swing back, not to persuade, but to at least put a stop to the oblivious sense of privilege and entitlement Religionists have always had here.
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Defending Sarah
by rjosephhoffmann
“Poets…are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting; they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society… Social and linguistic order are not the sole products of the rational faculty, as language is ‘arbitrarily produced by the imagination’ and reveals ‘the before unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension’ of a higher beauty and truth. In short, poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”(A Defence of Poesy, Shelley)
“English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!’” (Of Refudiation, Sarah Palin)
Frankly I am sick of the blood libel being hurled at Sarah Palin. I don’t know whether it comes in buckets or baggies, but enough is enough.
Following the shootings in Arizona, it should be clear to anybody who cares about the English language, the future of democracy, and the subtle allure of pencil skirts over yummy black tights that what America needs, Sarah Palin is.
I used to admire her mainly because she knew her way around a moose and had failed, like many of us, at teaching our children good abstinence habits. Ever since I saw her grit when she wrestled John McCain for the microphone during his concession speech in 2008, she has been my uncrowned princess of the rough and tumble American Dream, a spacious and verdant field where every man hopes to train his plow, elbow deep in grizzly grease on a Saturday morning, but, by golly, soaped up, perfumed and ready for business at the Mat Su Family Restauarant LLC on Saturday night. I knew I wanted in.
That’s where Sarah and I met–the Mat Su in Wasilla, I mean, and where she asked me to become her official poetry and General Culture Advisor. “I can’t pay you anything,
she said, winking, “but there are perks. Can I call you Joe?” “Of course,” I gasped, almost overcome with surprise. “Can I call you Governor?”
Since then we have spoken directly by phone whenever questions about poetry come up. Not all that frequently really–until the shootings in Tuscon last week.
She told me that the Lame-stream media was at it again, only this time they were “pulling no prisoners,” and saying that she may as well have pulled the trigger. She said she was besides herself, mad as heck and smoking like a seive. Someone “would have to hang from the yardstick for this and they want it to be me,” she said.
I told her to calm down, catch her breath and tell me what she was wearing. After a few minutes she said that she had no choice but to grab this bull by the horns of the dilemma and run with it even if it meant eating humble crow.
She was planning to make a speech, and naturally wanted to hit all the right punches. Bristol was home for the weekend and was arguing in the background with Piper over how many smores to make for a camping trip to “Russia” as they call their back yard. Sarah shushed them saying that as the road unfolded before them and they confronted new horizons, yes even in the future, they would have to learn to get along whether it was skinning an elk or making cookie treats, and now Piper is learning from Bristol that no one will buy the eggs if they can get the cow for free. It’s life I said.
But then to business:
“Joe,” she said a little shakily, “I need to make a statement about this Tuscon thing. People are you know whatever pointing fingers and saying it’s all about things I have said. And I’m afraid this is just the tipping of the iceberg.”
“I’d do anything to help, Sarah:You know that,” I said. “I’m always here for you. Especially in matters of state. Just tell me what you need.”
“Ok, for starters, They say this is all about my rhetoric. What’s rhetoric?”
“That’s easy,” I said, “It’s the language you use for a specific purpose. For example, if you say in a public place, ‘This man is a wife-beater and should be driven out of town on a rail,’ that’s rhetoric.”
“Who?” she said searchingly.
“No, Sarah, that’s just an example of inflammatory rhetoric. I don’t know any wifebeaters in Marblehead. Maybe a few drunken sea captains in the last century. That’s just an example.”
“Then why did you bring it up? I’m talking about these people who got shot in Tuscon. I can’t very well say that they should be driven out of town on a rail. Some of them are dead for Pete’s sake. People will think I’m nuts.”
“Don’t listen to people Sarah,” I said serenely. “Driving someone out of town on a rail is a metaphor.”
“A metawhatchit?” she said.
“It’s a figure of speech–like saying lipstick on a pig. Remember that one?”
“Well, take it from somebody who tried, it’s easier to do that than get it on a caribou.”
In the background, Piper had decided that they would need at least one hundred smores and that they would give all of them silly African names beginning with O.
“No, Sarah, I mean when people are saying rhetoric caused this to happen, they mean language you used in the political campaign. Comparisons. They think you’re intemperate, that you use language without thinking about the consequences. Maybe–and please understand, this isn’t me talking–that you’re reckless. If a guy did get run out of town because I said he should, it’s a problem I caused. And some people might say that by putting Ms Giffords in a crosshairs helped to get her shot, especially when you made that don’t retreat reload comment…..”
“Listen, I don’t like where you’re going with this metaphor stuff. We talk the talk up here In Alaska. We keep our eye on the price and our finger on the trigger. And we don’t shoot that bridge until we come to it, otherwise we’re just, so to speak, throwing the house out with the baby.”
That reminded her that Trig had to be fed. “Todd,” she yelled in a soft way, “When you finish replaying Bristol’s concession speech on Dancing with the Stars can you put some smashed nannners in a pan on the stove.” Todd’s unmistakable voice in the background affirmed he would.
“I still cry when I think of it,” she said. “If her name had been Obeejobee Obama you know she would have come in first. But heck, I’ve raised my kids to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. When the going gets tough…”
“The tough get going, ” I said, trying to be helpful.
“You never make any sense,” she said. “I was just about to say you don’t bite the hand that rocks the cradle.”
I smiled. All I wanted was for her to go on spinning her magical web of words. Was I in love with her? Maybe.
Finally I said, “Sarah:you think in metaphors, beautiful images, almost snowflake-like in their intricacy and lightness. And no one can blame you for what you don’t mean literally. Just like my example of the wifebeater.”
“Well, up here in Alaska which is a great and worthy part of this sublime and scrumptuous landscape we call America, we shoot wifebeaters. We don’t want our dirty laundry coming home to roost. Anyway, Joe, I need some language. Some language that will let people know that when they say I caused the shooter to do this they’re barking up the wrong whatever. I need to drill that message home.”
“What’ve you got so far?” I asked.
“Well. What I said is that nobody worth heck would believe the trash these liberal pundunts are talking about me and my family and they had better shut up or they’ll find themselves on the business side of my Glock 19. But the ones on my side, I want them to know that just like this wonderfilled beautiful land we call home I have a heart as big as gold.”
“That is nice and direct,” I said. “It has punch. Especially the last part about wonderfilled. But, Sarah, here’s the problem: some people won’t know you’re speaking in metaphors. They’ll think you mean it.”
There was a long pause; Sarah was asking Todd if he had ever heard the phrase Blood Libel. “Nuh-uh” came a voice in the background.
“One other things. I want to work in the word blood libel. This person who got caught in the crosshairs, she’s a Jew right, so this is just another case of Jews trashing on Christians. I have to make that clear to my people.”
I paused. To correct Sarah is to betray her confidence in me, ruin any chance there might be that she could truly love me. I had to be careful–deft even. “Gabby Giffords is Jewish, that’s right,” I said, “but a blood libel refers to the legend that Jews used the blood of Christians in their preparation for Passover meals. It’s just a legend. But even if it was true, it wouldn’t make any sense–it’s like mixing a metaphor. I think it might hurt, to be honest.”
“Exactly. Mixing metaphors. That’s what we’ll do. Whaddya get from mixing: Cake, that’s what. You’re thinking just what I was thinking. It gets into the Jewish thing and the Christian thing in a good way that let’s people know that you can’t trash Christians just because you get shot by some rogue maverick crazy man. I’ve been taking notes and I think I’ve got it. Thanks for your help, Joe. It’s always nice to talk to you about these language things–helps me spew it off your chest and see light at the end of the rainbow. Anyway, I’ll get Todd to write this up and text you. Right now I don’t have two minutes to rub together.”
There was a click–the sudden climax of hopeless love and a busy woman. The message came about an hour later.
“I implore you to avoid casting aspersions on any individual or group for influencing alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner. If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision,…If you don’t like their ideas, you’re free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundunts should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.”
Brilliant. No matter how hard I try, she’s always ahead of me.
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Published: January 13, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Bristol : English Lamguageghe : Gabby Giffords : John McCain. Todd Palin : Metaphor : Sarah Palin : Shootings : Tuscon ..
7 Responses to “Defending Sarah”
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Dwight Jones
January 13, 2011 at 5:25 pm
How ironic that Sarah Palin is a confidante of both of us!
Here are some questions I had posed for her guidance, regarding some elements of God’s Laws (our priest was arrested over Christmas) and how to follow them. Perhaps you can answer some of them in the meantime, until she settles those “blood libel” issues and returns my emails:
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and
female, provided they are from neighboring nations. A friend of mine
claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you
clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in
Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair
price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of Menstrual uncleanliness – Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how
do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a
pleasing odor for the Lord – Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors.
They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus
35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated
to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an
abomination, Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than
homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this? Are there
‘degrees’ of abomination?
7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I
have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading
glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room
here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair
around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.
19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes
me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two
different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments
made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also
tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go
to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them?
Lev.24:10-16. Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family
affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev.
20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy
considerable expertise in such matters, so I’m confident you have some advice for me.
Thank you again for standing in for Sarah during this difficult time.
Reply
Herb Van Fleet
January 13, 2011 at 5:58 pm
Dwight, those questions are eerily similar to those posed by a listener to Dr. Laura’s radio show a couple of years ago. But then, I suppose great minds think alike.
Reply
MKR
January 13, 2011 at 6:16 pm
Sarah says that this blood libel was manufactured by journalists and pundents.
Reply
steph
January 13, 2011 at 9:41 pm
You’re right. Or she is, about inciting “the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn”. But who is Sarah Palin anyway? I love sentimental love stories, poetic ones, about ducks. Beautifully and so sweetly told with such compassion for the vulnerable. Hellarius.
Reply
Scott
January 25, 2011 at 10:25 pm
A scholar of the ancient world and man of integrity in support of a Neocon presidential hopeful? If there was ever a contradiction then it’s this one.
Wow, I’ve seen it all Dr Hoffman. I’m just going to stick with your essays on ancient culture and languages.
Reply
Oemissions
February 1, 2011 at 2:34 am
and into ploughshares beat our swords…
and a moose in the freezer for every American
Reply
Herb Van Fleet
February 1, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Dr. Hoffmann, you’re spot-on (again) in your defense of the part-time governor and full time narcissist, Sarah Palin. Thanks for running it up the flagpole to see how the cookie crumbles
Reply
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
The Birth of the Messiah Legend: A Post-Epiphany Reality Check
by rjosephhoffmann
In Honour of America’s Annual Nativity Feeding Frenzy
(First published as First Century Pulp Fiction: CBS at the Manger
A review of the recent CBS 48 Hours special “Birth of Jesus”)
Once again the American media and a few scholarly mercenaries have tried to focus attention on New Testament mythology as though startling historical facts are waiting to be discovered beneath the layers of legend.
It happens every year, at Christmas and Easter: new revelations, startling discoveries (often described as “archaeological” to give a scientific ring), the latest scholarly finds, expert opinion. Given the lineup on CBS’s recent 48 Hours special on the birth of Jesus—John Crossan, Elaine Pagels, Michael White, and Ben Witherington (appropriately the gamut from skeptical to credulous in their approaches)—the ready supply of expertise (read: informed opinion) is no more in doubt than a burned out bulb in a marquee display.
But the opinions are. Quote Witherington, for instance: “[Mary] was very young at the time of the annunciation, barely a teenager. We’re talking about a small town girl here.” But the basis for this is nowhere to be found in the gospels; it’s based on guesses about marriageable age in Jewish tradition, spliced together with a prophecy from Isaiah 7 about a “young woman bringing forth a child,” spliced further with an event which defies historical explanation: an “announcement” of a virgin birth by one of God’s favorite messengers.
As with so much network (and general) docu-drivel, the scholarly shovels are out digging holes in air as though solid ground were beneath them. Other Class One errors: Elaine Pagels playing the Gnostic card, saying that the Gospel of Philip questions the entire concept of the virginity of Mary. Actually, the GP says that Mary is the “virgin whom no power defiled” and denies the historical Jesus (including his physical birth) completely.
Relevance to this discussion: nil. Witherington on the slaughter of the children by Herod described in Matthew’s gospel “From what we can tell about the ruins of first century Bethlehem, a few hundred people lived there. I think we’re talking about six to ten children [slaughtered] max.”
Queried as to why the event isn’t recorded outside the gospel account Witherington says “it was a minor event” by the standards of the time. So minor, in fact, that no other gospel writer mentions it, and New Testament critics have known for ages that while Herod may have been a no-gooder, the “massacre of the innocents” is just another case of Matthew milking prophecy to exploit his notion that Jesus was the “true” king of the Jews, Herod an evil imposter.
Slaughter of the Innocents, Giotto
In another instance, CBS took its crew to Egypt (receipts, please: no poolside drinks) to ask the visually tantalizing question, “Did the holy family actually live there for a while?” Matthew says they did. He says so because he is “reenacting” the Exodus scenario and gives his hand away by linking the sojourn to Hosea 11.1. Great story. Terrible history.
The problem with all such television exercises is that most of what is claimed is simply not true, or new, or revolutionary. The vast majority of biblical scholars know this; shame on them. It is the seasonal game to boost ratings, with Jesus Christ Superstar heading the pack—this year in tandem with ABC’s provocative query, Where is Heaven, How do I get There? Since archaeology is especially useless in answering that question we can leave heaven to one side, or up there as the case may be, and focus on the Christmas story, rightly beloved by children because it was a children’s story from the beginning.
Here is what we really know:
1. The Nativity Story is late—very late: The original gospel was communicated orally, chiefly by illiterate peasants. It possessed no story of the birth of Jesus because no one was interested in that part of the story until later. Paul has never heard of Jesus “of Nazareth,” or Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, or kings from eastern provinces, or a distant guiding star, or a virgin named Mary. He knows a story about a semi-divine messianic “man from heaven” (Philippians 2.5-11) whom he names Jesus Christ, “born of a woman [unnamed, unhusbanded], under [Jewish] law” (Galatians 4.4).
2. The earliest gospel and its copies possessed no birth story: When the basics of the story of Jesus were written down, the earliest literature still contained no story of the birth of Jesus. The earliest and (we think) the latest gospels–Mark (ca. 70, at earliest) and John (ca. 95, at earliest)–also know nothing of the birth of Jesus. Well, that’s almost right: the Fourth Gospel, John, knows a story similar to the one Paul knows, fancified a bit using ideas borrowed from popular Stoic philosophy, so that the semi-divine man becomes the “divine Word” of God, “who became flesh.” But still, no manger, no virgin birth–a mother he addresses, in fact, as “Woman” (John 2.4) , no angels singing Gloria, and instead of Bethlehem, active embarrassment that he hails from Galilee (John 7.40-2).
To add to the confusion, Matthew knows nothing of Jesus being from Nazareth; the family resides in Bethlehem and end up in Nazareth because it’s part of an escape route (Matt. 2.23). Luke on the other hand has the family living in Nazareth and ending up in Bethlehem because of an otherwise unknown Roman tax census (Luke 2.4f.). There is no historical memory here, and not even the Nazareth tradition is secure since despite all the very energetic attempts to find references to it no such “village”—not even an outpost of Empire–existed in the first century. (Yes, I know the contravening evidence; it is not compelling).
Discussions of the inscription from Caesarea Maritima have not alleviated our ignorance of this location and thus discussions of the implications of its proximity to the Hellenistic mini-city of Sepphoris are completely conjectural. The solution espoused by some scholars, of making this man of mystery Jesus of Bethlehem from Nazareth near Sepphoris makes him less a mystery than a cipher.
In fact, the birth in Bethlehem is legendary and the “hometown” (or refuge) of Nazareth was, if anything, a large farm.
3. The Stories are legends based on other legends: The birth stories are pious tales appended to the gospel of Mark by later writers whom tradition names “Matthew” and “Luke,” – but probably not by the authors known by those names.
Scholars know that the original gospel of Luke did not have its familiar nativity story because our earliest version of it, used by the famous second century heretic, Marcion, did not have it.
And as Marcion was writing and quoting away from his version of “Luke” in 120 AD or so in complete ignorance of the tale (just like Paul), we can assume that the nativity story came later. It arose at around the same time many other legendary accounts of the birth and infancy of Jesus were being written: The Pre-Gospel of James, for example, or the (in)famous Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which are full of entertaining stories about the birth of Jesus. In Infancy Thomas Jesus makes sparrows out of clay, then brings them to life, and smites his playmates—dead—for being rude to him. In some of the apocryphal tales he performs cures in the manger as a newborn. The tendency in the early church was to make Jesus “miraculous” from the get-go. The sources of these stories are tales told about emperors like Alexander the Great (whose mother was thought to be a virgin), Augustus (emperor, allegedly, when Jesus was born), Vespasian, heroes such as Herakles/Hercules (another virgin birth), Apollonius of Tyana, and Jewish folktales, like those associated with Chanina ben Dosa.
The story of the star is taken from Virgil’s praise-hymn (Eclogue IV) in honor of the “Peace” of Augustus. Nothing in the story is original, but its popularity was ensured by having its roots in a hundred other famous myths and legends. The point was to show Jesus the equal of the cultural heroes of the time.
4. What about the Genealogies? Another reason for knowing that the nativity tales are legendary is that, like all legends, they are uneven, flamboyant (even by the standards of miracle tales, which were the favorite form of first century pulp fiction) and contradictory. The two tales, Matthew’s and Luke’s, were not written very far apart in terms of chronology–perhaps Matthew’s coming first. But they were written to satisfy different audiences, different tastes, and for different religious reasons.
There are too many of these discrepancies to list here but there’s no need to dig very deep: Both Matthew and Luke provide “genealogies” of Jesus designed to defend their saviour from the Jewish calumny that he had been the illegitimate child of a Roman soldier (another proof of the lateness of the tales). But the genealogies themselves are out of synch: Among many discrepancies, Matthew (1.16) knows Jesus’ grandfather as Jacob, Luke (3.23) as Heli, and neither writer seems aware that the whole genealogy is negated by the doctrine of the virgin birth, which makes Joseph’s paternity irrelevant in any case. This shows to biblical critics that the genealogies originally served a different purpose from the virgin birth story—the first to prove the Jewish/Davidic pedigree of Jesus, the second to prove his divinity, mainly to gentile converts. Even the earliest Jewish Christians, the Ebionites, rejected the genealogies as forgeries, and the gospels of Mark and John know nothing about them.
5. Virgin Birth, Manger, and the Rest of It: As Christianity forged ahead, the church became less interested in the Davidic/Jewish pedigree of Jesus than in arguing his divine status–as son of God (filius dei, the designation used by Roman emperors from the time of Augustus, and conditioned by their belief that Jesus was their true lord and king). The miraculous birth was the culmination of this belief, the stage at which the virginity of Mary is introduced into the picture (Matthew 1.13-25 and Luke 1.5-8).
Matthew tells a Jewish story, more or less, and links the birth to prophecy by misusing, or misunderstanding, a verse from Isaiah (7:14, which in Hebrew simply reads, “A young woman [not a virgin] shall conceive and bear a child.”) Luke tells a Greek story, with awe-struck shepherds and harp-playing angels singing in the provincial skies. The Christians who adhered to the earliest tradition long enough to be regarded as heretics in the second century, the Ebionites, regarded the virgin birth story as heresy.
The earliest Christians seem to have followed Mark’s opinion that Jesus was promoted by God to lieutenant godship at the moment of his baptism (Mk 1.11), but the idea of a divine child sent by God for the salvation of his people was a part of the mythological picture of the late first and second century, Christianity’s formative decades. It was too tempting to leave aside: Wondrous manifestations of light, cave-births, hidden divinity made manifest to trembling onlookers. They were all part of the story of the birth of the gods and heroes before Christianity came onto the scene to share them.
Virgin birth of the Buddha
In Buddhist tradition, at Gautama’s birth, in equivalently odd circumstances, a great light shines over the world. Persians marked the birth of the Sun, symbol of the god, in the cave of Mithras at the winter solstice, and the Roman co-option of the cult of the sun god, Helios (combined with Mithras in the pre-Christian pantheon) made the solstice the date the birth of Jesus, “the light of the world.” In Greek tradition, Zeus as the Sun divinely illuminates the birth chamber of Herakles in the stable of Angras. And the poet Ovid presents Hercules as the child Horus, who shares a midwinter birthday with Zeus, Apollo, and other calendar gods. The Greek god Hermes was born in a cave in swaddling clothes. The story of the annunciation in Luke 1.30-33 is itself a borrowing of the Egyptian idea that impregnation can be effected through a ray of light falling from heaven, or a word (logos) spoken in the ear, a legend associated with the birth of Apis. The list goes on.
In summary: The stories of the birth of Jesus are late, legendary, and totally without historical merit. They are the additions of devotional writers who are at cross-purposes over whether to understand Jesus in messianic or heroic context and end up doing both. The failure to iron out contradictions is not their problem, because they were doubtless unaware that such contradictions existed. That the contradictions do exist, however, gives us important insight into the mythological foundations of the nativity tale.
Real scholars need to pay closer attention to the origins of religious myth and story and in communicating their opinions to have fuller regard for their role as reporters of reasoned conclusions. Looking for the manger, like looking for Noah’s ark, will probably continue to transfix believers once a year, but historians and biblical scholars should have no part in that quest.
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Published: January 15, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Bible : Christ myth : Christmas : fundamentalism. media : historical jesus : Jesus : miracles : New Testament : religion ..
22 Responses to “The Birth of the Messiah Legend: A Post-Epiphany Reality Check”
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steph
January 15, 2011 at 8:46 pm
Bewildering, bewithering, embarrassing and appalling. And what a shambles of a gamut – from Crossan, through Pagels, White to BW3??!! In fact this latter academic had some rather appallingly serious, false accusations against the department of biblical studies at Sheffield, attributed to him in Christianity Today. C.T. last year, reported faculty [at Sheffield] were “bent on the deconstruction of the Bible, and indeed of their students’ faith,” according to Ben Witherington, a New Testament scholar at Asbury Theological Seminary. Asbury Theological Seminary, is where Ben teaches. They have a “statement of faith”. Asbury Theological Seminary, Ben’s employer, is a very conservative institution which is “called to prepare theologically educated, sanctified, Spirit-filled men and women to evangelize and to spread scriptural holiness throughout the world through the love of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit and to the glory of God the Father”. It also endorses the inerrancy of Scripture, whatever that is. Everybody knows the birth narratives are myth!! For goodness sake, tell the truth!!!! I even made a scholar at a conference blush – from a similar institution at Cambridge, confessing a similar statement of faith. I said to his face, you know the virgin birth is a myth. An awkward ‘ahh well, no…’ I insisted and persisted and he blushed!! But he couldn’t look me in the eye and say they were true.
I wrote Ben’s story up in a blog:http://dunedinschool.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/bewithering-is-becoming-bewildering/
Oh and remember the James Ossuary? But then it did sell alot of books. Tell the truth!!!! It would solve alot of problems in society and may even benefit learning and knowledge.
Reply
Deane
January 16, 2011 at 12:26 am
Joe – Odd, isn’t it, that the beginning and end bits of Matthew and Luke are the least believable. (And that’s not saying anything about the believability of some of the bits in the middle.) That seems to often be the way that those Jewish books grew over time, from Deuteronomy and Jeremiah to Mark/Matthew. All the while getting more and more imaginative, adding the odd Giant, Angel, or Zombie (Deut. 1-3; Luke 1; Matt 27).
Steph – Whoever would’ve thought that money and evangelicalism would come together in a US theological seminary?
Reply
steph
January 16, 2011 at 2:50 pm
haha yes there are seminaries and ossuaries and not ‘disappointing’ readers, but it doesn’t stop there does it … and I know (and so do you) where and who the Zombies are now. Giants… so much more appealing than Q (another place where money gets in the way).
(Check out the links Roland gave me ISAA independents)
Reply
Demonax
January 16, 2011 at 10:16 am
Steph :”It would solve a lot of problems in society and may even benefit learning and knowledge.”
Dangerous ground, remember Plato’s Critias and his speculation as to the foundation of God and punishment stories.
Reply
steph
January 16, 2011 at 8:51 pm
Yes indeed Demonax … although it is a little anachronistic considering the contemporary phenomenon I am inferring here. (ie fundamentalism and it’s opposing reactionaries)
Reply
Mike Wilson
January 16, 2011 at 8:10 pm
It is sad that the History channel is one of my least favorites. Though i do get a kick out of one of my old professors on T.V. (talking about naval warfare, not religion). The History Channel at its’ worst was the two “Search for the Ark” programs. Both turned up odd nick-nacks that bore no resemblance and had no connection to the Ark. An African drum, really? They were the equivalent of E! promising a topless Kardashians Christmas special but instead having a John Goodman/Tom Arnold farting contest.
RJH, where do you think Luke originally began? Was the census dates added to give a Lukan feel to the later material? An interesting idea, I had wondered if the boy Jesus in the Temple was actually borrowed from Infancy Gospel rather than vice versa.
Reply
Ed Jones
January 16, 2011 at 11:06 pm
The problematic of traditional Christianity based on its sources the writings of the NT, the birth narratives being a part, can no longer be ignored given our pesent historical methods and knowledge. What is “bewildering, bewildering, embrassing and appaling” is the bias: there is no reliable Scriptual witness to the HJ, which all too readily develops from its recgnition, to make it all but impossible to recognize the evident historical alternative to NT writings – our closest original and originating apostolic witness, and hence the proper canon for judging the appropriateness of all Christian witness and theology. This Scriptural alternative is convincingly argued in the works of three of our longest standing top NT scholars. This argument “is a task to which specialized knowledge in the areas of philology, form and redaction criticism, literary criticism, history of religions, and New Testament theology necessarily applies” (Betz).
Reply
Ed Jones
January 19, 2011 at 11:28 am
Yes it is “bewildering. bewithering” – whether anyone reads this or not, I add: from my restricted perspective the real “reality check” is the posibility of recognizing the fact that we have a true historical Scriptural path to apostolic witness to the HJ – revealing an image of Jesus entirely different from that found in the writings of the NT. Such an argument has been made, at least by four of our most authentic NT scholars.
Reply
steph
January 20, 2011 at 3:15 pm
Having critiqued both Robinson and Betz heavily in my thesis, I cannot agree with your favourite scholars. They are the best in your opinion and in mine they are not as remotely as helpful as others from Schweitzer and Vermes through to Sanders. Even Dale Allison for all his conservative bias has produced more helpful historical research. Ogden was a theologian and not a historian, Betz for all his good intentions, inherited a mistaken assumption about a Greek speaking Jesus which he fails to demonstrate, and then sought to squeeze and stretch the ‘evidence’ to fit a simple and useful two source hypothesis and Robinson’s over confidence encouraged him to reconstruct the past right down to syllables on similarly false and simplistic assumptions.
Reply
Ed Jones
January 22, 2011 at 12:57 pm
Steph,
I think I see where you are coming from.
The problematic: None of the writings of the NT, the writings of Paul, the Gospels, as well as the later writings of the NT are apostolic, hence not reliable sources for rconstruction of a credible Jesus. To this point you and my named scholars may be in ageement. The stark difference lies in the “bewildering” claim that there is yet reliable Scriptural witness – a difference requiring some explanation.
Ogden can be dismissed – he is only a theologian. In Betz’s case: “for all his good intentions” language much like what he used in explaining the effects of the problematic ["The reason for our lack of knowledge (of Jesus and his teachings) are of a hermenutical sort (authoral
intent) and cannot be overcome by an excess of good will"] – “inherited a mistaken assumption” evidently to so slant his critical judgment that he misinterprets the evidence. “inherited a mistaken assumption” is one way to explain critical scholarly differences – even our own!
Robinson sharing Betz’s mistaken assumptions may be likewise esplained.
Interesting quotes by Joe: “This from Ed Jones concerning the recent post Religion. He cites Schubert Ogden, once one of my intellectual heroes” A 4/19/09 email: “I agree with you about the singular contribution of Schubert Ogden and Hans Dieter Betz, James Robinson actually is one of or members (senior consultant) – - That said, I very much like the idea that Betz should be aboard and will take this up with my colleagues”. Imagine Kurtz welcoming Betz! “
gestalttheology
January 21, 2011 at 3:15 am
In another instance, CBS took its crew to Egypt (receipts, please: no poolside drinks) to ask the visually tantalizing question, “Did the holy family actually live there for a while?” Matthew says they did. He says so because he is “reenacting” the Exodus scenario and gives his hand away by linking the sojourn to Hosea 11.1. Great story. Terrible history.
“gives away his hand”? how does the literary parallel discount an historical parallel?
Reply
steph
January 22, 2011 at 3:04 pm
I doubt it. And no – and that’s what theses are about: a great deal of explanations. Also Ed, I make many criticisms of Robinson and Betz. I’ve read them each, nine times over, upside down and backwards, and I find them holey (not holy) all the way through. Simplistic solutions are a big part of that.
Reply
steph
January 22, 2011 at 3:06 pm
The bewildering which you insist on requoting, refers to the lying, Ed. Thou shalt tell the truth. I made that up but it should have been included.
Reply
steph
January 22, 2011 at 3:08 pm
or rather ‘that you insist on mocking’ rather than ‘requoting’.
Reply
steph
January 23, 2011 at 12:52 am
actually while I frequently err and am very often wrong and have changed my mind many times over the course of my research, I actually think Joe Hoffmann is the wisest and most broadly learned, incisive and brilliant contemporary biblical historian I know. Brilliant contribution to knowledge of Marcion too.
Reply
steph
January 23, 2011 at 1:27 am
…and therefore with reference to the focus of my research and to the cause of my critique, (ie the confidence to reconstruct source material of the synoptic gospels) he is far wiser than both Betz and Robinson who both advocate some form of “Q”. Both Betz and Robinson have contributed significantly however to other aspects of New Testament and early Christianity, and Robinson is especially significant to me for his contribution to research on Nag Hammadi material.
Reply
Ed Jones
January 23, 2011 at 10:59 am
At least I may have been redeemed from the lying reference. To explain dismay over just how the “b” word refers to lying, I have the urge to repeat it.
The Jan 19th requote was to correct the bungled Jan. 16th requote before being called on it. At my age, 92 the 25th, I am misake prone.
Reply
steph
January 23, 2011 at 4:00 pm
sorry, “I haven’t a clue” what your comment is about. (to quote the BBC radio series) :)
Reply
steph
January 23, 2011 at 4:02 pm
or more correctly, before I’m called out perhaps, “Sorry, I haven’t a clue”. BBC…
Ed Jones
January 23, 2011 at 7:35 pm
I accept my Jan. 23rd comment as being nonsensical. I would end this discussion.
Reply
Ed Jones
January 27, 2011 at 10:31 pm
Joe, Steph may have hit upon something perhaps more than she intended with the phrase: “inherited a mistaken assumption” to explain critical scholars holding different understandings about the Jesus puzzle.
Physicist Paul Davies wrote concerning the idea that there might be “a complete explanation of things”- specifically, the reason for existence: “All explanations are founded on the assumption of human rationality: that it is legitimate to seek “explanation” for things and that we truly understand something only when it is ‘explained’: Yet it has to be admitted that our concept of rational explanation probably derives from our observation of the world and our evolutionary inheritance. Is it clear that this provides adequate guidance when we are tangling with ultimate questions? Might it not be the case that the reason for existence has no explanation in the usual sence?
Is there a route to knowledge – even ultimate knowledge – that lies outside the road of rational scientific inquiry and logical reasoning? Many people claim that there is. It is called mysticism.
Most scientests [and NT theologians] have a deep mistrust of mysticism. This is not surprising, as mystical thought [knowledge by revelation] lies at the opposite extreme to rational thought, which is the basis of the scientific method. In fact, many of the world’s finest thinkers, including notable scientists have espoused mysticism. Mysticism is no substitute for scientific inquiry and logical reasoning [(with the Jesus puzzle) no substitute for the historical path to recognition of the source of the occason of the revelation] so long as this approach can be cosistently applied [(with the Jesus puzzel) the historical cannot interpret the occasion] It is only in dealing with ultimate questions that science and logic may fail us – they may be incapable of addressing the sort of ‘why’ (as opposed to ‘how’) questions we want to ask.
We are barred from ultimate knowledge, from ultimate explanation, by the very rules of reasoning that prompt us to seek an explanation in the first place. If we wish to progress beyond, we have to embrace a different concept of “understanding” from rational explanation. Possibly the mystiical path is the way to such understanding.” (The Mind of God”)
Reply
Ed Jones
January 28, 2011 at 5:17 pm
Addition to the above comment.
“Maybe such experiences provide the only route beyond the limits to which science and philosophy can take us, the only possible path to the Ultimate’.
Might not Jesus with his idiom The Kingdom of God have been about Ultimate Concern – man-God relationship – Knowledge by revelation not by sense perceived explanation. Hence the ultimate reason behind Jesus as puzzle: our inherited problem bound to sense perceived reality.
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
The Birth of the Messiah Legend: A Post-Epiphany Reality Check
by rjosephhoffmann
In Honour of America’s Annual Nativity Feeding Frenzy
(First published as First Century Pulp Fiction: CBS at the Manger
A review of the recent CBS 48 Hours special “Birth of Jesus”)
Once again the American media and a few scholarly mercenaries have tried to focus attention on New Testament mythology as though startling historical facts are waiting to be discovered beneath the layers of legend.
It happens every year, at Christmas and Easter: new revelations, startling discoveries (often described as “archaeological” to give a scientific ring), the latest scholarly finds, expert opinion. Given the lineup on CBS’s recent 48 Hours special on the birth of Jesus—John Crossan, Elaine Pagels, Michael White, and Ben Witherington (appropriately the gamut from skeptical to credulous in their approaches)—the ready supply of expertise (read: informed opinion) is no more in doubt than a burned out bulb in a marquee display.
But the opinions are. Quote Witherington, for instance: “[Mary] was very young at the time of the annunciation, barely a teenager. We’re talking about a small town girl here.” But the basis for this is nowhere to be found in the gospels; it’s based on guesses about marriageable age in Jewish tradition, spliced together with a prophecy from Isaiah 7 about a “young woman bringing forth a child,” spliced further with an event which defies historical explanation: an “announcement” of a virgin birth by one of God’s favorite messengers.
As with so much network (and general) docu-drivel, the scholarly shovels are out digging holes in air as though solid ground were beneath them. Other Class One errors: Elaine Pagels playing the Gnostic card, saying that the Gospel of Philip questions the entire concept of the virginity of Mary. Actually, the GP says that Mary is the “virgin whom no power defiled” and denies the historical Jesus (including his physical birth) completely.
Relevance to this discussion: nil. Witherington on the slaughter of the children by Herod described in Matthew’s gospel “From what we can tell about the ruins of first century Bethlehem, a few hundred people lived there. I think we’re talking about six to ten children [slaughtered] max.”
Queried as to why the event isn’t recorded outside the gospel account Witherington says “it was a minor event” by the standards of the time. So minor, in fact, that no other gospel writer mentions it, and New Testament critics have known for ages that while Herod may have been a no-gooder, the “massacre of the innocents” is just another case of Matthew milking prophecy to exploit his notion that Jesus was the “true” king of the Jews, Herod an evil imposter.
Slaughter of the Innocents, Giotto
In another instance, CBS took its crew to Egypt (receipts, please: no poolside drinks) to ask the visually tantalizing question, “Did the holy family actually live there for a while?” Matthew says they did. He says so because he is “reenacting” the Exodus scenario and gives his hand away by linking the sojourn to Hosea 11.1. Great story. Terrible history.
The problem with all such television exercises is that most of what is claimed is simply not true, or new, or revolutionary. The vast majority of biblical scholars know this; shame on them. It is the seasonal game to boost ratings, with Jesus Christ Superstar heading the pack—this year in tandem with ABC’s provocative query, Where is Heaven, How do I get There? Since archaeology is especially useless in answering that question we can leave heaven to one side, or up there as the case may be, and focus on the Christmas story, rightly beloved by children because it was a children’s story from the beginning.
Here is what we really know:
1. The Nativity Story is late—very late: The original gospel was communicated orally, chiefly by illiterate peasants. It possessed no story of the birth of Jesus because no one was interested in that part of the story until later. Paul has never heard of Jesus “of Nazareth,” or Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, or kings from eastern provinces, or a distant guiding star, or a virgin named Mary. He knows a story about a semi-divine messianic “man from heaven” (Philippians 2.5-11) whom he names Jesus Christ, “born of a woman [unnamed, unhusbanded], under [Jewish] law” (Galatians 4.4).
2. The earliest gospel and its copies possessed no birth story: When the basics of the story of Jesus were written down, the earliest literature still contained no story of the birth of Jesus. The earliest and (we think) the latest gospels–Mark (ca. 70, at earliest) and John (ca. 95, at earliest)–also know nothing of the birth of Jesus. Well, that’s almost right: the Fourth Gospel, John, knows a story similar to the one Paul knows, fancified a bit using ideas borrowed from popular Stoic philosophy, so that the semi-divine man becomes the “divine Word” of God, “who became flesh.” But still, no manger, no virgin birth–a mother he addresses, in fact, as “Woman” (John 2.4) , no angels singing Gloria, and instead of Bethlehem, active embarrassment that he hails from Galilee (John 7.40-2).
To add to the confusion, Matthew knows nothing of Jesus being from Nazareth; the family resides in Bethlehem and end up in Nazareth because it’s part of an escape route (Matt. 2.23). Luke on the other hand has the family living in Nazareth and ending up in Bethlehem because of an otherwise unknown Roman tax census (Luke 2.4f.). There is no historical memory here, and not even the Nazareth tradition is secure since despite all the very energetic attempts to find references to it no such “village”—not even an outpost of Empire–existed in the first century. (Yes, I know the contravening evidence; it is not compelling).
Discussions of the inscription from Caesarea Maritima have not alleviated our ignorance of this location and thus discussions of the implications of its proximity to the Hellenistic mini-city of Sepphoris are completely conjectural. The solution espoused by some scholars, of making this man of mystery Jesus of Bethlehem from Nazareth near Sepphoris makes him less a mystery than a cipher.
In fact, the birth in Bethlehem is legendary and the “hometown” (or refuge) of Nazareth was, if anything, a large farm.
3. The Stories are legends based on other legends: The birth stories are pious tales appended to the gospel of Mark by later writers whom tradition names “Matthew” and “Luke,” – but probably not by the authors known by those names.
Scholars know that the original gospel of Luke did not have its familiar nativity story because our earliest version of it, used by the famous second century heretic, Marcion, did not have it.
And as Marcion was writing and quoting away from his version of “Luke” in 120 AD or so in complete ignorance of the tale (just like Paul), we can assume that the nativity story came later. It arose at around the same time many other legendary accounts of the birth and infancy of Jesus were being written: The Pre-Gospel of James, for example, or the (in)famous Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which are full of entertaining stories about the birth of Jesus. In Infancy Thomas Jesus makes sparrows out of clay, then brings them to life, and smites his playmates—dead—for being rude to him. In some of the apocryphal tales he performs cures in the manger as a newborn. The tendency in the early church was to make Jesus “miraculous” from the get-go. The sources of these stories are tales told about emperors like Alexander the Great (whose mother was thought to be a virgin), Augustus (emperor, allegedly, when Jesus was born), Vespasian, heroes such as Herakles/Hercules (another virgin birth), Apollonius of Tyana, and Jewish folktales, like those associated with Chanina ben Dosa.
The story of the star is taken from Virgil’s praise-hymn (Eclogue IV) in honor of the “Peace” of Augustus. Nothing in the story is original, but its popularity was ensured by having its roots in a hundred other famous myths and legends. The point was to show Jesus the equal of the cultural heroes of the time.
4. What about the Genealogies? Another reason for knowing that the nativity tales are legendary is that, like all legends, they are uneven, flamboyant (even by the standards of miracle tales, which were the favorite form of first century pulp fiction) and contradictory. The two tales, Matthew’s and Luke’s, were not written very far apart in terms of chronology–perhaps Matthew’s coming first. But they were written to satisfy different audiences, different tastes, and for different religious reasons.
There are too many of these discrepancies to list here but there’s no need to dig very deep: Both Matthew and Luke provide “genealogies” of Jesus designed to defend their saviour from the Jewish calumny that he had been the illegitimate child of a Roman soldier (another proof of the lateness of the tales). But the genealogies themselves are out of synch: Among many discrepancies, Matthew (1.16) knows Jesus’ grandfather as Jacob, Luke (3.23) as Heli, and neither writer seems aware that the whole genealogy is negated by the doctrine of the virgin birth, which makes Joseph’s paternity irrelevant in any case. This shows to biblical critics that the genealogies originally served a different purpose from the virgin birth story—the first to prove the Jewish/Davidic pedigree of Jesus, the second to prove his divinity, mainly to gentile converts. Even the earliest Jewish Christians, the Ebionites, rejected the genealogies as forgeries, and the gospels of Mark and John know nothing about them.
5. Virgin Birth, Manger, and the Rest of It: As Christianity forged ahead, the church became less interested in the Davidic/Jewish pedigree of Jesus than in arguing his divine status–as son of God (filius dei, the designation used by Roman emperors from the time of Augustus, and conditioned by their belief that Jesus was their true lord and king). The miraculous birth was the culmination of this belief, the stage at which the virginity of Mary is introduced into the picture (Matthew 1.13-25 and Luke 1.5-8).
Matthew tells a Jewish story, more or less, and links the birth to prophecy by misusing, or misunderstanding, a verse from Isaiah (7:14, which in Hebrew simply reads, “A young woman [not a virgin] shall conceive and bear a child.”) Luke tells a Greek story, with awe-struck shepherds and harp-playing angels singing in the provincial skies. The Christians who adhered to the earliest tradition long enough to be regarded as heretics in the second century, the Ebionites, regarded the virgin birth story as heresy.
The earliest Christians seem to have followed Mark’s opinion that Jesus was promoted by God to lieutenant godship at the moment of his baptism (Mk 1.11), but the idea of a divine child sent by God for the salvation of his people was a part of the mythological picture of the late first and second century, Christianity’s formative decades. It was too tempting to leave aside: Wondrous manifestations of light, cave-births, hidden divinity made manifest to trembling onlookers. They were all part of the story of the birth of the gods and heroes before Christianity came onto the scene to share them.
Virgin birth of the Buddha
In Buddhist tradition, at Gautama’s birth, in equivalently odd circumstances, a great light shines over the world. Persians marked the birth of the Sun, symbol of the god, in the cave of Mithras at the winter solstice, and the Roman co-option of the cult of the sun god, Helios (combined with Mithras in the pre-Christian pantheon) made the solstice the date the birth of Jesus, “the light of the world.” In Greek tradition, Zeus as the Sun divinely illuminates the birth chamber of Herakles in the stable of Angras. And the poet Ovid presents Hercules as the child Horus, who shares a midwinter birthday with Zeus, Apollo, and other calendar gods. The Greek god Hermes was born in a cave in swaddling clothes. The story of the annunciation in Luke 1.30-33 is itself a borrowing of the Egyptian idea that impregnation can be effected through a ray of light falling from heaven, or a word (logos) spoken in the ear, a legend associated with the birth of Apis. The list goes on.
In summary: The stories of the birth of Jesus are late, legendary, and totally without historical merit. They are the additions of devotional writers who are at cross-purposes over whether to understand Jesus in messianic or heroic context and end up doing both. The failure to iron out contradictions is not their problem, because they were doubtless unaware that such contradictions existed. That the contradictions do exist, however, gives us important insight into the mythological foundations of the nativity tale.
Real scholars need to pay closer attention to the origins of religious myth and story and in communicating their opinions to have fuller regard for their role as reporters of reasoned conclusions. Looking for the manger, like looking for Noah’s ark, will probably continue to transfix believers once a year, but historians and biblical scholars should have no part in that quest.
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Published: January 15, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Bible : Christ myth : Christmas : fundamentalism. media : historical jesus : Jesus : miracles : New Testament : religion ..
22 Responses to “The Birth of the Messiah Legend: A Post-Epiphany Reality Check”
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steph
January 15, 2011 at 8:46 pm
Bewildering, bewithering, embarrassing and appalling. And what a shambles of a gamut – from Crossan, through Pagels, White to BW3??!! In fact this latter academic had some rather appallingly serious, false accusations against the department of biblical studies at Sheffield, attributed to him in Christianity Today. C.T. last year, reported faculty [at Sheffield] were “bent on the deconstruction of the Bible, and indeed of their students’ faith,” according to Ben Witherington, a New Testament scholar at Asbury Theological Seminary. Asbury Theological Seminary, is where Ben teaches. They have a “statement of faith”. Asbury Theological Seminary, Ben’s employer, is a very conservative institution which is “called to prepare theologically educated, sanctified, Spirit-filled men and women to evangelize and to spread scriptural holiness throughout the world through the love of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit and to the glory of God the Father”. It also endorses the inerrancy of Scripture, whatever that is. Everybody knows the birth narratives are myth!! For goodness sake, tell the truth!!!! I even made a scholar at a conference blush – from a similar institution at Cambridge, confessing a similar statement of faith. I said to his face, you know the virgin birth is a myth. An awkward ‘ahh well, no…’ I insisted and persisted and he blushed!! But he couldn’t look me in the eye and say they were true.
I wrote Ben’s story up in a blog:http://dunedinschool.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/bewithering-is-becoming-bewildering/
Oh and remember the James Ossuary? But then it did sell alot of books. Tell the truth!!!! It would solve alot of problems in society and may even benefit learning and knowledge.
Reply
Deane
January 16, 2011 at 12:26 am
Joe – Odd, isn’t it, that the beginning and end bits of Matthew and Luke are the least believable. (And that’s not saying anything about the believability of some of the bits in the middle.) That seems to often be the way that those Jewish books grew over time, from Deuteronomy and Jeremiah to Mark/Matthew. All the while getting more and more imaginative, adding the odd Giant, Angel, or Zombie (Deut. 1-3; Luke 1; Matt 27).
Steph – Whoever would’ve thought that money and evangelicalism would come together in a US theological seminary?
Reply
steph
January 16, 2011 at 2:50 pm
haha yes there are seminaries and ossuaries and not ‘disappointing’ readers, but it doesn’t stop there does it … and I know (and so do you) where and who the Zombies are now. Giants… so much more appealing than Q (another place where money gets in the way).
(Check out the links Roland gave me ISAA independents)
Reply
Demonax
January 16, 2011 at 10:16 am
Steph :”It would solve a lot of problems in society and may even benefit learning and knowledge.”
Dangerous ground, remember Plato’s Critias and his speculation as to the foundation of God and punishment stories.
Reply
steph
January 16, 2011 at 8:51 pm
Yes indeed Demonax … although it is a little anachronistic considering the contemporary phenomenon I am inferring here. (ie fundamentalism and it’s opposing reactionaries)
Reply
Mike Wilson
January 16, 2011 at 8:10 pm
It is sad that the History channel is one of my least favorites. Though i do get a kick out of one of my old professors on T.V. (talking about naval warfare, not religion). The History Channel at its’ worst was the two “Search for the Ark” programs. Both turned up odd nick-nacks that bore no resemblance and had no connection to the Ark. An African drum, really? They were the equivalent of E! promising a topless Kardashians Christmas special but instead having a John Goodman/Tom Arnold farting contest.
RJH, where do you think Luke originally began? Was the census dates added to give a Lukan feel to the later material? An interesting idea, I had wondered if the boy Jesus in the Temple was actually borrowed from Infancy Gospel rather than vice versa.
Reply
Ed Jones
January 16, 2011 at 11:06 pm
The problematic of traditional Christianity based on its sources the writings of the NT, the birth narratives being a part, can no longer be ignored given our pesent historical methods and knowledge. What is “bewildering, bewildering, embrassing and appaling” is the bias: there is no reliable Scriptual witness to the HJ, which all too readily develops from its recgnition, to make it all but impossible to recognize the evident historical alternative to NT writings – our closest original and originating apostolic witness, and hence the proper canon for judging the appropriateness of all Christian witness and theology. This Scriptural alternative is convincingly argued in the works of three of our longest standing top NT scholars. This argument “is a task to which specialized knowledge in the areas of philology, form and redaction criticism, literary criticism, history of religions, and New Testament theology necessarily applies” (Betz).
Reply
Ed Jones
January 19, 2011 at 11:28 am
Yes it is “bewildering. bewithering” – whether anyone reads this or not, I add: from my restricted perspective the real “reality check” is the posibility of recognizing the fact that we have a true historical Scriptural path to apostolic witness to the HJ – revealing an image of Jesus entirely different from that found in the writings of the NT. Such an argument has been made, at least by four of our most authentic NT scholars.
Reply
steph
January 20, 2011 at 3:15 pm
Having critiqued both Robinson and Betz heavily in my thesis, I cannot agree with your favourite scholars. They are the best in your opinion and in mine they are not as remotely as helpful as others from Schweitzer and Vermes through to Sanders. Even Dale Allison for all his conservative bias has produced more helpful historical research. Ogden was a theologian and not a historian, Betz for all his good intentions, inherited a mistaken assumption about a Greek speaking Jesus which he fails to demonstrate, and then sought to squeeze and stretch the ‘evidence’ to fit a simple and useful two source hypothesis and Robinson’s over confidence encouraged him to reconstruct the past right down to syllables on similarly false and simplistic assumptions.
Reply
Ed Jones
January 22, 2011 at 12:57 pm
Steph,
I think I see where you are coming from.
The problematic: None of the writings of the NT, the writings of Paul, the Gospels, as well as the later writings of the NT are apostolic, hence not reliable sources for rconstruction of a credible Jesus. To this point you and my named scholars may be in ageement. The stark difference lies in the “bewildering” claim that there is yet reliable Scriptural witness – a difference requiring some explanation.
Ogden can be dismissed – he is only a theologian. In Betz’s case: “for all his good intentions” language much like what he used in explaining the effects of the problematic ["The reason for our lack of knowledge (of Jesus and his teachings) are of a hermenutical sort (authoral
intent) and cannot be overcome by an excess of good will"] – “inherited a mistaken assumption” evidently to so slant his critical judgment that he misinterprets the evidence. “inherited a mistaken assumption” is one way to explain critical scholarly differences – even our own!
Robinson sharing Betz’s mistaken assumptions may be likewise esplained.
Interesting quotes by Joe: “This from Ed Jones concerning the recent post Religion. He cites Schubert Ogden, once one of my intellectual heroes” A 4/19/09 email: “I agree with you about the singular contribution of Schubert Ogden and Hans Dieter Betz, James Robinson actually is one of or members (senior consultant) – - That said, I very much like the idea that Betz should be aboard and will take this up with my colleagues”. Imagine Kurtz welcoming Betz! “
gestalttheology
January 21, 2011 at 3:15 am
In another instance, CBS took its crew to Egypt (receipts, please: no poolside drinks) to ask the visually tantalizing question, “Did the holy family actually live there for a while?” Matthew says they did. He says so because he is “reenacting” the Exodus scenario and gives his hand away by linking the sojourn to Hosea 11.1. Great story. Terrible history.
“gives away his hand”? how does the literary parallel discount an historical parallel?
Reply
steph
January 22, 2011 at 3:04 pm
I doubt it. And no – and that’s what theses are about: a great deal of explanations. Also Ed, I make many criticisms of Robinson and Betz. I’ve read them each, nine times over, upside down and backwards, and I find them holey (not holy) all the way through. Simplistic solutions are a big part of that.
Reply
steph
January 22, 2011 at 3:06 pm
The bewildering which you insist on requoting, refers to the lying, Ed. Thou shalt tell the truth. I made that up but it should have been included.
Reply
steph
January 22, 2011 at 3:08 pm
or rather ‘that you insist on mocking’ rather than ‘requoting’.
Reply
steph
January 23, 2011 at 12:52 am
actually while I frequently err and am very often wrong and have changed my mind many times over the course of my research, I actually think Joe Hoffmann is the wisest and most broadly learned, incisive and brilliant contemporary biblical historian I know. Brilliant contribution to knowledge of Marcion too.
Reply
steph
January 23, 2011 at 1:27 am
…and therefore with reference to the focus of my research and to the cause of my critique, (ie the confidence to reconstruct source material of the synoptic gospels) he is far wiser than both Betz and Robinson who both advocate some form of “Q”. Both Betz and Robinson have contributed significantly however to other aspects of New Testament and early Christianity, and Robinson is especially significant to me for his contribution to research on Nag Hammadi material.
Reply
Ed Jones
January 23, 2011 at 10:59 am
At least I may have been redeemed from the lying reference. To explain dismay over just how the “b” word refers to lying, I have the urge to repeat it.
The Jan 19th requote was to correct the bungled Jan. 16th requote before being called on it. At my age, 92 the 25th, I am misake prone.
Reply
steph
January 23, 2011 at 4:00 pm
sorry, “I haven’t a clue” what your comment is about. (to quote the BBC radio series) :)
Reply
steph
January 23, 2011 at 4:02 pm
or more correctly, before I’m called out perhaps, “Sorry, I haven’t a clue”. BBC…
Ed Jones
January 23, 2011 at 7:35 pm
I accept my Jan. 23rd comment as being nonsensical. I would end this discussion.
Reply
Ed Jones
January 27, 2011 at 10:31 pm
Joe, Steph may have hit upon something perhaps more than she intended with the phrase: “inherited a mistaken assumption” to explain critical scholars holding different understandings about the Jesus puzzle.
Physicist Paul Davies wrote concerning the idea that there might be “a complete explanation of things”- specifically, the reason for existence: “All explanations are founded on the assumption of human rationality: that it is legitimate to seek “explanation” for things and that we truly understand something only when it is ‘explained’: Yet it has to be admitted that our concept of rational explanation probably derives from our observation of the world and our evolutionary inheritance. Is it clear that this provides adequate guidance when we are tangling with ultimate questions? Might it not be the case that the reason for existence has no explanation in the usual sence?
Is there a route to knowledge – even ultimate knowledge – that lies outside the road of rational scientific inquiry and logical reasoning? Many people claim that there is. It is called mysticism.
Most scientests [and NT theologians] have a deep mistrust of mysticism. This is not surprising, as mystical thought [knowledge by revelation] lies at the opposite extreme to rational thought, which is the basis of the scientific method. In fact, many of the world’s finest thinkers, including notable scientists have espoused mysticism. Mysticism is no substitute for scientific inquiry and logical reasoning [(with the Jesus puzzle) no substitute for the historical path to recognition of the source of the occason of the revelation] so long as this approach can be cosistently applied [(with the Jesus puzzel) the historical cannot interpret the occasion] It is only in dealing with ultimate questions that science and logic may fail us – they may be incapable of addressing the sort of ‘why’ (as opposed to ‘how’) questions we want to ask.
We are barred from ultimate knowledge, from ultimate explanation, by the very rules of reasoning that prompt us to seek an explanation in the first place. If we wish to progress beyond, we have to embrace a different concept of “understanding” from rational explanation. Possibly the mystiical path is the way to such understanding.” (The Mind of God”)
Reply
Ed Jones
January 28, 2011 at 5:17 pm
Addition to the above comment.
“Maybe such experiences provide the only route beyond the limits to which science and philosophy can take us, the only possible path to the Ultimate’.
Might not Jesus with his idiom The Kingdom of God have been about Ultimate Concern – man-God relationship – Knowledge by revelation not by sense perceived explanation. Hence the ultimate reason behind Jesus as puzzle: our inherited problem bound to sense perceived reality.
Reply
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Riddling the Sphinx: Egypt 2011
by rjosephhoffmann
The invocation of “freedom from oppression” by sullen powers trying to secure the oppression of freedom-fighters is nothing new in the history of civilization. It’s a particularly tantalizing mantra when the cameras are rolling and reporters sniff blood on the streets. It helps if the protesters are young, confused and loud, as they are in Cairo, and as they were in Tehran in 1978.
It’s true, of course, that loud and bloody rebellions have sometimes resulted in the oppressed masses getting what they wanted, even if they were never particularly clear about what they wanted. Americans (some anyway) wanted fewer taxes and fewer ostensible reminders that they were third-rate toadies of “An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King”, in Shelley’s verdict on royalty. The French wanted less of it too, royal attitude and opulence that is, the repeal of the salt tax (gabelle), and (like Zimbabwean peasants later) more bread. There are other examples of popular uprisings that led to reform, social improvement, and greater freedom for the activists. But not many. The French revolution, glorious as it was, got France a funny kind of Republic and a deliverer who crowned himself emperor. Zanu-PF, a “freedom struggle” even the British got behind, got Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe, a racist dictator who knew how to punish his enemies and finesse the guilt-ridden colonial masters.
Russia was an industrial and economic mess in 1912. By 1917 things had become ripe for agitation. The October Revolution (Великая октябрьская социалистическая революция), was an armed, popular insurrection following on the February Revolution of the same year. By 1922, following a full scale civil war, Russians awoke to find their earlier unhappiness contained by the Soviet state. Somewhere between closing the banks, repudiating its national debt, firing prelates, and seizing the factories, the idea of freedom got lost–especially among vulnerable populations like Jews, intellectuals, poets and critics.
That wasn’t the first example of populism gone crazy: Martin Luther’s rock star status, his mulish defiance of papal power, gave hope to religious dissidents and sympathizers that the Italian “whore” would finally be off the streets of Germany. That in turn, due to the preaching of Luther’s favorite lieutenant Thomas Muentzer, gave hope to the peasants that their day had finally come. There had been similar upsrisings across Europe–stretching back to Wat Tyler’s rebellion in England in 1381. The English cause was all about the poll tax, greedy land lords, labour shortages (the plague, remember?).
The German situation, inspired by Luther’s ambiguous, and as it turned out totally hypocritical concern for the common man, was a nastier affair, one that left as many as 100,000 dead, with his blessing, out of a peasant militia that reached over 300,000. The causes of the revolt sometimes intersect with modern popular complaints: the Emperor was petitioned to abolish the “cattle tithes,” and the death tax; and to preserve all “common fields, forests and waters” for use by the peasants, rather than “allowing these lands to fall into private hands,” and “allow the peasants to hunt on the common lands and fish in the common waters.” As the intensity of the movement grew, Luther became squeamish and finally not only withdrew support for their (expanding) list of grievances against the princes, the nobility and the wealthy, but defended the right of a lawful king to mow them down where they stood in opposition to God-given authority. He got the idea, of all places, from St Paul (Romans 13.1-7).
That brings us to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the US-cradled Shah of Iran–a well-known autocrat who nonetheless developed virtues in dealing with his neighbors, in a chessman kind of way that left him few friends when the going got tough. Pahlavi wasn’t Louis XVI. He was a reformer who developed an enviable record of improving the quality of life for millions of Iranians.
The Shah, on the Peacock Throne
The Shah, despite a pretty listless playboy life to which he felt entitled by the rules of the game, alienated the traditional elites by redistributing the largest estates for the benefit of more than four million small farmers. As a modernizer (the “White Revolution”) he extended the vote to women, which he declared was in accordance with Islamic law. In industry, he enabled the participation of workers in factories through share-holding, based on sweat equity, and other measures. He created an American style elementary school system, ran literacy courses in remote villages using members of the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces as teachers. He promoted health care and health education in rural areas and cities (“Sepāh e Behdāsht”), and offered free lunches to poor children. And perhaps topmost, he introduced a series of rigorous exams for Islamic theologians which were required for them to qualify as clerics. In many ways, he was Mubarak’s mirror image opposite: Much do and little talk.
The young protesters in blue jeans who took to the streets in 1977, 1978, and finally 1979 (he left the country in January of that year) began to chant the phrase “Unislamic” in the direction of the palace, partly reflecting the simple European-style anti-Americanism that was rife in the Middle East, in its import-form, at the time. It was an old story replayed, in which the encounter with “western values,” especially among the children of the elites, engendered identity-crisis soul-searching and remorse among young Muslims; that in turn evoked a Freudian regression to their most cherished adolescent illusions. The reaction is sometimes fearsome: My Islam is not Islamic enough. I must try to walk the narrow path. Our leaders are corrupt. There is only atonement in purification–which of course means, often enough, insurrection and violence–cutting away the cancer. But it is not simply “curious” that the encounter with liberal ideas and values by educated young Muslims is almost always beneath the surface of Islamic rage. The west (and I do not especially equate the west with American values) is inherently provocative. Islam is inherently vulnerable to its allure.
In December, 1979, between six and ten million Iranians marched in the streets of Tehran and elsewhere. By February, the monarchy had been dissolved, Iran was proclaimed an Islamic state, Qom had been declared a Vatican-like religious city-state, the epicenter of both religion and political power, and the Ayatollah Khomeini came home. The Revoution against Reform was complete.
Tehran march, 1979
Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, was born in 1928. He is a well-preserved 82, but a man of another time. He succeeded the very popular and affable Anwar Sadat. He has ruled for thirty years, walking a razor wire between Al-Ikhwān (the Muslim Brotherhood), the Copts, the Muslim factions, the reformers, the West, and the military. In general, despite heavy-handed tactics and inertia, he has not proved to be a totally bad deal.
Americans are a funny lot. It is in their constitutional, gun-loving change-worshiping blood to think that anyone who rules a country for so long can’t be any good. The country probably isn’t worth a damn either. That is the depth of American political wisdom, a nation where citizens become quickly bored two years after a “transformative election” and throw the majority party out and chew gum until they can change drivers yet again.
Thus, when American and (some) European media see thousands of violent protestors in the streets, in Cairo or anywhere in the world, they do not stop to think how few such demonstrations in the history of the planet have resulted in good, or change, or benefit for the “oppressed.”
They think this because (they think) change is good, and a little anarchy, backed up by weapons, never hurt anybody. Isn’t that what our Revolution was all about?
The other visual coordinate is Tienanmen Square, where as many as 800 Chinese protesters, or perhaps many fewer depending on whose frames you believe, were killed in April, 1976, following a show of mourning for the respected Premier Zhou Enlai. The gathering was, ironically, labeled “counter-revolutionary” by China’s surviving, ancient leaders. Both in its inception and in its results, the Chinese affair was completely anomalous. China’s patient evolutionary processes triumphed over the moment. The analogy, despite its visual power, is irrelevant.
Yet the American infatuation with violent protest and massive unrest abides, along with the idea that public demonstrations always convey promise, a fetish they equate with “the will of the people.” This largely mythological view about how change happens persists as all block-headed notions do. At its most banal, it represents a cult of emotion, of mob rule, or the belief (which history can’t corroborate) that chaos always sorts itself out in justice and peace. A few recent NPR interviews with “serious” political scientists” (I mention no names) who claim to know something about the politics of Egypt have been even more heart- and mind-breaking, fraught with ideas that the only live topic is the post-Mubarak era, which of course will be better than the Mubarak era because new things are better than old things.
Hassan al Banna, founder of the Brotherhood
The movers and shakers of this outburst and the final beneficiaries of the game are the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Ikhwān. They are the ones who are fanning the flames, puppeteering the young, skewering the discourse with predictable references to human rights and (naturally) freedom.
Their English language website (Ikhwanweb) called for January 25th to be a “Day of Rage” because, among other things the dictator Mubarak has “insulted” al Qaeda.. Like all incendiary movements, the MB are using statistics like monopoly money, big numbers with no factual value. “At least 100 protesters killed since yesterday.” –And the number continues to climb. It is another case of a dangerous Islamist wing-command using “human rights violations” as a framing device for arrests and detention, and where the attempt to restore civil order becomes “aggression” on the part of the security forces. The MB pours gasoline on grievances, calls it water, then stands back in feigned surprise, like a batch of medieval Dominicans, when the flames leap higher. The strength of the protest, its sheer volume and bloodiness, will be seen as proof of the rectitude of the cause by millions. While American viewers with their limited understanding of such outbreaks begin to conclude, Time for Mubarak to go, millions of Muslims will be thinking something else: Time to join.
And what is our response? What does the United States have to say? The United States government talks about “restoring internet access” in the name of free speech. The President insists that the right to protest peacefully is a “human right.” Fair enough. Mr. President: this is not about Facebook. For the engineers of these protests, it is about God. It is about confusion, and how unconfused men with wicked principles that they hold to be right–purpose-driven men–can turn images that the American media can’t exegete into a government America can not do business with.
That’s what it was about in 1979, too, when the marching stopped, the Shah safely evacuated (to Egypt, by the way) and the shouting died down, and Americans watched their embassy ravaged. Five hundred ardent, shouting student supporters of the Ayatollah, the “Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line,” seized fifty two American citizens and held them captive for 444 days as the United States and a fumbling American president stood by helplessly. There is nothing like reform.
It is undoubtedly true that history doesn’t alter the present. But this present and these scenes are so much like the recent past that whatever the United States gets–a new fundamentalist terrorist state in one of the most important countries in the Muslim world?–it deserves.
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Published: January 29, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Egypt : Extremism : Iran : Islamism : Mubarak : Muslim Brotherhood : R. Joseph Hoffmann : religious violence : Shah ..
9 Responses to “Riddling the Sphinx: Egypt 2011”
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steph
January 30, 2011 at 1:06 pm
Superb post and very astute comparisons. It would be helpful if more people understood a little history and ideology instead of blindly defending the right to protest. You’re absolutely right: the protestors are confused. I can well imagine the menacing Muslim Brotherhood rubbing their hands with glee as they fan the flames with bellows, and filling the ink wells ready to sign up new recruits. Oppressive regimes are often replaced by … oppressive regimes.
x
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steph
January 30, 2011 at 3:23 pm
Prior to this excellent historical analysis I had been comparing the increasing confusion and out of control nature of the Egypt protestors to deplorable situations in Western countries. Prejudice against Muslim communities is so pronounced in some countries, that young Muslims become disenfranchised and angry. As they seek validation for their identity, they become potential recruits for ‘organisations’.
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Mike Gantt
January 30, 2011 at 7:13 pm
Thanks for the history.
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Poverty or Religion? Are we likely to see more revolt in the Middle East? Here? | Unsettled Christianity says:
January 30, 2011 at 7:37 pm
[...] let me recommend, although I disagree with various points, this post which I believe is a valid viewpoint. Let me add, though, that what has bothered me since the [...]
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John Coffin
February 1, 2011 at 1:02 pm
The example of 1979 Iran, and the mere presence of the Muslim Brotherhood, are reasons enough for doubt and worry.
Can Hoffmann demonstrate how much current events are actually controlled/directed by the Ikhwa? Khomeini co-opted and exploited an uprising that wasn’t–at first–dominated by islamists. Everyone should be worried about how the MB exploits the current situation. We don’t have to whitewash the Shah or Mubarak to be realistically concerend about the near-future of Egypt.
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Items you may have missed … « Episyllogism – Bob Lane says:
February 8, 2011 at 8:39 am
[...] “The New Oxonian” on Egypt 2011 – Source [...]
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Alex
May 5, 2011 at 11:47 am
Agree with John’s comments.
The article seems intent on ignoring the violently oppressive aspects of the Shah’s regime to make the valid point that sometimes revolutions don’t always turn out for the best. Is the author suggesting the public had other means with which to dampen the frequent brutality of the regimes they were under? Maybe they could have all had a bake off? Written angry letters?
Also attempting the paint the frequent change of government within the American democratic system as a symptom of public malaise seems a little contrived. I had always assumed the driving idea behind having limited terms of government within democracies was to limit the chance of dictatorships emerging and the subsequent destruction of a dissenting public voice? The same public voice which has been silenced throughout much of the middle east
I think the more relevant question is what can be done from outside to help make sure the representative views of the masses are not drowned out by those seeking to take advantage for their own benefit. A tricky role to walk for any external power, if there is any role to play at all… I certainly don’t know the answer, but it can’t be “put up or shut up” like it seems is being suggested.
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Riddling the Sphinx: Egypt 2011 (via The New Oxonian) « The New Oxonian says:
May 8, 2011 at 7:54 am
[...] The invocation of "freedom from oppression" by sullen powers trying to secure the oppression of freedom-fighters is nothing new in the history of civilization. It's a particularly tantalizing mantra when the cameras are rolling and reporters sniff blood on the streets. It helps if the protesters are young, confused and loud, as they are in Cairo, and as they were in Tehran in 1978. It's true, of course, that loud and bloody rebellions have someti … Read More [...]
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s. wallerstein
May 8, 2011 at 11:30 am
The analysis is very interesting and thanks for the history lesson.
However, the point, as I see it, is not “what the United States gets” in Egypt or whether the U.S. “deserves” it, but what the Egyptian people get, want and deserve.
What the Egyptians get, want and deserve is almost completely out of my and, I suspect, your control, and maybe it’s better that way: that the Egyptians
(and the Iranians) mess up or better their own lives.
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
The Dumbing of Humanism
by rjosephhoffmann
The New Yorker cartoon showed a man defiantly situated behind a newspaper refusing to give up his bus seat to an irate “lady shopper.” The caption was “Chivalry isn’t dead Madam. I am.”
I think it’s vintage 1950. It was included in my grandmother’s fairly slim 1950′s collection of cartoons from the publication that writers still refer to as The Magazine.
I was a subscriber when I was an impecunious undergraduate. My grandmother saw to it–and that I got a box of cherry cordials on my birthday. Now that I am an impecunious university teacher, I still subscribe. Nothing–not even Monty Python’s “Isn’t it Awfully Nice to Have a Penis”–ever made me laugh louder than New Yorker cartoons.
But this lol cartoon came to mind a day or so ago because I’ve been wondering lately whether or not to give up on humanism. It may be dead, but like the flogged dead horse, it won’t lie down.
I say this as someone who has an ardent respect for gay, women’s, minority, and various other individual rights. I support a woman’s right to choose as a matter of common sense and human decency. It is not an arguable topic. I support the right of gays and any other loving people on the planet to love each other with the blessings they choose and in the way they want. It is not an arguable topic. Stem cell research, wherever they usefully come from? For it. War? Against it. Mostly. Religious and any other kind of dogmatism and extremism. Get real. –Sorry, a man of my era.
I am not exactly a libertarian and most libertarians I meet actually annoy me and seem oddly incoherent. But I agree with what used to be a cardinal libertarian tenet: We are free to choose anything that does no harm to others except to choose not to be educated. Something libertarians no longer spotlight–at least as far as I can tell. To choose not to be educated puts us in the running for dogmatism, the opposite of liberty.
“The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle. The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth: and this without a particle of regard to the results to which the exercise of that power may lead, even though it should conduct the pupil to opinions diametrically opposite to those of his teachers. We say this, not because we think opinions unimportant, but because of the immense importance which we attach to them; for in proportion to the degree of intellectual power and love of truth which we succeed in creating, is the certainty that (whatever may happen in any one particular instance) in the aggregate of instances true opinions will be the result; and intellectual power and practical love of truth are alike impossible where the reasoner is shown his conclusions, and informed beforehand that he is expected to arrive at them.” John Stuart Mill, Civilization (1836).
Mill’s language worries me. My worry is that humanism, which (if the word still has any force) has to be concerned about rights, individuality, privacy, non-interference, and pressing social and political matters, is being reduced to the issues those principles evince. That sounds a bit fustian. It isn’t meant to.
I suppose it’s fair to say that the reason humanism, as most people know the word, has taken this turn is that it is easier to talk about issues than principles, easier to discuss hot topics than ideals. Movements and advocacy groups are “joined.” They are not the last statement in a syllogism.
But there be monsters. Religious communities are also joined, and just for the same reason. No one ever became a Presbyterian because he read his Calvin. Not recently, anyway. The danger of becoming dogmatic about anything you haven’t arrived at through a steady course of reasoning is immense. That is exactly Mill’s point.
It is proportionally easier, therefore, to confuse issues and ideals–and I think that is what is happening to humanism–with humanism. It now falls victim to the kind of reductivism to which its spacious principles have entitled it, like Adam to the succulence of forbidden fruit.
Can we blame anyone or anything for this outcome? I think so.
Chivalry died and no one noticed. It was replaced by sheer dumbness and the unprincipled assurance of male political and social dominance. That was (simplified) certainly the case during my childhood, and even remained the case during the now well-documented male-dominated protest movements of the early sixties when I came of age. Then women came of age and didn’t want to be called “babe” or “my chick” anymore, around the same time Asians at Berkeley were called Buddha heads. And then everything changed.
I’ve just read Stephanie Coontz’s new biography of
Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique. When I knew her, near the end of her life, she resisted saying outright that feminism and humanism were compatible. They were certainly not the same thing. One was not a subset of the other. They could be arrived at by different roads. Cher’s don’t-mess-with-me-looks at Sonny did more than Gloria Steinham to change things for women. And she began as a chick. Humanism had nothing to do with it.
I think humanism leads to positions that embrace freedom, justice, equality and compassion. But I see no way of maintaining those positions, practically or even argumentatively, without careful assessment of what brings them into existence.
The best kind of humanist vision creates liberating (not necessarily liberal) positions; but I do not think these positions lead inevitably to a humanist vision. There are ample “proofs” of this, but reflect on the fact that Christian principles, as represented in the Black Church of the 1950′s and 1960′s and ideas of self-worth that were rooted in the Gospel, issued in the Civil Rights movement. Liberal Christian ministers like William Sloane Coffin climbed on board quickly. They were also there at the head of the civil disobedience phase of the anti-war movement. I know because I was there too. A small, core peace movement had long existed in the United States, largely based in Quaker and Unitarian beliefs, but failed to gain popular currency until the Cold War era. The escalating nuclear arms race of the late 1950s led Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review, along with Clarence Pickett of the American Society of Friends (Quakers), to found the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) in 1957. The list goes on, but except for the atheist orientation of certain radical groups, the list of effective activism–activism that made a difference–was at least implicitly religious.
Humanism, meantime, of a quieter, calmer and even religious disposition was being dumbed in the growth of secular humanism [Humanist Manifesto II, 1973]
It was the purest reduction of humanist principles to easy targets that America had ever seen, an accelerated Berlitz-scheme to make America more like Europe. Fundamentalists, political yahoos, believers in the paranormal, weird science, and assorted other “issues” that smart people might have settled with a little classroom time and careful thought, were put forward as a program (a joinable cause) in an age when self-help was just coming of age. It bought a variety of causes, more or less, wholesale, as its agenda, failing to see that religion was changing and offering its screed against religion in the form of a new scientific morality as a substitute for “faith”:
…Traditional faiths encourage dependence rather than independence, obedience rather than affirmation, fear rather than courage. More recently they have generated concerned social action, with many signs of relevance appearing in the wake of the “God Is Dead” theologies. But we can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species. While there is much that we do not know, humans are responsible for what we are or will become. No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.
I am an unbeliever who doesn’t like the word atheist very much–too fraught with unarguable curves. Secular humanism embraced atheism as its non-negotiable starting point. There were other kinds of “humanism,” the founders of secular humanism acknowledged, but they were primarily of antiquarian value. Hardly worth notice in a democratic (10 across) and secular (7 down) society.
There was nothing especially wicked in any of this. Secular humanism was a vision for the early-late twentieth century. Its attention to the secular origins of American democracy was important, though not unique and not philosophically grounded in a deep sense of history. One of its early saints, Corliss Lamont, and many of its attaches, were simply repentant and fairly ignorant Marxists. Humanism was a badge of respectability when other loves dare not be spoken.
It was not a vision or a way forward. The threat it posed to itself was the threat of the phoenix. Ultimately it would self-destruct before the twin spawn of its birth: issues of individual rights, which it shared with a dozen other advocacy groups, and the atheist mind-set that it taught was required for the implementation of any meaningful approach to the issues. It did not imagine that one day its hedginess would be its undoing and that the soft bottom of humanism would not be strong enough to support it.
As the creation of an era, secular humanism was between Scylla and Charybdis. It preached nonsense under the banner of “reason” and “science” since no self-respecting individualist who is also a non-believer would dare to challenge the icons of the Post-Darwinian world.
Mainly, traditional humanists shut up. First because they were (that word again) chivalrous where secular humanism was loud and bluff, though not as loud as organized atheism. Partly because they had grown diffident about their usefulness in an issue-dominated society that was also being driven in new directions by a hundred social and intellectual currents. They–the liberal and vaguely religious humanists–were quaint, classical, church-friendly, even a bit priggishly old fashioned in their moral and intellectual stances.
Secular humanism seemed, at the time, aggressive, issue-sensitive, purposeful. The extent to which it had become servant rather than master of its issues was never, really, cataloged.
The propounders were scarcely aware of the prior history of denominationalism. They aspired to a European version of society without really ever “getting” Europe, as if they married into it rather than being born to the manor. They needed to have read a little more Niebhur, maybe even a little Augustine, a little less C.S. Peirce.
H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism
If they had, they would have been aware that the qualification of anything is the beginning of its fracture, its breaking into bits, wings, factions–or to use the ecclesiological jargon, denominations. Once humanism began calling itself names, like so many Baptists, the end was near. It is hard to get back to basics–principles and ideals, origins–once issues, movements, and mind-sets have replaced them in energy, flow and focus. That is what happened. And it is entirely describable, in a historicist kind of way.
Humanism doesn’t need to be defined anymore. It is as it does. Like language, it’s the talk we talk, not the speech described in nineteenth century grammars. I have no illusions that a philosophy opposed to the soul is prepared for soul-searching. I am not even sure it’s desirable. Smart people will always draw inspiration from historical models and form unspoken principles from example and “great” ideas. They don’t really need a name, a map, a manifesto, or a banner in front of it.
Yet there may be hope. I think that there is a new generation of idealists (and I could name names, and maybe I will at some point) who care as ardently as I do about first principles, virtue, and goodness as the starting point for any meaningful experience of humanism.
They certainly exist in Boston (and perhaps elsewhere?) and they recognize that individual freedom begins from the principles–the ideas–not the issues. They are not reductivists. They are not antiquarians. They are not dumb. And they are far from dead.
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Published: February 5, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: atheism : C.S. Peirce : Harvard : humanism : Paul Kurtz : R. Joseph Hoffmann : secular humanism : What is Secular Humanism? Religion ..
18 Responses to “The Dumbing of Humanism”
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Cherry Cordials says:
February 5, 2011 at 8:15 pm
[...] The Dumbing of Humanism « The New Oxonian My grandmother saw to it–and that I got a box of cherry cordials on my birthday. Now that I am an impecunious university teacher, I still subscribe. Nothing–not even Monty Python's “Isn't it Awfully Nice to Have a Penis” ever made me . [...]
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steph
February 5, 2011 at 9:53 pm
“Humanism doesn’t need defining anymore” – I’m not even sure it needs a name. Names always demand interpretation and become things to hijack and misunderstand. Names are prone to be prefixed with an epiteth. I’ve never found the focus of the humanism that calls itself secular, particularly helpful. It’s not ‘about’ secularism (or God) at all. Humanism needs to be lived, demonstrated, and reflected, in a sense – not named and defined. And a little more gently, quietly, thoughtfully and considerately. I agree and empathise with every word you’ve written – you’ve saved it if it needed to be saved. Beautifully expressed it. I also believe that I know quite a few people who are concerned with these principles – but they don’t necessarily call themselves humanists, or anything at all. My own father was definitely one of them.
I found the New Yorker diary for 2011. It’s hilarious – The New Yorker Cat Diary. But I like it so much I can’t write a word in it. But that’s OK – I have an impeccable memory for dates, times, numbers and lists…
x
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steph
February 5, 2011 at 10:58 pm
actually I alter that – it does need to be saved, with passion, from mutilation. For the past few decades, it has suffered from definitions and humanists don’t call themselves humanists. But you have expressed the ideas perfectly, I believe.
x
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steph
February 6, 2011 at 1:42 am
Following further consideration (or googling) I think these principles very urgently need to be rescued, with cooperative effort, from this:
“The clarion call of the New Atheism’s rise has filled us with celebration, and has encouraged us to answer reason’s call. At this summer’s Midwest Humanist Conference, renown FreeThought activist August Berkshire has called “atheism the medicine.” August brilliantly completed the thought calling Humanism the “bedside manner.” As Humanists we realize our role and obligation as members of the human race.” (Southern California Secular Humanism Conference … Beyond disbelief, Secular Humanism fills us with the energy to look forward and progress ourselves to a brighter future by our own hands, unencumbered by fanciful beliefs in the supernatural”
I don’t recognise any essence of humanism in this statement. I just find it depressing.
Herb Van Fleet
February 6, 2011 at 1:34 pm
If you can get through the verbosity, the postings on my blog, TheHumanistChallenge.worpress.com, go a long way to underscore your points. Here, for example, is a quote from my very first post, “Becoming Kinder Gentler Humanists:”
“By any measure, we humans have come a long way since the dawn of civilization. But only in the last few hundred years or so have we come to better understand our world, and indeed reality itself, through the application of reason and the discipline of science. Yet, sadly, we have made very little progress in our capacity for tolerance, compassion, and fairness. It seems to me that this deficiency presents an opportunity for the Humanist Movement.
“If Humanism follows its implicit moral imperative of emancipating people from irrational dogma of all kinds by helping to assuage the existential angst that goes with living in a complex and diverse society, then it can facilitate an awareness of other, more rational, more ethical, more humane possibilities. I see this battle for hearts and minds carried out not just in churches, mosques, and synagogues, but in our educational institutions, our economic systems, our families and communities, our courts, our legislatures, our health care systems, our communication networks, our workplaces, and our liberal democracy.
“Therefore, in respect of the foregoing, I believe the focus of the Humanist Movement should be on reason, compassion, ethics, justice, scientific inquiry, and the promise of human fulfillment in the natural world. It should leave the attacks on religion to those groups created specifically for that purpose – the Anti-Theists – and emphasize a need for the Humanist philosophy in all of our social institutions. Humanists should strive to become uniters, not dividers.”
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rjosephhoffmann
February 6, 2011 at 1:41 pm
Brilliant, Herb, I just read it: could not agree more. What we need to to is unite the humanists who have this vision and not a “partial” one based on elements that may or may not be essential to humanist philosophy. And I don’t think it’s verbose at all.
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steph
February 6, 2011 at 3:12 pm
Hello Herb, Your incisive summary, becoming a gentler kinder humanist, contains exactly the essential principles of humanism I recognise, with perfect clarity. Inspiring vision – and promising for an exciting revival. Thank you Herb, beautifully expressed. And exactly – uniters not dividers (and there are quite a few rational theists who empathise with these principles). I love it.
Reply
pat schreer
February 7, 2011 at 2:15 pm
Well, blah blah blah, and more blah. Too wordy withourt much to say except one does not have to read between the lines when reading anything Humanist to see all the” shoulds “and “oughts” in the rhetoric. Much too moralistic for us Atheists who tell it like it is without fanfare. Give me that old time Atheism anytime all the rest is riding on our backs!
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rjosephhoffmann
February 7, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Intriguing comment, Pat. One of the reasons I avoid “that old time atheism”–whatever that is. Kind of in your face or up yer bum is it?
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pat schreer
February 9, 2011 at 2:08 am
Yes thats it , and if it wasn’t it, you humanists would still be wondering what exactly it is! Let me remind you of what IT is not =it is not about being nice, it is not about being tolerant, it is not about being polite , it is not about compromising , it is not about agreeing to disagree. And it really is hard to get excited about something that rides on the coattails of IT.
steph
February 9, 2011 at 3:21 pm
I’m excited anticipating a future helping to create a more ideal and meaningful humanism – as it’s expressed with much eloquence, wit and clarity above. But then many of us not in your cultural context do not follow your brand of “IT”. In fact your “IT” is nothing to do with humanism at all. I happen to be atheist but I’ve never been obsessed about the differences between me and those with mistaken beliefs. I’ve always been more interested in education and building futures with a variety of different people sharing basic principles and values, building relationships – not creating enemies. I am also not under any illusion that I am a better person than people with a belief in any defined or indefinable God concept or concept of ‘God’ as ‘goodness’. Quite various really, beliefs of religious people.
Mind you I’ve never believed so I’ve never had any faith to leave and consequently resent, but I know plenty of others who have become atheists and left some form of ‘faith’ and don’t demonstrate antagonism towards religious people or religions as your “IT” does. Often they never identify as ‘atheists’ because of the “IT” you represent. In fact Michael Goulder specifically identified himself as “a non-aggressive atheist” after he left his faith, precisely because of the “IT” you represent. I didn’t come across your “IT” until I came across it on the internet, and it appears to be a predominantly American phenomenon. I’ve never had a first hand encounter with “IT” of your brand. Perhaps it’s because so much of religion in America is categorically fundamentalist. Your perception of religion may be intensely flavoured or poisoned by your impressions of fundamentalism, and fundamentalism is fundamentally, quite similar in certain characteristics to “IT”. But once again, I haven’t had much first hand experience with fundamentalists either. Religious beliefs are probably far more diverse in the rest of the world. Religious people don’t always feel beholden to dogmatic or biblical beliefs or “society’s religion”, but view their religion with more freedom and initiative. And alot of religious people have very humanistic views on life. So best of luck to you and your “IT” friends in building a future together.
Northerner
September 15, 2011 at 4:51 pm
I agree pat. In the 80s Humanists were trying to dominate the Green parties, now they’ve successfully managed to dominate online atheists (recent informal polls suggests online atheists are 85% self described Humanists. I find the moralisism and anthropocentrism of Humanism very annoying. In addition to the constant crying of “treating humans better”. If modern humanity had not been doing ONLY that for the past 5000 years, our numbers would not have increased so. Frankly, it is time for humans to do a little less navel gazing and admit that we’re already done too much for “humans”.
Reply
rjosephhoffmann
February 9, 2011 at 6:22 pm
@ Steph
By George, she’s got IT!
Reply
pat schreer
February 11, 2011 at 1:28 am
The “IT” is not theists or relligious or christians or believers , or fundamentalists IT is refered to as Humanists. Stick to the subject and quit prattling on!
Reply
steph
February 12, 2011 at 1:46 am
Check your spelling and punctuation, and stop whining. The “IT” you described as ‘old time atheism’, has nothing to do with humanism. In fact, the “IT” you described bears a distinct resemblance to new atheism. New atheists are not humanists Pat. They do not behave like humanists. You see Pat, humanism is not really about religion or atheism. Humanism definitely doesn’t ‘ride[] on the coattails’ of atheism, whether the atheism is old, new or unqualified. If anything, it emanates from belief. Perhaps you haven’t quite cottoned onto the subject. Maybe you’re just a bit to cross to comprehend, eh.
Reply
Dwight Jones
April 28, 2011 at 5:09 pm
RJH writ: “My worry is that humanism, which (if the word still has any force) has to be concerned about rights, individuality, privacy, non-interference, and pressing social and political matters, is being reduced to the issues those principles evince.”
Those issues are standalone, and may overlap to be fair. Perhaps what’s missing is their lack of linkage to Humanism. There’s no pingback.
Example: Humanists at some point would be expected to decry a new generation of Trident missile subs as anti-human, a monument to human failure. Or do we ask the Quakers to do that for us? Are we hijacking the Quakers to do our duty, while we sit by in our ten gallon hats, sneering at Dawson?
Reply
rjosephhoffmann
April 28, 2011 at 6:51 pm
Christopher Dawson, or Richard Dawkins?
Reply
The Incompleat Atheist Woman? A Little History and Less Context « The New Oxonian says:
August 20, 2011 at 5:09 pm
[...] the title most influential feminist of her generation, Betty Friedan, went so far as to question whether humanism was suited to pursue the feminist agenda. Part of her concern, as expressed in [...]
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
The Necessity of Atheism
by rjosephhoffmann
I submit that any atheist, new, old, or in between, should be able to read and react to the essay that got Shelley expelled (“sent down”) from Oxford.
I think this partly because I think atheists are becoming illiterate about their own past, disconnected from the history of the risk their position entails.
And partly because they increasingly believe what they believe without inquiry, on the basis of what prestigious people have said or written. That is a religious approach, not a critical approach to religion. And that is as fatal for atheism as blind faith is for faith.
The poet was nineteen years old when he was called on by the proctors of the University to claim authorship of the essay, which he refused to repudiate even after his father intervened with his College.
1811
The Necessity of Atheism
Percy Bysshe Shelley
There Is No God
This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken.
A close examination of the validity of the proofs adduced to support any proposition is the only secure way of attaining truth, on the advantages of which it is unnecessary to descant: our knowledge of the existence, of a Deity is a subject of such importance that it cannot be too minutely investigated; in consequence of this conviction we proceed briefly and impartially to examine the proofs which have been adduced. It is necessary first to consider the nature of belief.
When a proposition is offered to the mind, It perceives the agreement or disagreement of the ideas of which it is composed. A perception of their agreement is termed belief. Many obstacles frequently prevent this perception from being immediate; these the mind attempts to remove in order that the perception may be distinct.
The mind is active in the investigation in order to perfect the state of perception of the relation which the component ideas of the proposition bear to each, which is passive; the investigation being confused with the perception has induced many falsely to imagine that the mind is active in belief. — that belief is an act of volition, — in consequence of which it may be regulated by the mind. Pursuing, continuing this mistake, they have attached a degree of criminality to disbelief; of which, in its nature, it is incapable: it is equally incapable of merit.
Belief, then, is a passion, the strength of which, like every other passion, is in precise proportion to the degrees of excitement.
The degrees of excitement are three.
The senses are the sources of all knowledge to the mind; consequently their evidence claims the strongest assent.
The decision of the mind, founded upon our own experience, derived from these sources, claims the next degree.
The experience of others, which addresses itself to the former one, occupies the lowest degree.
(A graduated scale, on which should be marked the capabilities of propositions to approach to the test of the senses, would be a just barometer of the belief which ought to be attached to them.)
Consequently no testimony can be admitted which is contrary to reason; reason is founded on the evidence of our senses.
Every proof may be referred to one of these three divisions: it is to be considered what arguments we receive from each of them, which should convince us of the existence of a Deity.
1st, The evidence of the senses. If the Deity should appear to us, if he should convince our senses of his existence, this revelation would necessarily command belief. Those to whom the Deity has thus appeared have the strongest possible conviction of his existence. But the God of Theologians is incapable of local visibility.
2d, Reason. It is urged that man knows that whatever is must either have had a beginning, or have existed from all eternity, he also knows that whatever is not eternal must have had a cause. When this reasoning is applied to the universe, it is necessary to prove that it was created: until that is clearly demonstrated we may reasonably suppose that it has endured from all eternity. We must prove design before we can infer a designer. The only idea which we can form of causation is derivable from the constant conjunction of objects, and the consequent inference of one from the other. In a base where two propositions are diametrically opposite, the mind believes that which is least incomprehensible; — it is easier to suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it: if the mind sinks beneath the weight of one, is it an alleviation to increase the intolerability of the burthen?
The other argument, which is founded on a Man’s knowledge of his own existence, stands thus. A man knows not only that he now is, but that once he was not; consequently there must have been a cause. But our idea of causation is alone derivable from the constant conjunction of objects and the consequent Inference of one from the other; and, reasoning experimentally, we can only infer from effects caused adequate to those effects. But there certainly is a generative power which is effected by certain instruments: we cannot prove that it is inherent in these instruments” nor is the contrary hypothesis capable of demonstration: we admit that the generative power is incomprehensible; but to suppose that the same effect is produced by an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent being leaves the cause in the same obscurity, but renders it more incomprehensible.
3d, Testimony. It is required that testimony should not be contrary to reason. The testimony that the Deity convinces the senses of men of his existence can only be admitted by us, if our mind considers it less probable, that these men should have been deceived than that the Deity should have appeared to them. Our reason can never admit the testimony of men, who not only declare that they were eye-witnesses of miracles, but that the Deity was irrational; for he commanded that he should be believed, he proposed the highest rewards for, faith, eternal punishments for disbelief. We can only command voluntary actions; belief is not an act of volition; the mind is ever passive, or involuntarily active; from this it is evident that we have no sufficient testimony, or rather that testimony is insufficient to prove the being of a God. It has been before shown that it cannot be deduced from reason. They alone, then, who have been convinced by the evidence of the senses can believe it.
Hence it is evident that, having no proofs from either of the three sources of conviction, the mind cannot believe the existence of a creative God: it is also evident that, as belief is a passion of the mind, no degree of criminality is attachable to disbelief; and that they only are reprehensible who neglect to remove the false medium through which their mind views any subject of discussion. Every reflecting mind must acknowledge that there is no proof of the existence of a Deity.
God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist. Sir Isaac Newton says: Hypotheses non fingo, quicquid enim ex phaenomenis non deducitur hypothesis, vocanda est, et hypothesis vel metaphysicae, vel physicae, vel qualitatum occultarum, seu mechanicae, in philosophia locum non habent. To all proofs of the existence of a creative God apply this valuable rule. We see a variety of bodies possessing a variety of powers: we merely know their effects; we are in a estate of ignorance with respect to their essences and causes. These Newton calls the phenomena of things; but the pride of philosophy is unwilling to admit its ignorance of their causes. From the phenomena, which are the objects of our attempt to infer a cause, which we call God, and gratuitously endow it with all negative and contradictory qualities. From this hypothesis we invent this general name, to conceal our ignorance of causes and essences. The being called God by no means answers with the conditions prescribed by Newton; it bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit, to hide the ignorance of philosophers even from themselves.
They borrow the threads of its texture from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar. Words have been used by sophists for the same purposes, from the occult qualities of the peripatetics to the effuvium of Boyle and the crinities or nebulae of Herschel. God is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; he is contained under every predicate in non that the logic of ignorance could fabricate. Even his worshippers allow that it is impossible to form any idea of him: they exclaim with the French poet,
Pour dire ce qu’il est, il faut etre lui-meme. [To say something is, it is necessary for it to be what it is]
Lord Bacon says that atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy, natural piety, laws, reputation, and everything that can serve to conduct him to virtue; but superstition destroys all these, and erects itself into a tyranny over the understandings of men: hence atheism never disturbs the government, but renders man more clear- sighted, since he sees nothing beyond the boundaries of the present life. — Bacon’s Moral Essays.
The [Beginning here, and to the paragraph ending with Systeme de la Nature," Shelley wrote in French. A free translation has been substituted.] first theology of man made him first fear and adore the elements themselves, the gross and material objects of nature; he next paid homage to the agents controlling the elements, lower genies, heroes or men gifted with great qualities. By force of reflection he sought to simplify things by submitting all nature to a single agent, spirit, or universal soul, which, gave movement to nature and all its branches. Mounting from cause to cause, mortal man has ended by seeing nothing; and it is in this obscurity that he has placed his God; it is in this darksome abyss that his uneasy imagination has always labored to fabricate chimeras, which will continue to afflict him until his knowledge of nature chases these phantoms which he has always so adored.
If we wish to explain our ideas of the Divinity we shall be obliged to admit that, by the word God, man has never been able to designate but the most hidden, the most distant and the most unknown cause of the effects which he saw; he has made use of his word only when the play of natural and known causes ceased to be visible to him; as soon as he lost the thread of these causes, or when his mind could no longer follow the chain, he cut the difficulty and ended his researches by calling God the last of the causes, that is to say, that which is beyond all causes that he knew; thus he but assigned a vague denomination to an unknown cause, at which his laziness or the limits of his knowledge forced him to stop. Every time we say that God is the author of some phenomenon, that signifies that we are ignorant of how such a phenomenon was able to operate by the aid of forces or causes that we know in nature. It is thus that the generality of mankind, whose lot is ignorance, attributes to the Divinity, not only the unusual effects which strike them, but moreover the most simple events, of which the causes are the most simple to understand by whomever is able to study them. In a word, man has always respected unknown causes, surprising effects that his ignorance kept him from unraveling. It was on this debris of nature that man raised the imaginary colossus of the Divinity.
If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, knowledge of nature is made for their destruction. In proportion as man taught himself, his strength and his resources augmented with his knowledge; science, the arts, industry, furnished him assistance; experience reassured him or procured for him means of resistance to the efforts of many causes which ceased to alarm as soon as they became understood. In a word, his terrors dissipated in the same proportion as his mind became enlightened. The educated man ceases to be superstitious.
It is only by hearsay (by word of mouth passed down from generation to generation) that whole peoples adore the God of their fathers and of their priests: authority, confidence, submission and custom with them take the place of conviction or of proofs: they prostrate themselves and pray, because their fathers taught them to prostrate themselves and pray: but why did their fathers fall on their knees? That is because, in primitive times, their legislators and their guides made it their duty. “Adore and believe,” they said, “the gods whom you cannot understand; have confidence in our profound wisdom; we know more than you about Divinity.” But why should I come to you? It is because God willed it thus; it is because God will punish you if you dare resist. But this God, is not he, then, the thing in question? However, man has always traveled in this vicious circle; his slothful mind has always made him find it easier to accept the judgment of others. All religious nations are founded solely on authority; all the religions of the world forbid examination and do not want one to reason; authority wants one to believe in God; this God is himself founded only on the authority of a few men who pretend to know him, and to come in his name and announce him on earth. A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man.
Should it not, then, be for the priests, the inspired, the metaphysicians that should be reserved the conviction of the existence of a God, which they, nevertheless, say is so necessary for all mankind? But Can you find any harmony in the theological opinions of the different inspired ones or thinkers scattered over the earth? They themselves, who make a profession of adoring the same God, are they in Agreement? Are they content with the proofs that their colleagues bring of his existence? Do they subscribe unanimously to the ideas they present on nature, on his conduct, on the manner of understanding his pretended oracles? Is there a country on earth where the science of God is really perfect? Has this science anywhere taken the consistency and uniformity that we the see the science of man assume, even in the most futile crafts, the most despised trades. These words mind immateriality, creation, predestination and grace; this mass of subtle distinctions with which theology to everywhere filled; these so ingenious inventions, imagined by thinkers who have succeeded one another for so many centuries, have only, alas! confused things all the more, and never has man’s most necessary science, up to this time acquired the slightest fixity. For thousands of years the lazy dreamers have perpetually relieved one another to meditate on the Divinity, to divine his secret will, to invent the proper hypothesis to develop this important enigma. Their slight success has not discouraged the theological vanity: one always speaks of God: one has his throat cut for God: and this sublime being still remains the most unknown and the most discussed.
Man would have been too happy, if, limiting himself to the visible objects which interested him, he had employed, to perfect his real sciences, his laws, his morals, his education, one-half the efforts he has put into his researches on the Divinity. He would have been still wiser and still more fortunate if he had been satisfied to let his jobless guides quarrel among themselves, sounding depths capable of rendering them dizzy, without himself mixing in their senseless disputes. But it is the essence of ignorance to attach importance to that which it does not understand. Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interests of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced by the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies.
If, leaving for a moment the annoying idea that theology gives of a capricious God, whose partial and despotic decrees decide the fate of mankind, we wish to fix our eyes only on the pretended goodness, which all men, even trembling before this God, agree is ascribing to him, if we allow him the purpose that is lent him of having worked only for his own glory, of exacting the homage of intelligent beings; of seeking only in his works the well-being of mankind; how reconcile these views and these dispositions with the ignorance truly invincible in which this God, so glorious and so good, leaves the majority of mankind in regard to God himself? If God wishes to be known, cherished, thanked, why does he not show himself under his favorable features to all these intelligent beings by whom he wishes to be loved and adored? Why not manifest himself to the whole earth in an unequivocal manner, much more capable of convincing us than these private revelations which seem to accuse the Divinity of an annoying partiality for some of his creatures? The all-powerful, should he not heave more convincing means by which to show man than these ridiculous metamorphoses, these pretended incarnations, which are attested by writers so little in agreement among themselves? In place of so many miracles, invented to prove the divine mission of so many legislators revered by the different people of the world, the Sovereign of these spirits, could he not convince the human mind in an instant of the things he wished to make known to it? Instead of hanging the sun in the vault of the firmament, instead of scattering stars without order, and the constellations which fill space, would it not have been more in conformity with the views of a God so jealous of his glory and so well-intentioned for mankind, to write, in a manner not subject to dispute, his name, his attributes, his permanent wishes in ineffaceable characters, equally understandable to all the inhabitants of the earth? No one would then be able to doubt the existence of God, of his clear will, of his visible intentions. Under the eyes of this so terrible God no one would have the audacity to violate his commands, no mortal would dare risk attracting his anger: finally, no man would have the effrontery to impose on his name or to interpret his will according to his own fancy.
In fact, even while admitting the existence of the theological God, and the reality of his so discordant attributes which they impute to him, one can conclude nothing to authorize the conduct or the cult which one is prescribed to render him. Theology is truly the sieve of the Danaides. By dint of contradictory qualities and hazarded assertions it has, that is to say, so handicapped its God that it has made it impossible for him to act. If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has, filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED? If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest. — Systame de la Nature. London, 1781.
The enlightened and benevolent Pliny thus Publicly professes himself an atheist, — Quapropter effigiem Del formamque quaerere imbecillitatis humanae reor. Quisquis est Deus (si modo est alius) et quacunque in parte, totus est gensus, totus est visus, totus auditus, totus animae, totus animi, totus sul. … Imperfectae vero in homine naturae praecipua solatia, ne deum quidem omnia. Namque nec sibi protest mortem consciscere, si velit, quod homini dedit optimum in tantis vitae poenis; nee mortales aeternitate donare, aut revocare defunctos; nec facere ut qui vixit non vixerit, qui honores gessit non gesserit, nullumque habere In praeteritum ius praeterquam oblivionts, atque (ut. facetis quoque argumentis societas haec cum, deo compuletur) ut bis dena viginti non sint, et multa similiter efficere non posse. — Per quaedeclaratur haud dubie naturae potentiam id quoque ease quod Deum vocamus. — Plin. Nat. Hist. cap. de Deo.
The consistent Newtonian is necessarily an atheist. See Sir W. Drummond’s Academical Questions, chap. iii. — Sir W. seems to consider the atheism to which it leads as a sufficient presumption of the falsehood of the system of gravitation; but surely it is more consistent with the good faith of philosophy to admit a deduction from facts than an hypothesis incapable of proof, although it might militate, with the obstinate preconceptions of the mob. Had this author, instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have, been more suited to the modesty of the skeptic and the toleration of the philosopher.
Omnia enim per Dei potentiam facta aunt: imo quia naturae potentia nulla est nisi ipsa Dei potentia. Certum est nos eatenus Dei potentiam non intelligere, quatenus causas naturales ignoramus; adeoque stulte ad eandem Dei potentism recurritur, quando rei alicuius causam naturalem, sive est, ipsam Dei potentiam ignoramusd — Spinoza, Tract. Theologico-Pol. chap 1. P. 14.
On Life
Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which support them; what is the birth and the extinction of religious and of political systems, to life? What are the revolutions of the globe which we inhabit, and the operations of the elements of which it is composed, compared with life? What is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their destiny, compared with life? Life, the great miracle, we admire not because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that which is its object.
If any artist, I do not say had executed, but had merely conceived in his mind the system of the sun, and the stars, and planets, they not existing, and had painted to us in words, or upon canvas, the spectacle now afforded by the nightly cope of heaven, and illustrated it by the wisdom of astronomy, great would be our admiration. Or had he imagined the scenery of this earth, the mountains, the seas, and the rivers; the grass, and the flowers, and the variety of the forms and masses of the leaves of the woods, and the colors which attend the setting and the rising sun, and the hues of the atmosphere, turbid or serene, these things not before existing, truly we should have been astonished, and it would not have been a vain boast to have said of such a man, “Non merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta.” But how these things are looked on with little wonder, and to be conscious of them with intense delight is esteemed to be the distinguishing mark of a refined and extraordinary person. The multitude of men care not for them. It is thus with Life — that which includes all.
What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without, our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered, and our infancy remembered but in fragments; we live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being! Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance to ourselves; and this is much. For what are we? Whence do we come? and whither do we go? Is birth the commencement, is death the conclusion of our being? What is birth and death?
The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life, which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess that I am one of those who am unable to refuse my assent to the conclusion of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived.
It is a decision against which all our persuasions struggle, and we must be long convicted before we can be convinced that the solid universe of external things is “such stuff as dreams are made of.” The shocking absurdities of the popular philosophy of mind and matter, its fatal consequences in morals, and their violent dogmatism concerning the source of all things, had early conducted me to materialism. This materialism is a seducing system to young and superficial minds. It allows its disciples to talk, and dispenses them from thinking. But I was discontented with such a view of things as it afforded; man is a being of high aspirations, “looking both before and after,” whose “thoughts wander through eternity,” disclaiming alliance with transience and decay: incapable of imagining to himself annihilation; existing but in the future and the past; being, not what he is, but what he has been and all be. Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being. Each is at once the center and the circumference; the point to which all things are referred, and the line in which all things are contained. Such contemplations as these, materialism and the popular philosophy of mind and matter alike they are only consistent with the intellectual system.
It is absurd to enter into a long recapitulation of arguments sufficiently familiar to those inquiring minds, whom alone a writer on abstruse subjects can be conceived to address. Perhaps the most clear and vigorous statement of the intellectual system is to be found in Sir William Drummond’s Academical Questions. After such an exposition, it would be idle to translate into other words what could only lose its energy and fitness by the change. Examined point by point, and word by word, the most discriminating intellects have been able to discern no train of thoughts in the process of reasoning, which does not conduct inevitably to the conclusion which has been stated.
What follows from the admission? It establishes no new truth, it gives us no additional insight into our hidden nature, neither its action nor itself: Philosophy, impatient as it may be to build, has much work yet remaining as pioneer for the overgrowth of ages. it makes one step towards this object; it destroys error, and the roots of error. It leaves, what it is too often the duty of the reformer in political and ethical questions to leave, a vacancy. it reduces the mind to that freedom in which it would have acted, but for the misuse of words and signs, the instruments of its own creation. By signs, I would be understood in a wide sense, including what is properly meant by that term, and what I peculiarly mean. In this latter sense, almost all familiar objects are signs, standing, not for themselves, but for others, in their capacity of suggesting one thought which shall lead to a train of thoughts. Our whole life is thus an education of error.
Let us recollect our sensations as children. What a distinct and intense apprehension had we of the world and of ourselves! Many of the Circumstances of social life were then important to us which are now no longer so. But that is not the point of comparison on which I mean to insist. We less habitually distinguished all that we saw and felt, from ourselves. They seemed, as it were, to constitute one mass. There are some persons who, in this respect, are always children. Those who are subject to the state called reverie, feel as if their nature were dissolved into the surrounding universe, or as if the surrounding universe were absorbed into their being. They are conscious of no distinction. And these are states which precede, or accompany, or follow an unusually intense and vivid apprehension of life. As men grow up this power commonly decays, and they become mechanical and habitual agents. Thus feelings and then reasoning are the combined result of a multitude of entangled thoughts, and of a series of what are called impressions, planted by reiteration.
The view of life presented by the most refined deductions of the intellectual philosophy, to that of unity. Nothing exists but as it is perceived. The difference is merely nominal between those two classes of thought which are distinguished by the names of ideas and of external objects. Pursuing the same thread of reasoning, the existence of distinct individual minds, similar to that which is employed in now questioning its own nature, is likewise found to be a delusion. The words, I, you, they, are not signs of any actual difference subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts thus indicated, but are merely marks employed to denote the different modifications of the one mind.
Let it not be supposed that this doctrine conducts the monstrous presumption that I, the person who now write and think, am that one mind. I am but a portion of it. The words I, and you, and they are grammatical devices invented simply for arrangement, and totally devoid of the intense and exclusive sense usually attached to them. It is difficult to find terms adequate to express so subtle a conception as that to which the Intellectual Philosophy has conducted us. We are on that verge where words abandon us, and what wonder if we grow dizzy to look down the dark abyss of how little we know!
The relations of things remain unchanged, by whatever system. By the word things is to be understood any object of thought, that is, any thought upon which any other thought is employed, with an apprehension of distinction. The relations of these remain unchanged; and such is the material of our knowledge.
What is the cause of life? That is, how was it produced, or what agencies distinct from life have acted or act upon life? All recorded generations of mankind have wearily busied themselves in inventing answers to this question; and the result has been — Religion. Yet that the basis of all things cannot be, as the popular philosophy alleges, mind, is sufficiently evident. Mind, as far as we have any experience of its properties — and beyond that experience how vain is argument! — cannot create, it can only perceive. It is said also to be the cause. But cause is only a word expressing a certain state of the human mind with regard to the manner in which two thoughts are apprehended to be related to each other. If anyone desires to know how unsatisfactorily the popular philosophy employs itself upon this great question, they need only impartially reflect upon the manner in which thoughts develop themselves in their minds. It is infinitely improbable that the cause of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind.
On A Future State
It has been the persuasion of an immense majority of human beings in all ages and nations that we continue to live after death — that apparent termination of all the functions of sensitive and intellectual existence. Nor has mankind been contented with supposing that species of existence which some philosophers have asserted; namely, the resolution of the component parts of the mechanism of a living being into its elements, and the impossibility of the minutest particle of these sustaining the smallest diminution. They have clung to the idea that sensibility and thought, which they have distinguished from the objects of it, under the several names of spirit and matter, is, in its own nature, less susceptible of division and decay, and that, when the body is resolved into its elements, the principle which animated it will remain perpetual and unchanged. Some philosophers — and those to whom we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries in physical science — suppose, on the other hand, that intelligence is the mere result of certain combinations among the particles of its objects; and those among them who believe that we live after death, recur to the interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome the tendency inherent in all material combinations, to dissipate and be absorbed into other forms.
Let us trace the reasoning which in one and the other have conducted to these two opinions, and endeavor to discover what we ought to think on a question of such momentous interest. Let us analyze the ideas and feelings which constitute the contending beliefs, and watchfully establish a discrimination between words and thoughts. Let us bring the question to the test of experience and fact; and ask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire extent, what light we derive from a sustained and comprehensive view of its component parts, which may enable us to assert, with certainty,, that we do or do not live after death.
The examination of this subject requires that it should be stripped of all those accessory topics which adhere to it in the common opinion of men. The existence of a God, and a future state of rewards and punishments are totally foreign to the subject. If it be proved that the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily can be drawn from that circumstance in favor of a future state. It has been asserted, indeed, that as goodness and justice are to be numbered among the attributes of the Deity, he will undoubtedly compensate the virtuous who suffer during life, and that he will make every sensitive being, who does not deserve punishment, happy forever. But this view of the subject, which it would be tedious as well as superfluous to develop and expose, satisfies no person, and cuts the knot which we now seek to untie. Moreover, should it be proved, on the other hand, that the mysterious principle which regulates the proceedings of the universe, to neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to suppose at the same time, that the animating power survives the body which it has animated, by laws as independent of any supernatural agent as those through which it first became united with it. Nor, if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it will be a state of punishment or reward.
By the word death, we express that condition in which natures resembling ourselves apparently cease to be that which they are. We no longer hear them speak, nor see them move. If they have sensations and apprehensions, we no longer participate in them. We know no more than that those external organs, and all that fine texture of material frame, without which we have no experience that life or thought can subsist, are dissolved and scattered abroad. The body is placed under the earth, and after a certain period there remains no vestige even of its form. This is that contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses the brightness of the world. The common observer is struck with dejection of the spectacle. He contends in vain against the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to be. The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have preceded him, and whose voice was delightful to his ear; whose touch met his like sweet and subtle fire: whose aspect spread a visionary light upon his path — these he cannot meet again. The organs of sense are destroyed, and the intellectual operations dependent on them have perished with their sources. How can a corpse see or feel? its eyes are eaten out, and its heart is black and without motion. What intercourse can two heaps of putrid Clay and crumbling bones hold together? When you can discover where the fresh colors of the faded flower abide, or the music of the broken lyre seek life among the dead. Such are the anxious and fearful contemplations of the common observer, though the popular religion often prevents him from confessing them even to himself.
The natural philosopher, in addition to the sensations common to all men inspired by the event of death, believes that he sees with more certainty that it is attended with the annihilation of sentiment and thought. He observes the mental powers increase and fade with those of the body, and even accommodate themselves to the most transitory changes of our physical nature. Sleep suspends many of the faculties of the vital and intellectual principle; drunkenness and disease will either temporarily or permanently derange them. Madness or idiocy may utterly extinguish the most excellent and delicate of those powers. In old age the mind gradually withers; and as it grew and was strengthened with the body, so does it together with the body sink into decrepitude. Assuredly these are convincing evidences that so soon as the organs of the body are subjected to the laws of inanimate matter, sensation, and perception, and apprehension, are at an end. It is probable that what we call thought is not an actual being, but no more than the relation between certain parts of that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the universe is composed, and which ceases to exist so soon as those parts change their position with regard to each other. Thus color, and sound, and taste, and odor exist only relatively. But let thought be considered only as some peculiar substance, which permeates, and is the cause of, the animation of living beings. Why should that substance be assumed to be something essentially distinct from all others, and exempt from subjection to those laws from which no other substance is exempt? It differs, indeed, from all other substances, as electricity, and light, and magnetism, and the constituent parts of air and earth, severally differ from all others. Each of these is subject to change and decay, and to conversion into other forms. Yet the difference between light and earth is scarcely greater than that which exists between life, or thought, and fire. The difference between the two former was never alleged as an argument for eternal permanence of either, in that form under which they first might offer themselves to our notice. Why should the difference between the two latter substances be an argument for the prolongation of the existence of one and not the other, when the existence of both has arrived at their apparent termination? To say that fire exists without manifesting any of the properties of fire, such as light, heat, etc., or that the Principle of life exists without consciousness, or memory, or desire, or motive, is to resign, by an awkward distortion of language, the affirmative of the dispute. To say that the principle of life may exist in distribution among various forms, is to assert what cannot be proved to be either true or false, but which, were it true, annihilates all hope of existence after death, in any sense in which that event can belong to the hopes and fears of men. Suppose, however, that the intellectual and vital principle differs in the most marked and essential manner from all other known substances; that they have all some resemblance between themselves which it in no degree participates. In what manner can this concession be made an argument for its imperishabillity? All that we see or know perishes and is changed. Life and thought differ indeed from everything else. But that it survives that period, beyond which we have no experience of its existence, such distinction and dissimilarity affords no shadow of proof, and nothing but our own desires could have led us to conjecture or imagine.
Have we existed before birth? It is difficult to conceive the possibility of this. There is, in the generative principle of each animal and plant, a power which converts the substances homogeneous with itself. That is, the relations between certain elementary particles of matter undergo a change, and submit to new combinations. For when we use words: principle, power, cause, etc., we mean to express no real being, but only to class under those terms a certain series of coexisting phenomena; but let it be supposed that this principle is a certain substance which escapes the observation of the chemist and anatomist. It certainly may be; thought it is sufficiently unphilosophical to allege the possibility of an opinion as a proof of its truth. Does it see, hear, feel, before its combination with those organs on which sensation depends? Does it reason, imagine, apprehend, without those ideas which sensation alone can communicate? If we have not existed before birth; If, at the period when the parts of our nature on which thought and life depend, seem to be woven together; If there are no reasons to suppose that we have existed before that period at which our existence apparently commences, then there are no grounds for supposing that we shall continue to exist after our existence has apparently ceased. So far as thought and life is concerned, the same will take place with regard to us, individually considered, after death, as had taken place before our birth.
It is said that it is possible that we should continue to exist in some mode totally inconceivable to us at present. This is a most unreasonable presumption. It casts on the adherents of annihilation the burden of proving the negative of a question, the affirmative of which is not supported by a single argument, and which, by its very nature, lies beyond the experience of the human understanding. It is sufficiently easy. indeed, to form any proposition, concerning which we are ignorant, just not so absurd as not to be contradictory in itself, and defy refutation. The possibility of whatever enters into the wildest imagination to conceive is thus triumphantly vindicated. But it is enough that such assertions should be either contradictory to the known laws of nature, or exceed the limits of our experience, that their fallacy or irrelevancy to our consideration should be demonstrated. They persuade, indeed, only those who desire to be persuaded.
This desire to be forever as we are; the reluctance to a violent and unexperienced change, which is common to all the animated and inanimate combinations of the universe, is, indeed, the secret persuasion which has given birth to the opinions of a future state.pelled rrom
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Published: February 8, 2011
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4 Responses to “The Necessity of Atheism”
.
maryhelena
February 9, 2011 at 4:11 am
Shelly: “…man is a being of high aspirations, “looking both before and after,” whose “thoughts wander through eternity,” disclaiming alliance with transience and decay: incapable of imagining to himself annihilation; existing but in the future and the past; being, not what he is, but what he has been and all be. Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being. “
And how does man go about giving voice to this “spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution”?
What can atheism offer here? Acceptance of our lot? A look down at the dusty facts of our existence instead of reaching for the ‘salvation’ that our spirit has at hand? No, not swapping nothing and dissolution for hope and empty promises. No, not just that beautiful sunset and awe at the starry skies. Our responses here are simply a reaction to our physical surroundings, our reaction to the physical, the material. But there is much more to our human nature than such responses can capture. And it’s perhaps here that atheism falls flat on it’s face. Sure, it’s a necessary step in seeking to understand our humanity. But that all, that’s its only worth. It is not a destination.
Atheists don’t care for ‘spirituality’. It’s such a subjective notion that those seeking facts leave it by the wayside. Life is, however, not so accommodating. The mystery is there, the unknown and the simply incomprehensible. The intangibles; love, loyalty, dignity, empathy etc. In other words; the very human side of life. Aspects of our humanity that do not rest upon our intellectual premises. The mind might be our glory but our heart is our ‘salvation’. It’s our heart that reaches out – that seeks connection with others.
Somethings in life are just inexplicable. Consider the final words of Les Miserables: “To love another person – Is to see the face of God.”. Consider ‘Bring Him Home’ (from the 25th Anniversary Concert, with the glorious voice of Alfie Boe). Methinks any atheist prepared to knock any talk of ‘spirituality’, after listening, and watching, Les Mis, are in some cul-de-sac of their own devising. This musical, with all its digs at theological ideas and yet its reverence for ‘god’, its celebration of the spirit of life that lies within us all, is truly a reflection of our humanity. And hence, of course, it’s enduring hold on it’s audiences – leading to its longevity as a stage production.
Shelly: “….there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution…” Les Miserables is every poet’s dream reflected – the tragedy and the beauty – and that indomitable spirit that holds up a flag to the whole of what makes us human.
________________
The video from the 25th Anniversary Les Mis concert – the sublime, the glorious voice of Alfie Boe.
Shed a tear if you must. :-) Not just for Alfie Boe’s moving rendition of the song – but for any atheist out there who fails to comprehend the depth of spirituality the song is striving to express.
Reply
ken
February 9, 2011 at 11:26 am
“And I call to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.
I hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;
I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.”
Walt Whitman
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Barrett Pashak
February 9, 2011 at 11:43 am
Shelley’s “Essay on Christianity”is most illuminating:
It is important to observe that the author of the Christian system had a conception widely differing from the gross imaginations of the vulgar relatively to the ruling Power of the universe. He everywhere represents this Power as something mysteriously and illimitably pervading the frame of things.
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Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Necessity of Atheism | Unsettled Christianity says:
February 10, 2011 at 11:30 am
[...] He presents an essay by P.B. Shelley dealing with 19th century atheism – something different, like the religious ideas of then and now, than the atheism presented today: The Necessity of Atheism « The New Oxonian. [...]
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Darwin Profile on Ancient Coin!
by rjosephhoffmann
The yaw coin dates from the 4th century BCE and was discovered in southern Gaza where the cult of YHWH, the God of the Hebrew Bible,was dominant. Its official description is this:
Langdon (1931):
“A coin from Gaza in Southern Philista, fourth century BC, the period of the Jewish subjection to the last of the Persian kings, has the only known representation of this Hebrew deity. The letters YHW are incised just above the hawk(?) which the god holds in his outstretched left hand, Fig. 23. He wears a himation, leaving the upper part of the body bare, and sits upon a winged wheel. The right arm is wrapped in his garment. At his feet is a mask. Because of the winged chariot and mask it has been suggested that Yaw had been identified with Dionysus on account of a somewhat similar drawing of the Greek deity on a vase where he rides in a chariot drawn by a satyr. The coin was certainly minted under Greek influence, and consequently others have compared Yaw on his winged chariot to Triptolemos of Syria, who is represented on a wagon drawn by two dragons. … Yaw of Gaza really represents the Hebrew, Phoenician and Aramaic Sun-god, El, Elohim, whom the monotheistic tendencies of the Hebrews had long since identified with Yaw…Sanchounyathon…based his history upon Yerombalos, a priest of Yeuo, undoubtedly the god Yaw, who is thus proved to have been worshipped at Gebal as early as 1000 BC.” (pp. 43-44. Langdon. 1931)
Yaw image (drawn) with Darwin looking on as he mounts his wheel or chariot.
It has interested scholars for generations that the officially monotheistic and iconoclastic Jews, whose laws strictly prohibited “graven images” of the sort used by pagan kings on their coins, would permit their national God to be represented in a blatantly Hellenistic way.
But that is only half the story. Upon close inspection it is clear that the coin is also miraculous. In the lower right a clear image of Charles Darwin in profile, accurate in detail right down to his flowing beard, appears.
Is Darwin trying to tell us something, proleptically? Is this the final refutation of all those skeptics who say that Darwin was an atheist? Or does the coin make some association between Darwin and Yahweh, perhaps suggesting that Darwin has been supplanted by the God of revelation who stole his wheel? Or is the coin an encrypted message, a token of a collaboration between God and Darwin in the evolutionary process? Is it possible that the face is a representation of Jesus and that Darwin was his direct descendant, or perhaps a reincarnation?
You must judge for yourself–but this is very exciting archaeology.
Yaw coin, Persia (?), 4th BCE
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Published: February 10, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: atheism : coins : Darwin : evolution : God : miracles : YHWH coin ..
10 Responses to “Darwin Profile on Ancient Coin!”
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MKR
February 10, 2011 at 11:21 am
Ah, but can he appear in a taco or a slice of pizza?
Reply
Herb Van Fleet
February 10, 2011 at 1:29 pm
I gotta go with Moses on this one. Or, maybe Noah.
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Ophelia Benson
February 10, 2011 at 2:02 pm
I believe!
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steph
February 10, 2011 at 4:08 pm
hmm… Gaza. Lots of minting there. Some scholars think the ancient inscription might be jhd, used also by the Persians, and if so, meaning Judeah, and therefore Persian currency. Others think the ancient inscription might be jhw … but these theories would spoil this story, and the Darwin, Jesus and maybe even Logos theory? And this story is how all good myths start! I believe this one, maybe with Jesus as the Logos too.
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rjosephhoffmann
February 10, 2011 at 4:11 pm
No it was minted in Persia by common assent, dug in Gaza however.
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steph
February 10, 2011 at 4:39 pm
Sorry, I meant lots of ‘coins’ in Gaza … but Betlyon, JBL 105 (1986) 633 says of this coin, “probably emanating from a mint in or near Jerusalem” and says it was previously thought to have been minted in Gaza! I don’t know. I just like Darwin best.
rjosephhoffmann
February 10, 2011 at 4:51 pm
Oh that article what a YAWn
Reply
steph
February 10, 2011 at 7:50 pm
hahaha yes! And what’s more an article chockablock with references to other articles. I only had a quick ruffle through papers because I’d seen this coin before but it was used to claim some connection to Dionysus, sun gods, Jesus… I was unconvinced and I can’t remember who it was who claimed it and I got sick of looking for it…. I expect you’ve read it anyway. The only thing that bothers me about that coin is the head. It’s decapitated. It’s unsettling.
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rjosephhoffmann
February 10, 2011 at 7:52 pm
Spooky, eh? And if a mask, why so eerily like Darwin. It’s a MiRaKaL for sure.
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steph
February 10, 2011 at 9:00 pm
it’s not a mask – there’s no elastic, no fastening. It’s Darwin’s head definitely – spitting image. A MRK-l for sure. Spooky too – and if they already knew, they’ve been keeping it a very closely guarded secret. Suspicious.
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The Judgement of the Dead
by rjosephhoffmann
There are a number of reasons Christianity seems absurd to many people. In the third century, the pagan philosopher Porphyry blamed its speciousness on the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, the “disgusting idea that bodies will be raised fom the grave,” with bits of desiccated flesh flying through the air like a fast rewind of an Egyptian plague. He poses the case of a boatload of Christian fishermen (recalling the fact that Jesus’ followers earned their keep that way) being wrecked at sea, their bodies eaten by sea creatures, regurgitated or defecated and swirled into the ocean depths where they mingle with sand and broken shell. Will these be raised up? Does the Christian God not have better things to do–because the Greek gods certainly did.
Porphyry
Since Porphyry’s day the treasury of Christian doctrine has increased dramatically, largely though not exclusively on the Catholic side: entries like the Real (physical) presence of Christ in the Eucharist, forgiveness of sin, and, related to both, the stature of the priest as an avatar of Jesus. Then there’s the Assumption of Mary (proclaimed 1950) not to be confused with the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin (proclaimed 1854, and about her, not Him), and the doctrine of Purgatory, a tribute to why bad things happen to good people, based on a medieval credit-rating system where almost everyone had scores between 300 and 550 and had to pay back the debt in millennial installments of woe and agony. –Unless the Church intervened. And yes, still very much on the books.
Mind you, most Christians and many Catholics don’t believe these things anymore. According to a 2010 Pew Research poll, 45% of Catholics hadn’t heard of the real presence, which means that almost half of practicing Catholics have no idea what they’re practicing. To hide their embarrassment, parishes are laying on weekly “Eucharistic Adoration” opportunities, the kind of labor my birthright-Irish grandmother found intrusive to her complacent religious life, thus not likely to attract the Facebook crowd to fall on their knees. Large numbers of Catholic girls think the Church’s teaching on abortion has an opt-out provision, or varies from diocese to diocese or priest to priest. They confuse it obviously with the celibacy rules.
I’ve often thought I’d like to give a course called “What You Don’t Know That You’re Expected to Believe Anyway,” as a balance to the Church’s course in “What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You, So Let’s Not Talk About It.”
Which is exactly what’s happening in the Church. Since there has to be some connection between doctrinal literacy and belief, it isn’t shocking that the Church, along with its evangelical allies, has chosen to fight the battle for relevance in the forward trenches of sexual ethics and not on behalf of positions its adherents find boring–so early-second millennium.
Of the number of women having abortions who self-identify religiously, the statistics for Catholics and Protestants are dead-even at around 32% each. For Jews, less than 2%, but for other reasons. No wonder the cunning and soon-to-be saint John Paul II started his Gospel of Life movement, a recipe for being against war, capital punishment, murder, violence, and (by cross-ranking inclusion) abortion. His sainthood will be based on changing the subject from obedience and doctrine to love and peace. (For it!) and creating the illusion that almost everything else is a mystery and a symbol–though in this he has a very long tradition to fall back on. Hating abortion is the key symbol, and has hence become the core doctrine.
With respect to traditional doctrine, the sort of thing that had to do with fighting the devil and getting your soul to heaven, Catholic Christianity has become an episode of Fawlty Towers –the one where (confronted with German tourists but trying his best to be English about it) Basil reminds his staff, “Don’t mention the War.” Likewise, in these inattentive times, when Christianity is all about loving God through hating a woman’s right to choose, it’s important not to mention eschatology: Death, Judgement, Heaven, Hell, the core of Christian faith.
So I want to mention it. Eschatology. The four last things.
Let’s talk about the second, since the first is pretty obvious and the third and fourth depend on the second. They are worth talking about because this is what the Church has a right to talk about, and also because in a shruggish kind of way many Jews believe it too, and in a much more robust way Protestants and Muslims believe it. We will be judged.
Let’s say that if you don’t believe in this, no fair calling yourself a Christian, whereas whatever you think about abortion is contingent on a theological principle. Its moral character is not self-explanatory without other ideas behind it. Abortion is a real decision, made by real people in real time, with real consequences. The church can declare it is wrong, sinful and hateful to God, but without judgement, the teaching is a bit toothless, isn’t it? You see my point.
The Christian church worked itself into a corner very early. The early and medieval church couldn’t promise heaven right away because they knew that the bodies of dead Christians weren’t spared the ravages of the grave. They looked just like dead pagans and Jews after six months. The doctrine of the soul, which the church copped from various writers and cobbled together over time (it isn’t biblical, not even New Testament) and blended with Jewish ideas of “resurrection,” was a great help: Bodies die, souls fly off somewhere, but if this is true they need to be judged quickly for what they’ve done “through the body.” Through the body–whose corrupt state pretty much tells you all you need to know about human nature.
Thus was born the Two-Judgement Theology of the Western Church. We are so important to God that he has time to judge us twice. A first, or particular judgement at the moment of death, a final judgement when body and soul are recombined on the Last Day.
The Last Judgement is not an appeal process. It’s reckoned that first and last will be identical in verdict and punishment, though the soul gets a head start on the body in enduring everlasting pain. The only reason for there being two is the distance between the reality of death (now) and the uncertainty of the time of the end of the world and Christ’s coming (then, when?). The Now is dull, personal and predictable. The Then is fiery and spectacular (cf. Mk 13) and brings with it that realignment of soul and body parts that caused Porphyry to break out in fits of laughter.
If this sounds complicated, imagine the capacity of an unpaid Irish nun to explain it to a skeptical twelve year old. Scenario: “Well, Joseph, you just ask too many questions, don’t you?”
The particular judgement has no textual support though there is a “source” that Christians tried to introduce into the mix by making people think it was old and Jewish, called The Testament of Abraham. It probably comes from the third century CE (AD) though some scholars want it to be older. It’s an entertaining fantasy of how an aged Abraham gets visions (very Christian visions) of angels and heaven–and judgement. He meets Michael, the “captain of the angels” (archangel) who is perpetually darting back and forth between the Oak of Mamre and heaven with messages. Heaven has gates. A tiny gate for the chosen few, a big gate that seems to be an elevator door to the netherworld:
“And Abraham asked the chief-captain Michael, What is this that we behold? And the chief-captain said, These things that thou seest, holy Abraham, are the judgment and recompense. And behold the angel holding the soul in his hand, and he brought it before the judge, and the judge said to one of the angels that served him, Open me this book, and find me the sins of this soul. And opening the book he found its sins and its righteousness equally balanced, and he neither gave it to the tormentors, nor to those that were saved, but set it in the midst.”
The tale even has reality TV-emanations: Abraham witnesses the judgement of a woman who is condemned for having sex with her daughter’s husband, killing her daughter, and then claiming she remembers nothing. Boooo! said the ancient studio audience.
The later history of the “particular judgement” is bland. It includes Tertullian’s idea that the distance between death and final judgement is a waiting period for the soul, full of excruciatingly conscious thoughts about where it fell short–but leaving open the possibility of a surprise reprieve; Hippolytus’s notion that the judgement is really like sorting beads, for future reference, when God decides to make the necklace; and–of course–Augustine. Liking structure more than evidence, he decides that at death souls are sorted into bundles (four in all) ranging from blessed to damned–but unlike Tertullian, no waiting–first come first served for the unambiguously saintly or beastly, like the 4.45 PM Seniors’ Special at a Florida restaurant. But note: there is no agreement here. Not one of these writers has any idea what he’s talking about. There is no control group, there are no interviews. Not even a good text worth debating. It is belief heaped on belief.
The discussion of Judgement up through the medieval period looms large. It connected to every other important doctrine, from saints, to sacraments, to what the Church could dispense to you through its “treasury of merits”–a fund of superfluous grace achieved by holy men and women who didn’t use up all they had–and the sale of indulgences. At the Reformation, largely due to Calvin, the growth of speculation and imagery was brought under control, but the belief that souls are judged after death (Calvin said, “consciously, so that they know their fate”) was retained.
Indulgence Certificate
The Big Deal, of course, is not merely what happens after you die but what happens when everything explodes and the Son of Man appears in the sky to call you home. That much, at least, is biblical–the core of Christian belief in the second coming, complete with a perennial Protestant temptation to pinpoint doomsday (the Old English word dome/doom means judgement) and humiliate your opponent with statistics drawn from the Book of Revelation, which he will call Revelations.
The Last Judgement was at least “Biblical”–which means simply that the idea of it could be located in scripture. Matthew 25 contains a significant passage about separating the sheep and goats, and there is a disturbing passage in Revelation 20.11-13 about the “dead” coming before a great white throne. As to how you get there, St Paul worried that the Corinthian Christians were asking too many questions. In one piece of guesswork (1 Thessalonians, maybe his literary debut) he thinks that we will all be swept up “to meet the Lord in the air”–frightening prospect; in another, that we will need a change of clothes before the interview, and so “will be changed [into a new kind of flesh] in the twinkling of an eye (1 Corinthians 15.51-2). Either way, spectacular.
The Church fathers were limited in their guesswork by scriptural controls that didn’t apply to the “particular judgement” and the central belief that certain passages in Daniel and Isaiah could be used to prove that, at the time of judgement, the dead would be raised for the purpose of giving an account of themselves. Matthew gets so excited by the idea that (27.52-54) he has a few of the dead being raised “prematurely” at the time of the crucifixion, but then puts them on hold until the resurrection of Jesus, when they’re permitted to enter Jerusalem in their burial cloths.
And so, back to Porphyry. Why are the dead raised? To be judged. Why are they judged? Because death is not bad enough. The God of life, who made you to die, wants more from you. Wakened from a neural sleep they are roused to undergo torture or experience the pleasures of heaven–always unimpressively and unenticingly described in Christian thought.
Paradise, Persian
There are no virgins, or their male equivalents, or grapes, or nonintoxicating intoxicating beverages–no Paradise in the voluptuous Middle Eastern sense, not even in the Genesis Garden of Eden sense. Nothing that would make you want to be there for a minute, let alone eternally. The “vision of God,” that later became the reason for wanting to go to heaven, was Christianized platonic faddle from the early Middle Ages. Mark Twain had it right.
Worst of all, there will be lines. Long queues extending for centuries. Maybe the angels will let women who were at least six months pregnant when they died go first. –The ones who died because they killed themselves rather than tell their parents they were pregnant will go to hell. The ones who ended their pregnancies will go to hell. The ones who died because they were told they had to deliver a child, and ended up with pulmonary insufficiency because they couldn’t sustain a pregnancy at twelve years old will go to heaven. Such is the divine mystery. Such is the will of God.
Eschatology.
What I ask is that the Church start talking about this again: something it has taught for two millennia. Something it claims to know about because it invented it. Talk about the texts. Talk about the disagreements, the stories, the history, the imagery. Talk about how Judgement happens, what to expect. Talk about the evidence. Do not say it is a mystery of faith, like the Eucharist. If it is, then say you don’t understand it either and stop talking about it. You cannot talk convincingly about the price of “sins” like abortion if you can’t explain this.
If I convert to Islam or profess my atheism loudly enough, can I be diverted to the Wide Gate and get started on my punishment? I would prefer that.
If I feel that I’m at least as virtuous as my church-going neighbor but happen to be a Buddhist, is there room for appeal?
And before anyone says I am asking silly questions and it is all much more complicated and mysterious than I am making it: ask your friendly priest or minister to explain what he believes, what his church teaches, and then get back to me.
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Published: February 11, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: abortion : Bible : Catholic Church : church : doctrine : heaven : hell : Islam : judgement : New Testament : protestant : purgatory : religion : sin : women ..
57 Responses to “The Judgement of the Dead”
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Dwight Jones
February 11, 2011 at 10:33 pm
An easy critique for your colorful exegesis of such matters would be that “Ye protest too much”…you have lingering…
If that is the case, do take some time to resolve them in our presence – such rare scholarship and sensibility is edifying despite the dangers…of the risque catechisms and catacombs. ;-) .
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rjosephhoffmann
February 11, 2011 at 10:51 pm
I can’t deny it; though the nun be dead and judged.
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steph
February 12, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Love it, it flows, a beautifully incisive and necessary critique of what people ought to and generally don’t know. I tend to think, that a little education pointing out exactly what church dogma states and the historical evolution of that dogma, sometimes leads believers to a little healthy agnosticism and serious skepticism.
It reminds me of a rather lengthy conversation over evening drinks at a biblical conference a few years ago in Oxford. A rather pale Australian colleague friend of mine, who lectures at Tyndale House where they must confess a frightfully archaic “statement of faith” which includes biblical inerrancy. You expect this in American seminaries but Tyndale House and Whitcliffe Hall are embarrassing exceptions in a British environment pleading higher academic repute. Encouraging the lubrication of my pale gentleman friend’s palate and spirit with tumblers of Scottish whisky, I began to question him intensely on the synoptic birth narratives, and the doctrine of the virgin birth. He has a Ph.D. He’s studied theories of the history of biblical tradition. He’s studied science. He understands biology, the laws of physics. Surely he didn’t believe in a literal VIRGIN BIRTH!!! And when it came down to it, he could not confess to my face that he did. In fact he blushed so vigorously I feared he might faint. He did say however, “aaaaah errrrr aaaahhh errrrrr well errrr I can’t really say, well I really don’t know.”
I wish they didn’t have a statement of faith at Tyndale House. My blushing colleague friend knows the truth. When they force educated people to tell lies, the people who don’t already know, will never know the truth. With knowledge, at the very least, although they might still take their underwear when they die (like Woody Allen) they might be more agnostic about an afterlife while alive…
x
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steph
February 12, 2011 at 10:29 pm
oh whoops – mentioning Thomas Whitfield and his son George Whitefield on the Don Cupitt post is still in my mind I think … I meant ‘Wycliffe Hall, Oxford’ not Whitcliffe Hall.
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rjosephhoffmann
February 12, 2011 at 4:32 pm
Funny, v funny! Tyndale and Wycliffe will never probably be fully integrated as colleges for that reason. Alister McGrath tried when he was principal at W. Hall, and came very close, and then he left. Frankly, I like these old anomalies. There are a lot of conservatives at Regents Park (eg, now a full college) who aren’t inerrantists. But let us celebrate the ones that are. It keeps our wits sharp and our argumnents sharper.
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steph
February 12, 2011 at 8:32 pm
I’m torn – I admit I agree, I like them too. They add a special sparkle, entertainment value, and it’s a little bit like preserving antique furniture. I like a bit – well alot – of old fashioned culture kept alive. Oxbridge is ancient: long may it survive. You’re right about it keeping our wits sharpened too, and alert to correct their mistakes. But I do get embarrassed when the statement of faith tradition is assumed by others to represent the whole discipline and it’s a bit of a concern that their influence might have a negative effect on education. Why is it that the new atheists and the Christian apologists, opposing heads, attract great cheering bands of fans hanging on every word? But my conference experiences, Oxford/Cambridge experiences, even reading and criticism experience wouldn’t be the same without them. Next time I’ll pour him more whisky and test him…
… but I don’t know Regents Park…
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Dwight Jones
February 12, 2011 at 9:13 pm
Regarding Steph’s comments about the Tyndale fellow, I tend to view such personages with fond appreciation as well. To me they define the boundary conditions, and are no more laughable than a good steamfitter, fitfully out of work.
In some ways the Jesuits personify this small army if supposed inerrantists marching down a cul de sac. I see the dead end too, as do most of them, but I note their livery and colours, know that regiments’s reputation, and would hand them a few gold ducats at any time to take my side in the years to come.
After all, the last chapter has not been written, and our species has immature governance. Swap out the books in the pews, and you could have Facebook in church next week, young people right there in the flesh. A flash mob that might persist.
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steph
February 13, 2011 at 12:55 pm
Although Dwight, for me at least, it’s that quaint old charm, peculiar to Oxbridge that appeals to me. There is no inherent danger in nurturing these darlings on the peripherals of scholarship with their sweet lisping and inability to sound their r’s. There is no harm in encouraging their hosting of posh 3 course breakfast lunches and dinners, selections of wines and ports, crystal glasses and white linen, all provided with silver service, such as is distinctive of the Oxford conferences. I don’t want to be denied the privilege of being treated like a queen with my special requirements of fruit, resulting in curled oranges for entree to rose shaped melons sprinkled with berries for desert… and even my menu changed each day. It’s all part of their ‘grace of God’, attendees of Tyndale and Wycliffe are a treasured aspect of that ‘grace’. They don’t have a major influence on society. And significantly, the debate and conversation that Tyndale and Wycliffe scholarship inspires at these affairs, is intellectual and well informed. Ultimately therefore, there is an inexplicable pleasure in making an intelligent grown man blush.
On the other hand I cannot feel sentimental about the American fundamentalists, who are anti science and a menace to civilisation. They do affect the political and social structure of society. Therefore the likes of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Asbury Seminary, which harbour pseudo scholars such as Witherington and Mohler, lead me to despair…
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Herb Van Fleet
February 13, 2011 at 1:47 pm
Buy ‘em books and buy ‘em books, and they don’t learn nothin’. Of course, the Catholic church is a multi-billion dollar empire, with lots at stake if it came unraveled. It is, after all, the Wal-Mart of religious dogma.
In my humble opinion the Church is morally, philosophically, and politically corrupt. I really don’t expect it to scratch and claw its way to the mountaintop of rationality, look back at where they came from and say, “OMG, what have we done?”
As to what I see as its conflicted and somewhat absurd eschatological vision, and considering that the current pope is the past and present “Grand Inquisitor,” (a title borrowed by the Ku Klux Klan along with the associated duties of office,) the Church is highly unlikely to change its ways any time soon, much less climb into the 21st century, where it would doubtless fall victim to culture shock.
In any case, I think Sarah Silverman has the right idea. Close the Vatican, sell the art and artifacts, and use the money to feed the world. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/11/sell-the-vatican-save-the_n_316559.html
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steph
February 13, 2011 at 3:52 pm
I don’t think that’s very helpful. Sarah Silverman will just increase conflict and increase the church heirarchy’s confidence in itself. However if you happen to know ordinary Catholics you just might get somewhere if you can help convince them to change practise of their religion. For example when social surveys began in the 1960s we became aware that Dutch Catholics use contraceptives as much as Dutch Protestants. Many Catholics don’t follow the whole of church dogma, (for example I know several practising homosexual Catholics and have written a paper on homosexuals which included discussions with groups associated with the Catholic church) and if you can persuade them to diverge a little more… For example many Anglicans have persuaded some of the heirarchy to change direction in teaching of homosexuality, same sex marriage etc. This has resulted in divisions within the church but inspired debate – and debate is positive and constructive. But blatantly demonising the whole church as corrupt, is not.
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Herb Van Fleet
February 13, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Steph, to every rule there is, quite often, an exception. And the exceptional Catholics you describe are worthy of respect and admiration for their courage. But, they are not representative of the Catholic church, anymore than the pedophile priests or the priests in Southern Africa who tell their parishioners that condoms are laced with HIV, are representative. Nor are those Catholics in Northern Ireland who tortured and executed Irish Protestants, or the slavery condoned by the Catholics in the Sudan and Uganda, or the absolute prohibition in every country against abortion even if it means the mother would die without it.
But history is pretty clear. The Catholic leadership has directed its flock (or “sheepole,” as a friend of mine calls them) to carry out crimes against humanity going back many centuries. “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,” saith Voltaire. So, what do the Catholics have to show for all this bloodshed? Has their positive contribution to humankind been worth all the pain and suffering? I think not.
I fully support Sarah Silverman’s proposal as a way for Catholics to be brought to account and to atone for their criminal behavior, which continues even up to the present day. Of course, there is virtually a zero possibility of that ever happening.
steph
February 13, 2011 at 10:44 pm
well we disagree greatly. I would never hold ordinary Catholics, most of whom are born into the faith, nor all Catholic priests responsible for what you describe, any more than I’d hold you responsible for your government. The Catholics I know or have met are hardly exceptional. And obviously demonising the entire church doesn’t offer anything constructive at all and certainly offers nothing to Catholics in place of their faith.
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steph
February 14, 2011 at 11:59 am
Your comment really upset me Herb. In fact it made me cry yesterday. Haven’t you heard the famous Irish joke? ‘Are you Catholic or Protestant.’ ‘I’m atheist’. ‘Yes, but are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist.’ People are born into the faith. You cannot hold people and priests responsible for crimes of some of the heirarchy let alone past crimes of the church. There is absolutely nothing good about it and it just increases conflict. There are far more constructive approaches like persuading Catholics to diverge from traditional teachings and rebel more against their leaders.
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Herb Van Fleet
February 14, 2011 at 6:15 pm
Steph, I sincerely apologize for having caused you so much upset. But my beef is not with the lay Catholics per se, it’s with the Catholic leadership. And, yes, I can hold the church hierarchy responsible for their criminal misdeeds in the same way I can hold George W Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld responsible for the crimes against humanity they commented in Iraq, Afghanistan, and at Gitmo and other “rendition” sites around the world.
The fact that nobody in power has the temerity to pursue charges does not absolve them of their crimes. Now, I suppose I could move to Canada (or New Zealand?) as a protest. On the other hand, I could join a few friends, have a few drinks, and laughs, and just bitch about the fact that this country has not too subtly replaced the rule of law with “Good Ol’ Boy” politics.
And, that, I believe, is a good analog for what’s going on at the Holy See. I also think that my take on the Catholics, as compared to that of Christopher Hitchens, is certainly mild, at least by half. In any case, all this is simply my opinion and has no force or effect; just noise in the vacuum of cyberspace. Please don’t take it as any more than that.
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rjosephhoffmann
February 14, 2011 at 12:13 pm
If I may: I think the reticence to criticize religion is a little like the reticence to criticize a grandparent who was a bruiser of a tyrant in his day but has mellowed with frailty. He doesn’t bang on heads anymore. He smiles and supplicates: ah! the appeal of antiquity!
No one wants to put a Pope against a wall and shoot him for the sins of the fathers. At least I don’t. I have no desire to humiliate the church for global crimes against humanity, which is what I think Hitchens proposed on the Pope’s visit to the UK. In a real sense, he didn’t do it, and who can say that a man or woman of our day retrojected into the “then” of an inquisition would have done it–in the same way, I mean?
We are guilty of a huge anachronism if we don’t see the symmetry between medieval gullibility and papal/church opportunism. Given human nature and power, I don’t think it could have been otherwise. And it useless to speculate that it might have been.
My gripe is with a church that seeks relevance in the Now by addressing issues, and not just uterine issues, though that would be enough, about which it has no authority to speak–at any level–and says they are mandated to take this position in the basis of doctrines that are rooted in “tradition” or a divine command to defend life, a mandate rooted in grandpapa’s past. In other words, we have to let grandpas’ past be what it it. And forgiveness depends on grandpa’s saying he was a rotter–not trying to say that his legacy has binding moral authority.
This moral delict must be pointed out. It is a moral obligation to point it out. To let it go, for some odd cost/benefit reason (ah! but the church has done so much good!) makes us complicit in the moral hypocrisy that lets grandpapa die with his sins defended.
Besides, the number of old people who have the hearts of vipers but show only their saintly faces framed by lovely white hair–well…
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steph
February 14, 2011 at 4:11 pm
You always express everything so much better than I could. I agree with absolutely everything you say.
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Herb Van Fleet
February 14, 2011 at 6:19 pm
rjosephhoffmann, I suppose nobody outside of the Vatican knows how many billions of dollars have been spent as hush money for the victims of the Church’s pedophilia scandal (which, by the way, is still ongoing.) Another moral dilemma for the church; embezzle church funds and you’re out on your ear, fondle a choirboy and, well, who doesn’t. And you would think the laity would want to know the percentage of their tithing that goes to ameliorating criminal behavior. And a pox on the houses of those parents who took hush money in lieu of exposing the criminals who caused their children’s pain.
Consider this from John Cory’s “A Personal Issue, The Catholic Church Scandal,” on readersupportednews.org:
“I can tell you that abuse smells like Old Spice and Vaseline Hair Tonic wafting in the air with each blow. I can tell you that abuse tastes like oatmeal on a dishrag in my mouth to keep me from screaming. I can tell you that abuse burns like a tub of scalding water boiling away my sins and it stings like the slice of a knife to bleed out that evil blood inside of me. I can tell you that the sound of abuse is an icy echo: I’m only doing this because I love you. If you were good, you wouldn’t make me do this.
“The perpetrators stole innocence and purity, trust and love, and beautiful childhood souls like they were nothing more than trinkets of idol pleasure.
“But the greatest theft came from the Cardinals and Bishops and authorities. They stole in silence just like a thief in the night. They were soundless accomplices to the murder of souls.
“They stole truth from those who needed its protection most. They stole the right to be heard and to be believed. They stole love and hope and the sanctity of the church.
“They stole God.”
Those who don’t feel the pain of Mr. Cory from these lines are an embarrassment to the human race. For here is proof positive that the Inquisition has not ended, that denial and obfuscation sets morality on its pointy hatted head, that stealing the soul is the worst corruption of all. If grampa was the Catholic church, I would be calling 911 post haste.
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Dwight Jones
February 14, 2011 at 12:51 pm
The ascendancy of the Christian church over the past millenium+ does instruct us in one thing – that humanity did and does accept, even craves, the cohesiveness it provided.
As I like to claim, swap out the books in the pews, and we could pick up where we left off just a generation or two ago, with a humanistic franchise this time.
That said, forgiving the church wholesale is like forgiving the SS. Paedophilia and torture are quite similar, and responsibility and justice, like mortal sin, must get their due. No triaging out the “I was just following orders” types.
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steph
February 14, 2011 at 4:17 pm
I still don’t think it’s about condemning or forgiving – it’s more about persuading change in the future church. And there are alot of varied young people, if not already persuaded, persuadable, and they don’t have the same mindsets as their grandparents. For others, it is a purely social experience, maybe spiced with spiritual satisfaction too, but they too might be persuaded to encourage change. And then, old men die and so do crabby old ladies too…
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rjosephhoffmann
February 14, 2011 at 4:20 pm
Exactly: and that is the issue, Dwight, spot on. The Church’s preaching of “forgiveness” has had its effect on the laity (remember them?). That is why the “Holy Mother Church” imagery or the Pope-as-Holy Father imagery is so effective. Honour thy father and thy mother. Sure they looked the other way when abuse was happening in the bedroom, but (quoting Edward Albee now) “what family doesn’t have its little problems,” and surely the mark of a good christian is…to forgive, not to harp on the mistakes. Perhaps the priests in question were so stupid they misunderstood the mode of the verb in Jesus’ instruction to “Suffer the little children….’?
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steph
February 14, 2011 at 4:46 pm
I withdraw the first clause of my first sentence to you Dwight. I agree with Joe. But I still feel dutybound to continue to encourage change in the church through my work and personal contact with Catholics too.
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rjosephhoffmann
February 14, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Yes, of course. I have consistently admired the Catholic intellectual tradition, especially Christopher Dawson within limits. I was trained by George MacRae and Joe Fitzmyer for God’s sake, never more honest scholars, both Jesuits. We are talking about something bigger, and something that can’t happen because the Church has foolishly decided as in the 16th century that it will not be reformed, only rejected.
Dwight Jones
February 14, 2011 at 5:55 pm
So we must decide if we are “forgiving” individuals, the institution, or both. I say neither.
When you join the Jesuits or the SS, you forswear the Self, as a condition of membership. You sold your soul – and now you want credit?
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rjosephhoffmann
February 14, 2011 at 6:10 pm
Huh? The people I mentioned were the top biblical scholars of a generation and taught at Harvard, which did not discriminate on the basis of genius.
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rjosephhoffmann
February 14, 2011 at 6:21 pm
+ was NEVER a Jesuit and have no soul to sell! (I know this is an obtuse comment: just to be clear)
Dwight Jones
February 14, 2011 at 6:29 pm
“Huh? The people I mentioned were the top biblical scholars of a generation and taught at Harvard, which did not discriminate on the basis of genius.”
Goebbels was a genius. So was Pizarro. Both were butchers.
I realize that you weren’t a Jesuit, RJoe, but you are a genius so I paint you with the same brush..;-)
It’s OK to respect the officer corps within certain parameters, but for Humanists responsibility underpins all justification of character. Our lives teach us who we are – Rushdie.
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rjosephhoffmann
February 14, 2011 at 6:37 pm
All true: lovely quote, Dwight. And ex-Jesuits (e.g. Loisy) made the best atheists. The church trained them to be without realizing…
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steph
February 14, 2011 at 7:41 pm
I agree Dwight: Joe is a genius. But I wouldn’t associate George MacRae and Joe Fitzmyer, two of the finest, most honest scholars, born Catholic, with the crimes of Pizarro and Goebbels – although I wish they had used their influence to be critical of the current heirarchy. And then Thomas Thompson, a breath of fresh air in OT scholarship, although maybe not in same league as MacRae or Fitzmyer, is a pretty liberal Catholic. These Catholic scholars would have nothing to do with the crimes of the heirarchy (R.I.P. MacRae).
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Seth Strong
February 15, 2011 at 11:45 am
A comment on the comments: as a soulless antagonist, I still feel like Steph’s position that Catholics shouldn’t be judged for the sins of the institution or other Catholics holds a great deal of water. The same is true of American Christian Fundamentalists who hold a position that infuriates me. People are raised to believe nonsense and it’s not exactly a choice to be raised with such nonsense and then agree to join the group when you’re 18. And I would parallel that to SS soldiers.
If your country raises you to be a racist, or a terrorist, or a catholic and you grow up and join the racist Catholic terrorist groups, I shall not judge you the individual because the systemic force of your upbringing is the true cause of your actions. So you are innocent but your system is not. And this can lead to a situation where there isn’t really a good person to blame for horrible situations, in my opinion.
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Dwight Jones
February 15, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Seth sed: “If your country raises you to be a racist, or a terrorist, or a catholic and you grow up and join the racist Catholic terrorist groups, I shall not judge you the individual because the systemic force of your upbringing is the true cause of your actions.”
Good point, I guess we should distinguish between the various tiers. To simply be catholic or an SS foot soldier may be forgivable per se.
Although, if said catholic heads out on a crusade and slaughters Arabs in the name of the Lord, same with the SS guy “following orders”, sorry, no deal. Responsibility. Your actions are distinct from the organization, always.
Finally, if you are in the priesthood, a prelate, the Pope or Heinrich Himmler, you are the progenitor and agent of that institution, and always culpable, just as the Directors of a company are liable for its actions.
Otherwise it would be far too easy to join the SS or Al Queda or the US Marines and just indulge yourself in the name of ________ . Which too many do.
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Seth Strong
February 15, 2011 at 1:50 pm
Right the more education, the more intelligence, the more power, and the more hypocrisy an individual partakes of, the more they earn their guilt by association. But in the cases of the child soldiers of some African countries I have a hard time even blaming the horrible dictators because I’m having a hard time identifying the point where the child soldier gets promoted and has the safe self-awareness to go “we should do something safer for our people.”
That’s entirely different from the well connected educated Catholic patriarch who is not putting life and limb on the line on a regular basis and has more time to reflect on values and such.
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Herb Van Fleet
February 15, 2011 at 1:42 pm
If there is a teachable moment here, maybe it should be the lessons learned from the Nuremberg (and Tokyo) trials. These were the genesis of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent additions to the Geneva Conventions, as well as numerous treaties, as well as the International Criminal Court. These, collectively, purport to be, or are generally acknowledged as, the civilized world’s moral compass.
Now, Vatican City is a country, the smallest actually, but it is not a member of the UN, and therefore is not a signatory on any human rights treaties. It apparently believes that its moral standards are at least independent of, if not superior to, the rest of the world. So, the question is, how would the Holy See, including the church’s hierarchy, fare if their actions were pitted against the various human rights treaties now in place and the theory of justice that came from Nuremberg?
Consider this excerpt from Justice Robert Jackson’s summation speech at the end of the Nuremberg trials:
“ . . . these defendants now ask this Tribunal to say that they are not guilty of planning, executing, or conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs. They stand before the record of this Trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain king. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: ‘Say I slew them not.’ And the Queen replied, ‘Then say they were not slain. But dead they are…’ If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.”
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Seth Strong
February 15, 2011 at 1:56 pm
What you’re identifying is the point at which tragedy begins to exist. We were right to stop the Nazis, but individual Nazis weren’t necessarily given a right option to pick at all. Also, I’m of the opinion that the lowest level Nazis were not the defendants in the trial.
Another way to slice the continuum is to say that the Nazis who defended the beach of Normandy were not as guilty as the Nazis who ran Auschwitz. Storming another country to take land or defending your own territory isn’t the same sort of personal crime as a soldier as systematically dehumanizing and killing your own fellow citizens. Yet, the lowest soldiers may not have had choices to fight the hands history dealt them.
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Dwight Jones
February 15, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Herb sed “If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.”
Indeed, the murdered are watching all through the progression of justice. If there is no justice, and the guilty walk free, then another crime has been committed.
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Seth Strong
February 15, 2011 at 2:16 pm
I could care less about justice for justice’s sake. Justice for the purpose of removing criminals (determined by a transparent legal system) who are more trouble than society thinks they are worth makes sense especially in the case of serial killers. And justice for the purpose of rehabilitating criminals so that they can be transformed into standard citizens is also sensible to me.
Punishment as a deterrent is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of although it’s often repeated. The reason I feel that way is because in every case of justice for that reason, the crime has already been committed.
My perspective is of course consistent with my belief that the foot soldiers of a war are not simply guilty for crimes their flag may represent. That’s too simplistic. I expect policies that follow that way of thinking to simply continue vicious cycles of retaliation.
But then, justice isn’t something I’m entirely knowledgeable about. So I welcome other ways of viewing this subject.
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Dwight Jones
February 15, 2011 at 2:44 pm
Speoh sed “My perspective is of course consistent with my belief that the foot soldiers of a war are not simply guilty for crimes their flag may represent. That’s too simplistic.”
Soldiers returning from any war know that they are all guilty, on all sides. It keeps them quiet.
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Seth Strong
February 15, 2011 at 4:41 pm
As a bit detail, I was a soldier and I spent a year in Iraq for the uniform… which was for college money which was for my future. I totally chose to put the Iraqi people into governmental chaos.
I don’t take much responsibility for the war. My ability to avoid going to war at that stage would also constitute a choice to go to jail. Not that it happened, but if I had to choose between being ethical and being free, there is no wrong choice. We can all hope I look to the ethics, but I’m not wrong to survive. No individual is wrong to try doing that. And the opposing forces aren’t wrong to test my efforts. There is no right at all in such a situation but conversely, there’s no guilt either.
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Dwight Jones
February 15, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Speoh? I mean Steph of course.
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steph
February 15, 2011 at 3:23 pm
I beg your pardon, Dwight, I didn’t say that, Seth did.
Nazis? I can only think of the young Catholic lad, who like so many others, grows up learning about his faith and experiencing spiritual fulfillment in his church, and then as he matures, like so many others, feels a ‘calling’ to commit his life to the Church … and become celebate (oh dear, we’ve got to convince them to marry and be happy). So he chooses to become ordained and begins to preach, like so many others, in his local Catholic church. How on earth can you blame him and those like him, for the crimes of other individuals within that same broad Church? Was he supposed to decide to become a less spiritually fulfilling Baptist minister instead when he discovered the evils of the heirarchy? He wasn’t born Baptist, he was Catholic. What happens when he finds out about all those evil Baptists? And what ‘justice’ do you propose? I still believe it’s better to punish those who commit paedophilia like any ordinary citizen, and convince more Catholics to rebel against the church teachings on contraception, celebacy of the priesthood and the rest … and approach a future oriented around humanist ideas. I don’t want to participate in a humanist police force. I’ve always been an advocate for restorative justice and education anyway … so let’s all have a groupy huggy (HA HA).
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Seth Strong
February 15, 2011 at 4:34 pm
I don’t really want to defend Nazi’s but somehow Nuremberg got involved. I think we’re on a similar page all of us. I’d like to add that I’m not advocating that guilty people get away with their crime. I think the punishment has a goal of serving the people. If punishing the criminal doesn’t provide the greatest service to the people, I’m against blind justice. And that’s a more legalistic parallel to the idea that the average people of blind faiths need to be led from their positions compassionately because the only other tool is some form of war which does in fact make victims (and criminals if all victims of humanity must have a guilty party).
I often waver between the idea that American Atheists must fight the encroachment of religion versus the idea that since atheists or anybody worth their salt is smarter by virtue of having been educated in an objectively superior manner, that we should all fight for higher standards of education and let the democratic chips fall where they may.
Dwight Jones
February 15, 2011 at 3:43 pm
“I beg your pardon, Dwight, I didn’t say that, Seth did.”
The dog ate my keyboard – apologies. I think I’m going to try Disqus on my own WP site, if only for the edit button it offers.. ;-)
Re: your example of the poor supplicant who becomes a priest, and encounters the Baptists…reminds me of the little boy who set up a lemonade stand, and then grew up to be a stock promoter.
At some point, he became a man, and he could continue as a man of character or as a psychopath. It’s not the calling, it’s the call he makes about who he really is.
I’m not sure if either variant is born or morphed by life, but I do agree that baseline catholics are certainly not guilty by any count. There are many styles for a wolf’s clothing, we all start as sheep.
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steph
February 15, 2011 at 4:14 pm
oh well my cat, Delilah, tends to encroach upon my keyboard – she made me spell celibate wrong.
Soldiers coming back from war do not all think they’re guilty…
When I worked at the the-A-ter in Auckland down under, I rented the ground floor flat of a flash house in the suburbs. I rolled out my french doors onto a patio and fell into a great big long pool. Very convenient although I had the beach across the road as well. Next door, lived ‘Father James’ as I called him. We became good friends and I took him to the the-A-ter a few times as he was pretty excited about that sort of thing. In fact we were such good friends he often used to invite me round for evening drinkies, you know, a nice stiff gin, or we’d share a bottle of wine. He was an interesting gentleman, very sweet, honest, humble and kind and laughed at all my jokes which made me like him even more…. He also had very intriguing ideas about theology. Somehow, even though he was quite middle aged, I could never think him guilty of the sins committed by others employed by his same God. His church was the local suburban Catholic church.
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Herb Van Fleet
February 15, 2011 at 4:39 pm
Yikes! Me thinks some doth not understandeth my point…eth.
First and foremost, there is no equivalency between a soldier in a foxhole dodging bullets and bombs, and a parishioner dressed in her Sunday best listening to the choir. And, my bad for assuming you folks knew more about the Nuremberg trials. It was, in fact, the generals who were in the dock, not the soldiers. The soldiers may or may not be fighting for the cause, but whether they were or not, they were doing their soldierly duty. In the end it was the generals who were hanged; not for following orders but for using their positions of authority to commit unconscionable, horrific, crimes against humanity for no other reason than they could. The Gloucester defense won’t work. Ever.
Parishioners, on the other hand, occupy the pews pretty much of their own volition. There is no gun pointed to their heads, except perhaps metaphorically, and they are free to leave their church and their faith at any time. Now, in this country, and, as far as know, most industrialized countries, those who have knowledge of a crime and wittingly, or not, contribute to criminal activity (or activities) are called “accessories.” Depending on the circumstances, an accessory to a crime is an indictable offence, and therefore a crime in and of itself. Now, I doubt that the sheriff is going to start arresting people in the church for such offenses. The parishioners themselves will have to live with their own consciences. Then, again, Christianity is all about guilt anyway, so adding a bit more probably won’t even be noticed.
I would also point out that the Mother Church is not a democracy, white smoke notwithstanding. It is the contrary, an autocratic dictatorship, but one that, admittedly, these days is a bit more benign that in past centuries. Like virtually all religions, there is no accountability except what those in power wish to share. And the press, like the courts, are rarely allowed in. The only consequence to the institution for its bad acts is the loss of parishioners, and, of course, the clergy. In fairness, the Catholic Church is now having to deal with its decline because of the mischief it has caused (and continues to.) So, maybe eating fish on Friday and using condoms, albeit in a limited way, are OK after all.
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steph
February 15, 2011 at 6:54 pm
I’m afraid that you scare me now. Of course I understood you very well. And quite clearly, I thought, I disagreed with you. You haven’t understood my point about being born into a social group. To say “Christianity is all about guilt” sounds very biased to me, and fails to take into account normal decent Christians who are not homophobic, misogynist, theocratic, or tyrannical.
While I have never in my life believed in any God, I think I can no longer call myself an atheist. It’s just too aggressive for me. But I am not agnostic, nor am I theist, deist or religious in any sense at all. The only thing I believe in, and I believe in it passionately, is humanism.
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rjosephhoffmann
February 15, 2011 at 7:17 pm
The real evil is that the worst punishment available to the Church canonically is the laicization of a priest. It happened last week when B XVII laicized a few miscreants whose deeds ( all but one) were done in the 1970′s when the Church was sexually out of control after Vat II. I happen to think the Church should try these men publicly, record their trials, and impose ritual humiliation on them. At the very least rip off their cassocks (they were good at that with altar boys), extinguish a candle on their crotch and send them them packing draped in a cheap hotel towel.
Putting them aside, or leaving them to the civil authority, acknowledges the criminality of what they have done. It does not do justice to the gravity of their sins against the Church. [Please don't get glib about the Church's sins: this is meant to be a serious proposal, except for the towel-bit) not a chance for someone to chime in about the sinners trying the sinful] I can’t imagine why no one has suggested canonical trials for offenders, complete with accusers, witnesses, defenses, the whole papal ball of wax. The Church excelled at this kind of thing until it became irrelevant. Now it’s all handled in offices. Even Luther got his trials. Think I feel a blog coming on…
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Dwight Jones
June 1, 2011 at 10:39 am
“.. Even Luther got his trials.”
Not too many priests demanding their day in a canonical court, I do agree. And the trials of the Inquisition, in particular, were hardly held in camera. Perhaps we can round up a few believers who might agitate for a legit show trial.
Still, like the militarists, take away their funding, then you have hit them in the crotch for good. Reprimands don’t last.
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Dwight Jones
February 15, 2011 at 7:27 pm
Steph sed: “While I have never in my life believed in any God, I think I can no longer call myself an atheist. It’s just too aggressive for me. But I am not agnostic, nor am I theist, deist or religious in any sense at all. The only thing I believe in, and I believe in it passionately, is humanism.”
I think you have found the seam between religion and Humanism, Steph, which should be like phrenology IMHO. Humanism is there on your skull like your motor functions, you are born with its legacy and promise as a member of our species. Your religious beliefs are mapped out over another part of your head, and are private. There is just no reason to mix the two a priori.
Humanism is about responsibility, character, and opportunity within our own kind. As a credo it is destined to become our species Constitution.
So when we review the people you have cited as well-meaning catholics, I avidly see Humanism in them as well. It’s that simple (except to the BHA and American Humanists=atheists).
But hey, I’ve had a good day.
Paul Kurtz asked to be my friend on Facebook. It doesn’t get any better than this, for an old philosophy major and amateur Humanist.
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Dwight Jones
February 15, 2011 at 7:56 pm
RJoe sed: “The real evil is that the worst punishment available to the Church canonically is the laicization of a priest. It happened last week when B XVII laicized a few miscreants whose deeds ( all but one) were done in the 1970′s when the Church was sexually out of control after Vat II. I happen to think the Church should try these men publicly, record their trials, and impose ritual humiliation on them.”
I like the idea of him becoming a B17. But seriously, Humanism does need a Waffen-SS arm to deal with the competition, while us Positive Humanism types dawdle over theories of Venus terraforming. :-)
Ever notice how nobody asserts “I’m positive!” anymore?
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steph
February 15, 2011 at 8:48 pm
I thought the villains should be tried for their crimes against humanity like ordinary criminals. I know nothing about the justice system. Stage one criminology decades ago and a bit of stuff on restorative justice. I thought it was a matter for the courts not the church. Maybe both, but I don’t trust the church to get it right. They’re not very good at Law. I don’t know…
But as for this: “I think you have found the seam between religion and Humanism, Steph, which should be like phrenology IMHO. Humanism is there on your skull like your motor functions, you are born with its legacy and promise as a member of our species. Your religious beliefs are mapped out over another part of your head, and are private. There is just no reason to mix the two a priori.”
Ick. Waffle. Religious beliefs indeed. Just a bit patronising too. ‘But heh’, I feel a bit sick now – just undergone an autopsy. I asked him and ‘friended’ when I first joined FB. Lucky you, eh.
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The Judgement of the Dead (via The New Oxonian) | The New Oxonian says:
May 26, 2011 at 9:37 am
[...] There are a number of reasons Christianity seems absurd to many people. In the third century, the pagan philosopher Porphyry blamed its speciousness on the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, the "disgusting idea that bodies will be raised fom the grave," with bits of desiccated flesh flying through the air like a fast rewind of an Egyptian plague. He poses the case of a boatload of Christian fishermen (recalling the fact that Jesus' follow … Read More [...]
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rey
May 29, 2011 at 3:06 pm
Its very simple really: everybody goes to hell for the exact duration of torment that fits the sum total of their sins proportionally. Then once that’s over, God keeps the ones he wants to keep around, and throws he rest into oblivion.
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Dwight Jones
May 29, 2011 at 9:48 pm
The hidden appeal of “everybody goes to hell for the exact duration of torment that fits the sum total of their sins proportionally.” is the notion that humans have destiny.
Not “a” destiny – just the species involved in some cosmic accounting system that warns of suffering, yet sneakily promises a de facto immortality. People take from that what they want. Which is immortality, which like eugenics is not a big subject at cocktail hour.
When it ‘comes around on the guitar’, as the great philosopher Arlo instructed, it could underpin the rapture of humanism.
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steph
May 30, 2011 at 6:52 pm
But he was singing about some garbage and a dump that was closed on thanksgiving. And Alice’s Restaurant where you could get anything you want and Alice who didn’t live there but lived in the belltower of a church without any pews with her husband and dog called Fasha. And he sang about singing loud in Alice’s Restaurant’s anti massacre movement to end all wars. Which says alot about the human condition. So George Bernard Shaw was even wiser to reflect that “death is for many of us the gate of hell; but we are inside on the way out, not outside on the way in.” But always look on the bright side of life, for life is quite absurd and death is the final word…
Dwight Jones
June 1, 2011 at 10:25 am
Steph sed:
“But always look on the bright side of life, for life is quite absurd and death is the final word…”
Does humanism have to be hermetically sealed, on both ends, even against the preternatural – have you no intimations, Steph?
If life is absurd (we finished up with Kafka in the 70′s I hope) and death the final word, it does not exalt us/it one scintilla to preclude our possible persistence. So let’s look at our cards.
During my lifetime I have seen the discovery of DNA by Watson/Crick, through to the its full modeling as the human genome. We do have powers, and can recreate ourselves, truth be told.
I do maintain that our identity is based on our genotype (DNA) and not our phenotype (body) which is just one ‘printout’ of that pattern. We have really big powers – who can instruct us?
Slap me if you must, but I do admire the legacy and modus operandi of the Jesuits, for the way they stood guard for centuries over a concept and mission, no matter how flawed we view their loyalty now. If a new Jesuitical order emerged with whom I could entrust my own DNA, my life of quiet desperation would be quieted as I approach its conventional conclusion. That’s all.
I am perhaps as sad as an old widow clutching her little prayerbook as she kneels at mass, but I warrant that both of us may leave this earth more gently than most.
steph
June 1, 2011 at 10:02 pm
Monty Python, Dwight. Who instructs… me? In the end, me. And, “Does humanism have to be…”: my humanism is inclusive, that’s all.
Dwight Jones
June 5, 2011 at 6:05 pm
So where is this new payday for commercial atheists going to fit within the halls of academe?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13659394
Reply
rey
May 29, 2011 at 3:08 pm
BTW, that wasn’t sarcasm.
Reply
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
“Existentialism is a Humanism” — Jean Paul Sartre (edited)
by rjosephhoffmann
In the ongoing quest to create an educated and informed humanism based on classic texts, this from 1946
And when we speak of ‘abandonment’ – a favorite word of Heidegger – we only mean to say that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to the end. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to suppress God at the least possible expense.
Towards 1880, when the French professors endeavoured to formulate a secular morality, they said something like this: God is a useless and costly hypothesis, so we will do without it. However, if we are to have morality, a society and a law-abiding world, it is essential that certain values should be taken seriously; they must have an a priori existence ascribed to them. It must be considered obligatory a priori to be honest, not to lie, not to beat one’s wife, to bring up children and so forth; so we are going to do a little work on this subject, which will enable us to show that these values exist all the same, inscribed in an intelligible heaven although, of course, there is no God. In other words – and this is, I believe, the purport of all that we in France call radicalism – nothing will be changed if God does not exist; we shall rediscover the same norms of honesty, progress and humanity, and we shall have disposed of God as an out-of-date hypothesis which will die away quietly of itself.
The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself.
He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse. For if indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one’s action by reference to a given and specific human nature; in other words, there is no determinism – man is free, man is freedom. Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimise our behaviour. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse. – We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never regard a grand passion as a destructive torrent upon which a man is swept into certain actions as by fate, and which, therefore, is an excuse for them. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion. Neither will an existentialist think that a man can find help through some sign being vouchsafed upon earth for his orientation: for he thinks that the man himself interprets the sign as he chooses. He thinks that every man, without any support or help whatever, is condemned at every instant to invent man. …
[after a long anecdote, Sartre takes up the idea of "despair"]
As for “despair,” the meaning of this expression is extremely simple. It merely means that we limit ourselves to a reliance upon that which is within our wills, or within the sum of the probabilities which render our action feasible. Whenever one wills anything, there are always these elements of probability. If I am counting upon a visit from a friend, who may be coming by train or by tram, I presuppose that the train will arrive at the appointed time, or that the tram will not be derailed. I remain in the realm of possibilities; but one does not rely upon any possibilities beyond those that are strictly concerned in one’s action. Beyond the point at which the possibilities under consideration cease to affect my action, I ought to disinterest myself. For there is no God and no prevenient design, which can adapt the world and all its possibilities to my will. When Descartes said, “Conquer yourself rather than the world,” what he meant was, at bottom, the same – that we should act without hope.
Quietism is the attitude of people who say, “let others do what I cannot do.” The doctrine I am presenting before you is precisely the opposite of this, since it declares that there is no reality except in action. It goes further, indeed, and adds, “Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realises himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.”
Hence we can well understand why some people are horrified by our teaching. For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” …
But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. … No doubt this thought may seem comfortless to one who has not made a success of his life. On the other hand, it puts everyone in a position to understand that reality alone is reliable; that dreams, expectations and hopes serve to define a man only as deceptive dreams, abortive hopes, expectations unfulfilled; that is to say, they define him negatively, not positively. Nevertheless, when one says, “You are nothing else but what you live,” it does not imply that an artist is to be judged solely by his works of art, for a thousand other things contribute no less to his definition as a man. What we mean to say is that a man is no other than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organisation, the set of relations that constitute these undertakings.
In the light of all this, what people reproach us with is not, after all, our pessimism, but the sternness of our optimism. The existentialist says that the coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic; and that there is always a possibility for the coward to give up cowardice and for the hero to stop being a hero. What counts is the total commitment, and it is not by a particular case or particular action that you are committed altogether.
We have now, I think, dealt with a certain number of the reproaches against existentialism. You have seen that it cannot be regarded as a philosophy of quietism since it defines man by his action; nor as a pessimistic description of man, for no doctrine is more optimistic, the destiny of man is placed within himself. Nor is it an attempt to discourage man from action since it tells him that there is no hope except in his action, and that the one thing which permits him to have life is the deed. Upon this level therefore, what we are considering is an ethic of action and self-commitment. …
…Every theory which begins with man, outside of this moment of self-attainment, is a theory which thereby suppresses the truth, for outside of the Cartesian cogito, all objects are no more than probable, and any doctrine of probabilities which is not attached to a truth will crumble into nothing. In order to define the probable one must possess the true. Before there can be any truth whatever, then, there must be an absolute truth, and there is such a truth which is simple, easily attained and within the reach of everybody; it consists in one’s immediate sense of one’s self.
In the second place, this theory alone is compatible with the dignity of man, it is the only one which does not make man into an object. All kinds of materialism lead one to treat every man including oneself as an object – that is, as a set of pre-determined reactions, in no way different from the patterns of qualities and phenomena which constitute a table, or a chair or a stone. Our aim is precisely to establish the human kingdom as a pattern of values in distinction from the material world. But the subjectivity which we thus postulate as the standard of truth is no narrowly individual subjectivism, for as we have demonstrated, it is not only one’s own self that one discovers in the cogito, but those of others too.
…Contrary to the philosophy of Descartes, contrary to that of Kant, when we say “I think” we are attaining to ourselves in the presence of the other, and we are just as certain of the other as we are of ourselves. Thus the man who discovers himself directly in the cogito also discovers all the others, and discovers them as the condition of his own existence. He recognises that he cannot be anything (in the sense in which one says one is spiritual, or that one is wicked or jealous) unless others recognise him as such. I cannot obtain any truth whatsoever about myself, except through the mediation of another. The other is indispensable to my existence, and equally so to any knowledge I can have of myself. Under these conditions, the intimate discovery of myself is at the same time the revelation of the other as a freedom which confronts mine, and which cannot think or will without doing so either for or against me. Thus, at once, we find ourselves in a world which is, let us say, that of “inter-subjectivity”. It is in this world that man has to decide what he is and what others are.
Furthermore, although it is impossible to find in each and every man a universal essence that can be called human nature, there is nevertheless a human universality of condition. It is not by chance that the thinkers of today are so much more ready to speak of the condition than of the nature of man. By his condition they understand, with more or less clarity, all the limitations which a priori define man’s fundamental situation in the universe. His historical situations are variable: man may be born a slave in a pagan society or may be a feudal baron, or a proletarian. But what never vary are the necessities of being in the world, of having to labor and to die there.
These limitations are neither subjective nor objective, or rather there is both a subjective and an objective aspect of them. Objective, because we meet with them everywhere and they are everywhere recognisable: and subjective because they are lived and are nothing if man does not live them – if, that is to say, he does not freely determine himself …
What is at the very heart and center of existentialism, is the absolute character of the free commitment, by which every man realises himself in realising a type of humanity – a commitment always understandable, to no matter whom in no matter what epoch – and its bearing upon the relativity of the cultural pattern which may result from such absolute commitment….There is no difference between free being – being as self-committal, as existence choosing its essence – and absolute being. And there is no difference whatever between being as an absolute, temporarily localised that is, localised in history – and universally intelligible being.
First they tax us with anarchy; then they say, “You cannot judge others, for there is no reason for preferring one purpose to another”; finally, they may say, “Everything being merely voluntary in this choice of yours, you give away with one hand what you pretend to gain with the other.” These three are not very serious objections. As to the first, to say that it does not matter what you choose is not correct. In one sense choice is possible, but what is not possible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I must know that if I do not choose, that is still a choice. This, although it may appear merely formal, is of great importance as a limit to fantasy and caprice. For, when I confront a real situation – for example, that I am a sexual being, able to have relations with a being of the other sex and able to have children – I am obliged to choose my attitude to it, and in every respect I bear the responsibility of the choice which, in committing myself, also commits the whole of humanity. Even if my choice is determined by no a priori value whatever, it can have nothing to do with caprice:… Rather let us say that the moral choice is comparable to the construction of a work of art.
But here I must at once digress to make it quite clear that we are not propounding an aesthetic morality, for our adversaries are disingenuous enough to reproach us even with that. I mention the work of art only by way of comparison. That being understood, does anyone reproach an artist, when he paints a picture, for not following rules established a priori. Does one ever ask what is the picture that he ought to paint? As everyone knows, there is no pre-defined picture for him to make; the artist applies himself to the composition of a picture, and the picture that ought to be made is precisely that which he will have made. As everyone knows, there are no aesthetic values a priori, but there are values which will appear in due course in the coherence of the picture, in the relation between the will to create and the finished work. No one can tell what the painting of tomorrow will be like; one cannot judge a painting until it is done. What has that to do with morality? We are in the same creative situation. We never speak of a work of art as irresponsible; when we are discussing a canvas by Picasso, we understand very well that the composition became what it is at the time when he was painting it, and that his works are part and parcel of his entire life….
Existentialism dispenses with any judgment of this sort: an existentialist will never take man as the end, since man is still to be determined. And we have no right to believe that humanity is something to which we could set up a cult, after the manner of Auguste Comte. The cult of humanity ends in Comtian humanism, shut-in upon itself, and – this must be said – in Fascism. We do not want a humanism like that.
But there is another sense of the word, of which the fundamental meaning is this:
Man is all the time outside of himself: it is in projecting and losing himself beyond himself that he makes man to exist; and, on the other hand, it is by pursuing transcendent aims that he himself is able to exist. Since man is thus self-surpassing, and can grasp objects only in relation to his self-surpassing, he is himself the heart and center of his transcendence. There is no other universe except the human universe, the universe of human subjectivity. This relation of transcendence as constitutive of man (not in the sense that God is transcendent, but in the sense of self-surpassing) with subjectivity (in such a sense that man is not shut up in himself but forever present in a human universe) – it is this that we call existential humanism.
This is humanism, because we remind man that there is no legislator but himself; that he himself, thus abandoned, must decide for himself; also because we show that it is not by turning back upon himself, but always by seeking, beyond himself, an aim which is one of liberation or of some particular realisation, that man can realize himself as truly human.
You can see from these few reflections that nothing could be more unjust than the objections people raise against us. Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of plunging men into despair.
And if by despair one means as the Christians do – any attitude of unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is something different.
Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God.
It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action, and it is only by self-deception, by confining their own despair with ours that Christians can describe us as without hope.
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Published: February 12, 2011
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7 Responses to ““Existentialism is a Humanism” — Jean Paul Sartre (edited)”
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Dwight Jones
February 13, 2011 at 12:09 am
“…man is condemned to be free.”
From there he becomes progressively bushed, living in the wilds of Maine or Saltspring in his mind, until merciful….
“Conquer yourself rather than the world.”
A little facile, the simpler goal of a wanker.
When all that world is aglow before you, the oxygen of Life blowing through your windows – and you’re to stay your hand? No!
Humanism is not a sedimentary philosophy like Existentialism tried to be, successfully…
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steph
February 13, 2011 at 1:06 am
I think Satre reflects two important humanistic principles. The first is about freedom and he says “I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.” The second is “even if God existed that would make no difference from [a humanist's] point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action” I believe they are both important aspects for any meaningful humanism…
In regard to your less than serious facebook comment, ‘new humanism’ (if that’s what it is) is oddly bothering me a bit. It is a bit huggy, a bit gushy-touchy-feely-group-hug humanism. And it seems, sometimes, almost to celebrate and emphasise God, who isn’t there anyway, not that it would matter if he was… Not that I don’t love hugs, but not with strangers.
x
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steph
February 13, 2011 at 1:06 am
done it again: Sartre
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rjosephhoffmann
February 14, 2011 at 8:20 pm
Nothing to get the strange out of stranger quicker than a hug. Sorry, more quickly.
Ed Jones
February 20, 2011 at 10:48 pm
I repeat a comment even if it is blocked.
Pico della Mirandola may be associated with the origins of Humanism described as folows: “humanism” is not anti-Christian as it has come to mean in some quarters of modern discourse, in fact, late medieval and early modern humanism is just the opposite. Late medieval and Renaissance humanism was a response to the Standard educational program that focussed on logic and linguistics and that animated the other great late medieval Christian philosophy, Scholasticism. The Humanists, rather than focusing on what they considered futile questions of logic, semantics, and proposition analysis, focused on the relation of the human to the divine, seeing in human beings the summit and purpose of God’s creation. Their concern was to define the human place in God’s plan and the relation of the human to the divine, and hence called themselves “humanists”. At no point do they ignore their religion; humanism is first and foremost a religious and educational movement, not a secular one (what we call “secular humanism” in modern political discourse is a world view that arises in part from “humanism” but is, nevertheless, initially conceived in opposition to “humanism”) Pico sought out nothing less than the reconciliation of every human philosophy and every human religion with Christianity.
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Is “God” Invulnerable? | The New Oxonian says:
May 18, 2011 at 3:21 pm
[...] non-existence but by the implications of that recognition for human existence itself. Sartre, among others, had described the sense of emptiness brought on by the end of God’s moral [...]
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Is “God” Invulnerable? « The New Oxonian says:
September 30, 2011 at 4:41 am
[...] God’s non-existence but by the implications of that recognition for human existence itself. Sartre, among others, had described the sense of emptiness brought on by the end of God’s moral reign [...]
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
The Sacrament of Penance
by rjosephhoffmann
It is comforting to know that Pope Benedict last week got rid of three men who raped children.
The famously cautious (in all such cases) pontiff removed three men who served the archdiocese of Boston, long since famous for having a track record in paedophilia.
According to the Globe “The Archdiocese … identified the men as Frederick J. Cartier, Louis J. Govoni, and Frederick Guthrie [and] said in the statement that the men had asked to be removed from the clerical state. …They may no longer function in any capacity as priests, with the exception of offering absolution to the dying.”
Great theology: They can’t say Mass, but they can still forgive a repentant sinner his sins, in an emergency. And in following established recent protocol, the Church has granted their request “to be freed from their ordination,” in the interest of sparing the wretched lot a canonical trial.
Does anyone else see the treachery in this deal-making?
The Globe reported that “Cartier was ordained in 1963, was granted a leave of absence in 1979, and has not been connected to the archdiocese for more than 20 years…. According to bishopaccountability.org, Cartier was accused in 2002 of molesting a 13-year-old while he was serving at a Woburn parish in the 1970s…
“Govoni, who was ordained in 1972, has not been associated with the archdiocese since 1978…. He was accused in the 1970s of sexually molesting boys at Archbishop Williams High School. He was not publicly linked to the allegations until 2003 when his personnel record was made public.In 2003, Govoni was working as a substitute teacher in Duxbury and was fired after the allegations became public, according to published reports.
“Guthrie, who was ordained in 1962, left the Boston Archdiocese in 2001. He later pleaded guilty in New Hampshire to charges that he used a computer to solicit a minor for sex in the early 2000s.”
Now their “resignations” have been solicited and accepted. They have been thrown to the American judicial system as criminals and turned in their collars–well, mostly.
But I say that’s not enough. Not only is the Church still not getting it, the Catholic faithful aren’t getting it either. Laicization is the only serious penalty the Church can impose on a priest, now that raking flesh and the rack are out of season.
But it is not the only thing the Church can do in cases of viciousness. For almost twenty years now, as the horrid facts about predatory priests have become clear, we’ve been persuaded (mainly by lawyers) that the Church needs to realize that these are crimes, not just sins. Offenders need to be tried for criminal offenses. And the penalties imposed should be the same penalties anyone should expect for foul acts committed against children. Agreed. That much is absolutely clear. Treating these acts as sins is not sufficient, especially when the punishment for sin is usually delayed until the hereafter.
The focus has been almost exclusively on treating a priest the same as anyone else. This has turned out to be a conscience-free approach to the issue, however. The Church, to save money and face, is more than happy (except for the lawsuits and bankruptcies) to throw the predators to their victims and their lawyers. It is by far the least expensive thing to do in the long term–especially prestige-wise. A Church in compliance with the law can be seen as a Church that is doing the right thing.
But it’s not.
These men should be tried publicly in ecclesiastical courts according to canon law. No option, no deal, no “May I please have your resignation, Father, sorry to ask but there have been complaints.”
No settling these cases by bureaucrats in offices whose signatures represent justice. That was Joseph Ratzinger’s job, and his signature, before he became pope.
In addition to breaking laws, they have violated their priestly vows, blasphemed against conscience, and every moral commandment the Church is supposed to defend. For those who do not think justice is winged but does have a cash register, perhaps these violations don’t amount to much. But in processing the resignations of wayward clerics over six to a dozen years on for crimes (sins) committed three decades and more ago, the Church is granting a kind of pre-absolution to the guilty. Resignation will do? They have suffered enough? The Church has done everything it can to deal with the situation, including all of the meetings the Pope has had with victims and their families? This is not resolution, or acknowledgement or ecclesiastical due process. It’s a dance. It is the Church saying, yes, of course we must turn these people in to the sheriff, and then (after a time) throw them out. But not in such a way that we are embarrassed by the throwing.
No, I do not know what is in their hearts today. And that is not relevant. Even the church’s forgiveness, as Dorothy Sayers once reminded someone, is merely activated by contrition. It’s satisfied by penance. You pay for what you broke, no matter how sorry you are. The current process insists on neither. There can therefore be no effective forgiveness. The hypocrisy continues: the Church reserves the right to forgive and to absolve on its own terms on the pretext that it invented for its own splendid isolation from the state: that it answers to a higher judge.
Dorothy Sayers
There are Church laws governing the behavior of promiscuous and abusive men; there are procedures for appointing church lawyers, tribunals, admission of evidence, witnesses and prosecution. What the Church knows is that a formal canonical trial (a trial governed by canon law) would be embarrassing and time-consuming. And the result–laicization–would be about the same. Ergo, as Catholic philosophers used to say, let’s make it short and sweet. Go straight to the penalty.
Accordingly, the matters are dealt with in diocesan offices, forwarded to the Vatican, where they are reviewed (slowly) by committees who cajole the priests into resigning.
The effect: the Church saves time, money, procedural paperwork and face. It reduces the men to the “lay state”–except not really because the theology of ordination makes the priest “a priest forever.” What it really does is strike them from the payroll and forbid them to say mass and hear confessions. It restrains them.
Benedict’s predecessor was even more cautious: he ordered then Cardinal Ratzinger to drag his feet in all such cases because of the shortage of priests. Better a bunch of bad apples than no apples at all.
Catholics need to know that the Church can do more to assuage their sense of outrage within the Church than tossing the rotters out. The “office trial” is a modern phenomenon. It happens largely on paper. The priest in question rarely sees a tribunal face to face. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The Church could insist that such cases are too important to be handled behind closed doors. Transparency of its justice system is required.
It could summon the priest to appear. There can be real interrogations. Until the nineteenth century, this is the way it would have been done. Even in the sixteenth doctrinally dicey priests got their trials and bishops and interrogators were skilled investigators. Martin Luther got several, but never apparently committed crimes against humanity.
The modern rule in the case of a priest accused of serious moral lapses requires a panel of at least three judges for ordination annulment or laicization (can. 1425 §1). Appellate procedures exist, extending right up through the curia (the Pope’s cabinet) and the Pope himself (the papal Signatura, which is final). The procedure is inquisitorial. With permisison, it could be made public.
To avoid this display, the Church has been happy to hide behind the criminal law and secular justice. But this is foul play. I suspect a great many Catholics would welcome the sight of indignant bishops questioning a priest about how many boys he had raped and whether at any point in the course of events he considered that what he was doing was vile and sinful.
Boston's Cardinal Law, author of the priest-shell-game
“Vile” and “sinful” are theological terms. But the Church believes in them, or says it does. It has a method of applying justice and judgement on its own terms. Why aren’t Catholics insisting on it? Because when all is said and done, the money settlements and law suits don’t get to the heart of the hypocrisy. Not nearly. Crime is crime, but sin as Shakespeare said stinketh to high heaven. Church trials would at least be a means of ventilation.
And one final suggestion: Let them be televised on EWTN. It will triple their audience.
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Published: February 15, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Benedict XVI : canon law : Catholic Church : church courts : confession : contrition : pedophile scandal : Penance : rape : Roman Catholic Church : sexual abuse scandal ..
8 Responses to “The Sacrament of Penance”
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Dwight Jones
February 15, 2011 at 9:05 pm
A viper’s nest of implications, like a Nuremberg for Bush.
What would be the implications of such show trials around clandestine boy-love over the centuries, and gay-lib today? Sympathy for the Devil?
And what cards does B17 hold? He’s still the spaciest game in town. He knows this too will pass.
Mefears the homophobic line is what the press would take…be careful what you ask for..
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rjosephhoffmann
February 15, 2011 at 9:12 pm
XVI unless he has a bastard son/heir apparent. I don’t consider this frivolous at all. Most trials are for show (have you forgotten OJ?); this would have the effect of putting the humiliation where it belongs. Obviously not a substitute for the “real thing,” but I have a vision of cigar chewing cardinals over a poker game in Rome thanking God for the American judicial system. –V Different in Belgium where the police actually invaded a bishops’ meeting and seized their files. That’s secularism.
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Crucify Them? A Modest Way with Wayward Priests | The New Oxonian | Society & Culture News says:
February 15, 2011 at 9:18 pm
[...] the original here: Crucify Them? A Modest Way with Wayward Priests | The New Oxonian Related PostsFebruary 16, 2011 — Being Is Good: Reading Pope Benedict XVIA 2000 interview [...]
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steph
February 16, 2011 at 2:28 am
I agree with this proposal absolutely. Thank you, and thank you for articulating details I didn’t know. Public international humiliation would create a fresh terror for their sins and is perfectly appropriate as a proper crucifixion. I more than suspect a great many Catholics would welcome the sight of indignant bishops questioning a priest about how many boys he had raped and whether at any point in the course of events he considered that what he was doing was vile and sinful. I’m fairly positive from the few I know, that what they need is encouragement to unite and rebel, and I hope, to ensure this happens in a drastic reformation of the way things are now.
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Herb Van Fleet
February 16, 2011 at 12:20 pm
rjosephhoffmann, once again from your pen, er, keyboard, an eloquent and edifying and truly enjoyable post. I suggest we past this information along to all the parishes in the U.S. asking the congregants to protest the way the miscreant priests have been deal with and demand that the Church implement its own procedures for handling “criminal” behavior of its own clergy. We could call them Protestants.
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The Sacrament of Penance | The New Oxonian says:
February 17, 2011 at 4:32 pm
[...] It is comforting to know that Pope Benedict last week got rid of three men who raped children. The famously cautious (in all such cases) pontiff removed three men who served the archdiocese of Boston, long since famous for having a track record in paedophilia. According to the Globe "The Archdiocese … identified the men as Frederick J. Cartier, Louis J. Govoni, and Frederick Guthrie [and] said in the statement that the men had asked to be remov … Read More [...]
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fourcrickets
February 21, 2011 at 4:15 pm
Great suggestions, Mr. Hoffman. As one who is divorced from TV, a televised inquisition might inspire a reconciliation — or at least a determined Internet search for a live stream!
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Rich Griese
March 7, 2011 at 7:54 pm
RJ, Dat’s a good one! Perhaps make it a comedy. Remember the comedy “My Cousin Vinny” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Cousin_Vinny ? Ok, let’s make Herman Munster the Judge, and have Joe Pescie and Marisa Tormei be his helper, and they can be the prosecuting attorney.
Cheers! RichGriese@gmail.com
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Bertrand Russell: Am I an Atheist? (1947)
by rjosephhoffmann
Part of the ongoing Atheist Literacy Project
I speak as one who was intended by my father to be brought up as a Rationalist. He was quite as much of a Rationalist as I am, but he died when I was three years old, and the Court of Chancery decided that I was to have the benefits of a Christian education.
I think perhaps the Court of Chancery might have regretted that since. It does not seem to have done as much good as they hoped. Perhaps you may say that it would be rather a pity if Christian education were to cease, because you would then get no more Rationalists.
They arise chiefly out of reaction to a system of education which considers it quite right that a father should decree that his son should be brought up as a Muggletonian, we will say, or brought up on any other kind of nonsense, but he must on no account be brought up to think rationally. When I was young that was considered to be illegal.
Sin And The Bishops
Since I became a Rationalist I have found that there is still considerable scope in the world for the practical importance of a rationalist outlook, not only in matters of geology, but in all sorts of practical matters, such as divorce and birth control, and a question which has come up quite recently, artificial insemination, where bishops tell us that something is gravely sinful, but it is only gravely sinful because there is some text in the Bible about it. It is not gravely sinful because it does anybody harm, and that is not the argument. As long as you can say, and as long as you can persuade Parliament to go on saying, that a thing must not be done solely because there is some text in the Bible about it, so long obviously there is great need of Rationalism in practice.
As you may know, I got into great trouble in the United States solely because, on some practical issues, I considered that the ethical advice given in the Bible was not conclusive, and that on some points one should act differently from what the Bible says. On this ground it was decreed by a Law Court that I was not a fit person to teach in any university in the United States, so that I have some practical ground for preferring Rationalism to other outlooks.
Don’t Be Too Certain!
The question of how to define Rationalism is not altogether an easy one. I do not think that you could define it by rejection of this or that Christian dogma. It would be perfectly possible to be a complete and absolute Rationalist in the true sense of the term and yet accept this or that dogma.
The question is how to arrive at your opinions and not what your opinions are. The thing in which we believe is the supremacy of reason. If reason should lead you to orthodox conclusions, well and good; you are still a Rationalist. To my mind the essential thing is that one should base one’s arguments upon the kind of grounds that are accepted in science, and one should not regard anything that one accepts as quite certain, but only as probable in a greater or a less degree. Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
Proof of God
Here there comes a practical question which has often troubled me. Whenever I go into a foreign country or a prison or any similar place they always ask me what is my religion.
I never know whether I should say “Agnostic” or whether I should say “Atheist”. It is a very difficult question and I daresay that some of you have been troubled by it. As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God.
On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.
None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of homer really exist, and yet if you were to set to work to give a logical demonstration that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and the rest of them did not exist you would find it an awful job. You could not get such proof.
Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line.
Skepticism
There is exactly the same degree of possibility and likelihood of the existence of the Christian God as there is of the existence of the Homeric God. I cannot prove that either the Christian God or the Homeric gods do not exist, but I do not think that their existence is an alternative that is sufficiently probable to be worth serious consideration. Therefore, I suppose that that on these documents that they submit to me on these occasions I ought to say “Atheist”, although it has been a very difficult problem, and sometimes I have said one and sometimes the other without any clear principle by which to go.
When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.
Persecution
One must remember that some things are very much more probable than others and may be so probable that it is not worth while to remember in practice that they are not wholly certain, except when it comes to questions of persecution.
If it comes to burning somebody at the stake for not believing it, then it is worth while to remember that after all he may be right, and it is not worth while to persecute him.
In general, if a man says, for instance, that the earth is flat, I am quite willing that he should propagate his opinion as hard as he likes. He may, of course, be right but I do not think he is. In practice you will, I think, do better to assume that the earth is round, although, of course, you may be mistaken. Therefore, I do not think we should go in for complete skepticism, but for a doctrine of degrees of probability.
I think that, on the whole, that is the kind of doctrine that the world needs. The world has become very full of new dogmas. The old dogmas have perhaps decayed, but new dogmas have arisen and, on the whole, I think that a dogma is harmful in proportion to its novelty. New dogmas are much worse that old ones.
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Published: February 16, 2011
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Tags: agnosticism : atheism : Bertrand Russell ..
One Response to “Bertrand Russell: Am I an Atheist? (1947)”
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MKR
February 17, 2011 at 10:29 am
Dear Mr. Russell, I am so glad to see that you have joined the blogosphere. I would raise a cup of tea in salute to you, but unfortunately my teapot has gone into orbit somewhere about the sun; or at least, no one can prove the contrary.
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Why I Am an Unbeliever: Carl van Doren
by rjosephhoffmann
Part of the Ongoing Atheist Literacy Project From Twelve Modern Apostles and Their Creeds (New York: Duffield, 1926)
It can fairly be asked: Where has America gone since this was published in 1926 as a Book of the Month Club selection? That’s right: your grandmother might have read this.
Let us be honest. There have always been men and women without the gift of faith. They lack it, do not desire it, and would not know what to do with it if they had it. They are apparently no less intelligent than the faithful, and apparently no less virtuous. How great the number of them is it would be difficult to say, but they exist in all communities and are most numerous where there is most enlightenment. As they have no organization and no creed, they can of course have no official spokesman. Nevertheless, any one of them who speaks out can be trusted to speak, in a way, for all of them. Like the mystics, the unbelievers, wherever found, are essentially of one spirit and one language. I cannot, however, pretend to represent more than a single complexion of unbelief.
The very terms which I am forced to use put me at the outset in a trying position. Belief, being first in the field, naturally took a positive term for itself and gave a negative term to unbelief. As an unbeliever, I am therefore obliged to seem merely to dissent from the believers, no matter how much more I may do. Actually I do more. What they call unbelief, I call belief. Doubtless I was born to it, but I have tested it with reading and speculation, and I hold it firmly What I have referred to as the gift of faith I do not, to be exact, regard as a gift. I regard it, rather, as a survival from an earlier stage of thinking and feeling: in short, as a form of superstition. It, and not the thing I am forced to name unbelief, seems to me negative. It denies the reason. It denies the evidences in the case, in the sense that it insists upon introducing elements which come not from the facts as shown but from the imaginations and wishes of mortals. Unbelief does not deny the reason and it sticks as closely as it can to the evidences.
I shall have to be more explicit. When I say I am an unbeliever, I do not mean merely that I am no Mormon or no Methodist, or even that I am no Christian or no Buddhist. These seem to me relatively unimportant divisions and subdivisions of belief. I mean that I do not believe in any god that has ever been devised, in any doctrine that has ever claimed to be revealed, in any scheme of immortality that has ever been expounded.
As to gods, they have been, I find, countless, but even the names of most of them lie in the deep compost which is known as civilization, and the memories of few of them are green. There does not seem to me to be good reason for holding that some of them are false and some of them, or one of them, true. Each was created by the imaginations and wishes of men who could not account for the behavior of the universe ~ in any other satisfactory way. But no god has satisfied his worshipers forever. Sooner or later they have realized that the attributes once ascribed to him, such as selfishness or lustfulness or vengefulness, are unworthy of the moral systems which men have evolved among themselves. Thereupon follows the gradual doom of the god, however long certain of the faithful may cling to his cult. In the case of the god who still survives in the loyalty of men after centuries of scrutiny, it can always be noted that little besides his name has endured. His attributes will have been so revised that he is really another god. Nor is this objection met by the argument that the concept of the god has been purified while the essence of him survived. In the concept alone can he be studied; the essence eludes the grasp of the human mind. I may prefer among the various gods that god who seems to me most thoroughly purged of what I regard as undivine elements, but I make my choice, obviously, upon principles which come from observation of the conduct of men. Whether a god has been created in the image of gross desires or of pure desires does not greatly matter. The difference proves merely that different men have desired gods and have furnished themselves with the gods they were able to conceive. Behind all their conceptions still lies the abyss of ignorance. There is no trustworthy evidence as to a gods absolute existence.
Nor does the thing called revelation, as I see it, carry the proof further. All the prophets swear that a god speaks through them, and yet they prophesy contradictions. Once more, men must choose in accordance with their own principles. That a revelation was announced long ago makes it difficult to examine, but does not otherwise attest its soundness. That some revealed doctrine has lasted for ages and has met the needs of many generations proves that it is the kind of doctrine which endures and satisfies, but not that it is divine. Secular doctrines which turned out to be perfectly false have also endured and satisfied. If belief in a god has to proceed from the assumption that he exists, belief in revelation has first to proceed from the assumption that a god exists and then to go further to the assumption that he communicates his will to certain men. But both are mere assumptions. Neither is, in the present state of knowledge, at all capable of proof. Suppose a god did exist, and suppose he did communicate his will to any of his creatures. What man among them could comprehend that language? What man could take that dictation? And what man could overwhelmingly persuade his fellows that he had been selected and that they must accept him as authentic? The best they could do would be to have faith in two assumptions and to test the revealed will by its correspondence to their imaginations and wishes. At this point it may be contended that revelation must be real because it arouses so much response in so many human bosoms. This does not follow without a leap of the reason into the realm of hypothesis. Nothing is proved by this general response except that men are everywhere very much alike. They have the same members, the same organs, the same glands, in varying degrees of activity. Being so much alike, they tend to agree upon a few primary desires. Physical and social conditions brings about a general similarity in prophecies.
One desire by which the human mind is often teased is the desire to live after death. It is not difficult to explain. Men live so briefly that their plans far outrun their ability to execute them. They see themselves cut off before their will to live is exhausted. Naturally enough, they wish to survive, and, being men, believe in their chances for survival. But their wishes afford no possible proof. Life covers the earth with wishes, as it covers the earth with plants and animals. No wish, however, is evidence of anything beyond itself. Let millions hold it, and it is still only a wish. Let each separate race exhibit it, and it is still only a wish. Let the wisest hold it as strongly as the foolishest, and it is still only a wish. Whoever says he knows that immortality is a fact is merely hoping that it is. And whoever argues, as men often do, that life would be meaningless without immortality because it alone brings justice into human fate, must first argue, as no man has ever quite convincingly done, that life has an unmistakable meaning and that it is just. I, at least, am convinced on neither of these two points. Though I am, I believe, familiar with all the arguments, I do not find any of them notably better than the others. All I see is that the wish for immortality is wide-spread, that certain schemes of immortality imagined from it have here or there proved more agreeable than rival schemes, and that they have been more generally accepted. The religions which provide these successful schemes I can credit with keener insight into human wishes than other religions have had, but I cannot credit them with greater authority as regards the truth. They are all guesswork.
That I think thus about gods, revelation, and immortality ought to be sufficient answer to the question why I am an unbeliever. It would be if the question were always reasonably asked, but it is not. There is also an emotional aspect to be considered. Many believers, I am told, have the same doubts, and yet have the knack of putting their doubts to sleep and entering ardently into the communion of the faithful. The process is incomprehensible to me. So far as I understand it, such believers are moved by their desires to the extent of letting them rule not only their conduct but their thoughts. An unbelievers desires have, apparently, less power over his reason. Perhaps this is only another way of saying that his strongest desire is to be as reasonable as he can. However the condition be interpreted, the consequence is the same. An honest unbeliever can no more make himself believe against his reason than he can make himself free of the pull of gravitation. For myself, I feel no obligation whatever to believe. I might once have felt it prudent to keep silence, for I perceive that the race of men, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity; but just now, happily, in this breathing-spell of toleration, there are so many varieties of belief that even an unbeliever may speak out.
In so doing I must answer certain secondary questions which unbelievers are often asked. Does it not persuade me, one question runs, to realize that many learned men have pondered upon supernatural matters and have been won over to belief? I answer, not in the least. With respect to the gods, revelation, and immortality no man is enough more learned than his fellows to have the right to insist that they follow him into the regions about which all men are ignorant. I am not a particle more impressed by some good old mans conviction that he is in the confidence of the gods than I am by any boys conviction that there are fish in the horse-pond from which no fish has ever been taken. Does it not impress me to see some good old woman serene in the faith of a blessed immortality? No more than it impresses me to see a little girl full of trust in the universal munificence of a Christmas saint. Am I not moved by the spectacle of a great tradition of worship which has broadened out over continents and which brings all its worshipers punctually together in the observance of noble and dignified rites? Yes, but I am moved precisely by that as I am moved by the spectacle of men everywhere putting their seed seasonably in the ground, tending its increase, and patiently gathering in their harvests.
Finally, do I never suspect in myself some moral obliquity, or do I not at least regret the bleak outlook of unbelief? On these points I am, in my own mind, as secure as I know how to be. There is no moral obligation to believe what is unbelievable, any more than there is a moral obligation to do what is undoable. Even in religion, honesty is a virtue. Obliquity, I should say, shows itself rather in prudent pretense or in voluntary self-delusion. Furthermore, the unbelievers have, as I read history, done less harm to the world than the believers. They have not filled it with savage wars or snarled casuistries, with crusades or persecutions, with complacency or ignorance. They have, instead, done what they could to fill it with knowledge and beauty, with temperance and justice, with manners and laughter. They have numbered among themselves some of the most distinguished specimens of mankind. And when they have been undistinguished, they have surely not been inferior to the believers in the fine art of minding their own affairs and so of enlarging the territories of peace.
Nor is the outlook of unbelief, to my way of thinking, a bleak one. It is merely rooted in courage and not in fear. Belief is still in the plight of those ancient races who out of a lack of knowledge peopled the forest with satyrs and the sea with ominous monsters and the ends of the earth with misshapen anthropophagi. So the pessimists among believers have peopled the void with witches and devils, and the optimists among them have peopled it with angels and gods. Both alike have been afraid to furnish the house of life simply. They have cluttered it with the furniture of faith. Much of this furniture, the most reasonable unbeliever would never think of denying, is very beautiful. There are breathing myths, there are comforting legends, there are consoling hopes. But they have, as the unbeliever sees them, no authority beyond that of poetry. That is, they may captivate if they can, but they have no right to insist upon conquering. Beliefs, like tastes, may differ. The unbelievers taste and belief are austere. In the wilderness of worlds he does not yield to the temptation to belittle the others by magnifying his own. Among the dangers of chance he does not look for safety to any watchful providence whose special concern he imagines he is. Though he knows that knowledge is imperfect, he trusts it alone. He he takes, therefore, the less delight in metaphysics, he takes the more in physics. Each discovery of a new truth brings him a vivid joy. He builds himself up, so far as he can, upon truth, and barricades himself with it. Thus doing, he never sags into superstition, but grows steadily more robust and blithe in his courage. However many fears he may prove unable to escape, he does not multiply them in his imagination and then combat them with his wishes. Austerity may be simplicity and not bleakness.
Does the unbeliever lack certain of the gentler virtues of the believer, the quiet confidence, the unquestioning obedience? He may, yet it must always be remembered that the greatest believers are the greatest tyrants. If the freedom rather than the tyranny of faith is to better the world, then the betterment lies in the hands, I think, of the unbelievers. At any rate, I take my stand with them.
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Published: February 16, 2011
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The Secular City
by rjosephhoffmann
Someone once defined a puritan as a person who lives with the gnawing suspicion that his next door neighbor is having more fun than he is. When you get right down to it, what the religious conservative hates about American democracy is his own suspicion that his neighbor isn’t as Christian as he is.
It is a lie propagated by wishful-thinking conservatives that America is a Christian country. But it would also be a lie to say that this country was founded by atheists. It wasn’t.
It’s also untrue to say that America was founded by humanists. In the eighteenth century, the term had already come to describe attitudes associated with classical idealism, reborn during the Renaissance–especially the Italian branch of the movement. Nothing frustrates the modern humanist more than to be told that both Erasmus, a pretty devout Catholic, and Calvin, a pretty devout Protestant were not just humanists but typify their respective branches of the humanist Zeitgeist of the sixteenth century.
America’s founders weren’t humanists, though they were fair examples of humanistic learning–especially Franklin and the polymathic, almost disgustingly smart Jefferson. If anything, both were too skeptical of religion to have been good humanists in the renaissance sense of the word.
But for the most part the founders of the Republic were secular. When they trusted in God it was simply a homonym for trusting in themselves–a real “All others pay cash” approach to the slogan that finally adorns our currency.
They knew what they were doing when they rejected Hobbes and reinvented Locke’s theory of government.
Secularism and self-reliance (the word Emerson assigned an almost mystical value to) granted them the ability to move in less than a century from the narrow religiousness of the Bay Colony puritans and the cavaliers of Virginia Anglicanism to a new position that would be neatly summarized in the idea of “toleration.” If there was ever a miracle in American history, it was that.
The British Parliament had passed a completely useless Act of Toleration in 1689 when the Plymouth Colony was only sixty five years old (Boston was founded in 1630, ten years after Plymouth. Harvard in 1636, a century and a half before the United States and, remarkably, over a century before most Oxford colleges).
The Act did not extend its tenderness to Roman Catholics or non-Trinitarians (thus not Jews or Unitarians) and excluded them from university education and political office. It is why,vestigially, to this day, a special act of Parliament would be required for an heir to the throne to be anything but a Protestant. Perhaps even to marry one.
Only in the nineteenth century did England get round to upgrading the 1689 law; it was beat at the hustings by the Maryland Toleration Act of 1649 that mandated religious freedom for anyone living in the colony, though it was a bit tough, in British fashion, on anyone denying the divinity of Jesus. The penalty for that was death. Hardly a model for the First Amendment.
The turning point for American law was the belief that individual liberty entailed freedom of conscience. That meant that colonial protections of particular religious practices–Baptists in Rhode Island, Anglicans in North Carolina, Catholics in Maryland–gave way to a more spacious principle based not on the status quo of religious numbers but to the belief that conscience is more sacred than deity.
John Adams
That principle gets enshrined in the Virginia Statute of 1786, “That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote it; James Madison oiled its way through the Virginia Legislature.
In the long preamble, Jefferson jabs for the idea that argument and debate are the only tests of religion opinion, and that religious tests insult the divine gift of reason:
“Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible tests.”
Let kings, tyrants, and all Gods but Reason beware.
It was a short step to the concise language of the First Amendment to the Constitution. To paraphrase: Congress is not in the religion business. It is not in the anti-religion business. Public institutions funded by government may not be in the religious business. And politicians who curry public favor by suggesting otherwise walk a very fine line, fraught with the danger of betraying the republican and secular values that resulted in American democracy.
I assume that the absurdist “reading” of the Constitution at the opening of 112th Congress of the United States included a reading of the Bill of Rights. But of course, like their reading of the Bible, the Conservative Christian reading of the text made little sense to its readers. For example: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It took until the Illiterate Century, our own, for a Supreme Court to say that this meant a private citizen is entitled to carry a concealed weapon.
And this is why secularism, far more than disbelief in God, is considered threatening by religious conservatives. Mere atheism has no political implications. None. Secularism on the other hand requires the religious conservative to defend the proposition that belief in God is an entitlement in a nation where that opinion is, basically, outlawed by writ even they want to consider sacred.
Secularism is more than a recipe for religious toleration, however. And both religious persons and non-religious persons need to realise that. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and the obsessively odd John Adams would not have been atheists. It is a waste of intellectual time to think that they were or would have been.
But they would vomit at the obsequious language of both Democrats and Republicans–especially at the necessity of having to proclaim religious faith in order to qualify as a serious contender for political office.
The secular factor in American democracy is not only on trial at home; it is precisely why American democracy is a hugely unlikely option abroad–especially in the Middle East. More’s the pity that we have fought wars to export it, without recognizing its non-exportable features as a philosophy that does not trust in God at all. I do not know what is sweeping through the Middle East at the moment. But I know it is not the Spirit of ’76.
American secularism does not enshrine any opinion or movement. In fact, it exposes the reality than any opinion or movement that cannot be argued and reasoned deserves to be treated, like the divine right of kings, as a new superstition.
It’s important to realize that while the American experiment in secularity came from a time when gentlemen and ladies were questioning core religious doctrines like the divinity of Jesus, it also came from circles that had a quiet belief in the divinity of reason.
To the extent we share something like a demythologized vision of that faith in ourselves, we are secularists.
To the extent we don’t–or ascribe it to the power of an unseen God to help us out of our misery–we are mere partisans, peasants to our passions and private agendas.
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Published: February 23, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: atheism : Constitution : democracy : First Amendment : humanism : Middle East : R. Joseph Hoffmann : religion : secularism : Skepticism ..
16 Responses to “The Secular City”
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Dwight Jones
February 23, 2011 at 9:44 pm
The press has abetted the “Christian Nation” to the point where the leading religion of the US is “Anachronism”. Lip service is your church service.
WADR, I do fault the Oxbridge toads who pushed Wittgenstein et al for a hundred years, and still do. Blame where it is due here; it’s not all the priesthood – the flame dies in an ideational vacuum, when effete parlour games and nepotism are allowed to pass as the “liberal arts”.
Like the military, and that whipping-boy Church, whose puerile affections are little different than academics with “the English disease”, send them all home or grant them tenure on the dole; their parasitism must stop, and will.
Humanism will rise again, absent their “stewardship”.
Reply
MKR
February 24, 2011 at 11:09 am
WADR, I do fault the Oxbridge toads who pushed Wittgenstein et al for a hundred years, and still do.
Fault them for what? How has Wittgenstein, who 100 years ago had not yet even arrived at Cambridge as a student, been “pushed” by “Oxbridge toads” for 100 years? Who are the “others” of your “et al.”? And, more important, what on earth has any of this got to do with the subject of the present blog post? Or are you simply off your nut?
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steph
February 24, 2011 at 12:01 pm
Superb and eloquent historical post, insightful and much needed to recognise the injustices and misunderstandings today. May it be widely read.
I didn’t understand the relevance of Dwight’s unclear comment and particularly the anachronistic attack on Oxbridge. What is wrong with Wittgenstein (and who are “et al”)? Is your attack related perhaps to the accusations that A.J. Ayer took off from his philosophy and discredited all religious language as meaningless? It would have been helpful if you could have clarified and articulated the relevance of your comments to Joe’s excellent post.
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imarriedaxtian
February 24, 2011 at 12:39 am
Professor Hoffmann,
Could you please fix the first line of your post? I do not know what it is that the religious conservative hates about America. Also a title would aid in understanding the point(s) of this post. Thanks
Oh, and also this. A couple of weeks ago I read a post of yours entitled “Requiem” and was deeply saddened that you were going to stop blogging here. That post is no longer extant here. Did you changed your mind? Or were you “hacked”?
Reply
Seth Strong
February 24, 2011 at 8:57 am
This might be my favorite blog post so far. History for the impatient is my cup of tea.
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MKR
February 24, 2011 at 1:01 pm
Secularism and self-reliance (the word Emerson assigned an almost mystical value to) granted them the ability to move in less than a century from the narrow religiousness of the Bay Colony puritans and the cavaliers of Virginia Anglicanism to a new position that would be neatly summarized in the idea of “toleration.” If there was ever a miracle in American history, it was that.
It happens that just this morning I read the chapter of Garry Wills’s Head and Heart: A History of Christianity in America” entitled “Beyond Tolerance” (pp. 175–188), and with that in view, it does not seem to me that “toleration” is the right word at all. As expounded by Locke (on my understanding, derived from Wills’s exposition), “toleration” or “tolerance” signified the granting by the state to the people of a certain latitude in religious matters—in practice, the freedom to embrace certain varieties of Protestantism. This latitude did not extend to any religious allegiance that was held to interfere with allegiance to the state, as, e.g., Catholicism was held to do. Nor did it extend to atheism, which was held to make it impossible to bind people by oaths or promises.
Subsequent to this passage, though, you write:
The turning point for American law was the belief that individual liberty entailed freedom of conscience.
This seems to me correct; but freedom of conscience is quite a different thing from toleration. It is an individual liberty and not a privilege granted by the state; and it extends to all opinions in religious questions, including the profession of no faith. Today’s religious conservatives are closer to the Lockean idea of toleration than they are to the idea of freedom of conscience propounded by Jefferson: they would allow people the liberty to worship God as they choose, but not the liberty to forgo all worship and religious belief.
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MKR
February 24, 2011 at 1:02 pm
Aw, nuts: I made an error with the HTML code, and this site doesn’t allow one to edit one’s comments.
Reply
rjosephhoffmann
February 24, 2011 at 1:09 pm
@Miles: Yes, that’s an important distinction as between Emerson and Jefferson, or between any of them and Eisenhower’s “Our country makes no sense unless it is founded on deep religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.” [last bit usually omitted]. On the other hand, I have just been trawling through the mix of political/religious zealots online–a few write to me–and it seems to me toleration would be a distant goal for most of them.
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Sam ODonnell
July 21, 2012 at 3:07 pm
It is too bad these “political/religious zealots ” are not more willing to be tolerant. I find that I learn more when I listen and learn from others. Whether or not I beleive them is entirely beside the point.
Reply
Seth Strong
February 24, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Tolerance has to begin with an agreement on how far your freedom of conscience can stretch. In principle, I don’t mind everybody having a voice. I don’t know how to balance that principle with the fact that I have a limited attention span, the sense that not everyone wants to talk as much, and talking about silencing a group is an ethical contradiction.
Reply
Herb Van Fleet
February 24, 2011 at 2:55 pm
To the extent it might contribute to the conversation here, (although it really doesn’t need anything further due to Dr. Hoffmann’s masterful presentation,) and with no particular pride of authorship, you might want to check out my post on thehumanistchallenge.wordpress.com titled, “The Alchemy of Religion and the Quantum Theory of Humanism Part 2: Humanism Meets Religion Under the Constitution.”
The first third of the piece concerns (my take on) the Founders philosophy of the separation of church and state. The last third addresses a pet peeve of mine, which is when a government body hires and supplies a “Chaplain” at taxpayer expense to conduct prayer services and other religious duties on government property. But, the inane opinion of the Burger court in Marsh v. Chambers allows as how this is perfectly constitutional. Arg! We’ve been “Burger-ed!
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The New Oxonian’s Take on the Founders, the Constitution and DOMA | Unsettled Christianity says:
February 26, 2011 at 10:28 am
[...] The Secular City « The New Oxonian. [...]
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Robert Tapp
March 3, 2011 at 12:08 am
Joe –I assume your is Mencken, slightly modified?
I enjoy your musings enormously. What are you doing for bread, however??
Bob
Reply
rjosephhoffmann
March 3, 2011 at 6:50 pm
Hi Bob, being Erasmus in Boston: when I have change left over from books, I buy bread. I hope you’re well–I miss our get-togethers courtesy CFI when there was CFI.
J
Reply
MKR
March 3, 2011 at 7:08 pm
Will somebody please complete or correct the string of words “I assume your is Mencken”? I’ve been reading a lot of Mencken lately and I would be interested to know what this refers to.
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Adams | Trends Pics says:
March 9, 2011 at 11:16 pm
[...] John Adams rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com [...]
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
The Secular City
by rjosephhoffmann
Someone once defined a puritan as a person who lives with the gnawing suspicion that his next door neighbor is having more fun than he is. When you get right down to it, what the religious conservative hates about American democracy is his own suspicion that his neighbor isn’t as Christian as he is.
It is a lie propagated by wishful-thinking conservatives that America is a Christian country. But it would also be a lie to say that this country was founded by atheists. It wasn’t.
It’s also untrue to say that America was founded by humanists. In the eighteenth century, the term had already come to describe attitudes associated with classical idealism, reborn during the Renaissance–especially the Italian branch of the movement. Nothing frustrates the modern humanist more than to be told that both Erasmus, a pretty devout Catholic, and Calvin, a pretty devout Protestant were not just humanists but typify their respective branches of the humanist Zeitgeist of the sixteenth century.
America’s founders weren’t humanists, though they were fair examples of humanistic learning–especially Franklin and the polymathic, almost disgustingly smart Jefferson. If anything, both were too skeptical of religion to have been good humanists in the renaissance sense of the word.
But for the most part the founders of the Republic were secular. When they trusted in God it was simply a homonym for trusting in themselves–a real “All others pay cash” approach to the slogan that finally adorns our currency.
They knew what they were doing when they rejected Hobbes and reinvented Locke’s theory of government.
Secularism and self-reliance (the word Emerson assigned an almost mystical value to) granted them the ability to move in less than a century from the narrow religiousness of the Bay Colony puritans and the cavaliers of Virginia Anglicanism to a new position that would be neatly summarized in the idea of “toleration.” If there was ever a miracle in American history, it was that.
The British Parliament had passed a completely useless Act of Toleration in 1689 when the Plymouth Colony was only sixty five years old (Boston was founded in 1630, ten years after Plymouth. Harvard in 1636, a century and a half before the United States and, remarkably, over a century before most Oxford colleges).
The Act did not extend its tenderness to Roman Catholics or non-Trinitarians (thus not Jews or Unitarians) and excluded them from university education and political office. It is why,vestigially, to this day, a special act of Parliament would be required for an heir to the throne to be anything but a Protestant. Perhaps even to marry one.
Only in the nineteenth century did England get round to upgrading the 1689 law; it was beat at the hustings by the Maryland Toleration Act of 1649 that mandated religious freedom for anyone living in the colony, though it was a bit tough, in British fashion, on anyone denying the divinity of Jesus. The penalty for that was death. Hardly a model for the First Amendment.
The turning point for American law was the belief that individual liberty entailed freedom of conscience. That meant that colonial protections of particular religious practices–Baptists in Rhode Island, Anglicans in North Carolina, Catholics in Maryland–gave way to a more spacious principle based not on the status quo of religious numbers but to the belief that conscience is more sacred than deity.
John Adams
That principle gets enshrined in the Virginia Statute of 1786, “That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote it; James Madison oiled its way through the Virginia Legislature.
In the long preamble, Jefferson jabs for the idea that argument and debate are the only tests of religion opinion, and that religious tests insult the divine gift of reason:
“Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible tests.”
Let kings, tyrants, and all Gods but Reason beware.
It was a short step to the concise language of the First Amendment to the Constitution. To paraphrase: Congress is not in the religion business. It is not in the anti-religion business. Public institutions funded by government may not be in the religious business. And politicians who curry public favor by suggesting otherwise walk a very fine line, fraught with the danger of betraying the republican and secular values that resulted in American democracy.
I assume that the absurdist “reading” of the Constitution at the opening of 112th Congress of the United States included a reading of the Bill of Rights. But of course, like their reading of the Bible, the Conservative Christian reading of the text made little sense to its readers. For example: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It took until the Illiterate Century, our own, for a Supreme Court to say that this meant a private citizen is entitled to carry a concealed weapon.
And this is why secularism, far more than disbelief in God, is considered threatening by religious conservatives. Mere atheism has no political implications. None. Secularism on the other hand requires the religious conservative to defend the proposition that belief in God is an entitlement in a nation where that opinion is, basically, outlawed by writ even they want to consider sacred.
Secularism is more than a recipe for religious toleration, however. And both religious persons and non-religious persons need to realise that. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and the obsessively odd John Adams would not have been atheists. It is a waste of intellectual time to think that they were or would have been.
But they would vomit at the obsequious language of both Democrats and Republicans–especially at the necessity of having to proclaim religious faith in order to qualify as a serious contender for political office.
The secular factor in American democracy is not only on trial at home; it is precisely why American democracy is a hugely unlikely option abroad–especially in the Middle East. More’s the pity that we have fought wars to export it, without recognizing its non-exportable features as a philosophy that does not trust in God at all. I do not know what is sweeping through the Middle East at the moment. But I know it is not the Spirit of ’76.
American secularism does not enshrine any opinion or movement. In fact, it exposes the reality than any opinion or movement that cannot be argued and reasoned deserves to be treated, like the divine right of kings, as a new superstition.
It’s important to realize that while the American experiment in secularity came from a time when gentlemen and ladies were questioning core religious doctrines like the divinity of Jesus, it also came from circles that had a quiet belief in the divinity of reason.
To the extent we share something like a demythologized vision of that faith in ourselves, we are secularists.
To the extent we don’t–or ascribe it to the power of an unseen God to help us out of our misery–we are mere partisans, peasants to our passions and private agendas.
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Published: February 23, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: atheism : Constitution : democracy : First Amendment : humanism : Middle East : R. Joseph Hoffmann : religion : secularism : Skepticism ..
16 Responses to “The Secular City”
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Dwight Jones
February 23, 2011 at 9:44 pm
The press has abetted the “Christian Nation” to the point where the leading religion of the US is “Anachronism”. Lip service is your church service.
WADR, I do fault the Oxbridge toads who pushed Wittgenstein et al for a hundred years, and still do. Blame where it is due here; it’s not all the priesthood – the flame dies in an ideational vacuum, when effete parlour games and nepotism are allowed to pass as the “liberal arts”.
Like the military, and that whipping-boy Church, whose puerile affections are little different than academics with “the English disease”, send them all home or grant them tenure on the dole; their parasitism must stop, and will.
Humanism will rise again, absent their “stewardship”.
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MKR
February 24, 2011 at 11:09 am
WADR, I do fault the Oxbridge toads who pushed Wittgenstein et al for a hundred years, and still do.
Fault them for what? How has Wittgenstein, who 100 years ago had not yet even arrived at Cambridge as a student, been “pushed” by “Oxbridge toads” for 100 years? Who are the “others” of your “et al.”? And, more important, what on earth has any of this got to do with the subject of the present blog post? Or are you simply off your nut?
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steph
February 24, 2011 at 12:01 pm
Superb and eloquent historical post, insightful and much needed to recognise the injustices and misunderstandings today. May it be widely read.
I didn’t understand the relevance of Dwight’s unclear comment and particularly the anachronistic attack on Oxbridge. What is wrong with Wittgenstein (and who are “et al”)? Is your attack related perhaps to the accusations that A.J. Ayer took off from his philosophy and discredited all religious language as meaningless? It would have been helpful if you could have clarified and articulated the relevance of your comments to Joe’s excellent post.
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imarriedaxtian
February 24, 2011 at 12:39 am
Professor Hoffmann,
Could you please fix the first line of your post? I do not know what it is that the religious conservative hates about America. Also a title would aid in understanding the point(s) of this post. Thanks
Oh, and also this. A couple of weeks ago I read a post of yours entitled “Requiem” and was deeply saddened that you were going to stop blogging here. That post is no longer extant here. Did you changed your mind? Or were you “hacked”?
Reply
Seth Strong
February 24, 2011 at 8:57 am
This might be my favorite blog post so far. History for the impatient is my cup of tea.
Reply
MKR
February 24, 2011 at 1:01 pm
Secularism and self-reliance (the word Emerson assigned an almost mystical value to) granted them the ability to move in less than a century from the narrow religiousness of the Bay Colony puritans and the cavaliers of Virginia Anglicanism to a new position that would be neatly summarized in the idea of “toleration.” If there was ever a miracle in American history, it was that.
It happens that just this morning I read the chapter of Garry Wills’s Head and Heart: A History of Christianity in America” entitled “Beyond Tolerance” (pp. 175–188), and with that in view, it does not seem to me that “toleration” is the right word at all. As expounded by Locke (on my understanding, derived from Wills’s exposition), “toleration” or “tolerance” signified the granting by the state to the people of a certain latitude in religious matters—in practice, the freedom to embrace certain varieties of Protestantism. This latitude did not extend to any religious allegiance that was held to interfere with allegiance to the state, as, e.g., Catholicism was held to do. Nor did it extend to atheism, which was held to make it impossible to bind people by oaths or promises.
Subsequent to this passage, though, you write:
The turning point for American law was the belief that individual liberty entailed freedom of conscience.
This seems to me correct; but freedom of conscience is quite a different thing from toleration. It is an individual liberty and not a privilege granted by the state; and it extends to all opinions in religious questions, including the profession of no faith. Today’s religious conservatives are closer to the Lockean idea of toleration than they are to the idea of freedom of conscience propounded by Jefferson: they would allow people the liberty to worship God as they choose, but not the liberty to forgo all worship and religious belief.
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MKR
February 24, 2011 at 1:02 pm
Aw, nuts: I made an error with the HTML code, and this site doesn’t allow one to edit one’s comments.
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rjosephhoffmann
February 24, 2011 at 1:09 pm
@Miles: Yes, that’s an important distinction as between Emerson and Jefferson, or between any of them and Eisenhower’s “Our country makes no sense unless it is founded on deep religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.” [last bit usually omitted]. On the other hand, I have just been trawling through the mix of political/religious zealots online–a few write to me–and it seems to me toleration would be a distant goal for most of them.
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Sam ODonnell
July 21, 2012 at 3:07 pm
It is too bad these “political/religious zealots ” are not more willing to be tolerant. I find that I learn more when I listen and learn from others. Whether or not I beleive them is entirely beside the point.
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Seth Strong
February 24, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Tolerance has to begin with an agreement on how far your freedom of conscience can stretch. In principle, I don’t mind everybody having a voice. I don’t know how to balance that principle with the fact that I have a limited attention span, the sense that not everyone wants to talk as much, and talking about silencing a group is an ethical contradiction.
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Herb Van Fleet
February 24, 2011 at 2:55 pm
To the extent it might contribute to the conversation here, (although it really doesn’t need anything further due to Dr. Hoffmann’s masterful presentation,) and with no particular pride of authorship, you might want to check out my post on thehumanistchallenge.wordpress.com titled, “The Alchemy of Religion and the Quantum Theory of Humanism Part 2: Humanism Meets Religion Under the Constitution.”
The first third of the piece concerns (my take on) the Founders philosophy of the separation of church and state. The last third addresses a pet peeve of mine, which is when a government body hires and supplies a “Chaplain” at taxpayer expense to conduct prayer services and other religious duties on government property. But, the inane opinion of the Burger court in Marsh v. Chambers allows as how this is perfectly constitutional. Arg! We’ve been “Burger-ed!
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The New Oxonian’s Take on the Founders, the Constitution and DOMA | Unsettled Christianity says:
February 26, 2011 at 10:28 am
[...] The Secular City « The New Oxonian. [...]
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Robert Tapp
March 3, 2011 at 12:08 am
Joe –I assume your is Mencken, slightly modified?
I enjoy your musings enormously. What are you doing for bread, however??
Bob
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rjosephhoffmann
March 3, 2011 at 6:50 pm
Hi Bob, being Erasmus in Boston: when I have change left over from books, I buy bread. I hope you’re well–I miss our get-togethers courtesy CFI when there was CFI.
J
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MKR
March 3, 2011 at 7:08 pm
Will somebody please complete or correct the string of words “I assume your is Mencken”? I’ve been reading a lot of Mencken lately and I would be interested to know what this refers to.
Reply
Adams | Trends Pics says:
March 9, 2011 at 11:16 pm
[...] John Adams rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com [...]
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
The Gospel of Chloe: A New Contribution to “Q” Studies
by rjosephhoffmann
While this corrupt tract, found pasted to the bottom of a patio table in Sharm el Sheik, dates from the second century, it does not seem to be connected with similar materials found in saunas and billiard table pockets.
Judging from the poor condition of the manuscript, multiple erasures, and detritus from camel faex, the original language seems to have been Aramaic, suggesting a Palestinian provenance for its most important ideas. A third character is a female disciple referred to only as “Daughter” by the male speakers. Extraneous ossuary evidence from Talpiot (תלפיות) shows almost decisively that the woman in question is the biological daughter of Judas and hence the niece of Jesus by Judas’s sister Tiffany.
While an interesting product of a syncretistic heretical movement, scholars have been unable to determine what relevance its contents may have for the serious study of the New Testament.
_________________________
Jesus: Judas, do you [ ] me?
Judas: That depends on what you mean by [ ]
Jesus: Judas, do you [ ] Me?
Judas. Oh, that’s better, you ask louder and capitalize Me. It’s like I said, and it’s what the Daughter said. It is what it is, isn’t it?
Jesus: So you don’t?
Daughter: Like who said?
Jesus: Who will remember the Glory?
Daughter (rubbing eyes and adjusting veil): I will.
Judas. I never know what to answer. Ok, I will too. And just what is the glory?
Jesus: The Kingdom of God is like the night sky at noon.
Judas: Just don’t. People are already saying we’re gnostics. No, I say, he’s tired. He’s been with the multitudes again. He doesn’t bring lunch, again. Maybe blood sugar, knock on wood.
Jesus: But you must remember; that is why I came into the world
.
Daughter: Why do you say things like “came into the world”? We know where you’re from. You came in a cart just like the rest of us.
Jesus: It will be harder for a relatively fat man to prick his neighbor with a needle than for a camel to enter the mystery of the kingdom of God by the narrow gate. But I say to you, shake the dust off your sandals! Let him who has ears, etc.
Judas: Look, my job is to make sense of this. When you hired me, you said Judas, what I really need is a PR man, a people person. Ever since then, it’s Judas do you love me. Peter do you love me. It’s driving us all blithers. We need writers–professional people who can sell it. Frankly, the boys are saying you’ve lost it and that we’ll never get to Jerusalem.
Daughter: I know someone. His name is Chloe.
Judas: Chloe is a girl’s name.
Daughter: It’s a gender preference. He writes like a boy.
Judas: We can change his name to–something else.
Jesus: I like Chloe: Someday he’ll be famous, like the womb that bore me. Does Chloe love me?
Judas: Chloe doesn’t bloody know you. You talk, let Daughter write. Do your short thingies, not the long “I am the cherry in the middle of the chocolate”- stuff.
Daughter: I don’t know how to write. I have a good memory, though. I think it will help with the kerygma.
Jesus: The law is inscribed on the hearts of men though not one of seven bothers know what treasures it will own when the son of man comes like David on the heights. Not women though. It’s not inscribed there. The secret of the Kingdom lay hidden like a pearl under an oyster basket. Who among the daughters of men can shuck the oyster….
Judas: You can’t saaay that. In two thousand years people will say, Oh right: Jesus the liberator. Look what he says about women and oysters. And you don’t bloody make sense and you don’t stick to the point and without us you’d still be scrubbing spit off the floor in your father’s house.
Jesus: In my father’s house there are countless mansions. And my father will say to you, “Depart from me before I cast you among the swine like the pearls you are” or something like that.
Judas: Daughter, how much will Chloe want to sort this out?
Daughter: He’ll do it for thirty.
Judas: Thirty denarii? That’s great.
Daughter: Thirty pieces of silver. That’s real money.
Judas: It will break us. It might not even be worth it to clean up his language, but sometimes he sounds sane. And let’s face it, he’s the rockstar. Christ, if only he hadn’t wasted the nard.
Daughter: That’s right, blame me. He has really nice feet.
Jesus: Blessed be you Simon bar Jona, for flesh and blood sake now get behind me. Yes, there.
Judas: That’s disgusting. No wonder Peter ran off. He’s in one of his trances. Does Chloe know we can’t put his name on the scroll?
Daughter: Not yet. I still have to see if he’s got time. What do you suggest.
Judas: Discretion. People have to think he said it. No titles, no bylines. Thirty drachma, not a copper more. Just the sayings that make a little sense. No description–no lakes, or hill, or cliffs. We’ll fill that in later, after… you know.
Daughter: Got it. Just sort out the sayings.
Judas: Not all of them. I’ve got someone named John working on the worst ones. We’ll see how he goes, maybe publish a second volume. But John wants a byline. The pig.
Daughter: Just the sayings, no scenery, make them short.
Judas: Exactly: We can do this. “Chloe” Move it around your mouth. It has a nice qof thing going—k-k–k. That’s it, we’ll call it Q. Just us–us. No one outside knows. In two thousand years, who will guess?
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Published: February 28, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: biblical criticism : Christianity : Gospel of Judas : gospels : New Testament : Q : religion : Synoptic Problem : synoptics ..
16 Responses to “The Gospel of Chloe: A New Contribution to “Q” Studies”
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steph
March 1, 2011 at 10:56 am
This is hilarious, ‘serious’ scholarship from the apocraphyl gospel to ‘qof’ as the last joke. Crikey: what a shame it seems ‘scholars’ are already considering its usefulness. Inevitable I suppose. It would have been better to discretely sneak it into the Vatican for hiding, before the Blithering-tons of menaces, of all extremes and variations, got hold of it. It’s a tragedy. I should have anticipated it, knowing the climate, instead of barking up the wrong tree. The articulation of Q described is horribly reminiscent of klu klux klan! Maybe it’s time to pick up my cello or maybe even go and study something less flammable, like gynaecology (not the virgin birth … or maybe a virgin birth)…
x
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Herb Van Fleet
March 1, 2011 at 11:44 am
Upon a third reading, it ought to be abundantly clear, even to the average Joe who enjoys picking the gum from underneath tables, that these are, indeed, some of the missing pages of the missing Gospel of Chloe that belong, not to the missing “Q,” but to the missing Testament of Monty Python.
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steph
March 1, 2011 at 1:28 pm
So who is just a naughty boy then … and on a second reading this naughty dyslexic girl spelled apocryphal wrong – it happens, bother.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 1, 2011 at 5:02 pm
I can see that neither of you appreciates real archaeology. You will eat your words when this comes a poppin on the History Channel.
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Herb Van Fleet
March 1, 2011 at 5:54 pm
Are you sure the “daughter” isn’t John Cleese in drag?
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rjosephhoffmann
March 1, 2011 at 6:05 pm
Ah! or that daughter and Chloe are one in the same. As the Church says, ’tis a mystery.
Reply
steph
March 1, 2011 at 7:36 pm
Archaeology? I think I prefer gynaecology – new babies to ancient things, and I was never much good with a spade anyway. Can’t shoot a billiard ball straight (maybe because of the gin), and I’ve always been a bit squeamish around camel poo and dead things. Thank goodness I don’t watch television, eating my words isn’t appealing!
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rjosephhoffmann
March 1, 2011 at 7:39 pm
What would anyone do without the fresh air you provide.
Reply
Ed JonesEd Ed Jones
March 2, 2011 at 12:15 pm
My comment was not accepted.
Why?
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Ed JonesEd Ed Jones
March 2, 2011 at 2:14 pm
Fact: Absolutely all that we know historially about Chloe is from 1 Cor. 1:1: Chleo and her household were in correspondence with the apostle Paul,
Paul stood in absolute opposition with the Jerusalem Jesus Movement with their sayings tradition. It was Paul who severed the Jesus tradition from its Jewish roots to become the primary source of the fundamental tenets of Christianity. Hence Chloe and any related so-called gospel stood as far removed from Jesus traditions as history can show. Paul consistently evidenced a complete lack of understanding of the physochology or mechanics of God-man relationship . i.e. experience of Spirit as inspiration, revelation; rather Paul saw spirit as a thing sent uniformally, an automatic consequence of the rite of baptism. Thus Christianity with its primary tenets dreived from Pauline kerygma was not a legitimate religion (religion seen as the language of inspiratin – Ultimate Reality), it is commonsense perceived understanding . i.e. God is just, in obligation to His justice He could not accept sinful humanity until the proper sacrifice was offered.
All mankind by procreation was infected by an irrestaible complusion to sin, only a divine being by Virgin birth could offer the sacrifice. But I’ve said enough.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 2, 2011 at 2:46 pm
Thanks Ed. I agree with you–it must be a fake.
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steph
March 2, 2011 at 3:34 pm
There is more than one man called Joe in tradition and there is more than one Mary, so, eternally suspicious, I’d be surprised if there was only one Chloe. After all, like Joe and Mary, Chloe is a beautiful name, and the name of my fragance, which was given to me by my beautiful niece, whom my sister chose to call Chloe, as well. But then the daughter might not have been Chloe – and anyway, gospels are often given names with no historical connection to the authors … oh what a tangled harp we’ve strung and what fun they are to play.
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The Gospel of Chloe: A New Contribution to “Q” Studies (via The New Oxonian) | The New Oxonian says:
June 8, 2011 at 11:38 am
[...] While this corrupt tract, found pasted to the bottom of a patio table in Sharm el Sheik, dates from the second century, it does not seem to be connected with similar materials found in saunas and billiard table pockets. Judging from the poor condition of the manuscript, multiple erasures, and detritus from camel faex, the original language seems to have been Aramaic, suggesting a Palestinian provenance for its most important ideas. A third charac … Read More [...]
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Viviana Goldenberg
June 9, 2011 at 10:56 am
That is hilarious!!!
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Tristan Vick
June 9, 2011 at 11:04 am
@Joe,
As you know, I’m no biblical scholar, but I do have an interest in NT history and criticism.
I have a different take on Q than most. It may just be a brainstorm, but reconstructions of Q, are a sort of fanciful fictionalization which is supposed to piece together ‘original’ sayings.
However, the question which always nags at me, is where did the logia come from that are familiar to the NT and other textual sources, such as the Gospel of Thomas? I mean, they must have come from somewhere.
The way I see it is like this:
These sayings were made up, and do not signify any original sayings but are part of an ongoing literary tradition. They may be fragments from earlier forms of Philosophical dialogs, only the most popular being preserved and cataloged, and then reassembled, and incorporated into religious texts like the NT.
Q as an artifact, in any possible form or reconstruction, is not so farfetched when we think of it less along the lines of any actual “original” sayings and more along the lines of the missing link in an evolutionary literary transition from oral dialogs, such as the Socratic dialogs, to being collected and incorporated into popular religious texts.
In other words, we can deduce that somewhere between a Philosophical dialog and a religious text there must be a more primitive written form that is not quite a dialog and not quite a full fledged religious compendium.
Granted, what I am arguing means that an alternative Q tradition exists as a transitional stage between popular mediums in a literary progression. Therefore technically not a source for original sayings, but perhaps a link pointing back to the literary forms which possibly (and plausibly) came before the flood of religious writing.
Anyway, it’s still a theory in progress.
I wrote further ideas down here if your interested (It’s more of just a memo to myself and not an actual essay of any kind):
http://threeskeptics.blogspot.com/2011/06/alternate-interpretation-of-q-some.html
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rjosephhoffmann
June 9, 2011 at 11:08 am
Hey Tristan: I am going to read your comments later this morning but I like your theory very much. You should be in touch with Stephanie Fisher who is working on Q for the PhD thesis.
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Should Atheism be Studied?
by rjosephhoffmann
Atheists have grown intellectually fat and lazy, enamored of the quaintness and minority rectitude of their opinion, careless about their targets and goals, gibberishical about their “values” and ideas, many of which are indistinguishable from anybody else’s liberal ideas. Except, perhaps the God part–the not-part.
Should Atheism be Studied? "Atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of man, than by this; that atheists will ever be talking of that their opinion, as if they fainted in it, within themselves, and would be glad to be strengthened, by the consent of others…." That is not a trick question. Atheism to have any intellectual standing in the world must be studied, like any other subject. The stumbling block for doing this, most atheists will allege, are those pesky Chr … Read More
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Published: March 22, 2011
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Should atheism be studied? says:
March 24, 2011 at 8:34 pm
[...] Joseph Hoffmann makes his case. That is not a trick question. Atheism to have any intellectual standing in the world must be [...]
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Living Without Religion
by rjosephhoffmann
The new atheists (aka EZs, News) to put it bluntly are taking heat. Worse, they are taking it from some very smart,–dare we say– bright people. Florida State University philosophy Professor Michael Ruse writes.
“So my conclusion is that if someone argued that the New Atheists have a religion — or perhaps better, are religious (because of their atheism) — I don’t think I would want to say that they are completely wrong. The obsession with the topic, the nastiness, and other things like near mystical veneration of the leaders — look at the Dawkins website if you don’t believe me. But at the moment, I am not inclined to use the religion label. To me, New Atheism is more a philosophy than anything else. I don’t mean this as praise; but then, if I called the New Atheists religious, I wouldn’t be saying that as a term of criticism.”
Ruse, elsewhere, says this: “I think the New Atheists are a disaster, a danger to the wellbeing of America comparable to the Tea Party. It is not so much that their views are wrong—I am not going to fall into the trap of labeling those with whom I disagree immoral because of our disagreements—but because they won’t make any effort to think seriously about why they hold their positions about the conflict between science and religion.”
Jacques Berlinerblau
Close behind, but with more literary oomph, Jacques Berlinerblau who heads the Jewish Studies program at Georgetown University, summarizes his opposition to the News this way:
“American atheists—a thoughtful, diverse, and long-suffering cohort—have seen this all before. Atheism has never been a force in American politics or cultural life and a lot of it has to do with poor choices and leadership. In fact, atheism is still trying to dig out from the self-inflicted damage caused by its mid-century embrace of American communism. That was followed by Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s carnivalesque and tragic reign of error. New Atheism is just the latest bad idea to grab the steering wheel. The News are not just a disaster to American life, they are “a disaster and a danger to the well being of atheism in America.”
At some point (how about now) it must occur to the controversialists that key opposition to their agenda is not coming from religious zanies but from people, like Ruse, who are not believers at all and others, who if they are believers, have a lot of explaining to do before they get their baptismal certificates renewed.
On the other hand, it is not clear that the EZs are listening, at least not directly, to their critics, because their royalty checks and speaking fees are talking too loud.
Berlinerblau hits the nail on the head when he observes that “what is fascinating about the New Atheists is their almost complete lack of interest in the history and philosophical development of atheism. They seem not the least bit curious to venture beyond an understanding that reduces atheist thought to crude hyper-empiricism, hyper-materialism, and an undiscriminating anti-theism.” –It is almost as though they believe that to the extent atheism has a history (i.e., that it has been hanging on the bough for several hundred years, probably longer if you go back to classical adumbrations), it is too easy to explain away its radical, exciting, and mind-blowing newness. (Jacques doesn’t actually say this last bit: I did, and thus want credit for completing the thought).
And then there is this: “Atheism” may not be a good word to describe the EZs. Their critique involves God, but it’s really not directed at belief, or the grounds for belief. It’s directed at believers and at the disembodied essence they prefer to describe, oceanically, as “religion.”
Unbaptism
The mode of critique is lodged somewhere between “Stupid Pet Tricks”- and “Bushisms”-style humor, a generation-based funniness that thrives on ridicule as a worthy substitute for argument: Blasphemy contests, Hairdrier Unbaptisms, Blowgun-slogans (“Science flies you to the moon, religion flies you into buildings”), and my latest personal favorite, Zombie Jesus Jokes (“He died for your sins; now he’s back for your brains”). The message of the Four Horsemen, now conflated into one big message, is that religion has been nothing but retardant and deserves nothing but contempt. The message of their EZ followers is as controlled as a post-car-smash pig-fest.
For all the activity, there isn’t much evidence that it means anything. While in olden days atheists (who preferred to call themselves philosophers and–even–theologians) started with postulates because they saw the postulates as errors in a reasoning process (Aquinas: “Therefore, that God exists is not self-evident.” [ST, 1.Q2] –I know schools in Georgia where he could still be fired for saying that.) EZs begin with the postulators, who are obnoxious and stupid. They are able to do this because (as Berlinerblau sees) without historical tribute to pay they can throw slogans and mud around, hoping that at least some of it will coalesce into a rational critique or a policy agenda—except…“New Atheists don’t have the foggiest idea how to achieve their political goals. And one sometimes wonders if they are actually committed to figuring it out. At present, their preferred mode of activism consists of alienating liberal religious people who share their views on nearly all these issues.”
Thomas
I would add to that two other projects: (1) ensuring that there is no such animal as a liberal religious position (Harris’s absurd ahistorical view) and (2) poaching statistics to make it seem as if their ranks are much larger than they are, vires in numeris. Berlinerblau mentions Dennett’s 2004 Brights Manifesto where statistics about people who might best be described as uninformed or intellectually hazy are turned into “27 million would-be Brights” who are poised for political action. “That figure was clearly off. The only question was whether it was off by 20 million, 25 million, 26 million, or more.”
My own naivete about the deliberate sensationalism of the EZ atheist movement was profound. At the beginning, having seen Dawkins worthily opposed in debates at Oxford in the 1980s, I thought the discussion was an earnest attempt to enlarge the atheist perspective, that books that were extended polemics about the evils and ignorance of religion would lead to better books and better discussion. What we got instead was the debate script without the rebuttal.
But, as it soon became clear, the only people who the News wanted to debate, or wanted to debate them, were preposterous self-promoters like William Lane Craig and John Lennox; serious “theists” (and loads of skeptics and critics of religion) had better things to do, and it became a mark of dishonor in the Academy to take News too seriously. There were exactly three topics in their pannier bag: the existence of God, the creation of the world (cosmology and evolution), and the resurrection of Jesus. The answer to all three by the way is No. An early and surprising vote of no confidence in Dawkins’s approach to (or failure to engage with) theology came in a 2006 London Review of books article from former Oxford colleague Terry Eagleton: “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.” It has always been a sore spot for the News that the charge of amateurism has stuck, even though they defended vigorously the right of scientists to pronounce on the existence of a being who doesn’t exist anyway.
The iconic status of the News made any criticism, after a while, blasphemy to their followers; critics could be written off as mean-spirited or simply envious of the success the writers enjoyed.
Instead of discussion we got books and more books by people who didn’t seem to recognize that Dostoyevsky (and Tolstoy, Freud, Camus, Ionesco, Eliot, Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel Becket, Smetana, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood) had explored the ramifications of the post-God universe for the better part of a century, and even then were building on a crisis that was already fledgling in the nineteenth century.
Can you name one artistic movement, one literary school, or one serious poet, dramatist or musician of the past century who has not been affected by (or embraced) the death of God as angst, anxiety, ennui, nausea and chaos? Neither can the News. Their skill was solely in making naive readers and listeners believe that they had discovered for the first time a situation that had been the status quo of western civilization for most of their lives.
Camus: Sisyphus or Prometheus? You choose
Instead of reflecting their superior knowledge of the artistic and literary contours of the twentieth century (the state of affairs Lippmann described in 1929 as the “acids of modernity”) the EZs wanted to locate society’s major cultural crisis in the backwater churches of Slicklizard, Alabama. When you consider that three of the four basked in the glow of Oxford bona fides, the almost anthropological fascination with American backwardness is not surprising. In America, unlike England, the atheist agenda could be approached with something like missionary zeal. Besides, that’s where the money was.
In the middle of it all the “Good without God” craze was born, copping a title from Paul Kurtz’s book originally titled Eupraxsophy: Living without Religion and then released in 1994 under the title Living without Religion. In the book, Kurtz made no bones about the fact that atheism, even if implied in the secular humanist position, cannot be the end of the story.
“…I think that the term ‘humanism’ is crucial, because humanism is an effort to suggest that if we reject God and proclaim that ‘God is dead,’ we need to affirm human worth. The chief aim of humanism is to create the conditions for the good life here and now, and beyond that to build a global ethics for the world community. The purpose of humanism is to realize and fulfill all the things of which we are capable, and to advance human freedom. Accordingly, there is a positive agenda of humanism which is constructive, prescriptive, and ethical. Therefore, at the very least, we need to say that while we are atheists, we are also humanists. Humanism has a basic cognitive aspect, and it involves a commitment to rationalism. Again, the rationalist position is cerebral and intellectual–it is committed to the open mind, free inquiry and skepticism.”
For Kurtz, it is less that the individual “becomes” an atheist than that modern society operates on rational principles, principles which, if they are followed faithfully exclude the possibility of a traditional belief in God and absolutely exclude the possibility of dogmatism and supernaturalism as contrary to freedom. No follower of the existentialists as such, Kurtz nevertheless believed that the role of humanism begins in the constructive work that “the modern situation” imposes on all of us. We are world-makers and the shapers of destiny on this planet.
This implied an educational task, outreach, a movement. But it was not to be a movement that garnered support from people who had simply been trained to think religion was evil. It was a movement based on the twin premises that “religion” and “atheism” do not automatically embody the rational principles of secularism and humanism, the great intellectual gifts of the Enlightenment. It required fine tuning, this message–a high wire act. For that reason it did not get the credit it deserved in a country addicted to one hit wonders. It was Nietzsche’s man on a rope, extended precariously between the good that God once represented and the evil that would ensue if courageous people did not act in his absence.
When Good without God and assorted bus and billboard campaigns (modeled on atheist awareness drives in Britain) started three years ago, the architecture of discussion changed dramatically. It moved from what Kurtz would have called exuberance (a joyful response to the challenge of seeking wisdom and finding happiness, eudemonia from self-discovery—a tradition that takes us back to the Greeks) to self-defense.
The unstartling result was that atheists glommed onto the rhetoric of victimization that had been imported from various rights movements, on the most superficial of grounds: As women, gays, blacks, and other marginalized groups had fought for recognition in spite of the social obstructions they faced, atheists could claim that religion offered no monopoly on virtue. The case was easily “proved”: Look at religious violence. Look at the way religious people interfere in politics. Look at the imbecility of the religious right. Look at the anti-science campaigns of the fundamentalists. That is, essentially, all the EZs looked at.
But unlike the groups which had legitimate claims to exclusion on the basis of unalterable conditions or status, atheists were asking to be judged by what they did not believe, not who or what they were. The whole pretext was absurd. And unlike the marginalized, their undeclinable position was such that they could not claim simple equality to the religious majority.
Their binary approach to reality admitted of only right or wrong–God (1) or No God (0). For that reason, it was difficult for the EZs to admit that religions promote virtue, since their view of belief was that religions were merely coercive and that all rely on a primitive command ethic that has never evolved and never been modified in two thousand years.
Afraid that they fatally wounded themselves with the frat-party atmosphere of Blasphemy Day 2009, the living without religion branch of EZism, sponsored by a radically transformed Center for Inquiry adopted a more suppliant tone, while still insisting it had not been neutered.
One popular myth is that the nonreligious are immoral, or at least that they can’t be relied upon to be as good as those with religious beliefs. If you know any nonreligious people (and almost everyone does…), you already know this is not true. Human decency does not depend on religious belief. There are good believers and good nonbelievers; there are wicked believers and wicked nonbelievers. You can’t predict a person’s moral character just from knowing his or her metaphysical beliefs.
Another prevalent myth is that the lives of the nonreligious are empty, meaningless, and dominated by despair. This, too, is false. The nonreligious experience the same range of emotions, sentiments, and sensations as the religious. They are joyful and sad; they feel sympathy and disgust; they experience pain and pleasure. They have aspirations; they are concerned about others. They love and are loved.
One reason this myth persists is many religious believers see their god or their faith as the basis for emotions such as hope, caring, and love. We don’t deny that the religious may find inspiration in their beliefs—but our religious friends should not presume that accepting their beliefs is necessary for a fulfilling life.
We who are nonreligious lead meaningful lives without reliance on the supernatural. Moreover, we believe anyone can find meaning in a life that is human-centered and focused on the here and now instead of the hereafter. Some people have parted ways with traditional god beliefs intellectually but hesitate to give up their faith because they’re afraid of what life might be like without the beliefs and practices they have found so comforting. They’ve heard myths about the nonreligious, and they may think these myths are all they have to go on.
I’m pretty sure that whoever wrote this had never read the most prattlingly self-serving of all the speeches Shakespeare gave to any of his characters, Shylock in Merchant of Venice. But it is the same genre: Confronted with the evidence of his excesses Shylock immediately turns his personal vice into a discourse on antisemitism:
“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that?” The Merchant of Venice, Act III Scene I).
Confronted with the reality of excess (and fishing for a message that might appeal to the unchurched and the wavering Brights and “Nones”), the atheists at CFI now claim to care about your heart. We care, we love, we hope, we bleed. Just like you Christians.
Almshouse: the Church and Care of the Poor
I am happy that atheists care about caring, loving, hoping and the full range of human emotions. But is there really a general movement afoot to tar atheists as emotional defectives? The subject they are changing is not whether they have the same basic feelings as religious persons, but why in this latest plea for attention they have adopted Shylock’s position toward their adversaries.
This is not a real question by the way: it is an assertion. I want to suggest that these campaigns are not about ideas but broadening a financial base–and an admission that the anti-religion volume was pumped up way too high to attract the attention of anyone.
But the campaign suffers not just from wooden prose, defensive tenor, and a lack of pizazz: it also reveals that distressing ignorance that Berlinerblau detects in the atheist movement. “You can’t predict a person’s moral character just from knowing his or her metaphysical beliefs.” Sure you can: the “metaphysical” ideas of a terribly religious person who felt that he was receiving instructions from a god named Chaos and who wanted to advance his plan for liberation by killing people, and those of a terribly warped unbeliever who felt the same way, didn’t use the term god, but targeted people according to their religious views might be relevant in assessing moral character. That is not an extreme example: it is the metaphysics of most genocides since the Middle Ages.
Cambodia
Or this “One reason this myth [that the lives of the nonreligious are meaningless] persists is many religious believers see their god or their faith as the basis for emotions such as hope, caring, and love.” I frankly don’t know any religion that would put it quite that way, though I do know religions that make ample room for hope, caring and love as correlates of a loving God.
It grieves me of course to say that the most eloquent example of this sentiment comes from a religion. In the most famous discourse on the subject (1 Cor 13) St Paul doesn’t mention God at all, and makes faith a decidedly inferior virtue:
“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
St Paul
All of which brings me back to Berlinerblau’s central point: an atheism that moves from intellectual respectability to Mission Accomplished-pride (Dawkins: ”Dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument”) and then to begging for status is a humiliating outcome for a once-proud tradition. It’s what Allister McGrath projected in 2004 when he said that under the new atheist regime, exciting possibilities have been rendered dull. We only know what they don’t believe.
But it has only itself to blame. It has been disrespectful if not downright dumb about its history and origins and rude to its conversation partners. Skeptics who have their doubts about religion are also smart enough(like Sartre’s aunt) to be skeptical of atheism. The recent upward trend in criticizing new atheism suggests only that it has boiled down to marketing strategies, and that people know it. People know that the shop window is empty. The organizations, having not much to sell except the signs above the shop will try Commando-tactics one day, Victimization the next (I am trying to remember the date of the death of the last atheist martyr), and Misunderstood the day after. The closest analogy are the versatile rain dances of the Quapaw Indians in Missouri. On the up side, overhead is low when you’re not actually making anything.
Empty windows, lots of signs?
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Published: March 23, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: CFI : EZ atheism : Good without God : humanism. Jacques Berlinerblau : living without religion : new atheism : Paul Kurtz : secular humanism ..
91 Responses to “Living Without Religion”
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steph
March 24, 2011 at 10:13 am
Reading this is like listening to Jacqueline du Pres playing Elgar. It’s stirringly profound, like the sea. It’s so incisive, elegantly eloquent and true. Including most aptly, Shylock, and probably one of the exquisite and moving pieces of New Testament text from St Paul. I’m reminded sadly of Pink Floyd and I already hear some EZs chanting in choral disharmony: ‘We don’t need no ejukashun’. Maybe not the old system, but definitely a new education is needed. Surely the most worthwhile campaign to be undertaken now, one that would sing with pizazz, is one which proposes and installs university programmes in the teaching of the history of humanism and the history of atheism. This is an absolute necessity and there is, I know, alot of potential support within the university system.
(I’m fascinated on the ‘conservative’ translation of agape as ‘charity’ – it sort of misses the point really. You can dutifully perform charitable works without love)
8X
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rjosephhoffmann
March 24, 2011 at 10:45 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF6JMotbHYM
But at least Sam knew something….
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steph
March 24, 2011 at 11:06 am
He did .)
Luis Rosa
March 24, 2011 at 10:17 am
Sure, and all that matters, arguments pro/contra the existence of god, or pro/contra creationism, is simply ignored. There is no rationality in being dogmatic, neglecting the possible evidences or reasons that could be part of a body of premises for a certain conclusion. Those “new atheists” are anything but rational, disparaging the serious and rational atheist.
Nice post!! =]
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Nathan Bupp
March 24, 2011 at 10:49 am
My argument as a secular humanist has been only with theologians or representatives of organized religion who have attacked my naturalistic views of man and nature in an effort to convert me, or who have invoked religious dogma in support of dubious social proposals. This they have every right to do, just as I have to make a critical response. Nonetheless, although I reject all religious faith, I have a profound respect for the role of religion in personal human experience. This recognition and respect has grown over the years. I have never sought to dispute or to deprive anyone of his or her religious faith although on occasions I have been invited to discuss it.”
– Sidney Hook, 1989, a highly distinguished secular humanist and American philosopher and persistent critic of religious fanaticism who stood arm-in-arm with Paul Kurtz in the founding of the Council for Secular Humanism in 1980.
I wonder, how would Hook — this man who did so much for secular thought and causes — be greeted by the PZ Myers’, Jerry Coyne’s and Ophelia Benson’s of today? I suspect that he would be tarred with the pejorative broad brush of “accommodationist” and then told by PZ (and his slew of loyal “fans”) to F-OFF. I mean, that is exactly the kind of treatment Kurtz himself has suffered on the blogosphere.
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SocraticGadfly
March 23, 2012 at 11:34 am
Nathan, good thought there. Agreed that the likes of Hook would probably be marginalized today with exactly that word.
Another interesting thing, speaking of, is the politicization of at least some Gnus, such as PZ claiming there are no conservatives in the movement.
Really? Both Hitch and Harris were/are clear neocons in foreign policy, and Harris’ semi-amateur venturings into neuroscience could be used to conservative ends just as much as liberal ones.
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Nathan Bupp
March 24, 2011 at 10:50 am
“My argument as a secular humanist has been only with theologians or representatives of organized religion who have attacked my naturalistic views of man and nature in an effort to convert me, or who have invoked religious dogma in support of dubious social proposals. This they have every right to do, just as I have to make a critical response. Nonetheless, although I reject all religious faith, I have a profound respect for the role of religion in personal human experience. This recognition and respect has grown over the years. I have never sought to dispute or to deprive anyone of his or her religious faith although on occasions I have been invited to discuss it.”
– Sidney Hook, 1989, a highly distinguished secular humanist and American philosopher and persistent critic of religious fanaticism who stood arm-in-arm with Paul Kurtz in the founding of the Council for Secular Humanism in 1980.
I wonder, how would Hook — this man who did so much for secular thought and causes in the 20th century — be greeted by the PZ Myers’, Jerry Coyne’s and Ophelia Benson’s of today? I suspect that he would be tarred with the pejorative broad brush of “accommodationist” and then told by PZ (and his slew of loyal “fans”) to F-OFF. I mean, that is exactly the kind of treatment Kurtz himself has suffered on the blogosphere.
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Michael Faulkner
March 24, 2011 at 10:57 am
The “new atheist” movement if it means anything stands for three simple premises:
1. There is no good reason or evidence to believe in the supernatural, God or any specific claims of mono-theistic religion.
2. Religion (mono-theism) is not only not the last word in ethics but is in many ways immoral. That today we need to find an ethics and justify it in ways that are not premised in scripture or revelation.
3. That the world will generally go better when people and societies are committed to, reason, evidence, liberty, tolerance, secular movements etc.
The new atheists are not really new (and they never claimed this) Bertrand Russell pretty much said all that needed to be said for this “movement”.
Fancy quotes and condescension aside from this author, he has not really grasped the three above principles that the “new atheist” movement stand for. This is evident in that none of his article makes specific reference to any of the books of the key “new atheists.”
My recommendation, is one “new atheist” Sam Harris recommends, we don’t even need words like atheism or anti-theism, they are actually counter-productive, what we need is simply reason, evidence and to point out bullshit when we encounter it.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 24, 2011 at 11:06 am
@Michael. I agree with (1). As for (2), mono-theism and religion are not convertible terms. As for (3) I am inclined to think this, but there is no proof of it. I hope that I have grasped at least some of these principles and apologize for using fancy words. Re. evidence: I am a fan of WK Clifford, but I am also a bigger fan of William James who opposed Clifford as being facile. I am not a fan of Sam Harris.
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stevenbollinger
October 14, 2012 at 4:33 pm
Utilitarianism was sadly naive and impossibly over-simplistic a century and a half ago when John Stuart Mill was advocating it; today, Sam Harris re-heating Mill’s leftovers is simply appalling. (“Why can’t people just be good?” “Well, Sam, one great big problem with that is that everybody can’t agree about what’s good and what’s bad. Do you see what I’m driving at?” Sam doesn’t see. He’s either never read Nietzsche nor anyone influenced by Nietzsche conception or morals or he’s damnably thick, or quite possibly both. He might not even know who Mill was: he never uses the term utilitarianism and he acts like he thinks he thought it up all by himself.)
Herb Van Fleet
March 24, 2011 at 3:43 pm
Love the Shylock quote. It is spot on. In fact, given their apparent inability to understand the wisdom of Shylock, I have often referred to the “EZs” as having about as much maturity as eighth-graders, except that that would be an insult to eighth-graders. It’s as if they were keeping some dirty little secret without sharing it with the rest of the class, in hopes of staking a claim of superiority. Or, to follow up on your reference to St. Paul, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11, KJV.) The “News” need to grow up.
The other thing that bothers me here (OK, there are a bunch of things that bother me, so I’ll just pick one) is what I see as the false premise that the atheists (and some Humanists too) use to suggest, if not insist, that rationality begets morality. Behavior derives first from a survival strategy – fight or flight, lie or be truthful, share or be selfish, etc. Then comes the genetic predisposition, followed by environmental influences, including the cultural and social settings. If the Ezs really want converts (and that objective presents an interesting topic in and of itself), then they need to offer an alternative that accounts for those factors and then structure an alternative in such a way that the religionists can come out winners by way of a painless conversion.
They really ought to ask, John Lennon notwithstanding, how much better would the world be if we could imagine no religion? Without an answer to that, there will be no sale.
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Herb Van Fleet
March 24, 2011 at 3:50 pm
p.s., the Quapaw Indians live mostly in the extreme northeast corner of Oklahoma – Ottawa county – after having (been) moved there from Arkansas.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 24, 2011 at 3:52 pm
I didn’t mean to slur them by suggesting they’d ever dance in Missouri!
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Seth Strong
March 24, 2011 at 7:21 pm
I’m still on board with the idea of an inclusive secular society. Also, I still think historical context and philosophical awareness help ground a position rationally. But I still feel like there is a short, easy, simple atheism that isn’t being given enough credit by you and also by mainstream society. So I’m speaking up because I think it deserves more protection from all faiths and lack of faiths. Let’s see if I can make that point stick.
There’s more to a person than being without a church or being a person who doesn’t pray. But a person without a church, who doesn’t pray is already outside of the mainstream society. If they actually stated, “I’m an atheist, I have no belief but I know some good friends who have got plans on Sunday,” then arguably they’ll have an Obama of a time getting elected. It took a black person of Obama’s intellect to be president. People with Bush’s experiences are a dime a dozen although they don’t all come with a one term president father. In other words, we already have to try harder in some way to make up for being atheists in the simple way. We’ve got to be quieter or louder. Nobody says atheists sound as loud as the dogmatics and really means it. What folks mean is that all the dogmatics are right because the speaker has the correct balance of dogma. The speaker is still denouncing atheism.
New Atheism has it’s problems. And you can see it because New Atheism is more visible than communism and somehow we’ve managed to keep it less scary. There’re either too many of us or not enough McCarthies this time around.
I might not be an old atheist or a real humanist, but I’m one of the people that would delude themselves into thinking we’re taking heat in such a way that Humanists are looking more reasonable than ever. Humanists haven’t gotten more reasonable. We’re just illustrating that New Atheists can nonviolently get more extreme.
I don’t think rhetoric a la Glenn Beck is correct. But you can’t fault me for wondering where the atheist Rush Limbaughs are. Do you know how many Libertarians I run into who thing “In God We Trust” has always been on our currency? We might need history lessons but we can google what our founding fathers really thought and we do from time to time.
We are outnumbered by self identified believers of “Christian Science”. Surely, you can grant us that we are better than those folks, more practical than Mennonites, and still more rational than the Latter Day Saints who have none of the mystery of Jesus plus even greater ethical dilemmas than “did we understand enough of our own history to take a stand?” Each of those categories are single items on the census paper that out number self described atheists. http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0075.pdf I argue, that regardless of the reason for being an atheist, being an atheist is intrinsically smarter than those positions I’ve listed. So, while we can improve atheists, all of those people would improve by being ignorant atheists because it would save so much baggage. Being an atheist for all it’s faults is still more like an opinion and less like a reason to keep two strangers from marrying.
Even if we stop growing now, we’re still better than many of the alternatives. We’ll be there voting for the Humanist Senator, we know how much non-believers need that kind of support. Don’t overlook our representatives.
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Seth Strong
March 24, 2011 at 7:22 pm
“What folks mean is that all the dogmatics are right because the speaker has the correct balance of dogma.” has a typo. I meant to say “dogmatics are wrong”.
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Seth Strong
March 24, 2011 at 10:20 pm
I spotted another glitch in my statement. Mormons outnumber atheists. The other two categories do not. So please strike “Each of those categories are single items on the census paper that out number self described atheists.” from your consideration. It’s patently incorrect after all.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 24, 2011 at 7:33 pm
Thanks, Seth: very insightful as always. Will respond at greater length later!
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Fred Edwords
March 24, 2011 at 8:11 pm
Are the so-called new atheists (a media-coined term) an intellectual movement deserving an intellectual critique? Not really. They are a popular movement deserving a popular critique. That, then, is the most appropriate context in which to judge them. Ask not how well they know their Albert Camus but how well they know their Saul Alinsky.
The new atheist polemic isn’t as concerned with philosophical abstractions or historic details as some may think. Nor is it truly aimed at powerless religious liberals and “mainliners” whose popular voices were drowned out long ago by the noisy evangelicals. (Remember, in these United States close to half the population avows young-earth creationism and less than a quarter accepts a fully naturalistic evolution. That’s the religious-philosophical-political reality that lives outside the cloister of the academy.) Rather, the new atheist polemic is concerned with helping ordinary people (1) to break free of conservative faith if they want to and (2) if they don’t want to, to at least understand that the godless are here to stay.
A better comparison would be to match the new atheists with Act Up, a group also criticized for its tactics but whose work nonetheless made a difference. In this wise the new atheists say to average Americans, “We’re here, we’re godless, get used to it.” And the message is resonating with the young.
Viewed this way, it’s easy to see why the new atheists aren’t recruiting or even addressing ivory tower atheists. The latter have an important role to play, to be sure. But it isn’t in the streets or on the barricades.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 24, 2011 at 8:21 pm
Excellent response Fred, and doubtless meritorious. But it misses the point that Dawkins, and Dennett and lesserly Hitchens and Harris live in ivory towers and have espoused an atheism for Brights, not the masses. They must therefore be subject to intellectual judgement, don’t you think?
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Fred Edwords
March 24, 2011 at 8:37 pm
The term “Bright” (as in “shiny” not “smart” by the way) is itself an appeal to the common person. It was coined to serve in the same positive way that “gay” has served. But it really hasn’t gotten the traction hoped for. Hence the return to “atheist.” And although Dawkins is from the ivory tower, he’s retired now. Moreover, philosophical atheism is really outside his field. (How narrow a thing is a Ph.D.) Thus in this context he’s a popular writer and speaker, at the forefront of a growing popular movement, and clearly effective at it.
rjosephhoffmann
March 24, 2011 at 8:42 pm
You’re treading water now, Fred.
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Robert Tapp
March 24, 2011 at 11:19 pm
Let’s grant that some people need the confrontative punch of the new atheists to outgrow simplistic childhood faiths. And let’s grant that the new atheists thus serve a useful social function. As long as the rest of us can keep saying that humanism is much more than atheism, and therefore much more important to articulate, improve, and promote.
There are so many ethical issues where we are needed — in terms of sexuality, militarism, genderism, fair wealth distribution, intellectual freedom. These are areas where religions are typically all over the place. And once people realize that (via education in history and comparative religion) the mystique that religion is good or necessary begins to fade.AS more people begin to see that problems are best solved by reasoning and evaluating consequences (rather than intentions and divine commands), the improved society that ensues will be self-justifying.
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Seth Strong
March 25, 2011 at 9:00 am
That’s how I feel about it. I certainly do not want the various outposts of non belief to give up and become New Atheists. The experiment for each little-a atheist tribe is different.
I envy the science atheists because I think science is awesome. But I’m actually not one of them. I’m a different white collar engineer type. I’m not in the labs or the universities.
Quite frankly, I had to be an atheist at one point before my dad would consider untangling a really warped variation of Christianity. Simply being outspoken affects other people and grants them options they may not have acknowledged.
Just like I wouldn’t deliberately undercut the Humanists, I think the Universalists and other coexistence churches are an excellent set of experiments. And I know we’ve benefited from social justice movements of churches in the past.
I’d like to find a way to give the average Christian a way to have their faith and their natural science. And then, a lot of my faith based stereotypes will have no motivation behind them. I don’t mind people trying to answer different ethical questions. And I don’t mind capturing some of our best practices in sound bites either.
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Bruce Gorton
March 25, 2011 at 2:18 pm
The thing is, is what both of you are saying is precisely consistent with what New Atheists say.
In a debate with Chris Mooney over at Point of Inquiry PZ Myers said much the same thing – he felt that a multitude of approaches would work better than one.
Greta Christina, a major voice in the so-called New Atheist movement, has this as a running theme of her talks on what New Atheism can learn from the LGBT movement.
O noes! Atheists ignore history! « Why Evolution Is True says:
March 25, 2011 at 8:58 am
[...] to specialize in atheist-baiting. The other, largely a copy of Berlinerbrau’s post, is by R. Joseph Hoffman at his own website, The New Oxonian. Both level the same old charges at Gnus: we’re [...]
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Atheism » Blog Archive » O noes! Atheists ignore history! « Why Evolution Is True says:
March 25, 2011 at 11:20 am
[...] to specialize in atheist-baiting. The other, mostly a duplicate of Berlinerbrau’s post, is by R. Joseph Hoffman during hisArticle source: [...]
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Darwiniana » More on ‘New Atheists’ says:
March 25, 2011 at 12:19 pm
[...] Living Without Religion [...]
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Chuck
March 25, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Sam Harris declines to call himself an atheist and is focused on understanding the brain science behind belief. I’d call the first act as non-promotional the second rational. He also has responded to all public challenges of his attempt at science-based humanism in his “Moral Landscape” argument. It would be nice for you to recognize recent history when demanding those you criticize expound ancient history. I know as a former captive Calvinist who logically concluded that self-hatred essential from an inference to Reformed Theology, Dr. Harris’s “Letter to a Christian Nation” was therapeutic. I think your invitation to further atheist study inspiring but unlike my prior religious commitment I don’t see the necessity for doctrinal ordination necessary to oppose those who wish to make their privileged superstition public moral ground.
Also (and this is delivered with sincerity) do you have a book? Might this atheist purchase it? If not, why not? I’d think one who holds the thin scholarship of the New Atheists (a title provided by Robert Wright BTW and none of the considered News) as horrible would offer his book-form reply.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 26, 2011 at 8:34 am
“Sam Harris declines to call himself an atheist and is focused on understanding the brain science behind belief. I’d call the first act as non-promotional the second rational.” It doesn’t really matter what you call it:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/there-is-no-god-and-you-k_b_8459.html
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Ophelia Benson
March 25, 2011 at 1:21 pm
So what are we talking about here? What is the post talking about? Who exactly are the EZs? The Notorious Four, or their followers, or both, or other? I can’t tell. One minute the NF or an individual of them is under discussion, but the next minute it’s just unidentified EZs.
I ask because there’s an enormous amount of generalization in the post, and I haven’t got a clue what it’s based on. Nailing down the subject might be one step to figuring that out.
Or you could just say. What is all this generalization based on? Who are these people and how do you know they all match the description you give of the supposed EZs?
Nathan Bupp apparently knows who they are: they’re PZ Myers, Jerry Coyne, and me – which is highly flattering of course, but surely incomplete. You can’t have written this long, searching post just to tell off those three people, can you?
At any rate, what I wonder is, how do you know all this? How do you know “the new atheists aka EZs” do and say and know or don’t know all the things you say they do and say and know or don’t know?
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rjosephhoffmann
March 25, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Is that a real question or a musket shot, “How do you know?”
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Ophelia Benson
March 25, 2011 at 1:54 pm
Of course it’s a real question.
stevenbollinger
October 14, 2012 at 4:37 pm
It looks like 11 questions to me.
Michael Fugate
March 25, 2011 at 1:28 pm
I read your post, I read Berlinerblau, and I read Ruse. How is your or their criticisms of new atheists any more intelligent and respectful than the new atheists’ criticisms of religion? Because you cite Shakespeare? Haven’t you just defined new atheists as those individuals whose actions you don’t like? It is all seems pretty circular.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 26, 2011 at 6:53 am
@Michael: Can you tell me why you are placing criticism of religion is apposition with criticism of religion. Can you tell me which religions, and what bits of religion you have in mind–assuming that you do not think religion is a metaphysical essence?
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Seth Strong
March 25, 2011 at 1:41 pm
I think Sam Harris is pretty fascinating to follow because he stumbles on things that are not banner New Atheist issues. For example, he took some flack for suggesting that we can’t simply dismiss the experience of a person who hides away in a cave for a year and meditates. No one is suggesting the cave man has a divine RSS feed to God’s blog, but Sam did suggest the experience of the cave man was worth more than easy dismissal. The experience of meditation was worth investigating scientifically. Being a brain guy, he’s closer to a look at why people think what they think in a more than rhetorical way. I like him.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 25, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Dear readers: Or at least three of you. “How do you know?” is an epistemological question. I’d suggest Descartes for starters and build from there. The question about labeling, which I take to mean the distinction between News and EZs is included in the 1st sentence: “The new atheists (aka EZs, News) to put it bluntly are taking heat.” Not sure you need clearer identification than that. I also assume it might be OK for a disciple of new atheism to call himself or herself a New or honorary Gnu or however you want to style it without getting a certificate. But I’m puzzled about the assumed kickassedy of the question How do you know? when this piece and the pieces by Ruse and Berlinerblau are about effects of a movement or trend. I suppose one way to know something like that would be to look at the evidence, or maybe the level of discussion, or the outrage engendered by criticizing the work of DDHH. I’ll try to deal with some of this in a further blog today.
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Ophelia Benson
March 25, 2011 at 2:01 pm
I’m not assuming any kickassedyness – and for the record, I have no illusions about my ability to kick your ass! To put it mildly. But I really don’t know how you know what you claim to know about a bunch of people, especially when I don’t know who they are.
Now if you mean the movement – that clarifies, but on the other hand, it doesn’t work to anthropomorphize the motives etc of a movement. Are you sure you’re not having it both ways? I rather think you are.
I just really don’t share your admiration for the Berlinerblau post; I think it’s godawful. It’s worthy of a comment on a busy nooooo atheist blog; the busier ones include some rowdy comments. Much of your commentary on the noooo atheists seems to be aimed at rowdy commenters, which seems like aiming a bit low.
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Nathan Bupp
March 25, 2011 at 3:04 pm
“aiming a bit low.”
But these are exactly the people being drawn into this noooo movement. They constitute the “followers” of the quartet I frequently mention. The tone and temper they exhibit on these blog sites is legendary now. These precisely are the people that make a large chunk of this movement. They are the people who tell Paul Kurtz to F-OFF, and call erudite essays by Berlinerbrau and Hoffmann “shyte.” THIS LEVEL OF DISCOURSE IS a part of what the new atheist movement has wrought.
Ophelia Benson
March 25, 2011 at 5:05 pm
“THIS LEVEL OF DISCOURSE IS a part of what the new atheist movement has wrought.”
Do you know that? Do you know, for instance, that it’s not what the internet has wrought? Or that it’s not what a combination of the internet and anonymity has wrought? Comments, especially anonymous ones, are often rough almost anywhere you look.
“New” atheism has spread: there are more people involved: in any large group of people, there will be some rude ones. It is just barely possible that “new” atheism did not cause rudeness all by itself.
Bruce Gorton
March 25, 2011 at 2:28 pm
Please, actually tell us how you know. Pointing us to Descartes seems like a delaying tactic so that when we finally get back to you the argument has gone stale.
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Ophelia Benson
March 25, 2011 at 2:07 pm
To amplify a bit – at risk of being even more annoying, since you want us to take a break while you obviate criticism -
But I’m puzzled about the assumed kickassedy of the question How do you know? when this piece and the pieces by Ruse and Berlinerblau are about effects of a movement or trend.
I don’t think I buy that. Ruse and Berlinerblau are both highly personal – albeit vague at the same time. They talk about new atheists as well as new atheism, and I think there’s more of the former than the latter. It’s like ranting about feminists as opposed to feminism. It does make a difference.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 25, 2011 at 7:00 pm
well, it’s highly personal with me too, but in a different context. I like all four of the News; I suspect what this comes down to is dealing with the results: http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/
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Your comment is awaiting moderation « Choice in Dying says:
March 25, 2011 at 2:08 pm
[...] at The New Oxonian I made the following brief comment on his Belinerblau is right and you’re all wrong post, and it has been in moderation for the last hour or so; meanwhile Hoffmann has put up one by [...]
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rjosephhoffmann
March 25, 2011 at 2:13 pm
@ Eric: Except for perhaps sorting out this sentence: “You provide virtually no evidence, and what evidence you do provide is selected from fringe elements of the “new” atheist phenomenon,” you must have said it all. But I have to demur: I do not regard this as a condemnation of anyone (except perhaps tactics that flow from the New Atheism, for which the News themselves are probably not responsible.) I do see the trend as highly troubling and agree with Berlinerblau and Ruse that harm is being done.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 25, 2011 at 6:54 pm
As to real harm: http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/
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Seth Strong
March 25, 2011 at 2:31 pm
@Bruce, I have a lot of respect for Greta Christina but would you really say her voice is a New Atheist voice? I wouldn’t. She covers non belief, alternative sexual orientations, alternative lifestyles, and feminism. What she covers is very relevant and I agree with a lot of what she says, but I think the variety of topics she covers takes her out of the umbrella of New Atheism and puts her in a special category.
I don’t want to take away from anything she says. But I dispute the idea that she is considered major in the realm of New Atheism.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 25, 2011 at 2:34 pm
A Seth, I know this isn’t for me, but I agree with you; and I’ve only seen videos of her satire.
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Bruce Gorton
March 25, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Very few of the so-called “New Atheists” deal only with religion. We tend to turn against religion because we have other concerns that religion impacts on.
For me for example, my main concern with religion is that as a South African, I live in a country where evangelical churches set up camps that will pray people’s AIDS away, we have traditional healers providing hijackers with muti, the odd occassional witch hunt, people who believe success is a matter of appeasing the spirits etc…
Ophelia Benson deals heavily with feminism and gender rights and PZ Myers does a fair bit on biology. Realise even Richard Dawkins’ main body of published work was about evolution.
Greta Christina’s posts on “Atheism and Anger” are classic rallying cries. She was also a respected figure in the argument between Jerry Coyne and PZ Myers on whether atheism is a disproveable hypothesis.
I would say she is highly influential within the movement and thus yes I consider her a major player.
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Seth Strong
March 25, 2011 at 3:23 pm
I’m used to seeing Greta in a different perspective. I think she is relevant to atheism. I’ve never thought of her as a New Atheist. I’m considering it now.
rjosephhoffmann
March 25, 2011 at 6:57 pm
Bruce, please sort out for me the difference between these very broad knock on implications of atheism and the claim that atheism is ONLY about not believing in God, which of course is absurd on the face if it. You cannot have it both ways: asserting atheism is limited to one doctrine, but then saying all these agendas can be bought in under it. It’s simply chaotic.
Ophelia Benson
March 25, 2011 at 7:11 pm
But Bruce didn’t say the other things that atheists do are part of atheism; he said atheists do more than just atheism.
I do things other than atheism. I watch the EagleCam; I eat chocolate; I listen to music. I’m an atheist but when I eat chocolate I’m not eating atheist chocolate.
Atheists are not identical to atheism.
rjosephhoffmann
March 26, 2011 at 6:25 am
@Ophelia eating chocolate: Good for you. But the point trivializes the point: positions have entailments. It is preposterous that anyone would want to be an atheist in relation to a meaningless value-free deity. I don’t think eating chocolate is one of those entailments and neither do you.
Barney
March 26, 2011 at 7:25 am
Not only is “the claim that atheism is ONLY about not believing in God” far from absurd (it’s simplistic, perhaps, but it is the actual meaning of the word), neither is it “preposterous that anyone would want to be an atheist in relation to a meaningless value-free deity”. A meaningless, value-free deity is the first sort of deity I’d want to distance myself from. And I thought that was your point too – that because some religions have values, they so shouldn’t be dismissed. Why quote Paul otherwise?
Yes, I’m an atheist, and I’m also a democrat, a republican (using international meanings, not the American political party meanings), a liberal, and internationalist and so on. These do not flow from my atheism, but they do interact with my ethical values. I’m not really sure my atheism does entail much; I think my empiricism may entail atheism, however.
I am, for that matter, ‘anastrological’ too, if you see what I mean – I have no belief in astrology. All this really entails is mild disgust at the money a few people make out of it, often from people who are in some difficulty and could spend their limited resources looks for better advice elsewhere. I have similar disgust for those who make money from religion, or who use it to force their prejudices on society.
rjosephhoffmann
March 26, 2011 at 7:33 am
We agree on much of this, except the bit about why anyone would reject gods. There have been proposals about gods being synonymous with what “is”–though I find such proposals meaningless (as you can’t reject what is) you normally find atheists rejecting attributed notions about God as a way of unloading the whole concept. i think this is a valuable way to proceed. So we don’t disagree about that. But if we agree about that, you have already ranged beyond the idea that God is a value free term and into other territory.
Seth Strong
March 26, 2011 at 11:58 am
I’ve been thinking about Greta as a New Atheist and I still feel like there is something different than Sam, Meyers, Dennet, Dawkins, and Hitchens (you can include Sherman, Mehta and others if you’d like) versus Greta. Most of the New Atheists are barely feminists if they would identify as such. I expect fewer New Atheists to be gay. And even fewer to be polyamorous.
I don’t want it to be an all white suburban movement forever, but New Atheism has this quality right now. New Atheists are still learning how to keep gender equality issues from hamstringing their fight against more backwards believers.
From this perspective, Greta is one of the most dissimilar New Atheists. I don’t know if I’d call Ophelia Benson a New Atheist either. I don’t want to uninvite them from parties. They bring a nuance to the table. But they are something different and they deserve to be seen that way. If more New Atheists were like Greta, I think things would be very different.
Lumping and splitting people from movements is petty except when we consider what the average New Atheist is that people are arguing for or against. There might be a reasonable social justice oriented Scientologist somewhere, but that’s not the example I’ve been disagreeing with ever since science fiction got religion. People do identify with movements while being more than the prototypical member. And in that sense, I can include these people as contributors. But an argument for someone like Greta isn’t like an argument for Dawkins, it requires four heads talking about four different things at once. But approving of Dawkins is a simple thing which isn’t nearly so ambiguous.
rjosephhoffmann
March 26, 2011 at 12:14 pm
Ophelia can speak for herself, but I think there are new atheist tendencies for sure. As for Greta, I am going out on a limb (again) to say that I find her approach crude–and by that I don’t mean unintellectual, just uninspiring. This is based entirely on what I have seen of her, but if I DID have to name a name as epitomizing EZ in the negative, it would be her–entertainment. I am not saying that EZ is crude, but it can become simplistic, especially at the interpretative level. For example. Dawkins’ book was OK, though many have commented that it was a work about (or against) theology written by a scientist. Hitchens’ was journalism, always savoury,and late to the game. Harris’s exploratory, too general and somewhat immature (but that doesn’t make it evil) and Dennett’s had ambitions of being popularly serious. Those are different categories, from which the phenomenon of new atheism arises. Of all of them, I like Dennett’s least (review here: http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?page=index_27§ion=library, the same issue wherein Dennet’s review of The God Delusion appears) but my only criticism was that the book is “untidy,” both in structure and in purpose. I have never said these works should not be taken seriously. Which brings me back t Greta, who I don’t think can be taken seriously.
Seth Strong
March 26, 2011 at 2:03 pm
The use of Ophelia is an analogy for seeing my evaluation of the New Atheists. Mixing feminism and atheism is a different beast even if the atheism is New Atheism. Mix more positions, and the relationship to New Atheism is stranger still.
Maybe I’m discussing sub-themes. The four horsemen related science and atheism prominently. And when the mix is between atheism and something else, I feel like we’re talking about something different.
Jeff Sherry
March 25, 2011 at 2:48 pm
R.J. Hoffman, what have you done to make my life as an atheist in the U.S. better?
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rjosephhoffmann
March 25, 2011 at 2:57 pm
@Jeff: I am going to assume from your question that the answer is Nothing. What is it about simple non-belief (Just that with nothing else attached) that makes it better, because this discussion is not about ethics, causes, choices and lifestyles: it’s about atheism qua atheism.
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Fred Edwords
March 25, 2011 at 2:58 pm
While I don’t agree that harm (at least not much of it) is being done, I do think the general point is well taken that there is a notable difference between the popular polemic of the new atheists and the scholarship of the various university disciplines that touch on the same subject. If some commentators here need to be regaled by a train of specific evidence for that distinction, they either haven’t been paying much attention or are tone deaf. And the same goes for those who might fail to see the difference between the polemical “God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins and the philosophical “God and Philosophy” by Antony Flew. Each is worth reading by its audience. Each has its place. But those audiences and places simply aren’t the same.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 25, 2011 at 6:58 pm
Fred, I was/am a great admirer of Flew and have written extensively on his legacy. I hope this helps to clarify my position about the harm: http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/
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Felix
March 25, 2011 at 3:17 pm
“The new atheists (aka EZs, News)”
The derivation of ‘news’ is obvious but you’re the first person I have seen use it, but ‘EZ’ is completely foreign to me. Did you just make it up? What’s it supposed to mean?
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Michael Fugate
March 25, 2011 at 3:38 pm
Do you have an exam I can take to see if I know enough to call myself an atheist? This is a turf war among academics – philosophers claiming one doesn’t know enough philosophy, theologians claiming one doesn’t know enough theology and so on. It is a strategy to shut up people with whom one disagrees – come back when you have read these five books, then five more – like Heracles and Eurystheus.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 25, 2011 at 7:20 pm
I suppose if you claim that God is a very small topic because he does not exist, it follows that suggesting ways to approach the topic of atheism is largely irrelevant. I do not accept that view. I have no idea what reading, convictions or experiences led you to atheism. I assume they were significant because I believe that atheism is a significant position.
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Felix
March 26, 2011 at 9:51 pm
Why should one need to be led to atheism?
Surely it is the default position if one has not been indoctrinated?
rjosephhoffmann
March 27, 2011 at 8:33 am
That would make an interesting study but if it were true, and anthropologists would strongly disagree, where did ancient tribal societies develop the idea. It may be true that particular dogmatic expressions of religion can’t arise “automatically” but religion, alas, from what we know, has been the default position for a very very long time. That doesn’t make it “true” anymore than the geocentric universe was “true” and believed for a long time. But in strictly historical terms, it’s a myth that atheism is a default position.
Felix
March 27, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Yes, but that’s _obviously_ because people ask “Why?” and religious explanations were the best available.
The continuing promulgation of religious beliefs is not down to their truthfulness, accuracy, or usefulness but to the fact that the previous generations cling to the answers given to them by their own parents when children ask “Why?”
Thus in reply to “I have no idea what reading, convictions or experiences led you to atheism.” my children can simply say “You’ve got it backwards, I was simply not indoctrinated with pre-scientific beliefs about the nature of reality”
The Orthodoxy of Just Not Believing in God « The New Oxonian says:
March 25, 2011 at 5:39 pm
[...] say that as someone who has fallen prey to zingers used about the heretics in the fourth century Empire: According to my disgruntled [...]
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Are the New Atheists Insufficiently Serious? | Prometheus Unbound says:
March 25, 2011 at 5:40 pm
[...] Jesus in History and Myth (Prometheus Books 1986)—thinks so, writing at his blog recently the following: The mode of critique [by New Atheists] is lodged somewhere between [...]
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The yukkists - Butterflies and Wheels says:
March 25, 2011 at 6:43 pm
[...] gnu-hating crowd. There was Michael Ruse, then Jacques Berlinerblau, and now (it grieves me to say) Joseph Hoffmann. All three doing an extended yell of rage at “the new atheists” while seldom actually [...]
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Michael
March 26, 2011 at 12:49 am
Here in Australia I meet more apatheists than noisy atheists, new or old. Apatheists just can’t be bothered with the whole god or atheist palaver and would not read beyond the first sentence of Joseph Hoffman’s finely crafted post (what’s an EZ anyway?). I suspect the ranks of apatheists will continue to grow steadily with or without the noise of the new atheists. And I would say it is indeed hard to predict a person’s values from their metaphysics. For example, Australia’s prime minister is an atheist with surprisingly conservative social views, nothing like the liberal views frequently associated with atheism in its new & noisy, or old & quiet forms.
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Bruce Gorton
March 26, 2011 at 4:27 am
rjosephhoffmann
As Ophelia said – my point is that nobody is only about atheism, and nor is opposition to religion.
So for example I oppose the Catholic Church’s handling of pregnancies that will kill the mother. That is not atheism but as an atheist I have no respect for the Catholic Church’s authority to silence my opposition – so there is nothing stopping me from voicing my concerns.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 26, 2011 at 6:59 am
Oh my: diatribe, witch hunt, thoughtless, no evidence, fringe, furious, empty rhetoric, semblance of argument. I shall try in future to shape my arguments without the use of emotive language.
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ernie keller
March 26, 2011 at 11:23 am
I start with a conservative assumption, that gods and naturalism are “small” enough topics to entitle the intelligent 12 year old to decide for atheism, as they/we often do. This conditions my view on the optionality (but not the desirability) of further education in the dark arts of philosophy and theology. Put simply, I learned to ride a bike without deep knowledge of gravitation in the formal sense, though what knowledge I possessed was deep enough to keep me from falling off.
The lesson applies to the theists and the feeble arguments defending their right to claim expert knowledge in the dark arts, which expertise is being ignored by EZs. This is a variation on the Courtiers Reply. Since we don’t know what we don’t know, we don’t know what we do know. I’ve been exasperated for some time by the willingness of accommodationists to resort to cheap shots like this. First of all, the willingness of atheists to decide for atheism is not a denigration of all knowledge beyond that sufficient to decide about a gods existence. I’ve read a number of the relevant books by Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett, and they are not shallow, nor are they ignorant about subtleties. Where they differ most from the “courtiers” is not knowledge of theological/philosophical refinement, but rather how these fine points affect the cases we face in the world, such as the role religion plays in politics and education, and how it contributes to the level of violence and repression around the world.
Many accommodationists agree about these problems, but not what to say about the cause of them. Hence the clumsy intersection of accommodation with truth, between the unspoken agreement between the atheist camps about, and the, ah, artificial disagreement the accommodationist strategy imposes on one side.
By keeping the level of hostility high, one side poses as the friend of theists, warning that there are bad atheists out there, don’t listen to them, they call you creeps and imbeciles. It won’t work. Theists have more respect for atheist hardasses than they do for their false friends. They pay attention to what Dawkins and Harris are saying, not to the “helpful” interps from accommodationist translators.
Please stop telling theists that EZs are insulting them. Let them decide how insulted they are.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 26, 2011 at 11:37 am
Much of what you say here is agreeable. I do not agree that theists (whoever that is) have respect for atheist hardasses. That a bit like saying that Blacks knew where they were with racists in South Carolina, but more puzzling because most people who are religious wouldn’t know what you mean by calling them “theists” and have little to say about atheism except that they aren’t. Second, the motive of criticism is usually to call attention to excesses within a movement that might do the cause harm. I’ve said that my worry about EZ atheism is that we are now at that stage: my criticism has nothing to do with “telling theists that EZs are insulting them.” I am not addressing theists,and I am not a friend, or a false friend. As to the books, they’re not in the shop window here because this is about the outflow from their reception and interpretation.
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Other minds - Butterflies and Wheels says:
March 27, 2011 at 12:51 pm
[...] I think the piece is not so bad, but I am saying I can see why he might be riled. I always thought Hoffmann’s piece was a much better read, and now that I also see why he might be riled, well there you [...]
Reply
A few links of interest | Theology in the News says:
March 29, 2011 at 6:22 am
[...] The New Oxonian – Living Without Religion [...]
Reply
Wade
March 31, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Where does it say in the atheist handbook that one must read “Dostoyevsky (and Tolstoy, Freud, Camus, Ionesco, Eliot, Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel Becket, Smetana, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood” in order to discuss atheism? One of the few things remotely “new” about the new atheists is not that they are ignorant of the literature on the “angst, anxiety, ennui, nausea and chaos” about the death of god, but that they explicitly reject this pessimistic attitude. In fact, there are many reasons to think theism produces just as pessimistic of an outlook, if not more so than atheism.
Also, how would it be either praise or criticism to call “new atheism” philosophy? Nevermind Ruse flips from callimg it philosophy but religious, then back again, exactly what is wrong with it being philosophy? Of course it is! It is an answer to a philosophical question, in this case, “does god exist”. Just like every “ism” is the same thing, empiricism is a yes to the question “is all knowledge derives from sense experience”.
So for someone, especially philosophers whom are criticizing others for lack of argumentative rigor, to refer to positions like empiricism or materialism in a derogatory tone without giving actual arguments as to what is wrong with those positions is just absurd, it poisons the well.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 31, 2011 at 3:58 pm
I do not regard atheism as a philosophical school, ancient or modern. It is arrived at as a position towards a specific question, through some of these others isms you mention. Nor do I say that any of the writers I listed in the essay are required reading; I am saying they were the status quo of the intellectual tradition before there was a new atheism and that the new atheism passed rather abruptly over that reverting to older and in many cases hackneyed arguments for the existence of God. But to be fair, as time goes by there will be new reasons esp from the sciences that will make the proposition God exists less plausible, and I am certainly interested in those arguments, as well as in the older ones.
Reply
Felix
March 31, 2011 at 6:09 pm
“that will make the proposition God exists less plausible”
How much less plausible does it need to be before one is allowed to be an atheist without considering 2 millenia of religious apologia?
rjosephhoffmann
March 31, 2011 at 6:14 pm
I don’t understand the emotive use of “is allowed to be”–are you saying that being informed about the history of argumentation has no bearing on the question, or that shortcutting is permissible, and if so when and of what sort? And where has anyone ever said that religious apology (theology?) is all that needs to be considered?
Felix
March 31, 2011 at 7:35 pm
I don’t understand the emotive use of “is allowed to be”
Yes, we should try to be less emotive :-)
But I was basically standing up for the right to be EZ (i.e correct but ignorant)
are you saying that being informed about the history of argumentation has no bearing on the question
The question of whether god exists or is man made?
Yes.
And where has anyone ever said that religious apology (theology?) is all that needs to be considered?
Apologia is all that stands between religious belief and the devastating critique that science and reason (and according to Wade, philosophy) present to it.
But anyway, the conversation has moved on now.
I was just reading your “5 Goods things about atheism”.
Much more interesting!
rjosephhoffmann
March 31, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Good! Because we can have superb conversations–I know.
Herb Van Fleet
March 31, 2011 at 4:33 pm
To help shed a little more light on this issue, perhaps this excerpt from an upcoming post on my blog will be of interest:
“The paradox here is that atheists must concede the existence of God before they can deny it.
So, we have books like “The God Delusion.” “God is not Great,” and “God, The Failed Hypothesis.” The authors are not just taking on God, they are taking on religious theology itself; setting it up as a foil to be dissected and torn asunder. God thus becomes an ad hominem. Folks don’t like ad hominems, especially when directed at the object of their deeply felt belief. It’s hard to talk reason to somebody who’s already pissed off before the conversation begins.
“In his article on About.Com, “Is Atheism an Ism? Atheism is No Religion, Philosophy, Ideology, Belief System,” (http://atheism.about.com/od/definitionofatheism/p/AtheismReligion.htm), Austin Cline argues that atheism is not a religion, or an ideology, or a philosophy, or a belief system, or a creed, or even a worldview. Cline concludes with this prescient observation:
“Christian theism has so dominated Western culture, politics, and society that there have been few sources of religious or theistic resistance to this domination. At least since the Enlightenment, then, atheism and atheistic groups have been a primary locus for freethought and dissent from Christian authority and Christian institutions.
“What this means is that most people engaging in such resistance have ended up being pulled into the sphere of irreligious atheism rather than into an alternative religious system. Atheism doesn’t have to be irreligious nor does it have to be anti-religious, but cultural trends in the West have caused atheism, irreligion, and opposition to religion to be drawn together in such a way that there is now a high correlation among them.
“As a consequence, atheism tends to be associated with being anti-religion rather than simply the absence of theism. This leads people to contrast atheism with religion rather than with theism, as they should. If atheism is treated as the opposite of and opposition to religion, then it will be natural to assume that atheism is itself a religion — or at least some sort of anti-religious ideology, philosophy, world view, etc.”
Reply
Herb Van Fleet
April 6, 2011 at 1:30 pm
For a spin on CFI’s “Living Without Religion” campaign and other atheist organization advertizing. check out http://thehumanistchallenge.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/when-the-message-shoots-the-messenger-%e2%80%93-why-atheist-ad-campaigns-don%e2%80%99t-work/
Reply
rjosephhoffmann
April 6, 2011 at 1:40 pm
Highly recommend, and thanks Herb.
Reply
R. Joseph Hoffmann › On Just Not Believing in God says:
November 16, 2011 at 11:57 pm
[...] say that as someone who has fallen prey to zingers used about the heretics in the fourth century Empire: According to my disgruntled [...]
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On Not Quite Believing in God « The New Oxonian says:
November 25, 2011 at 8:08 pm
[...] say that as someone who has fallen prey to zingers used about the heretics in the fourth century Empire: According to my disgruntled [...]
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SocraticGadfly
March 23, 2012 at 11:46 am
I do have one bone to pick with one segment of this piece, and it’s where Hoffmann criticizes defending the emotional range of secularists, when he asks rhetorically:
But is there really a general movement afoot to tar atheists as emotional defectives?
Uhh, yes there is, and in a newspaper column nearly a decade ago, before the word “Gnu” was around, I riffed on Shylock myself to write just such a column. (It appeared in the religion section of The Dallas Morning News.)
In fact, after claims that atheists must be immoral, the claim that they must be emotionally soulless is probably the second one raised by conservative religious apologists and general defenders of conservative religion.
The general thesis is that without being able to be grateful to a creator deity, one just can’t appreciate a sunset, or a Beethoven quartet, in the same way that a true believer can.
And, even, some non-fundamentalists still believe some myths about atheism. For example, how else could Americans say they’d be even less likely to elect an atheist as president than a gay unless bias against atheists weren’t widespread?
Reply
On Not Quite Believing in God » R. Joseph Hoffmann says:
October 13, 2012 at 9:05 pm
[...] say that as someone who has fallen prey to zingers used about the heretics in the fourth century Empire: According to my disgruntled [...]
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Good without God? Not the Problem
by rjosephhoffmann
Reprinted from Spinoza’s Lens (2007/8) http://www.clipclip.org/clips/detail/159809/spinozas-lens-good-without-god-r-joseph-hoffmann
Being good is not the same as being ethical ,or virtuous, or doing good, or even leading a good life.
Be a good boy, Beaver
Let me begin with two stories. The first comes from Voltaire, who is reported to have said to his mistress, Marguerite, “Whatever you do, don’t tell the servants there is no God or they’ll steal the silver.”
Another, told by the writer Diderot in the 18th century, is about the journey of Catholic missionaries to Tahiti–a dialogue between a chief named Orou and a priest, who tries to explain the concept of sin.
Orou says that many of the things Europeans find sinful are sources of pride in his island.
He doesn’t understand the idea of adultery, since in his culture generosity and sharing are virtues. Marriage to a single man or woman is unnatural and selfish. And surely there can be nothing wrong with being naked and enjoying sexual pleasure for its own sake—otherwise, why do our bodies exist. The horrified priest delivers a long sermon on Christian beliefs, and ends by saying,
“And now that I have explained the laws of our religion, you must do everything to please God and to avoid the pains of hell.”
Orou says, “You mean, when I was ignorant of these commandments, I was innocent, but now that I know them, I am a guilty sinner who might go to hell.”
“Exactly,” the priest says.
“Then why did you tell me?” says Orou.
These stories indicate a couple of things about the relationship between religion and morality—or more precisely, the belief that God is the source of morality. The first story suggests that belief in God is “dissuasive.” By that I mean, religion is seen as a way of preventing certain kinds of actions that we would do if we believed there was no God. The kind of God religious people normally think of in this case is the Old Testament God, or the God who gives rules and expects them to be obeyed.
Not all religious people believe these rules were given by God to Moses or Muhammad directly, but most would agree that it’s a good idea, in general, not to steal, commit adultery, hate your neighbor (or envy his possessions obsessively), or kill other people.
For at least a thousand years busy theologians have tried to put these essentially negative rules into more positive form: for example, by saying that people should act out of love for each other, or love of God, and not out of fear. Most Christians would say this is the essential difference between the laws of the Old Testament and the teaching of Jesus in the New. But they are only partly right. Both books of the Bible and all of the Qur’an emphasize fear of God, judgment, and the rewards and punishments of the hereafter as goads to repentance, leading a better life, giving up your rotten ways. Even the books of the Bible that are tainted with Greek thought—like the Book of Proverbs–emphasize that “the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” So it’s mischievous to say that fear and trembling aren’t used for moral leverage throughout the Bible.
The God of the book religions, regardless of theological attempts to transform him into a God who loves the social agendas of the twenty-first century, is not a god who would understand the phrase “unconditional love.”
Modern Christians, Jews, and the Muslims who focus on God’s compassion and mercy, are required to ignore a whole cartload of passages where God reminds people, like any ancient father (and not a few modern mothers), that his patience is wearing thin. Jeremiah 5:22 (NIV) “’Should you not fear me?” declares the Lord. ‘Should you not tremble in my presence?’” The answer is a deafening: “Yes.” Remember the flood? Remember the first born sons of the Egyptians? Remember the plagues and famines? Remember Sodom and Gomorrah? You love this God because you ignore his commandments at your peril. He has chosen you; you have not chosen him, and he can withdraw his favor whenever he wants. (As Jackie Mason used to say, “You look at Israel and you have to wonder if maybe the Samoans aren’t the chosen people”).
The theme of the oldest books of the Bible is very plain: God “loves” (more precisely, he watches out for) the ones who keep his commandments and punishes those who don’t. –A simple message that theology has had two thousand years to massage. In fact, the New Testament belongs to the history of that massaging process. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were the first spin doctors–re-writing the script, transforming Yahweh into a compassionate conservative.
But let’s be clear that the hero of the story is a typical Near Eastern tyrant: powerful, vengeful, jealous by his own admission, proprietary (“His is the world and all that dwells within”), and though slow to anger, fearsome when his wrath is provoked, watchful to point of being sleep-deprived (Ps 121.4). This God is not a model for progressive parenting; he’s not interested in the self-esteem of his people, has not read Dr Wayne Dyer, and will not break down weeping on Oprah! for being compulsive. The message of God the Father is, “Do this or else.”
A larger question posed by Voltaire’s little story is whether the motivation of fear is ever ethical. If you do something because there is a threat of pain and suffering if you don’t, or if you hold off doing something you would really like to do—for the same reason—are you being moral?
What Voltaire is really saying—as Nietzsche, Marx and Freud would later say—is that religion is useful for keeping certain kinds of people in line. Eighteenth- and Nineteenth- century European society could be neatly divided into those who knew better and those who served the ones who did. Marx went so far as to suggest that the social deference the moneyed classes paid to religion was simply intended to convince the lower classes that religion is true—in fact, that’s exactly what Voltaire is saying: Religion is a mechanism used by the knowledgeable to keep the unknowledgeable in their place. It has social advantages—Marx’s Jewish father conveniently “converted” from Judaism to the Prussian State Church in order to go on working as a lawyer. And we all know the younger Marx’s most famous verdict on the topic: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.”
The young Marx
Religion functions through its dominant image of God and his punishments to make people “good” in the same sense servants, dogs and disobedient wives were made to be good in the ancient world. A later era would use the word control mechanism to describe this kind of incentive.
What’s missing from this critique, of course, is the question of whether a “religious act” can ever be a “moral act.” Clearly, belief in God (or a specific kind of God) provides behavioral incentives. As a system of control based on fear, religion keeps people from “being bad,” or at least doing things considered bad by the controller. But it does this inefficiently. Clearly it offers people an explanation for why they behave in certain ways, ranging from the “Bible tells me so” to “Papa dixit”—the pope says so. As a means of consolation, it teaches people to deal with the fear and insecurity created by oppression. But it does this at the expense of self-fulfillment, wholeness. It is the security of an abusive relationship, where comfort consists in being able to predict and manipulate eruptions of violence. In fact, to look back to the sacrificial origins of religion, this was precisely its social role. Even the story of the crucifixion, which many people believe is all about love and forgiveness, is the story of a God so angry at the sinful imperfections of humanity that he transfers his violence to his only son, who becomes the redemptive victim—the buy-back price—for sins he didn’t commit.
crucifixion
Let’s call this religious approach to behavior “Being Good.” Being good is not the same as being ethical or virtuous, or doing good, or even leading a good life. It’s a mother wagging an imperative finger at a three year old and saying “You’d better be good.” It always involves threat and reward. Two generations ago, the image would have included threats of belts or woodsheds spankings, going to bed without dinner. I guess, unfortunately, in some places it still does. But you don’t get ethics out of this. You get obedience and submission.
What about Diderot’s story, the one about the missionary and the tribal chief? If the story from Voltaire suggests that religion is dissuasive and coercive, Diderot’s suggests another reason why religion doesn’t sit well with ethics: Religion is prescriptive, and like politics, it’s local. In 2000 years of massaging the message, it has changed because human beings, the true makers of religion, have changed their minds. Most of the biblical rules about property, goods and chattels, adultery and incest were typical throughout the Middle East; in fact, as Freud recognized, the taboos against murder and incest are the earliest form of laws in some tribal societies. But the books we call the basis of the “Judaeo-Christian-ethic” weren’t written by tribes—tribes don’t write. And the body of laws we call the Ten Commandments contain lots of rules that have been quietly put in trunks and sent to the attic.
For example, we all applaud the wisdom of the commandment that says, “Honor your father and your mother.” It has a nice ring, especially during school vacations. But Deuteronomy 21.20 says that disobedient sons should be stoned in front of the elders at the gates of the city. And Exodus 21.17 says that anyone who insults his mother and father shall be put to death.
As for adultery, which belongs to ancient property law in the Jewish system, the punishment is stoning—normally only for the woman (Deut. 22.21). In Deut. 22.28, the penalty for raping an unbetrothed virgin is a fine of 50 shekels–plus taking her on as a wife. There are laws protecting the rights of the firstborn sons of unloved wives when a man has several wives (Deut. 21.15) and even laws about how long a Jewish warrior must wait (one month) before he can have intercourse with a woman he has captured in battle (21.10). According to Leviticus 19.23, raping another man’s female slave is punishable by making an offering to the priest, who is required to forgive him. There are laws covering how long you can keep a Hebrew male–slave—6 years—but if you sell your daughter as a slave to another man she cannot be freed, unless, after the master has had sex with her, he finds her “unpleasing”—in which case she can be put up for sale (ransom) (Exodus 21. 7ff.). On it goes—throughout the books of the Torah—the Law.
Sarah, Abraham, and his concubine Hagar
The sheer ferocity of the God who gives, or rather shouts these commandments to his chosen people is distant from our time. The voice is unfamiliar: Failure to do what he says results in terror: In fact, that’s the very word he uses: “I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting disease, recurring fever, plagues that will blind you….those that hate you will hound you until there is no place to run; I will multiply your calamities seven times more than your sins deserve. … I will send wild beasts among you and they will tear your children from you. … If you defy me , I will scourge you seven times over. …I will send pestilence …cut short your daily bread, until ten women can bake your bread in a single oven. … I will punish you seven times over. … Instead of meat, you shall eat your sons and your daughters.” Don’t take my word for it: read Leviticus 26. It has literary flair.
Cronus Devouring His Children (Goya)
The God of the Old Testament is a three dimensional figure—far bigger than Zeus and twice as officious. (Perhaps Zeus was able to give freer rein to his sexual appetites, whereas Yahweh limits himself to one Galilean virgin?) And look though you may, you will not find these laws “repealed” in later books, at least not in the way modern laws can be amended and repealed. But it’s absolutely certain that anyone who tried to obey these laws in twentieth century Europe or America would be slapped into jail, and the defense “The Bible told me so” would not be an adequate explanation for what we routinely call “inhumane acts.” –Try posting these commandments above the blackboard in your neighborhood school or the court house wall above the judge’s bench.
One way of charting the so-called progress of western civilization is to trace how human values eventually triumph over the ferocity of religious law. The kind of morality that Diderot’s priest represents, like the morality of the Bible, and even the reductionist versions of biblical and Quranic teaching that modern religious denominations espouse, is not ethics. It is not ethics because ethics can’t be grounded in what I’m going to call “prescriptive dissuasion.”
If you say to me, “Well: no one believes these things any more,” then I say “Good for us for not believing. Then time to stop letting the Bible be the source of moral authority when the conduct of its hero is not up to our standards of civil behavior.”
If you say, “There is great wisdom and poetry in scripture,” then I say “Please then, let’s treat it like other great books that express ideas, customs, and values that have no authority over how we lead our lives.” I have no quarrel with those who want to appreciate the Bible as a product of its own time and culture—with all the conditions that attach to appreciation of that kind. My quarrel is with people who want to make it a document for our time and culture.
And I suppose my quarrel extends to people who consider themselves experts, when what they are really expert in is reading around, into, or past the text. Liberal theologians are immensely gifted at reinventing the God of the Bible in the light of modern social concerns. But the project is a literary–not an ethical one. At another extreme, which is really a false opposite, are the fundamentalists who claim to defend the literal truth of the Bible while ignoring two-thirds of the text and focusing on the convenient “literal” truth of bits and pieces.
Can the Bible make you good? If you accept the framework, beginning with Adam and Eve, and the creation of a race doomed to be perpetually three years-old and scolded into obedience, I suppose it can. Would you want to be good without the Bible: No, because even without the dominance of a sacred text, “goodness” stems from authority rather than conscience and reflection: good dog, good wife, good Nazi, good Jew.
Reduced to basic form, the temptation in the Garden of Eden is a story about a cookie jar and a sly, accusing mother. But it takes more than avoiding mousetraps for a choice to be moral or an action to be ethical. A moral act is one in which you can entertain doubt freely, where a person confronts human choices and human consequences, personal and social.
To be fair: the Bible and its cousins are important records of those human choices and their social consequences, coming from an age which is no longer relevant to us. To make it a book for our time is an abuse of the book and a misunderstanding of its importance. More depressingly for some, perhaps, there will probably be no book to replace it. Not even one by a secular humanist. But there will be wisdom, and reason and choice-making, and that will make us humanly better, perhaps even virtuous. Pray that nothing–no power or text on heaven or earth–will arise to make us “good.”
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Published: December 9, 2009
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: choice : ethics : good wihout God : humanism. Bible : morality : R. Joseph Hoffmann : secular ethics ..
7 Responses to “Good without God? Not the Problem”
.
Good without God? Not the Problem (via The New Oxonian) « The New Oxonian says:
October 27, 2010 at 7:57 am
[...] Reprinted from Spinoza's Lens (2007/8) http://www.clipclip.org/clips/detail/159809/spinozas-lens-good-without-god-r-joseph-hoffmann Being good is not the same as being ethical ,or virtuous, or doing good, or even leading a good life. Let me begin with two stories. The first comes from Voltaire, who is reported to have said to his mistress, Margu … Read More [...]
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steph
October 27, 2010 at 1:19 pm
I couldn’t possibly forget Orou. Beautifully witty, eloquent, incisive and true, prophetic wisdom far, far wiser than Pooh. May such wisdom help us with reason and choice-making, be humanly better, even virtuous too.
x
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chenier1
October 28, 2010 at 8:13 pm
And can I put in a good word for Ninon de l’Enclos? Without ‘La coquette vengée’, and her bequest, Voltaire may have carried on in his father’s footsteps.
I have nothing against accountants, unless they wear ‘Accountants Do it by Double Entry’ t-shirts, but Voltaire does not appear to have escaped unscathed; the bit about the servants stealing the silver sounds a lot more like an accountant than a great intellect contemplating the role of religion…
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steph
October 29, 2010 at 1:03 am
Ninon de l’Enclos – the most voluptuously beautiful, and inspiring heretic of seventeenth century France who defended living a good life without religion – with wisdom and wit – and she did all that rather well. Was Voltaire grateful for the fortune she left him to buy books with? She commented that feminine virtue is nothing but a convenient masculine invention, she who despite her external appearance of a woman, was claims in a letter to a lover, “that in mind and heart I am a man”. And embracing Epicurean philosophy and other profane authors at an early age thanks to her father, she rejects the pious religious life her mother wished for her, shifting from the convent to the salon, pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, perhaps, and made Kings wonder what she was thinking.
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A Secular Ethics? | The New Oxonian says:
March 5, 2011 at 4:11 pm
[...] have claimed frequently on this site that if skepticism at a minimum, and unbelief at the extreme, is a kind of [...]
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Good without God? Reprise « The New Oxonian says:
March 25, 2011 at 7:25 am
[...] Reprinted from Spinoza's Lens (2007/8) http://www.clipclip.org/clips/detail/159809/spinozas-lens-good-without-god-r-joseph-hoffmann Being good is not the same as being ethical ,or virtuous, or doing good, or even leading a good life. Let me begin with two stories. The first comes from Voltaire, who is reported to have said to his mistress, Margu … Read More [...]
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Argelia (Argie) Tejada Segor (aka Argelia Tejada Yangüela)
March 25, 2011 at 3:11 pm
Joe this is a great article! I wish you can read Spanish to know how Dictators in Latin America signed Concordat with the Vatican, and in an ex-change for money and power, kept the poor “good.”
Today, even leftist governments are pleasing the Church by including in our constitutions an absolute ban on abortion, marriage by man and woman only, life at conception, and death only by natural death. Because of government’s corruption, they still want the Church to legitimize their “democracies.”
After John XXIII died, they have silenced the Liberation Theologians, that used the gospel to preach a social utopia and make revolution in oppressed Latin American countries a sacred calling. That is the reason why Ratzinger is now saying that Jesus was not a revolutionary. I wish you write about it sometime.
I am posting this article on a Latin Ateorizando atheist group, and on my For a Lay Dominican Republic group and blog. Even if it is in English. It speaks to the reality of the Catholic Church in poor nations. Only 5 countries in the world have banned therapeutic abortion: Chile, Nicaragua, San Salvador, The Dominican Republic and Malta.
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
The Orthodoxy of Just Not Believing in God
by rjosephhoffmann
We seem to be witnessing the rapid development of atheist orthodoxy.
I say that as someone who has fallen prey to zingers used about the heretics in the fourth century Empire: According to my disgruntled readers, I am confused, angry, unsettled, provocative, hurtful and creating division, which in Greek is what heresy means.
The word ATHEOs (atheist) in Ephesians, 3rd century Papyrus 46
No one has come right out and said what this might imply: that the New Atheists having written their four sacred books (a canon?) are not subject to correction. I haven’t been told that there is nothing further to study, or that the word of revelation came down in 2005 with the publication of The God Delusion. I have been told (several times) that I am mixing humanism and skepticism and doubt into the batch, when the batch, as in Moses’ day, just calls for batch. Or no batch. I have been reminded (and reminded) that atheism is nothing more than the simple profession of the belief that there is no God, or any gods. Credo in Nullum Deum. And I have been scolded in response to my challenge for atheists to be better-read and less cute to the effect that “Many of us have read…Hitchens’s excellent The Portable Atheist. But for Berlinerbrau [sic] that’s not nearly good enough.” An odd rejoinder since it is precisely Berlinerblau’s criticism that Hitchens’ anthology is not very good. And, much as I enjoyed reading its predecessor, God is Not Great, it isn’t.
When the first heretics were “proclaimed” (as opposed to pilloried by various disgruntled individual bishops) in 325–when the Council of Nicaea “defined” God as a trinity–a particular heretic named Arius was in the Church’s crosshairs. He believed that Jesus was the son of God, in an ordinary sense, if you can imagine it, and not eternal. The growing cadre of right-minded bishops, including his own boss, a man called Athanasius, was committed to the popular intellectual view that everything God was, Jesus was, so Jesus had to be eternal too.
Read our orthodox lips
Was Jesus always a son, Arius asked. Yes always, they replied. Was God always a father? Yes, always, they said: God does not change. Then what, asked Arius, is the meaning of terms like father and son? -You are irredeemable and anathema to us, they replied. Once a group rallies around a position, in other words, it becomes very difficult to ask questions or blow whistles. Just like academic politics.
To this day, the only bit of the Nicene creed Christians won’t find in their prayer books is the last clause: But those who say: ‘There was a time when he was not;’ and ‘He was not before he was made;’ and ‘He was made out of nothing,’ or ‘He is of another substance’ or ‘essence,’ or ‘The Son of God is created,’ or ‘changeable,’ or ‘alterable’—they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.” It would spoil the family atmosphere to end the prayer on a rancorous note.
I have always felt that the more you know about the history of ideas, the less likely you are to be a true believer. Studying science can have the same effect, but not directly (since science does not deal with religious questions directly) and usually (for obvious reasons) in relation to questions like cosmology rather than questions about historical evolution.
But that “challenge” kept me interested in history and to a lesser degree in philosophy, rather than causing me to throw my hands up and say “What’s the point?” I did not become an historian in order to vindicate any sort of belief, religious or political. But by becoming a historian I learned to recognize that all ideas, including God, have histories, and that the ideas of god in their historical context leave almost no room for philosophical discussions, however framed, about his existence. In fact, even having taught philosophy of religion routinely for two decades, I find the philosophical discussion almost as dull and flat as the scientistic hubris of the new atheists and their disciples.
When I took up a position as a professor of religious studies in Ann Arbor in the 1980′s, students in the large-enrollment lectures immediately spotted me as a skeptic. When I touched on biblical subjects, bright-eyed students from western Michigan would often bring Bibles and try to trip me up on details. I would always say the same thing, after a few volleys: “We are not here to test your fidelity to the teaching of your church nor my fidelity to any greater cause. We’re here to study history. God can take it.” I wish I had a better message after twenty-eight years, but I don’t.
There are two chief problems with orthodoxy–any orthodoxy. Once it establishes itself, it kills its dissenters–if not physically, then by other means. It got Arius (not before he’d done commendable damage however); it got Hus, it got Galileo, and it might’ve gotten Descartes if he hadn’t been very clever in the Discourse on Method by creating a hypothetical pope-free universe.
Scientific orthodoxies had fared no better until the modern era, the advantage of modernity being that science learned the humility of error before it began to be right. It did not promote itself as timeless truth but as correctable knowledge. It would be remarkable if science, in its approach to religion, did not follow the same process, and I’m happy to say that in most cases it does.
For all the confusion about the new atheism attributed to me in the past few days, it seems to me that atheism is not science. It is an opinion (though I’d grant it higher status), grounded in history, to which some of the sciences, along with many other subjects, have something to contribute.
Almost everyone knows not only that the non-existence of God is not a “scientific outcome” but that it is not a philosophical outcome either. So, if it’s true that at its simplest, atheism is a position about God, and nothing else, then atheism will at least need to say why it is significant to hold such a position. It can’t be significant just because atheists say so, so it must derive its significance from other ideas that attach to the belief in god, ideas that nonbelievers find objectionable and worth rejecting. (The gods of Lucretius can’t be objectionable because like John Wisdom’s god they are not only invisible but indiscernible). Consequently, atheism can not simply be about the nonexistence of God; it must be about the implications of that belief for believers.
Some of those beliefs matter more than others. For example, the belief that God created the world. In terms of the number of people who believe this and the vigor with which they are willing to defend that belief, this has to be the most important idea attached to belief in God.
Atheists who care to argue their case philosophically, will maintain that evidence of an alternative physical mode of creation defeats demonstrations of the existence of God. In fact, however, the evidence is a disproof of explanations put forward in a creation myth; and that disproof comes from history long before it comes from philosophy and science. The evidence is nonetheless poignant. But it takes the question of God’s existence into fairly complex argumentation.
Biblical Cosmos
Atheists might also argue that belief in the goodness of God is contradicted by the existence of natural and moral evil (theodicy) or that belief in his benevolence and intelligence (design, teleology) is disproved by the fact that this is not the best of all possible universes. These quibbles are great fun in a classroom because they get people talking, thinking and arguing. But as you can see, we have already come a long way from the bare proposition that atheism is just about not believing in God, full stop.
This recognition is unavoidable because you cannot disbelieve in something to which no attributes have been attached–unless like St Anselm you think that existence is a necessary predicate of divine (“necessary”) being. But that’s another story. When I use the term EZ atheists, I mean those atheists who short-cut propositions and adopt positions based on a less than careful examination of the positions they hold, or hold them based on authority rather than on strictly rational grounds–an atheist who holds a belief to be irrefragably true only because she or he has faith that it is true.
Most atheists, of course, do not establish their positions that way, e.g., Williams Hasker’s “The Case of the Intellectually Sophisticated Theist” (1986) and Michael Martin’s “Critique of Religious Experience” (1990) or the famous discussion between Basil Mitchell (a theist) and Antony Flew (an atheist) called “The Falsification Debate” (1955) provide important indicators about how the existence of God can be defeated propositionally. No atheist who now swims in shallow water should feel overwhelmed by reading these classic pieces.
Recent articles by Jacques Berlinerblau and Michael Ruse have raised the broad concern that the effects of the “New atheism” might actually be harmful. Why? Because it creates a class of followers who (like the early Christians) are less persuaded by argument than by the certainty of their position. It produces hundreds of disciples who see atheism as a self-authenticating philosophy, circumstantially supported by bits of science, and who, when challenged resort to arguments against their critics rather than arguments in favour of their position. A common criticism of the new atheists is that their journey to unbelief did not provide them with the tools necessary for such defense, or that they have found polemical tactics against their critics more effective than standard argumentation: thus, a critic is uninformed or a closet believer. Criticism becomes “rant,” diatribe, hot air; critics are “arrogant” and elitist, or prone to over-intellectualize positions that are really quite simple: Up or down on the God thing? Points of contention become “confusion,” “divisive”; motives are reduced to spite and jealousy rather than an honest concern for fair discussion–epithets that were used freely against people like Arius and Hus, especially in religious disputes but rarely in modern philosophical discussion. The intensity with which the EZ atheist position is held might be seen as a mark of its fragility, comparable to strategies we see in Christian apologetics.
A year ago, my position on this issue was less resolute: I would have said then that new atheism is just a shortcut to conclusions that older atheists reached by a variety of means, from having been Jesuits to having been disappointed in their church, or education, to reading too much, or staying awake during my lectures. (Even I want some small credit for changing minds).
It is a fact that few people become atheists either in foxholes or philosophy class. But having seen the minor outcry against criticism of the New Atheist position by their adherents, I have come to the conclusion that Ruse and Berlinerblau are right: the new atheism is a danger to American intellectual life, to the serious study of important questions, and to the atheist tradition itself.
I have reasons for saying this. Mostly, they have nothing to do with the canonical status of a few books and speakers who draw, like Jesus, multitudes of hungry listeners. At this level, emotion comes into play, celebrity and authority come into play. Perhaps even faith comes into play. The bright scarlet A of proud atheism as a symbol of nonbelief and denial becomes an icon in its own right: The not-the-cross and not-the-crescent. And again, as we reach beyond not believing into symbolism and the authority of speakers who can deliver you from the dark superstitions of religion, without having to die on a cross, we have come a long way from simply not believing. That is what Professors Ruse and Berlinerblau have been saying.
But the real disaster of the new atheism is one I am experiencing as a college teacher. Almost three decades back I faced opposition from students who denied that history had anything to teach them about their strong emotional commitment to a belief system or faith. Today I am often confronted with students who feel just the same way–except they are atheists, or rather many of them have adopted the name and the logo.
I say “atheist” with the same flatness that I might say, “evangelical,” but I know what it means pedgaogically when I say it. It is a diagnosis not of some intellectual malfunction, but a description of an attitude or perspective that might make historical learning more challenging than in needs to be. It means that the person has brought with her to the classroom a set of beliefs that need Socratic overhaul.
Alcibiades
An atheism that has been inhaled at lectures by significant thinkers is heady stuff. Its closest analogy is “getting saved,” and sometimes disciples of the New Atheists talk a language strangely like that of born agains. I hear the phrase “life changing experience” frequently from people who have been awakened at a Dawkins lecture, or even through watching videos on YouTube. It would be senseless to deny that the benefit is real. And it is futile to deny that leaving students in a state of incomplete transformation, without the resources to pursue unbelief–or its implications for a good and virtuous life beyond the purely selfish act of not believing–makes the task of education a bit harder for those of us left behind, in a non-apocalyptic sort of way.
I suspect this is pure fogeyism, but life-changing gurus have minimal responsibility after they have healed the blind.
I could site dozens of examples of the challenges the new atheist position presents. Two from recent Facebook posts will do. In response to a Huffington Post blog by a certain Rabbi Adam Jacobs on March 24, one respondent wrote, “Thanks Rabbi. I think I will be good without god and eat a bacon cheeseburger and think of you cowering in fear of the cosmic sky fairy…” and another, “This crazy Rabbi is completely right. Atheism does imply a moral vacuum, whether we like it or not. But that doesn’t mean that we can just accept the manifestly false premises of religion just because it would create a cozy set of moral fictions for us, which is what the author seems to be saying.”
The cosmic sky fairy, a variation presumably on Bobby Henderson’s (pretty amusing) Flying Spaghetti Monster, doesn’t strike me as blasphemy. Almost nothing does. But it strikes me as trivial. A student who can dismiss a serious article about the relationship of science, morality and religion, asked, let’s say, to read Aquinas in a first year seminar would be at a serious disadvantage. A worshiper of Richard Dawkins who can’t deal with Aquinas because he is “religious” is not better than an evangelical Christian who won’t read it because he was “Catholic.” That is where we are.
The second comment suggests that atheism is “de-moralizing,” in the sense that it eliminates one of the conventional grounds for thinking morality exists. The writer doesn’t find this troubling as an atheist, because he see the post-Kantian discussion of morality as high-sounding but fruitless chatter: “There is no higher justification for any moral imperative beyond ‘because I think/feel it’s better.’” –I actually happen to agree with him. But I can’t begin a conversation at the conclusion. His honesty about the question is pinned to a view of atheism that, frankly, I cannot understand.
The essence of EZ atheism is this trivialization of questions that it regards as secondary to the entertainment value of being a non-believer, a status that some will defend simply through polemic or ridicule of anything “serious,” anything assumed to be “high culture” or too bookish.
I am not questioning the robustness of the movement, its popularity, or the sincerity of the followers. I am not trying to make new atheism rocket science or classical philology. I have never suggested it belongs to the academy and not to the village, because I know that nothing renders a worldview ineffective quite so thoroughly as keeping it locked in a university lecture hall. The idea that there is no God, if it were left to me, would be discussed in public schools and from the pulpit. But it won’t be. For all the wrong reasons. When Harvard four years ago attempted to introduce a course in the critical study of religion into its core curriculum, its most distinguished professor of psychology, who happens also to be an atheist, lobbied (successfully) against it because it was to be taught as a “religion” course. Almost no one except a few humanists saw that atheism lost a great battle in that victory. And it lost it, I hate to say, because the professor responsible sensationalised the issue as “bringing the study of religion into the Yard” rather than keeping it safely sequestered in the Divinity School.
I want to suggest that the trivialization of culture (which includes religion and religious ideas), especially in America where trivial pursuits reign, is not especially helpful. And as I have said pretty often, that part of this trivialization is the use of slogans, billboards, out campaigns and fishing expeditions to put market share ahead of figuring things out. Truth to tell, there is nothing to suggest that these campaigns have resulted in racheting up numbers, increasing public understanding of unbelief, or advancing a coherent political agenda. They have however potentially harmed atheism with tactics that simplify religious ideas to an alarming level (all the better to splay them) and by confirming in the minds of many “potential Brights” (Dennett) that their suspicions of atheism were well founded. Adherents of the New Atheists need to make a distinction between success as a corollary of profits to the authors and the benefit to the movement or, to be very old fashioned, the ideals of an atheist worldview.
Julian Huxley
After a long time as a teacher, I am surprised to find myself writing about this. I have often found myself thinking, “If only half my students were atheists. Then we could get somewhere. We could say what we like, just the way we like it. We could follow the evidence where it takes us–no more sidestepping ‘awkward issues’ so as not to injure religious feelings.”
If only it were that easy: I may spend the remainder of my time in the academy imploring the sky fairy to smile on my efforts and deliver me from orthodoxy of all kinds.
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Published: March 25, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: american humanist association : Berlinerblau : billboard campaigns : Center for Inquiry : Christopher Hitchens : Daniel Dennett : EZ atheism : Four Horsemen : Good without God : living without religion : new atheism : Paul Kurtz : R. Joseph Hoffmann : religion : Richard Dawkins : Sam Harris ..
28 Responses to “The Orthodoxy of Just Not Believing in God”
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Felix
March 25, 2011 at 8:04 pm
“When I use the term EZ atheists, I mean those atheists who short-cut propositions and adopt positions based on a less than careful examination of the positions they hold, or hold them based on authority rather than on strictly rational grounds”
Thanks for explaining what you mean by that.
I am in the UK, and like the US, some level of theistic belief has been the norm for centuries.
However, now that I am raising children (and unfortunately the local elementary school is a church school) I am obviously telling them that despite what they may hear at school there is in fact no god and the reason many people believe that there is stems from pre-scientific desires to explain the natural world.
My children therefore are, and are highly likely to remain, EZ atheists.
Discuss.
Reply
Rich Griese
March 25, 2011 at 11:18 pm
I think that this may be making the issue more complex than it needs be. I believe that naturalists are simply saying to the theists, that if they want others to accept their hypothesis, they should simply demonstrate it.
Plus, the entire discussion evolves around, not intellectualism, but politics. I don’t think many naturalists would care what gods people want to believe in. I think what they are concerned with is that supernaturalism is affecting politics. And when you have a democracy that is affected by supernaturalism, you have democracy not based on reason. And a democracy that is not based on reason is doom.
Cheers! RichGriese.NET
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rjosephhoffmann
March 26, 2011 at 8:16 am
” I don’t think many naturalists would care what gods people want to believe in. I think what they are concerned with is that supernaturalism is affecting politics…” Absolutely, well said.
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steph
March 26, 2011 at 8:18 am
Eloquent and incisive … Augustine of Hippo defined the phenomenon, although without your flourish and wit. And you’re right, it is very hard to tell the difference. As a friend once said, they’re just batting for the other side. It really does seem as if there is a clean transferral of methodless principles from one set of convictions to another. But with the cheering I imagine the clink of glasses. Perhaps someone called for communion wine. We have several choices, The Mission, Divinity Street, Faith Peaks, Church Road, and Sacred Hill. They all make fantastic reds but I’m on the wrong end of the world for any of their bottles, so I’ll have to go French. By the way, fairies don’t exist. Only angels are true.
8X8
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Ophelia Benson
March 26, 2011 at 9:43 am
Well at least now I have a better sense of why you’re so (ahem) perturbed about noo atheism.
But I still think your perturbation is causing you to overlook some things – like the sheer badness of the Ruse and Berlinerblau posts.
But I think a larger thing is the torrent of bad posts and articles that have been directed at noo atheists for years now. Their consistent badness and the frequency with which they appear make them seem not like serious, reasoned, genuine criticism of ideas, but angry reflexive hostility; in short, a backlash. Noo atheists tend to suspect the motivations of all these over-general and heated-to-boiling-point articles and posts. We tend to suspect it’s just more of the “how dare you!” that shifts in thinking tend to attract.
You want a better and more erudite atheism. You want a better and more erudite everything; so do I; but we’re not going to get it, are we. The students sound deeply annoying, but is that really the fault of the noo atheists?
I don’t know; maybe it is to some extent. You could probably convince many noos of that if you tried, but invoking Ruse and Berlinerblau really isn’t the way to do it. (Honestly – when Ruse himself said right in that post that he likes to create dust ups, I find it bizarre that both you and Berlinerblau solemnly endorse his post as if he hadn’t been coat-trailing.)
Then again, you do love Fun With Language – and all these posts are of course witty in themselves, though not the cause that wit is in other people. But if that’s what you want, you can’t very well get exasperated when people respond accordingly. Bomb-throwing begets bomb-throwing. Wudja expect? Flowers?
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Fred Edwords
March 26, 2011 at 10:11 am
I like the tone of this latest post on the subject. In response to its lament, however, let me note two things: (1) we’ve seen it all before and (2) this too in time shall pass.
Starting with the freethought movement, look back at the first half of the twentieth century. There was the popular author Henry Louis Mencken, who was at once a scholar of the American language and an acerbic polemicist. Less well known, but popular in their circles, were atheist pamphleteers like Joseph Lewis, E. Haldeman-Julius, Chapman Cohen, and Joseph McCabe. In reading back issues of The Truth Seeker and other atheist periodicals of that era, I know that many of the young acolytes of these men were as orthodox as the students you decry now–an attitude that some maintained into old age, which I discovered when first getting involved in freethought in the late 1960s.
Consider the feminism of the 1970s. Remember SCUM, the Society for Cutting Up Men, and their brash journal Up from Under? In the Civil Rights movement there was Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers and later the Black Liberation Army. Campus antiwar activists of the time were often uncritical and doctrinaire trend followersthink of how often the police were called “pigs” and the word “capitalist” was thrown as an epithet if the price of a Coke went up. Then remember Act Up in the gay rights movement. I could go on.
But it probably all had to happen as part of the process of social change. Almost every wing of these movements made a contribution. So I consider it all a fact of life. Leaders have followers and social movements have dogmatists: it just works that way. I think how often, when executive director of the AHA in the 1980s and 90s, I would sigh in frustration, “Whoever said humanists are rational?” But I soldiered on.
By the very nature of their work, of course, professors have found social activists frustrating to teach. Just having a strong social goal orientation can dull intellectual curiosity and the ability to handle ambiguity. Even John Milton couldn’t write Paradise Lost until his political days were over. But once a cause is won, or lost, the excesses usually pass.
Your critique, therefore, is warranted. But not any pessimism for the future.
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Fred Edwords
March 26, 2011 at 10:14 am
Oops! I left out an at the end of one of my italicizations and made a mess of the rest. Could you fixt that for me?
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rjosephhoffmann
March 26, 2011 at 10:26 am
Thanks Fred, that is very helpful and I shall try to be optimistic….
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Ophelia Benson
March 26, 2011 at 11:07 am
You mean I’m not helpful? I’m cut to the quick!
rjosephhoffmann
March 26, 2011 at 12:50 pm
When did I say you weren’t helpful; help comes in many disguises–like Satan.
Seth Strong
March 26, 2011 at 10:42 am
Everybody has to have a little contrarian in them. It’s what makes every position seem unloved the moment you click a post button. It’s why professors and novices alike couldn’t lock a subject tight if they wanted to. And this is good for an academic look around a viewpoint. But it’s really frustrating in the case of math or evolutionary biology. Those are cases with a very right answer and a very large swath of folks who still can’t figure it out. I’m going to guess that humanists, New Atheists, and just about everybody who doesn’t go door to door asking you to join their church has been trying to figure out which kind of thing beliefs are.
For starters, Oxonian, you clearly move from facet to facet on various subjects that are important to you. The weakness of any one post or it’s appeal is that every comment with a critique would like to push or pull the position a little bit further somehow. You know how to write books and I’m too lazy to read half of them (although I attribute my laziness to other things most of the time) so that puts us in a bit of a standoff. It would soften the point of these posts to simultaneously say “atheists have almost figured it all out” and then critique the EZ positions.
I’d like to help us size up beliefs faster. And maybe we can even get beliefs bar coded so we can quick scan right answers. Seriously though. Atheism is probably not a belief and it never was but it helps underscore a series of factors that might define what a person’s belief is even if it’s godless.
Believing in a god is only one factor of a belief. It’s what you have in common with New and old atheists. I’ve known Christians that had more of an absent god than I do but they were Christians for other reasons. Social justice is a separate factor. There are believers and nonbelievers a like that have no interest in moving society forward. And there are us. We might have different subjects but we share an interest in moving things forward. Interest in the history of your faith or faithlessness is certainly a factor and it’s one that puts you at odds with those of us who Tivo your blogs instead of reading your books. Interest in the modern trend of a faith is certainly a separate component because it acts separately on people’s involvement. Potentially last is a factor of righteousness or an evangelism factor. It’s how likely a belief is to be outspoken.
In a nutshell, you worry about the interest in history which you see is lacking and the factor of righteousness which seems to high. I don’t think you mind the trendiness if EZ atheists displayed enough awareness of their roots because it’s okay to be excited about a position.
I think that illustrates the basic differences between New Atheists and Humanists anyway. So it makes sense to me.
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Joseph Segor
March 26, 2011 at 11:39 pm
I’ll start with a negative. I’m not against education and culture. That said, if atheists, agnostics, secular humanisst, brights, etc. are going to affect policy and make a difference in the United States, they must be organized in sufficient numbers that the people with power will be concerned about them. If the numbers are sufficiently larg,e it will be inevitable that the level of atheist education will not be very deep. If a movement can be cobbled together, I will not be much concerned that many of them have confined their reading to Dawkins and Harris.
In my case I became an agnostic around the age of 14. I think that reading a lot of science fiction was the precipitating cause. In college, I read on my own, Einstein’s popular books and Man and His Gods by Smith. That was about it for atheism for nearly 50 years. I continued to read science fiction up until about ten years ago and continuously read popular science books. I clearly was not the kind of agnostic Joe has in mind. But,I filled the years with participation in the Civil rights movement, married and had two children, helped start two legal services programs and an operating foundation, represented farmworker organizations including the United Farmworkers Union, engaged in a very time consuming appellate practice and in 1972 was one of three founders of Centro Campesino Farmworker Center and have served as President for the last 23 challenging years. Up until about six years ago, I was very much in the closet. Except for very close family, all of whom were believers, no one knew my religious beliefs. I kept them completely separate from my work. The civil rights movement and the farmworker movement were closely connected to religious organizations, very effectively used religion in support of their causes and my uneducated clients would not have understood my beliefs.
Finally, about ten years ago I received an advertisement from Free Inquiry magazine and bought a subscription. This rekindled my interest in knowing more about religion and non-religion. When I remarried, my new wife and I helped start a CFI community in Miami. She eventually became the coordinator for several years. The distinguishing feature of the people who attended meetings was their relief at having someone to talk with who had similar beliefs.
The problem with CFI was its verticallity. The professors at the top liked to lecture the peons at the bottom. In my wife’s case she is a PhD sociologist and statistician with three master’s degrees, one of them in theology. She also has extensive organizing experience, is a professional program evaluator and is expert in designing and implementing surveys. Suffice it to say she knows more about a lot of things pertinent to an organization and organizing than did the lecturing philosophers. So do I. But, there was no upward exchange of information. It was discouraging that the staff member in charge of the communities “wasn’t a joiner”. During this period of time we both came out of the closet, but I still carefully separate my beliefs from my work at Centro.
If atheists, I prefer “secular humanist” because it permits emphasis on ethics and humane matters, are ever to gain traction in this country they will have to enlarge and organize their numbers. The failure of the leaders as I see it is their failure to define a program and to bring in people with the requisite skills to create a mass movement. Simply writing to each other as we are doing here won’t cut it. The underlying problem with the academic opinions that I see here appears to be disdain for the great unwashed and a lack of interest in developing a movement that can meaningfully affect the issues of the day although Joe has called for us to do just that, especially regarding education. To create a broad movement you have to get your hands dirty and you must accept the fact that the average knowledge level will be a good deal less than the academics would like. The service that Dawkins and Harris, et al are rendering is that they are creating a large number of potential recruits. Who will organize them. I fear the answer is noone.
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Nicholas Lawrence
March 27, 2011 at 5:57 am
The history of phlogiston is interesting, and worth teaching. But chemists do not have to know this history in order to prove that phlogiston does not exist.
The history of far too many books attempting theodicy is likewise interesting. But if there was one, just one, such book which actually refuted, or even seriously addressed, the ancient disproof of benevolent deities from the existence of natural evil, we would all know about it. Granted, complete atheism does not follow: there may be any number of cosmic sadists. Is it just your little joke to call this point a ‘quibble’?
I have been an atheist ever since I was exposed to Mere Christianity in the 1950s. I agree that it is regrettable that some people treat Dawkins and Hitchens as authorities. But I rejoice that in the UK the big religions are now criticised freely, publicly, and cogently, as they long have been in (for example) France. Only history will tell whether the writings of (for example) Greta Christina and PZ Myers help or hinder that outcome in the USA.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 27, 2011 at 8:29 am
Joe, I of course know much of this because we have shared some of it before and I agree with it. If I were going to mention the good things about the New Atheism it would include some of what you say here, including the availability. Availability is a good thing. And I have also written that nothing kills a movement faster than locking it up in a university classroom. My point has been and continues to be that the results of the New Atheist movement have not been altogether good, and I have drawn fire for supporting Berlinerblau’s point that with the kind of antics we see in Blasphemy Day (CFI), and with some of the rallies and agendas that border on almost nothing but simple ridicule of religion, we are not moving atheism forward and we may well be frightening the nones and undecideds off. I do not say that the four chief authors intended the outcome, but they are normally the patron saints of the most extreme and have said some pretty ridiculous things themselves. And I have to disagree that atheism is spoiled by the PhDs, since most of the key figures in new atheism from Dawkins to Harris to Coyne to Myers are. Yes, they are willing to get their hands dirty (I know what you mean), but even they seem to display a very narrow range of interests–almost al are scientists, all are militant–and even their critics–many of whom are philosophers or historians–find their approach far fetched and downright clownish. So the question is whether tactics aren’t required or greater atheist awareness isn’t desirable–it is–but whether atheisst are doing themselves any favors by sticking so closely to the plot line put out by what I’m calling EX atheism. (The phrase seems to annoy people; maybe that’s good)
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rjosephhoffmann
March 27, 2011 at 8:41 am
@Nicholas: Thanks for a thoughtful response, and see mine to Joe Segor below, which actually embraces several of your points. Theodicy does seem to be self-defeating when people get into the topic, and Lewis’s moral argument is just a literary puzzle. The solution to theodicy is to postulate no God, and the problem disappears: in olden days that might have been a shocking, refusable option, but it isn’t anymore and has been appealing to people for a long time. It has relevance only within theology, not within a scientific view of cosmos and human origins. I’m happy to accept all those points.
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Joseph Segor
March 27, 2011 at 3:35 pm
One problem with this debate is that we are all working from profound ignorance; not of atheism, religion, philosophy, history or any of the other worthwhile subjects that we might study in school or on our own. We have not defined a realizable goal or goals for atheism (I prefer secular humanism). We have only the crudest information about the population that might be receptive to our message, we don’t know where they are or what their needs, interests, and desires might be.
I don’t like Blasphemy Day either, but that may just be a matter of taste. We know that a bunch of people have bought the Dawkins-Harris type books, but we know nothing about them except for the small number who have attached themselves to the authors. How typical are they? Is there any data? We pride ourselves on being the defenders of science, but we don’t use the tools of management (strategic planning for one) and social science ( focus groups and well designed surveys) to identify and further our goals. The critics of the new atheists may be right about the harm that they do, but I don’t know that. All I see are opinions. If one person is turned off by the News and five are turned on, we are ahead of the game, assuming we know what the game is.
Argie (my wife) was critical of CFI because of the absence of social scientists. I was additionally critical because of the absence of business people, especially those expert in planning and marketing. The churches have had millennia to refine their messages and techniques. We don’t have that kind of time, so, to further our cause we need to use modern knowledge and adopt modern techniques. If we do that, we might actually have some knowledge about what is helpful and what is harmful to our yet to be defined cause.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 27, 2011 at 3:58 pm
@ Joe, I agree with everything here, esp about the goals, and about strategies, and CFI should have tapped more directly into the kind of gifts you and Argie brought to the table–that is for sure. My advice is to get involved with the ISHV and make it happen now!
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J. Quinton
March 28, 2011 at 10:09 am
You want a better and more erudite atheism. You want a better and more erudite everything; so do I; but we’re not going to get it, are we. The students sound deeply annoying, but is that really the fault of the noo atheists?
I agree. I hate to say it, but atheism has been too academic and stuffy to have any relevance to the common person. The New Atheist have simply dumbed it down so that it can be more easily digested by your Joe the Plumber types. If atheism had remained an “ivory tower” phenomenon, then that’s exactly where it would have stayed.
If we want atheism to be something discussed in the living room or the local bar — instead of a philosophy journal — then it has to appeal to the type of person that flexes the extent of their intellectual muscle in those venues.
A double-edged sword, really.
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Douglas Struthers
March 29, 2011 at 9:10 am
The only thing new about the Gnu-atheists is the Bright meme. Let’s get a real, sophisticated, erudite debate going by ‘coming out’ as Brights. And testing naturalism (perhaps to destruction?) but sitting on the fence is no longer an option when you can be a Bright.
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Wade
March 31, 2011 at 3:44 am
Ruse & Berlinerblau & apperently you, Mr. Hoffman, seem to miss the entire point behind the ‘new atheism’. Would you judge books by Josh McDowell & Lee Strobel by the same criteria as Richard Swinburne & Alvin Plantinga? You all seem to be missing that this ‘movement’ is more about popularizing than presenting a philosophically sophisticated defense of atheism. The new atheist authors are aimed to the popular level crowd, to denegrate them for lack of academic rigor is entirely missing the point.
For someone that calls himself a philosopher to frame the issue & poison the well with phrases like ‘hyper-emiricism’ also seems dishonest. What exactly is ‘hyper-empiricism’, where in the philosophical literature can I read about it? Since Berlinerblau made absolutely NO argument as to what is wrong with this invented position, can you elaborate the flaws in it? What makes it ‘hyper’ instead of regular old empiricism? What exactly is wrong with just plain old empiricism, do you guys have a bone to pick with Hume? Are you saying that rationalism is better? If so, then, where are the arguments?
It seems that while Ruse, Berlinerblau & the like want to charge new atheists for not reading enough about atheism, but they appear just as ignorant of advancements in the field. There has been quite a lot of work done recently from the atheist position in philosophy of relgion, things have moved on since the gloomy existentialists of the late 19th/ early 20th century. And even past early to mid 20th century guys like Flew & J.L. Mackie. In the past 20 years or so, there have been powerful atheistic argumentsput forth by guys like Paul Draper, Ted Drange, J.L. Schellenberg, Andrea Weisberger, and Nicholas Trakakis, William Rowe. Graham Oppy, Jordan Howard Sobel, Nicholas Everitt, Michael Martin, Robin Le Poidevin and Richard Gale have put forth extremely sophisticated works that devastate theistic arguments in their modern & classical forms. Gregroy Dawes’ ‘Theism & Explanation’ gives strong arguments for the impotency of theistic explanations. Erik Wielenberg has done great work on why ethics does not need god, Steven Maitzen has written some great papers on how theism cannot ground morality. Erik Baldwin & Evan Fales have put forth powerful objections to reformed epistemolgy. There have been great defenses of naturalistic ethics, reliabilist epistemology, I could go on & on. The new atheist views are completely in line with comtemporary philosophy, as shown by the recent philpapers survey on what most philosophers believe.
For you to endorse the straw-man fest by Berlinerlrau is just absurd, if it’s really a more intellectual atheism you want to see, why not try to help out, ya know, embrace the principle of charity? Saying that new atheists ‘mock every thinker & text’ is surely not being charitable. Even in your own comments, I see you advise someone to learn epistemology & ‘start from Descartes & go from there’, is that really how one should approach the issue? Shoudn’t one dive right into Aquinas when enquiring about the issue? Wouldn’t it be better to point people to contemporary introductions to the subject instead of pointing to a bunch of different authors? It seems like you & the others are more interesting in appearing knowledgeable than helping people understand the issues.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 31, 2011 at 4:55 pm
@Wade Wade, sorry this is a late reply because I was actually going to centerpiece it in a blog–but now have to move on to another topic. I find this extremely eloquent, smart and insightful. You mention a number of philosophers whose works I teach and several whose works, while “learned,” I find deplorable (Plantinga is one, Swinburne, whom I’ve debated, is another). Plantinga in fact is a philosophical charlatan–reading him doesn’t repay the effort. Many, like Draper (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u-fLlnn7lE) and Michael Martin are my friends. So we couldn’t possibly agree more on this small canon.
I take it that your real distress is that given my own record of defending the atheist position against the extreme positions of believers I have nonetheless criticized the new atheists. In re-reading my post, it seemed to me that it was too strident, and I was too strident in defending it. I actually think all of the “four horsemen” are very nice guys, certainly much nicer than some of the people who have been most critical of their work from the religious side–and I know you know that new atheism is not afraid to pick fights or inclined to offer demurrers when challenged. That openness is what has brought it out of the corridors into the sunlight. But I also want the sun shining on a movement that all unbelievers can be proud of. The events I have attended, in a couple of cases chaired beginning in 2006 where Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have been present (Hitch on other occasions at CFI) were marked by complete civility and good spirits. So it should be clear, as it wasn’t from the tone of the discussion (with me partly to blame), that I am not opposed to popularizing the message.
BUT I am opposed to any strategy, any campaign, and any
movement that becomes programmatically uncharitable or encourages the idea (as the Old Atheism used to do, btw in Madalyn Murray O Hair’s day) that ridiculing religion as a genus of human behavior is progressive and far sighted. It isn’t, and I think Jacques was right to caution the News that leadership and tone will either sink or save the movement. I do not know whether we agree or disagree about that, but the dumbing of atheism, and of humanism in some quarters will simply alienate Nones, Waverers, and others. (I’ve actually been impressed by voices like yours and a number of others on B&W at how well versed you are on God matters–that is a really hopeful sign to me. But I have to confess, not all voices were as impressive. -So what’s new?) I personally wouldn’t use words like “hyper-empiricism” (is that a bad thing?) but I would agree with Berlinerblau’s point about atheism in some of its current iterations needing to become politically savvy enough to do business with the millions of agnostics and softies who won’t be persuaded by ridicule. The major premise cannot be “All religious people are imbeciles…” We know what the hardcore looks like; I myself prefer the softcore–but we’re all in deep when those two gradients can’t react to each other in matters of approach. For the time being let’s see if any of this criticism is of any use, or is addressed by anyone who thinks it matters. Either it will or it won’t. But it strikes me as something that key voices need to address, if for no other reason than that there are thousands who look to them for wisdom. Thanks for writing.
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Wade
March 31, 2011 at 5:55 pm
“That openness is what has brought it out of the corridors into the sunlight. But I also want the sun shining on a movement that all unbelievers can be proud of. ”
We do both share this desire, & there certainly is cause for worry brought on by some of the new atheist blog commenters. There is a definite resistance of philosophy by some that borders on anti-intellectualism. I’ve had to have quite a few arguments with my non-believing friends about the value of learning philosophy, too many conflate it with theology & consider it all useless. I find, though, it’s best to show through some clever arguing that whether they know it or not, they are doing philosophy when they argue about issues like the existence of god, the nature of science, morality without god, ect. It’s just a matter of whether you are doing good philosophy or not, & it’s quite hard to do something good when you know absolutely nothing about it.
Many just don’t seem to realize that when they construct an argument, they are engaging in philosophy, too many think ‘logic’ is synonymous with ‘common sense’, unable to tell the difference between modus ponens & modus tollen. They have no idea that empiricism is a position that must be defended with arguments instead of taken as a given, many think ‘occam’s razor’ is a hard & fast rule of science without even realizing that it was thought up by a theologian. Many seem wholly unaware that ideas like falsification, demarcation, ‘paradigm shifts’ come from philosophers of science.
And there are some that seem to close off inquiry just because one of the horsemen said it, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to explain the problems with arguments like the ‘the courtier’s reply’ or ‘who designed the designer’. I am completely in favor of criticism, if one wants to consider themselves ‘rational’, then one should never shield themselves from criticism. It hurts the cause to put forth & stubbornly defend arguments & ideas that a philosophically trained theist can demolish easily, because they can take these few examples to their ‘flock’ & say ‘see, their arguments are bad, don’t buy their books’.
And I do agree that tone is important, there are too many that jump straight to insults & ridicule without presenting arguments. But I’m also inclined to agree with Thomas Jefferson when he says “Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.” Sometimes just the right amount of ridicule can be the only weapon against nonsense. So really, a balancing act is in order.
However, I also think that it goes both ways, essentially calling gnus ‘big mean dummies’ & telling them to ‘read more this or that’ is never going to provoke a good response, it will only make people shut down. If the goal is to ‘soften’ people approach, it’s not going to work by doing the very thing you are criticizing. There has to be a better way of making atheists see the need for a more intellectual approach than straw-manning their arguments & hurling thinly veilded insults. The point about empiricism is a great example, Berlinerblau’s use of the term implies that there is something wrong with the position, that it is somehow a unfavorable view to hold in philosophy. If say, he had explained the problems of empiricism, say, quoting Quine’s ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ & elaborated on how gnus seem wholly unaware of the problems, maybe he would have had a good point. Instead he used it as a thinly veiled insult as if it were solipsism. Now that’s a position that you can make fun of someone for holding. JK lol
And as for political action, I never saw this as being an explicit goal of the new atheists, I don’t remember a call for people to push nonbelievers into politcal office, it seems more to be a social movement to get the masses to even acknowledge our existence. Most people still don’t view atheists favorably, polls show that atheists are the least trusted minority (especially here in the U.S.), to even admit to atheism in some parts of the country is social suicide. Merely by people talking about their atheism is a step in the right direction, no one expects atheism to sweep the nation in less than a decade. This, I think, is the greatest value of the new atheist authors, it got people to come out in the open & discuss the issues more than has been socially allowed for decades, if not centuries.
Wade
March 31, 2011 at 3:45 am
*Apparently*
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Wade
April 1, 2011 at 12:36 pm
@rjosephhoffmann,
I watched & enjoyed the video in the link you provided, thanks for sharing.
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The condoning atheist says:
April 3, 2011 at 1:42 am
[...] Whether it’s equivocating the New Atheists with the Tea Party, or degrading others as “EZ Atheists” — it’s clear that a dividing line amongst us is yet again being drawn, as to [...]
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rjosephhoffmann
April 3, 2011 at 8:11 am
(Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/florida_pastor_terry_joness_koran_burning_has_far_reaching_effect/2011/04/02/AFpiFoQC_story.html?wprss=rss_homepage T
The world was reminded of the 30-person Christian congregation at Dove World Outreach Center on Friday, when a mob incited by the burning of the Koran attacked a U.N. compound in Mazar-e Sharif, killing seven U.N. employees. On Saturday, related protests in Kandahar left nine dead and more than 90 injured.
Jones, 59, had considered the possibility that burning the text might elicit a violent response and that innocent people might be killed. In his characteristic drawl — a slow-motion delivery that seems incongruous with the church’s fiery rhetoric — the pastor said the church also debated whether to shred the book, shoot it or dunk it in water instead of burning it. But in the end, his desire to shed light on what he calls a “dangerous book” won out. The Koran was burned in a spectacle streamed live on the Internet. To reach out to Muslims overseas, Jones included Arabic subtitles….”
As to the extent of the Jones Awakening: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12950941
“For some of them,” he said, “it could be an awakening.”
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An Essay on Criticism » R. Joseph Hoffmann says:
December 8, 2011 at 9:33 am
[...] moved the target–if there is one. Or is that the point? Telling me (a thousand times) that atheism is “just not believing in God” (look back over my posts; you’ll see I’ve been there and written it) is like [...]
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An Essay on Criticism « The New Oxonian says:
December 8, 2011 at 11:24 am
[...] have moved the target–if there is one. Or is that the point? Telling me (a thousand times) that atheism is “just not believing in God” (look back over my posts; you’ll see I’ve been there and written it) is like saying football [...]
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Scipio Returns: An Allegory
by rjosephhoffmann
I met Scipio at Mathilde’s yesterday. He was late and huffing–and amazing for a March day in Marblehead–was actually breaking a sweat.
He was carrying a load of blue books he said he hadn’t had time to grade over the spring break.
“You know,” I said with just a hint of disapproval, “It’s harder to do when there’s no time than when there’s a little time.”
He ignored me and looked toward the barrista. She was new: long blonde hair, a runner–you could tell from the way her underarmor outlined her legs–and took an instant dislike to Scipio as soon as she saw him. I guess some men would find her attractive. Scipio did.
“You’re too obvious,” I hissed. ”It’s getting embarrassing to come here with you. I think the last waitress left because you wouldn’t stop staring–what was her name…”
“Maria,” he said without a pause.
“Maria, right. She’s working at the Salvation Army Store on Boylston because she thought you were stalking her.”
“These tables are really too small,” Scipio said. “There isn’t room for my bluebooks on the top.”
He tried to focus on me, but his eyes wandered toward the counter, and inevitably settled on the barrista’s bulging calves.
“I suppose you got all your marking done,” he said with a slight curl on his lips.
“Every bit. I don’t want to mix break and work.”
“You make no sense,” he said. “If you’re grading during break you’re working. So you’re mixing. Make up your mind.”
Scipio has always been good at trying to change the topic from his faults to mine.
“So, I guess having the work hanging over you during a vacation isn’t a little distracting, a little getting in the way of fun- time distracting. A little Oh gosh, what can I put off now that will cause me infinite pain in a week distracting. You make up your mind.”
The barrista had arrived. I ordered my usual.
“I just started,” she said, “excuse me if I don’t know what your usual is.”
“I’ll have a double espresso. My friend will have bubble tea.”
“Bubble tea?” she shot back. “Did you say bubble tea.”
“Exactly. Double espresso for me. My friend doesn’t believe in coffee after noon.”
She stood fast. She looked first at me and then at Scipio.
“You fucking don’t believe in coffee? That’s amazing. I don’t believe in God!” She had used the line before. She waited for a look of surprise–any reaction at all. None.
Scipio looked plaintively at me as though begging for instructions.
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe in coffee, strictly speaking” he said. “He did. I’d say I don’t believe in coffee after lunch”
“So you do believe in coffee?” Disappointment at not getting a gasp about the God comment had now turned into teasing.
Scipio was melting. She had him fixed in her blue eyes. I could almost feel his resolve leaking away.
“I mean, coffee is fine for morning but it’s almost three o’clock. So I prefer bubble tea. It isn’t that I don’t believe in it. In principle it’s fine” He coughed and laughed at the same time creating a thread of scum in the corner of his mouth. “It’s just not good for me.”
“Why is bubble tea good for three o clock.” She positioned herself near his elbow, her thigh against his stack of bluebooks that by now were in danger of spilling onto the floor.
Scipio frowned. “Look Miss,” he said, using a word I have avoided for almost ten years, “I didn’t ask you why you don’t believe in God or the tooth fairy. Please don’t inquire after my drinking habits.”
She moved away, feigning a pout, then pivoted and looked squarely at me.
“So you, you believe in coffee?”
“I do,” I said. “With all my heart. Why would anyone want bubble tea at three o’clock when there’s espresso on earth?” I tried to smile.
“Bubble tea’s more like the tooth fairy. I don’t believe in that either,” she said.
I was feeling a strange excitement at this development. Ten years coming to Mathilde’s, no one had shown the slightest interest in my usual. It didn’t matter what Scipio didn’t believe in after noon.
All that mattered is that I believed in something dark, concentrated, thick, bitter, and expensive. And it came with lemon peel and a tiny brown sugar cube to make it nicer.
“Can I have your number,” she said. She didn’t mean it of course. At least I don’t think she did.
But it was worth it just to see the expression on Scipio’s face.
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Published: March 26, 2011
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Tags: atheism : Good without God : humanism : new atheism : R. Joseph Hoffmann : religion : scipio ..
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Scipio and the New Atheism
by rjosephhoffmann
Mathilde‘s opens at 10 on Sundays, so Scipio and I usually meet at 9:55 sharp so that we can watch people scurrying to the service at First Church. Scipio enjoys this much more than I do. Today a mother with two over-polished kids in tow pushed past us without saying excuse me.
Then she turned. ”What did you say?,” she said.
“Nothing,” Scipio said, with that perfect little way he has of meaning something when he doesn’t mean it. He looked at me slyly. “I didn’t say anything. But you might have said ‘Excuse me’.”
“Actually,” she said, “I’m English. We normally say ‘sorry’ and slog on. So, sorry”
“I hear it now,” Scipio said. He did hear it because he tries hard to sound British, a habit he picked up from having attended a summer school session at the University of Leeds.
“So, sorry,” she said again, casting a faint smile, and rearranging her children on the sidewalk.
“I don’t mean to pry,” Scipio said a little menacingly, “but what actually goes on in there?”
“You mean church,” she said slightly amazed. “You’ve never been to church?”
“Oh sure,” he said, looking sideways at me for enouragement. “I went to my uncle’s funeral, but that didn’t count. I was only eight, so I thought church was all about people crying and sniffing floral bouquets.” He laughed appreciatively, and expected her to laugh back at his little joke.
“Well, ” she said, “We sing a little, pray a little, listen a little, usually to some dreadful sermon about how we need to do more to alleviate poverty and teach our children about love and kindness. This lot could use a little of that.”
“Why do you sing?,” Scipio said, looking at me to nod in agreement at his line of questioning. “Can’t you do that in the car?”
“Well, last I looked it’s hard to get a hundred people in a Subaru. Besides, I like the words. Look, you’re free to come along but I’m going to be late. Nice chatting,” and with that the small troupe was off and running toward the front steps.
“Pathetic,” Scipio said. “‘I like the words’ and she ‘prays a little‘ and listens a little‘. What she’s really saying is that she likes talking to herself and having her kid’s brains washed out with lies. Soap, lye: hey that’s pretty good.”
“She’s not so bad,” I returned. “I pray a little before every class and hope that the students will listen a little.”
“Don’t start,” Scipio said. ”I know you agree with me about religion.”
By then the new barrista had arrived, leaned her bicycle against the wall, took off her helmet and let her hair fall freely over her shoulders. She was even lovelier in the sunlight, prettier than she seemed the day before.
“Hi guys. Be with you in a minute.” She went inside.
Scipio shook his head in a depressed kind of way. ”I used to think that religion was irrelevant,” he said. “But when you see smart-looking people demeaning themselves–it’s sick. It’s just sick.”
“I don’t know,” I said flatly, There are worse things you can be than a waitress.”
Scipio did not look amused. “You know who I meant. And not just that, her kids have to drink the same poison. If you ask me, parents who go to church should be required by family services to leave the kids at home and give them a course in logic.”
“Do they get to sing after they do their syllogisms?,” I said. “You mean that poison about kindness and caring about starving children in Bangladesh?”
“I mean that poison about God and Jesus and being saved and not having abortions and voting Republican,” Scipio said. “Probably being spouted by some guy who screws little boys.”
Canova, "feeding the Hungry"
“Wow,” I said. “So that’s what’s going on at the First Congregational Church in Marblehead. You’re right. I’ll call 911. Maybe no one notices because of all the singing.”
Scipio stood up very straight and looked at me as though he wanted to punch me.
“You know what’s wrong with you Cleanthes? You’re apathetic. You don’t care that people are being taught rubbish. You don’t care that religion is poisonous. You don’t notice that the whole culture is sick and that religion is making it sick.”
To make him angrier, I feigned a yawn and looked at my watch.
“Scipio,” I began, “I don’t think you’re talking about religion. I think you’re talking about what you think about religion, which frankly isn’t very much. I think you’re talking about dogma–or something like that.”
The barrista had raised the shade, smiled through the window, and raised her hand with five fingers spread to indicate we would be standing outside having this discussion for five long minutes.
We were downwind from the church and the front doors were wide open. Two ushers were still allowing latecomers in. But the singing had begun.
I’d always liked hymns. I’ve always liked singing. I recognized this one from years before when it wouldn’t have been unusal for me to be standing inside joining in rather than outside having an unpleasant quarrel with an angry associate professor of psychology.
It was Lowell’s poem, Once to Every Man and Nation. Congregationalists love to sing this. He wrote it to protest the United States war with Mexico in 1845. If only we’d had a million more like him, I thought, the immigration issue would be off the table. They had just arrived at verse two -
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong;
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.
I was going to ask Scipio if he knew it, but even if he did he wouldn’t have said so, and the reference to God in the last line would have soured him on the idea that religion is an important force in social protest. He would have said something to spoil the majesty of the sentiment. Probably that if God had any interest in the future he should have intervened in 1845. I had a whole lecture in my head about that. But by now Scipio was tapping his shoe and it was 10.15.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. ”Maybe we should just shut them down, places like this. Toxin factories. I know if we did, wars would disappear and the economy would heal itself because we’d know that miracles don’t happen. The schools would get better. I’l bet that if we’re being honest about it, our future depends on getting more atheists elected to congress and outing the ones who are already there. I always look forward to our discussions Scipio. You’re always right about these big questions.”
He smiled appreciatively. “Well, maybe not shut them down. But tax them for sure. Make them pay for the harm they do–like cigarette sales.”
Religion
The barrista opened the door smiling slightly nervously. “Sorry guys,” she said, “The machines weren’t cooperating.”
“No problem” I said, “it was worth it just to see you smile. She smiled again.
“It’s way after 10,” Scipio said. “There’s hardly any time for me to enjoy a cup of coffee now. I have yoga at 11.” He pushed past her and moved toward his usual table as far from the window as possible. Scipio has a theory that watching people move past windows affects the optic nerve in unhealthy ways that may lead to early Alzheimer’s. He’s never expanded.
The barrista and I were left on the sidewalk. The children were being ushered down the front steps to the lower part of the church where they would color pictures of the prodigal son or the feeding of the 5000.
They would be told that this really didn’t happen, but that it’s a parable of why generosity to starving people is important. At least that’s what I was taught. The upstairs crowd, mainly young parents and old, probably wealthy, veterans of a lifetime of religion had moved on to a Whittier hymn, “Forgive Our Foolish Ways.” He was a Quaker. He hated slavery. Slavery was a sin, he thought. That’s about all I knew of its history.
“I love that one,” said the barrista. “We sang it when I was a kid.”
“Me too” I said, “but don’t these people ever stop singing?” She smiled again.
In the background, Scipio was calling out. “Oh Miss? Excuse me, Miss”
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Published: March 27, 2011
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Five Good Things about Atheism
by rjosephhoffmann
It seems I cannot win.
Meself
When I chart the vague, occasional and ambiguous virtues of religion (mainly historical) I am accused of being intellectually soft. When I tell atheists they run the risk of turning their social solidarity into tent revivals or support groups I risk expulsion from the ranks of the Unbaptized and Wannabe Unbaptized.
It is a terrible position to be in, I can tell you, and I have no one to blame but myself.
To make amends and win back my disillusioned readers I am devoting this blog to the good things about atheism.
As far as I can tell, there are five:
1. Atheism is probably right: there is almost certainly no God. At least not the kind of pluriform god described by the world’s religions. If there were, we would know it in the way we know other things, like potholes and rainbows, and we would know it not because of syllogisms that begin “All things that exist were created,” or through the contradictory revelations of competing sects.
We would know it because we are hardwired to know.
The weakest argument of all, of course, is existence since existence raises the question of God; it does not answer it. The difference between a god who is hidden (invisible), or does not wish to be known (elusive), or cannot be demonstrated rationally is the same thing as a God who may as well not exist. Not to assign homework but have a look at John Wisdom’s famous parable recited in Antony Flew’s essay, “Theology and Falsification,” (1968).
2. Atheism is courageous. Not valorous perhaps, not deserving of medals. But it takes a certain amount of courage not to believe what a vast majority of other people believe to be true. You learned that much as a kid, when a teacher said to you, after some minor tragedy in the playground, “Just because your best friend decides to jump over a fence onto a busy road doesn’t mean you need to do it too.”
The pressure to believe in God is enormous in twenty-first century society, and all but irresistible in certain sectors of America–the fundamental international base line for irrationality. Having to be religious or needing not to seem irreligious is the greatest tragedy of American public life and a sure recipe for the nation’s future mediocrity. It dominates political campaigns and the way kids learn history in Texas.
Texas edits textbooks
Theological differences aside, what Muslims and Christians and other godfearers have in common is an illusion that they are willing to defend aggressively–in certain cases murderously.
Even when it does not reach that level of viciousness, it can make the life of the uncommitted, unfaithed and unchurched miserable. Atheists deserve credit for having to put up with this stupidity. That is bravery, defined as forbearance.
Many atheists realize that the fervour displayed by religious extremists has deep psychological roots–that history has witnessed its bloodiest moments when causes were already lost. The legalization of Christianity (312?) came within three years of the final assault against Christians by the last “pagan” emperor. The greater number of the wars of religion (1562-1592) occurred after the Council of Trent (adj. 1563) had made Catholic doctrine unassailable–written in stone–for Catholics and completely unacceptable for Protestants. The Holocaust happened largely because Rassenhasse flowed naturally from two done deals: worldwide economic collapse and Germany’s humiliation in the Great War of 1914-1918. The Klan became most violent when its utility as an instrument of southern “justice” was finished.
Most of the available signs suggest that religion will not succumb to creeping irrelevance in the next six months. Religions become violent and aggressive as they struggle for breath. The substitution of emotion and blind, often illiterate, faith in support of threadbare dogmatic assertions is part of this struggle. So is an unwillingness to accept any alternative consensus to replace the old religious one.
Atheism symbolizes not just unbelief in God but the nature of that alternative consensus. That is why atheism is especially opprobrious to belief in an a era when most questions are settled by science and investigation.
Yet even without the security of dogma, religions usually provide for the emotional needs of their adherents in ways that science does not. They have had centuries, for example, to convince people that the miseries endured in this life are simply a preparation for a better one to come. A purposeless world acquires meaning as a “testing ground” for initiation into future glory. There is no art of consolation for the atheist, just the world as it is. Granny may have lost the power of speech after her third stroke, but she knows there is a wolf behind the door: religion knows this instinctively.
Being an atheist may be a bit lonely, but better “Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.” (And Socrates was courageous, too.)
3. Atheists are more imaginative than most people. Religious people obviously have imagination too, but so much of their imaginative world is provided for them in myth, art, ritual and architectural space. Atheists know that the world we live in is dominated by religion: spires, minarets, ceremonial prayers, political rhetoric and posturing, ethical discussion. I am not convinced (alas) that atheists are “brighter” than anyone else, but they have to imagine ungiven alternatives and worlds of thought that have not been handed to them by tradition and custom.
Imagination however is that two-way street between vision and delusion. The given myths and symbols of a culture are imposed, not arrived at or deduced, and if not imposed then “imparted” by traditions. Jung was wrong.
Collective Unconscious?
Skeptics and unbelievers from Shelley and Erasmus Darwin (Charles’s grandfather) to Richard Feynman, John Ellis, Ljon Tichy and Einstein in the sciences, Sir Michael Tippet, Bartok, Rimsky-Korsakov and Shostakovitch in music, Bukoswki, Camus, Somerset Maugham, Joyce Carol Oates, Vonnegut in literature, have been imaginers, iconoclasts, rule-breakers, mental adventurers.
Far too often, unfortunately, atheists are the worst advocates for imagination.
They rather nervously limit their interest to the scientific imagination. They don’t see a connection between Monod and Camus. They consider their unbelief a “scientific” and “rational” position, not an imaginative one. When confronted with photographs of the Taj Mahal or recordings of Bach’s B-minor Mass, they point to shots from the Hubble telescope or (my personal favorite) soundtracks of earth auroral kilometric radiation.
Instead of owning the arts, they play the part of intellectual bullies who think poetry is for mental sissies.
Joyce Carol Oates
I have come to the conclusion that this is because they equate the imagination with the imaginary and the imaginary with the supernatural. The imagination produced religion, of course, hence the gods, but that does not mean that it is governed by religion, because if it were we never would have got round to science. The poet Charles Bukowski summed it up nicely in a 1988 interview: “For those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our education system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
4. Atheism is an ethical position. That does not make being an atheist a “moral” stance, but it does raise a question about whether it is possible to be good with God. Only an individual free from the commandments of religion and the threat of heaven and hell deserves credit (or blame) for his decisions, actions, and omissions. Atheists are required to assume that responsibility fully. Religious people are not.
This is why anyone who teaches his children that the story of Adam and Eve in the Old Testament is a “moral fable” is just as bad as the fundamentalist who teaches it as history. What would you say about a brutish dog-owner who told his naturally stupid dog to piss anywhere but in the flower garden, then hied him to a shelter the minute he did what he couldn’t help doing to begin with? That is the story of Adam, without the benefit of two millennia of theology to disguise its simplest elements.
Bad Dog
Modern Christian theology has attempted to emphasize the love, mercy and compassion of this God: he is a God of second chances–redemption–after all.
But mainly the Christian message is little more than an attempt to rehabilitate God under the guise of teaching that it’s the humans who needed rehabilitating. They had to be given one more chance at the flowers in order to to show that God, after his initial temper tantrum, is really full of kindness and patience. That’s basically what the “New” Testament tries to do, after all, though in a highly problematical way.
At a basic level, an atheist is likely to detect that there is no ethical content to the stories of religion. The prototypes are Adam, the disobedient, Job, the sufferer, Noah, the obedient, and Abraham, the faithful.
But these figures are not ethical paragons. They are examples of the types of behavior religion requires. Religion evokes “good” in the “good dog” sense of the word–as a characteristic of obedience, not as an outcome of choice. That is not the kind of good any rational being would aspire to–and one of the reasons certain interpreters, like Augustine, thought that what was squandered in Eden was reason. But ethics is about reflection, discrimination, freedom, and decision. Religion, strictly and fairly speaking, does not provide for that; only unbelief does. If Augustine had understood things properly, he would have spit in God’s eye and said that Adam’s only rational choice was to do what he did, affirm who and what he was, and get on with his life without Yahweh. Instead, he creeps out of the garden, takes his punishment like a beaten spaniel, and lives in the hope that his master will throw him the occasional bone.
The expulsion from Eden
To the extent that modern liberal theologies try to say that religions have endorsed a policy of choice and reflection all along, the rebuttal is history.
5. Atheists are socially tolerant. By this, I mean that they do not have a history of violence against beliefs and practices they may privately abhor. They do not burn down churches, black or white. No matter how ardent their unbelief, they do not bomb mosques or blow themselves up at Sunday Mass to reduce the number of Catholics in the world. They are not responsible for the Arab-Israeli border wars. They have not created tens of thousands of displaced people in resettlement camps in Lebanon or torn whole African nations apart. In general, they do not mistake adventurism for preemptive wars.
They may support separation of church and state in sometimes strident ways, but not violent ways: you will not see gangs of secularists tearing down nativity scenes at Christmas or storming historic court houses to get icons of the ten commandments removed from public view. –Even if they think these public displays of devotion are inappropriate and teach people bad habits.
All of these things are pretty obvious, even to believers whose gurus talk incessantly about the secular humanist and atheist “threat” without ever being able (successfully) to put a face on it. But they need to be recorded because religious people often assume that tolerance can only be practised within a religious or inter-religious context, Catholic to Baptist, Christian to Jew and Muslim. But atheism stands outside this circle.
Atheism, as atheism, stands as the rejection of all religious beliefs: it is befuddling to believers how such a position deserves tolerating at all. If there has to be an enemy–something a majority can identify as uniformly despicable–atheism has to be it. That is why hoi polloi in the darkest days of the communist threat, especially those who had no idea what the social and economic program of the Soviet Union was, considered the worst sin of the “Reds” in Russia, China, and Europe their disbelief in God.
As with goodness, tolerance needs to be exhibited non-coercively. Not because Jesus said “Love your enemies,” or because Muhammad preached sparing unbelievers, provided they capitulated to Islam. Not even because John Paul II apologized to Galileo in absentia. What supports the suggestion that atheists are tolerant (and need to continue to be seen as being tolerant) is that the virtue of tolerance emerges naturally from the rational premises of unbelief. What atheism says is that intellectual assent is won by argument and evidence, not by force of arms or the power of priests and mullahs.
While atheists will never experience mass conversions to their cause “like a mighty wind” after a speech by a pentecostal preacher, the individual changes of mind from belief to skepticism will depend as much on the tone as on the substance of their message. By the same token, what atheist would trust the unbelieving equivalent of a spiritual awakening? It doesn’t happen that way. It happens one by one. Slowly. Just ask an atheist about how he “became” an unbeliever, and I wager that you will hear a life story, or something about how things just didn’t add up–a process, not a sudden emotional shudder but often a painful change of heart and (especially) mind.
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Published: September 28, 2010
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: atheism : Christianity : R. Joseph Hoffmann : religion : secular humanism : skeptcism : the Bible ..
44 Responses to “Five Good Things about Atheism”
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steph
September 28, 2010 at 11:03 pm
This is a very interesting post, not least because it makes me wonder whether I would have had the courage to reject a religious belief if I had been born into it. Although American and Middle Eastern atheists are courageous for not believing, as also Socrates certainly was, not all of us can claim to be courageous for not believing when there was never any pressure or desire in the first place. Despite unanswered questions … like ‘So why are we here?’ The answer for me is usually something like ‘Don’t know, but don’t forget the picnic because I know the surf’s up today.’ And it was precisely because I knew so many other atheists, of different flavours (former believers, anti religious, or like me, interested in believers’ beliefs despite not wanting to believe) that I didn’t always admit until very recently that I probably was one too. Not courageous – just conforming! although I defend my ‘atheist butism’ maybe…
You’re not in a terrible position though. When people disagree with you they tend to speak louder than people who agree. Although the Irish Oscar Wilde was referring to the British public, he said as long as three quarters of people disagreed with you, it was a sign of your sanity. More importantly though it’s a reflection of an independent mind not bowing obediently to convention for the sake of it. Without the reflection and insight into atheism and religion you provide, progress and learning is poorer. Ogden Nash wrote in part of ‘Seeing Eye to Eye is Believing’, “I believe that people believe what they believe they believe. When people reject a truth or an untruth it is not because it is a truth or an untruth that they reject it. No, if it isn’t in accord with their beliefs in the first place they simply say, “Nothing doing,” and refuse to inspect it.”
A long winded way of saying, with Groucho Marx “I can’t say I disagree with you” regarding the five good things – even six – about atheism in this post, and you’re absolutely right. And as always entertaining and beautifully written.
x
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Seth Strong
September 29, 2010 at 8:16 am
Although not in disagreement with the comment above by Steph, there is no winning on subjects like this. I get the impression that for every view into a subject you can find as an example writer, I can find another view that you haven’t incorporated or another way to look at the motivations of this type of people or that type of people. But I also think that’s a good place to include room for comments which can go further and onto tangents.
I totally endorse viewpoints that suggest atheism is not enough while simultaneously brandishing atheist as a priority description for people who might want to know things about me.
And also, if religion weren’t such a big deal to the extent that there are states acting to include creationism in science class, then I’d have a lot less incentive to investigate this subject. So for people in other countries and even other communities in America like maybe Oregon, their atheists might have less to say.
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chenier1
September 29, 2010 at 6:14 pm
At some point you will no doubt explain the basis for categorising Comrade Stalin and Chairman Mao as “socially tolerant”, but you’ve obviously been having a hard time of it recently, so not now.
We’re back to the bit about two nations divided by the same language and different cultures; it is difficult for someone like myself, educated at a school founded in 1875 by radical feminists, in which Creationism was known to be too ridiculous even to be laughed at, to envisage any teacher trying to claim that the story of Adam and Eve is a moral fable; certainly none of mine ever attempted to do so, presumably because they did not wish to be laughed out of the classroom.
That and the fact that as far as Miss Buss and Miss Beale were concerned the Jesuits were pikers; no girl educated at a GPDST school was allowed to believe something because someone, however eminent, had said so. Even if the eminent Being doing the saying was God; it would be an affront to the memory of the suffragettes, who are ranked considerably above any saints.
Equally, since Job was not Jewish no-one ever attempted to claim that the God he was conversing with was the one addressed as father by Jesus, in the event of there actually being a ‘historical Jesus’, that is. Improbable as it may seem, the question of whether there really was a Jesus at all was included in the curriculum; as I recall the school chaplain was a bit unhappy about it but he went on to become an admittedly rather bad bishop, so presumably the powers that be forgave him for knuckling down.
All in all, I was educated to believe that intellectual assent is won by argument and evidence; since someone claiming to be an atheist is now considered to warrant a round of applause without that person providing any argument or evidence at all, I shall declare myself to be an atheist roughly around the time when Hell freezes over…
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Seth Strong
September 30, 2010 at 9:03 am
Any chance you could summarize your opinion, chenier1. It appears you’re saying that you wouldn’t identify as atheist because of Stalin, Mao and two founders of the women’s college at Oxford. I admit I was extra confused when Job entered the conversation. The blog post’s treatment there struck me as rather benign.
I think it’s really swell that you found some evil fellows who identified as atheist. I’d like to know about nutjob atheists analogous to the abortion doctor snipers and the kidnappers of O’hare because dictators say a lot of things in order to control their masses and are rarely the epitome of the faiths or lack of faiths that they profess. At least, that’s my take on that. And yes, it is possible that people identifying as atheist can actually commit crimes. But I’m pretty sure I can dredge up statistics substantiating that people who identify as atheist are jailed proportionally less than their believer counterparts which would provide more support for the blog post claims (http://www.atheistempire.com/reference/stats/main.html under “Atheist Prison Population”).
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Eliyahu
October 8, 2012 at 11:43 am
The believers vs non-believers in jail is a fallacious argument, there is substantially more believers than non-believers so surely there will be in the prisons as well. If I survey a Starbucks and find more theists than atheists 3:1 does that mean that theists in general love coffee more than atheists? No :)
Seth Strong
October 9, 2012 at 4:35 pm
It would be a fallacious argument if the amount of believers in jail were proportional to the amount of believers at large. I haven’t put any recent effort into this topic (that comment you replied to is two years old) but I’m holding the stance that the amount of believers in jail is disproportionately larger and the amount of atheists disproportionately smaller than those populations are outside of jail. So more criminals claim faith.
It could be a conspiracy where all the atheists and associated non-believers get together and promise that when they go to jail, they check “Christian” or “Muslim” but I doubt that.
However, you might be saying that you know that the amount of believers in jail is proportional to the population outside of jail. Is that what you are saying?
steph
September 29, 2010 at 11:43 pm
I love the photo – your hands appear to recreate the angels’ wings in William Blake’s Christ in the Sepulchre, Guarded by Angels… http://www.william-blake.org/Christ-in-the-Sepulchre,-Guarded-by-Angels.html
x
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rjosephhoffmann
September 30, 2010 at 11:30 am
I might want to distinguish the categories. Stalin and Mao were communists whose atheism was prescribed by the party, just as a thousand Christian rotters and not a few popes were Christian by default, not choice. That’s to say that they did not arrive at atheism as their fundamental intellectual position, but their “default” atheism gave the position in general a bad name–precisely because they symbolized pars pro toto what religious people in the west thought atheism is/was. I think we call this the fallacy of division.
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Ophelia Benson
October 1, 2010 at 12:41 pm
I disavow any claim to courage. It takes no courage whatseover for me to be an atheist, and it never has. It does take courage for some people, but only some. As for me, I’m a coward.
Imagination…really? Atheists shy away from art and imagination? Not the ones I know.
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Josh in California
October 1, 2010 at 9:17 pm
Didn’t you get the memo? All gnu atheists are emotionless Commander Datas–able to understand human art, literature, music, etc. intellectually but incapable of truly appreciating any of it.
(And every article about gnu atheism will include at least one off-the-wall generalization that only really applies to the small subset of atheists the author has actually interacted with.)
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Eric MacDonald
March 28, 2011 at 9:29 am
Yes, that stood out for me. Reading poetry is one of my favourite pastimes, and seldom a day goes by when I do not read some of my favourite poets: Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Herbert, Larkin, Auden, Lawrence, Owen, Stevens, Hopkins, …
While I think this post makes up to a certain extent for the earlier one lambasting the new atheists, it seems to me important to remember that the forces of religion are exceedingly powerful. Criticism is vital, but indiscriminate condemnation is not helpful.
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rjosephhoffmann
October 1, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Now, now–I said too many do. You are being modest as well: I think anyone who calls for common sense in this society is brave. It takes nothing to be Christine O’Donnell except a good dentist.
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Ophelia Benson
October 1, 2010 at 9:06 pm
I know, you did. I suppose I was just thinking about the atheists I know – who are more in the vein of Salman Rushdie (in a YouTube clip he posted on Facebook a couple of days ago) saying “they’re great stories, but they’re not true.” He’s a fan of great stories. Heh heh.
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Ed Jones
October 2, 2010 at 4:20 pm
For goodness sake, common sense – be Bright not Dim, go to Quodlibet:Atheist Attitude – Comments 6. 7 & 8. Begin with 7 then to 8 – but engage!
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Ed Jones
October 5, 2010 at 2:30 pm
steph,
Apologies for seeming rude. I take refuge in that I comment as a believer over against blatently offensive labeling, “Religion is for Dims” – “Religion (saith RD with essay approval) is the default position for the scientifically challenged of the world” – further without comment response, the advise “Ignore the believer” seems to rule. All the while attempting to introduce the contradiction (the absolute, radical, irredeemable difference), the stark phenemon: why these the pioneering physicists, the world’s greatest, in droves, go beyond physics, the hardest of the sciences, to embrace the mea-physical, mysticism, the tenderest of religions!
By pure happenstance, I have a peculiar interest in RJH essays which may be explained by the first 13 comments to the essay “The Importance of the Historical Jesus” which may suggest that orthodox Christianity does not represent true reilgion.
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Arrested moral development. | Open Parachute says:
October 3, 2010 at 1:32 pm
[...] Five Good Things about Atheism where R. Joseph Hoffmann claims that atheism is an ethical position and raises the question of “whether it is possible to be good with God.” [...]
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Herzen
October 5, 2010 at 3:02 am
Stalin also claimed that he ran a democratic party-hence the elections with 99.9 percent majorities. Should we be nervous of Democracy?
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Seth Strong
October 5, 2010 at 8:54 am
Of course you should! As a citizen, you should always feel uneasy about the balance of your remaining liberties versus the concessions you make to the government.
It seems that you are pointing out that what someone labels themselves as isn’t necessarily what they are. Is there more to your point?
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Stewart
March 28, 2011 at 6:49 am
Re: courage
Surely being an atheist is not connected to courage. Coming out as one might be something else. A society that criminalises or stigmatises atheism is surely likely to have less open atheists than one that doesn’t, isn’t it?
Hope you saw my late addition to the B&W thread; it was posted before I had read this.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 28, 2011 at 6:59 am
We have much more evidence about societies that have persecuted Jews, heretics, and even Catholic or protestant disseneters than any that have actually persecuted atheists in the way, e.g., religion was discouraged under communist regimes. But your point is aggreable: there would be fewer atheists in a society that actually persecuted them.
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Seth Strong
March 28, 2011 at 8:38 am
Being an atheist isn’t the only courageous thing but it can be. Most of my non believer friends are first generation atheists. We had to disappoint our parents before we could earn their respect. And some of us speak up louder because we have the privilege that our friends do not. I thing courageous is an adjective you can apply to atheism.
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Stewart
March 28, 2011 at 7:07 am
But are we not speaking about times in which being an atheist was far less acceptable than belonging to a faith that happened not to be dominant?
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rjosephhoffmann
March 28, 2011 at 8:03 am
You use the word “stigmatize,” and I’ll accept that. Actual persecutions of atheists have been pitifully infrequent and rare throughout history–no major purges or anything of the sort. i do notice a trend in some atheists circles to create such an era, but except for very minor incidents, like Shelley and Bradlaugh and the social “ostracism” often applied to atheist ideas, I can’t think of any real theatrical moments. Please tell me what you have in mind. Part of the issue is that atheism as we use the term today is a modern word without much pre-18th century history. it meant something very different in the ancient world, where even Jews and christians could be and were called atheists. I am now being told that some new atheists are receiving death threats; I have no reason to doubt this but I think the claim deserves investigation.
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Veronica
March 28, 2011 at 4:31 pm
You include Shelly among the imaginers, iconoclasts, rule-breakers, [and] mental adventurers, but you fail to mention that Shelley was expelled from Oxford for atheism after publishing his pamphlet, _The Necessity of Atheism_ and that the British courts denied Shelley custody of his two children.
rjosephhoffmann
March 28, 2011 at 4:39 pm
I actually posted the whole of Shelley’s Necessity to this site, with that information; no one wants to deny that Shelley paid a price–in fact, he’s one of the few who suffered. http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/the-necessity-of-atheism/
Stewart
March 28, 2011 at 8:12 am
To clarify, when you talk about religious minorities (persecuted or other), you are talking about communities of some kind, I assume. Which historical periods have seen atheists in sufficient numbers or concentration to qualify as a community? Is this not an outgrowth of how unacceptable it was? Are there not examples of philosophers in centuries past now assumed to have been atheists in all but name (because they were too attached to their lives and liberty to say so outright)?
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Ophelia Benson
March 28, 2011 at 1:39 pm
Anaxagoras and Socrates to name two.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 28, 2011 at 2:42 pm
Well, I don’t think Socrates was our kind of atheist–too wordy–but certainly not some people’s idea of a religious Athenian. But the charge certainly included not believing in the myths.
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Stewart
March 28, 2011 at 3:12 pm
By “atheist” I did mean it in our more contemporary sense of simply not believing in the existence of god/s. Certainly I did not have believing Jews and Christians in mind. If Christians of one sect or another were persecuted, I suppose it was usually as heretics, whereas Jews might have been “Christ-killers.” Did you intend, in your reply, to claim that if there was less persecution of atheists as a group, it was because atheism was looked upon more favourably than any brand of religious belief?
rjosephhoffmann
March 28, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Bit more complicated: the modern position we call atheism coincides with a period where many countries were moving away from medieval persecutionist tactics, which were fundamentally inter-religious, as you also say. When we talk about modern atheism as a “movement”–yes, there isn’t much of it in an organized way until the 19th century when places like Conway Hall move quickly from Unitarianism to essentially an atheist stance, and by then laws protecting even the most radical groups are in place. The evolution of atheism in the modern period therefore correlates with toleration and actually benefits from it–which is why pseudo atheists, if they were, like Paine and even deists like Jefferson could get by with saying as much as they did critical of religion. I’d even argue that from that standpoint, elected officials and intellectuals are probably worse off today than they were in the 16th and 17th century. I think atheism is unpopular enough without trying to create a history of persecution that just doesn’t exist–but not because there haven’ always been skeptics and atheists. The closest I think we might come is the persecution of Socinians, who were in Italy and had to fee to Poland: they denied the trinity in the 16th and 17th century, and found a home in Poland for a while. The history of atheism in an organized way is closely tid to the development of rational religious movements in the pre- and early enlightenment, especially unitarianism, which is the first step on the slope towards rejecting revelation.
Bruce Gorton
March 28, 2011 at 10:32 am
On imagination I disagree – I write poetry (Not very good poetry, but it counts) and go in for photography basically because I can never quite draw what I see in my head fast enough.
We also have champions like Tim Minchin and the like. Atheists often make for great comedians, and comedy is to my mind the very highest form of creativity. It combines the best of poetry’s expression, with philosophy’s introspection.
I think it is one of those things that as a community we should highlight more – that we are not, as Steve Martin once claimed, lacking songs. That not only do we have art, but it is often great art.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 28, 2011 at 11:22 am
Hi Bruce: Are you disagreeing with this or some point made after it?
3. Atheists are more imaginative than most people. Religious people obviously have imagination too, but so much of their imaginative world is provided for them in myth, art, ritual and architectural space.
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Seth Strong
March 28, 2011 at 3:48 pm
Rebellions take courage. Christians who think they are oppressed can probably qualify for that label as well. I would define courage as the willingness to step outside your comfort zone and risk social penalties for stating your opinion. Being an atheist is easy, potentially. Saying that’s what you’re doing is not always so. In my house it’s not courageous. But out here on the internet where it can affect job prospects, in laws, and other folks opinion of me? It’s courage.
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Stewart
March 28, 2011 at 8:18 pm
“The evolution of atheism in the modern period therefore correlates with toleration…”
I take that as confirmation of what I was fishing for; while minority faiths could get by even if persecuted, atheists didn’t even dare stick their heads above the parapets till certain rights had been anchored in society.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 28, 2011 at 8:29 pm
This is close to right, except we need to be careful about assuming a coherent “atheist” position before the coherent position, which is evolutionary, had developed. There are scholars like John Hick for example who have suggested that something like what we are calling atheism was “psychologically impossible” before the modern era, meaning that we are not talking about repression but about rational development. I would completely reject any suggestion that there was an enormous “atheist underground” in the 12th century for example–it just wasn’t possible. But what there WAS is just as important. Have a look at http://www.positiveatheism.org/india/s1990c25.htm Gordon Stein was the expert on the subject of the evolutionary identity of atheism. He died tragically after he had edited the Enc of Unbelief. But you can get the basic outline there.
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Stewart
March 28, 2011 at 8:35 pm
Thanks for the link. Will give it my attention shortly. I also was not expecting a 12th century atheist underground, but “psychologically impossible” does sound far-fetched. There must have been people centuries before us who decided that what was being preached just didn’t add up, even if they were smart enough to keep it to themselves. “Socially almost impossible” I could buy.
rjosephhoffmann
March 28, 2011 at 8:38 pm
I agree, far fetched. I think there must have been atheists in neolithic times. Just trying to avoid the disparity between what they would not have believed and what we do not believe, which is culturally determined and this highly uncertain. Our atheism has been greatly shaped by science and theirs could not have been.
Stewart
March 28, 2011 at 8:52 pm
The science point is well taken. Unless one is prepared to swallow a 100% rate of self-delusion among prehistoric shamans, yes, there must have been neolithic atheists.
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rjosephhoffmann
March 29, 2011 at 7:38 pm
What would really be useful, and very difficult to produce, is a history of atheism that respected the way in which belief has been related to particular objects over time. Modern atheism has been the story of the rejection of a particular set of beliefs, defined primarily in biblical terms, since the early Enlightenment. –I just don’t want to see atheism becoming superstitious about its past; the Christians created a totally, or largely false story of their own martyrdom and persecution–let’s not do that with unbelief.
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Ed Jones
March 29, 2011 at 5:33 pm
I am forced to restate the above March 5th challenge. Joe, you said March 28th:: “Our atheism has been greatly shaped by science – -” as a positive statement. I am forced to take it indisputably to be the exact opposite – a negative statment; based on the thought of those identified as the world’s greatest physicists of the 20th century. They all embraced mysticism. A conclusion not of emotion, not of itituition, not of faith, but of a sustained use of the critical intellect. This followed after concluding that the great differenc betweeen the old and the new physics, given that they both were dealing with shadows and illusions, not reality, the new physics was forced to be aware of the fact. “We (the old) thought we were dealing with the world itself”. (Sir James Jeans)
Litte as they were in the position of simply living and thinking within the radition of one of the old religious traditions (e.g. Christianity), so equally little were they prepared to go over to a naive, rationalistically grounded atheism.
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Seth Strong
March 29, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Our modern atheism is in fact greatly shaped by science. Our horseman are pretty unanimous about that. And I would say the evolution versus creationism stand off is a purely science versus a popular religion even more than it is an argument against faith. And yet, some of us atheists, consider it to be analogous to the kind of half hatched nonsense that leads the uneducated to think Scientology is nice because it’s got science in the name. Real science is a good cure for a lot of those crazy thoughts which ail many people.
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Five Good Things about Atheism (via The New Oxonian) | The New Oxonian says:
June 8, 2011 at 5:32 am
[...] Five Good Things about Atheism (via The New Oxonian) Posted on June 8, 2011 by rjosephhoffmann It seems I cannot win. When I chart the vague, occasional and ambiguous virtues of religion (mainly historical) I am accused of being intellectually soft. When I tell atheists they run the risk of turning their social solidarity into tent revivals or support groups I risk expulsion from the ranks of the Unbaptized and Wannabe Unbaptized. It is a terrible posi … Read More [...]
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Tristan Vick
June 13, 2011 at 9:55 am
I appreciate this article.
I think this has compelled me to write a similar list of positive reasons in support of atheism.
However, just a small nitpick, but I would change your preface to your list of good things about atheism which states:
“As far as I can tell, there are five:”
to
“As far as I can tell, there are at least five:”
Because, as we all know, there could be more we haven’t thought of yet. ;) Now I am off to think more on the subject.
Reply
Robert
July 15, 2011 at 8:46 am
You forgot the most important one.
Atheism is honest.
The rest are nice, but in reality, irrelevant.
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient
Theology and Falsification: The Hijacking of Antony Flew
by rjosephhoffmann
Antony Flew at home in 2007
Antony Flew died on April 8, 2010 after a career that earned him the reputation of being one of the most acute critics of theology and theological discourse in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition.
The excerpt here, from “Theology and Falsification” (1950) represents Flew’s attempt to examine the statement “God loves us,” against the background of Christian theodicy–the belief that the goodness of God can be reconciled with the seeming contradiction that there is natural and moral evil in the world he created. With his later essay, “The Presumption of Atheism” (1984) it is one of the most popular contributions to the philosophy of religion ever written.
Courted at the end of his life by a variety of evangelical Christian groups, and in declining health after 2003, Flew is sometimes represented as a “convert” to Christianity, specifically deistic theism, who came finally to accept the “complexity” arguments associated with the “intelligent design” proponents. The history of this period was summarized in a 2007 New York Times feature by Mark Oppenheimer, “The Turning of an Atheist.”
Various individuals and groups have put forward letters and interviews from him to support their own view. None adds up to a coherent picture of Antony Flew’s state of mind after 2003.
My own take on the situation is very different, having known him and worked with him closely in Britain between 1991 and 1997, and remaining in close touch until 2006.
In 1996 Flew came to me asking if I would reprint in the Journal for the Critical Study of Religion, which I then edited, his essay “The Presumption of Atheism.” Since the article had been frequently anthologized (and pressed for space) I demured and asked him why.
The answer came a few days later in the form of a manuscript by a conservative, then little-known evangelical Christian philosopher, Douglas Geivett, entitled “A Pascalian Rejoinder to ‘The Presumption of Atheism’.” Flew asked for it to be included because he found the argument compelling. “Do you mean you think he’s right?” I asked. “No.” he shot back. “I am right. He is compelling.”
The essays were published in JCSR 2/2 (1997) as a matched set. On receiving his copies, Flew phoned me to say that he was happy to have done Geivett the favour, but even happier that people would be able to judge the difference between the two positions.
Geivett’s friend and collaborator at the “Christian Research Institute,” Gary Habermas (whom Flew had debated in 1984 before 3000 people), then began his long campaign to remodel Flew’s ideas under the pretext of a “discussion.” Flew seemed to regard this interchange as an extended debate of the sort he enjoyed. In CRI propaganda, however, Geivett contended that Flew’s new position was an evolving deism, “Historic deists [sic] were moving away from Christianity and toward atheism. Flew, however, seems to be moving in the opposite direction from his decades-long atheism.” It was the kind of life-changing experience that CRI craved in order to bolster its claims of being a Christian think tank.
While Flew regarded his involvement with the CRI and Geivett as a debate, not a process of conversion, he was becoming less good at it, and less clear and careful at sorting details. From 2004 onward, following an interview with Habermas published in a Biola University journal Philosophia Christi, in which Flew appeared to reverse some of cirticisms of theism, the claim was routinely made that Flew was a Christian. As time went on, Flew’s repeated attempts to clarify his position to concerned friends led to even greater confusion. He was no longer able to extricate himself from the intellectual bondage of his Christian interpreters.
It has alays been my view that the Geivett-Habermas hijacking of Flew’s ideas during this period stands as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of philosophy since the trial of Socrates. It was Tony’s willingness to engage positions no matter how inimical to the empiricism he embraced that characterized his life as a philosopher. His insistence that his own essay appear, unedited and unchanged, alongside that of Geivett was proof that he stood firmly by his views, and that Geivett’s ideas did not demand separate rebuttal.
By Antony Flew
Let us begin with a parable. It is a parable developed from a tale told by John Wisdom in his haunting and revolutionary article “Gods.”[1] Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, “Some gardener must tend this plot.” The other disagrees, “There is no gardener.” So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. “But perhaps he is an invisible gardener.” So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Well’s The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. “But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible, to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves.” At last the Sceptic despairs, “But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?”
John Wisdom, "Gods"
In this parable we can see how what starts as an assertion, that something exist or that there is some analogy between certain complexes of phenomena, may be reduced step by step to an altogether different status, to an expression perhaps of a “picture preference.”[2] The Sceptic says there is no gardener. The Believer says there is a gardener (but invisible, etc.). One man talks about sexual behavior. Another man prefers to talk of Aphrodite (but knows that there is not really a superhuman person additional to, and somehow responsible for, all sexual phenomena).[3] The process of qualification may be checked at any point before the original assertion is completely withdrawn and something of that first assertion will remain (Tautology).
Mr. Wells’ invisible man could not, admittedly, be seen, but in all other respects he was a man like the rest of us. But though the process of qualification may be and of course usually is, checked in time, it is not always judicially so halted. Someone may dissipate his assertion completely without noticing that he has done so. A fine brash hypothesis may thus be killed by inches, the death by a thousand qualifications.
And in this, it seems to me, lies the peculiar danger, the endemic evil, of theological utterance. Take such utterances as “God has a plan,” “God created the world,” “God loves us as a father loves his children.” They look at first sight very much like assertions, vast cosmological assertions. Of course, this is no sure sign that they either are, or are intended to be, assertions. But let us confine ourselves to the cases where those who utter such sentences intended them to express assertions. (Merely remarking parenthetically that those who intend or interpret such utterances as crypto-commands, expressions of wishes, disguised ejaculations, concealed ethics, or as anything else but assertions, are unlikely to succeed in making them either properly orthodox or practically effective).
Now to assert that such and such is the case is necessarily equivalent to denying that such and such is not the case.[4] Suppose then that we are in doubt as to what someone who gives vent to an utterance is asserting, or suppose that, more radically, we are sceptical as to whether he is really asserting anything at all, one way of trying to understand (or perhaps to expose) his utterance is to attempt to find what he would regard as counting against, or as being incompatible with, its truth. For if the utterance is indeed an assertion, it will necessarily be equivalent to a denial of the negation of the assertion. And anything which would count against the assertion, or which would induce the speaker to withdraw it and to admit that it had been mistaken, must be part of (or the whole of) the meaning of the negation of that assertion. And to know the meaning of the negation of an assertion, is as near as makes no matter, to know the meaning of that assertion.[5] And if there is nothing which a putative assertion denies then there is nothing which it asserts either: and so it is not really an assertion. When the Sceptic in the parable asked the Believer, “Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?” he was suggesting that the Believer’s earlier statement had been so eroded by qualification that it was no longer an assertion at all.
Now it often seems to people who are not religious as if there was no conceivable event or series of events the occurrence of which would be admitted by sophisticated religious people to be a sufficient reason for conceding “there wasn’t a God after all” or “God does not really love us then.” Someone tells us that God loves us as a father loves his children. We are reassured. But then we see a child dying of inoperable cancer of the throat. His earthly father is driven frantic in his efforts to help, but his Heavenly Father reveals no obvious sign of concern. Some qualification is made — God’s love is “not merely human love” or it is “an inscrutable love,” perhaps — and we realize that such suffering are quite compatible with the truth of the assertion that “God loves us as a father (but of course…).” We are reassured again. But then perhaps we ask: what is this assurance of God’s (appropriately qualified) love worth, what is this apparent guarantee really a guarantee against? Just what would have to happen not merely (morally and wrongly) to tempt but also (logically and rightly) to entitle us to say “God does not love us” or even “God does not exist”? I therefore put to the succeeding symposiasts the simple central questions, “What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or the existence of, God?”
Notes
1. P.A.S., 1944-5, reprinted as Ch. X of Logic and Language, Vol. I (Blackwell, 1951), and in his Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (Blackwell, 1953).
2. Cf. J. Wisdom, “Other Minds,” Mind, 1940; reprinted in his Other Minds (Blackwell, 1952).
Cf. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, II, 655-60.
3. For those who prefer symbolism: p = ~ ~ p.
4. For by simply negating ~ p we get p: = ~ ~ p = p.
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Published: March 28, 2011
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Tags: Antony Flew : atheism : Center for Critical Studies in Religion : Christian Research Institute : Christianity : Douglas Geivett : Evangelical : Gary Habermas : Oxford University : Presumption of Atheism : R. Joseph Hoffmann : religious language : theology and falsification ..
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The Secular Core of Humanism, by Paul Kurtz
by rjosephhoffmann
Paul Kurtz, PhD, is the founder of the Center for Inquiry, the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is also the founder and for almost thirty years editor in chief of Free Inquiry and the Skeptical Inquirer. The author of dozens of books and hundreds of articles, both learned and popular, Paul Kurtz resigned from the organizations he created in 2009 in order to devote himself fully to the ethical dimensions of secular and humanistic thought when the board of the Center decided on a militant atheist agenda unrelated to the historic strengths of the organization. Dauntless, Kurtz founded the Institute for Science and Human Values and a new journal, The Human Prospect, which is now in circulation.
Kurtz’s Statement of Neohumanist Principles has now been endorsed by over a hundred of the world’s leading humanists, philosophers, scientists, and public intellectuals.
In this excerpt, Kurtz explains the difference between secular humanism and atheism, insisting that a key task of the nonreligious humanist must always be the free and critical examination of religion.
Secular humanism and atheism are not identical. One can be an atheist and not a secular humanist or humanist. Indeed, some thinkers or activists who call themselves atheists explicitly reject humanist ethical values (for example, Stalin, Lenin, Nietzsche, and others). Nor is secular humanism the same thing as humanism by itself; it is surely sharply different from religious humanism.
I should also make it clear that secular humanism is not antireligious; it is simply nonreligious. There is a difference. Secular humanists are nontheists; they may be atheists, agnostics, or skeptics about the God question and/or immortality of the soul. To say that we are nonreligious means, that is, that we are not religious; ours is a scientific, ethical, and philosophical life stance. I have used the term eupraxsophy to denote our beliefs and values as a whole. This means that, as secular humanists, we offer good practical wisdom based on ethics, science, and philosophy.
The term secular should make it clear that secular humanists are not religious. In contrast, the term religious humanism is unfortunate. It has been used by some humanists to denote a kind of moral and æsthetic commitment to a set of ideals and practices; but this is most confusing. Often it serves to sneak in some quasi-spiritual and/or transcendental aspect of experience and practice, aping religion.
Secular humanism is nonreligious. But this does not mean that it does not criticize the claims of religion; indeed, we have a moral obligation to speak the plain truth. There is a difference, however, between being antireligious—attacking religion or dismissing it cavalierly—and being willing to analyze religious claims and calling them to account for their lack of reliable empirical foundations. Biblical and Qur’anic criticism are essential to intellectual honesty and clarity; and so, secular humanists are able and willing to submit the claims of religion-particularly where these are relevant in the open public square-to critical scrutiny. To shy away from this would be dishonest.
Accordingly, secular humanists are nonreligious critics of religious claims, particularly where these intrude in public policies and beliefs. Surely theistic religions today attack secular humanists and naturalists without compunction. In contrast, secular humanists have a responsibility to truth, to respond and to present the outlook of secularists and the ethics of humanism in clear and distinct language.
Secular humanism is thus committed to science and reason as the method of evaluating all truth claims, whether arising in popular belief, scientific theories, or in moral, political, or religious claims. Similarly, secular humanists are sympathetic to skeptical inquiry-that is, the application of rational methods and empirical/experimental testing to all claims to truth. For that reason, too, secular humanists cannot understand why religious humanists so fear to step on the toes of their religious brethren. Similarly, secular humanists are critical of those contemporary skeptics who express trepidation about treading in religious waters. Surely, skeptical epistemology means that there is open season on any and all claims to truth; all are subject to empirical and rational scrutiny. Critical thinking should not be confined to paranormal claims alone, which might be considered safe to criticize. In principle, critical thinking should likewise be applied to religion, politics, economics, and morality.
What is central to humanism, in my view, is the ethical component; namely, humanists believe that:
◾Ethics is an autonomous field of inquiry, independent of theological claims, amenable to rational scrutiny, testing value judgments by their consequences.
◾Ethical values and judgments are relative to human interests, needs, desires, ends, and values; they are open to objective criticism and evaluation.
◾Fulfillment, realization, and maximization of human freedom and happiness are what humanists seek, both for the individual and the community.
◾Thus there are ethical responsibilities that humanists hold toward others within the community, on the interpersonal level, the level of the democratic society, and the planetary community as well.
Clearly, secular humanism is not equivalent to atheism—it is far more than mere unbelief, since it stands for affirmation and not merely negation. Similarly, secular humanism finds itself at odds with religious humanism, since its outlook is clearly nonreligious. It goes beyond any negative skeptical inquiry insofar as it seeks to provide a positive and affirmative alternative to customary moral and religious practices.
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Published: March 29, 2011
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